I began shooting with 35mm slr's 50 years ago. Found my way into the air force where I got trained in 4 x 5. Fell in love. I shot a whole bunch of 4 x 5 cameras both in b&w and color for years. Did my own darkroom work. Loved it. Got older and not so strong. Went to Hasselblad, just like Ansel. Loved it. Never lost my preference for German glass. Then digital came along. I was slow to respond. Finally I took the dive. Traded everything film for a Canon system. EOS 5D Mark II with 16-35, 24-70, and 70-200. I thought zooms would make life easier. But I began to lose interest in photography. I'd just grab the camera, zoom, and snap. My photos showed my laziness. With the 4 x 5 and a fixed lens, tripod position was everything. With zooms it didn't matter. Then Sony comes out with this camera. It's magical. Mirrorless. No bypass filter! Incredible low light sensitivity. F**k flash. A body that feels like the Leica M3. A shutter with almost no vibration, but a definite, solid feel. The "program" mode is just like the Hasselblad EV setting. There's a level in the viewfinder. How long did it take to come up with that? On and on. One of the things that slowed my move from film to digital was the difference in dynamic range. No more. You can, in the camera, take bracketed exposures of the same scene exceeding the range of film. For an old dog, this is Nirvana. And German glass. I've gone back to Zeiss prime lenses and I LOVE IT.

I mostly shoot black and white 120 film, and make my living selling big fine-art prints. I returned to film 5 years ago for aesthetic reasons, and tried all kinds of digital cameras and hated them all (5dmkiii, D800E, etc). The Sony A7Rii is the first digital camera I really like and can live with.

For the past year, I've also brought along a Sony A7R (with 16-35 and 24-70 zeiss lenses). It was a slow, clunky focusing camera with an amazing sensor. I liked the mirrorless concept, so I tolerated its faults. The mark ii version is a vast improvement; about 5 generations ahead of the old one. Sony has fixed just about everything about A7R, while adding some unique features.

I am the last person on earth to run out and buy the latest gear. I was lucky enough to walk into a local store who had one for me to try and buy. I was not happy about the price, but I could quickly see why it cost so much. The build quality and speed were terrific. You're definitely paying an early adopter fee for all the R&D. It will be years before all this technology becomes cheaper, so go ahead and buy it now. At least this time Sony includes 2 batteries and a charger.

1) This is the first camera to shoot as unobtrusively as my rangefinder film cameras, except that I get a really nice preview. DSLRs were always old technology slapped onto modern technology. I hate DSLRs because you constantly need to 'chimp' and take your eyes away from the viewfinder to check exposure. With mirrorless, you can get a full what-you-see-is-what-you-get preview before hitting the trigger. No need to review for focus or exposure.

2) The new viewfinder more improved then you can initially tell. When turning a polarizer, for instance, I can see the change in sky much better. The screen is sharper, bigger, and very high resolution. I can distinguish background blur from whats in focus, even with a 16mm at f/4. I can manually focus accurately without focus assist (but I do have very good eyes).

3) DR of the sensor is astounding. I'm considering not using grad nd filters anymore. Ignore people obsessing over lossless RAW.

4) The sensor stabilization really works. Works seamlessly with Zeiss lenses with stabilization (btw, upgrade your 24-70 to v2 firmware, I had already done so. Some people have focus issues, that is why!).

5) Soft shutter finally gets rid of camera shake on long lenses. I repurchased the 70-200 f/4, which works worlds better than on the mk1. Silent shutter allows hand held exposures that are super slow. e-front curtain shutter has a nice quick chirp sound, vs the old clunky a7r that drove me nuts.

6) Lots more settings and customization. I spent a good 4 hours customizing each switch. Then, I programmed the 1 and 2 dial for switching between tripod exposures and hand held. Lots more bracketing options. Bulb mode works better with wireless remote.

7) Focusing is great. Really great, even in low light with the f/4 lenses. My intention is to only use native sony lenses. The real focusing system works much better for closeups with wide angles, and other situations where the a7r struggled. You can disable the video button. The list goes on and on.

8) The camera is now lightning fast and super responsive. This is from the combination of fast shutter and focus.

8) Build quality is terrific. Gone is the twisty, bendable lens mount. Too bad they didn't use real gaskets (although tight build is important for good weather sealing).

9) Light meter. This doesn't get enough attention, but the meter is sooooo more accurate in mirrorless cameras in general, especially with portraits.

10) More lens choices coming soon. Sony and Zeiss are dedicated to the e-mount system.

11) Knock-off accessories are really good, and most from a7r work with a7rii

12) ISO performance is great, but I can't compare since I mostly only use 100-400 iso.

Some Tips:

1) Update September 2015: True 14bit files are now available, which did matter for star trail photography and in some occasions.

2) Silent shutter and/or continuous mode will only give you only 12bit files. Use e-front curtain instead.

3) Spend a good 4 hours customizing all the buttons. Make the camera fit your needs.

4) I set the image review to off, which prevents the photographer from having to chimp, and allows a more subject connected, intuitive style of shooting that I associate with film rangefinder cameras. BTW Film SLRs were always terrible, and not made for fine-art photographers.

5) The Neewer Arca-Swiss Bracket for the A7ii fits the A7ii. Makes the camera a little bit taller, which is good.

Some Drawbacks

1) Sony is still catching up with lens choices. No ultra-super-wide, no fisheye, no wide primes, etc. Some lenses are branded Zeiss, but are made by Sony and cost more for the zeiss name.

2) Battery life still sucks, but Wasabi batteries are cheap and good (easier than carrying film). Turn off the pre-focus, which will save power. Turn off camera when not in use.

3) No gaskets for super-duper weather sealing.

4) Included camera manual is useless. Spends more time on liability stuff than using the camera.

5) Camera is a bit small without a bottom arca swiss plate, even with my small hands.

**Random thought. Wouldn't it be great for Sony to make this into a Nikonos style underwater camera? Just a thought.

Walking around with this camera is very comfortable - yet not as stealthy as my RX1R II. The body is solid though a little small and I find my pinky dangles in the air - so I use it to support the bottom of the body. Middle and ring fingers hold on to the small front grip (which is comfortable) and my index finger lives between the shutter release and shutter speed dial (explained a little more below). There is a slight bump-out on the rear where my thumb comfortably sits and provides quick access to the f-stop dial. It's a slightly different grip on the RX1R II which, though smaller, doesn't make it seem as small - maybe the lack of the bump-out grip in the front of the RX1R II.

I enjoy the placement of the buttons and dials on this camera. They are solid and smooth to operate - and the ones that need to click into position do so. At this time, with the camera always in manual (M) mode I have the front dial set to adjust shutter speed, the rear to adjust f-stop and a button on the rear to adjust ISO on the fly. A single click on the button brings up the ISO menu, then the thumb wheel allows me to quickly scroll to the rating I want.

The only other button programmed so far is C1 for eye detection. Obviously, only used in portraits but seems to nail it every time. I use this same setup on the RX1R II. I have been using the Exposure Comp wheel more and more to give me the exposure exactly how I want it rather than relying on post to correct that. Also been getting into relying almost solely on the histogram in the viewfinder to expose my work now.

The shutter release is smooth and pleasing (and I like the sound of it) and has the option of silent shutter, though I haven't tried that to date.

SONY A7R II - SENSOR

The A7R II has a 42.4-megapixel back-illuminated 35mm full-frame Exmor R CMOS sensor powered by the BIONZ X image processing engine to support 14-bit uncompressed RAW images. Technically, getting an ISO range of 50-102,400 but realistically using ISO 100-25,600. Even more realistically for my style is ISO 100-6400.

Unlike my RX1R II, there is no optical low-pass filter on this camera.

5-AXIS IMAGE STABILIZATION

The Sony A7R II has 5-Axis Image Stabilization which has been maximized for the 42 MP sensor. This system corrects camera shake while shooting along the 5 axes of angular shake (pitch & yaw), shift shake (along the x/y axis), and rotational shake (roll). Pair this with a IS lens (like the Zeiss Batis 85 I have been using) and you can freehand some ultra-lowlight photography.

BATTERY

Battery is notoriously bad on these cameras, but there are a ton of tips and tricks out there to increase life. Best thing I suggest is tossing the camera into Airplane mode - this turns off all the Wi-Fi and searching for networks. With this off, I can shoot all day with 3 batteries at the ready. To be honest, I shoot so little on a typical day (200-300 max photos) that I seldom need to jump to a backup.

Some other things you can try are reducing the brightness in the monitor and viewfinder, having a short power-save time, turn off the "Sunny Weather" option, turn off audio signals and turn off Pre-AF.

If I am walking around between shots, I tend to switch the camera off too. Not sure how much that helps, but a habit I picked up with the RX1R II.

I also suggest having a couple battery backups and a couple chargers in the house. Right now, I have 2 Sony stock batteries and 2 off-brand ones. I haven't noticed much of a difference between the two. For the house, I have a pair of chargers, as these batteries seem to take forever to get to a full charge. At least with a pair, I am able to cut the charge time in half.

FINDER / SCREEN

There are a couple ways to compose images with the A7R II. Either the screen on the back of the camera with LiveView or via the Electronic View Finder (EVF) that's really a godsend. The camera has the intelligence to automatically only power the view you are using. If LiveView, the EVF is powered off. If you put your eye to the EVF, it fires up in an instant and the back screen powers down. Very good for a camera that's a battery whore, as mentioned above.

With either of these views, you can increase or decrease the resolution, though they both look really good at standard. Very bright and quite responsive. Nearly identical to what I said about the RX1R II and not like the LiveView of the past (where my last experience was with a laggy Sony NEX-3). I keep the rear screen fairly dim, so I like to use the finder as my review of images when needed.

The eye cup for the A7R II finder is much better than the RX1R II, by the way. The former is a proper viewfinder with a rubberized eye cup (see rear image of A7R II below in the My Defaults section) while the later is a pop-up EVF and does not offer eye relief at all.

Both screens offer a slew of data from shutter speed, ISO, f-stop to digital levels, histograms and so on. I won't bore you with all the goodies, but there is a plethora of stuff that can be added to or removed from either screen.

The rear screen tilts up and down which is nice to hold over your head or at your feet to frame a decent shot. I don't use the screen often, but really enjoy the ability when I need it to compost a shot this way. I find this can be a stealthy way of composing a shot without those around aware of what you're doing - if stealth is your motive.

AUTOFOCUS

The Sony A7II offers up 25 contrast detection points and 399 phase detection points covering about half the sensor. The modes available here are Single, Continuous and Manual focus as well as AF-A and DMF modes that can be used with the native FE glass. As I don't tend to shoot moving targets, I stick to Single mode for almost all my shooting and have found it to be quite fast and really accurate.

As always, you can also switch the focus areas between Wide Area, Zone Area, Center Area (my preference), Flexible Spot, Expand Flexible Spot, Lock-on AF Expand Flexible Spot, Lock-on AF, Eye AF (which I mapped to C1), and Face Detection.

Like with the Sony RX1R II, the files spoil me. There is a great deal of latitude in them and so much shadow detail. The IQ is really nice to work with and I am getting the hang of how they behave with my one-click edits.

Conclusions

It is very early on with this camera to have any firm conclusions, but I have to tell you, I was secretly hoping to not love this one. I have my film cameras that I am more than happy with, and my Sony RX1R II that I figured was all I wanted. I wanted to shoot this, get it out of my system, then return it. Well, it's not going back. As soon as I strapped on the Zeiss Batis 85 and walked around with the Sony A7R II I was smitten. This camera is really offering everything I currently want in a digital setup. Gorgeous files with the colors I enjoy, great speed and a joy to walk around with. I read complaints about the menu system, but really, once you set it up once, you don't need to dig in there much and it truly isn't that bad.

This is a fine compliment to my film work and will also be a great compliment to the Sony RX1R II - so yes, they are both staying. I plan to get a ton of use out of this throughout the year and re-touch this review with future thoughts, uses, issues or what have you.