Good Hardware Handicapped by an Awkward Interface
Its widely known that the sensor in this camera performs brilliantly in the Nikon D800/810, with extraordinarily high resolution, low-noise images. The images from this camera's use of the same sensor is about as good, but the efficient production of good images is hampered by Sony's awkward interface and slow operation. I compare this camera to my Canon 7D II, which is a pure action shooter's instrument. My use of Canon and other lenses on this camera body mean that I sacrifice autofocus, but for capturing panoramas and focus-stacks, autofocus and RAW operating speed are not high priorities. However, this camera gets in the way of the photographer. Instead of providing separate, independent controls for the number of shots taken and their EV separations, it provides a number of predetermined combinations it thinks might be most useful. For example, there is no easy way to take 5 bracketed shots with 1 EV of separation. If you want that kind of bracketing sequence for high quality HDRs, you have to set up and take each one separately, which slows the work flow. Also, the internal data path seems slow: with a Sony SDXC with 95MB/s write speed, I have to wait after each shot for the image to be written to the card.
Even though I have updated to the most recent v2 firmware version, it still has operational bugs. For example, when I'm moving around a blown up image, the camera slips to the next image when I don't do anything that should trigger that action.
With all these and other defects, the sensor is still the most important factor, and it over rides the irritating problems.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned