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A7riii vs a7riv


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Greetings…. I need assistance from the Sony community with respect to the A7RVI vs A7RIII for aviation photography. I’m currently moving from Canon to Sony. I shoot a lot aviation photos. With aviation photography comes a great deal of cropping as the planes can be of a distance. My question comes from a megapixel count for cropping vs which has the better autofocus as planes sometimes are traveling 500 knots at 500 feet.

 Which body would be the better choice aviation photography?

 Thank you for your time and advice…. I’m looking forward to exploring the world of Sony!!!

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I don't know how those cameras would fare as aviation cameras - either of them are far beyond my scope of purchase - but people have been taking pictures of planes and other man-made flying objects well, as long as they have been around.  Unless the aircraft is flying straight at you or flying perpendicularly away from you, the AF lagging behind the shutter should not be an issue and in almost all cases you would be shooting at infinity so internal lens movements to acquire focus should be at a minimum. 

If you are expecting to crop a lot, I guess a camera with higher resolution would be better for you but that also depends on what you are going to do with the image.  If you are going to be printing large mural sized prints, higher resolution image would be better but if you are going to print at or below 11x17 or not print at all, even a cropped image from my A7II will be good enough on any consumer grade monitors on the market.  I have seen images printed from the first generation Olympus OM-D E-M5 (16MP) at 11x17 and they were excellent.

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  • 6 months later...

The A7RV is the first model with specific autofocus for planes, but the A7RIII and A7RIV are both able to photograph planes, just using older-style autofocus.
 

If you are wanting to focus on high speed planes passing from one side to the other, maybe you should be looking at an A9 or A1…

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    • Thanks for the very useful information. The 16-55 tempts me, I can live with the absence of stabilisation, what holds me is the price tag. As always, there is not such a thing like a free lunch in life. The Sony gives performance at a reasonable size but with no stabilisation and higher price tag, the Zeiss is compact, stabilised and reasonably priced but lower performed, while the Tamron provides performance at very good price and stabilisation at the expense of bulkiness. 😀 All in all, I think I will give a try to the Tamron, once I have taken in my hands. Here are two cutouts taken close to the center of the picture. The sharper one is the kit zoom, the other is the 18-105 mm, at approximately the same lenght around 40 mm at /f 8. The difference is impressive and more impressive for me is that all the lenses in the shop had the same behaviour on two different cameras. At this point looks like a whole batch and not just a lens.  

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    • That's a pity and certainly doesn't match with my experience with the 18-105: mine is definately on par with the 16-50 kit lens (which on its own was as decent as I could expect from such a cheap lens). Sure, dont expect sharp corners especially wide open, but in the center my 18-105 left little to be desired across most of the zoom range. The 16-55 does beat it in every regard except zoom range though. The Tamron 17-70 trades blows with the 16-55 and might be the better choice in some cases. I went for the 16-55 because of the smaller size (I also found the 18-105 too bulky most of the time) and slightly wider FoV. My camera has a stabilized sensor so stabilized optics was no requirement for me. As you noted, I kept the 18-105 on my old A6000 for the occasional video project.
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