Switched to Sony, still use my Canon’s and Nikon’s

The background and reasoning

I am a long time hob­by­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er and have been using Canon since day 1 (start­ed with a Canon AE‑1).

I have owned a con­sid­er­able amount of Canon gear over the years from a Canon F‑1 and var­i­ous FD L lens­es to my EOS-1n and ulti­mate­ly 3 more EOS 1 series cam­eras (1DS2, 1DS3 and a 1D4).

When I took a break from pho­tog­ra­phy in 2013 and ulti­mate­ly cam back to it in 2016 I was get­ting dis­il­lu­sioned with Canon and their com­pet­i­tive­ness and incre­men­tal upgrades for their cam­era bod­ies and sen­sors at that time.

I was not impressed with the M series line and with the ever grow­ing mir­ror-less lines from com­pet­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers with some unique fea­tures.  After wait­ing 3 years (2016–2019) and hop­ing that Canon would bring out the fea­tures I was look­ing for (ulti­mate­ly what would become the R5) I jumped on the A7R4 release in sum­mer 2019.

Now that I am writ­ing this arti­cle in late 2020, and with the release of the Canon R5/R6 (to even the field), some of my rea­sons for my switch to Alpha may seem less unique or less leaps and bounds game chang­ing; how­ev­er I am still pleased I moved to the Alpha line.

One of the issues I had when decid­ing to switch plat­forms was the invest­ment in a mul­ti-decade long com­mit­ment to Canon EF near­ly all L series lens­es — like many pho­tog­ra­phers the cam­era bod­ies are not the area where you are heav­i­ly invest­ed, its the glass.

For the ini­tial con­ver­sion, I adapt­ed much of my Canon glass with suc­cess while allow­ing time to pick and choose native glass for the Sony E mount.

Update: Sept 2021…

I still think the switch to Sony was the cor­rect one… and after invest­ing in 4 native pieces of glass for the cam­era (Sig­ma ART, Sony G and GM) I con­tin­ue to still adapt a few of my Canon EF pieces with great success.

I know many pho­tog­ra­phers have said that the Sony ergonom­ics are not the same as the Canon’s and that while the A7R4 has strange quirks about it (such as the often report­ed touch screen that does not real­ly do much)… I still like my A7R4 and in many cas­es find it prefer­able and more flexible.

I have been shoot­ing with the Alpha for 2 years now and my pref­er­ences and con­fig­u­ra­tions are essen­tial­ly set in stone.  I do miss the Canon inter­face some­times and occa­sion­al­ly I find myself still using reflex-mem­o­ry for a quick key (I did use Canon for 30 years).

All in all, I like all the fea­tures of the A7R4 and fea­tures of the new­er Alpha mod­els… I’m here to stay with Sony as I con­tin­ue to replace my EF lenses.