Budget FE body for landscapes on tripod

I've had my A7iii for 18 months now and love it. It's the perfect camera for me, great AF, good battery performance, nice accompanying app (latest update it finally seems to work as intended!). But for the 8-9 years before I had two identical bodies (A700s, then A900, then A99), mainly for the occasional weddings I shot. But alongside that legitimate need of a second body, I miss the freedom of having a long lens for wildlife on one body and a wide angle (possibly with filters) on another.

Point being, I don't shoot any weddings anymore (pandemic or no pandemic) so I can't justify a second A7iii for this luxury of occasionally carrying a second body with lens. But looking at the second hand market an A7r or A7ii can be picked up for ~£500 which is tempting. This second body will almost exclusively be used for landscapes, carefully composed on tripod so while it would be nice to have good AF and IBIS in case of a surprise wedding, it's not essential. It's a pain that they both use different batteries to the A7iii but that frustration is well worth the £500 saving!

So, finally getting to the point, which body would you get as a second body for use on a tripod, A7r or A7ii?

Things I've picked up:
Pixels - I'd prefer 24mp, but 36mp is tolerable (I hate larger sensors forcing me to update my laptop!)
Batteries - either route I need to have different batteries from my A7iii as I understand it?
Shutter shock - apparently an issue with the A7r?

Anything else to be mindful of? (Do they both work with the imagingedge app? Differences in customisations or settings? Either better than A7iii in specific situations, such as high iso sensitivity?). Appreciate any advice :)

The shutter shock for the a7R seemed to kick in at around 1/30 sec but then disappear at longer shutter speeds (1/5th and longer). Basically I just avoided shooting in this range. Which tbh, weren't good speeds for most landscapes.

I did like the a7R as a landscape camera, and basically used it as a digital back for my A-mount lenses for a few years. I almost always shot on a tripod and composed carefully.
Some of the apps that could be used with the a7R were also pretty good. These aren't available for later cameras, but I think are still present on the Sony store. I also used my phone as a remote.

I found the 36MP much better for landscapes than 24MP as it meant I could make larger prints (if necessary).

Why not go down the route of a bridge camera for a second body... they all provide something different to your standard ILC packages.

Eg:
RX1 series - FF, 35mm f2 lens, small form factor
RX100VI upwards - a nice 24-200mm lens in a small form factor
RX10IV - A very large range in a single body with decent AF.
X100V - a fixed lens fuji cheaper than RX1 series

I personally would skip the A7II unless you really want that IBIS, not sure its really worth the extra over the original A7 which can be had very cheap these days. So that's your cheapest FF ILC and IQ is about on the level of your old A99.

A7R has a very nice sensor but suffers from the shutter shock issue, its also loud (personally like that) and slow.

If you can stretch your budget a bit, I'd personally pick up the A7RII. If you can handle 36mp, you should be able to handle 42mp too. the difference isn't that big. The sensor is amazing and nearly as good as the latest and greatest. The AF is reasonably good too. I'd consider this the "base level" to aim for a second FF body personally. The original A7 series are bit rough around the edges (as you'd expect from the original 1st gen bodies) and A7ii is more of the same but with IBIS tacked on.

Edited by nandbytes - 05 April 2021 at 11:48

My minty a7ii + grip is still available, and I will include an arca-swiss mount L-bracket designed for the a7ii if you are interested.

Edit: Due to renewed publicity it is now sold.



Edited by bonneville - 05 April 2021 at 19:21

Thansk for all the comments everyone. It feels daft to go for a non FE mount (ie RX model) when I'm investing in so much glass. The purpose of this second body will always be to have on my hip with a wide angle (16-35 f4, laowa 12 f2.8 or laowa 15 f2) while using a longer lens on the A7iii for birds, deer and the like. Interesting to hear the original A7 had similar sensor and could be the way forward.

bonneville wrote: minty A7ii

Thanks, will take a look. The l plate and grip may be wasted on me though as will likely use peakdesign clip, and while the grip adds extra battery power, the weight extra is probably to be avoided. Otherwise it would be a bargain. Saw a rather battered one on one of the 2nd hand stores for £519 with 6 month warranty which is my yard stick coming into this. Will give it some though.

addy landzaat wrote: If you have a decent not to old laptop, 42mp is no problem. I do not understand the angst some people have for this. Why do you think 42mp is beyond your computer? The A7r2 is quite a complete camera imho.

a lot of it comes down to load speed and storage. It takes considerably longer for Captureone to build the previews and then it's almost doubles the file size. I like to shoot raw and on my 1tb Macbook Pro I can pretty much store 18 months of images (ie I backup regularly but do one main archive each year - which takes me up to 6 months of the following year to clean through ready for archiving, while I'm also capturing new images in the current year). I'm happy with 24mp and know I could end up being tempted by more. If I have more, I'll use them and then need to change my storage and archive setup :) it becomes an expensive upgrade. I'm only just happy with performance of my top spec 2016 mbp with a7iii files, and anything that worsens that is not something I really want.

Tricky01 wrote: I'm only just happy with performance of my top spec 2016 mbp with a7iii files, and anything that worsens that is not something I really want.

I find this surprising tbh.
My late 2015 iMac (i7@4Ghz, 16GB RAM, 4gb graphics, 500GB SSD) was perfectly fine even with A7RIV files.
My current base model M1 Mac air can handle A7RIV files with a small lag. It handles A7C files just fine with no issues. A7RII/III while there is a lag is not really noticeable in grand scheme of things.

I think there's something to be said for the slightly smaller size and significantly lower weight of the original A7.

Though after checking some views I took across the bay with the A7Rii and the little Samyang 35mm f2.8, I've been gobsmacked by the resolution. With extreme pixel-peeping I can see detail in objects which are too small to recognise in the full view! And that's taking fine jpegs in camera!

I've tried raw a couple of times but it seems a waste of time and space for my purposes and methods. I reckon with this combination you could take images of a large protest/event crowd and get passport-usable pictures from everyone looking your way (gulp!). Is this what the security services have been using?