Belt up Orion

There are many good things about the new Sony a7RIII - improved battery life, better autofocus and video codecs (if you like that sort of thing), but the best thing is how much it has reduced the prices of used a7RII's. I've done a lot of noise testing of the a7RII against my beloved D7200 and they are essentially the same. According to the DxOMark bench tests, so is the dynamic range. And yet... 

I step outside my back door (literally) and shoot this hand held with a £40 lens. And I'm surprised at the results. OK, M42 is not the hardest object in the sky to image, but we suffer from such bad light pollution that I normally don't bother with any astrophotography. A hand held snapshot on the a7RII produces this image (go LARGE). Yes, I know it's very dark - 1/20s exposure. More to follow though. Stay tuned. And then the penny dropped. Noise is not the issue. With digital files, you can make noise go away. Signal is the key factor here. I've got no reason to doubt the DxOMark bench tests, but in the hand, the deeper pixels of the Sony sensor outperform expectations. It's far from the perfect photograph - you don't use a 50mm lens for astrophotography - but it's a pretty damn good sensor test. 

Which gives me a problem. I have strong emotional attachment to my D7200, easily the best camera I've ever owned. And yet... 


Sony ILCE-7RM2
Yongnuo YN EF 50mm f/1.8 AF 
f2.8 1/20 ISO 6400