Change body/upgrade lens landscape photography

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Tex86

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Matt
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Hi,

I have an A7iii body and use mostly a tamron 28-200.

I was originally going to upgrade the lens to a Sony 70-200 f4.

Then get a 24-70 to fill the gap (have a tamron 17-28)

Along with this is a move to a A7riii body going to offer better overall performance for landscape photography? I think even just the crop ability would be beneficial imo.

Thoughts?
 
The A7Riii has higher resolution, plus a pixel shift mode, both of which can give improved results over the A7iii for landscape, but the A7Riii has fewer AF points, and lacks the points close to the frame edge that the A7iii has.
In practice, however, 24Mp is enough for most purposes, and with landscape you are generally taking time to frame and compose (so crop/rotate due to framing errors are less common), and with the 70-200 you are only occasionally likely to want to crop a landscape image for reach.
I think that overall while the A7Riii would offer some improvement, I'm not sure if offers sufficient to warrant the cost of an upgrade - you might be better waiting, and then moving to an A7Riv / A7Rv at a later stage - but it's partly down to personal preferences.
 
I do tend to print quite large too A1/A2 but I'm guessing at a certain distance the difference here would also be negligible?

Also if the choice came down to keep the tamron 28-200 and upgrade to A7RIV body OR keep A7iii and upgrade the telephoto to the Sony 70-200 f4 - which would you do?
 
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I noticed an improvement in image quality from A7III to A7cII. Lens wise I suppose it depends how good your current lens is and what aperture you're shooting at. For example if shooting at f8-11 will changing the lens make any differance?
 
Tex86 said:
I do tend to print quite large too A1/A2 but I'm guessing at a certain distance the difference here would also be negligible?

Also if the choice came down to keep the tamron 28-200 and upgrade to A7IV body OR keep A7iii and upgrade the telephoto to the Sony 70-200 f4 - which would you do?
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I have an A7iv - it's a great camera, but again, it's an incremental upgrade from the A7iii (I upgraded from an A900, so did see a big difference when I did so!).

I'd be inclined to keep the A7iii and upgrade the lens, as larger zoom multiples require greater optical compromises - so I'd expect the Sony to be significantly better than the Tamron.
 
Faldrax said:
I have an A7iv - it's a great camera, but again, it's an incremental upgrade from the A7iii (I upgraded from an A900, so did see a big difference when I did so!).

I'd be inclined to keep the A7iii and upgrade the lens, as larger zoom multiples require greater optical compromises - so I'd expect the Sony to be significantly better than the Tamron.
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Sorry I made a typo, I would upgrade the body to the A7RIV...
 
Faldrax said:
I have an A7iv - it's a great camera, but again, it's an incremental upgrade from the A7iii (I upgraded from an A900, so did see a big difference when I did so!).

I'd be inclined to keep the A7iii and upgrade the lens, as larger zoom multiples require greater optical compromises - so I'd expect the Sony to be significantly better than the Tamron.
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Sorry I've corrected my original post to say I would potentially upgrade to the A7RIV
 
sk66 said:
It's best to identify what's lacking in your current results... then you can identify what you might need to get to rectify that issue. If there is no issue, then you are just spending money for the sake of it.
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I think sharpness/detail is lacking, I shoot the majority of my landscape shots with the tamron 28-200 which is a great travel lens but undoubtedly is compromised to different extents through the range. I was set on just replacing this lens with the Sony 70-200. I think the draw of upgrading the body to the A7RIV enables more cropping possibilities and maybe better ability to resolve details? Not sure about that last point.
 
Tex86 said:
I think the draw of upgrading the body to the A7RIV enables more cropping possibilities and maybe better ability to resolve details?
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Depends on how it's used.

Assuming a theoretical perfect lens, diffraction due to the aperture setting used limits the resolution of a lens. I.e. at f/11 a lens can only resolve an average of 16MP onto a FF sensor; the lens would have to be used at f/5.6 or wider to resolve 60MP. And that assumes not only a diffraction limited lens (of which there are very few, and no zooms), it also requires perfect technique/settings and optimal situation (i.e. no wind, no atmospherics, etc).

That's not to say there is no benefit to increasing the sensor resolution, there are several. But in terms of recorded resolution it is generally far less than the numbers would indicate. And, even if it does record more resolution, will it show in prints? Probably not in an inkjet print. Even if it does show in a print, will it be visible to a viewer? Probably not, e.g. the CoC standard for image sharpness requires less than 2MP actual recorded resolution for standard viewing by someone with average vision. E.g. the resolution of my 16" MBP liquid retina screen set to the highest setting is 2.73 MP, and I can't see the pixel level details (that's why it's called "retina").

It's very probable you will benefit well from a lens upgrade. It is also very likely that you will see an improvement which is visible when pixel peeping if you upgrade the body as well; but often that increased resolution is of little practical use.
 
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sk66 said:
Depends on how it's used.

Assuming a theoretical perfect lens, diffraction due to the aperture setting used limits the resolution of a lens. I.e. at f/11 a lens can only resolve an average of 16MP onto a FF sensor; the lens would have to be used at f/5.6 or wider to resolve 60MP. And that assumes not only a diffraction limited lens (of which there are very few, and no zooms), it also requires perfect technique/settings and optimal situation (i.e. no wind, no atmospherics, etc).

That's not to say there is no benefit to increasing the sensor resolution, there are several. But in terms of recorded resolution it is generally far less than the numbers would indicate. And, even if it does record more resolution, will it show in prints? Probably not in an inkjet print. Even if it does show in a print, will it be visible to a viewer? Probably not, e.g. the CoC standard for image sharpness requires less than 2MP actual recorded resolution for standard viewing by someone with average vision. E.g. the resolution of my 16MP MBP liquid retina screen set to the highest setting is 2.73 MP, and I can't see the pixel level details (that's why it's called "retina").

It's very probable you will benefit well from a lens upgrade. It is also very likely that you will see an improvement which is visible when pixel peeping if you upgrade the body as well; but often that increased resolution is of little practical use.
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Great answer. I suppose then the main draw then is the ability to crop substantially and maintain a large amount of resolution.
 
A point that's worth considering when the urge to "buy quality" comes over you...

Bert Hardy, a successful photojournalist of the mid twentieth century, once accepted the challenge to produce an interesting photograph with a box camera.. The result is (allegedly) one of the best known images of the twentieth century.
 
Tex86 said:
Great answer. I suppose then the main draw then is the ability to crop substantially and maintain a large amount of resolution.
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There's a difference between pixels and detail. If you want to retain fine detail in your landscape after cropping then you need a lens with greater resolving power than your tamron. As Steven @sk66 said, you don't need more pixels, but a better lens and better technique may allow you to use more of the pixels you do have. TBH as an A7III user, the limitation is almost always the lens and technique, rather than the pixel density.

The point about viewing distance is also good. I have a bunch of 16:20 and 20:30 inch prints in my office, some shot on crop and others on full frame. Some appear absolutely fine until you get close enough to touch, but others I can see the flaws (bluring/distortion from using a zoom lens) from 10 feet. If you want to crop AND print big then your technique and your optics need to be very good. Higher pixel density *may* result in apparently lower noise/smoother images at lower ISO levels, but probably not enough to notice.
 
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Tex86 said:
Great answer. I suppose then the main draw then is the ability to crop substantially and maintain a large amount of resolution.
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As Toni said, pixels and recorded resolution are not the same thing.
Cropping is just another form of magnification, just like using a longer lens is; and it comes with all of the same limitations/requirements. I.e. it will increase/make more visible any lack of sharpness (motion blur/diffraction). It reduces the depth of field in the image. And it also reduces the amount of light recorded to create the image, which makes the image noisier (more visibly noisy). Noise and blur both reduce recorded resolution. So, if you actually expect to be able to crop and enlarge more, your technique and settings have to account for that... exactly as if you had used a longer FL lens with a smaller aperture instead.

Basically, everything we do is just some form of cropping and enlarging (magnification). The camera sees the same scene and receives the same light as your eyes do... Everything after that is just cropping/limiting the field of view for recording/composition, and magnification for output; it doesn't make a lot of difference how you go about it in terms of equipment.

I've been using the 46MP D850 and Z9 since they came out; and it would not require the use of any toes to count the number of times I have come anywhere close to recording 46MP of actual resolution. I'd be surprised if I've achieved 30+MP more than a handful of times; but I also don't do much landscape type stuff with a locked down tripod/etc.

There is almost always some small increase in recorded resolution when you increase sensor resolution just due to the increased oversampling (smaller pixel spacing); maybe 10-20% of the increase (i.e. maybe 8MP with the jump from 24MP to 60MP). If you want to see an increase more than that it usually requires other changes as well (lenses/technique/settings/etc).
 
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@sk66 and @ancient_mariner are talking a lot of sense, 90%+ of the time your current body is prefectly fine, and you won't have been getting the best out of it due to lens limitations and techniques.

There are thousands of images on flickr taken with quite basic (by today's standards) digital bodies and often the 'kit' lens, which are very sharp, with plenty of detail. Do not underestimate technique.

I always think of your photography journey like climbing a staircase, sometimes you can spend ages on one step and then something chnages and you go up 1 or 2 steps. You'll then spend an indeterminate amount of time on the next step before going up again. I found this with sharpness, one day I just went up that step, my gear hadn't changed, but I had.

I have printed A1/A2 from a Fuji 24MP APSC (crop sensor) and had no issues with the resultant image, in fact I was very surprised how well the A1 image stood up, even with close viewing.

I think we need to ask (@Tex86) are you usng a tripod or hand holding? If you are hand holding then is the shutter speed fast enough or are you relying on IBIS/OIS - obviously fast shutter speeds may require a bump in ISO which in turn has consequences. If you are using a tripod are you using the Timer or a remote release (and is IBIS/OIS off??)

I really would explore technique before buying anything - we all love shiney new things but often we sucker ourselves into something we didn't really need.
 
Tex86 said:
I think sharpness/detail is lacking, I shoot the majority of my landscape shots with the tamron 28-200 which is a great travel lens but undoubtedly is compromised to different extents through the range. I was set on just replacing this lens with the Sony 70-200. I think the draw of upgrading the body to the A7RIV enables more cropping possibilities and maybe better ability to resolve details? Not sure about that last point.
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Rereading your replies I haven't seen you state the aperture you're shooting at.

Some lenses are less good than others but also some improve upon stopping down. I think shooting aperture and lens performance across the frame at the aperture you'll be using is worth thinking about before spending money as depending upon the lens in use and its potential replacement there may or may not be any significant visible improvement once you've spent your money. For example I used to have a Sigma 28-300mm and it wasn't a great lens at some apertures but it performed quite well across the frame at f8-11 which is where I'd probably be if going for across the frame sharpness. If shooting at wider apertures then the lens choice may be more important, not ever lens is great across the frame at f2.8.

On technique and tripods. When I take a scenic shot I sometimes go for across the frame sharpness and if that's the case I personally don't see a tripod being much use unless the ISO becomes a problem and I need to limit the shutter speed to something I can't achieve handheld because if anything in the scene is likely to move I'll be using a suitable shutter speed to freeze it, unless I'm going for motion in the scene. If not going for motion in the scene shutter speed is your friend rather than a tripod but you need to keep an eye on the ISO, IMO. Unless your hand held technique is terrible enough to overwhelm the shutter speed you're using if freezing motion and I just can't see that or unless ISO is a problem I think it's worth doing a double think about if significant improvements are possible and at what cost before spending.
 
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Thanks for all the replies.

I tend to shoot on a tripod with IBiS off unless it's particularly windy and use a timer for the shot.

Aperture wise I probably shoot mostly around f11 (try not to exceed this) unless I can get away with a larger aperture and focus stack. I always check for sharpness zoomed in on the back of the camera and changed shutter speed if not sharp.

I suspect the lens I use varies quite a bit across the zoom range so I can get mixed results with the same technique. I think the Sony 70-200 f4 would offer more consistent performance.
 
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