The Sony a7RIII was the camera that really made me believe in Sony.  It took a deeply flawed camera (though with some great strengths) in the a7RII and turned it into the most complete camera on the market at the time.  It had a little bit of everything:  great sensor, great autofocus, great video performance, and improved ergonomics.  I liked it well enough that I immediately bought one.  The one thing that mostly stayed the same was the excellent 42MP sensor from the a7RII.  The a7RIV (my review here) debuted a new sensor (with a then-record 61.2MP) and improved autofocus but also had a lot of similarities to the a7RIII in other areas.  There were a number of shortcomings that I thought were left unaddressed.  I had a list of things in my review that I thought should have changed but didn’t.  But much like the a7RIII, the new Sony a7RV carries forward the excellent sensor from the previous generation but essentially improves almost everything else on the camera.  The list of new features and changes is a long one!

One of my critiques about the a7RIV is that it had a massive amount of resolution (61MP) but no way to reduce that resolution for the situations where it was overkill.  You could switch to an APS-C crop mode (at 26MP), but that would change the angle of view of your lenses.  The ILCE-7RM5 introduces both an MRAW (26MP) and SRAW (15MP) in the Lossless Compressed mode that allows you to shoot at lower resolution levels for those situations where you don’t need the full resolution.  It also retains multiple options for the RAW file type at full resolution, which include Uncompressed, Compressed, and Lossless Compressed (which is typically my file type of choice in most cameras).

The long list of improvements on the a7RV basically check off every box that I would look for in this class of camera, and, much like the a7RIII, I feel like the a7RV is the upgrade that many people are looking for who might have skipped the a7RIV upgrade path.  This is an incredibly complete camera, and while its price tag of roughly $3900 USD isn’t low, this is a LOT of camera for the money.  We explore the pros and cons of Sony’s latest camera more deeply in my text review, or you can watch my video review here.

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Thanks to Gentec (Sony’s Canadian Distributor) for sending me a loaner of the a7RV. As always, this is a completely independent review.

List of Features and Improvements

What stays the same:

• 61MP – Full frame BSI-CMOS Sensor
• 10fps continuous shooting with AE/AF tracking
• Interval shooting
• Pixel Shift
• NP-FZ100 battery
• mic input and headphone output (3.5mm)
• Same ISO range (native 100-32,000)
• Dynamic Range and ISO performance
• Similar body and button layout
• 240.8MP Pixel Shift feature

What’s different:

• 8K24P and 4K60 recording
• Support for CFExpress Type A cards
• Much deeper buffers (up to 583 RAW images)
• Ability to choose MRAW (26MP) or SRAW (15MP)
• 693 vs 567 Phase Detect points – 79% coverage (more points, slightly less coverage)
• 567 Phase Detect Points in APS-C mode (vs 325)
• Newer image processor (BIONZ-XR) and AI learning for superior tracking
• More detectable subjects for AI tracking (Humans, Animals, Birds, Insects, Car, Train, Airplane)
• Improved IBIS performance (up to 8 stops vs 5.5 stops)
• Improved Viewfinder (9.44M dot vs 5.7M dot)
• Higher viewfinder magnification (0.90x vs 0.78x)
• Improved LCD screen (3.2″ vs 3″, 2.36M dot vs 1.44M dot resolution)
• Fully functional touchscreen
• Fully articulating screen with 4 axis points (tilt + articulating)
• Full size HDMI port
• Can record video without time limits
• Mode dial allows separate setup for stills and video

Images of the ILCE-7RM5

Images Taken with the ILCE-7RM5

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