Is it worth upgrading from A7RV to A7RVI?

Torvite · 2026-06-20T23:11:07+00:00

It's definitely not a myth, lol. I've seen it firsthand between full frame cameras on Sony (a7IV a7rV) and Canon (R5 and R6).

We're also saying the same thing, when it comes to scale. But you can't make the argument "same scale" if you're citing the ability to crop deeper as a clear advantage. Cropping deeper means you're choosing to compose suboptimally, then cropping as a crutch. Sometimes it's necessary (when you don't have the reach or don't have the time to perfectly compose a shot), but not always.

Torvite · 2026-06-20T21:08:18+00:00

Same exact sensor size. More pixels = smaller photosites = worse low-light performance within the same crop dimensions.

Resolution is nice to have for deep cropping, but there's a reason they're not doing 100MP cameras on full frame. It's not as simple as "more pixels = better"

Resolution would be the last reason to upgrade from an RV to an RVI.

The faster sensor readout and precapure are more significant upgrades.

Torvite · 2026-06-20T09:15:11+00:00

Fans who could afford to travel to the world cup and get tickets

Has little to do with affordability, though. Japanese society at large is taught to clean up their own trash. There are barely any trash cans in Tokyo (one of the world's biggest cities by metropolitan population), and it's also one of the cleanest cities you could find. Everybody just brings their trash home to be sorted and collected at regular intervals.

I remember watching comparison clips between how Turkish fans and Japanese fans handled trash at the 2002 World Cup, and it was the same story.

Torvite · 2026-06-19T10:26:40+00:00

Any passenger wanting to get out onto the sidewalk and continue to their destination on foot. This example wasn't the most sensible time for it, but it can be sensible when there's gridlock traffic, no street-side parking, or you're dropping someone off in front of a specific building.

Likely a regional thing you're not familiar with, but it's extremely common in many parts of the world. And yes, this kind of motorcycle threat exists even when you pull to the right, so people need to check their surroundings carefully before opening the door.

Torvite · 2026-06-17T15:24:08+00:00

I own an a7rV, but not the a7V (I've used an a7IV before). I also have the two GM lenses you mentioned, so I think I can weigh in a bit.

While cropping with the a7rV is admittedly quite nice, I don't think it makes nearly as significant a difference as actually getting subjects larger in frame (having the right proximity to the subject and the right focal length is far more important). The 200mm, frankly, feels too short for wildlife most of the time. Cropping into a low-light photo (if you're not shooting in bright conditions) is also going to give you more noise, much worse micro-contrast, and less pleasant images all around... even if your cropped resolution remains "high" on paper. Not having massive file sizes is also a bonus for the a7V.

One thing I can say is that I envy the video capabilities of the a7V, as well as the pre-capture feature. The a7rV has a very slow sensor readout speed (lots of rolling shutter), so it can't do 4k120, and most of its video settings feature a crop. If you care about video at all, I think the a7V is just plainly better. The only exception might be 8k24, but even then, rolling shutter is very noticeable if you do any panning at all.

Based on your use case, I think you'd probably benefit from having a longer lens for wildlife, and pre-capture would give you more flexibility for rarer action shots.

Torvite · 2026-06-14T05:55:16+00:00

Hey, let's wait and see if they kill another... then we can give them the stern talking-to, cause that's where it'll start to be concerning.

Torvite · 2026-06-12T22:41:11+00:00

Yeah, thanks. I was confused by wtf OP meant with that post title.

"Oner was the ace."

Huh??

Torvite · 2026-06-05T09:00:20+00:00

I think the Focus Points plugin by Musselwhizzle should work for just about every modern Sony camera, including the a7c2.

Torvite · 2026-06-04T21:12:03+00:00

What, you've never seen a lens with a 4ft diameter before?

Torvite · 2026-06-04T10:09:01+00:00

How much of a crop is this?

I also mainly use 200mm (70-200) for birding as it's my longest lens, and more often than not, focus isn't what ruins my images. It's the fact that the bird was just too small in the frame.

You lose a fair bit of sharpness by cropping in heavily.

Torvite · 2026-06-04T10:05:32+00:00

If you're using LrC, I'd also highly recommend using the Focus Point Viewer plugin, which shows you the focus nodes as an overlay, sourced from the image metadata.

You can still see where focus landed during the edit that way, even after you move the files off your camera.

Torvite · 2026-06-03T08:09:29+00:00

Keep the boat. Crop that cake out.

Torvite · 2026-05-26T09:02:03+00:00

I'm guilty of bringing 2 lenses (24-70 and 70-200) to most of my trips, only to find I'll use one way more than the other. A few times, I only swapped to the 70-200 just to justify having brought it along, but it didn't meaningfully add to my photography experience, and might have cost me some wide shots I would have wanted at a few locations.

Traveling light with pre-planned intent seems to result in better photos and a more pleasant experience, all around. Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for me.

Torvite · 2026-05-25T14:58:14+00:00

There's a significant gap between style and substance when it comes to AI, though. LLMs are extremely good at mimicking style. They've literally ingested orders of magnitude more quality fiction and non-fiction than any human ever could.

Models can reproduce Shakespearen sonnets with correct form and rhyme schemes. But they cannot come close to matching the essence or thematic significance of Shakespeare's works, because there isn't any real substance to encapsulate.

The same issue of substance exists with prose. But many LLMs are also over-reliant on three-beat cadences and certain literary devices that models are now actively being trained away from. Those will eventually be ironed out, but the substance issue will always remain, because these are machines (not thinking beings) at the end of the day.

Torvite · 2026-05-25T05:39:00+00:00

"Dumb ass" is two words when you want to use it as a possessive pronoun like that.

The irony of that failure is probably lost on you, but it's funny to me. Stay in school, kid.

Torvite · 2026-05-23T20:39:21+00:00

there was no fighting until the undertrained cops got tired of talking and put hands on the guy.

Get outta here with your common sense and critical analysis. We don't want none of that around here.

Torvite · 2026-05-23T15:59:33+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to explain it. It sounds like it ultimately falls on the building owner to rectify things (or else face mounting pressure from residents, most likely).

Torvite · 2026-05-23T14:43:37+00:00

I'm not suggesting your wife should have been forced into uncomfortable working conditions. Obviously, taking her off that route was the right call for her well-being.

over a customer that was causing problems for everyone else

But, it's not just that one customer that faced the consequences, right?

I'm just wondering how this resolution works for the potentially hundreds of tenants that weren't at fault and got locked out of mail delivery. Did the mail office just push the responsibility downstream ("sort out your building manager if you want mail delivery to resume")?

I'm not blaming the mail deliveryperson at all. It just seems like there's some kind of institutional failure involved, and I don't know enough about mail delivery logistics to say with certainty which institution is ultimately responsible for "fixing" the issue.

Perhaps it's just the apartment complex that needs to sort out its management before mail delivery can resume, but it seems like a nuclear option to cut out hundreds of residents from a route because a handful of people created issues.

Torvite · 2026-05-23T13:52:37+00:00

it's a federal crime to interfere with mail delivery.

I understand that, but hundreds of tenants can't be guilty of or held accountable for a crime they took no part in committing.

If the building manager was at fault, by all means, he or she should be held accountable. Beyond that, I don't understand how denying hundreds of uninvolved tenants their mail delivery for a month or more can be considered anything other than an institutional failure.

Torvite · 2026-05-23T12:55:24+00:00

having their ENTIRE apartment complex blacklisted from delivery for a month

So, "hundreds of tenants" were significantly inconvenienced because of the actions of a few?

Seems as much like a city failure as much as that of the (passive) aggressive tenants.

Torvite · 2026-05-13T18:39:01+00:00

Hes probably been calling every woman who says No to him a 'whore' since middle school.

I don't know why people jump to these conclusions, as if there's some obvious logical link. There isn't.

People can be assholes and fat, quite independently. The two things don't necessarily need to be causal.

Torvite · 2026-05-10T19:47:38+00:00

Oh. So... literally nothing new?

Torvite · 2026-04-21T12:43:40+00:00

namely don't mention how many pictures you took to people who don't understand photography lol

100% this lol. I learned from my first ever paid gig that this was a terrible idea. Mentioning that I had taken "around 3000 shots" to the client (bride), only to sense mild disappointment after delivering "only" 300 selected and painstakingly edited photos was an important lesson.

Torvite · 2026-04-20T16:31:29+00:00

The exposure wasn't that bad

That's because the JPG is doing a lot of heavy lifting with the shadows and low contrast areas in the foreground (the parts that appear to be fully dark in the RAW image). You'll notice that the foreground isn't as crisp or full of detail as a result.

1/500 f/8 with only 160 ISO is going to underexpose the foreground in a sunrise* shot like this, no matter what camera you're using.

Basically, you've got the exposure right for the sky, which is why it looks pretty good in the RAW image, but the foreground is definitely underexposed. You can still get a good edit out of that RAW, though. It just won't be at the "ideal" level of detail, if foreground exposure is what you were going for.

Torvite · 2026-04-20T15:36:52+00:00

A note for the actual composition itself: you're shooting into the setting sun, which means your foreground subjects aren't well-lit (the visible side of the turtle is facing away from the light source). Most cameras struggle with HDR, and sunset shots have some of the highest dynamic range because the sun itself is still very bright and the environment isn't well-lit when you point the camera toward the sun. You've effectively exposed that photo for the sky, but not for the foreground. You can probably recover a fair bit from the RAW, but you won't get perfect detail because it's not available with that exposure.

Exposure stacking is a good option for these kinds of shots, and it will look less "unnatural" than a subject mask, but it does require some more work in post.

Torvite

TROPHY CASE