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Sony A7R Menu System
The Sony A7R has terrific hardware features but as with its siblings, Sony falls short in offering total system usability out of the box: no-nonsense non-confusing usability. Instead, complexity and no thought given to the overall experience unless the user deeply engages to essentially reprogram all the buttons to bypass the issues.
Sometimes dedicated buttons are the answer, and here the A7R falls a little short, relying instead on buttons that loften ead to menus rather than simple toggles (several keypresses to get anything done). Compare that to the AF/MF switch on the Sony RX1R; your author prefers a switch for things that control basics such as manual focus (on A7R, program button C3 to toggle between AF and MF). Small things add up with usage, but of course the working style can always be adapted to the camera. The key is whether the camera can be set up to get out of the way.
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