Just Announced - The Sony Alpha a7RII

Just Announced - The Sony Alpha a7RII

Just announced this afternoon is the much anticipated Sony a7RII. Boasting 42 megapixels in a full-frame sensor, the Sony a7RII promises to be the newest king in the mirrorless camera world. However, the camera has some more features up its sleeve, like internal 4K video and an incredible 399 Phase-Detect AF points at 5 fps.

Many have hailed the original Sony a7R as one of the best cameras available, outing even some of the top contenders in the DSLR market. Sony has taken what made the a7R so special and added to it, creating the a7RII, a beast of a camera, in an incredibly small package. Specifications are listed below:

Sony Alpha a7RII

  • 42MP Full-Frame Exmor R BSI CMOS Sensor
  • BIONZ X Image Processor
  • 5-Axis SteadyShot INSIDE Stabilization
  • 399 Phase-Detect AF Points & 5 fps Burst
  • Internal 4K XAVC S Video & S-Log2 Gamma
  • Weather-Resistant Magnesium Alloy Body
  • Built-In Wi-Fi Connectivity with NFC

 

 

Click Here to View the Press Release

 

Very little information has been released other than the short spec sheet and press release, more information will be added as it becomes available. B&H Photo has teased the preorder date of June 17th, with the release sometime in August. The camera can be preordered from B&H Photo when it becomes available for $3198.

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Zach Sutton is an award-winning and internationally published commercial and headshot photographer based out of Los Angeles, CA. His work highlights environmental portraiture, blending landscapes and scenes with portrait photography. Zach writes for various publications on the topic of photography and retouching.

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40 Comments

*dances in the street*

This camera has more focus points than I do...

Sony obviously is trying damn hard to get me off of Canon.

These specs are getting me off! haha

That is ridiculously impressive. wow!

Pre Ordering!

I'm getting married in 3 days. I better buy this now otherwise my soon to be wife will kill me when I buy it a week from now.

Tell her it's so you can take the best photos of your honeymoon =D

Just when I bought 3 new Nikon primes (Sigma 35 1.4, Nikon 85mm 1.8 and 105 micro) and a new Nikon body... This looks to be an insanely impressive offering.

I don't usually pay too much attention to specs, but damn it, Sony is not playing around. This is a crazy upgrade.

Big question for me is battery life.

Probably still terrible.

Kinda expecting this for mirroless. Solution: buy more batteries. IF you just dropped 3200$ on camera, i'm sure you can afford 4-5 more batteries.

AND they give you two batteries already in the box. ;)
I think batteries are not a problem at all, just buy more! They don't cost that much (compared to the price of the body). Need full day always turned on? just buy 6 batteries (+ 2 they already give you). Need continuous video recording? Buy AC-Adaper :)
PS: i have an a7s, batteries are half the size of my 5D ones :)

And do what I do with my a7R, keep the battery grip on. The a7 series is small enough that adding the grip not only makes it more comfortable to hold (no dangling pinky), but also doubles your battery life.

And it's still lighter, much lighter than a DSLR equivalent.

The battery life, as stated during the announcement/Q&A is 290 shots using the EVF. That is less than the A7R, but hey you are getting so much more in the camera that I think it's not really surprising.

I will be getting this camera regardless and will just be buying several batteries.

What the ff.....

Uncompressed raw please!!

Clean HDMI out, so it's up to an external recorder. File write speeds would be insane for SD or CF.

Clean HDMI out does not mean that you can record RAW video with an external recorder. Actually, you can't.
You can record 8 bit or maybe 10 bit, but It will always be constrained to the picture profile you choose on the camera, the white balance you set etc..... RAW is a totally different thing :)

I'm not talking about video. I want a clean, uncompressed, true raw file from the A7RII. It's what stopped me from going to the A7R when it came out.

What are you going on about? The A7r raw files are brilliant

Well and next week I'll get a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 II for my birthday...

Just imagine what would happen if Sony would play nice with Sigma and collaborate on making a few A-Mount lenses.
I would probably sell all of my Canon gear.
As of right now, the A-Mount selection is limited and expensive when compared to the Canon equivalents.

Well, Sigma does make A mount lenses. If you are talking FE lenses, then yea. The interesting thing about this camera is that it can use just about any lens - plenty of adaptors available.

Hopefully this sensor will make it into my future Nikon D820.

Looks like a beast of a cam. Really tempts me to spend some of the money I've made from selling some of my Canon gear.

I just wish Sony would focus less on pushing out bodies they don't have lenses for. For the quality of these cameras, their lens lineup is abysmal.

Only if you need to buy 50 different lenses. The current lineup to the end of 2015 covers the needs of 85-90% of photographers.

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/sony-lens-roadmap-2015-plus-new-fe-ful...

Heck, you can even get a Mitakon Speedmaster f/0.95 native E-mount for that Noctilux experience: http://www.ducloslenses.com/collections/mitakon-primes/products/speedmaster

What do you mean 50 different lenses? They don't even have the basic workhorse focal lengths in f-stops or prices that rival their competitors.

Those aren't niche lenses. Those are popular focal lengths.

The only fast 50 native to the system is a $1000 Zeiss, they lack an 85, and their 16-35, 24-70 and 70-200 are f/4. Why?

If I'm going to completely switch to a new system, the argument "You can use/adapt 3rd party lenses" isn't very comforting.

Sony is really stepping up their camera game, but I really wish they would take some notes from Fujifilm in terms of lens support.

If you're going to be using the cam for video, it doesn't matter as much because you're probably going to be adapting cinema lenses anyways, but as a still photographer, I'm not sure an amazing camera can make up for what I would be giving up in terms of lenses.

According to Dpreview:

"Sony says the on-sensor phase-detection AF can be used with A-mount lenses using the simpler LA-E3 adapter, rather than the LA-E4 that had an SLT mechanism built in.

At the press launch in New York we even got a glimpse of the a7R II autofocusing Canon EF lenses using a Metabones electronic adapter. Focus appeared to be on par with OVF focus on a native Canon body, and the AF experience itself didn't appear to be limited simply because you're using a third party lens (full coverage and tracking are available)"

If this is true then I would easily go for the canon 70-200 2.8 IS II over the Sony A mount 70-200 F2.8 G SSM II.

The canon is much more responsive, but I fear we may loose that advantage. It seems like a giant hack but I would love to hear from someone who has had some hands on.

Now this is a solid upgrade, and I don't give two poops about the 4k recording or increased megs (though the potential is nice). I've had the A7r since it came out and I'm happy that as I went down the list of upgrades ALL of my complaints have been addressed.

Silent shooting options (hopefully this means a quieter shutter in general) , increased ISO (though never really a complaint), FASTER auto focus and better LCD. Recording video in a format other than the crappy AVCHD!

I definitely welcome the internal stabilization since I do a lot of lens adapting to the camera.

WELL DONE SONY! The innovation in mirrorless is the reason I switched from my DSLR's. Fuji and Sony for the win.

Sony is killing it right now...... Canon seem to be in denial about what photographers want... Its a great shame, as a loyal Canon user, with a lot of "L" lenses, but I'm thinking of trading it all in for one of these :'(

You could use your Canon glass with good AF with the A7RII

I will be interested to see how it performs with adaptors, but I'm not too impressed with what I have read about previous versions of the A7 series and Metabones adaptors etc... i.e. slow focus & internal reflections causing flare !! :(

Well I guess I can stop holding out. Anyone around Minnesota wanna but a whole heap of canon gear?

I've been sold on the A7 for a while but now the high resolution is just sealing the deal for good. I'm looking to borrow one soon so I can test out how much I like the Electronic View Finder. Not needing to chimp to see how the exposure looks sounds like a dream.

I'd use canons live view more if I didn't HATE holding the camera out in front of my face like that.

Wonder if they have changed the Raw files to at least 14bit lossless?

No

After almost 25 years with Canon, I won't be switching. All I want is more time to shoot whatever appeals to me, not more tech in my camera.

This die-hard Nikon lover is seriously considering dumping all my Nikon cameras and lenses and go Sony! I mostly shoot video and 4k super 35 without pixel binning is just amazing! Especially shooting slog2 would match my fs700r so much better then any of my dslrs