Last-minute photo gifts
There’s still time – just! Some festive treats for the photographer in your life
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£45/$65 buyrememberingwildlife.com
he fifth RememberingWildlife book from a series where the title is no accident – if humankind doesn’t take action, we will lose cheetahs and many other species. But you don’t need to be a cheetah super-fan to be moved by this book; buy a copy and support a fragile ecosystem that has been severely affected by Covid-19 and the shutdown of international travel.
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£20/$26 www.panmacmillan.com
avid Bailey’s memoir was a long time coming, but for any followers of his extraordinary career, it has been worth the wait. ‘Unputdownable’ isn’t really a word, but it applies here… from the first chapter, the anecdotes and vignettes come quicker than continuous mode on a pro-spec camera. Plough through the book, and it’s a veritable Who’sWho of the movers and shakers that Bailey captured on film.
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£16.95/$22.95 www.hoxtonminipress.com he 1980s was a transformational time in the UK, and Paul Trevor’s close-up portraits of passers-by in the City of London and the East End between 1977 and 1992 certainly captures the essence of change. Shot on 35mm black-and- white film with a 50mm lens, Trevor’s photos were exhibited in 1994, but now appear in print for the first time.
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£30/$40 www.ilexinstant.com
en years in the making, this photographic odyssey by explorer and photographer Levison Wood is divided into four sections: ‘Frontiers’, ‘Conflict’, ‘Heritage’ and ‘Community’. A former Army officer, Wood’s intrepid nature takes him to over 100 countries, and his natural curiosity paired with the presence of a camera encourages people to tell their stories.
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instagram.com/gadgetsjon
Jon is a professional photographer, videographer and technology journalist.
LEFT: The Zhongyi 50mm f/0.95 manual focus lens gains AF capabilities when you mount it on a camera using the DJI RS 2 and 3D Focus System.
ecent months have seen the emergence of enthusiast cameras with simplified controls, designed to make the change from beginner cameras or smartphones less daunting. We’ll be reviewing the Fujifilm X-S10 in an upcoming issue, but this month we’re taking a look at Sony’s Alpha 7C. A compact full-frame mirrorless, the A7C is essentially an A7 III in the form factor of Sony’s APS-C Alpha 6600. The A7C is pitched at a new type of buyer, who may be intimidated by the dials and buttons found on a conventional
Rmirrorless, but who also wants a camera that makes shooting video very straightforward. Nikon, on the other hand, has favoured evolution over revolution for one of its recent major launches. The Z 6II adds some features that Z 6 owners would have clearly benefited from, so on paper this popular model looks even more compelling now.
Also on test this month is the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DG DN Macro Art, which brings an established optic to Sony E-mount and Leica L-mount cameras, and Canon’s RF 800mm f/11 IS STM – another affordable RF-mount super-telephoto. Rod Lawton
he Sony Alpha 7C answers a burning question: what if you could have the fullframe sensor of Sony’s Alpha 7 mirrorless cameras in the compact rangefinder-style body of APS-C Alpha 6000 cameras? It looks like that’s what you get here – but things aren’t always what they seem.
The Sony A7C is like a compact version of the Sony A7 III, with some advances in design, ergonomics and autofocus. The resolution is the same, however, at 24 megapixels, and the video tops out at a relatively unambitious 4K 30p. Sony is aiming the A7C at a new, younger market, but placing its faith in a steady evolution of its digital capture technologies rather than any headline-grabbing technical breakthroughs.
The biggest news around the A7C is its design. Lots of people have made
Tlots of fuss over how small this camera is. It’s true that the rectangular body is smaller than that of the A7 III, but bigger and thicker than Sony’s APS-C cameras. The flip-out screen is a major ergonomic leap forward, though, and the A7C also has a brand-new retracting 28-60mm kit lens to go with the camera’s downsized dimensions.
Key features
From the outside, the A7C is radically different to the regular Sony A7-series cameras. The viewfinder housing on the top is gone, replaced by a viewfinder eyepiece in the top-left on the rear of the body. The rear screen now flips sideways, via a vari-angle pivot that gives a much wider range of movement, and the camera’s two-tone black-and-silver finish is a departure from the all-black livery of other A7 models – though Sony says a limitededition all-black version is coming.
Inside, though, the A7C is rather more conventional. The 24MP sensor is the same as (or a close relative of) the sensor in the A7 III, and the video is capped at 8-bit 4K at 30p. By today’s standards, this is very ordinary indeed; Sony says the bit depth has been kept to 8-bit to produce manageable file sizes for capture and editing. The relatively low processing demands mean the A7C does at least have no recording limits – and its 4K video is ‘oversampled’ full-width 6K, so the quality should be good.
You do at least get Sony’s S-Log2, S-Log3 and HLG modes, together with both mic and headphone sockets, not to mention 120p Full HD.
What you also get is Sony’s latest and best autofocus technologies, with 693 phase AF points and 425 contrast AF points, between them covering 93 per cent of the frame. Sony’s AF system is arguably the most advanced and effective on the market; this one has the Real Time Eye AF, human/ animal, left/right eye and Real Time Tracking options seen on the flagship Alpha 7R IV, and the AF speed and sensitivity adjustments of the new Sony Alpha 7S III.
The A7C is just as effective at stills photography, especially if you shoot sports and action. Its 10fps continuous shooting speed is pretty impressive, but its buffer capacity – the number of shots it can take before slowing down – is better still. Sony says it can capture 115 raw files or 223 JPEG images in a burst; 115 raw files is three or four times more than most generalpurpose cameras can manage.
Build and handling
There’s no denying the A7C appears compact for a full frame camera. However – and this is where it gets subjective – it’s not pretty. It does have a magnesium alloy body, but the silver finish looks and feels plastic.
And although the A7C is smaller than other A7 cameras when
The A7C delivers attractive images straight from the camera. Here it’s given this blue sky a very deep, rich tone, which contrasts well with the neutral white of the tree bark.
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The Sony A7C’s specifications are unambitious, particularly in terms of its video capabilities, but its practical performance, from its handy vari-angle screen to its excellent AF system, make it effective enough as a camera.
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