SteveG Loc: Norh Carolina

Here we go again! I certainly understood what he was saying. There's NOTHING wrong with what he offered as guidance. Stop the sniping! It's what's wrong with this forum!!

gwilliams6

gwilliams6

You are the one taking it personal. I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions and untruths in your post. And help give you a fuller picture of the new reality of the photo landscape now.

It does not matter to me what brand you like to shoot with. I teach my university photo students with gear from Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus and Fuji.

The facts are there are good cameras from all, and more longtime Canon and Nikon users (including media services, worldwide) have and are switching from Nikon and Canon to Sony, and not the other way around, again just a fact. Make your own inferences about that and why.

Nothing wrong with staying with the brand you have invested in, also nothing wrong with moving to another system that you find better suited to your needs. I and many other amateurs and pros did just that, and have never looked back.

That happens with all products from cars to toasters, from vacuums to cellphones , from TVs to cameras. Each brand will have to fight to keep their customers, as is always the case in any competitive marketplace.

Many photographers were lured by the Sony A7III to give fullframe mirrorless a real try and they loved it and stayed . Now it's successor the A7IV will have to compete for its buyers in an even more crowded fullframe mirrorless field. My bet, and early returns suggest Sony has released another popular model that does compete favorably with releases in its category and price range from other camera makers.

Dont take it personal if I added to the discussion with facts about the new reality, and a clearer look at where the movement and innovations in this market are coming from and going, moving forward .

Cheers and best to you.

baron_silverton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Not taking it personally at all - to the contrary :)

Your perspective has merit. The notion that Sony cameras are the 'end all be all' of current MICL cameras that is often espoused online (but less in the real world) has become tiring.

Are Sony cameras good - yes - some models better than others. Sony cameras have strengths and weaknesses as all cameras and products do. For example, there is no doubt that the A7III was great for its time, and still decent but not as great today - this is normal as tech advances - same is true for all the camera companies. Whether the A7 IV is a great update to the A7 III or just an iterative improvement is not for me to say as I have not used one as yet - have used the A7 III. That said, I have seen conflicting reviews - some suggesting that it is great and others saying that it is not worth upgrading unless you have very specific use cases. I don't know which is true and don't really care as I am not in the market for a Sony at this time.

The point is that there are many reasons to shoot other brands over Sony - just as there are also reasons to shoot Sony over other brands.

In the end, all that matters is what works for the individual and which system best satisfies anyone's individual use case - this is especially true in the professional arena as opposed to the academic area of learning photography where this distinction probably matters less - since they are all adept at switching aperture, shutter and ISO.

As far as innovation goes - as this is being written - the Nikon Z9 is the most advanced MILC on the market - this is not in dispute. With that said, there is no doubt that Sony and Canon will be responding with something to best the Z9 somewhere in the near to mid term horizon. Of course then, Nikon will respond again - this is the way that it has always been, and if we are lucky, as consumers, the way it will always be. If this were to end and Sony, or Canon (or any one company) 'defeated' the others and there was no more competition, then innovation would go way down and prices would go up - so let us all hope that Nikon, Canon and Sony all stay very much in the game.

Luckily, as of today, it is looking like that is exactly what is going to happen - so there should be no fear for anyone of entering any one of these systems (Nikon, Canon or Sony) due to concerns of them exiting the market/going out of business - this is clearly not the case for any of those top three as of now.

BTW, the associated press switched to Sony because Sony made a deal with them. Large organizations buy in bulk and their decisions on what to buy are motivated by the economics of the transaction not whether the product is slightly better or worse than the competition, so this is not a great metric to base a belief of superiority on. But, I digress.

Enjoy your Sony camera as evidently it works best for your particular use cases. I am glad that you are so happy with it. Keep shooting!

All the best :)

azted Loc: Las Vegas, NV.

Baron_silverton "The notion that Sony cameras are the 'end all be all' of current MICL cameras that is often espoused online (but less in the real world) has become tiring."

That is a personal response. Give it up already!

gwilliams6

You really dont know anything about AP and the other media switching to Sony and dumping their Canon and Nikon gear.

I know more as a former longtime shooter for them and know the Chiefs of Photography at both AP and Gannett .

Nikon and Canon made similar deal offers, but if you had taken the time to actually click on my links and read what they each said as their reasons for picking Sony, you would have read the reality that they all felt that Sony was the best at innovation , better than Nikon and Canon mirrorless and had a fuller, more proven system.

Nikon and Canon users always say that Sony paid them to switch. That is just fake news and bogus fan-boy conspiracy theories. Get real. Canon and Nikon owners who for years call Sony cameras "toys", just have never been able to accept that many top Pros and organizations would pick Sony over their beloved brands. Grow up folks. Pros and media services worldwide can afford the gear that works the best for their needs. No one ever came here in UHH to claim Nikon and Canon had paid them for all the years they used those brands. LOL

The Z9 is excellent, but if you would get over your blind love affair and read some of the top reviewers doing comparisons you would know that the Z9 falls down in some areas to its competitors , like NOT being able to record in any Raw file mode at 30fps, which the A1 can do. And the Z9, without any mechanical shutter can't flash synch at either 1/400 sec in fullframe mode, or flash synch at 1/500 sec in APS-C mode like the A1 can. The Z9 can only flash synch at a max of 1/200 sec. That is important to many shooters like me shooting flash in daylight, so dont call the Z9 the best just yet. Both those Z9 shortcomings are deal-breakers for many pros like myself.

As all reviewers have said, even while praising Nikon for it excellent Z9, they have all said that Sony and Canon pro users aren't likely going to switch their systems to Nikon now.

The Z9 is to keep Nikon users in the house and stop the bleeding. I wish Nikon all the success in the world. I have made many Award-winning shots with both Nikon and Canon gear in my 47+ year professional career. Moving over to Sony doesn't get rid of my lasting love for those other brands. I care about the image ,more than the gear. And for me and many other top pros around the world, our Sony gear just performs the best for us in this very competitive field.

Nikon needed the Z9 to regain some brand aura and get it back in the game. No one expects Nikon to climb out of third place in the professional fullframe mirrorless market, but hopefully they will survive.

If you have ever followed me here in UHH, I have always said I want them all to do well so that they keep pushing each other to innovate and thus we all win. Never said anything but that here in UHH. We need all brands to survive and Nikon was on life support, and hopefully as I predicted here in UHH many times before its release, the Nikon Z9 will be that camera to save Nikon's bottom line. I expected Nikon to give us its best, and it did.

Cheers and best to you.

baron_silverton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Sure - all great points - all of which have counters, but I am not interested in continuing the conversation here. This is a really bad forum for discussion as reasonable conversations cannot be had over text and often (and definitely in this case) context is terribly lost.

The irony is that we seem to keep agreeing that we want all the brands to do well and yet we seem to keep arguing about minutiae - needlessly for 2 reasons:

1) We agree we want all the brands to do well, and that seems to be happening - so we are both sitting pretty
2) Nothing that is said here in this forum makes any difference to how things will play out - thus making this entire discussion largely irrelevant.

If I were going to keep bickering with you, I could go on to say that I also know professional sports shooters that insist that 16+ FPS is all you would ever need to get good shots if you know how to shoot - 30 FPS versus 20 FPS is not an extremely relevant difference for them - for most magazine and print the 11MP jpg that the Z9 shoot would easily suffice and that shoots at 120 FPS - blasting 30 FPS into oblivion - again precise tools for each job; or I could mention that I also shoot in daylight with OCF (professionally) and 1/400 of a second is an irrelevant increase in shutter speed in the daylight - speeds of 1/8000 can still be insufficient for 1.4 lenses at ISO 100 to say nothing of all the 1.2 lenses being used today - so this difference is also largely irrelevant. Also, both of those issues can likely be upgraded through firmware - I would not be surprised to see the Z9 release firmware that ups the RAW FPS to 30 from 20 and increases the sync speed to 1/400 - if they did that would be nice, but it would not make much of a difference to me (or anyone else who is being real) - I have heard exactly zero Nikon people complain that the camera cannot do these things. Or, I could mention how the Z9 shoots only 14bit RAW files - even at 20 FPS - where the A1 drops to 12 bit RAW when it shoots high speed - but admittedly, this would be a largely irrelevant issue as low res jpgs likely suffice for the material most often captured at those speeds. So, I won't make any of these points.

The actual point again is that they both have strengths and weaknesses and use case is all that really matters. Saying "X" brand is the best as a blanket statement is silly.

Please don't bother to reply - we agree that things are going well for all brands and that this is what we all want. And, if it makes you happy, we can just say Sony is the best and leave it at that.

Thanks for the well wishes it is appreciated :)

baron_silverton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Thanks for your opinion on that one sentence that is out of context.

All the best :)

gwilliams6

LOL, I don't need to be made happy , especially not in UHH, and I guess you don't want me to bother to reply, so you can have the last word LOL.

The reality is Nikon users will flock to the Z9 and be happy, but no top Canon or Sony users will be switching brands as their gear has its own advantages over the Z9. And all the media services that switched to Sony exclusively aren't switching to Nikon and the Z9.

So the Z9 was made to save Nikon and I predicted all along in all the UHH threads that talked about the demise of Nikon, that Nikon would hit a home run with the Z9 and reclaim its seat at the table with the big boys.

The technical prowess of Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Fuji, Olympus guarantee that we haven't yet even seen the best of the best.

This thread is about the A7IV , let's don't lose sight of that, and the A7IV is a superb camera for anyone to aspire to own and use, including current Nikon users .

Cheers

baron_silverton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Hi gwilliams6:

I'm actually not interested in the last word - I just know that continuing down the path that this thread has lead to will not serve anyone (neither you, nor I, nor any other reader that may be looking for insight). We each have a perspective (ironically similar perspective in many respects), and what we both know seems to work well for us respectively.

In general, I had hoped to give a rounded view to someone that was here and was legitimately looking for information - not a biased view (however justified or not) that one brand reins supreme and all the others suck. I was trying to balance out that notion, which is often espoused here, and which is clearly false - I am sure we can agree on that.

Sadly, this forum generally breaks down in to a slug fest over minutiae that actually doesn't matter to most readers - especially inexperienced people here just looking for basic insight.

In the end, which camera one uses is very much a personal choice and should be largely based on the use case of the specific person - so there cannot actually be one that is the "best" or even one brand that is the best - this is categorically impossible.

The A7IV is certainly one excellent camera among several excellent choices in the market :)

Also, for the record, I harbor no ill will - I sincerely respect your opinion. I agree with you on some things and disagree on others, and that is okay - disagreement among honest people is healthy and productive - to a point. I'm just not interested in arguing to no purpose, and it seems like we were getting there fast.

All the best (sincerely) - I'm sure we'll see each other elsewhere around here in the future :)
-B

gwilliams6

A rewind: This is what was asked; " Thinking about jumping ship from Nikon dslr to Sony mirrorless. I’m interested in the new Sony a7 IV thoughts??? "

Many have shared their thoughts, opinions ,experiences and advice, but you cant mention any brands here in UHH without invoking the ire of fanboys . LOL

I have no real issue with your excitement and love of the Z9, but just like my A1, they are both likely out of the discussion and out of the budget of the OP. LOL

So lets leave it that if the OP is ready for a different path, we just wish him or her well on their choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ7kX8OEaUI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQnRYNru_tQ



Cheers

baron_silverton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

Guess you needed that last word 😂

gwilliams6

LOL, no I dont.

I have my own facebook International Photography Group and belong and moderate in other even larger worldwide photo groups . I am only here in UHH to help share some of my knowledge and experience and to speak the truth and help separate fact from fiction. Please feel free to join us in my group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIk2DfZZEbM


Here is something of interest to Z9 folks released today from Gerald Undone, one of the best and most thorough independent reviewers/creators in the business, and a well respected one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIk2DfZZEbM

Cheers

gwilliams6

Loved my A6500 and so true about the native E-mount lenses available. Just the widest and most complete top-notch mirrorless lens system for APS-C and fullframe ,IMHO.

gwilliams6

Latest 2022 Camera Industry Predictions for major brands, from longtime Canon user and well-known and respected youtuber J. Cristina.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kEKtrruUJ0

Cheers