Sony has debuted a new kit lens with the a7C, a retractable zoom design. This will likely replace the unlamented FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS lens, which, on paper, seems to have the advantage over a lens with a smaller zoom range, a slightly smaller maximum aperture on the wide end (F4 vs F3.5), and one without OSS. In the real world, however, the older lens was completely uninspiring in every facet, from autofocus to image quality. And, while I personally have a hard time getting excited over any lens with a small, variable aperture and that only reaches 60mm, I have to confess that I was very pleasantly surprised with the optical performance of the lens.
If you would like to watch my video review of the lens, check out this definitive review above:
First of all, however, let’s take a quick look at the build. When in the retracted position, the FE 28-60mm is a miniscule 45mm in length, which is considerably shorter than the 83mm for the 28-70mm. It also weighs in at only 5.9 oz / 167g, which is considerably less than the 10.41 oz / 295g of the 28-70mm. This is obviously going to really enhance the idea of portability in the lens.
The lens is 66.5mm in diameter, but because of the retracting inner barrel, the filter size is a very odd 40.5mm. Frankly I have never seen any lenses with this filter size before, so I was surprised to discover that a number of filters do exist in this unusual size. They are pretty universally inexpensive, as well.
Sony has elected to not include OSS in the new lens, likely due to the fact that most of their recent cameras have IBIS whereas almost none did when the 28-70mm was released. Since I tested in on the a7C, which does have effective IBIS, I didn’t notice the lack of OSS in the lens at all. IBIS did an effective job for my purposes. The first shot I shared in this section was taken at 1/20th of a second and is tack sharp.
The retractable design requires you to first extend the inner barrel to the 28mm position before use. This extension adds around 30mm to the overall length.
The action to move it from the retracted position to the 28mm is quite stiff, with a fair amount of force required to start the process and again right before the 28mm (engaged) position. I can understand the need for resistance at these points, but the action here feels a little cheap and betrays the lack of engineering sophistication in the lens.
The rest of the design is pretty straightforward, as there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles here. The length of the lens changes depending on focal length, and it is a “dip” design where it is longest at 28mm and 60mm with a “dip” to a slightly shorter length around 38mm. There’s a very slight variance in resistance as you turn the zoom ring near that point, and the zoom ring action itself is not particularly smooth. Not a big deal, but again it is one of the reminders of the “kit lens” origins.
The maximum aperture varies by focal length.
F4 – 28-30mm
F4.5 – 31-34mm
F5 – 32-41mm
F5.6 – 42-60mm
This is not a “fast” lens in terms of aperture.
The manual focus ring is fairly narrow, and will be hard to find separately from the zoom ring if you are wearing gloves. The damping is very light, but everything turns smoothly. Focus seems to be linear and works fine, though without much tactile response due to the “focus-by-wire” nature of manual focus in mirrorless. Some Sony lenses do a fairly good job of emulating manual focus, but this isn’t really one of them.
On a positive note, the lens does have dust and moisture sealing. The build otherwise feels very much like a kit lens, and the $498 USD price for the lens feels a little steep for the lens based solely on the build and handling. This feels more like a $200 lens. Fortunately it is what’s inside that delivers the value.
The FE 28-60mm employs linear focus motors, and autofocus is fast, quiet, and accurate.
This lens does a nice job in video focus pulls, with quiet, smooth action that is aided by the fact that depth of field is never particularly shallow due to the smaller maximum aperture values.
Where I was most impressed, however, was in the optical performance. The only real downside is some fairly strong barrel distortion at 28mm:
Though the barrel distortion is strong, it is nicely linear, so I was able to effect a perfect correction by dialing in a +23 in Lightroom. The vignette was similarly fair strong, but a +40 and midpoint of 7 did the trick. The upside here is that the fact that I can get a very clean manual correction of the flaws means that profile corrections (in camera for JPEG/Video and in software for RAW files) will also be very clean.
At 60mm the lens is essentially distortion free and has little vignette. I did nothing to correct distortion and added only a +20 for vignette correction and then slid the midpoint over to 15 for a nice, linear correction. All good news here.
At 28mm, the FE 28-60mm proves to be very sharp from wide open on. It has high levels of contrast, great detail, and is consistently good across the frame. There is little to no evidence of lateral chromatic aberrations, too, which will allow this to shine for landscape applications. Here are greater than pixel level crops from the center, mid-frame, and corner:
I saw the same results in real world situations. You can see from this shot and the crop that the detail and contrast are very high.
Stopping down to smaller apertures will give a slight boost in contrast, but performance is already high and just mildly improves. Minimum aperture is F22, and, while there is a bit less contrast and detail isn’t as crisp, diffraction hasn’t done as much damage due to the lower resolution of the a7C. The R series will give you more of a hit at apertures past F11.
Performance at 40mm was also excellent with very good levels of contrast and detail across the frame and a mild improvement at smaller apertures. Choose F8 for peak performance across the frame. Here are greater than pixel level crops from the center, mid-frame, and corner:
Here’s a wide open real world shot and crop, and it looks pretty good to me.
Minimum aperture is now F25, so you’ll see a bit more diffraction.
The high level of performance extends through to 60mm, which is outstanding even at F5.6 across the frame. Here are greater than pixel level crops from the center, mid-frame, and corner:
Minimum aperture is now F32, so diffraction will be even stronger at F32.
Real world shots have great detail and contrast whether shot at close focus distances or landscape distances.
Here’s the framing difference between 28 and 60mm:
Even the bokeh is pretty decent, though you’ll have few situations where you can really “blow out” a background with a lens that tops out at 60mm and F5.6.
Minimum focus distance is 30cm, and the resulting maximum magnification is a fairly unimpressive 0.16x (this won’t be confused with a macro lens!), but this is compensated for somewhat by a good up close performance, which looked pretty yummy.
I was also fairly impressed with the flare resistance of the little lens (that does come without a lens hood), as it was able to shoot directly into the sun with little consequence in either loss of contrast or in ghosting and flaring.
All told, this is an impressive little lens optically, and I have to confess that it exceeded my expectations on virtually every level. I was not impressed with the 28-70mm at all, so I was very pleasantly surprised by the fairly premium optics in this cheap housing. The price of the lens drops to $300 if purchased in kit with the a7C, and I suspect that after market forces work for a while we may see the price drop further (the 28-70 costs $200 in kit). Normally I wouldn’t advise people to purchase the kit lens, but this really isn’t a bad little compact option. You can see more images from the lens below:
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Keywords: Sony FE 28-60mm, 28-60mm, Kit Lens, 28-60mm Review, 28-60mm, Sony 28-60, Sony a7C, Sony Alpha 7C, Sony a7C Review, ILCE-7C, Sony, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Battery Life, Tracking, Focus, Burst Rate, Tracking, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Dogs, Ergonomics, Sigma MC-11, Metabones, Vello, Sony a9, sony a7III
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The size of mirrorless cameras has trended ever larger as the early focus on (mostly) smaller sensors and compact lenses has shifted to high resolution full frame sensors and professional grade lenses designed to match (or exceed) what was available for DSLRs in the past. Some of us don’t mind this trend, as we are more interested in getting quality images, but others feel disenfranchised by this trend. They want smaller and lighter. If that is you, then good news! Sony has released their newest full frame mirrorless camera – the Sony a7C – a compact full frame model that manages to fit a fully featured full frame sensor (with IBIS!) into a body roughly the size the a6xxx series.
This meant moving to more of a rangefinder body style and squaring off the top of the camera (it is nearly 25mm shorter) but while moving away from Sony’s typical tilt screen to a (finally) vari-angle LCD screen that can even be rotated out to the side and face forward for monitoring from the front. The Sony A7C’s spec list most similarly resembles the similarly priced Sony a7III, but there is some give and take between the two cameras. Above all, though, Sony is marketing this camera to photographers and content creators who want to keep things small and light…which includes the new FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 retractable kit zoom lens.
Basic Feature List
24.2MP Full-Frame Exmor R BSI CMOS Sensor
BIONZ X Image Processor
UHD 4K30p Video with HLG/HDR and S-Log3/2
15 Stops of Dynamic Range
5-Axis In-Body Image Stabilization
Vari-Angle Touchscreen LCD
Smallest Full-Frame Camera with IBIS to Date
10 FPS burst rate
693 phase-detection and 425 contrast-detection points
The basic feature list looks a lot like the Sony a7III, but there are some subtle points of distinction that I’ll do my best to document in this review. I suspect there will be a number of potential buyers who will have to really consider which camera best suits their purposes, and I will do my best to help you make an informed decision in this review.
Still want the details? Then read on or watch my standard length or long format (definitive) video reviews by clicking the appropriate thumbnail below.
The Sony a7C is essentially a slightly improved a6xxx series body with a7III internals. To accomplish this, Sony had to do some miniaturize some of the internals (like the IBIS system, for example), to make everything work in a more compact body. My main objective in using and handling the camera was to determine if the excellence of the a7III (one of the best cameras in this category) was lost in translation. The good news is that the answer is mostly “no” when it comes to the performance of the camera; I recognize a lot of the same great things that I liked about the a7III here.
But there are certainly some sacrifices in handling that are made at the altar of miniaturization.
The Sony a7C is considerably smaller than the a7III. The dimensions are (W x H x D) 124 x 71.1 x 59.7 mm vs 126.9 x 95.6 x 73.7 mm for the a7III. The biggest difference is in the height of the camera and the depth of the grip, but that adds up to considerably less overall volume. That’s reflected in the weight of the two cameras, as the a7C is a full 22% lighter than the a7III (509g vs 650g), and only 6g heavier than the Sony a6600, which measures 120 x 66.9 x 69.3 mm. The two cameras have a similar volume, with the a7C being a hair taller but the a6600 being a little deeper. You can see all of those specification differences here:
I included the similarly priced Fuji X-T4, which, despite being an APS-C camera, is both larger and heavier than the a7C. There is some give and take between these two cameras, with the X-T4 having superior controls, but I like the focus system and optical performance at the limits better on the a7C. I personally prefer the variety of lenses available for the Sony as well.
So what has changed to achieve this smaller size? A lot, actually, as while there are a few familiar pieces (mode dial, exposure compensation dial, on/off lever, and the combination rear dial/four position switch), there is also a lot that has changed.
The most positive change is that the a7C inherited the new Vari-Angle (articulating) LCD screen from the a7SIII. This is a real boon for content creators, as it allows you a lot more flexibility in where you place the screen, including being able to rotate it to face forward to allow for monitoring when you are in front of the camera. If you do videos like myself where you are in front of the camera, being able to monitor the video can really save you some wasted segments where framing or lighting was off.
This necessitated some changes to the design on the left side of the camera, including the fact that the custom button there (C3) is lost and the menu button had to be relocated. The menu button now sits alone in the middle of the upper portion of the back right underneath the hot shoe. As you can also see from the photo above, the viewfinder has shifted over to the left side like the a6xxx series, a location I definitely find less convenient. The resolution of that viewfinder is the same as the a7III (2.36m dot), but it is smaller than that a7III’s 0.50″ viewfinder. It shares the a6600’s 0.39″ viewfinder, which is adequate but underspecced compared to basically all the competition. Not a high point for me.
Much more impressive is the clean design on the left side. Sony managed to make room for the hinge for the screen while also doing a clever reorganization in the remaining space where they managed to fit three separate compartments. The top one opens (in a nicer fashion than the a7III dangling port covers) to reveal the microphone input. The bottom compartment opens down and reveals a headphone monitoring jack, a micro-HDMI output, and a USB C (3.2 Gen 1) port. You can conveniently charge the battery in camera from just about any power source via the USB-C port. The middle compartment opens to reveal (thankfully!) the memory card slot. I despise when the memory cards are relegated to the bottom of the camera with the battery, as it means I’ve got to remove a quick-release plate and put the camera on its back to access it. There is only one slot here (the a7III has two), but fortunately it is the faster UHS-II standard SD slot. I know that many of you will be put off by having only one SD slot, but at least it is located reasonably!
The back is largely dominated by the 3.0″ LCD screen, which in typical Sony style is only 921,600 dot and rather limited its touch capacities. Touch is limited to selecting focus areas (you can move the focus area around while your eye is pressed up to the viewfinder), and you can touch to focus during video operation, but there is no touch to focus for stills or the choice to touch for shutter. No menu navigation options in either the main menus or in the F-menu, either. I have been using and reviewing Sony cameras for about four years, now, and I have seen essentially zero progress in this area. Disappointing.
Also disappointing is the loss of the joystick. This makes navigating menus less friendly than typical on a Sony camera, as you are essentially reduced to using the rear wheel/rocker switch for navigation as well. A functional touchscreen would have really helped to mitigate the loss of the joystick.
You might notice from the photo above that the video record button has been moved from the back (fortunately to a better position), and there are a few other changes there as well. Lost is the exposure lock button, though the AF On/Magnify button gets an improved size and feel. I really like the distinct tactile feel of that button, particularly if I’m using a manual focus lens and want to magnify to assist focus. The relative position of the other buttons and dials remain the same.
A look at the top plate reveals more changes. The mode dial is largely the same (though without a lock), and the exposure compensation dial is the same. You can see from the top that the rear control dial (for AV or TV) is largely the same as well. The shutter button and on/off dial are the same as well, but what is missing are the C1 and C2 buttons, making a total of three Custom buttons that are lost along with the Exposure Lock button that could also be customized. That’s a lot of lost controls and customization of the camera.
What is a positive is that the video record button has a new position of prominence, making it very easy on the fly to choose to record video even if you are in stills mode.
A look at the front of the camera reveals one more significant loss if you’re accustomed to Sony’s full frame bodies. The front dial underneath the shutter button is also gone, meaning that you will have to rely on the two rear dials/wheels if you want both aperture and shutter speed control. This is more like the a6xxx series, and one of the reasons why I prefer the ergonomics of the a7 series so much more. You can also see that the grip is considerably more shallow (shallower even than the a6600), and that it has a new texture pattern that looks a bit like carbon fiber. It does have a little more contemporary look (probably what they were going for), but on a practical level it has a little less grip than the older texture.
The right side of the camera has nothing than the NFC “bump point”. You can clearly see the new texture in this photo. You can also see that the depth of the grip is essentially only wide enough to house the standard NP-FZ100 battery pack that Sony moved to with the a9. The battery is rated a little higher in this application (740 vs 710 shots for the a7III). I personally find the grip small for my hands, but it has a decent enough shape that I at least feel I can hang onto the camera, though my preference would be to use this camera with smaller and lighter lenses as much as possible (which frankly, is probably the point.)
The a7C is available with a new kit lens, the new FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 retractable zoom. It’s retractable design is a little bit of a pain if you are unaccustomed to using a lens like this (it requires you to rotate the zoom ring and move the lens from the locked/retracted position to the extended 28mm position before use), but the advantage is that the lens is only 45mm long when retracted, which adds to the overall portability of the lens. It also only weighs 167g, which means that you can really travel light with the kit. The lens isn’t cheap, retailing for $498 USD, though you pay only $300 for it if you buy it in a kit with the a7C. I’ll comment more on its performance below.
Sony has done an effective job in miniaturizing the a7C if that is a priority for you, but it does come at a cost. The handling feels much more like the a6xxx series, which I like much, much less than the a7 series. I miss the front dial, the customizable buttons, and the joystick. Sony could have made up for that by giving us a fully functional touchscreen, but once again I come away disappointed in that metric. The addition of the vari-angle LCD is the single greatest upgrade here, and that might be enough to move the needle for some. The great priority, though, was achieved. The C (for compact) is a truly compact full frame camera.
Sony a7C Autofocus
There are good things to report on the autofocus front. The a7C inherits the fantastic focus system from the a7III, which is inherited from the a9. This is a focus system that punches above its weight. There are 693 phase and 425 contrast-detect autofocus (AF) points that cover approximately 93% of the sensor.
The a7C’s focus system benefits from the refinements over the past couple of years to real-time tracking, so we actually have a more sophisticated focus system than what we saw in the a7III. Sony says that there is an updated focus algorithm borrowed from the new Sony a7SIII that further improves real time tracking efficiency. I really can’t overemphasize how much improvement we have seen in the past three years in terms of face tracking during video recording. The only time I have an issue with hunting or pulsing these days is if I’m testing a brand new lens that doesn’t yet have the final firmware. With reliable lenses, the face tracking is flawless. I recorded videos with the a7C where I was teaching on camera and making points about body language. I covered my face with my hands and yet the focus stayed right where it should be. I routinely record videos with an 85mm lens set at F2 because I know that face tracking will be reliable. The Sony a7C is an excellent performer if you are looking for a camera to use to record people on stage, on set, or just doing life.
We have real-Time Eye AF and Pet AF (in both stills and movies) and you now have the ability to touch an object or person on the screen, and while the shutter button is half depressed (or depressed) the camera will track them in real time with even better Ai accuracy than before. I shot a number of event settings and had flawless eye tracking, even with third party lenses like the Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 (one of my current favorite event lenses).
Eye AF works exceptionally well, quickly grabbing the eye (you can choose to switch between the left or right eye with a setting that can be mapped to a button) and tracking it in real time. Pet Eye AF works well also, though again you need to switch between human and animal Eye AF as the two have very different characteristics and the camera doesn’t (yet) automatically sense which you are tracking. As you can see from the photo above, however, I had no problem getting excellent focus even in challenging lighting conditions when I saw this great grey owl on one of my hikes (photo taken with the new Tamron 70-300mm F4.5-6.3 RXD lens on the a7C).
I also got a fairly soulful portrait of my dog with the new Samyang AF 35mm F1.8 (a lovely little match for the size of the camera).
Focus behavior is excellent, and the camera has a fairly good burst rate and the buffer depth to back it up. You can shoot up to 10FPS and can take 115 RAW or 223 JPEG images before the buffer fills. Like most Sony cameras, it will take a few seconds for the buffer to flush, and during that time you are limited in what you can do with the camera. The a7III has the same frame rate but is limited to 89 RAW or 177 JPEGs before the buffer fills. The a7C’s other advantage is that it can deliver the same performance with a fully silent shutter, which can be an asset in certain situations.
All in all, I had a completely frustration-free autofocus experience with the Sony a7C. I’ve shot with Sony’s best cameras, and frankly this didn’t feel much different from any of them. I got consistently well focused results, whether shooting stills or video.
Sony FE 28-60mm F4-5.6 Kit Lens
Sony has debuted a new kit lens with the a7C, a retractable zoom design. This will likely replace the unlamented FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS lens, which, on paper, seems to have the advantage over a lens with a smaller zoom range, a slightly smaller maximum aperture on the wide end (F4 vs F3.5), and one without OSS. In the real world, however, the older lens was completely uninspiring in every facet, from autofocus to image quality. And, while I personally have a hard time getting excited over any lens with a small, variable aperture and that only reaches 60mm, I have to confess that I was very pleasantly surprised with the optical performance of the lens.
First of all, however, let’s take a quick look at the build. When in the retracted position, the FE 28-60mm is a miniscule 45mm in length, which is considerably shorter than the 83mm for the 28-70mm. It also weighs in at only 5.9 oz / 167g, which is considerably less than the 10.41 oz / 295g of the 28-70mm. This is obviously going to really enhance the idea of portability in the lens.
The lens is 66.5mm in diameter, but because of the retracting inner barrel, the filter size is a very odd 40.5mm. Frankly I have never seen any lenses with this filter size before, so I was surprised to discover that a number of filters do exist in this unusual size. They are pretty universally inexpensive, as well.
Sony has elected to not include OSS in the new lens, likely due to the fact that most of their recent cameras have IBIS whereas almost none did when the 28-70mm was released. Since I tested in on the a7C, which does have effective IBIS, I didn’t notice the lack of OSS in the lens at all. IBIS did an effective job for my purposes. The first shot I shared in this section was taken at 1/20th of a second and is tack sharp.
The retractable design requires you to first extend the inner barrel to the 28mm position before use. This extension adds around 30mm to the overall length.
The action to move it from the retracted position to the 28mm is quite stiff, with a fair amount of force required to start the process and again right before the 28mm (engaged) position. I can understand the need for resistance at these points, but the action here feels a little cheap and betrays the lack of engineering sophistication in the lens.
The rest of the design is pretty straightforward, as there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles here. The length of the lens changes depending on focal length, and it is a “dip” design where it is longest at 28mm and 60mm with a “dip” to a slightly shorter length around 38mm. There’s a very slight variance in resistance as you turn the zoom ring near that point, and the zoom ring action itself is not particularly smooth. Not a big deal, but again it is one of the reminders of the “kit lens” origins.
The maximum aperture varies by focal length.
F4 – 28-30mm
F4.5 – 31-34mm
F5 – 32-41mm
F5.6 – 42-60mm
This is not a “fast” lens in terms of aperture.
The manual focus ring is fairly narrow, and will be hard to find separately from the zoom ring if you are wearing gloves. The damping is very light, but everything turns smoothly. Focus seems to be linear and works fine, though without much tactile response due to the “focus-by-wire” nature of manual focus in mirrorless. Some Sony lenses do a fairly good job of emulating manual focus, but this isn’t really one of them.
On a positive note, the lens does have dust and moisture sealing. The build otherwise feels very much like a kit lens, and the $498 USD price for the lens feels a little steep for the lens based solely on the build and handling. This feels more like a $200 lens. Fortunately it is what’s inside that delivers the value.
The FE 28-60mm employs linear focus motors, and autofocus is fast, quiet, and accurate.
This lens does a nice job in video focus pulls, with quiet, smooth action that is aided by the fact that depth of field is never particularly shallow due to the smaller maximum aperture values.
Where I was most impressed, however, was in the optical performance. The only real downside is some fairly strong barrel distortion at 28mm:
Though the barrel distortion is strong, it is nicely linear, so I was able to effect a perfect correction by dialing in a +23 in Lightroom. The vignette was similarly fair strong, but a +40 and midpoint of 7 did the trick. The upside here is that the fact that I can get a very clean manual correction of the flaws means that profile corrections (in camera for JPEG/Video and in software for RAW files) will also be very clean.
At 60mm the lens is essentially distortion free and has little vignette. I did nothing to correct distortion and added only a +20 for vignette correction and then slid the midpoint over to 15 for a nice, linear correction. All good news here.
At 28mm, the FE 28-60mm proves to be very sharp from wide open on. It has high levels of contrast, great detail, and is consistently good across the frame. There is little to no evidence of lateral chromatic aberrations, too, which will allow this to shine for landscape applications. Here are greater than pixel level crops from the center, mid-frame, and corner:
I saw the same results in real world situations. You can see from this shot and the crop that the detail and contrast are very high.
Stopping down to smaller apertures will give a slight boost in contrast, but performance is already high and just mildly improves. Minimum aperture is F22, and, while there is a bit less contrast and detail isn’t as crisp, diffraction hasn’t done as much damage due to the lower resolution of the a7C. The R series will give you more of a hit at apertures past F11.
Performance at 40mm was also excellent with very good levels of contrast and detail across the frame and a mild improvement at smaller apertures. Choose F8 for peak performance across the frame. Here are greater than pixel level crops from the center, mid-frame, and corner:
Here’s a wide open real world shot and crop, and it looks pretty good to me.
Minimum aperture is now F25, so you’ll see a bit more diffraction.
The high level of performance extends through to 60mm, which is outstanding even at F5.6 across the frame. Here are greater than pixel level crops from the center, mid-frame, and corner:
Minimum aperture is now F32, so diffraction will be even stronger at F32.
Real world shots have great detail and contrast whether shot at close focus distances or landscape distances.
Here’s the framing difference between 28 and 60mm:
Even the bokeh is pretty decent, though you’ll have few situations where you can really “blow out” a background with a lens that tops out at 60mm and F5.6.
Minimum focus distance is 30cm, and the resulting maximum magnification is a fairly unimpressive 0.16x (this won’t be confused with a macro lens!), but this is compensated for somewhat by a good up close performance, which looked pretty yummy.
I was also fairly impressed with the flare resistance of the little lens (that does come without a lens hood), as it was able to shoot directly into the sun with little consequence in either loss of contrast or in ghosting and flaring.
All told, this is an impressive little lens optically, and I have to confess that it exceeded my expectations on virtually every level. I was not impressed with the 28-70mm at all, so I was very pleasantly surprised by the fairly premium optics in this cheap housing. The price of the lens drops to $300 if purchased in kit with the a7C, and I suspect that after market forces work for a while we may see the price drop further (the 28-70 costs $200 in kit). Normally I wouldn’t advise people to purchase the kit lens, but this really isn’t a bad little compact option. You can see more images from the lens in the image gallery here.
Samyang Tiny Series
I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Samyang/Rokinon “Tiny” series is a wonderful fit for the Sony a7C if you want some reasonably priced, compact, and high performing prime lenses.
I personally own the 18mm F2.8, 45mm F1.8, 35mm F1.8, and 75mm F1.8 primes and love them. They are nicely compact, optically very good, and have good autofocus performance. Samyang (also sold as Rokinon) has really refined the autofocus process via firmware and ongoing improvements (getting the Lens Station for applying those firmware updates and making customization tweaks is a good idea) and so now each of these lenses also gives a very autofocus performance. They added a switch with the ability to use the focus ring for multiple purposes to the 75mm, and then further updated the most recent 35mm F1.8 by also adding weather sealing. Each of these lenses can be had for under $400 USD, with a couple of them closer to $300.
Some of my favorite photos taken during my review of the a7C were taken with some of these lenses, including the one above taken with the new 35mm F1.8.
Of course, if you want to go all out, the FE 135mm F1.8 GM continues to be amazing regardless of what camera I put it on…
I wanted to draw some awareness to these lenses for potential a7C owners as very natural fits both to the size and budget of the camera. All of them worked great on it.
Sony a7C Sensor Performance
The a7C utilizes the same 24Mpx Full-Frame backlit BSI sensor as the a7III, which is a good thing. This sensor has a BSI structure which gathers more light than conventional sensors and a front-end LSI chip to improve the readout and processing speed of the camera. It records 14-bit RAW with uncompressed or compressed options. This gives the a7C a 6000 x 4000 pixel resolution, which many users will find plenty for their applications and that also is a natural resolution for 4K footage. I’ve been impressed with this sensor each time I’ve tested it, as it provides nicely detailed images, has very strong high ISO performance, and also delivers exceptionally good dynamic range.
For my own purposes there is one significant disadvantage to the a7C when compared to the R series, and that is in APS-C/crop mode. For video this presents no problem, but when shooting stills it means that you are only getting a 10Mpx APS-C mode instead of the much more useful 18Mpx APS-C mode of the a7R3 or 28Mpx of the RIV. I just have very little incentive to shoot at that 10Mpx of resolution these days.
At the same time, however, there are definitely some advantages for a sensor that is not impeded by having to carry the “weight” of such high resolution. We will explore some of those advantages in the following sections.
Dynamic Range
Dynamic range has become one those topics debated ad nauseum on photography forums and harped on by certain reviewers to the place where some perspective has been lost on the topic. I can definitely say that there are a number of situations where improved dynamic range gives the photographer (and particularly the post-processor) more latitude to fulfill their vision. This could be in the ability to recover a blown-out sky or shadowed area as a landscape photographer or the ability to balance a foreground subject with a background or sky for portrait photographers. In this shot, for example, I had to make a choice between retaining the highlights in the bright sky or to allow the details of the foreground to be visible.
But good dynamic range means that I did not have to choose in post. I simply raised the shadows and even reduced the highlights a bit, leaving me with both the details of the foreground now visible and even more detail in the sky, as well. That’s the value of dynamic range.
The a7C is rated at 15 stops of dynamic range, and it does as well as any camera I’ve ever tested in shadow and highlight recovery. What I found when purposefully underexposing by one, two, three, and four stops and then adding that exposure back in post is that the a7C produced very clean shadow recovery even at four stops of underexposure with little penalty in terms of increased noise, color cast, or textures being muddied. You can see here just how underexposed the image is (left) and how cleanly everything is restored on the right by just adding that exposure back in post:
This is true even if we zoom in on the potential trouble spots. There’s no visible noise in the mirror area of the SLR, and the black area to the right remains smooth and noise-free.
That’s a fantastic performance.
When I overexposed by one, two, three, and four stops and reduced that exposure in post, I found that again the a7C ranks up with the very best I’ve seen in highlight recovery. A three stop overexposure can be recovered with very little penalty:
There are a few hot spots there, but all in all there’s little real damage, and the image looks natural. I’ve never yet seen a camera deliver a perfect four stop overexposure highlight recovery, and the a7C isn’t the first, though it gives a fairly good effort:
You can see that the yellow is skewing on the Veneer book, the timer face has lost color and some information, and that the image as a whole has an unnatural look to it. But trust me, I’ve seen much, much worse. Bottom line is that the a7C is one of the best models on the market in its dynamic range performance.
ISO Performance
The Sony a7C has a 100-51200 native range with extended levels that go as low as 50 and as high as 204800. I don’t test the expanded ranges on cameras, as I have consistently found them to be more there for marketing purposes than anything (one exception: I will sometimes use ISO 50 for shooting long exposures just to get that extra length in shutter speed). I can safely say that the a7C (as with the a7III) is one of the very top models I have ever tested for ISO performance.
If you look on a global level, there is very little visual difference between ISO 100 and ISO 25,600.
You can see a little bit of roughness in the shadow information on the wood surface on the left, but that’s about it. Even if you dive into that area a lot closer, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy.
I typically use ISO 25,600 as my upper limit, as I typically find that in the last stop of a camera’s ISO range (in this case from 25,600 to 51,200) is where the biggest IQ breakdown takes place. That’s also true here, but it really isn’t all that bad.
ISO 51,200 (right side) shows more roughness in the noise and loses some contrast due to raised shadows, but it stays free of color banding or tint, and could definitely still be used for reportage or event work. It also makes you really appreciate how good the 25,600 performance is.
I regularly set my ISO at 3200 or 6400 in church settings and hardly notice the noise. IQ is pretty close to perfect.
The Sony a7C is a great low light camera because of the strong performance at higher ISO values.
Resolution
If you want high resolution in a full frame camera, then Sony’s R series is obviously the way to go. You aren’t going to have the same deep cropping ability in the 24Mpx images from the a7C, but I also feel that the a7C’s resolution is at a sweet spot for a lot of things, including things likes events and weddings. The R series resolution is overkill in those settings. I find the images out of the a7C to have great detail, and their smaller size makes them snappy to work with in post. I do feel like Sony is squeezing the most out of this sensor in terms of resolution. Stick a good lens on there and you will find an impressive amount of detail rendered in your images.
You do have the option of shooting either compressed or uncompressed RAW images, and most photographers in most situations will have a hard time discerning the difference between the two. These days 24Mpx doesn’t sound like very high resolution, but the reality is that it is plenty for most applications.
The bottom line is that I really like what I see out of the Sony a7C’s sensor (just like the a7III before it). Colors are nice, detail is impressive, and the sensor performs really, really well at the limits. You can check out many more images from the camera by visiting the image gallery here.
Video Performance
The a7C is a great video camera, having all the strengths of the a7III along with a few improvements. It has a near perfect 6K native resolution (6000×4000 pixels), which easily downsamples to a highly detailed 4K image without any “pixel-binning”. You also have the option of shooting in the Super 35 Crop mode, which not only allows you a different framing choice but also means you get the option of using lenses designed for that crop (APS-C lenses) without having vignette issues. Both formats are very, very clean and handle high ISO filming quite well. There is a very mild crop when shooting 4K30, but it is so insignificant that I don’t really notice it.
Things like picture profiles, S-Log2, S-Log3 and HLG gamma curves are included along with audio in & out and a clean 4:2:2 8-bit HDMI output. The hotshoe is the new updated version that can support digital audio through the Sony ECM-B1M and certainly other accessories to follow.
The codec choices are mostly MP4 variants (XAVC-S) in a compressed IPB format that is limited to 100Mbs. 4K framerates are still limited to 24/25/30P, but you can shoot 1080 footage up to 120P. This is less impressive than it was at the launch of the a7III, though, as many cameras offer at least 4K60 and beyond.
The primary improvements over the a7III are partly ergonomic (the switch from tilting to fully articulating screen!) and also partly functional. The a7C follows the lead of the a7SIII and removes the recording limit. I’ve recorded some teaching sessions with the a7C, and it was such a relief to not have to worry about the 29:59 minute recording limit. It also inherits the AF Speed settings from the recently released A7S III, a new blue peaking color, the ability to shoot vertical videos, live streaming support, and dual NTSC and PAL recording on the same memory card without requiring a reformat. Something there might be very important to you!
Sony’s built in 5 axis Steady Shot OSS is also undoubtedly useful, and the IBIS seems like it functions more like Sony’s newest cameras than previous generations.
The Sony a7C is a camera that I think few were expecting, as in many ways it is nearly identical to the Sony a7III. These two cameras may be each other’s greatest competition, but they are both targeted at two different audiences despite their similarities. The Sony a7C’s primary focus is on being Compact (it’s right there in the name!), and there have a few sacrifices on that altar. In many ways the Sony a7C takes the a7III’s greatest performance strengths and mildly improves on them, and in so many ways it is a great camera for content creators of all kinds.
The sacrifices to compactness are most evident in the handling of the camera, however, and I definitely missed the front dial, joystick, and customizable buttons that are the big part of the reason why I so prefer the ergonomics of the a7 bodies over the a6xxx bodies. The addition of the articulating LCD screen is the single biggest positive change, though that is somewhat diminished by Sony’s inability to make a more functional touchscreen on its cameras. There are things that I genuinely prefer on the a7C, but the handling was disappointing to me. If your biggest priority is compactness, however, you may not mind these sacrifices, as the a7C is genuinely compact for a full frame camera.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the optical performance of the new FE 28-60mm F4-5.6 kit lens. Much like the camera, it has fantastic internals housed in a lackluster body. I was shocked by how sharp and crisp the detail on images from the little lens were.
So at the end of the day, the choice between the a7C and the A7III will really come down to how important compactness is to you. I prefer the ergonomics of the a7III, but there’s no question the a7C shaves off significant size and weight, and perhaps that tradeoff is the difference maker for you. If you don’t mind the ergonomics of the a6000 series, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the amazingly competent full frame camera that’s been stuffed into that smaller body. I know I am!
Pros:
Genuinely compact – very close in size to Sony a6xxx series
Love the addition of the articulating LCD screen
Deeper buffers and good framerates
Great autofocus system with good tracking abilities
Real time Eye AF works exceptionally well
Fairly robust video modes and no recording limit
IBIS feels a little better than 3rd gen bodies
Excellent dynamic range and high ISO performance
Redesign allows SD card slot to be on the side rather than the battery port
New kit lens is optically superior to most
Cons:
The missing front dial is missed
Viewfinder position feels a little awkward
I miss the custom buttons
Touch function on LCD screen and resolution remain disappointing
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Keywords: Sony a7C, Sony Alpha 7C, Sony a7C Review, ILCE-7C, Sony, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Battery Life, Tracking, Focus, Burst Rate, Tracking, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Dogs, Ergonomics, Sigma MC-11, Metabones, Vello, Sony a9, sony a7III, Sony FE 28-60mm, 28-60mm
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
The size of mirrorless cameras has trended ever larger as the early focus on (mostly) smaller sensors and compact lenses has shifted to high resolution full frame sensors and professional grade lenses designed to match (or exceed) what was available for DSLRs in the past. Some of us don’t mind this trend, as we are more interested in getting quality images, but others feel disenfranchised by this trend. They want smaller and lighter. If that is you, then good news! Sony has released their newest full frame mirrorless camera – the Sony a7C – a compact full frame model that manages to (just about about) fit a fully featured full frame sensor with IBIS into a body roughly the size the a6xxx series.
This meant moving to more of a rangefinder body style and squaring off the top of the camera (it is nearly 25mm shorter) but while moving away from Sony’s typical tilt screen to a (finally) vari-angle LCD screen that can even be rotated out to the side and face forward for monitoring from the front. The Sony A7C’s spec list most similarly resembles the similarly priced Sony a7III, but there is some give and take between the two cameras. Above all, though, Sony is marketing this camera to photographers and content creators who want to keep things small and light…which includes the new FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 retractable kit zoom lens.
Basic Feature List
24.2MP Full-Frame Exmor R BSI CMOS Sensor
BIONZ X Image Processor
UHD 4K30p Video with HLG/HDR and S-Log3/2
15 Stops of Dynamic Range
5-Axis In-Body Image Stabilization
Vari-Angle Touchscreen LCD
Smallest Full-Frame Camera with IBIS to Date
10 FPS burst rate
693 phase-detection and 425 contrast-detection points
Watch for my full written review along with video reviews coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy the photos below!
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/323jP0m | Amazon https://amzn.to/34MlE3z | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/2l7yt | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3jGoN93 | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2JoSnDL | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3mFxBy1 | Ebay http://bit.ly/Sonya7C
Keywords: Sony a7C, Sony Alpha 7C, Sony a7C Review, ILCE-7C, Sony, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Battery Life, Tracking, Focus, Burst Rate, Tracking, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Dogs, Ergonomics, Sigma MC-11, Metabones, Vello, Sony a9, sony a7III
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Sony has long been the revolution brand in the camera world. While they lacked the market share of Canon and Nikon, the Sony company has typically played the role of disrupter by constantly innovating and bringing new features to the market. Canon and Nikon have been the more conservative, established brands, and their development cycles have been longer but typically they bring fairly mature products to market by the time of release (though there will often be some internet drama over them that turns out to be fairly inconsequential in the long run!). Sony’s third generation of full frame mirrorless cameras started with the release of the Sony a9, a flagship sports camera that broke all kinds of new ground. It’s 20 frame per second burst rate with no blackout and deep buffers made it a seriously revolutionary camera, and timely firmware updates added significant improvements to the camera that have kept it feeling very current in many ways. This was followed by the exceptional Sony a7RIII and then a7III bodies, which were both extremely innovative at their respective price points and seriously disrupted the camera market. It was on the strength of these three cameras that propelled Sony past Nikon into second place behind Canon for market share. But the release the a9 Mark II – (the a9M2 (ILCE-9M2) flagship) – (and, to a lesser extent, the a7RIV) have been met with far less excitement.
Both the a7RIII and the a9 remain highly competent cameras, and firmware updates have helped them remain such. Sony’s challenge with this generation is that it has come time for them to do a more “Canon” kind of upgrade, which is more about maturing existing technology than it is massively innovating with exciting new (but underdeveloped) features. Put simply, I think that Sony is improving a lot of the areas that were lacking, but an evolutionary upgrade is harder to market and get people excited about than a platform with all kinds of exciting new tech.
The question remains if this is a necessary upgrade for everyone, or even if one shouldn’t consider the $1000 USD savings by opting for the first generation a9. It’s not my job to sell you on any option, but I do view it my job to provide you the unbiased information and observations that will help to inform your decisions. You can read my full written review here, or watch one of the video review options below…or just enjoy some photos!
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2ZR0wWR | Amazon https://bhpho.to/33EpMRp | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3myqg4c | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2Eb4FNE | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/2H9LK73 | Ebay http://bit.ly/a9IIDLA
Keywords: Sony a9 II, Sony Alpha 9II, Sony a9 Mark II, Sony a9M2, Alpha, 9, M2, ii, Sony a9II Review, Sony Alpha 9 II review, Sony a7riv, Sony a7r4, Sony, Review, Mark II, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Battery Life, Tracking, Focus, Burst Rate, Tracking, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Dogs, Ergonomics, Sigma MC-11, Metabones, Vello, Sony a9
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Sony has long been the revolution brand in the camera world. While they lacked the market share of Canon and Nikon, the Sony company has typically played the role of disrupter by constantly innovating and bringing new features to the market. Canon and Nikon have been the more conservative, established brands, and their development cycles have been longer but typically they bring fairly mature products to market by the time of release (though there will often be some internet drama over them that turns out to be fairly inconsequential in the long run!). Sony’s third generation of full frame mirrorless cameras started with the release of the Sony a9, a flagship sports camera that broke all kinds of new ground. It’s 20 frame per second burst rate with no blackout and deep buffers made it a seriously revolutionary camera, and timely firmware updates added significant improvements to the camera that have kept it feeling very current in many ways. This was followed by the exceptional Sony a7RIII and then a7III bodies, which were both extremely innovative at their respective price points and seriously disrupted the camera market. It was on the strength of these three cameras that propelled Sony past Nikon into second place behind Canon for market share. But the release the a9 Mark II – (the a9M2 (ILCE-9M2) flagship) – (and, to a lesser extent, the a7RIV) have been met with far less excitement.
Both the a7RIII and the a9 remain highly competent cameras, and firmware updates have helped them remain such. Sony’s challenge with this generation is that it has come time for them to do a more “Canon” kind of upgrade, which is more about maturing existing technology than it is massively innovating with exciting new (but underdeveloped) features. Put simply, I think that Sony is improving a lot of the areas that were lacking, but an evolutionary upgrade is harder to market and get people excited about than a platform with all kinds of exciting new tech.
A lot of people have looked up and down the specification list of the a9M2 and called it a disappointment. It doesn’t seem (on paper) to be a huge improvement over the a9. In many ways Sony has become a victim to their own “ADHD” short attention span where they’ve often moved on to the next innovation without bringing their last idea to full completion, and, in doing so, they’ve programmed their audience to always expect massive amounts of innovation. But in many ways the improvements to the a9M2 will be most appreciated by those that actually use the camera for its intended purpose – a high speed sports/wildlife option designed for professional use. Most of its core improvements are more subtle that extravagant, and are designed more around improving professional usability than as a platform for showcasing new technologies. One of the best articles I’ve personally read on this topic is from Patrick Murphy-Racey, a sports photographer who used first the a9 and then the a9M2 as his primary workhorse cameras.
The question remains if this is a necessary upgrade for everyone, or even if one shouldn’t consider the $1000 USD savings by opting for the first generation a9. It’s not my job to sell you on any option, but I do view it my job to provide you the unbiased information and observations that will help to inform your decisions. Here’s a quick breakdown of what stays the same, what has changed, and what hasn’t changed but should have!
What stays the same:
24.2MP Exmor RS Stacked sensor
ISO 100-51200 range (up to 204800)
20fps with AF/AE tracking, blackout-free live view
up to 1/32000s with electronic shutter
693 phase and 425 contrast detection AF points
60 times per second AF calculations
Real-Time Tracking and Real-Time Eye AF (human and animals)
3.69M dots EVF (0.78x, 120hz)
1.44M dots LCD screen with touch sensitivity
No Picture Profiles for video
What’s different:
Updated physical design similar to a7RIV in many ways
Drive speed in mechanical shutter mode increases from 5FPS to 10FPS
Addition of anti-flicker mode
Real time Eye-AF in video mode
Improved IBIS system rated at 5.5 stops (vs 5)
Improved connectivity (More encryption options on the LAN port, improved wireless from 2.4Ghz to 5Ghz, upgraded to USB-C)
New voice memo option that can be converted to text in Imaging Edge software
Both SD slots now UHS-II compatible
SD slot 1 is finally in the logical top position
Multi-interface port (hot-shoe) now compatible with digital audio and new mics
EVF should have been upgraded to the 5.76 million dot viewfinder found on the a7RIV
Touchscreen execution still lacks
Not including picture profiles and SLOG on a camera so well suited for video is ridiculous
No 4K60 option
Still want the details? Then read on or watch my standard length or long format (definitive) video reviews by clicking the appropriate thumbnail below.
While the overall appearance of the a9M2 isn’t radically different from the a9, there are a number of subtle improvements. The a9M2 is marginally bigger than its predecessor, measuring (W x H x D) 5.07 x 3.8 x 3.05″ / 128.9 x 96.4 x 77.5 mm vs 5 x 3.8 x 2.5″ / 126.9 x 95.6 x 63 mm for the a9. The number that has changed the most there is the depth of the two cameras, as the a9M2 has grown by 14.55mm in depth. This is mostly in the form of a vastly improved grip that is deeper and fits the hand much better. Any of us with medium to large hands would actually prefer the height of the camera to also grow to better accommodate our hands. I typically use a grip extender from SmallRig to make my cameras ARCA-compatible (ready to go right on a tripod) and to extend that grip a bit to make the camera more comfortable and secure in my hand. There is a new grip – the VG-C4EM vertical battery grip, which is shared with the new a7RIV. The a9M2 moves towards being more usable without one of these accessories, though Canon’s R-series cameras are better yet in this regard.
There is a minimal amount of weight increase (1.49 lb / 678 g from 1.48 lb / 673 g). This is surprising considering the physical growth of the camera, but I will say as from a purely observational perspective that the original a9 feels a little more “metal” in hand than does the a9M2. The a9M2 touts improved weather sealing in the body. Here’s a diagram of those seals:
The most obvious external sign of improved sealing is that all of the external doors and compartments open and fit more securely. I vastly prefer the design of these compartments, which feel much more like definite doors as opposed to what feel more like flaps on the a9.
The card slots are still located on the right side of the camera, but now the whole side assembly slides forward to give access to the two SD card slots. There’s more available space through this design, which makes the card slots easier to access. Also appreciated is that (like the a7RIV), Slot 1 is now logically located on the top rather than the bottom. Another long-overdue improvement is that now both card slots are UHS-II compatible, which allows both to benefit from the faster read/write times of UHS-II cards. I personally have moved over almost exclusively to the Sony Tough cards, which have more robust construction along with very high read and write speeds of around 300 MB/s. Many cards tout a high speed which is actually a read speed, but the write speed (the important one!) is much slower. The Tough cards are also Bend / Drop / Water / Dust / X-Ray Proof, so more ready for professional use. There is a solid argument to be made that Sony should have moved to a faster technology in this camera (CF Express, for example), which could have allowed for more improvements in buffer depth (though, to be fair, these are already exceptionally good).
One of the single biggest criticisms of Sony’s older cameras was the battery life, which Sony solved starting with the a9. The A9 turned this around by slightly expanding the grip to allow for a much larger capacity NP-FZ100 battery. This more than doubles the capacity, as the NP-FW50 has a 1020mAh capacity compared to the 2280mAh capacity of the FZ100 battery. The a9M2 has further improved the efficiency of the power use to allow for slightly more shots per charge.
While the positioning of most of the buttons on the camera are very similar, the feel of the buttons are improved. The buttons have more travel to them (and are slightly more raised), which makes the tactile feedback more definite. My favorite improvement is to the AF-ON button, which I typically assign magnification to when shooting manual focus lenses, and it is many times over easier to find and operate by feel. It’s the little touches that make for a better experience. In the first photo below, you can see the a9 button, then the a9M2, and also the redesigned AF-ON button.
Likewise the rear joystick has also been improved, with a better surface texture and more precise movement.
Both the front and rear control wheels have also been improved. The front wheel has received a slight cant upwards that makes it fall more readily to the finger, and the rear wheel has been moved up to a higher position on top of the camera body where it is easier to get one’s thumb on it. It is these little things that make for a better camera to the experienced photographer. All of the button and wheel positions have had tiny tweaks that have optimized their placement and performance.
One final change is that the Exposure Compensation dial now has a lock to prevent it being inadvertently moved. If you don’t like using the lock, you have the option to leave it unlocked. I would have preferred that they would have used the same lock mechanism as they have on the other dials for consistency sake, but I’m sure we’ll all adjust.
Unfortunately there is still one glaring ergonomic issue that, frankly, boggles my mind. Sony continues to have the most half-baked touchscreen integration of any of the true competitors, and lags far behind the touchscreens in the most basic of Canon’s DSLRs or mirrorless cameras. The amount of things you can do is pretty limited, though, thankfully, you can use your finger on the touchscreen to move focus around while your eye is pressed up to the viewfinder. You can’t use the touchscreen to navigate menus, to navigate images during playback, to change settings, and, while you can now touch to focus, you cannot touch to release the shutter. What I find irritating is that there is no question that Sony is capable of doing better. I particularly find the lack of navigation ability via the touchscreen irritating. Both Canon and Fuji allow you to pull up the Q menu and make quick changes with the touchscreen. You cannot navigate Sony’s FN menu by touch. What I find frustrating is that there is no question that Sony is capable of better (they make smartphones!!!).
Mirrorless cameras utilize an electronic viewfinder, which is both a strength and a weakness. To date no EVF can compare to the clarity of an optical viewfinder (like that on DSLRs). The a9/a7R3 increased resolution from 2.359 to 3.686MP million dot, but surprisingly the a9M2 does not utilize the new new 5.76 million dot EVF that came on the a7RIV. It was a major improvement there, one I appreciated particularly when magnifying the image. This is one major complaint in my mind; I can’t understand why Sony wouldn’t be put their best EVF in their flagship camera.
EVF’s do have an advantages on a camera like this, as they allow for a lot of additional information to be overlaid on the screen and these are often useful when tracking high speed action. The complete lack of viewfinder blackout on the a9 bodies makes this an even better experience.
And, for me, one of biggest advantages to an EVF is when using manual focus lenses. It shows true depth of field, for one, making visual confirmation of focus easier. You can easily magnify the image in the viewfinder, allowing you to nail focus every time. You can choose to add colored focus overlays (focus peaking) in different shades that will highlight areas in focus. This final method isn’t my favorite, personally, as it makes the shooting process less organic. One of the keys to being an effective photographer is the ability to visualize – to see color, light, and shadow – and I find overlays interfere with that. Still, it is my love for my manual focus glass that has been a primary catalyst in moving mostly to mirrorless bodies. Nailing focus consistently adds so much enjoyment to using these lenses…and the EVF is the single biggest reason for that.
Sony’s 5 Axis in-body-image-stabilization (Steady Shot) has been improved slightly on the a9M2. Sony claims 5.5 stops rather than the 5 on a9. Both claims might be a little ambitious, particularly with longer focal lengths. While I can tell little difference with shorter focal lengths in sensor-based stabilization vs in-lens stabilization, there’s no question that lens stabilization does a better job with longer focal lengths (anything over 135mm). One of the primary benefits of sensor-based stabilization, however, is the fact that it works for all lenses…including adapted lenses, vintage lenses, and wide aperture prime lenses. One nice feature of Sony’s IBIS is that if you are using a lens with electronics (even an adapted lens), it will automatically adjust for the focal length. If you are using a lens without electronics (like the Laowa 15mm f/2 lens or similar lenses), you can manually set the focal length in the Steady Shot settings. I found that experimenting with that setting definitely made a big difference in the results and steadiness of the viewfinder image. It also made a difference in the smoothness of handheld video footage. Here’s a macro shot taken at only 1/8th second and 105mm.
The a9M2 sports an intervalometer that is well-implemented for shooting time lapses. You can shoot time lapse movies by utilizing the S&Q settings.
GPS logging and geotagging is handled via a Bluetooth connection to your smartphone and having the Sony Image Edge Mobile app active (and the Location Linkage set up). The problem? It doesn’t really work consistently, in my experience, leaving some images tagged and others untagged. You essentially need to be sure that the Bluetooth link is active before you start shooting (at the very least at the beginning of your shoot). I’ve never really seen this perfectly executed yet, and I’ve definitely had a more reliable tagging experience with Canon DSLRs in the past that had a built-in GPS tracking.
Some of the key upgrades to the a9M2 center around connectivity. Professional sports photographers and/or journalists often have a different workflow than, say, wedding photographers. Wedding photographers often want space to “tweak” and stylize images before showing them to the client, but sports photographers and journalists often prioritize time sensitivity over artistic merit. These photographers need options for quickly delivering images to clients, and the a9M2 is designed around that. While the A9 has a LAN terminal and supports transfer to FTP servers, the A9 II can deliver images over SSL or TLS encryption (FTPS) for better security. The a9M2 gets a Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as 5GHz wireless support in addition to the existing 2.4GHz on the original a9. This enables much faster delivery of images over wireless. FTP settings can now be saved and reloaded onto the a9M2 either via the SD card (up to 10) or up to 20 through the Imaging Edge mobile app.
The a9M2 retains the micro HDMI and USB ports of the a9, but also adds USB-C port which delivers faster transfer speeds thanks to an upgrade to the 3.2 Gen 1 standard. Charging is now handled by the USB-C port as well, which allows for quicker in-camera charges. All in all, there are a variety of improved ways where you can quickly deliver your images either to clients or get them backed up yourself.
All in all there are a number of areas of positive maturation in the a9M2. The camera feels better in the hands and handles better than ever. There’s a massive scope for customizing the operation of the camera, from the dials to the buttons to even creating custom menus. If you are accustomed to either the a9/a7RIII/a7III, you will find that all the little details feel improved. Kudos to Sony for creating such a highly functional camera.
Sony a9M2 Autofocus
On paper, the a9M2 utilizes the same autofocus system as the a9, which was already an autofocusing beast. There are 693 phase and 425 contrast-detect autofocus (AF) points that cover approximately 93% of the sensor. In my personal experience, the a9 was easily the best autofocusing camera that I’ve used.
Here’s a look at how the specs from the a9 (same as a9M2) compare to other models, and how the Phase Detect AF points cover nearly all the sensor (first image shows the a7RIII AF point spread), second shows the a9 point spread, and the third is a chart comparing specs):
While the RAW specs are the same as the a9, Sony has matured in the way that this information can be processed and utilized, allowing for better tracking consistency on the a9M2 when compared to the a9. Processing power is further enhanced, which allows the a9M2 to get more performance from both its sensor and autofocus system. We have real-Time Eye AF and Pet AF (in both stills and movies), increased sensitivity (Phase Detection at F16 is essentially unmatched), and you now have the ability to touch an object or person on the screen, and while the shutter button is half depressed (or depressed) the camera will track them in real time with even better Ai accuracy than before.
Eye AF works exceptionally well, quickly grabbing the eye (you can choose to switch between the left or right eye with a setting that can be mapped to a button) and tracking it in real time. Pet Eye AF works well also, though again you need to switch between human and animal Eye AF as the two have very different characteristics and the camera doesn’t (yet) automatically sense which you are tracking.
You will experience your best performance yet with adapted Canon EF lenses via the Sigma MC-11 or Metabones FE adapters, though lenses like the 200-600mm F5.6-6.3G OSS,100-400 GM, 400mm F2.8 GM, and 600mm F4 GM are well worth considering as they make tracking action incredibly simple when mounted on an a9, and even more so on an a9M2. Adapted results still don’t compare to the tracking excellence of using a native lens. Sigma’s new 100-400mm F5-6.3 OS DN lens is also a great value, and it is the lens that I used for the tracking shots featured in this review. Sony’s expanding telephoto options through both first party and third party lenses has certainly helped make Sony a more attractive platform for wildlife and sports work. That, combined with the still-incredible 20 frames per second without any blackouts between shots makes tracking with good lenses much easier than ever before. I’d recommend watching one of the video reviews to see tracking in action.
I did a comparison between using a native lens (Sigma 100-400 DN) and an adapted Canon EF 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS II, and there’s no question the native lens locked faster and kept up with the high speed action much better. The adapted Canon delivered almost exclusively back-focused results during the high speed direct running sequences, though it was fine for easier lateral sequences. The native lens delivered a near-perfect keeper rate under the same circumstances.
I did a few side by side comparisons between the a9 and a9M2 tracking golden retrievers running at the camera. I definitely saw the Eye Detect box lock on faster and stay more engaged during the runs when using the a9M2. The a9 relied more on regular phase detect points. The a9M2 delivered a more even performance, while the a9 had a section midway through the run where there were some back-focused photos. There’s no question that while the specs look identical, the a9M2 gets more out of the AF system than what the a9 does.
I’ve also had good success focusing in low light. This is an image from the a9 and the Sigma 35mm F1.2 DN. The a9 did a good job of focusing in near dark conditions with a good contrast target (books on a bookshelf). I shot this image at ISO 32,000 and 1/13th of a second even with a F1.2 lens! That’s the equivalent of a 20 second exposure at ISO 100, and the a9M2 does even a bit better.
One shared advantage with the a9 (particularly when using wider apertures) is that the electronic shutter increases the maximum shutter speed from 1/8000th second (most cameras) to a staggering 1/32,000th of a second. This gives you even more control of the light. This is great in natural light, but the a9 is less impressive under artificial light or when using strobes. That vaunted 20FPS with the electronic shutter dropped to just 5FPS with the mechanical shutter, but the a9M2 has an improved mechanical shutter that is smoother, quieter, and longer lasting while also doubling the frame rate in mechanical mode to 10FPS. This gives you much more flexibility when using strobes, for example, which require mechanical shutter use.
It also gives you more flexibility when paired with an incredibly important new feature for the a9M2 – an anti-flicker mode where the camera detects and avoids uneven lights due to lighting sources that cycle intensity or color temperature. Sodium lights are very common in large indoor (and outdoor venues), and they are some of the worst offenders for displaying a cycling effect where the color temperature and light intensity changes constantly at a split-second level. Look at how uneven the lighting and color are in these event shots taken with the a9:
The a9 does not deal with this very well, and it is perhaps my biggest real world annoyance for the many events that I shoot. The a9M2 has an anti-flicker mode that will give you much more consistent results, but it does require using a mechanical shutter. The improved mechanical shutter speed (10FPS) means that your sacrifice of speed isn’t as great and you can still track action relatively well. The good news is that it also helps eliminate the uneven results due to flicker.
The autofocus performance here is very close to being unparalleled. The Sony a9 Mark II is one of the best autofocusing cameras on the market.
Sony a9M2 Sensor Performance
The a9M2 utilizes the same 24.2 MP Full-Frame Exmor R BSI CMOS Sensor (backlit) and BIONZ X Image Processor as the a9, but, like with the AF system, the a9M2 manages to get more out of the sensor due to superior processing. The a9M2 has a 6000 x 4000 pixel resolution, which many users will find plenty for their applications. I actually prefer this resolution for a lot of my work, as the either 42Mpx or 61Mpx of the a7R series tends to be overkill for a lot of work I’ve actually been consistently impressed by how detailed images are from this sensor, though obviously it lacks the higher number of pixels found in the a7R camersa (particularly the new a7RIV). The BSI structure of the sensor gathers more light than conventional sensors and a front-end LSI chip improves the readout and processing speed of the camera. One can record 14-bit RAW with uncompressed or compressed options. Here’s a look at how the file size breaks down across several Sony full frame options:
It’s worth noting that Sony thinks highly enough of this sensor that they went against conventional wisdom and reused it in the a9M2, though, as we will see, they managed to milk more out of it than what we saw in the a9.
For my own purposes there is one significant disadvantage to the a9 when compared to the a7R cameras, and that is in APS-C/crop mode. For video this presents no problem, but when shooting stills it means that you are only getting a 10 MP APS-C mode instead of the much more useful 18 MP APS-C mode of the a7R3 or (even better) the 26MP APS-C of a7RIV. That’s right – the RIV still has more resolution in crop mode than the a9 does in full resolution mode. The APS-C mode in the a9/a7III is obviously not nearly as useful.
At the same time, however, there are a few real strengths for the a9M2’s sensor. Let’s explore a few of these areas:
Dynamic Range
Dynamic range has become one those topics debated ad nauseum on photography forums and harped on by certain reviewers to the place where some perspective has been lost on the topic. It has become on the key “stats” where brand fanboys either push their brand or bash another. At the same time, as a person who gets a chance to use most current gear, and one who has used the current best from Canon, Nikon, Fuji, and Sony, I can definitely say that there are a number of situations where improved dynamic range gives the photographer (and particularly the post-processor) more latitude to fulfill their vision. This could be in the ability to recover a blown-out sky or shadowed area as a landscape photographer or the ability to balance a foreground subject with a background or sky for portrait photographers. These days it is pretty easy to recover a lot of lost details in any given image.
I have found with each of the more recent cameras that I bracket exposures for exposure blending/HDR less often, as it is often possible to get the result I want out of a single exposure. Dynamic range is the range of visible light that a sensor can record, and the Sony a9M2 bests the a9 here but scores a bit behind the Sony a7III. The latter is surprising, as one would think that the sensors are identical. I’m not entirely sure why the a7III’s performance is better here, but it could be due to the stacked sensor of the a9 series (the a7III’s sensor is not stacked). Sony managed to improve things from 13.3 EV (a9) to 14 EV on the a9M2 (as per DXO Mark), though they rate the a7III at an even more impressive 14.7 EV (the highest 24Mpx sensor rating in their tests).
While I didn’t have an a7III on hand to compare with the a9s, I did directly compare the a9 and a9M2.
What I found when purposefully underexposing by one, two, three, and four stops and then adding that exposure back in post is that the the a9M2 did a very good job of recovering shadow information with relatively little penalty. I did find the slightest loss of contrast at the extremes, and there was some additional noise found in shadow transition areas, but it is pretty remarkable how completely you can completely recover information crushed in dark shadow:
The a9M2 definitely has a better shadow recovery than the a9. There is better contrast retained and the shadowed area is less rough looking.
When I overexposed by one, two, three, and four stops and reduced that exposure in post, I found the typical limit where a two stop overexposure is completely recoverable while a three stop overexposure does introduce a few “hot-spots” and a few areas of minor discoloration. Here’s what a three stop overexposure looks like before and after recovery.
At four stops, however, the image is ruined and unrecoverable.
Once again, however, I saw a slight improvement on the upper end of the a9M2’s performance compared to the a9. There is better contrast after recovery and more information is recoverable under identical conditions.
Sony has done a good job milking a more competitive performance out of this sensor, which adds to the versatility of the camera.
ISO Performance
The a9M2 retains the 100-51200 native range with extended levels that go as low as 50 and as high as 204800 that we saw in the a9. Let’s see if they were able to squeak out a little more performance once again. I recommend that you watch the definitive video review to see how I arrived at the following conclusions:
The a9M2 does a great job of maintaining color fidelity throughout the native ISO range
There is a slight green cast that comes into shadow areas at ISO 25,600 and becomes more pronounced at 51,200
While noise increases progressively above ISO 6400, it stays evenly distributed and without clumping or banding
There is still very usable amounts of contrast at higher ISO settings.
Here’s a look at how ISO 25,600 compares to base ISO (100) at a global level…
…and at a pixel level.
Image quality degrades after ISO 25,600, though it is still perfectly usable for reportage. Up to ISO 25,600, however, I think image quality remains quite good, actually.
If we compare to the a9, we find that Sony has definitely managed to get more out of the sensor. I found that the a9 showed more of a tendency towards clumping and banding at higher ISO values than the a9.
Discoloration is also a bit higher, and I saw a consistently stronger amount of contrast from the a9M2 compared to the a9 at climbing ISO values. Shadow noise was rougher on the a9. There’s no question that the a9M2 delivers better image quality at higher ISO values.
Resolution
The Sony a9M2 lags behind the a7R bodies in the resolution category by a wide margin, and, as mentioned, the greatest impact of that is felt in the APS-C (crop) mode. But I also feel that the a9M2’s resolution is at a sweet spot for a lot of things, including things likes events, sports, and weddings. The a7R bodies resolution is often overkill in those settings. I find the images out of the a9M2 to have great detail, and their smaller size makes them snappy to work with in post. I do feel like Sony is squeezing the most out of this sensor in terms of resolution as images have great detail at a pixel level without feeling oversharpened and developing halos.
You do have the option of shooting either compressed or uncompressed RAW images (the difference is only noticeable in more demanding situations), but you don’t have anything like MRAW or SRAW resolution options where you can still get a RAW file at a smaller resolution. This is far less of an issue than with the Sony a7R bodies, however, as the resolution is already at a reasonable area. 24MP is probably plenty for most shooters in most situations, though you occasionally will be left wanting a little more.
Color Science
I’ve long felt that the a9 had the nicest color rendition of the Sony cameras I’ve used, and the color rendition in the a9M2 is highly similar.
In the past, when I’ve compared the a9, a7RIII, and a7RIV with similar lenses, I found my eye a little more drawn to the colors from the a9. When I was looking over images I had captured, for example, I found that I often naturally selected a9 images in a blind test. That remains true with the a9M2, and, while I found the colors mostly identical at lower ISOs, I did find that color fidelity was held a little more at the extremes on the a9M2.
Landscapes also look pretty great, as you can see from these examples.
The controversy over color will almost certainly continue, but it seems like this sensor is one of Sony’s better ones when it comes to color.
Video Performance
Little has changed on the video front for the a9M2 from the a9 with the exception of real-time Eye AF tracking during video. Most all of Sony’s recent cameras are fantastic video machines, and that is [mostly] true of the a9, as we’ll see. First of all, the upside to this particular resolution means that oversampling to 4K is a cleaner, more straightforward process where the 6K pixel readout is easy to downsample to 4K without “pixel binning” (clumping pixels together and potentially skipping or dumping some information). Sony says, “Full-pixel readout with no pixel binning makes it possible to condense approximately 2.4 times the amount of data required for 4K (the equivalent of the amount of data required for 6K) into 3,840 x 2,160 4K output. This oversampling process plus full-frame pixel readout without binning results in the highest possible 4K movie image quality.” The non-technical answer is that the 4K footage is very clean and highly detailed. The Sony a9M2 supports up to 30FPS in 4K at a maximum bitrate of 100Mbs, and Full HD 1080 at up to 120P (also with a maximum bitrate of 100Mbs). This is pretty much standard for most Sony cameras of the last five years, but is a little more disappointing because 4K60 is becoming fairly commonplace.
But where the Sony a9M2 really makes you question is in the continued omission of Picture Profiles, which means that SLOG is unavailable along with Cine4 and any HLG option for High Dynamic Range footage. Everyone thought that it would be added to the original a9 via firmware, and to not get this common feature in a whole new camera is, well, weird. Fortunately the standard footage out of the camera is great, and I use the a9 more than any of my other cameras for my YouTube channel videos, and I’m sure I would do the same with the a9M2 if I owned it.
Another strength for the a9 series is a result of them being designed around an electronic rather than mechanical shutter. They have worked to eliminate rolling shutter from the electronic shutter, which also translates into a better camera for panning video shots as rolling shutter is essentially eliminating. This means that vertical straight lines don’t lean as you pan by them, and it can make a big difference in certain situations.
There is both a microphone input and headphone monitoring jack, and the a9M2 sports a micro-HDMI output as well. The updated hotshoe allows for digital audio to be recorded and is compatible with the new ECM-B1M shotgun mic.
It continues to be puzzling why Sony would not put Picture Profiles in this otherwise exceptional camera for video. I guess we are left hoping for a firmware update to bring it once again.
Conclusion
The Sony Alpha 9 Mark II is a very different kind of new camera for Sony. Whereas the first a9 left the camera world wowed with its amazing performance, the a9M2 has left many photographers uttered a jaded, “meh”. Sony clearly made a decision to focus on making the kind of improvements that working professionals needed and not the kind of upgrade that would set the internet ablaze. There are few people that would look at the side by side specs of the a9 and a9M2 and see a compelling reason to upgrade, but there’s also no doubt that when you use the cameras side by side there are a number of areas where the camera has become much more usable.
What continues to set the a9 series apart is the lack of blackout between shots. This allows the photographer to stay perfect attuned to the situation as you track the action and to maintain better composition. The a9M2 fires off shots like a silenced sub-machine gun, delivering well focused results again and again. The Eye AF and real time tracking works fantastic in both stills and video, and using large aperture lenses with tiny depth of field is easy to do with it’s astounding capabilities. The advent of third party telephoto options designed for Sony FE has created a lot of choice for photographers, and the telephoto end of the spectrum on Sony is no longer a barren wasteland.
The focus on usability and connectivity rather than marketable feature upgrades is a sign of maturation for Sony, however. They are actually perfecting their tech rather than just innovating new tech, and it is that stability and maturity that has resulted in an organization like the Associated Press choosing to equip all its journalists with Sony equipment. Sony cameras are no longer novelties; these are cameras for professionals. The following shot, for example, I doubt I would have gotten with previous cameras. I scared these docks while hiking and had only a split second to bring the lens up and fire off some frames…and yet focus is nailed.
But this decision also means that there are a lot of a9 owners (myself included for now) who will stand pat and continue to use what is still an extraordinarily capable camera in the a9. The a9M2 is really designed around the needs of those who need the advanced connectivity above all else. There are a lot of other marginal improvements, but the most important upgrades center around making the a9M2 more functional for people who work under specific conditions. That doesn’t mean that the Sony a9M2 isn’t an amazing camera (it is), but there will be fewer people that fall outside its main audience that will be tempted to foot the cost of an upgrade. But here is what I perceive as the upside: Sony’s dedication to maturing their product line is going to make their whole system more usable, and that benefits us all. Just don’t stop innovating, Sony!
Pros:
Improved connectivity
Improved mechanical shutter and performance under flickering lights
Physical improvements make for a better experience
Incredible burst rate
Deep buffer
No blackout makes tracking easy
Focus performance is the best yet
Firmware updates have improved functionality
Eye AF is awesome…in both stills and video
24MP sensor delivers good detail and color
Improved dynamic range and ISO performance
SD cards slots more logical and both are UHS-II supported now
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
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Keywords: Sony a9 II, Sony Alpha 9II, Sony a9 Mark II, Sony a9M2, Alpha, 9, M2, ii, Sony a9II Review, Sony Alpha 9 II review, Sony a7riv, Sony a7r4, Sony, Review, Mark II, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Battery Life, Tracking, Focus, Burst Rate, Tracking, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Dogs, Ergonomics, Sigma MC-11, Metabones, Vello, Sony a9
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Here’s an updated long term review on what I call the “best lens that no one is using”. The Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2 APO Sonnar is one of the best optical instruments in the world, but it is in few people’s kits. I noted on B&H Photo that the Canon EF version I’m reviewing has only 5 user reviews (all five star, of course) despite being around for nearly four years. In my long term video review I explore what makes this lens so great, but also the reasons why few people are using it and why even I don’t reach for it as often as what I would like. If you want to read my original text review, you can find it here. I’m doing the video review on a Canon EOS R body, though photos in the gallery have been taken with everything from a Canon EOS R to a 6D to a Canon 5D Mark IV and even some shots adapted to Sony! Enjoy the video review of one of my favorite lenses!
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Keywords: Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2, Otus 135mm 2, Zeiss 135mm F2, Zeiss Milvus 135mm 2, Otus 135 Review, APO Sonnar, Milvus 135mm, Milvus 135 Review, Milvus2135, Milvus 135mm Review, Milvus 135 2 Review, Carl Zeiss, Zeiss, 135mm, F2, Canon EOS R, EOS R5, Dustin Abbott, Sample Images, Video, Video Test, review, Video review, Real World, Sony a7RIII, Sigma MC-11, Sharpness, Resolution, Bokeh
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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 (I had returned my a7RII loaner without a moment’s regret), and my a7RIII has served me faithfully for the several years. Sony has shown further signs of growth and maturity as an actual camera company, too, as they didn’t immediately abandon the a7RIII and continued to improve it via firmware updates, including the very significant Version 3 update that added several key features into the mix like real-time Eye AF, interval shooting, and Pet Eye AF. In some ways it is surprising that Sony has elected to replace the a7RIII so quickly (most Sony fans would have preferred the a7SIII first!), but after spending time with the new Sony a7RIV, I suspect that Sony is shaping a new market strategy with a couple of prongs.
Since the release of the a7RIII, both Canon and Nikon have released multiple cameras in their own full frame mirrorless universe (a space previously dominated by Sony), and, while the consensus remains that none of the Nikon Z cameras or the Canon R cameras are as complete as cameras like the Sony a7RIII or a7III, the a7RIV is clearly an attempt to Sony to further widen the gap with its competitors and maintain its market dominance. The second aspect of the market strategy that I see is to potentially create space for the a7IV to move a little more upmarket, which might create space for a new budget model to compete with the Canon EOS RP (and similar cameras) or for Sony to continue to reduce the price of the extremely competent Sony a7III to compete in that space. They have created that space by pitching the Sony a7RIV as a medium-format-competing, high resolution monster with a record (for a 35mm, full frame sensor) 61 megapixels of resolution. There is one significant misstep here, though, and that is that Sony has not allowed for any means of using a smaller amount of resolution when shooting RAW (outside of the crop mode). That means that if you are a RAW shooter, you are stuck always shooting with 61MP, which is, frankly, overkill in probably 95% of situations for 99% of all photographers.
The second image is a pixel level crop from the first. That’s a LOT of resolution to use 100% of the time!
In fact, anecdotal feedback from my YouTube audience suggests that few people were looking for a resolution upgrade here, and the sheer amount of resolution (32% higher) is actually more a deterrent to upgrading than an enticement to do so. And this is a shame, as in many other ways the a7RIV is the most complete, fully realized Sony camera yet. Let’s explore why together.
Prefer to watch your reviews? Check out my detailed, real world review here!
If you get lost in lengthy reviews, here’s a little bullet-point breakdown of what’s stayed the same, what’s changed, and what didn’t change but should have since the a7RIII:
What stays the same:
5-axis sensor stabilization with 5.5 stops of compensation (CIPA)
10fps continuous shooting with AE/AF tracking
Interval shooting
4K up to 30p and 100Mbps
Full HD up to 120 fps
1.44M 3.0-in LCD screen with touch sensitivity
NP-FZ100 battery
mic input and headphone output (3.5mm)
Same ISO range (native 100-32,000)
Similar dynamic range (close to 15 stops)
What’s different:
61MP vs 42.4MP
Autofocus improvements: 567 PD (74%W x 99%H = 86.5% coverage) vs 399 PD points (68% coverage)
Newer image processor and autofocus algorithms allow for better real time tracking.
Improved crop mode has higher resolution (26.2MP vs 18MP) and 325 PD points. Buffer grows from 68 to 204 in crop mode, making this an interesting sports or wildlife option.
Buffer depth drops slightly (from 76 compressed RAW files to 68)
More shots involved with Pixel Shift (16 vs 4) Requires Sony Imaging Software to combine.
Eye AF rather than face tracking during video
The hot-shoe has been updated to work with new accessories like microphones
Vastly improved viewfinder with 5.7M dot vs 3.6M dot. More real and natural (also crisper when zoomed in for focus confirmation)
Vastly improved grip is much deeper and now functional without accessory (though a grip extender is still welcome if you have big hands). About 4mm deeper but less than a mm taller
More weather resistance with increased seals
Both slots are now UHS-II compatible
Wireless tethering
Buttons and dials are improved in feel and positioning
What Should have Changed (but Didn’t!)
No MRAW or SRAW
Touchscreen execution still pathetic
No built-in GPS
No 4K60 option
What the bullet points can’t cover is how all of this plays out in real-world use, so let’s cover these areas in more detail.
Sony a7RIV Handling and Ergonomics
There are a number of key upgrades to the a7RIV from the a7RIII that have made it a far more useful (and usable) camera. You can see all of these changes by watching this video episode:
There are minimal differences in size and weight between the A9, a7R3, and aRIV, and, in fact, when I have all three in front of me I have to look carefully to determine which is which. The a7RIV is ever-so-slightly larger than the a7R3 with dimensions of 5.07 x 3.8 x 3.05″ / 128.9 x 96.4 x 77.5 mm and a weight of 1.46 lb (665g) vs 5 x 3.8 x 2.9” (126.9 x 95.6 x 73.7mm) and 1.445 lb (657g) for the a7RIII. The A9 has similar dimensions to the a7RIII but is slightly heavier at 1.481 lb (673g) due to a more robust build. Sony has used that extra millimeter of height and 4mm of depth well, as the a7RIV feels far, far better in my hands than the a7RIII. With the a7RIII I continually felt like my pinky had no place to go on the grip, and I resorted to continually using a grip extender to make the camera more friendly to my hands. With the a7RIV, I feel like the grip has room for my whole hand even though the camera is still considerably smaller than its DSLR counterparts.
That’s not to say that I don’t still prefer using a grip extender (I do), but I’m much more comfortable using the camera without one. The physical changes to the camera do mean that new accessories are required, like the VG-C4EM vertical battery grip. Fortunately the new body is shared with the new Sony a9II, so the accessories are also shared across that platform. No basic grip extender was announced alongside the new a7RIV, which definitely suggests that Sony has more confidence in the way the camera feels in the hand.
While the positioning of most of the buttons on the camera are very similar, the feel of the buttons are improved. The buttons have more travel to them (and are slightly more raised), which makes the tactile feedback more definite. My favorite improvement is to the AF-ON button, which I typically assign magnification to when shooting manual focus lenses, and it is many times over easier to find and operate by feel. It’s the little touches that make for a better experience.
Likewise the rear joystick has also been improved, with a better surface texture and more precise movement.
Both the front and rear control wheels have also been improved. The front wheel has received a slight cant upwards that makes it fall more readily to the finger, and the rear wheel has been moved up to a higher position on top of the camera body where it is easier to get one’s thumb on it. It is these little things that make for a better camera to the experienced photographer. All of the button and wheel positions have had tiny tweaks that have optimized their placement and performance.
Unfortunately there is still one glaring ergonomic issue that, frankly, boggles my mind. Sony continues to have the most half-baked touchscreen integration of any of the true competitors, and lags far behind the touchscreens in the most basic of Canon’s DSLRs or mirrorless cameras. The amount of things you can do is pretty limited, though, thankfully, you can use your finger on the touchscreen to move focus around while your eye is pressed up to the viewfinder. You can’t use the touchscreen to navigate menus, to navigate images during playback, to change settings, and, while you can now touch to focus, you cannot touch to release the shutter. What I find irritating is that there is no question that Sony is capable of doing better. I particularly find the lack of navigation ability via the touchscreen irritating. Both Canon and Fuji allow you to pull up the Q menu and make quick changes with the touchscreen. You cannot navigate Sony’s FN menu by touch. What I find frustrating is that there is no question that Sony is capable of better (they make smartphones!!!).
A close examination of all the doors and ports on the a7RIV reveal a much better implementation of gaskets and seals. The side doors and ports open in a more definite (and much less sloppy) fashion, and, when open, the doors covering the ports don’t hang in a way that interferes with operation any longer.
One of the single biggest criticisms of the a7R2 was the battery life, which Sony solved starting with the a9. The A9 turned this around by slightly expanding the grip to allow for a much larger capacity NP-FZ100 battery. This more than doubles the capacity, as the NP-FW50 has a 1020mAh capacity compared to the 2280mAh capacity of the FZ100 battery. The end result is that what was a weakness for the a7R series became a strength. The battery rating remains the same (530 shots), though I routinely exceed that by a fair margin. Using the battery grip will allow one to double that capacity.
Another long-overdue improvement is that now both card slots are UHS-II compatible, which allows both to benefit from the faster read/write times of UHS-II cards. I personally have moved over almost exclusively to the Sony Tough cards, which have more robust construction along with very high read and write speeds of around 300 MB/s. Many cards tout a high speed which is actually a read speed, but the write speed (the important one!) is much slower. The Tough cards are also Bend / Drop / Water / Dust / X-Ray Proof, so more ready for professional use. There is a solid argument to be made that Sony should have moved to a faster technology in this camera, one that is pushing more data due to higher resolution than any 35mm camera before. The buffer depth actually drops a little from the RIII to the RIV, and a faster card technology could have helped that. What is also obvious is that the delay problem while the buffer clears is still there even though the processing speed of the camera is undoubtedly faster to accomodate the considerably larger files. There’s room for both praise and criticism here. One final area to praise is that Sony has finally done the logical thing and made the top slot #1 rather than #2 (previous models had this reversed, which never made sense).
Sony’s 5 Axis in-body-image-stabilization (Steady Shot) works really, really well (particularly for stills). They claim more than 5 stops of stabilization, which might be a little ambitious, but the results are pretty fantastic. I’ve reviewed a lot of different IS/VC/OS/OSS lenses over the years and have a very good idea of what to expect at certain focal lengths, and, while the trope that IBIS isn’t as effective as lens stabilization is still pretty common, I frankly cannot tell a difference in everyday shooting. Sony does a great job with this sensor shift stabilization, and, to me, the benefit of sensor-based stabilization is the fact that it works for all lenses…including adapted lenses, vintage lenses, and wide aperture prime lenses. I was pleasantly surprised to put an adapted lens like my Zeiss Milvus 2/135mm on there via adapter and get solid results down to 1/8th and even 1/5th second shutter speeds. Having stability in a high-resolution body is even more important, as we will see in a moment.
One nice feature of Sony’s IBIS is that if you are using a lens with electronics (even an adapted lens), it will automatically adjust for the focal length. If you are using a lens without electronics (like the Laowa 15mm f/2 lens or similar lenses), you can manually set the focal length in the Steady Shot settings. I found that experimenting with that setting definitely made a big difference in the results and steadiness of the viewfinder image. It also made a difference in the smoothness of handheld video footage.
The a7RIV sports an intervalometer that is well-implemented for shooting time lapses, though I do wish there was an option for creating the timelapse movie in-camera, as downloading potentially hundreds of images and then creating the time lapse in software feels like unnecessary extra work. I would prefer to have a both/and option rather than either/or for this. Ditto for the Pixel Shift feature, which has expanded from 4 shots to a potential total of 16.
What is Pixel Shift? Pixel Shift functions by taking up to 16 photos (options are 4 or 16) while shifting the sensor one-half pixel in between, which results in getting massive amounts of information at a pixel level. Those (up to) 16 images are blended together (in software) to produce a single file with as much as 241MB, plus it eliminates things like moire and even increases color accuracy. This is particularly noticeable at a pixel level, where the file has much more resolution. Pixel Shift works best with a subject in which there will be no movement in between frames (architecture, for example), as there will be some delay between shots (though this is reduced from the 1 second intervals which were the shortest in the a7RIII). Landscape images might be marred if there is any breeze present.
After shooting you will have either four or sixteen uncompressed RAW files in camera (there is no automatic combining of files in camera, unfortunately). You have to combine these files in post afterwards, and, at least for now, this is unsupported by Adobe or other third party software makers even after several years of the technology being on the market. You are required to use Sony’s own Imaging Edge Software to combine the images. The end results are impressive, but, as things exist in the present, the technology has limited scope/applications. I actually prefer the 4 file option, which now creates a 61MP file (same resolution as normal) but with additional detail, contrast, and color fidelity due combining information from the four files. The downside is that the file size is roughly 4x higher than an uncompressed RAW, or about 480MB. Huge, in other words. But the 16 image file is a staggering 1.9GB in size. I have an incredibly powerful workstation (with 32GB of RAM), and Lightroom would not display the 241MP image at a pixel level for some reason or another.
A conversion to DNG in Lightroom resulted in 178MB and 664MB files respectively for the 4 image and 16 image options. In a couple of attempts, I didn’t actually find the 16 image file for me made an appreciable difference over the 4 image file (even when downsampled to equal size), and so it is highly unlikely to be a part of my regular workflow.
Here’s a look at a few pixel level crops from an image taken in normal compressed RAW (smallest file size at about 61MB) and the 4 shot Pixel Shift image (480MB):
You’ll be forgiven for thinking that the difference is not night and day. Yes, there is better contrast and slightly better resolution, but the different is not significant enough to use other than in incredibly critical situations. I suspect that Pixel Shift will be more of a novelty for most photographers.
Another feature I really wish was internal is GPS logging and geotagging. This is handled via a bluetooth connection to your smartphone and having the Sony Image Edge Mobile app active (and the Location Linkage set up). The problem? It doesn’t really work consistently, in my experience, leaving some images tagged and others untagged. You essentially need to be sure that the Bluetooth link is active before you start shooting (at the very least at the beginning of your shoot). I really wish this was handled internally, as the Canon cameras I’ve used with this internal GPS work much more reliably, though with at least some battery drain.
Sony continues to improve their electronic viewfinders, with another leap forward in the a7RIV. Mirrorless cameras utilize an electronic viewfinder, which is both a strength and a weakness. To date no EVF can compare to the clarity of an optical viewfinder (like that on DSLRs). The a9/a7R3 increased resolution from 2.359 to 3.686MP million dot, and the a7RIV/a9II furthers that improvement with a new 5.76 million dot EVF. It’s a major improvement, and I notice it particularly when magnifying the image. That being said, it is still a display rather than an optical instrument, and still has such limitations. Clarity isn’t as high as an OVF, though the gap is closing.
But there are also huge advantages to an EVF. You have much more flexibility in what can be displayed there, from information, overlays, and even image review. In bright situations being able to review images or even video in the viewfinder can be huge. When you switch into crop mode, the angle of view automatically changes, making composition easy. You can see real-time Eye AF tracking and be confident that focus is where it needs to be.
And, for me, the biggest advantage to an EVF is when using manual focus lenses. It shows true depth of field, for one, making visual confirmation of focus easier. You can easily magnify the image in the viewfinder, allowing you to nail focus every time. You can choose to add colored focus overlays (focus peaking) in different shades that will highlight areas in focus. This final method isn’t my favorite, personally, as it makes the shooting process less organic. One of the keys to being an effective photographer is the ability to visualize – to see color, light, and shadow – and I find overlays interfere with that. Still, it is my love for my manual focus glass that has been a primary catalyst in moving mostly to mirrorless bodies. Nailing focus consistently adds so much enjoyment to using these lenses…and the EVF is the single biggest reason for that. There’s still room for the technology to further mature, but the a7RIV’s EVF has definitely moved the ball closer to getting a more lifelike experience.
One final change is that the Exposure Compensation dial now has a lock to prevent it being inadvertently moved. If you don’t like using the lock, you have the option to leave it unlocked. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but it’s the little ergonomic improvements that make the camera more a joy to use.
All in all there are a number of areas of significant maturation in the a7RIV. The camera feels better in the hands and handles better than ever. There’s a massive scope for customizing the operation of the camera, from the dials to the buttons to even creating custom menus. If you are accustomed to either the a9/a7RIII/a7III, you will find that all the little details feel improved. Kudos to Sony for creating such a highly functional camera.
a7RIV Autofocus Performance
The a7RIII’s autofocus system inherited a lot of the technology pioneered in the a9 and was a HUGE improvement over the a7RII. While the difference isn’t as significant on the a7RIV, there is a clear and obvious improvement in real world use that goes beyond the specs. Speaking of the specs: the a7RIII had 399 phase detect AF points covering about 68% of the sensor. The a7RIV advances to 567 PDAF points spread out over 87% of the sensor. That leaves only the a9/a9II (and, oddly, the a73) in better shape with 693 PDAF points covering 93% of the sensor. These PDAF points are supported by 425 Contrast AF points in all noted models. The autofocus in the a7RIII was/is excellent, but the a7RIV is enough improved that it feels closer to the performance of the a9 than it does to the a7RIII. Find out more in this video episode here:
Sony managed to dramatically improve some areas of autofocus on the a9/a73/a7RIII via firmware (namely the Version 3 firmware in a7 bodies and the version 6 firmware in the a9). This allowed for Real-Time/Full-Time Eye AF, so Eye AF can be continually engaged without having to depress a button. It make a huge ergonomic improvement to this functionality. They also added the ability to switch between human and animal (Pet) Eye AF, which allows for much-improved tracking of animals eyes (which vary in kind from the human variety). This made a notable improvement when tracking animals. Real-Time face tracking during video was added as well.
The a7RIV inherits all of these technologies but has them built into the basic architecture of the camera. It shows, as autofocus just feels better executed in the small ways. One area, for example, is when using adapted lenses in Canon EF mounts. Many of them now function with near-native performance (at least for stills) and are noticeably more confident than on the a7RIII that I’m now so familiar with. Here’s a few with both a telephoto (Canon 100-400L II) along with my Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II:
The only place where the a9 still stands out as being better is when shooting high-speed action with longer telephotos. It still seems to be able to drive lenses a little faster and squeeze just a little bit more of tracking out them, though I mostly only noticed this when using adapted telephoto lenses. The a9 was the only camera to track a sprinter running right towards the camera at high speed when using an adapted Canon EF 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS II. Other than that, however, I felt like my autofocus performance was very similar to that of the a9.
Sony’s Eye AF works fantastic, delivering consistently focused results even with an F1.2 lens like the Sigma 35mm F1.2 DN ART lens that I tested during my review period with the a7RIV. I shot many F1.2 shots with the lens in a portrait session and for general use, with all the Eye AF results perfectly focused regardless of where I composed in the frame.
Likewise face tracking during video recording is better than ever. I feel like Sony has definitely caught up to Canon’s Dual Pixel AF tracking that for several years was the industry standard. I’m able to shoot my video episodes now without worrying about autofocus, as the camera naturally detects my face/eye and tracks it rather than the background.
One other interesting feature is the a7R3’s Silent Shutter mode, which, combined with the whisper quiet focus many of the better lenses results in such a silent operation that the only indication of a photo having been taken is the writing of the file to the card. This is pretty huge for events or quiet venues, allowing you to take photos in a completely unobtrusive fashion. There are a few quirks with this, however, including the fact that it doesn’t work with the anti-flicker mode. It appears to be an either/or thing, which is unfortunate considering that these should be complimentary rather competing technologies. It only seems to work with mechanical shutter, however.
Speaking of that anti-flicker mode. Anti-Flicker is designed to help off-set the cycling of some types of lights that result in uneven illumination or discoloration. This has been an area where Canon cameras are definitely better than Sony ones, though there is fortunately some improvement here. It seems to work a bit better than past iterations, evidence that Sony continues to slowly but surely grasp the little things that make for a more complete camera system, and this is incredibly important in winning over (and retaining) adapters of their cameras who are accustomed to slightly more mature cameras from Canon and Nikon.
The Sony a7RIV has a very robust focus system that compares favorably to any and all competitors. Sony has done yeoman’s work on this front over the past four years and is to be commended. The a7RII was way behind competitors; now Sony is the competitor to beat.
Buffer and Burst Rate
The a7RIII took a massive leap forward in burst rate and buffer depth over the a7RII, but unfortunately we have a mild regression in the a7RIV for the simple reason that it is pushing about 32% more information through the pipeline. In many ways Sony is to be praised for such a mild reduction in buffer depth and for retaining the same burst rate despite the massive resolution of the a7RIV, but there’s also no question that the market is accustomed to Sony delivering ever-higher specs. Here’s a chart that compares the shutter speed and buffer depth of some of Sony’s most popular models:
There is a mild regression from 76 (a7RIII) compressed RAW files to 68 in the a7RIV. It takes just as long as ever to empty that buffer, too. Impressively Sony has managed to retain the 10 FPS burst rate (with either mechanical or electronic shutter) of the a7RIII, which is impressive considering how much information is being moved.
For many people 68 RAW images will be enough for any situations. Cut that figure in half if you shoot uncompressed RAWs. I’ve tried just shooting medium JPEGs (26MP), and I managed to get 73 before slowdown, so obviously the camera is limited in those situations as that isn’t nearly the amount of information that 68 compressed RAW.
The a7RIV has an additional trick up its sleeve, however. It has an extremely useful, high resolution 26.1MP APS-C mode. When you are in APS-C mode, the camera shifts into a much deeper buffer depth. I was able to get over 250 compressed RAW or JPEG files before slowdown, and the buffer emptied in what was a very reasonable 25 seconds for so many files (about 27MB each) to clear. What’s interesting to me is that this is actually considerably more total data than what 70 full size RAW files represent, so perhaps Sony is actually limiting the full size buffer (heat protection?). What this means, though, is that the a7RIV is an excellent option for wildlife shooters who want to use the camera in APS-C mode…and that extra reach can be very, very useful!
Now that both slots are UHS-II you don’t have to worry about one of the slots potentially slowing you down. My preferred set-up is a “Sort” option where RAW files are written to Card 1 while JPEGs are written to Card 2. This gives me flexibility for what format I want to grab and also a kind of back-up on a separate card, though your mileage may vary.
The shutter speed and buffer depth are definitely competitive…particularly when one considers the huge resolution. Sony made a choice to advance resolution rather than improving on burst rate or buffer depth, but those migrating from the a7RIII to the RIV are not really losing out on anything, either.
Sony a7RIV Sensor Performance
In many ways the a7RIII’s sensor was little changed from the a7R2, which is understandable since the 42.4 Megapixel Exmor sensor with a base ISO range from 100-32,000 was that camera’s greatest strength. It was a back-illuminated sensor utilizing Sony’s BIONZ X image processor with a rated 15 stops of dynamic range at low ISO values. Sony decided that it would make a major jump in resolution from the 42.4 MP sensor in the a7RIII to a 61MP sensor in the a7RIV. That’s a jump from the 7952×5304 file dimensions of the a7RIII to 9504 x 6336 pixels in the RIV. That’s about 32% more resolution, and, though that is a great marketing statistic, in many ways it is also the way that the a7RIV is most compromised. The massive amount of resolution has created one huge advantage, however, and that is in the excellent 26.1MP APS-C crop mode. The strengths and liabilities of the sensor are explored in this video.
Resolution
This video dives deep in the realities of high resolution, and can demonstrate many of the points I make below.
First of all, let’s be clear about what I consider to be the single biggest liability to the 61MP sensor on the a7RIV; Sony still has not provided any MRAW or SRAW (Small or Medium RAW) options, meaning that it is 61MP all the time, which is often overkill in many situations. Many, many more people would consider this camera if they had the option to shoot at lower resolutions (and smaller file sizes) when the full 61MP was not needed. Options at, say, 45MP and 30MP would have been fantastic. One has three JPEG options (60MP, 26MP, and 15MP), so it’s a bit confusing why Sony doesn’t offer any RAW options. The only way to get a smaller RAW file is to activate the APS-C mode (26MP), but then one also activates a 1.5x crop, which changes the angle of view on all your lenses. This omission is puzzling, particularly since we had similar complaints about the a7RII and a7RIII.
So, as it stands, you are left with large and larger file sizes and all of the potential storage and processing slowdown issues inherit in adding 32% more resolution to an already high resolution camera. Here’s a look at how current models compare (the a9II and a7III will share the file sizes from a9 specs):
If you are shooting RAW, the minimum size (as it stands) is going to be 61MB for compressed, and 122MB for uncompressed. If you are shooting a portrait session, wedding, or event and shoot hundreds of images, there is going to be some serious storage requirements and you will need a recent, powerful computer workstation to be able to process those images.
The advantage, however, is that there is a massive amount of resolution to work with. This gives one incredible versatility in how you can frame an image. Take this photo, for example:
I only had the new Sigma 35mm F1.2 DN lens with me, and because of the physical location, I couldn’t get closer to the old mill. I didn’t love the foreground, and felt the image didn’t draw the viewer into the main event – that gorgeous old mill in the autumn scene. The sky is also quite bland here. So I did a 16:9 crop from the center of the frame and got this image:
What’s amazing, however, is that this deep crop still has the same resolution as the a9/a7III sensor, with plenty of resolution for even large prints. Imagine the possibilities this opens up for macro shooters, wildlife shooters, and even landscape photographers that can create entirely different framing of scenes from one location.
As previously mentioned, the APS-C crop mode is equally useful for the same reason. I like to assign APS-C/Super 35 to a button (C1, for me), so that I can easily switch back and forth between framing options. I find this incredibly useful at events where I don’t need as much resolution (and am more likely to deliver photos right to the client), as I can change up framing options on the fly.
Marketing hype for certain lenses (ahem, G Master), has created a somewhat false perception that only certain lenses will “work” on a high resolution body. My experience on both the Canon 5DsR and on the a7RIV is that this is very misleading. The sensor of a camera does not change the optical properties of a lens. What does change, however, is the amount of pixels that aberrations and optical flaws cover. Instead of a few pixels, purple fringing will cover 2-3x more…making it much more obvious at a pixel level. Ditto for the “haze” to textures that comes from surface aberrations.
Here’s a good example. I tested the new Sigma 35mm F1.2 DN ART for coma on both the a9 and the a7RIV. Obviously the lens has equal amounts of coma in both applications, but at a pixel level the comatic aberrations (wings growing on stars in the corners) is much more obvious on the a7RIV:
Is the lens performing worse? No. The flaws are just more visible due to high magnification at a pixel. When viewed globally, they won’t look any different.
My vintage glass that I tested (SMC Takumar 50mm F1.4 and Helios 44-2) looked a little rough at wide apertures because it exposes the low contrast, hazy textures, and chromatic aberrations that older, less corrected lenses often have. But if I throw an inexpensive modern lens on there like the Samyang AF 45mm F1.8 (my review here), it looks great even at F1.8 (second image is a crop):
A serious advantage the a7RIV has over, say, the Canon 5DsR is the IBIS (in body image stabilization), that helps with motion blur. Like other aberrations, motion blur will occupy more pixels and make images look softer, so having good stability is extra important when shooting at higher resolutions. I actually saw very few images impacted by motion blur, though I did find trying to handhold images at low shutter speeds a bit more challenging for this reason.
If you want to see how a number of other lenses hold up, take a look at this video highlighted above.
There’s no question that there are many applications for this high resolution. I think that most photographers wouldn’t mind having the option of having 61MP available; they just don’t want to shoot every shot that high!
Dynamic Range
Dynamic range has become one those topics debated ad nauseum on photography forums and harped on by certain reviewers to the place where some perspective has been lost on the topic. It has become one of the key “stats” where brand fanboys either push their brand or bash another, causing many people to become disgusted with the term in general. That being said, there is no question that there are a number of situations where improved dynamic range gives the photographer (and particularly the post-processor) more latitude to fulfill their vision. This could be in the ability to recover a blown-out sky or shadowed area as a landscape photographer or the ability to balance a foreground subject with a background or sky for portrait photographers. I’ve also been able to save images where I captured something special but a flash didn’t fire, like in this key moment shooting a wedding and using a smoke bomb:
As DR has improved dramatically in recent years, I have found that I do exposure blending/HDR less often, as it is often possible to get the result I want out of a single exposure. This helps simplify my workflow and yet create images that fulfill my artistic vision. Dynamic range is the range of visible light that a sensor can record, and the Sony a7RIV boasts a rated 15 stops of dynamic range (essentially the same as the a7RIII), though this figure is at a standardized 8 MP downsampling (this is the DXO approach). While this is useful for standardizing test results, note that in most practical situations (at a native pixel level) that dynamic range is a little below 14 stops.
I did head to head comparisons with the a7RIII, which I’ve previously compared against a number of other cameras from Sony, Canon, Nikon, and Fuji. What I found is that while there are minor variances, the end result is practically the same. You can recover shadows and highlights to essentially the same degree.
When recovering shadows, you start to introduce some minor noise and color cast issues somewhere between 3 and 4 stops of underexposure. The first crop is from a 3 stop image, the second is 4 stops, and the final is the original to show you how much shadow is being recovered.
You have a lot of latitude when recovering shadows on the a7RIV. You might see a little more noise than the a7RIII for the reason we discussed before; at a pixel level the noise introduced will be magnified a bit.
As is typical, it’s a little harder to recover highlights in the extreme. Two stops is no problem, but starting at three stops little “hot spots” start to appear where highlight information cannot be recovered. By four stops a lot of data is lost (as you can see in the second image below). The third image shows just how much overexposure we are trying to recover in that final image.
My typical recommendation if you are shooting a scene where you need a lot of dynamic range is to slightly underexposure, as shadows can often be more cleanly recovered than highlights.
While there isn’t really any progress here from the a7RIII, the a7RIV is one of the best cameras on the market for recovering highlights and shadows. You never know what is waiting in the shadows…
ISO Performance
I ran controlled tests with the a7RIV, the a7RIII, and the a9, and found pretty much what I expected. A high resolution sensor is at a serious disadvantage at higher ISOs because of the high concentration of pixels on the sensor area. The Canon 5DsR had a maximum native ISO of only 6400, and noise levels were already very high by that point. The a7RIV is orders of magnitude better, with much lower levels of visible noise and no strange color banding when the shadows are raised at ISO 6400.
That being said, the a7RIV does take a step back from the a7RIII. They both share a native ISO range of 100-32,000, but the a7RIII has clear advantages in both the appearance of the noise (less coarse) and lower levels of color shift/color casts at higher ISO values. What surprised me is that this was true even after I downsampled the a7RIV image to a7RIII dimensions (to learn what I mean by downsampling, I recommend that you watch this video.) You can see what I mean here:
The cleanest results at higher ISO values comes from the a9 (and I found the same to be true when I reviewed the a7III). A downsampled comparison from the a7RIV (which theoretically favors the a7RIV) shows that the a9 has smoother results (less apparent noise), but, perhaps more importantly, you can see that while there has a been a green color shift to the a7RIV image, the a9’s image has retained near perfect color fidelity. If your priority is shooting events in poorly lit venues, the a9 or a7III is your best bet, followed by the a7RIII, and then the a7RIV. You have to choose the right tool for the job.
The anecdotal feedback I’m getting from those who have upgraded to the a7RIV is that photographers feel that they are seeing a little more noise at lower ISOs than what they are accustomed to. That’s an unavoidable tradeoff for the increased resolution. There is a step back from what we saw on the a7RIII.
That being said, the a7RIV does a remarkable job of managing noise at higher ISO values, and if you were to compare it to the Canon 5DsR, for example, you would see just how well Sony has done in mitigating this liability of higher resolution.
Color Science
There has been a fair bit of debate over Sony color. When I did extensive comparisons with the a7RIII (against the Canon 5D Mark IV and Nikon D850), I found the Canon colors to be the most neutral, with the Sony color most likely to have a bit of green/yellow tint in the skin tones. I’ve found that to be less true with the passage of time, which suggests to me that at least part of the improvement has been that Adobe has gotten better with its color profiles and processing of Sony colors. I won’t rehash that argument here, and will instead reserve my comparison to the a7RIII.
When I did a side by side comparison with a portrait subject, I found essentially what I did when I reviewed the a7III; Sony seems to have responded to some of the criticisms of the a7RIII by slightly reducing saturation in certain color channels. Reds seem slightly more saturated (a bit like Canon) in the a7RIII compared to the RIV, and I prefer the look of the RIII skin tones in this particular example. The RIV skin tones look fairly neutral to me, but they are also slightly “washed-out” to my eye when compared with the a7RIII, which allows the yellows to be slightly more apparent. This could be (at least in part) because Adobe has gotten better with the a7RIII’s color over time; it could also simply be the behavior of the new sensor. The third image comparison below shows both images with minor tweaks to improve saturation and vibrancy.
I have no actual concerns on this front, however, as I have a catalog full of images from my review period that have fantastic color shot on a wide variety of lenses:
To see many more photos that will help illustrate these points, take a look at the image galleries here.
Video Performance
One of the strengths of the Sony mirrorless brand for the past five years has been on the video side of things, where Sony has been far more aggressive than Canon or Nikon in introducing video features. The trend of pushing the envelope ends here, however, as Sony introduced more evolutionary than revolutionary touches here. Codecs, framerates, and basic specs stay the same. The codec choices are mostly MP4 variants (XAVC-S) in a compressed IPB format that is limited to 100Mbs. 4K framerates are still limited to 24/25/30P, and Full HD (1080) footage up to 120P. The only difference is that in super 35 mode the image is downsampled from 6K and comes without pixel binning. This (in theory) will produce slightly better results than the a7RIII, which downsampled from 5K, though in a side by side comparison the difference wasn’t significant enough for me to spot. There might be other situations/environments where most difference is apparent. In another clip (not Super 35), I actually felt the a7RIV’s footage looked a bit crisper, so make of that what you will.
After comparing a lot of footage, in fact, I would say that now the full angle of view and Super 35 footage looks more similar in sharpness to my eye. I don’t feel there is any significant loss when electing for the full view now, though as always Super 35 also means you get the option of using lenses designed for that crop (APS-C lenses) without having vignette issues.
SLOG 3 is still available (with a stated 14 stop dynamic range!) along with a Hybrid-LOG Gamma (HLG) profile for high dynamic range video. You can see a lot of video in this final review episode:
While there are no big headline improvements on the video front (and thus a lot of people will write off any upgrades), there are actually two significant upgrades that I see. The first is autofocus-oriented, as real-time Eye AF is now available for video recording. When the a7RIII was released, I still felt like Canon had the advantage with its DPAF video focus technology, but I now feel that Sony has caught up on this front. The a7RIV has proven very stable for my video episodes, with great face tracking not marred by video pulsing. This is really important for someone like me and a host of other people that get in front of the camera or VLOG.
The second improvement is the introduction to truly digital audio capabilities through an upgraded hot-shoe (now referred to as a “Multi-Interface Shoe”). The ECM-B1M microphone is the first to take advantage of this, and this new microphone can do analogue to digital conversation internally to output a direct digital signal.
Better focus and better sound makes for better video, even if we didn’t get the 4K60 that many people wanted.
Earlier Sony cameras had two main areas people complained about for video work: battery life and overheating issues, but Sony had already largely solved those issues with the NP-FZ100 battery and it’s higher capacity along with better heat dissipation in more recent bodies. I hear essentially no complaints on these fronts from my viewers/readers, and have no real complaints of my own. My only real complaints on those fronts have been from my a6500, a camera that predates both improvements.
Sony’s EVF has an extra degree of usefulness when recording video, as you can playback video clips not only on the screen but on the viewfinder. I find this very useful if I’m recording in bright, sunny conditions where it’s difficult to see anything on the LCD screen. I can get better feedback on the levels of my footage that way, and the new higher resolution viewfinder is a treat.
Sony’s built in 5 axis Steady Shot OSS is undoubtedly useful, as it applies equally to whatever lens you may have mounted for video. It doesn’t really rival the smoothness of footage you can grab with, say, a motorized gimbal like the Moza Air Cross but it is certainly better than having no stabilization. I think Sony’s IBIS works a little better for stills than video, though.
So, even though there are no major headline improvements to video, video performance remains excellent (unless you need 4K60!!)
Conclusion
The Sony a7RIV is a surprisingly controversial camera. It is a camera loaded with upgrades, from improved ergonomics to improved autofocus to record-setting resolution. But it is this last point that actually creates the controversy. While there are certainly those who have responded to my numerous videos on the a7RIV stating that they value and are loving the extra resolution, many more have written to say that they would have preferred all of the other upgrades but a megapixel count staying near 42 (perhaps with a few improvements to the existing sensor). Ironically people are disappointed with Sony for not bumping up the resolution on the a9II (there were hot rumors over a 36MP sensor going in the a9II) while being simultaneously disappointed with Sony for increasing the resolution on the a7R series.
While this may seem unreasonable, I do understand the sentiment. I think Sony could have solved that problem with one minor change to the a7RIV; include the same RAW resolution options as they did with JPEGs (60, 26, and 15MPs). Even better would be to give us RAW options like 60, 30, and 15MPs. This would allow people to offset the liabilities of always shooting with such high resolution by reserving it for the times it was truly needed. Maybe it’s not too late, and perhaps they can add some option via firmware. As someone who has shot with the a7RIII since its release, I can certainly say that even 42MP is not always necessary or welcome. It’s also disappointing that Sony hasn’t managed to improve some of the little details like a lackluster touchscreen and the inability to access some menu options while the buffer clears.
That aside, however, the Sony a7RIV is a camera that shows a lot of signs of maturity. It feels better in the hands. It has better ergonomics, better button and wheel positioning, and better feeling doors and ports on the camera body. It’s very apparent at close inspection that more effort has put into sealing the camera from moisture and dust (though sensor dust continues to be an issue here!) The autofocus system feels very similar to the a9 in most situations, and there is a real and apparent improvement over the already excellent AF in the a7RIII. You will find that many adapted lenses perform more confidently, though they are becoming less necessary as Sony has enjoyed the strongest support from third party lens makers over the past two years of any system. The Sony FE lens catalog is truly mature now, with a variety of options at varying price points now available at most focal lengths (with perhaps the exception of telephoto lenses). Sony has even done a good job of mitigating many of the potential downsides of such a high resolution camera, with only minor hits to ISO performance and buffer depth. The fact that you can still get 10FPS with so much resolution is impressive.
While the Sony a7RIV is far more accessible than what was the Canon 5DsR, I can’t help but think that Sony has created a more niche camera here due to the extreme nature of the resolution. Perhaps this is intentional, and they are creating space for a mid-grade model (might the a7IV move a bit up-market?). Perhaps they overestimated the market’s demand for higher resolution. Time will tell. In the meantime, however, my conclusion is this: not everyone needs a camera with this high of resolution, but that doesn’t stop the a7RIV from being a truly fantastic camera with a host of genuine strengths.
Pros:
Record-setting resolution at 61MP
Improved ergonomics; the camera feels better in hand
Strong autofocus improvements (567 PDAF points) makes it very near the a9 in performance
No real compromises to frame rate or buffer depth despite the 32% higher resolution
Better weather sealing and more logic design to ports and doors
Video improvements – minor picture improvements, better AF tracking, better audio
26MP crop mode is genuinely useful, as is the increased buffer depth in APS-C mode
Improved, high resolution viewfinder is a treat
Cons:
Record-setting resolution at 61MP (No options for lower RAW resolutions)
Touchscreen implementation lackluster
Camera still takes longer than competitors to empty buffer
More visible noise at lower ISO levels compared to a7RIII
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Keywords: Sony a7R IV, Sony a7riv, Sony a7r4, Sony a7RIV, Sony A7r IV Review, a7riv review, Sony, A7R IV, a7r 4, Review, 61MP, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Battery Life, Canon EOS R, Sony a7rIII, Video Test, Sigma 14-25mm F2.8 DN, Tamron 17-28mm F2.8, Sigma 35mm F1.2, Focus, Burst Rate, Tracking, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 201p, Ergonomics, Sigma MC-11, Metabones, Vello, Sony a9
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It’s here! I’ve got a copy of the new 61MP Sony a7R IV in for review. This is Sony’s latest warning shot to Canon and Nikon that they are going to have a HARD time carving up Sony’s vast mirrorless market share. Improved build and ergonomics, improved autofocus, more resolution, and more. But does all of the new features on paper add up to a camera worthy of upgrading to? That’s the purpose of this review, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s a cache of images to let you see whether the Sony a7R IV is the new camera for you. Check back often!
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Keywords: Sony a7R IV, Sony a7riv, Sony a7r4, Sony a7RIV, Sony A7r IV Review, a7riv review, Sony, A7R IV, a7r 4, Review, 61MP, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Battery Life, Canon EOS R, Sony a7rIII, Video Test, Sigma 14-25mm F2.8 DN, Tamron 17-28mm F2.8, Sigma 35mm F1.2, Focus, Burst Rate, Tracking, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 201p, Ergonomics, Sigma MC-11, Metabones, Vello, Sony a9
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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