Sony a7S II ILCE7SM2/B 12.2 MP E-mount Camera with Full-Frame Sensor, Black

I've owned the original A7s before upgrading to the A7sii. The A7s was already one of the most amazing cameras to shoot in low light and the A7sii makes it an even more competent camera with better processing and IBIS.I shot the A7s for photography stills. I understand it's mainly made for a video shooter however I needed something for natural light photos (no flash) in low light. Flash can be amazing if used right, however there is a certain loveliness to natural light photos without artificial light - natural shadows and purposeful darkness can help enhance the moody look of photos that feels genuine. Plus it's not always convenient to walk around several pounds of lighting equipment - off camera flash, flash stand, diffusers, reflectors, etc. For this purpose there's no better camera than the Sony A7s series. I loved my A7s as it could capture photos that other cameras simply weren't capable of capturing. A7s photos had a unique look because they were taken in a situation that no other camera could produce.The A7sii upgrade was an immensely helpful refinement of the original A7s:1. THE SENSOR - the sensor has remained the same. There's no new silicon for image quality capture, but additional image processing sorcery by Sony has made it slightly more competent at low light. Most online reviews and tests agree that noise improved about one stop over the predecessor. So ISO 12800 shots look like ISO 6400 shots which is a great improvement!2. AUTOFOCUS - the autofocus of the A7sii feels slightly snappier and better and finding focus in the dark. The A7s and A7sii are contrast detection focus cameras. While this might seem like a hindrance, my experience with the AF of these cameras is that they do surprisingly well because the camera's low light performance is so good. It would acquire focus in areas to dark for any other camera to acquire focus. The A7sii improves on this with slightly more consistent AF. Again, I think this is due to better processing of the camera rather than a sensor redesign. (AF points are on the sensor itself). Despite the improvements in AF, contrast detection AF does have its limitations. CD AF simply can't do tracking and continuous AF as well as PDAF. While my A7riii and A7iii can do continuous eye AF tracking, the A7sii simply can't continuously track subjects if they move. Using continuous AF gives you a constant jittery AF shake. This has to do with how CDAF works, it needs to move the focus above and past the target AF and measure the best contrast creating "AF shake" and it simply won't work with continuous AF. The A7sii is strictly an AF-S lock -and-recompose camera.3. Speaking of Eye AF, contrary to what many may believe, Eye-AF IS POSSIBLE with this camera. However it does not function like, or is as well refined as the eye AF in the A7r/A7/A9 series. You can do eye AF in AF-S where the camera simply finds the eye and locks focus on it. If the subject moves or if your hands move then the focus is thrown off as you're already locked. You would have to recompose and find the eye again. The behavior is more akin to DSLRs where you press the shutter down at the location of your desired focus, lock, and recompose for proper framing. To combat hand shake or subject movement, you will have to use your body to rock back and forth while burst shooting to ensure you will get a shot with the best focus. It's not as efficient as the newer A7 series but most DSLR shooters will be familiar with this method.4. SHUTTER - the A7sii has a redesigned shutter that feels softer and less violent than the previous gen 1 shutter. The original A7s shutter was never bad but the A7sii is more dampened with less sliding shock which may contribute to camera shake during hand-held shoots. In addition I've read at many review sites that the new shutter mechanism should also prolong the life of the shutter so less shutter replacements in the future.5. BODY AND ERGNOMICS. The body is significantly better than the original A7s body. The gen 1 cameras were very small and slim but were generally barebones. The grip of the gen 1 bodies were often to small and uncomfortable and many complained about comfort. The gen 2 bodies have a wider girth in the grip and is more comfortable to hold. Furthermore there are extra programmable buttons that you can assign to your needs. The body is slightly larger, however it makes the camera seem more like a serious professional camera than a hobby camera. The new magnesium body and matte paint finish is also less prone to chipping like the older gen 1 A7 series and less resistant to the ugly finger oils smudges.6. IBIS. IBIS is by far the best improvement for the A7sii and all of the gen 2 bodies. IBIS was added to the A7ii, A7rii, and A7sii and it is an amazing killer feature. The secret of the A7s's low light shooting is clean ISO noise even at ridiculously high ISOs. However no matter how high your ISO is, shutter speed makes the difference between a grainy high ISO shot and a highly detail rich high ISO shot. The addition of IBIS makes hand held shooting at speeds of 1/30 (usually my limit for handheld) clean and sharp. I can even get handheld shots of 1/15 or slower. The IBIS also have the added benefit for smoother video shooting. Normally video shooters need a gimbal which are normally huge, heavy, and the electronic ones can be quite expensive. While no replacement for a real gimbal, the IBIS makes smooth handheld video shooting a possibility. Used alongside a gimbal or weighted stabilizer, the two systems work together for smooth beautifully stabilized video.7. BATTERY LIFE. Battery life in all of the the A7 series are not great. Compared to DSLRs, the batteries drain many times quicker. The A7sii doesn't seem to change much either. However this can be easily alleviated by getting extra batteries. The W series batteries for the A7 series are quiet cheap these days and there's lots of third party brands from Wasabi that are much cheaper and operate well enough for the price. Bringing an extra 2-3 batteries doesn't add too much space or weight. Additionally you can charge these cameras while shooting with a simple battery bank and a micro USB cable.8. Image quality. Overall the sensor is super sensitive. The only downside to the camera is the low resolution. Again, I realize this is mainly geared towards video and not made for photography and the resolution is good enough for 1080p and 4k recording. However for photography 12mp is not enough to pick up fine details, textures, and cropping. While shooting you can crop maybe 10% but any more and you get a super low resolution photo which for professional shoots may not be suitable. If you don't nail the composition in your shot, you don't have much leeway in post processing to make it better. It really requires an experienced photographer as the resolution is not forgiving for mistakes.Overall this camera is the real deal. Even though it's an older camera, in 2019 there's still no challenger for a low light king. The only thing that may come close would be an A7siii which is supposed to be releasing soon. This camera allowed me to take shots simply not possible with other setups. When went to Iceland, I brought an A7sii and A7rii. When trying to capture the northern lights with the A7rii I had to do a lot of post processing trickery in order to make the green northern lights visible. With the A7sii, every shot of the northern lights had bright green lights! No editing was needed to make the lights visible. The camera can see the northern lights even when my eyes could not. It was there that I realized just how sensitive the A7sii sensor was, it could see spectrum that were not visible to human eyes. That's the best compliment I can make.***If this was helpful for you, please give me a helpful vote! Thanks!***

This is my first interchangeable lens camera, after a year and a half of heavy experience with an RX100M3. I was pleasantly surprised to feel like a fish in water when swimming through the familiar menus and features, also found in its smaller cousin. I'm getting used to the new features, such as uncompressed RAW, more video settings, and the instructions actually couldn't tell me what "AEL" meant. This camera is still barely out of preorder, so I'll start seeing support from Sony, but right now, Sony's website gives a collective shrug when you check for available firmware upgrades/software. It's just not set up.One thing that I'm still getting used to with this camera... the controls change based on the lens you attach. I went for Sony E-mount Full Frame lenses. I figured out that's what "FE" means. E-mount is the type of lenses that this camera can natively support, but if you want to use the full sensor, rather than just a part of it, you need "full frame" ones. There are not many options. I wanted a fast 35mm prime and an 85mm prime. The 35mm prime...NO PROBLEM. There's a $1600 f/1.4 beast that is available. I robbed a jewelry store to pay for that one. But the 85mm options aren't so obvious. The closest FE lens currently available is a 90mm Macro f/2.8 lens. Not as fast as I wanted, but still pretty good, and... it's got rave reviews about it's sharpness. That plus opening up a pathway into macro photography while still giving me the bokeh I'm looking for... I piped down and bought it (for $1000... only had to rob a small jewelry store for that one). I saw a few rumors of more lenses coming out, but you should figure out what lenses you want BEFORE buying this camera. If you're not sure, well, I took the option of renting a camera from a rental website (I used lensrentals.com) with lenses I wanted, and, if you like em, you can apply the rental price toward the price of "keeping it". Or just return it and..now you know what the lens is like.One motivation for buying this camera... the main motivation... is my filmmaking. I like low-light cinematography, and I want it available to me. I had the confidence that this would open up that avenue for me, with 4K footage. I've used RED cameras for short films before, and although I don't think this is going to approach that quality, it lets me still compete in film festivals keeping to the same genre. I decided to go ahead and use the very fast 35mm f/1.4 lens to test the low light video, recorded at the highest quality 24p 100Mbps, with panning over my cat on a bed, with varying levels of light. (testing in a 10x10 room with a small lighting kit, 200/500/750, plus a lamp with a small CFL bulb... I think 40-60W) I left the aperture open all the way at f/1.4.The results? The small bulb was certainly not going to sufficiently light anything. You can still see everything once you start to crank the ISO into the thousands, but there's banding/noise galore. However, the 200W light was actually plenty enough to see everything at 100 ISO (min for video). I attached a screenshot from that test. It's still a bit dark, but it's clean. I didn't see any noise on my 27 inch computer monitor as I panned over the cat. Increasing ISO levels only got brighter, with no hint of noise. At about 1000 ISO, Luna started getting overexposed.So this certainly gives me the creative freedom to work wonders, film festival-wise.You see the sleepy cat there? My other motivation for upgrading my camera, you'll be disappointed to know, is cat pictures. I run my blog at littlechomper.com, and I want more action pics. If you haven't tried, taking fast-shutter pics of a cat jumping around while indoors... it's a tall order. I've had to be very creative with my RX100M3, hanging out near windows during the hours with the strongest light. Well, I'm sad to report that the A7s2 is no magic cure for my woes. While I definitely don't have to stay so close to windows, an interchangeable lens camera is a lot heavier, and I'm finding it's a pain in the ass to try to aim the camera and throw the cat treat. I take the precaution of always wearing my neck strap, and... I insured the camera too. But still, I'll have to get more creative with strategies to overcome this. I'm going to try to leverage the 4K slow motion video. With 4K resolution, the stills should be high quality enough, and I shouldn't have to worry so much about keeping my figure near the shutter. Focus will be the main concern. But I'm sure the camera is capable of getting the shots I want once I figure out the right strategy.On a relevant note, I think the 5-axis stabilization is working for me. The 90mm lens I have has built-in stabilization, and the 35mm doesn't, but I don't think it matters. The a7s2 has it built in, and supposedly leverages the stabilization in the lens, if available, to improve even more. I certainly can't do macro photography very well without the camera being mounted or resting on a surface, but I certainly feel more at ease exhaling slowly with arms in and trusting my own steadiness at 1/60 shutter speed.Speaking of macro, is it relevant to this review to say I added my 58mm Canon 250D close-up lens to my 90mm macro and got a pretty nice close-up of a penny? I'll add that picture. When you zoom in, you see some strange colors in there... reds and greens... I figure this is related to taking pictures of scratched up metal, or maybe it's just not enough light yet... I'm relying on exposure time instead. I'll include the penny picture.What other things can I comment on? I definitely like the shooting mode being locked into place, unlike on cheaper cameras (like the RX100M3 and most point n' shoots). Although sometimes you wish you can change it with one hand. There's lots of configurability. I see a "C1, C2, C3, and C4"... all user-customizable. I'll deal with that when I have time.And lastly, I use Capture One, rather than Lightroom for my images. Capture One provides custom profiles for each camera based on hands-on testing of each camera through the different ISO levels, so I think that helps improve its handling of RAW images. There's a super-cheap version for Sony only, so it let me stick with that. Originally, the RAW images coming out of the A7S2 wasn't supported by Capture One, but they've already released an upgrade... version 8.3.4 I believe, which supports the RAW images seamlessly. I'm back to my old workflow, only a couple days after receiving my camera from pre-order.