I know the curtain mechanical shutter can be turned off in the a7rII. Is there any way of doing that in the a7II?

Unfortunately no. Electronic shutter requires very high read-out speed from the CMOS. a7RII has a very fast CMOS, while a7II does not. Though I would love to have silent electronic shutter on my a7II too, I don't think there is any possible way.

There are 2 possibilities here:

 

- EFCS ( that is present in the A7II) is Electronic First Curtain Shutter and this can be disabled in your menu. When ON, this means everytime you release the shutter, the first curtain will not need to close before actually taking a picture. It is possible to disable it since some lenses and flash may not give you proper exposure or may cause blurry pictures in some situations. When OFF, there will be 2 clicks to every picture ( first curtain closing, then opening, then 2nd curtain opening.

 

- Silent shutter that is available in A7rII has quite a few limitations since it seems it is only available in some exposure modes and flash can not be used. Here are a couple of quotes from the Help guide:

You cannot select [ Silent Shooting] when the mode dial is set to other than P/A/

S/M.

• When [ Silent Shooting] is set to [On], the following functions are not available:

Cont. Shooting/Flash shooting/Auto HDR/Picture Effect/Picture Profile/Long

Exposure NR/e-Front Curtain Shut./S. Auto Img. Extract./BULB shooting/Multi

Frame NR

• When shooting using a function downloaded from PlayMemories Camera Apps,

[ Silent Shooting] is canceled.

Thanks for the replies.  They are helpful. I had a feeling that it wasn't possible.  I had rented an RX 10III to try it out and the silent shutter was an option and I liked it because I shoot candid street shots.  

 

I really liked the RX10 III.  I hope Sony (or Zeiss) makes a version of  that lens for the A7 series.  I shoot a lot of video and the motorized zoom is very handy.