
I've long been a proponent of Sony camera gear, which has become an integral part of my creative process. Over the years, I have explored various lenses, bodies, and accessories that have enhanced my skills but I appreciate Sony's system isn't to everyone's taste. Whether you're a seasoned photographer or just starting out, I hope to provide insights and tips on how to make the most of your Sony equipment. Join me as I delve into my favourite gear, discuss what works best for different shooting scenarios, and share techniques that have shaped my photography style.
Camera Body - Sony A7RII

The Sony A7 series is kind of the benchmark for the amateur to professional camera market. You might not see these at the sidelines of a Premier League match, or on a National Geographic shoot, but they are the pinnacle of price to value ratio for all round, stills and video machines.
Sony produces each generation of the A7 in three variants, the Standard A7 Mk(-), the A7 S version and the A7 R version. The S version usually has significantly fewer pixels, but drastically larger pixel size, making them an absolute beast in low light and video applications. While the A7 R series typically crams in 50-100% more pixels into the same 35mm sensor size, making them ideal for high resolution and cropped shots. This is why I tend to use the A7R versions for my work. I'm often shooting fleeting scenarios during daylight hours, all outdoors. Light levels are rarely my largest concern, but being able to correct a crop in post can rescue shots I would otherwise miss on site. The A7RII boasts 42 Megapixels, with Sony's excellent autofocus systems, and performance that really does not indicate that it's now very much an older model!
These additional pixels also have the added benefit of making the R versions of the A7 an ideal transition camera for anyone using an APS-C cropped sensor camera, such as the A6000 series of Sony cameras. I began my photography journey with a Sony A6000, and then the A6300, gathering a suite of E mount lenses made for APS-C sensors. These E-Mount lenses are technically compatible with Sony's full-frame cameras, but they don't expose the entire full frame sensor, meaning without any sort of crop, around 50% of the image will be present, but the rest will be black. The A7 has a crop / super 35 setting to only keep the image from the centre of the sensor, deleting a large amount of pixels from the outside of the image, as these are usually black or very distorted when using APS-C lenses on a Full Frame camera. By using the R Series cameras, I was able to use these APS-C lenses, while still retaining about 18 Megapixels even after cropping. That way I could gradually replace my lenses with full frame equivalents over time, rather than having to drop nearly £6000 in one go.

Standard Lens - Sony 24-70mm F2.8 GMaster

The standard zoom range of 24-70 is the workhorse for many a photographer. Travel, landscapes, portraits and video all typically fall within this range, and Sony's G Master interpretation of this is excellent. Both in terms of optical quality, but also build, I've never had to worry about what I do with this lens, and what I'm shooting. Focus is solid, sharpness is fantastic for a zoom, and the F2.8 constant aperture makes managing light levels in stills and video a breeze (with the use of a handy VDN filter of course). I find myself doing most of my video with this lens, and have shot some more interesting sport angles with this at the wider end too, plus a lot of my wider landscape shots. I will admit I can often be drawn into shooting tighter, I'm perhaps lacking in the skill to control quite so many elements in one frame as professional landscape photographer like Nigel Danson. He can navigate branches of woodlands, blades of grass, streams and hilltops and somehow weave them all into a coherent, complimenting image even at the widest end. I much prefer to eliminate as many variable from my image, and use longer lenses to isolate subjects, but I still find the 24-70 being attached to my camera more often than any other lens.

Telephoto Lens - Sony 70-200 F2.8 GMaster

The 70-200mm range is the typical choice for sports photography where you aren't held at a distance from your subject. It covers typical portrait lengths 85mm to 135mm, while given further reach to help isolate subjects where needed. The huge aperture at the 200mm end here really helps separate subjects while running, providing sharp subjects and creamy backgrounds. It also means you can bring shutter speed as high as you like to capture movement in pinpoint detail. On a sunny outdoor event I find myself shooting at up to 1/2000th of a second without even having to lift out of base ISO. Sony produces a far cheaper version of this lens with F4 aperture, but you'll be allowing in about half the light that you would with the 2.8, and therefore have to adjust your shutter speed or ISO to compensate. This lens is the most expensive of the primary lenses I use, but it's by far the best for the sort of work I do. Even landscapes can be taken in incredible sharpness and separation using this lens.

Super Tele Lens - Sony 200-600 F5.6-6.3 G Lens

I also tend to carry a super-telephoto lens, currently the Sony 200-600 G Series, which provides exceptional reach on faraway subjects, or the ability to pick out small features in vast landscapes. The downsides are of course size, weight, and the amount of light needed through the lens to get a sharp image. Typically when shooting towards the 600mm end at F6.3, I'll have to push the ISO up to around 1600-3200 to maintain the necessary shutter speed of around 1/800th to get the sharpest of images. It helps to use a tripod, but for the most part I'm often shooting on a more agile approach, handheld and moving between points. That being said, using this lens tends to give me some of my favourite images time after time, especially for cycling events, long straights on running courses, and capturing fleeting beams of light in vast landscape scenes. That, and the fact I keep telling myself I'll try getting into wildlife photography...

Phone - Sony Xperia 1IV

My gear wouldn't be complete without my phone. I use Sony's Xperia 1 series of phones as my daily, but also a part of my photography ecosystem. The Xperia 1 IV is perhaps the most advanced piece of photography gear I own, boasting far better processing specs, and in some cases hardware, than my A7RII camera body. The Xperia 1 IV offers 4K, 120fps video, a true optical zoom camera (the first major company to do so, which Apple and Samsung have since copied - and Sony make all their camera sensors too), real-time eye-tracking autofocus, and the ability to shoot up to 20 still images a second on the main camera. It's an absolute monster of a system, and is my default for any vlogging type recording, and even acts as my backup camera should my main camera fail during a professional shoot.
I also love the 21:9 aspect ratio of the screen, and the 4k, 120HZ OLED display has made using any other handheld device feel like a poor imitation of what it could be. These two features have since been dropped on the latest version of the Xperia though, so I'm not planning on upgrading for a while.
In terms of the ecosystem, the Xperia IV is designed to be an addition to the Alpha cameras, acting as an UHD external monitor, livestreaming portal, capable of running demanding software like Lightroom and Photoshop out in the field using the 12GB RAM, and the expandable SD Card slot allows up to 1TB of additional memory, or direct importing from camera cards, this port being accessible without a tool and highly waterproof. Even the camera apps use the same interfaces and menu systems as the Alpha camera, which admittedly is usually most people's complaint with Sony cameras, but works well for me.
Samsung were recently caught out for using AI to alter images taken in camera to look more like what it thought you were taking pictures of. You could point your camera at a white ball on a black background, and suddenly it would have the details of the moon appear on it. Sony don't mess about with any of that, instead you get the truest to life version of any scene, aided by flawless hardware, instead of clever software.

The Sony ecosystem has been a part of my photography for as long as I've been doing photography. From my first A6000 with the 16-50mm kit lens, through to my current setup. A journey of thousands of hours of shooting and editing, 3 camera bodies, 10 lenses and around £10,000 of gear. I'm sure my setup will continually change as much as my work does, nothing is ever perfect. But for now, and for the work that I do, this setup serves me well. I'm proud of my sporting and landscape images, and while the full frame setup is a pain to carry up mountains and running around marathon courses (more on this in another blog coming soon) it's a small price to pay. That being said, if somebody wants to buy me a full system from Canon or Nikon, I wouldn't say no...

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