Physicist and photographer Stefan Liebermann stefanliebermannphoto uses his Sony Alpha cameras and Sony lenses to capture mesmerizing astro-landscapes and deep sky images. In this article we connect with him to learn more about the gear he uses and why. Photo by Stefan Liebermann. Sony Alpha 7 III. Foreground: sec. Sky: sec. Stefan Liebermann's Sony Alpha kit for night sky photography. Sony Alpha 7C. Panorama of 3 photos by Stefan Liebermann. The physicist and internationally award-winning photographer travels the world for his photographs — always in search of breathtaking landscape motifs.
With his images he wants to share his fascination for the night and show this magic new world using his Sony Alpha cameras. I use it for landscape and astro-landscape photography. The full-frame sensor with 24mp is exactly the right one for low light photography with a high signal-to-noise ratio with sufficient resolution.
Due to the second base ISO of , it allows astrophotography at a high dynamic range. Much like with the Sony A1, the new grip design of the A7 IV makes the camera much nicer to hold, especially if you have larger hands.
In my hand, the camera feels sturdy and substantial and much more comfortable to hold than the earlier, smaller A7 III or A7R IV cameras that I've shot with several times, for example. Although the A7 III is much improved ergonomically compared to the very first generation model, the camera's grip is still a little on the smaller size.
In particular, when using the predecessor, I noticed a tendency to wrap my pinkie finger under the base of the camera since the grip just felt a bit too small to fit all four of my fingers around it. The larger size of the A7 IV's grip seems to have alleviated that, despite the camera not being much taller than the predecessor. The grip here is wider, and I'm more easily able to get a full hold of the camera.
Overall, the camera feels sturdier, more substantial in the hand, and simply more comfortable to use -- especially with larger, heavier lenses -- without having a noticeable impact on the camera's general compact footprint. The A7 IV also is said to be dust- and moisture-resistant against harsh conditions, and while I didn't experience any rain or bad weather during my time with the camera, the A7 IV feels very well built and reliable. The body feels robust, and the controls and dials feel solid and not at all cheap or flimsy.
In terms of the A7 IV's general control layout, the camera is not drastically different than the previous model, but there are some nice changes and improvements to the dials and buttons on both the top deck and the back of the camera. On the top of the camera, to the right of the EVF, the controls and dials of the A7 IV borrow a similar look and feel to those of the Alpha 1, though with some minor differences.
The A7 IV features both front and rear control dials. The front control dial is again recessed into the top of the handgrip on the front, while the rear dial is now fully moved up to the top deck of the camera like on the A1, as opposed to being recessed into the back of the camera. It's not a drastic change, but compared to the A7 III, the rear control dial on the Mark IV is a bit larger and more prominently placed, making it easier to operate. The A7 IV also has a third control dial with a locking button mechanism, which, by default, controls exposure compensation.
This dial, which in the camera menu is named "Rear Dial R" "Rear Dial L" being the other rear control dial isn't labeled with exposure compensation dial markings, as we saw on the A7 III and on the A1. On the A7 IV, this locking dial is blank, and within the menu, it can be reassigned to any number of other functions.
The functionality of the front dial, both top-deck rear dials, and the Control Wheel on the back can all be customized to suit your shooting style. Another minor change to the top controls is that now the C1 custom function button has been replaced by a dedicated video recording button, as we see on the A7S III.
The selectable modes have also been simplified down to just the standard "PASM" modes, an Auto mode and three customizable preset modes.
The locking feature is nice and helps avoid accidentally changing your primary shooting mode. I do wish the main PASM mode dial had a locking feature, as well, like on many of Sony's other, higher-end Alpha models, but the dial feels stiff enough that accidental mode changes are probably going to be rare for most people.
The level of customization the A7 IV offers is impressive. On the left side of the EVF, we once again have a big blank spot. With the A1 and A9-series, Sony adds some additional controls, a dial for Drive mode and another for Focus mode. While I'd ideally love to have these additional physical controls on the A7 IV and other A7-series cameras , I suppose it's a differentiating factor between Sony's more consumer-focused cameras and their pro models. Nonetheless, it feels like a big chunk of unused space on the camera, and perhaps a couple of additional custom function buttons would do nicely there.
Moving down to the rear of the camera, the A7 IV's button layout is essentially unchanged compared to its predecessor -- with the exception of the aforementioned swapping of the C1 button and video recording button. Several of the button designs are updated and enlarged, matching those of other recent-generation Alpha cameras.
The buttons are all slightly larger and generally easier to press. The AF-ON button is notably larger, and the multi-directional joystick control is both bigger and has a new bumpy texture for better grip and operability.
I really have no complaints at all when it comes to the buttons and dials of this camera; having reviewed the new Alpha 1, the overall user experience here is essentially the same and an overwhelmingly positive one.
The larger size and the deeper, more tactile feel of the buttons presses are small but pleasing improvements to the A7 IV's usability compared to the previous model. The updated joystick control is especially nice; the texture is great, and the movement of the control feels responsive. I also appreciate that Sony continues to keep a dedicated 4-way directional control, which of course, works for menu navigation.
The menus are fully navigable via touch and swipe. You can also navigate the menus with the joystick control, but I still prefer navigating menus with a 4-way directional control, as I find that much more accurate and faster to operate. The ability to flip the screen to the side and outward to a front-facing position is excellent for video creators. For stills, I personally prefer the "older" tilting LCD design -- like on the A1 -- as I find that easier to use for shooting from low angles.
However, the articulated design of the A7 IV does allow for easier low-down shooting with the camera in a vertical orientation. In the field, the rear display works very well. Quality-wise, the rear LCD is crisp and sharp, and it performs well outdoors in bright light.
Sony states that live view quality, for both the LCD and EVF, has been improved, with attention put on reducing false colors and increasing image resolution. The LCD's touchscreen offers a responsive feel when using tap-to-focus functions and navigating through on-screen menus, such as the Function shortcut menu.
You can navigate the deeper main camera menus via touch, and while it generally is useable, the UI feels a bit on the small size, in my opinion, to be easily tappable and scrollable. It's fine, on occasion, and it can be done, but I found it much quicker to just use physical controls for menu navigation. Overall, the new menus on the A7 IV are much easier to navigate and find the items you're looking for, despite the expansiveness of the camera's menus.
The two-column menu design lets you see at a glance several, if not all, of the related items for a given menu category or section, which I found makes it much easier and faster to find the setting I'm looking for. Further, the way the menu options are categorized is much more intuitive than in prior models.
The refresh rate also gets a boost, with the camera offering both a normal 60fps frame rate as well as now a faster, smoother fps for improved usability when tracking fast-moving subjects. It's bright, sharp and offers a large, clear view of the scene. The 0. However, it gets the job done and does it quite well. Nonetheless, the camera's imaging pipeline offers impressive fine detail capabilities, an expansive ISO range and very good dynamic range, and the camera overall has very impressive performance capabilities, despite not having a sensor with a readout speed as quick as the A1 or A9-series.
In terms of specifics, the new A7 IV, despite its newer sensor and updated image processor, offers the same, albeit expansive, ISO range as its predecessor. Sony also states that the camera offers approximately 15 stops of dynamic range, which is, again, the same as with the previous A7 III. However, seeing as the camera uses the same image processing engine from the A7S III and A1, Sony also states that the A7 IV gains the improved image processing capabilities of these higher-end cameras, which are said to provide improved color accuracy and more natural-looking tonal gradations.
The A7 IV offers a variety of image quality settings and image file modes. In addition to the standard Picture Profile presets, which offer a wide range of in-camera image adjustment parameters, such as black levels, saturation, detail as well as the movie-specific Profiles like S-Log3, HLG and S-Cinetone , the A7 Mark IV also gains a new Creative Look feature. Though not exactly the same, the Creative Looks presets are in some ways similar to Fujifilm's Film Simulations or rather a set of in-camera image filter presets.
The A7 IV includes 10 pre-made Creative Looks, including a multi-purpose "Standard" look, a Black and White look, a Sepia-tone look, one for Portraits, a more neutral look with reduced saturation and sharpness, and more. There are also 6 additional preset slots for allowing for customized versions of these Creative Look presets.
Here you can adjust several different parameters, including contrast, shadows, highlights, sharpness, clarity and more. You may combine EXIF values to find very specific gallery listings see this post , or use our search tool to search for posts for images non-gallery, too by specific metadata combinations.
You can also search for posts with images, just add [IMG] as one of the keywords to get posts which have working images in them. Jump to forum Not a member yet? But it also facilitates high- and low-angle shooting in portrait format as well as landscape, which makes it really useful for photography, too. Even so, I much prefer the fully articulating design. Sony has been at the forefront of revolutionising autofocus via AI-based subject recognition, where instead of setting a specific focus point, the camera will identify and track focus on faces and eyes, or follow other moving subjects according to colour, pattern and distance.
It offers eye detection settings for humans, animals, and birds, all of which work astonishingly well. With other types of subject, you can choose between AF points arranged across the entire frame, via the well-placed joystick. In typical Sony fashion, the autofocus works phenomenally well. When shooting portraits, you can let face and eye detection do its thing, leaving you free to concentrate on composition. With moving objects such as trains or planes, the AF tracking does a brilliant job of sticking to your specified subject and not getting distracted by anything that temporarily obstructs your view.
Even with static subjects, engaging tracking allows you to experiment with different compositions while the camera holds focus on your specified subject. Eye AF now works just as well with birds as with humans and mammals. Nonsensically, tracking is still engaged from the AF area menu, where it comes complete with its own separate set of AF-area settings. Also, choosing between human, animal and bird eye AF normally requires a trip deep into the menus, so I added this setting to the customisable Fn menu.
Subject selection for real-time eye AF can be added to the Fn menu for quick access. Another irritation, which could be especially confounding to photographers who only shoot video occasionally, is that tracking AF works completely differently when you switch the camera to movie mode.
At this point, you have to select the subject by tapping the touchscreen, rather than with a half-press of the shutter button. It starts up near-instantly and is highly responsive to both the touchscreen and the physical controls.
The shutter sound is pretty unobtrusive too, if not quite as quiet as many other cameras. But it can still be let down by the Auto White Balance, which has a habit of over-neutralising subjects that should have a dominant colour, and I generally preferred using a preset instead.
Even then, colours can almost invariably be improved by tweaks in an app such Snapseed before sharing them on your phone. Here I tweaked the raw file to accentuate the twilight colours. This image was exposed to retain highlights, with the shadows then brightened by at least three stops in raw processing. When it comes to continuous shooting, the picture is complicated. To get this, you need to drop back to the 8fps CH mode. If you prefer to shoot in lossless compressed or uncompressed raw, the speed drops to 6fps or 5.
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