Image courtesy of Sony
I never thought I'd say it, but with how far mirrorless cameras have come along in the past couple of years, I don't have any need for a DSLR anymore.
A couple of months ago, I decided that I no longer needed a DSLR camera for the types of photography I do. Even when covering events, I tend to manually focus, use shorter focal lengths, and make the best use of available light rather than flash. Regardless of if I'm creating images in the street, photographing an event, or covering a story, I like to blend in with the people as much as I can. It's really hard to do that when toting a large camera and the standard 24-70 and 70-200 lenses. People would always ask, "Are you the official photographer for this?" Although, the answer was normally yes I would much rather be able to draw less attention when creating the images to share the multitudes of stories present. Also, for portraits, since I primarily use medium format film (there's something about the way film renders people) anyway, I found I wasn't really making use of the features that made a professional-grade DSLR necessary. So, I sold my Sony a99 and began looking around at some of the mirrorless cameras on the market that are more in line with my personal needs.
Just when I thought I had settled on the Olympus OMD EM-1, Sony announced the a7/r. Basically what I was looking for was a camera on which I could use my existing Leica lenses, capture great image quality, create short videos, and is weathersealed for walking around in the always-wet climate of Seattle. Both the Olympus and the Sony fit my needs pretty well, but what tipped the scales in favor of the a7 for me was the full frame sensor. For a while I've been saying, "Once somebody makes a full frame digital camera about the size of my Leica M6, shoots video, is weathersealed, and can use my existing lenses I'm all over it." I'll keep you all updated with my experiences and sample photos once the camera arrives and I have a chance to test it out.