Tag: Sony

Tom’s World – 13JAN2026 – Sony Photo Fails

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

The A7IV Sony camera is glitching again, at least to the extent of displaying the “not compatible with camera” message that started the whole thing. I’m pretty sure Sony originated the whole thing in an effort to stop the aftermarket purchase of 2nd party batteries. After all, Sony wants close to $90 for a NP FZ100 battery whereas you can get a compatible battery on Amazon with a charger (which sony does not give you) for $24. I’ll just bet that my glitch originates from a piece of Sony 2nd party battery detection software gone astray.
In the “Adding coals to Newcastle” department, my E mount 90mm f2.8 macro has totally failed. It makes a horrible mechanical razzing noise along with a coarse vibration and, of course, does not function. I sent it to a Sony “authorized” repair center who just received and inspected the camera and concluded that it needs a “4th group assembly”, $576. I’ve had the lens for a number of years but macro represents <5% of my shooting, so it has only maybe 2000-4000 snaps in its lifespan, a small fraction of what I shot with its A mount 100mm macro predecessor. When I called them about it, the Indian sounding service rep assured me the problem will not reoccur because it is/was a common problem with recent Sony lenses and that particular magnetic focusing mechanism is common to a lot of lenses and has since gone through total redesign. Do you know what Sony lenses cost?
In my history with Minolta/Sony cameras/lenses over a number of decades, my previous defect-failure rate is 0.00%
it may be just me but  doesn’t that constitute a tacit admission on Sony’s part that the commonly failing mechanism should have been a recall/warranty  issue. Sounds like grounds for a class action.
Oh yeah, and on top, when you attempt to prepay for the repair, the Sony Authorized Service Center wants a tip and makes it quite hard to pay the invoice without paying one. And they haven’t done s*** for me so far save irritating me.

Tom’s World – 13DEC2025 – Sony Trouble

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

My A7IV is glitching badly on me. The nature of the glitch seems to change but the camera has approached unusability and times and exceeded it at times. Right now, I’m using my backup A6600..

The glitches started by ID’ing my Sony battery incorrectly as an aftermarket battery. Then the warning wouldn’t turn off and the camera was unusable. Right now, it starts taking pictures continuously on startup and won’t stop.

I talked to the shop where I bought it and they recommended a firmware update. I checked and found that since I downloaded 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 have been issued. But then noticed that 6.0 was bricking cameras left and right and Sony had pulled it a couple of days after the intro. I figured that I could still update to 5.0 only to find that Sony has pulled ALL firmware updates until further notice which could be at least several weeks.

I wonder how long I can go without a main camera? And I especially wonder whether a firmware update will fix it. Logic tells me probably so.

I’ve noticed that the A7V has been issued at “only” $3,000 but I’ve also noticed that my photography level hasn’t increased apace with new and more sophisticated (and expensive) bodies. One big caveat to that, eye autofocus is now a MUST HAVE to me.

I’ve had Sony Alpha cameras since the A100 I bought 21-22 years ago and this is the 1st problem of any description from any of them. With my lenses, I’m irrevocably married to Sony now. If my IV model is screwed, it’s not a given that I’ll buy a V. A large percentage of my best shots were with the A850 but I couldn’t go back to that horrible high ISO performance and the autofocus performance would probably feel antediluvian.

FE 100mm f2.8 MACRO GM Lens – Damn You Sony!

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Just when I think I’m immune to lens lust Sony drags me back in!

Alright, this is not an in-depth review because this lens hasn’t even reached the stores yet.  It come out in early November.  But it has already destabilized my photographic equilibrium with its compelling mixture of desirable features and the stellar reviews the experts are giving it.

So just to put my own spin on it, here are the features I find most exciting.

  1. Fast autofocus.  Okay, probably not blazingly fast because no macro lens can be.  There’s just too much focus racking needed in a macro lens for that.  But its four XD Linear AF motors make it orders of magnitude faster than my current Sony 90mm f2.8 macro.
  2. 1.4X magnification.  That compares with the 90mm and its standard 1.0X magnification.  This is a big deal.  Filling the frame with your subject is what makes for better macro shots.
  3. The reviewers stressed that the Optical Steady Shot (OSS) system actually did seem to work very well on macro shots.  That’s always been a sore point for me with the 90mm lens.  There’s nothing steady about the image unless I’m on at least a monopod.  If this pans out it will be a major upgrade to my macro experience.
  4. The reviewers also stressed that the images when using a 1.4X or 2X teleconverter were still very good which if true means that 2X and 2.8X magnification would be achievable.  I’m most skeptical of this claim.  Whenever I’ve used Sony teleconverters I’ve always noticed a very significant image quality degradation (especially with the 2X unit).  If this turns out to be true it would be a very nice benefit.

Okay enough hyperventilating.  So let’s give some of the bad news.  It’s fifteen hundred bucks!  And I’ve checked the resale value of my 90mm lens ($450).  So I’d be forking over an extra grand or so.  Gack!!!!

Oh, the pain, the pain.  Well, Christmas is coming up.  And I do have some rarely used lenses hanging around maybe I could shrink that grand down to five hundred bucks.

It’s funny just a few months ago I think I was saying how glad I was that I no longer obsessed about camera gear and lenses in particular.  Sure I’m always interested in descriptions of the new odd-ball super-macros that the various Chinese lens manufacturers seem to create constantly.  But I’m never too excited because these lenses tend to be not of the highest quality.

But here Sony has dropped this thing in my lap with basically everything I wanted except a 200mm focal length (and that would be compensated for if it actually does work as well as they claim it does with a 2X teleconverter).  And here I am with my mouth hanging open, desperate to get my hands on this piece of photo kit.  They truly are evil geniuses sitting there in Tokyo (or wherever the hell their corporate headquarters is in Japan) and saying, “Now we’ve got photog right where we want him.”

And they do.  Damn them!!!

 

 

Gear Acquisition Syndrome in 2025

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I’ve been very happy with my Sony A7 IV camera since I bought it a few years ago.  It does everything I need it to do and I’m not sure what would tempt me to trade it in.  So, I haven’t bought any photo gear in quite a while.  But recently a new lens has tempted me.  But it’s a long story (and thus the reason it’s a post). About fourteen years ago I bought the Sony (badged as Carl Zeiss) A-mount 135mm, f\1.8 lens.  It was an extremely extravagant purchase at $1,500 and I couldn’t justify it in use terms because basically it was a very long portrait lens for which I had very rare need.  But after seeing some of the extraordinary results it could produce, I plunked down the cash.  And it was every bit as sharp and contrasty as the critics claimed.  And I managed to find quite a few excuses to drag this big heavy lens with me to places and events where longer and shorter and lighter lenses make better sense.

But not too long after this purchase, Sony, in its infinite cruelty, stopped making A-mount cameras and went mirrorless.  I won’t repeat my long sad story of enduring the e-mount introduction.  But I will mention that Sony salved over the initial problem of having no lenses for their new mirrorless cameras by producing a line of attachments for adapting A-mount lenses to e-mount cameras.  They were designated with the prefix LA-EA and numbered successively 1 through 5.  And with each introduction I dreamed of my e-mount cameras working with my A-mount lenses as if they were native lenses.  Well, that never happened.  Granted they got better.  But even the LA-EA-5 never allowed my A-mount lenses to enjoy the full capability of the camera’s auto-focus or special features like magnified view, in the same way as my e-mount lenses could.

And so, one by one I sold off my A-mount lenses and mostly bought the e-mount equivalent lenses (or just didn’t replace them).  But not the 135mm f\1.8.  By the time the equivalent e-mount lens appeared my A-mount lens was no longer very marketable.  A-mount lenses had a fairly small pool of users and so the market prices sank to fairly low prices.  And when the new lens came out in e-mount they wanted $2,100.  And that seemed a bridge too far for a lens that wasn’t really needed for a major part of my shooting style.

Over the years third party manufacturers have come out with their versions of this lens in the e-mount.  First Sigma, then Samyang and now Viltrox.  Each time I looked at the combination of price savings and quality and I shrugged my shoulders and said meh.  But finally, it’s reached the breaking point.  A review of the Viltrox lens (actually several reviews) claim that it is very slightly better than Sony’s $2,100 version but at about 1/3 the price ($760).  So, I checked the trade in value of my old A-mount lens and finding it to be about $350 I mailed it out and now await my thirty pieces of silver (figuratively) before finishing off the transaction to buy the Viltrox.

Wrapping up the lens gave me a pang of regret.  It was a beautiful piece of kit that had worked flawlessly when attached to the camera it was designed for, the Sony A-850 DSLR.  It wasn’t the lens’s fault that the geniuses at Sony had almost simultaneously with buying the Minolta camera line, relegated all of its products to obsolescence by going mirrorless.  But such is life.

Well onward and upward in 2025.  I will record the arrival of the new lens with photos it produces.  After all that’s the real reason they make these darn things.

View from Campsite 5 at Toroweap

SONY DSC
SONY DSC

Focus Bracketing Inside the Sony A7 IV – Part 1

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Well, I couldn’t resist. I went on Sony’s website and found the pages with the firmware update (4.00). But upon reading the instructions I found out that since my firmware was at version 1.01, I had to first update my camera to version 1.05 before updating to version 4.00. The warning said that if I went straight to 4.00 it would cause an error and then I wouldn’t be able to fix the problem. Well, the camera gods are a jealous bunch and defying them is very unwise so along with many a grumble and even a few mumbles I went through the procedure twice.
1.01 to 1.05
1.05 to 4.00
And what do you know? It really worked. The drive menu had new options that included focus bracketing. After following the instructions from a YouTube video, I was able to quickly and easily run a quick bracket on a preserved tarantula spider specimen and send it through my focus stacking program (Affinity Photo) and, voila, edge to edge sharpness.

Now this was just a quick test. I had a kid’s party starting and barely got the files stacked before I had to go referee grandkids for Camera Girl. But it was definitely a proof of concept and I can see how this will work for even some field shots. Definitely usable for macro shots of plants like mushrooms and such and even for resting or sedate creatures like resting dragonflies and such. Of course, butterflies are out of the question. But a little testing is bound to bring up other applications.
So, all in all, this is an amazing surprise from Sony. Kudos to them for hearing my cries in the wilderness. Bravo, gentlemen, bravo.

Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus. But His Name is Sony!

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At this point I considered attaching a video of the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah.  I had been waiting and hoping and praying that Sony would add focus bracketing to my Sony A7 IV camera by a firmware update but had more or less given up.

They did it!  Well, they made the update but I haven’t updated my camera yet.

But I watched the video below and did a quick jig around my house and am now calming down enough to type this post.

Ah hell, let’s add the Hallelujahs!

TomD replied:

Really!!??

I’ve been wanting focus bracketing for years! Years ago, FB was a relatively expensive windows or apple program and you had to shoot with the camera tethered to a computer. What a PIA.

I’m gonna update right now.

It can immediately help with a number of different types of shots I do. Aircraft in a museum for example. Museums are crowded with a constant problem of subject isolation. Far enough out to get the entire plane in the shot and there is a LOT of stuff competing for attention. Close enough with a wide angle and there is the depth of field problem.

photog replied:

I had to do two updates.  First I had to go from version 1.01 to 1.05.  Then 1.05 to 4.00.  But it worked.  I’ll load up the trial macro focus bracket soon.  It’s much easier than the damn tether.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 27FEB2024 – The Best Camera is the One You Carry

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

That looks to be a fossilized “rolly polly” insect. The ones that roll up into small armored balls. I ate one one, thinking it to be a chocolate chip fallen from my cookie. I won’t repeat that mistake, ever.

BTW: Below is a side by side photo of my new “carry around” Sony A6600 next to my “main camera” Sony A7IV.

A7IV Vs A6600.jpg
A7IV Vs A6600.jpg

Down here in Florida where self defense is considered to be a right, there is a maxim among the people who commonly carry weapons. That the best weapon for self defense is the weapon which you are most likely to have with you.

The same principle applies to cameras. If I’m going somewhere on a photo shoot, I’ll very probably have the larger camera with me. It is the more capable but not to the degree you may suspect. But the other 99.999% of the time, the bulk and cost precludes it as a constant companion as I travel about. But the smaller camera fits in my console or even a pocket with a smaller lens. And I constantly find photo subjects for which I wish I had a more capable camera than a cell, even my capable (for a phone) Pixel.

I used to get really good early dawn shots while going to work, when I worked.

At one point, I had an earlier version of the A6600 but I gave it to my wife when she dropped and destroyed her camera. I asked for it back but was cursed at.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 03JUL2023 – Sony Lens Options

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

DSC03736.jpg
DSC03736.jpg

We’ve both use the same camera body but your lens collection tends to the telephoto side compared to mine. I was left totally without anything longer that 105 mm when I moved to the A7IV and found that my old A mount 70-300 would become pure manual focus, even with the latest Sony adapter.

I grew up with manual focus but, back them, cameras had a split image focusing system to tell you when you were in focus. That consisted of twisting the focus ring while looking through the viewfinder until the upper and lower parts of the image perfectly aligned. Looking thorough the old Sony lens in the new body gave me no focusing information at all. So, bleah to that.

I thought about getting a new e mount version of the same lens but I thought $1300 a bit much for as little as I use long telephoto. But, I concluded, paying 40% of that figure for the Tamron version, which had good ratings, to be an acceptable bet.

Below is a shot of a female Cardinal that I photoed in my yard this AM at a range of around 70 feet. Even at 300 mm, this is a big crop.

Quick aside: The split image focus system is a spinoff originally derived from the Dreadnought era Naval gunnery optical rangefinders that prevailed in all the worlds navys in the until the advent of radar ranging during WWII.

Sony A7 IV to Get Focus Stacking

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So I check out the Sony camera rumors at (where else?) sonyalpharumors.com pretty regularly.  So what do I see today?

And at the bottom of the short article it says

One reliable source told me that the Sony A7IV will get a new firmware update 2.0 within the next couple of days! Another source told me that the new firmware update will include Focus Stacking.

Now focus stacking is a wonderful option for a macro-photographer.  Instead of hooking up some hokey laptop program or a manual focus advance trigger you just select the focus stacking option and let the camera do the work.  Now Olympus gave this option to its customers years ago.  But Sony, this giant electronics powerhouse isn’t up to the simple firmware update it would take.  So seeing this really got me excited.

But sonyalpharumors is called rumors for a reason.  I’d say the chance of focus stacking being in the update is 10%.  But hope springs eternal.  So fingers crossed.

 

Update:

This was a total myth.  Nothing came of it.  The only hopeful sign is that Sony is now beginning to provide some upgrades to their cameras on a pay basis.  Maybe that presages a larger effort to provide firmware upgrades that people would pay for.

 

22OCT2022 – OCF Update – Sony Photography

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Politics has been so all consuming lately that I haven’t had a chance to write about anything else.  But in the last month or so there’s been a lot of buzz about Sony’s imminent release of their latest update of the high resolution camera, the A7R V.  When I’m interested in breathless reporting I go to sonyalpharumors.com and listen as Andrea tells us confusing and sometimes inconsistent things about the future.

The Sony A7R cameras are very nice pieces of kit and using them for macro is a very attractive proposition with their 61 megapixel sensors and other high resolution accoutrements.  But 61 megapixels is a little bit more than I think I need.  Plus the price tag is now coming in above $4,000.  And for a man of my limited means that’s beginning to seem high.  Plus I do a sort of mixed landscape, macro, walk-around photography that seems to play to the Sony A7 IV all-around camera sweet spot.  So let’s just say that my interest in the Sony A7 V hullabaloo is more on the academic side.

But what did intrigue me was the talk about AI based autofocus.  And here’s why.  I’ve been hearing and reading from various sides that phone cameras are catching up with dedicated professional cameras.  And the reason given for this is that phone cameras have highly intelligent algorithms that provide very precise autofocus and excellent sharpening and color representation.  And that as we reach the limits of what lenses and mechanical devices can do for optical focusing and image stabilization it will be this advanced artificial intelligence that will render phones as the future of photography.

Now, currently I don’t think things are really all that simple.  In fact I’ve spoken to some photographers who have very good phone cameras and they say that although they get very nice shots from their phones, they wouldn’t put one of these files up against a full frame landscape shot as a source for a large print or even as a basis for a cropped photo.  Apparently there is a bit of surface magic going on that doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

But that being said, I am positive that adding a strong algorithm to a very good camera like any of the various Sony A7, A9 or A1 cameras would be a very useful and fruitful step.  For things like birds in flight and sports tracking it would be a step in the right direction.  Just like the eye-AF function was a game changer for good focus, having a program with many times the speed of human reflexes concentrating on evaluating the auto focus and recognizing the changes to the image and anticipating the expected changes to the focus result would improve results greatly.  Even for something like fast moving insect macro photography, having the latest algorithm to optimize the changes in focus point would provide a much higher rate of success in something that has a very short time window.  I could imagine that specialized algorithms might be available for individual subjects like birds in flight or hovering hummingbirds or even butterflies on flowers.

As you can see I’ve let my imagination run away with me but I’m sure there are sports photographers salivating over the idea of an algorithm specifically formulated for football wide receivers running for catches down the side line.  Or how about one specially formulated for NBA stars pretending to be fouled to obtain a penalty shot?

Anyway, I’m intrigued by just what AI may have in store for us in the future.  One thing I hope is that a lot of it might be available as a firmware update to our already very capable cameras.  But honestly I’m not very aware of exactly what capability my camera’s “Bionz-XR image processor has.  It may be a genius or a dolt.  So I’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile my present camera has been doing a splendid job of taking all the pictures I ask of it.  At this point I have no need of an upgrade.  All I ever watch nowadays is the new lens info.  And even that is sort of a reflex.

So I’ll just see where everything goes and enjoy photography for what it is.  Fun.