Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
Today we're taking a look at the Sony A7r IV. Thanks to
Camera Craft in Rockford Illinois for letting me try this out at their shop. The A7r IV
is currently one of the highest megapixel full-frame mirrorless cameras
on the market. 61 megapixels! Of course you can crop
down to aps-c format. You get around 26 megapixels in that case. This is a
higher-end camera. That means it has a lot of buttons, a lot of control, a lot of
features for those professional photographers. 1/8000th of a
second maximum shutter speed mechanical. Electronic shutter that you can use as
well. 1/250th of a second maximum flash sync
speed with that mechanical shutter. It does have the steady shot Shake
Reduction in the camera itself. It is rated up to 5.5 stops depending on what
lens you are using. Given the number of megapixels in this camera, it felt pretty
prompt to use. I didn't notice any issues with lag in the camera. Of course, I
wasn't hitting the buffer at all. Just doing single photos. Given this line of
camera, given the level of this camera, it has that larger battery, which is nice to
have in a camera like this especially. It has that NP-FZ100 battery. The body
itself feels very rugged in line with a camera you would expect to feel like at
this level. Sony, of course, says this camera has weather resistance. So just
know that's in there. So it has seals and gaskets to help avoid water getting into
the camera. Given that this is a mirrorless camera, it of course, has the
electronic viewfinder. It's large, it's nice, its high megapixel, it's one of the
top-end currently of mirrorless cameras. The back screen is a touchscreen. It is
somewhat limited. You just get the touch to focus if you want that available. The
screen itself does tilt, but it doesn't have a large degree of tilt to it. On the
bottom of the camera, of course, there is the tripod second. It is in-line with the
lens, as usual, with a camera like this. But it is somewhat forward on the
camera. It would have been nice if it were more centered. Not gonna be an issue,
just take note of that. Given this level of camera, it has no flash... and a hot shoe.
That's standard for these type of cameras. No issues there. Ports are
sectioned off into groups. You have different types of ports. So you have the
two different USB ports. The C and the standard micro, which Sony also calls the
multi port. And then you have the microphone port, headphone port, and the type-D HDMI, which
is the smallest type of HDMI port. The A7r IV does have the
flash sync port. So if that's something you use. You're a studio photographer, or
whatever, it's in there. The covers on the ports are simple rubber. They're easy to
open and close. Definitely nice there. If you ever
damage one you can probably replace it pretty easily. The camera is relatively
short, but just have a thick grip. So maybe your pinkie won't have enough room...
But you do have a large easy to hold grip on there. The mode dial, which has a
lock on it... You hold that button down and you can rotate it. The exposure
compensation dial also has a lock on it. In this case you have to press it on or
off. I think I would have preferred that the mode dial lock be the same as
exposure compensation lock where you could turn it off or turn it on rather
than having to hold it down. As with most Sony cameras, there are a
lot of custom buttons you can control and adjust as you would like
throughout the camera. The placement of the video record button is in a decent
spot given the limited space on the camera. The mode dial is clean. It does
not have unnecessary modes on it. You have three memory save slots on the
mode dial, which is very nice to have. What you can do there is push setting
groups into those slots and easily adjust the mode dial to switch to that
specific group of settings. I really love having those features on a camera. On
Sony cameras one of the main buttons used as the Fn button. It allows you
quick access to settings that you would want change most likely without having
to go deep into their menu system. A lot of professionals, a lot of photographers
like using a back button to initiate autofocus. In this case it has a
dedicated AF-ON button that you can use. Below that you have a nub for adjusting
the autofocus point. It works very nicely to move your autofocus point around the
camera, and it's also a button itself which you can press to have the camera
go to the center autofocus point. There are two SD card slots on the camera. They
are UHS-II. So you have faster speeds on both card slots, which is nice to have. I
did try the wireless capabilities on this camera with their Imaging Edge app...
It is very quick to connect with their QR code method of connection. And it gives
you a decent amount of options. However, I couldn't figure out any way to adjust the
autofocus point through the app. When I was in manual mode I could adjust all the
main settings that I needed to. So let's go through some of the settings...
some of the menu options in this camera. If you're worried about the size of
RAW photos, you can do compressed RAW with this camera. There are a lot of
photographers focus features like bracketing, interval modes, also the pixel
shift. By using the Shake Reduction mechanism in the camera you can have
very large photos where it's shifted just a pixel at a time with that
mechanical device in the camera. Sony's latest cameras are very advanced with
autofocus. There are a multitude of options. It's got face priority, eye priority,
animal priority, AF-S AF-A, AF-C, DMF and MF for the main autofocus options. AF-C is
the continuous. You'll probably want to be using that most of the time. DMF is a
autofocus with manual focus adjustment after you gain focus the first time. With
manual focus you do have the option of using peaking on the camera with
different levels and colors . The camera of course does have a silent photo mode.
It does not use the mechanical shutter. While this camera is very focused on
photography it does have a lot of options with video as well. You have the
4k video up to 30 frames, second 100 megabits
Also, the 1080p modes up to 120 frames a second. You have a lot of AF adjustments
in the settings for video mode, which is nice if you want to just how quickly the
camera will focus on subjects or track subjects. You do have the option to
display audio levels on the screen which is very nice to have with video. So with
the video samples you can see if there is any rolling shutter. It's very
important if you do a lot of quick movements with your video.
I did do a quick slow motion test with a cloth. You could see I drop it on there...
Basically it's in there, it's an option.
Let's take a look at the sample photos from this camera. Of course these are huge
files. I'm going to show the JPEGs that I took at the highest quality setting.
We'll go at a full view and then 100% crop of each photo...
The Sony A7r IV is a very impressive camera once you get it in your hands, you
can feel that it is solidly built. It has a huge amount of options. It has a large
amount of controls direct controls customizable controls. And definitely
focused towards professionals. People that are into landscape photography, studio
work... Any situation where you need a large amount of detail in your photos of
course you want to pair this camera with high quality lenses if you want that
absolute image quality, And consider things like using the electronic first
curtain shredder mode on the camera. So you have less internal shake to deal
with. I see this camera as a great option for any professional photographer that
is not concerned about large image files. They can deal with that storage wise and
someone who's not too concerned with super fast action. Of course this camera
will do just fine in that, but you do have options like the A9 series that
are better in that case. Anyways, hope you enjoyed this video. I'm Scott of Photography Banzai
Again, thanks to Camera Craft in Rockford Illinois for let me try this out at
their shop, and film there. Very much appreciated. Hope you enjoyed the video.
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