Some might say that I’ve got too many cameras (can you ever have that? :)) so when I post this now a few of my friends might just say, “another one?”. Yeah, another one!

But this wasn’t really another one but rather a replacement of my DSLR. I bought my Canon 5D Mark II about two years ago and I haven’t really been using it as much as I would have liked. It’s in no way a bad camera, it produces really good pictures but it’s bulky. It’s a DSLR so of course it’ll be heavier than your normal point-and-shoot.

In my new camera I was looking for something compact enough not to be cumbersome and not weigh a lot more than my current backpacking camera the Panasonic DMC-LX7. I try to bring one of my cameras with me everyday to work as you never know what’ll show up. I’m often out driving some hours every week visiting customers and when I do this you stumble upon photo opportunity every now and then and it’s nice to have a good camera with you when that happens. Sure, I got my iPhone but that’ll never produce a good picture enough to print or to post it somewhere. The Canon 5D is a little too big to fit in any of my computer bags and too big to hide in my car if I’m going for a short stop and can’t bring it with me inside.

Parallell to the size matter I’ve also been looking for a camera with better image quality than LX7 and that has got some built in protection from the elements, withstand rain and dust. The Sony A7 supposedly have this protection – it says so on their homepage and in every review I’ve read but I’ve also read about Sony not backing this up if you manage to break your camera due to water ingress which is kind of contradictory… I’ve been looking at a few different cameras and after reading everything that I could find online and watched almost every YouTube video out there I decided to go with the Sony A7.

The Sony A7 is a full frame mirrorless camera with interchangeable-lens-system which performs better than my old 5D Mark II, that I sold to get the A7. As it’s a full frame camera it’ll give me some great shots in low light situations and also with the high resolution the opportunity to blow up any picture to a nice big canvas to hang on my wall if I want to. The image stabilization is also really good.

I’ve only had the A7 for about a week but I’m already overwhelmed with the great quality this little fellow produces. Compared to my LX7 the Sony A7 with the Zeiss 35mm lens mounted it’s only about 300 grams heavier and that’s something that I can live with when I’m out backpacking given that I’ll get better quality photos with me back home to show friends and family. In my everyday life the weight issue isn’t really that big but it is still really light compared to other DSLR setups. For instance my Canon 5D Mark II with the Canon 35mm f/2.0 lens weighed in at about 1,3kg! That’s 700g heavier for the same setup and the A7 produces better images and also has more built in features like Wi-Fi etc.

I encourage everyone with a DSLR-setup to take a look at the Sony cameras as they’re lightweight and have more bang for the buck so to speak. It’ll also take other lenses than the Sony ones with an adaptor so you can run your current autofocus lenses or manual focus for that matter from say Leica, Nikon, Canon etc. You can also mount any flash you want to the camera without any adaptors or complicated in-camera settings. Those are two a nice bonuses! Go check out the Sony A7! I’m very happy with my choice to drop the “old DSLR”.

Sony A7 with Sony FE 35mm F2.8 ZA Carl Zeiss Sonnar T*

I’m not sponsored in any way by Sony nor have I gotten a compensation to put this on my blog.