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Sony A7: A welcome step-up from smaller sensors

2014-02-06
hi I'm Laurie grinning and this is the sony alpha il ce7 otherwise known as the a7 there's a lot to like about this camera it's got a 24 megapixel full-frame sensor which delivers reasonably sharp images that have a nicely broad dynamic range JPEGs are pretty clean through iso 800 and if you shoot raw you can push that hired though depending upon the scene the JPEGs might be okay as high as iso 12800 the video looks good without any unexpected artifacts it's got nice tonality even in low-light the camera is also quite well designed it's got a sturdy magnesium alloy body a relatively large bright contrast electronic viewfinder and a bright tilting LCD the controls are pretty customizable with all the frequently needed settings at or near the surface I do wish some of the buttons were more pronounced and I dislike the feel and location of the movie record button but these are more than made up for by controls like the auto manual focus override toggle place them into the SD card slot on the side rather than in the battery compartment the support for USB charging an exposure compensation dial a grip sufficiently large for shooting with heavy a mount lenses and other amenities I don't really have any complaints about the feature set while I wish it had a built-in flash that's frequently excluded from full-frame models in addition to the EVF and the tilting LCD the a7 supports Wi-Fi with NFC along with apps from Sony's proprietary PlayMemories app store while it offers better performance than it's more expensive sibling the a7r and it's also competitively fast as similar DSLRs it does have a really slow startup which may frustrate some folks and the burst shooting performance doesn't match competitors the battery life is also kind of poor for a camera in this price class if you want full frame photo quality in a great shooting experience in a compact model it's a good choice just carry a spare battery and don't get frustrated by the occasional sluggishness i'm laura grinning from cnet and this is the sony alpha il ce7
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