I had recently purchased a 2nd hand Sony A7R IV and was itching to try it out. I had arranged a quick photoshoot with Ella Ganza around the north bank of the Thames in Bermondsey close to where I do studio shoots.

As usual, I arrived early and sat down on a bench at Bermondsey Wall, it was very hot in the afternoon so I sat there for a while just soaking up the sun and taking a rest after a day’s work. I took out the Sony α7R IV from my backpack, I also had my Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 and the Sony 85mm f1.8 to test this beast of a camera on.

There was a jetty to my right so I took this picture with the Sigma lens. You can click on this to see the full size of the image and zoom in.

This is the centre of the image at 100%. The detail is insane! This will give me many options to crop in when needed.

My phone buzzed to show me to Ella was close and we met close to Edward III’s Manor House. It’s only a few walls left of the ruin but it once used to have a moat on three sides with the north side enjoying open access to the River Thames. Sadly now the walls are covered in grass and the odd crisp packet. A group of children were kicking a ball around on top of the mound. This is where Ella and I scrambled down the bank to start the shoot. I immediately found a pothole in the floor for me to trip over a few times.

I asked Ella to sit on part of the ruined wall and started to take pictures. Something was a little off... I was taking a few shots and checking at the back of the screen. as normal but I noticed the eye detect was not working right. I checked the Eye Detect settings… no it was not set to detect animals so what was it? I checked the metering modes and it was stuck on Center-weighted instead of multi… yeah Ella does not have eyes in the centre of the stomach so a quick reset and the eyes were detected. So a Pro tip there, if you buy second-hand gear, reset the menu options so you don’t look a fool when out on a shoot.

The size of the sensor is double that of the Sony α7 III. Above is a comparison shot showing the size difference between the two sensors. In the below example, you can see the zoomed-in detail of the eyeball. In some shots, I could see the veins in the eye.

We moved on from grass-covered potholes and walked back to the Bermondsey wall. Ella had asked for some shots with the London skyline behind her. This was where nature attacked! While shooting Ella as she relaxed on the wall a leaf from a nearby offended tree flew down and settled on Ella’s cheek, no sooner as it had landed it flew off again to annoy some passing ants. I have combined the shots of the images taken for comic effect, and evidence if the case of the flyby leafing ever goes to court.

Not exactly the apple-throwing scene from the Wizard of Oz but we walked back past the ruins of the manor house and took some photos next to a signpost. The sun was setting so after a few shots up on a nearby hill I called the shoot to a close. I had taken nearly 400 shots and I was running out of space on my SD cards.

Taking the images back home, they were thrown through the Rawsie application, 30 GIG was compressed to 9.8 GIG, and then transferred to my main PC to be embedded in the Capture One archive.

Thanks to Ella for another fantastic shoot!