Out for a walk yesterday afternoon, I tried both the 70-200mm f2.8 GM II/2X at 140mm and R 28-90mm at 90mm on a hazy, backlit cityscape. Both were sharp to perfection. But the R glass, a small degree of flare its only known weakness, out-contrasted the zoom/TC, even without the benefit of any cooked corrections from the camera.

Out with the zoom/TC combo this morning and afternoon, photographing surfers first under overcast skies, later in bright sunlight, part of what’s been bothering me made itself apparent. Spoiled for some years now by M and R glass that capture in detailed, lifelike color even in dim light, I realized that’s where the tiny black noise pixels come from when some FE glass is in use.

The zoom/TC was pretty spectacular in the afternoon light (although AF was abysmal); but under the morning’s overcast skies, fine details were rendered with those damned black dots where details should have been. I saw that in this sensor when it first came out. Billboards and large advertising posters shot with this sensor stood out like sore thumbs.

Autofocus? Well, unless the surfers I was photographing were actually robots, the a7r5’s subject recognition is incapable of spotting a human, even when the subject to be recognized is set to “Human.” Secondly, I set the focus square on the subject and it repeatedly instantly moved elsewhere. Hit rate was about 60% in bright light, and some of the successes were only because what the camera chose to focus on happened to be in the same focal plane as my intended subject.

Put on the R 28-90mm and the a7r5 is like a totally different camera, producing to-die-for color with incredible amounts of detail. And no black dots. This is one camera I’m really eager to test with the R 180 APO and extender, as well as a couple more pieces of R glass. It may turn out to be the SL3 I’ll never buy: same megapixels but stable and a bit more user-friendly.

If it doesn’t work out, well, it looks like whatever changes are made will be for valid reasons rather than nitpicky excuses. Every time I refer to my archives I see that my best critter shots were made while focusing manually. And mostly with R glass.

Scribere in murum.

a7r5/28-90mm Vario-Elmarit-R . . .