The Sony A7 IV: The Do-It-All Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera

While almost 4 years after the amazing Sony A7 III for Sony to drop a sequel. The Sony A7 IV is here and has been for several months now despite shipping delays due to chip shortages and supply chains. They made some slight changes to the body + menu settings while upping its abilities for a more competitive & must-have hybrid full-frame camera.

The specs on this put it in direct competition against the Canon EOS R6. That matches w/ it about up to 90% on paper & price before diving into the menus, crop, auto-focus, and comparing color science between the 2 cameras/companies. We finally got our hands on it to enjoy a good 2 weeks w/ it armed w/ an f/2.8 18-35mm G Master lens. We see w/ its slightly updated look & new features to see if it is worth the near $500 upgrade for it.

You still got Sony’s magnesium-alloy body that is both dust & moisture resistant w/ a larger & better grip than the A7 III. Coming from the A7S III, is a dual-slot card system that supports faster read & write card speeds. This supports both SD UHS-II and faster CFexpress Type A cards w/ read speeds up to 800MB per second read & write speeds up to 700MB per second write.

You got a new four-way multi-controller that can also act as a dial and the Mode dial gets less crowded as it is now split into 2 sections. The larger top section is the usual Auto/PASM/custom modes you see on just about every camera these days. And then the smaller bottom half is a ring switch that toggles between Photo, Video, and S&Q (slow-motion) modes. Although it may or may not sound like an extra step, it doesn’t take long to become instinctive to use.

You get the new colorized menu UI 1st seen in the A7S III here but it is more streamlined and easier to navigate, find things, & customize settings to your liking. You got a faster 3.68 million dot EVF w/ 120Hz refresh rate as well as a 3inch touchscreen LCD display from the A7S III that can flip out to use for selfies, framing, etc. The older A7 III still used the single-hinge tilting display from the a6000-series of shooters that required a monitor to see yourself.

The Sony A7 IV takes from the A7S III + A9 and puts it inside the A7 III body.

33MP Full-Frame Exmor R CMOS sensor
4K@60fps 10-bit 4:2:2, 4K@30fps 10-bit 4:2:2 oversampled from 7K w/ no pixel binning + 1080p @120fps Slow-Motion
15 stops of dynamic range
Bionz XR image processor
5-axis image stabilization
3.68 million dot EVF w/ 120 fps Refresh Rate
3inch swiveling flip-out touchscreen LCD
759-point fast hybrid auto-focus
Up to 10fps shooting
ISO 50-204,800
Real-time eye AF + tracking
Dual slots: 1 CFexpress Type A + 1 SDXC
3.5mm headphone out + mic in
Full HDMI out
USB-C in/out
4K@15fps streaming via USB-C

The A7 IV is armed w/ their BIONZ XR processor also used within the Sony A1 & A7S III. Along w/ image processing, this is handling their high-speed autofocus which can help pull off continuous shooting up to 10fps. Sony’s 759 phase-detection AF points make for faster & better eye AF for humans, birds, & other animals. Sony even has an AI-enhanced Eye AF + tracking that now works in video mode and Manual Focus Assist makes it easier to manually focus in video mode. This all makes for a stellar AF performance on the A7 IV to hone in on a subject w/ very little hunting around – whether moving or not.

Sony upgraded the sensor from 24.2MP up to 33MP sensor to give you better overall quality in various situations including low-light for photos/videos. Now on the photo side of things, we see the benefits of that larger sensor. You get great results in just about any situation: super clean images no matter the ISO and in low-light gets you close to A7S III results. The A7IV excels in AF-C mode for action photos. This takes full advantage of their tracking system to either go wide or small for focal points.

Meanwhile on the video side of things, it excels as well. You get the crisp visuals of 10-bit 4:2:2 4K@60fps from a 7K image that gives you 15 stops of dynamic range, improved color accuracy, no video recording limit, and S Log3 + S Cinetone present at launch. You even got S&Q (Slow & Quick) motion mode that records @60fp + 120fps w/ 24fps playback w/o audio. This makes speed ramping in post a lot easier.

Speaking on slow-motion, you got 1080p@120fps here. So if you want slow-motion 4K@120fps, you’ll have to shell out more $$$ for the Sony A7S III. But all isn’t smooth on the here either. You got no crop w/ 4K@30fps video but a 1.5x crop when shooting 4K@60fps. Sony equipped w/ 5-axis in-body stabilization w/ 5.5 stops of shake reduction. But despite having it, the A7 IV still suffers from some rolling shutter.

Sony uses its NP-FZ100 batteries – which is a 2280 mAh cell that equates to 520 shots or so. I only took a handful of photos as I was focused more so on video footage. I would get around just over 2 hours of juice when shooting video w/o having to deal w/ any overheating. So within 2 weeks of using the camera off/on, I had to charge it about 2 times. This is on par w/ the A7 III if not a little bit less.

Sony's upgrade from the A7 III to the A7 IV makes it even more of a jack-of-all-trades camera.

So 2 weeks in w/ the A7 IV, it is easily the jack of all trades camera – for most people. The only thing missing there folks would want is no crop in 4K and possibly 4K@120fps but other than that, it’s got you covered. Leaving you w/ everything you would need to capture high-end photos, shoot your vlog/YouTube content, or short your short/full-length feature film in one camera.

And believe it or not, this is Sony’s entry-level, pro-level full-frame mirrorless camera if you don’t count the smaller A7C. So while being more expensive than the previous model, you’re getting better overall results in more or less the same body which retails for $2,500. Keep in mind the A7S III starts at $3,500, and the Alpha 1 starts at $6,500. So you can get a lot of those features from the more expensive cameras for a lot lower barrier of entry.