While the title of this post may be blaming my Sony A7 for failures, I probably am the one to blame for not completely learning the camera. I am just so used to using my Canon 5D and my ability to control it quickly. I am trying as hard as I can to like this A7 but I can't seem to figure out settings quick enough in a situation where I need to get shots now. It performed awesome in the few situations where I didn't need it fast. In those situations I had time to think about my shot and look and see what my settings were.
Tonight was a perfect example that made me feel disappointed in the A7. I had some thunderstorms off in the distance with a nice gust front moving in. The down side is that it was starting to get dark quickly. It was a good situation to set up the camera on a tripod and use the Time-Lapse App that Sony sells for their camera. I knew with it getting dark that I needed the ISO to be automatic otherwise the exposure will be longer than the timer for the next picture and I knew it would have a hard time focusing due to how dark it was so I would have to keep it on Manual Focus set to Infinity.
I make sure the ISO is set to Auto and the Focus is set to Manual and at Infinity. I bring up the menu and load the Time-lapse application in the camera as the Gust Front is moving towards me pretty quick. I chose the "Clouds" theme in the application and it starts to take pictures. I go to grab my other tripod to get my 5D setup to try and grab lightning shots and notice that something is off with the A7. I go back over and notice that the application has switched the ISO back to 100 rather than Auto. So I try to change it back and the app wont let me make any changes to the camera unless I turn off the application. So I exited the application and go and make my changes again and see there is a "custom" theme in the application. So I set it to custom and make some adjustments and start to take pictures again. I go back to my 5D and get that all setup to take pictures of lightning with a lightning trigger on it. After that was all setup and running, the gust front was very close and I notice the A7 is taking very long exposures. I tried to see what was going on and noticed it was back to ISO 100 again and I also notice that the focus was set to auto as well so I had been taking out of focus pics on top of it. I decided to stop using the Time-Lapse application and just manually press the shutter every few seconds. After the gust front passed the lightning, which was pretty docile, ended completely. I decided to pack up and head home. There were a few more storms inbound on the radar but also looked like they would have the same fate as this storm.
After I got home I looked through the camera and noticed all the pictures taken via the Time-Lapse app was not on the camera at all. Lack of knowing the application, I have now learned that the application takes each picture and puts it to a movie right away and if you close the application prematurely then it will delete everything. So all was lost except for the pictures I took manually. Here is me scrolling through those images to do a lazy mans way of creating a time-lapse :)
I do want to learn this camera. It has a lot of great features but they are not features you should be learning in a quick thinking situation. I have seen some good quality pictures with the A7. I am going to bring it with me to Dallas next weekend and not bring my 5D so I will be forced to learn some of its features.
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