SONY ILCE-7R (35mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO250)

End of October can be foggy, cold and wet but sometimes spectacular.

This year we have one of the best autumns so far. Sunny days and blue skies and of course beautiful autumn colors. All yellow, orange and red. Magical.

SONY ILCE-7R (25mm, f/4, 1/160 sec, ISO100)
SONY ILCE-7R (35mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec, ISO400)
SONY ILCE-7R (110mm, f/5.6, 1/125 sec, ISO640)

Time to talk about the Sony A7R. The last couple of years I mainly shot with either Canon DSLRs or with Fuji mirrorless cameras. Both camera makers manage to offer a reasonable well working auto white balance. Sometimes I have to correct WB but most of the time the results out of the box are really good.

Why I’m telling you that? Well, the Sony is different. My Sony A7R has serious problems to find the right white balance. Not only in shadows. I remember when I was talking pictures at the Bryce Canyon NP this summer and watched the rocks to turn grey in the viewfinder. The EVF is not a master piece. Much more video like than the viewfinder of my Fuji X-T1 but it is good enough to see that the colors slowly fade to grey.

With the golden glowing autumn forest it was just about the same. Just take a look at the image above. This is what Sony’s auto white balance made of it. The picture below shows how it really looked like.

Meanwhile I found a simple solution: I set my white balance to CLOUDY just like I did in the good old days with my Nikon D1 in 2002. It’s amazing. Sony managed to put all that technology and a big sensor in such a small camera body but their AWB is as sophisticated as the one in a Nikon DSLR from the year 1999.

SONY ILCE-7R (110mm, f/2.8, 1/125 sec, ISO200)
SONY ILCE-7R (120mm, f/2.8, 1/320 sec, ISO100)