Punta Cana 2014 -- A Sony A7 review

January 8 - 14, 2014

So I was going down to the Dominican Republic to shoot a wedding and originally I was just going to bring 2 5Diii's.  But a couple weeks before, I made an impulse purchase and bought the Sony A7 from Broadway Camera. And just my luck, a couple days later the Sony Store in Richmond Centre had one Zeiss 35mm and 55mm in stock.  I was so impressed with it at the time that I challenged myself to shoot the wedding entirely with the A7.  And I did... most of the time!

When the A7/A7r first came out, I was a bit disappointed because it lacked 2 key features;
1) Lenses.  No fast primes.  No wide angle.  
2) In body stabilization.  Come on!  Olympus and Panasonic figured it out!  The A99 has it... why can't the A7?!

Other stupid things were;
- Have to use adapters like the LE-A4 (that just adds bulk and weight) to utilize other lenses
- Moire and Aliasing is nowhere near as good as the Canon 5Diii/1DX

So why did I buy it then?  Well the main reason is because it has a full frame sensor in such a small body!  I can take it almost anywhere!  Before the A7, I took my Olympus OMD EM-5 everywhere and only took my Canon's out when I had a paid job.  I love the Olympus and I still have it!  But you just can't beat full frame!

Anyways, here are some photos from my trip!  We had a little rough start... an hour delay in Vancouver... then a 2.5hr layover in Toronto -- BUT wait, an additional 4hr delay on top of that!! 

Please click HERE to view the entire set (including 5D stuff and video) on our wedding page!

After a couple hiccups with ground transportation, we finally arrived at our resort, the NOW Larimar Punta Cana.  Kyle (he was shooting video for the wedding) and I just spent the night eating and drinking...

The next day we just wanted to relax!  Time to see what the A7 and 35mm can do on the beach!

After reviewing the resort shots, I am fairly impressed.  In post, I hardly adjusted my exposure because I had nailed it in camera.  The EVF helps a lot with that!  One issue though that I found was with the palm trees in the sky.  Note the third picture (vertical one), you'll notice that the edges of the palm trees are WHITE!  It wasn't anything I did in post as the original raw file had it too.  It was only present in some of the images.... You'll notice a little more on the 4th image down.  

And now for the wedding... scroll to the bottom to read about my entire experience shooting with this camera!

This set was shot entirely on the Sony A7 with Zeiss 35mm and 55mm.

During the reception, I chose to shoot with my Canon 5Diii as it is better in low light, had fast wide primes, and focused the best!  To view the entire wedding set (including a mix with the 5D stuff), please check out our wedding website at RF Weddings!

A big shout out goes to Katya Nova for referring us!  Her work is amazing!  

Okay, so what are my thoughts about the camera after this wedding?

THE GOOD
- Small, lightweight, portable
- EVF is great
- Love the live exposure.  After shooting quite a bit with it, I've realized I nail the exposure in camera and don't spend any time at all in post adjusting it.
- Image quality is superb.  The straight out of camera JPGs/RAWs look nicer than what comes out of my 5D or 1DX.  
- Autofocus from the Zeiss lenses are pretty fast and accurate
- Headphone and audio jack for video

THE BAD
- The white fringe phenomenon that I experienced with the palm trees
- Noticeable aliasing/moire compared to the 5D/1DX
- Slow bootup time
- If you have your camera setup with 2sec image review, then you'll experience a little lag when taking multiple photos when looking through the EVF.  Not a lag in taking the photos, but a lag in what you will see through the liveview EVF.  I would suggest turning it off if your shooting an event where you won't want to miss a moment!
- Low light not bad, but not as good compared to the 5D.
- Wish it had something like the Olympus, 5 Axis Stabilization
- When shooting the wedding, I think I had a few people worried that I was shooting with a small mirrorless camera... but I had my 5D strapped around me the full day so I was all good!

This review is completely unscientific and is just based on my experience as a user.  I don't care too much about the pixel peeping or the amount of noise, blah blah blah.  It's all about image quality, ease of use(ergonomics), and portability.

**NOTE** I did bring the Metabones Canon EF - Emount V3 adapter but I never used it.  I'll definitely use for another shoot though!

I will continue to shoot as many things as I can with this camera so stay tuned in on my blog!

Here is what I packed on my journey! These are my 2 carry-on bags.  In the event that the airline loses my luggage or something, I should be able to survive on just these items!  (shot on the RX100)

Thinktank Wired Up 10 (This has to be one of my favourite bags of all time!  Too bad its discontinued...)
- Sony A7
- M-Sling Strap by CarrySpeed
- Zeiss 35mm f2.8
- Zeiss 55mm f1.8
- Extra battery
- Lens Cloth
- Empty water bottle (so I can fill up after airport security)
- Google Nexus 7
- Sony A7 charger
- 3 pairs of contacts
- Lip Balm
- Passport
- Skullcandy in-ear headphones
- Pepcid AC
- Sunglasses
- iPhone cable
- USB external battery pack charger
- Bag of mixed nuts
- Travel documents
- Money

Lowepro DSLR Fastpack 250 AW
- Macbook Pro
- MBP Charger
- Lacie Rugged External Drive
- Hyperdrive
- Canon 5D Mark III
- 3 Batteries
- Charger
- 24-105L
- 50mm f1.2L
- 20mm f2.8
- 135mm f2.0L
- 600 EX Speedlight
- Puffer
- Thinktank Card pouch with extra CF and SD cards
- Card reader
- 2 Sony A7 batteries
- Glasses
- Pepcid AC
- Contacts
- 2 Shirts
- 2 Shorts
- Sandals

Oh and here is the video that Kyle made!  (Shot on 5Diii and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera)

On our last day we got to meet up with some good ol Vancouver photographer friends!  Melinda and Rob Werner from Shoebox Photography! Good times!

Disaster Strikes...

Nothing but chaos for what was supposed to be a relaxing escape in the Dominican Republic.

Alisa and I were on our way to Punta Cana with a connection in Toronto with WestJet.  We were booked for the redeye, departing YVR at 10:55pm.  It started off with the plane being delayed about an hour coming in...  but whatever, no worries as we had a 3.5 hour overlay in Toronto...

As we were ascending, a peculiar smell invaded the cabin.  20min later, the pilot announced that we had struck a flock of birds that had gone through the engine... great...  had to turn around back to Vancouver Airport which took another 20-30min.  After another 20min on the ground as we waited for the engineering report, we were then de-planed and sat in the lounge, waiting for them to prepare another plane for us. After about an hour, we boarded the new plane.  I asked the WestJet Attendant if we were going to be able to make our connection flight, and was told that we would JUST make it!  Phew! Plane was scheduled to arrive at 8:50, and boarding was at 9:15am.  Perfect! ...

About 15min after everyone was seated, the pilot then announced that they had no fuel and that we had to wait another hour or so to get the fuel... All the fuel attendants had gone home so they had to wake someone to come.  There goes our trip to Punta Cana!  But that's okay, most likely WestJet will put us in a hotel for a night and then we would be able to go the next day, right?

NOPE!  After we arrived, we booked it to the WestJet customer service desk where we were told that we wouldn't be able to fly out for TWO days because there were no other flights available.  Well if that were the case, that means our 4night vacation in paradise would be cut down to only two.  It was very difficult to extend our vacation to still get our 4nights so we had to contact our travel agent to figure things out.  

Pretty bad news right?  Well after about 1.5hours talking on the phone trying to figure things out, we realized that our baggage was missing... WHAT??! YEAH... so we spent another hour or so trying to deal with that!

At that point, Alisa and I were just going mental.  We were tired, hungry, upset, angry, confused, and aggravated.  We just wanted to go home because it had been so emotionally draining.  But the issue was, that if we did decided to go home, we would lose out on about $2000 worth of travel.  We could have argued with WestJet to reimburse us, but that would mean more time spent on arguing, and nothing was gauranteed that they would have done anything.  But at the same time, if we continued forward with traveling to Punta Cana without our luggage, we would be VERY VERY VERY upset.  Lose-lose situation.  We were also given the option to fly the next day, but that would mean we would have to fly with Air Canada, putting in another $700 in flights.  So now we had 3 options, all of them putting us in a shitty situation.  And we needed to make a decision... 

We needed a break so we went to the hotel to check in, rest, and eat.  Fortunately, after a few hours, we got a call from WestJet telling us they had found our luggage.  What a relief!  We decided to continue on the trek to Montreal and to extend our trip by 2 days... We managed to spend the evening and the next day in Toronto relaxing and doing nothing.

Surprise surprise! Our flight departing from Toronto to Montreal was delayed 45min...  

WestJet was kind enough to give us meal vouchers for the two days that we were stranded, BUT they didn't give us enough money.  They gave us $10 each to spend on each meal, but at the hotel, each meal was like $15.  So I still had to put money out of my pocket for the difference.  

What was supposed to take us only about 10hours of travel time to get to Punta Cana, took actually around 66hours!  ARGG!!!!!