It has been a weird past month or so for my photography. My Sony a99, after a hot day of photographing the Great Valley Crit, starting acting up. After about 40 minutes or so of shooting, I would get an error saying that the IBIS (SteadyShot) was no longer working. I usually shoot fast enough to not need the IBIS, so I would just turn it off....but the camera would keep telling me that it was broken. It would still work, but every time I hit the function or menu button, this big warning would come up on the EVF. Ugh. I can live without IBIS...can't live with a stupid warning screen popping up all the time.
At first I thought it was heat related. Whenever the warning would pop up, I figured out that if I took out the hot battery, blew in the battery space for a bit and then inserted a cold battery, it would work again without the error. So, my first workaround that I came up with was to purchase a battery grip. Found one on MPB for $30. I wasn't entirely sure how it would work, but I was hoping that I could not use the battery in the camera and run the camera with the 2 batteries that were in the grip, thereby keeping it cooler. And, sure enough, you can do that. But, sadly, no change. The camera would still come up with the error after about 40 minutes of shooting.
Again, camera still works fine. I can live without IBIS. As it turns out, I took some great photos during the month or so that it was broken! Weird. I think with the IBIS broken I was more conscious of all my settings.
But, at the end of the day, the error message is annoying. So, I started rethinking my future relationship with the a99. Should I buy another one? Should I save up for an a99ii? Should I get a full frame mirrorless Sony? Or should I just toss it all and switch to Canon or Nikon?
Then, one wonderful evening, I was surfing the camera used retail webs and discovered that Adorama had 3-4 used Sony a7ii's on sale. $250 off. So I went ahead and got one. $500 for used Sony a7ii in "Very Good" condition. $500 for a full-frame camera! Crazy weird.
No surprises on the thing so far. I think the Sony a7ii uses the same sensor as the a99 and, to be expected, the images look pretty similar. Wonderful.
4 things that everyone posts as negatives about the a7ii:
Battery Life - well, I was pretty surprised on my first really long day of taking photos. Claim is that you can only get 350 images per battery. No big deal for me, that is about the same as my a6000 and the a99. To my surprise, I took 300 photos and still had half the battery left after 3 hours. I did get the battery grip just in case, but it looks like that will be plenty for a full morning for me. I did have the IBIS turned off, since it was very bright out and I was shooting an equestrian event and was shooting at 1/3000-1/4000.
5 frames per second - Yeah, more would be better. But, to be perfectly honest, I like 5 fps. Less images to cull through at the end of the day.
Focus - So far, no worse than the a99 in low light. And I've only been using adapted lenses. I am pretty used to manual focus and for macro and landscapes I am almost always in manual focus.
Costs of Lenses - I got an inexpensive vertical battery grip right away. This makes the body quite a bit bigger. And, all of a sudden, the weird frankenstein bulkiness of the LAEA4 adapter is hardly noticeable. On the a6000, the adapter was annoying, but on the a7ii witt the grip attached, you don't even notice it! I'll certainly start investing in some e-mount full frame lenses, but no rush, as the thing works well enough with the adapter and it would cost a fortune to replace my vintage lenses with new e-mount stuff.
Below are some photos I took with the new-to-me a7ii with the LAEA4 adapter and the a-mount Tamron 70=200 f/2.8 :