Sony A7R V
Big test
PRICE: £3999
SONY.CO.UK
If you seek high resolution, but don’t want medium format, this 61-megapixel Sony may be just the ticket. Time to find out if the numbers stack up
I REMEMBER WHEN Sony got serious about photography. Its first DSLR, the 10-megapixel Alpha 100 which launched in 2006, was the result of a collaboration with Konica Minolta. There was much talk of shared technologies, plus the fact that subsequent Alpha models would employ the Minolta bayonet mount, offering a lifeline to the 16 million lenses already out in the wild. I wasn’t wholly convinced, but although the company made unusual choices – DSLT anyone? – from these relatively modest beginnings, Sony has grown into a photographic superpower, which has largely followed the market shift to mirrorless. As Roman numeral fans will be aware, the A7R V is the fifth iteration of the A7R, which first appeared in 2013. The R range has always been the first port of call for those seeking a compact full-frame mirrorless with a hefty resolution. The first model boasted 36 megapixels back when 24 was considered the norm, and this version has 61 of the blighters – that means file dimensions of 9504x6336 in the largest 3:2 ratio. If you want to go larger than that, you have to consider medium format options such as the Fujifilm GFX 100S or Hasselblad X2D 100C, which represent a greater investment. That’s not to say the A7R V’s £4000 price tag isn’t a serious consideration, mind. While 61 megapixels is a sizable number, in reality the V uses exactly the same sensor as the model it replaces, so if you’re an existing IV owner, you’ll need to justify the switch elsewhere on the spec list. Don’t worry, there are plenty of options. One major change comes in the imaging engine, which for the first time is Sony’s Bionz XR unit – claimed to be up to eight times more powerful than its predecessor.
WORDS & IMAGES BY
ROGER PAYNE
SPECS › Price £3999 body only › Sensor 35.7x23.8mm full-frame Exmor R CMOS › Resolution 61 megapixels › Imaging engine Bionz XR › Sensitivity ISO 100-32,000 (stills expandable to 50 and 102,400) › Metering TTL 1200 zone with multi-segment, centre- weighted, spot (standard/large), entire screen average and highlight options › Exposure modes PASM, iAuto › Exposure compensation +/-5EV in 1/3EV steps › Image stabiliser Image sensor- shift mechanism with five-axis compensation, up to eight stops › Shutter speed range 15 minutes to 1/8000sec, plus B (mechanical), 15 minutes to 1/180,000sec (electronic) › Shooting speed Up to ten frames per second › Pixel Shift Multi Shooting Four- and 16-frame options up to 19,008x12,672 › Autofocus modes Automatic, single, continuous, direct manual, manual focus › Viewfinder 0.63in OLED with 9.44m dots and 0.9x magnification › Rear LCD 3.2in four-axis tilting touchscreen, 2.09m dots › Movie recording 8K/24p, 4K/60p, Full HD/120p › Storage media SD/SDHC/SDXC/ CFexpress Type A dual card slots, UHS-I and UHS-II compatible › Connectivity Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HDMI Type A, USB-C, multi USB, 3.5mm audio in and out › Power NP-FZ100 battery › Dimensions (wxhxd) 131.3x96.9x82.4mm › Weight 723g with battery and memory card
“THE AF SYSTEM HAS A HUGE AMOUNT OF MODIFIABLE FUNCTIONALITY”
This has a number of advantages for movie and image processing, but also improves autofocus performance, particularly in the area of subject recognition and tracking. Much claimed improvement is attributed to the use of artificial intelligence and deep learning. This means the AF system is fed with information about how human beings move to help estimate poses and focus accordingly. In short, the camera claims to know someone’s next move before they make it. This tech has been expanded to other moving objects as well – animals, birds, various vehicles and insects. There’s also a remarkable amount of customisation available with this particular AF feature, all accessed through the subject recognition menu option. Choose ‘animal’, for example, and you can fine- tune tracking shift range, tracking persistence level, recognition sensitivity and even which part of the animal’s anatomy you focus on: eye, head and body; eye and head; or eye only. I didn’t delve too deeply into these sub-menus, but safe to
say when a helicopter flew overhead while I was out testing, I switched to ‘airplane’ and it followed it perfectly. The AF system has a huge amount of modifiable functionality on offer – I’d even go so far as saying there’s too much choice – but you can certainly tailor precisely how the camera behaves if you put in the groundwork to learn what each of the many menu settings does. While we are on the subject of menus, the Sony’s are colourful and largely easy to navigate. The menu button itself is rather awkwardly placed on the left shoulder of the camera, which demands two-handed operation – that’s not ideal when the camera is up to your eye – but it’s simple enough to reassign functions to different buttons. As a regular Fujifilm user, this meant the button in the centre of the vertical dial on the back of the camera; a much
more logical place to access camera menus, to me at least. Some aspects of camera handling aren’t customisable, though, the very busy nature of the body design being the most obvious example. For me, this has always been one of Sony’s shortfalls – a seeming inability to produce an aesthetically pleasing body design. The curved handgrip is day-long comfortable, but I found the main exposure mode dial to be a bit fiddly – you have to press the central button down, then turn – and then there are two dials near where your thumb comes to rest. One of these freely rotates to change settings, while the other is set for exposure compensation by default, but can be assigned a different function. This latter dial has a central button to lock it, which makes sense, but I would have liked to see the same type of control on the exposure mode dial.
IN PLAIN VIEW A 9.44m-dot EVF grants perfect clarity in composition
14 Photography News | Issue 105
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