Sony a7R V vs a7R IV: what’s changed and is it worth the upgrade?

Introduction

The Sony a7R V is the company’s latest high-end, high-resolution full-frame mirrorless camera. It is built around the same 60MP BSI sensor as its predecessor but with a huge increase in processing capacity that brings improvements of varying degrees across the board.

We’re going to look at the main improvements and upgrades, so you can see how much they do (or don’t) add for your photography, compared with the a7R IV(A).

What is the a7R V?

Before we dig into what’s new, it’s worth stepping back to consider what the a7R V is as a camera in its own right, rather than an upgraded model.

The a7R series is Sony’s traditional high-res model line that sits alongside its video-focused a7S series and its mid-range all-rounder a7 series. (In addition, the company offers the compact, so-far-standalone a7C.) The a7R models are primarily aimed at disciplines that benefit from high-resolution images, such as landscapes, portraiture and commercial photography. While these cameras have all offered video, they aren’t optimized for it. Nor are they designed to compete in speed with the sports-and-wildlife-focused a9 and a1 models.

In the case of the a7R V, the camera offers a 60MP BSI CMOS sensor, image stabilization, continuous shooting at up to 10 fps (with caveats), advanced subject-recognition AF and a host of tools allowing the camera to lend itself to a number of specific photographic niches.

Autofocus

The a7R V becomes the first Sony camera to offer a new-generation AF system. It gains a dedicated processor for crunching the complex subject recognition algorithms developed though machine learning, with the result that it promises the most sophisticated subject recognition yet offered in an Alpha camera.

To begin with, the a7R V has a more advanced human-recognition system that, in addition to recognizing eyes, faces, heads and bodies, has been trained to recognize a variety of body parts and even poses, all enabling it to track a person more reliably through changing postures and greater distances. Sony also says its eye detection is better at focusing on the surface of the eye, rather than eyelashes.

Beyond this, the camera can recognize the eyes, faces and heads of animals and birds, as well as the heads and bodies of insects. It can also identify and track cars, trains and planes. You need to manually select which of these subjects the system looks for, and each has an array of fine-tuning options to maximize your hit rate with the specific subject you’re shooting.

Unlike previous Sony models, all these recognition capabilities are available in video mode, not just stills. The AF system is also rated to work in lower light (down to -4EV) than its predecessor.

The new processing hardware as well as the in-depth subject-recognition features mean that the a7R V is able to offer a more sophisticated AF system than the pro-targeted a1 (though the much faster sensor readout in the a1 is likely to translate into better performance with moving subjects).

Image stabilization

Another major improvement, this one very appropriate to a high-resolution camera, is in the image stabilization system. New gyro sensors and increased processing power allow it to achieve a rating of 8.0EV of correction, according to industry-standard tests.

These tests tend to over-state the real-world benefits (we doubt it’s going to give the same stability when hand-holding a 1-second exposure that you’d get from hand-holding one 8 stops faster, or 1/250 sec), but it still marks a significant performance improvement over the 5.5EV rating of the previous model.

Raw options

The a7R V gains the option of lossless compressed Raw that was introduced after the a7R IV was released, meaning there’s now a middle-ground between the vast uncompressed Raws and the (slightly) damaging lossy Compressed Raw option in the older camera.

Pertinently, though, the a7R V gains the Medium and Small sized ‘Lossless’ compressed Raw options that first appeared in the range-topping a1. These are either 26 or 15MP files downsampled from the sensor’s full 60.2MP capture, which should be able to maintain more resolution than natively-sampled 26 or 15MP images.

Alternatively, the camera can shoot 26MP Medium-sized Raw files if you shoot in APS-C crop mode, or downsampled 15MP versions derived from the cropped region. This gives plenty of flexibility when not everything you shoot requires the full file size of a 60MP image.

Ergonomics

Most of the camera’s ergonomics and handling will be very familiar to a7R IV users, as the company’s body design hasn’t changed dramatically between models. A few buttons have been switched around, with the main change being the addition of a dedicated Stills/Movie/Slow&Quick-video switch.

Bigger changes come to the camera’s displays, though. The rear LCD is now a side-hinged, fully articulating display mounted on a tilt up/down cradle, offering a wider range of flexibility in its movements while also allowing it to be folded inward for protection when the camera’s not in use.

The viewfinder gets a significant upgrade, offering an impressive 0.9x magnification and 9.44M dots of resolution. You’ll need to engage its higher detail mode to get the most out of the finder while shooting (and get used to the resolution dropping as the camera focuses), but even if you just use full-res mode for playback, it’s a powerful tool for checking your shots.

Menus

The new processors also mean that the a7R V gains the new, better-laid-out menus Sony has been rolling out in its recent cameras. These use a series of vertically-arranged tabs, broken down into sub-sections, that make it quicker and easier to find your way to the option you’re looking for.

There’s also the ‘Main’ settings page in a tab near the top of the menu system, that gives you quick access to all the camera’s main settings. We’d love to see this as an option on the Fn button, but it’s a useful addition, nonetheless.

These changes, in combination with the stills/movie switch, mean you don’t have to learn and memorize the menu system before you can fully use the camera. This is particularly valuable on a model that includes such a wide array of features.

Focus bracketing and multi-shot high resolution modes

Sony has offered 4- and 16-image Pixel Shift High Resolution modes on its cameras for a while now, but these have always been limited by the need to combine the images in separate software and the fact that the merging process was very sensitive to camera or subject movement. The a7R V still requires that the images be merged in desktop software, but it gains a motion correction intelligence that does a good job of replacing moving subjects with a single, static instance. We shot examples with moving leaves, bunting and people and found that the software coped with them well.

The a7R V is also the first Alpha camera to come with Focus Bracketing. You can specify how big the focus shifts are, how many images you want to shoot and whether the camera should make smooth exposure changes between images. The output can be saved to a separate folder to make it easy to manage sequences and merge the images using desktop software.

Shutter

The shutter mechanism is the same as the one used in the a7R IV, and so offers the same maximum flash sync speed of 1/250 sec (rather than the 1/400 sec offered by the a1). This is still a usefully fast figure compared to its peers.

The shutter can be synced to the brightest point in the light cycle when shooting under conventional artificial lighting, or there’s the option to make very fine-grained adjustments to the shutter speed if you’re trying to avoid a speed that clashes with fast-flickering lights such as LEDs.

Those users who do need flash for studio work can fire compatible strobes at the camera’s full 10 fps burst rate, if necessary.

The shutter can also be set to close when the camera is turned off, reducing the risk of getting dust on the sensor, though it’s set to stay open by default, suggesting Sony is concerned about the risk of damage to the delicate shutter blades. There’s also a sensor shake option to remove dust from the sensor, and an anti-static coating to reduce the risk of it collecting in the first place.

Video

The a7R V gains a wide range of video capabilities that we first saw in the video-focused a7S III, including 10-bit capture which significantly boosts the flexibility of footage shot using the S-Log 2 or 3 profiles. It also means the camera can shoot full Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) footage for playback on compatible HDR TVs.

The camera also gains the ability to capture UHD 8K video at up to 24fps from a native 7680 x 4320 pixel region of its sensor. It can capture 4K at up to 60p from this 1.24x crop region, and can also shoot 4K footage at up to 30p either by sub-sampling the full width of the sensor or from a 6.2K APS-C region of the sensor.

Despite these promising specs – and the focus map and breathing compensation functions we’ve seen in recent Sonys – the a7R V isn’t an especially great video camera. Many of its video modes exhibit significant rolling shutter (its high-res sensor isn’t built for readout speed). It does offer plenty of separation between stills and video modes, giving you a good degree of control over which settings carry over from one mode to the other, but the main advantage of the camera’s new stills/movie switch is arguably that stills shooters need not encounter the a7R V’s many video features unless they want to use them.

Summary

Overall, the a7R V represents a surprisingly large advance over its predecessor, despite continuing to use the same 60MP sensor. It’s still the highest-megapixel full-frame chip around, and one proven to produce excellent image quality. That could mean that plenty of people will be happy to stick with the a7R IV, or even aim their upgrade path at a IV(A) if Sony follows its usual pattern of keeping the old model on at a lower price.

We won’t be able to advise on the wisdom of such a choice until we’ve had time to push the a7R V’s AF system a little further. But even if you only shoot stills there are some appreciable advantages here over the a7R IV (and IVA):

• More advanced (though also more complex) subject recognition AF
• Much improved menus
• Downsampled Raw options for smaller file sizes
• Improved image stabilization
• Dual tilt/fully-articulating rear LCD mount
• Significantly upgraded viewfinder
• Motion correction for pixel-shift mode
• Focus Bracketing
• Option to use faster CFexpress A cards for faster buffer clearance/responsiveness
• More sophisticated 2×2 MIMO Wi-Fi and USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) connections for faster tethering and transfer

Whether you’ll benefit from some or all of these improvements will depend on your own priorities and the type of photography you do, but as a layer of polish atop an already capable camera, these improvements definitely add up.