Sony a7R II Full-Frame Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera, Body Only (Black) (ILCE7RM2/B), Base, Base

Walking around with this camera is very comfortable - yet not as stealthy as my RX1R II. The body is solid though a little small and I find my pinky dangles in the air - so I use it to support the bottom of the body. Middle and ring fingers hold on to the small front grip (which is comfortable) and my index finger lives between the shutter release and shutter speed dial (explained a little more below). There is a slight bump-out on the rear where my thumb comfortably sits and provides quick access to the f-stop dial. It's a slightly different grip on the RX1R II which, though smaller, doesn't make it seem as small - maybe the lack of the bump-out grip in the front of the RX1R II.I enjoy the placement of the buttons and dials on this camera. They are solid and smooth to operate - and the ones that need to click into position do so. At this time, with the camera always in manual (M) mode I have the front dial set to adjust shutter speed, the rear to adjust f-stop and a button on the rear to adjust ISO on the fly. A single click on the button brings up the ISO menu, then the thumb wheel allows me to quickly scroll to the rating I want.The only other button programmed so far is C1 for eye detection. Obviously, only used in portraits but seems to nail it every time. I use this same setup on the RX1R II. I have been using the Exposure Comp wheel more and more to give me the exposure exactly how I want it rather than relying on post to correct that. Also been getting into relying almost solely on the histogram in the viewfinder to expose my work now.The shutter release is smooth and pleasing (and I like the sound of it) and has the option of silent shutter, though I haven't tried that to date.SONY A7R II - SENSORThe A7R II has a 42.4-megapixel back-illuminated 35mm full-frame Exmor R CMOS sensor powered by the BIONZ X image processing engine to support 14-bit uncompressed RAW images. Technically, getting an ISO range of 50-102,400 but realistically using ISO 100-25,600. Even more realistically for my style is ISO 100-6400.Unlike my RX1R II, there is no optical low-pass filter on this camera.5-AXIS IMAGE STABILIZATIONThe Sony A7R II has 5-Axis Image Stabilization which has been maximized for the 42 MP sensor. This system corrects camera shake while shooting along the 5 axes of angular shake (pitch & yaw), shift shake (along the x/y axis), and rotational shake (roll). Pair this with a IS lens (like the Zeiss Batis 85 I have been using) and you can freehand some ultra-lowlight photography.BATTERYBattery is notoriously bad on these cameras, but there are a ton of tips and tricks out there to increase life. Best thing I suggest is tossing the camera into Airplane mode - this turns off all the Wi-Fi and searching for networks. With this off, I can shoot all day with 3 batteries at the ready. To be honest, I shoot so little on a typical day (200-300 max photos) that I seldom need to jump to a backup.Some other things you can try are reducing the brightness in the monitor and viewfinder, having a short power-save time, turn off the "Sunny Weather" option, turn off audio signals and turn off Pre-AF.If I am walking around between shots, I tend to switch the camera off too. Not sure how much that helps, but a habit I picked up with the RX1R II.I also suggest having a couple battery backups and a couple chargers in the house. Right now, I have 2 Sony stock batteries and 2 off-brand ones. I haven't noticed much of a difference between the two. For the house, I have a pair of chargers, as these batteries seem to take forever to get to a full charge. At least with a pair, I am able to cut the charge time in half.FINDER / SCREENThere are a couple ways to compose images with the A7R II. Either the screen on the back of the camera with LiveView or via the Electronic View Finder (EVF) that's really a godsend. The camera has the intelligence to automatically only power the view you are using. If LiveView, the EVF is powered off. If you put your eye to the EVF, it fires up in an instant and the back screen powers down. Very good for a camera that's a battery whore, as mentioned above.With either of these views, you can increase or decrease the resolution, though they both look really good at standard. Very bright and quite responsive. Nearly identical to what I said about the RX1R II and not like the LiveView of the past (where my last experience was with a laggy Sony NEX-3). I keep the rear screen fairly dim, so I like to use the finder as my review of images when needed.The eye cup for the A7R II finder is much better than the RX1R II, by the way. The former is a proper viewfinder with a rubberized eye cup (see rear image of A7R II below in the My Defaults section) while the later is a pop-up EVF and does not offer eye relief at all.Both screens offer a slew of data from shutter speed, ISO, f-stop to digital levels, histograms and so on. I won't bore you with all the goodies, but there is a plethora of stuff that can be added to or removed from either screen.The rear screen tilts up and down which is nice to hold over your head or at your feet to frame a decent shot. I don't use the screen often, but really enjoy the ability when I need it to compost a shot this way. I find this can be a stealthy way of composing a shot without those around aware of what you're doing - if stealth is your motive.AUTOFOCUSThe Sony A7II offers up 25 contrast detection points and 399 phase detection points covering about half the sensor. The modes available here are Single, Continuous and Manual focus as well as AF-A and DMF modes that can be used with the native FE glass. As I don't tend to shoot moving targets, I stick to Single mode for almost all my shooting and have found it to be quite fast and really accurate.As always, you can also switch the focus areas between Wide Area, Zone Area, Center Area (my preference), Flexible Spot, Expand Flexible Spot, Lock-on AF Expand Flexible Spot, Lock-on AF, Eye AF (which I mapped to C1), and Face Detection.Like with the Sony RX1R II, the files spoil me. There is a great deal of latitude in them and so much shadow detail. The IQ is really nice to work with and I am getting the hang of how they behave with my one-click edits.ConclusionsIt is very early on with this camera to have any firm conclusions, but I have to tell you, I was secretly hoping to not love this one. I have my film cameras that I am more than happy with, and my Sony RX1R II that I figured was all I wanted. I wanted to shoot this, get it out of my system, then return it. Well, it's not going back. As soon as I strapped on the Zeiss Batis 85 and walked around with the Sony A7R II I was smitten. This camera is really offering everything I currently want in a digital setup. Gorgeous files with the colors I enjoy, great speed and a joy to walk around with. I read complaints about the menu system, but really, once you set it up once, you don't need to dig in there much and it truly isn't that bad.This is a fine compliment to my film work and will also be a great compliment to the Sony RX1R II - so yes, they are both staying. I plan to get a ton of use out of this throughout the year and re-touch this review with future thoughts, uses, issues or what have you.

I'm an amateur wildlife and landscape photographer, though I tend to dabble in all kinds of shooting situations, such as portraits, night(long exposure shots), and macro, and I'm in love with this camera.I've had the A7RII for a month now, and it blows my previous camera out of the water. It's small, making it very portable. It's sharp. It's fast. It's got more than enough resolution for my needs. It focuses quickly. It has tons of features. It feels good in my hands. Low light and long lens capabilities are simply amazing. With the right lenses, it takes gorgeous images. I shoot 90% of the time in "M" mode and I love the customizability of the buttons.Update 12/07/2015 - after updating firmware to version 2 I'm still seeing digital artifacts. Artifacts show up horizontally with the camera oriented upright. I'm trying to post photos - updating rating to 4 stars from 5 due to on-going artifacts. Maybe I have a defective camera body?I'm not going to dwell on the specs, or give you a long drawn out story. I'll just summarize how it works from my perspective:Pros: lightweight, high-res, dusk loving, pixel peeping, low noise, dream machine. Shocking dynamic range shooting RAW compared to my old archaic beast that is now relegated to a dusty drawer. Snappy continuous shooting features. Beautiful video. I love using the Sony 55 F1.8 for gorgeously sharp photos (cropped, it generates similar resolution and sharpness compared to 300mm on my old 20 MP camera). Wildlife photos always come out crisp and clean with manual focus + focus peaking + MF assist (took a little to get used to the fly-by-wire lenses).Cons: much of what you've probably read - battery life is mediocre. I've resorted to shutting off the camera much more frequently between shots to conserve the battery life. Mandatory: car charger, 3 batteries. Also... the infamous lossy RAW (sniff) - while the impact I'm sure is negligible, why choose a lossy compression format Sony? Please offer a firmware update to shoot lossless raw! I don't mind compression - just don't make it lossy. Please, pretty please, with a cherry on top. Even with lossy RAW, shooting at full resolution gobbles memory cards. I tend to go through a 32GB card every time I go through a battery. Will need to upgrade to 256 GB cards soon. Speaking of SD cards, if you happen to have old cards laying around, you may as well trash them. A7RII boot time is super-slow with slow SD cards (10 second start-up with one card I tested), and the buffer fills much quicker (cant even get a full panorama shot with some of my old SD cards). Go with SDXC UHS II cards, 1000x or higher. Lens selection is still lacking after 5+ years producing these cameras. There are lots of adapters, but autofocus speed just isn't the same when using an adapter and non-Sony lenses. Would love to see some bigger Sony zoom lenses to really take advantage of the higher resolution sensors. I'd also love to see touch-screen to set the focus point. Now wouldn't that be sweet. I noticed in-camera post-processing seems to be a tad bit slow. If you shoot a 5 second exposure, the camera post-processes for almost 5 seconds. This is similar to my old camera. I was expecting an improvement here. I like to shoot lightning shots and thunder storms, and the amount of post-processing reduces my effective continuous exposure by half. And finally USB. The micro USB connector seems a little flimsy to me, and only supports USB 2.0 transfer speeds. Big memory = big transfer time. Invest in a good USB 3.0 SDXC UHS II reader. It's worth every penny of your time. Maybe in the next camera rev Sony will get it all right! But I'm sure I'll think of something else to complain about then too.You may have noticed I focused a little more on the Cons. Why? Well because it's easier for me to talk about the bad points when there is sooooo much gooey goodness in the camera. Its a freaking fabulous camera. I'll never go back if Sony can keep this up! I hope their product team keeps listening to customer desires. It will always lead them in the right direction.Update: 5/6/2017 - This camera is a work-horse. No problems at all over the last year.I was trying out some astrophotography with the camera, and decided to do an ISO invariance test to figure out what ISOs were usable for a 30 second exposure of a dark sky. I couldn't find a lot of information about this test being performed against the A7RII online, so these are my results. See the uploaded results. This camera is nicely ISO invariant from IS0 50 all the way to ISO 6400 for very dark sky photography at 30 second exposure. At 50 and 100 ISO, there was some noise and noticeably more hot pixel artifacts in the image. These image artifacts went away completely by ISO 800. At ISO 6400, the image was becoming over-exposed and dynamic range was suffering as a result. So for astrophotography, at least for my needs, ISO 1600 and 3200 are the best balance for less noisy photos of the night sky without suffering from lost dynamic range.I may repeat the test some time in the future with a shorter exposure (use 30 seconds for these tests) and ramp ISO to the max to see where it takes me.