There are lots of great cameras out their for wedding photography and videography but last year I bought the Sony A7Sii and here’s a few reasons why it’s great for photos and video and why it’s perfect for me.
Low Light
It’s the low light king, the undisputed best. A few years ago humans could see better than cameras, now we have the opposite, this camera can see considerably better than the human eye. I’ll get a bit technical for the geeks among you. ISO is 25-409600 which is huge. Standard until a couple of years back was 100 -6400.
Now while I admit it gets grainy after 20,000, with some f4 or below lenses that still gives you a huge amount of beautiful shots with very low light. I still have a flash and video light in the bag but the low light capabilities of this camera mean I only need to use them when I think it will improve the quality of the shot rather than as a necessity.
As well as a more natural look not using the flash or video light means people don’t see you taking the photo which means great candid shots without people constantly turning to you to pose.
Silent Shutter
Of course you say ‘what do you mean people won’t notice, with that big shutter sound?’ well you have the option to turn this off. It’s a bit freaky to use, not hearing that reassuring clunk but it means I can take 100 shots in a ceremony instead of 10 and no one will will notice or be annoyed by it. Not that you need 100 but having that extra freedom means the ability to try a few artistic and creative shots.
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Face Recognition Auto Focus
People have been using auto focus in photography for years and it’s really very good. But in video it’s traditionally been awful. For me face recognition auto focus changes this. The way it beautifully tracks the bridesmaid’s and the bride’s face in perfect focus as they come down the aisle is beautiful and I find myself admiring my cameras auto focus more than the nice dresses appearing in front of me. Of course you can very quickly switch back to manual if you need to.
Steadyshot and Smoothness
Again another video function is the in-built stabilisation, I also mostly use the Sony lenses which have their own stabilisation which makes it really very steady especially with the use of a monopod. This was the main problem with using stills cameras for video when I switched over a few years ago.
Another problem was the shakiness and the clunkiness with focusing. The autofocus and the smooth manual focus of the Sony lenses changes this as well, this with the stabilsation gives it the feel of a much bigger camera. You should be able to tell from my showreel which shots are on the new camera from the smoothness of them. Shakiness was acceptable and even in fashion for a few years but times have changed.
For me these are the key points of this camera which I love, it has many other traditional pro photography qualities which I won’t go into detail, such as it shoots RAW, it’s Full Frame and it pairs nicely with rich colour Zeiss lenses. Overall it’s a beautiful camera creating beautiful wedding photos and video.