Crowie

just realised you were looking for comments from owners of the A7RIV, hopefully my comments were relevant! Hi, I upgraded from an A7III to the A7RV. I’ve only used the new rig for 9 recent dives in Bali, all macro shots with the 90mm lens and a +18.5 diopter. I had some freezing issues which I discussed in another thread on this forum, but my overwhelming conclusion was that it was a reasonable improvement in autofocus, but not the massive improvement I was hoping for. It still hunted a bit, although I think some of this was down to the positioning of my focus light - when I lit the subject it would lock on quicker. I experimented with different options for subject selection and concluded that it was more accurate when I selected animal/bird than when I selected insects. I assumed this was because the camera couldn’t recognise the eyes of a hairy shrimp (for example) when zoomed up so close. All in all I’m happy with the upgrade, in my case the extra pixels alone mean I can crop much better than I could with the A7III, but with a bit more practice I’m hoping I will still get to see the big improvements in autofocus speed and accuracy which were the no 1 reasons I upgraded. Cheers, Paul

Hello Stephen, I have a new Nauticam housing for my A7RV but I believe the ports are the same as yours (I just upgraded the housing from a Nauticam/Sony A7III housing/body and all my ports have carried over). For the Sony 30mm lens, I’m using a 37127 N100 Flat Port 32. Re your comment on the TTL, you may be right, I wondered whether it was the amount of backscatter in the water which may have been throwing the metering out. I will experiment with and without it the next time I get a chance. Keen to hear how you go with the 30mm… Cheers, Paul

Hey Stephen, yes I did! I only managed a single BW dive and the subjects were nowhere near as good (ie big) as those on my only other BW dive in Anilao using the 90mm. That said, after spending the first 30 mins reminding myself how best to find and then track some of these critters, I managed to get a number of shots that made me think the 30mm f3.5 was definitely the right way to go. Focus was pretty quick and a million times easier than the 90mm macro. On a related note, I was also using my new 45 degree viewfinder (upgraded to the latest 0.8:1) and it struck me afterwards I might have found it easier to track the critters just using the EVF with no viewfinder (obviously it takes a bit of practice to follow these things while looking down), perhaps not but I will try both options on my next BW trip. I’ve also just added the UW Technics TTL trigger which I don’t really use on macro or wide, but had read it would be great for BW. I will need a few more dives to work out if that’s correct - most shots looked blown out straight out the camera - but a quick adjustment in Lightroom seemed to sort them out. Hope that helps. Cheers, Paul

Hi all, Does anyone know whether blackwater diving in Bohol is any good? The dive centre have said they do it, but I only want to take the additional camera gear if it’s considered a decent spot for BW. I recently tried it in Tulamben, Bali but it wasn’t nearly as good as in Anilao. Thanks, Paul

Yes I did say that, but then I always turned the camera off when it froze, so not sure if that would have prevented the camera from completing its writing to the card. I’m clutching at straws…

Thanks, yep I hear you, as I said before, if I don’t have any issues at all I would prefer the extra redundancy over not - I don’t always take a computer on my dive trips, although currently looking at the best options for portable backups on these trips. If I have any issues I will definitely switch to a single card. I may even try this on my current SD cards to check if this gets around the problem - it would be good to know this is definitely the problem.

Quick update from my side. Sony have had my camera and lens for a week and as expected they couldn’t replicate the exact problem. They rang me after the first couple of days to tell me they couldn’t find anything, but I was then able to give them the specific details of when/how the problem materialised and they tried for another couple of days. They’ve just called back to say that when using fast memory cards they couldn’t find anything, but when they swapped to slow cards (I didn’t ask which ones, but presumably slower than the Sandisk SD Extreme Pro’s I’ve been using), the camera would occasionally freeze (image still on screen) whilst trying to write to the cards. He said it could take up to a minute to do this at which point the camera would then return to normal, ie without having to power it off. He could see the flashing led light showing it was still trying to write to the card. I’m now wondering whether my camera would have returned to normal had I not turned it off whenever I experienced the problem - in the 30+ times this happened on my trip, I always tried turning it off/on to reset it and it would always take about 30 seconds to do so. Of course I wouldn’t have been able to see any flashing led light inside my housing. This doesn’t explain why I couldn’t replicate the problem topside, but I’m looking for the positives! I will swap to cfexpress cards on my next trip, possibly even writing to a single card at a time. Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated. Paul

Never, but unless there are real benefits to NOT writing to both, I figure the redundancy costs me nothing. That said, I’d be willing to sacrifice the extra protection (however unlikely) if writing to a single card meant the camera not freezing. I’ve already upgraded to cfexpress cards (both Sony Tough cards) and will definitely give this a go on my next trip.

1. I am an IT guy so have at least 4 other copies of the files before I delete the originals! 2. The SD cards are all the same brand and size and always formatted in camera before every dive trip. 3. I write to both cards in case one were to fail, for any reason, but not really because of flooding. I try to backup the SD cards whilst on dive trips, but a second card provides extra redundancy.

One other thing to mention is that I’ve always written to both memory cards simultaneously in RAW format - same SD cards - for both my A7III and A7RV. I’ve not been able to replicate the problem top side today and am taking the camera and lens into the Sony service centre.

Thanks Interceptor121, I will do some more digging to find these groups - I’ve found a few discussions via Google, but no solutions to date… if you come across any please share them. Thanks, Paul

Alex, thanks, your description of the problem is very close to what seems to happen. Despite the number of times it has frozen, it’s difficult to explain the exact sequence of events leading up to it, but I know for sure that one second I have taken a bunch of pics, the next while still trying to focus, the green box seems to flicker a bit and then freeze. It has been difficult replicating this top side cause the subjects I’m shooting are static. I’ve used track focus and move the subject around so the camera is working to stay focused, but it’s no where near as complicated as underwater. I’ve just ordered a second Sony cfexpress card so will use those on future dives. My next trip is wide angle in May but I’m almost certain I won’t see a repeat of the problem with that. Thanks again all. Paul

Thanks, yes, I tried to recreate the light levels earlier when I tested, mainly by just closing the curtains. Your suggestion makes sense although as I said above, in about 300 shots (rig setup as for underwater), I couldn’t reproduce the problem. I will have another go tomorrow. cheers, Paul

Quick update. I’ve setup my rig topside with vacuum sealed housing, UW Technics optical trigger, strobes and focus light and couldn’t replicate the problem after about 200 shots. I will have another go later. Realised I’d made a mistake in my earlier comment re upgrading the firmware - I did this on my 24-105mm lens. My firmware on this 90mm macro lens is the original version 0.01. Does anyone know if there has been an update to this? I haven’t been able to find anything online. Thanks, Paul

I will get around to replicating the setup on land and seeing if I can trigger the same problem - I haven't experienced the problem on land to date, but of course the setup has been very different.