Traveling Light
Checking out Sony’s lightweight, high res combo.
Sony A7CR with 20-70 G and SmallRig eyecup
I like to travel light: One carry-on bag no matter how long the trip, plus one gear bag for cameras, lenses, computer, and myriad dongles. Earlier this year I pushed the limits over in Afghanistan (see post), where I spent two snowy weeks in mid-winter with my A1, A9, and three prime lenses: 35, 85, and 300 - all stuffed into my indestructible Peak Design Everday pack. During that trip, things got heavy. Turns out, traveling with the 300 was an impractical, if not whimsical, idea.
Back home and back to the drawing board, I started eying Sony’s relatively new A7CR because of its crazy high resolution, small form factor, and focus tech. You can read all about it in this DPReview article. I was also interested in how it might pair up with their diminutive 20-70 zoom lens. There’s a decent review of it over at PetaPixel. But most importantly, I wanted to spend some time with both. My friends over at Sony Pro were glad to help.
A Few Considerations
If you are used to the fabulous viewfinder, bright back screen, and wide variety of configurable one-touch controls on the A1 and other higher-end models, you may find the A7CR a bit disappointing: the camera has a more limited selection of programmable controls and is designed mainly to work with the back screen; the viewfinder is pretty much a last-resort option to be used in bright daylight only (update: a third party eyecup by SmallRig solves that). I’m ok with all that; I’ve already decided that this is the perfect body for my four needs: Street candids, Studio portraits and vlogs, Landscapes, and as a third body for night sports photography. So a few more considerations:
Set the display to ‘daylight mode’ to brighten it—all the time. You’ll need it.
Consider that the back screen flips out to the side, not against the body. This can get fiddly for candids and may not be for you; it’s designed principally for vloggers.
Consider spending more time shooting JPG than RAW because of the mega pixelage. Or, at least, be judicious of your RAW keepers. The camera offers some attractive in-body styles, but even with JPG, I prefer plain vanilla until I get to Lightroom.
Consider using tracking focus, which takes advantage of the excellent subject recognition features.
The eyepiece is so tiny that it’s almost entirely unusable. The SmallRig eyecup solves that issue, though it does stick out a bit (which I am fine with, when I am shooting in bright light).
Consider that the maximum shutter speed is 1/4000. So, forget about shallow DOF shots in broad daylight.
The Crop Factor
The good news is that with all those megapixels, you can get lazy and just crop after. Or you can get creative. These images were all cropped from the same photo and all are large enough to print.
This may take a bit of getting used to, but it’s not too hard to turn a non-picture into a nice picture once you realize just how much you can crop out. And I didn’t even have to use AI to remove the telephone lines.
From 20 to 70 at 61 megapixels
This next gallery shows the flexibility of both the 20-70 lens and the A7CR. First at 20mm, then at 24mm, you can see the small but significant differences. In short, with 20mm at the wide end, I don’t need to go much wider for architecture or landscapes (and if I do, I’ve got that 48mp, 13mm lens on the iPhone in my pocket. The third image shows zoomed in to the max 70mm. In the fourth image, I was able to crop right in on my model, Mochi, resulting in a 6mp image - from which I can print an 11x14 image at 300 dpi. Not bad. And with post tech from Adobe and Topaz, I can re-sample that cropped image back up to 24mp, removing some of the resulting grain.
Three Travel Zooms
20-70 f4, 24-105 f/4, and 24-70 f/2.8 (GMii). Photo by iPhone.
Just for S&G ,I paired the A7CR with three small zooms - the 20-70, my trusty and well-worn (but heavy) 24-105, and the surprisingly compact (but even more heavy) 24-70 GMii. I also threw in my new iPhone 16 Pro, for good measure - because computational photography is not going away. My takeaways:
The 20-70 pairs perfectly with the A7CR seem made for each other. Both are compromise products, but both do very well with those compromises. The body is delightfully small, but the images are huge. The lens is equally small and light, and resolves those images very well in most conditions.
The 24-70 GM offers better bokeh and better low-light capabilities, but only maringally so. It also offers superior graphics. But to be honest, I didn’t really see as much of the difference as you could by using a prime instead of a zoom, for example, the 35mm GM.
The 24-105 gives more reach at the far end and is still the perfect one-camera, one-lens solution. But I don’t travel with one camera. I prefer two bodies and two prime lenses, and now I think the 20-70 could live on one of those.
And how about the iPhone 16 Pro, the one that’s always in my back pocket? Lets see how they match up outside of the lab.
Indoor Photography
This is not really my thing, but here are four images, each taken with one of those lenses, three of them on the A7CR, and one on the iPhone 16 Pro. Can you tell the difference? Neither can I. Feel free to pixel peep.
Everything at 35
Next I took some photos of my model, Mary, from all my lenses at 35mm, including the 35/1.4 and the iPhone, to see how things look both with Mary and with the background behind her.
Results were pretty much what I expected: separation was insane at f/1.4 (over the top, in my opinion), pretty good at f/2.8, and normal at f/4. The iPhone 16 Pro, which I set to f/1.4 computationally, had similar separation to the 35mm 1/4 but resolved very differently. Not bad for a mobile phone, but the color seemed a bit tinny and the separation looked a bit, well, computed.
Now Let’s Compose
But what’s the purpose of always shooting at 35, when you have zooms? It’s easy to achieve both bokeh and background separation on lenses with a larger minimum aperture. So I took the same lenses and simply composed what I thought looked good with each one. Here are the images and the zooms that I used. All JPG, straight out of the camera. No science here, just zoomed in to suite my tastes…
A Little Fun
Ok now that the work is done, let’s go take some snapshots. All were taken with A7Cr and 20-70 G. Except that last one.
Wait, What? Sports?
The A7CR first drew my interest because my aging A9 has been growing a bit long in the tooth and I was thinking it might be able to play wingman to my A1 as a second body for field sports, focusing (pun intended) on closer images. Here are a few samples from a hideous night in the 30 degree rain. Yes, it works. Yes you can crop. No, you cannot use the electronic shutter as you can with A9 and A1. But I think it pairs pretty well with the 135/1.8 lens…
So About Light Travel
Here are my use cases:
‘Always With Me’
A7Cr with 20-70 dropped into whatever bag I’m carrying around town. Typically a small messenger bag from Timbuktu (love the waxed canvas one). Maybe with 35/1.5 thrown in. Note: I keep the gear separate from everything else in my bag, to protect it from dust and dirt.
‘Trips, Overnight to one month’
A7Cr, A1, 20-70, 35/1.4, and 85/1.8 or 135/1.8. By the way I love the 85/1.8 and it too seems matched to the A7Cr in terms of size. All tucked into my Peak Design Everyday 20L.
‘Field Sports’
A1 with 300/2.8 and 1.4 extender, A9 with 135/1.8, and A7Cr with 20-70 or 35/1.4. All Tetris’d, a bit snugly, into my Peak Design Everyday 30L.