Sony Alpha 7R IV Full Frame Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera w/High Resolution 61MP Sensor, up to 10FPS with Continuous AF/AE Tracking

The A7R4 isn’t for everyone, but if your niche meets the needs of high resolution and mirrorless performance, it is fantastic.

Combined with the Sony 90mm Macro I can attain tac sharp focus handheld on insect eyes. I can shoot tiny jumping spiders, assassin bugs, flowers, lichen, moss, and all kinds of incredibly tiny subjects. APSC mode (or crop in Lightroom) makes this both the highest resolution Full Frame as well as a phenomenal Crop Sensor camera. Win win!

Combined with Sony 24-70 F2.8 GM, I can shoot all of my day-to-day non-macro photos. Things like street photography, infant photography, family photos, and more.

If dual memory card slots is critical to you, then this is a feature you need and will love. Most mirrorless cameras (ie Nikon) are a dang joke! So sad! Seriously, if you don’t have dual cards in the camera then it is just a toy, not a tool. Professionals can’t risk loosing photos.

File size is huge, managing space might be hard, a fast computer will help in processing and managing your files. Google drive doesn’t support Sony RAW files, so I also save jpg versions for quick viewing. More space gone… more upload time required.

The app is actually really great for a newer app. Connecting works all the time, but only if you do things in a particular order. They should fix that… I can control my exposure triangle from the app, shoot, and review a low resolution sample. Great for a remote shutter. Doesnt let me touch to focus… would love remote focus with focus magnifier. Would die for the same with a focus stacking mode from the app. I might be a dreamer though, probably won’t ever see this.

Ok, and the back screen. Seriously Sony?! Still poor resolution, but the biggest sin is that the screen still doesn’t flip around like canon cameras! Holy smokes, catch a clue Sony! Vloggers are a huge deal, stop ignoring them! At least the app can give you a remote live view experience on your cell phone. So that seems to be a workaround for me. But I can see that not working well for people that blog a lot.

Most people could do well with an A7R3 instead. Could you benefit from the savings? Could you use that for more accessories or glass? Would that help you more than the resolution jump? Maybe!

For macro, the super high resolution is really a big help. Know your needs!

Hope this helps you decide on your next camera! I love my Sony A7R4!

Ok so after a few days upgrading from my good old Canon 6d, here are a few cons :

Noise :
– noisier than A7R3 and A73 so not great for taking pictures of my kids inside with only ambient lightning
– A7R4 is about 1/3 stop noisier than A7R3 which means, to have as little noise, you need to let enter 1/3 stop more light
– which means you need to lower your shutter speed (or increase aperture) by 1/3 stop, for example from f/250 to f/160, which means you will have more difficulty freezing action so your image have chances to be blurrier

File size :
– uncompressed raw files are huge (120mb)
– there is no lossless raw compression
– you will a fast computer ($$) and a lot of SSD space to process these files
– you will need large fast SD cards (UHS-II, U3, at least 256GB) that are expensive ($$)
– even Sony SF-M sd card is relatively slow and won’t allow me to quickly see my photos to review focus for example, I have to wait for the buffer to clear, else it’s laggy, which is quite annoying, I will have to try Sony SF-G
– Canon r5, Sony a7rIII, a7s3 files are much smaller so they are faster to process, think about it since your time is valuable

Complexity :
– not much is simple with this camera
– menus could be worst but they are not user friendly at all
– a “slow” SD card makes shooting in continuous mode quite annoying/odd/slow, Sony should warn the user
– no scene selection mode like on my Canon 6D for people that want or need simplicity (I don’t trust full auto mode)
– saved settings for memory recalls can’t be renamed to meaningful description
– touch tracking not enabled by default
– limited touch screen functionalities (only useful to set tracking point basically)
– enabling Preview makes Continuous Mode atrocious because the Preview also appears in the Viewfinder
– to zoom a Sony lens, it’s the inverse direction than on the Canon (might be Canon’s fault)
– would be nice if Sony gave recommended settings (some kind of pre-sets/suggestions for Custom Keys/Buttons and My Menu Favorites)
– no automatic focus bracketing
– PlayMemories software keeps creating .modd files and importing my PC pictures in its library even if I unselected all folders from being imported.

I tried the feature “View on TV”, I get “could not authenticate the connection” on the camera and Registration failed on my sony TV (xbr 65x900e). I tried multiple times. Then I tried connecting by entering the password, I got “could not find the access point”.

Then I tried the new app for ios devices called Visual Story. First, why not on android ? This is not very respectful of android users. Second, it was not available in Canada. Third, (once I changed my country in apple store) the process to set it up is a mess, the ipad does not see the camera when trying to connect via bluetooth to set up the FTP and I tried with multiple ipads.

Update after a few months : I got used to its many flaws and I was able to get good results without too much trouble. But this does not make it a better product. Another missing opportunity : there is no way to see the focus points using Sony Imaging Edge. Let’s say you want to check where your focus was to better understand the end result. Finally, for video, the image stabilization is disappointing. My phone and my gopro are miles better and both are less expensive. Now Sony released the A1, double the price of the R4 and they have not updated the firmware on the R4 since over 6 months, pretty disappointing, not sure I will buy another camera from Sony because I don’t want to encourage Sony to release more expensive products instead of improving flawed products already released.

Any pros ? Ok cropping when you have images of that size/resolution is pretty insane (as long as you have low iso and no motion blur), dual slot is always good to have, dynamic range is good, battery life is ok and it survived to Canadian winters.

Incredible camera. I upgraded from the A7iii and I am amazed by the picture quality and the ability to crop the photos and still retain the resolution. I took it on a recent trip to Key West for a wild dolphins watch. I am so glad I brought the A7riv with me. I was able to take some amazing pics of the dolphins from far away using the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 and then crop in. The focus tracking works amazingly well as well. Noise is definitely worst then the A7iii in low light situation. But I am willing to live with that with all the other amazing features of the A7Riv.

Sony A7R IV has the resolution, autofocus, speed, and form factor that should place it near the top ranks for Camera of the Year honors. A bit disappointed to see little work done on the camera’s menu structure. The camera offers 14-bit uncompressed Raw or compressed Raws that use Sony’s potentially destructive compression. There’s still no lossless or visually lossless compression option.

There is no 4K/60p on the a7R IV but the camera remains a strictly 8-bit video camera. Most rivals now offer 10-bit capture or output: something that gives a significant boost in terms of editing flexibility to Log footage, so it’s odd not to see it here.

Rather than resolving existing quirks and foibles, Sony is more focused on adding attention-grabbing new features and, to be fair, Full-time Eye AF / Full-time Tracking are very impressive.

I love the technology and the 61 megapixels.

Three months after the warranty expired the shutter stopped working. After reading some literature it was obvious that other customers did have the same issues. Unlike Nikon or Canon professional cameras, Sony cameras have very low actuation numbers.