I told a lot of people to wait for the Sony A7IV. Not to buy it per se, but because its release would give a better perspective of where this tech was at this level.
People weren’t as enthusiastic about this camera as I expected. Some of that comes from Sony repositioning it, but there are also some limitations compared to the competition. It’s complicated, so I’ll break it all down.
Update: The Sony A7V has since replaced the A7IV. It fixes several of my biggest complaints below: it has a partially stacked sensor for much less rolling shutter, 30fps with the electronic shutter, and a 3.2″ 2.1m-dot screen. The A7IV is still a very capable camera, though, and everything here still applies if you’re considering one.
You can see all the specs here at B&H.
Sony A7IV – B&H – sponsored link
Sony A7IV The Good, The Bad & The Annoying
Here are the important details of the A7IV and why I think some people were disappointed.
Overall, I like how this camera is positioned.
The Good
These are all the features I think are pretty cool. There is a lot I like here.
The New Positioning
Sony repositioned this camera as a mid-tier full-frame camera, and I think that threw a lot of people off. The previous A7III was Sony’s entry-level full-frame camera. It was a nice camera on the day of the launch, and it caught everyone’s attention.
The A7IV no longer plays in that space. It’s more appropriately compared to the Canon R6, which does some things better and some things worse.
I actually really like Sony’s full-frame lineup positioning. Photographers who have no interest in video can grab something like an A7c or an older A7III. Or grab an A7rIII; it’s still an awesome camera, which is why I still have mine.
Landscape photographers have the A7R line, sports shooters have the A9 III or the A1 II that does it all, and the A7sIII and FX3 are the go-to systems for fairly compact video. The A7IV sits in the middle as the hybrid that does a bit of everything.
New Camera Specs
There is a new 33MP sensor. I love this. I loved the 30MP sensor in the Canon 5DIV, and I love it in the Canon R. It’s a very versatile resolution to work with, allowing you to do everything well with very acceptable results when shooting landscape photography, without files that are so massive they’re too taxing on your system.
It does have an anti-aliasing filter, but testing shows it’s a fairly light one, so you still get plenty of detail.
We have a bunch of new body upgrades – new dials, a new grip and a new menu system. A slightly bigger camera, which is good for people with normal-sized hands.
We have a new and improved EVF with a 3.68m-dot resolution and a 120 fps refresh rate.
Flippy screen. Vloggers like these, and they are useful for vlogging. I don’t like these for photography, but some people think they do. They don’t like them; they just tricked themselves into thinking they do because they spent all this money on a camera that has it. Sometimes they are handy for landscape shooting or situations where the camera is in strange positions. But mostly they are horrible, especially for street photography, where you have to fold out a giant wing to be stealthy while shooting from the waist. Unfortunately, Sony now puts them on almost everything.
Dual Memory Card Slots; both slots support UHS-II, and slot one also accepts CFexpress Type A. With the Sony A7III and A7rIII, the second slot was only UHS-I, which was very limiting when shooting bursts with a backup configuration. CFexpress Type A is worth it here, too. In my tests, CFxA cards wrote at about 325 MB/s in the A7IV versus 222 MB/s for the fastest V90 SD card, and the buffer is effectively unlimited with CFxA. You can see all the results in my Sony A7IV memory card speed tests.
New and improved autofocus system. Now you get Real-time Tracking plus Eye AF for humans, animals and birds. The A7III got Real-time Eye AF in a firmware update, but it never got Real-time Tracking. It’s interesting to watch all the influencers now admit the A7III’s autofocus wasn’t THAT good, like I’ve been saying.
New Video Features
The big thing this camera added is the video features.
The A7IV shoots 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 internally and 4:2:2 externally, with bitrates up to 600 Mbps in XAVC S-I.
The camera samples the full 7K sensor width to produce the 4K file up to 30p, similar to what Canon does in their 4K HQ mode.
It also has all the new creative looks, and a new feature called Focus Breathing Compensation. Since many Sony lenses have a lot of focus breathing, this digitally corrects it in-camera at the cost of a crop. This is pretty cool, but the crop adds up, which I get into below.
The A7IV shoots 4K 60p, but with a 1.5x crop.
All the latest AF and tracking modes are now available in video shooting. Not a stacked sensor, so not quite the A9 III or A1 II readout speeds.
A new focus map feature that uses color blocks to let you know what’s in focus.
Unlimited video recording time.
Full-Size HDMI connection.
The Bad
There are a few not-so-great things about this camera, which caused less-than-expected hype, especially for photographers who only care about photography.
4K60 with a 1.5x crop. The upside is that the cropped mode has much less rolling shutter, but if you want 60p from the full width of the sensor, you won’t get it here.
3″ 1.03m-dot screen. This is kind of a joke at this point. Sony also varies the resolution of their screens depending on what you’re doing, like recording video, and it’s always been a pretty terrible experience. Hey, but battery life is good! And at least the EVF is good now. It’s just that manual focus on a 3″ 1.03m screen is not as great once you get used to the 3.2″ 2m-dot screens Nikon uses, and that Sony finally moved to with the A7V.
The Nikon screen also doesn’t make you fold out a giant wing when shooting from the waist, which makes it a bit more stealthy for street shooting, but it’s more difficult to film yourself when doing run-and-gun video.
Rolling Shutter – Full-width 4K reads out in about 27ms. That’s typical for a non-stacked sensor in this class, but it’s still enough to see skew on fast pans or moving subjects. The 4K60 crop mode is much better at around 13ms, so use that if rolling shutter matters for a shot.
The Annoying
Only 10fps burst with compressed RAW, which is lossy. 10fps is the same as the A7III, and it drops to about 8fps with SD cards. That’s way behind the A7V, which now shoots 30fps with the electronic shutter.
The A7IV only shoots at about 6 fps with lossless compressed or uncompressed RAW. Lossless compression is a huge deal, but unfortunately, it’s only 6 fps, which is sad. I personally never burst at more than 6 fps, so I would just leave the camera in lossless mode and not worry about it. Since it’s using a 33MP non-stacked sensor, some drop in specs, particularly sensor readout speeds, is to be expected.
Camera Feels Cheap In The Hand – For some reason, the camera feels a little cheaper than my Sony A7rIII. Buttons are still squishy, the grip kind of feels hollow and plastic even with a battery in it. The flip-out screen feels like cheap plastic. Something is off compared to some of their other cameras and other brands in general.
Sony is still the worst camera at adapting third-party lenses, like Leica M lenses. There is nothing they can do about this; they can’t just change the spec now of their micro-lenses and cover glass, or it will throw off the performance of all their existing lenses, but you definitely won’t want to buy Sony if you have a collection of M lenses or other retro film lenses.
The Biggest, Most Annoying Thing About The Sony System
I have some fundamental problems with this camera and the Sony system in general, which are kind of bugging me, and it’s not just the 3.0″ 1.03m-dot screen.
It’s an issue with the system’s overall stability when shooting video, which isn’t as much of a problem with other brands.
Here is the problem.
If you’re a run-and-gun video shooter, a lot of the Sony lenses focus breathe pretty hard. This is where the field of view changes as you focus. The Viltrox lenses have very limited focus breathing, by the way. So you can buy lenses to get around this, but third-party lenses from Viltrox don’t have the best AF. Kind of a catch-22. (By the way, most of the Nikon prime lenses do not focus breathe. The 85mm does a little.)
Sony added Focus Breathing Compensation to fix this, which is great, but it introduces a crop, which is not so great.
Next, Sony’s stabilization in video mode with IBIS is not amazing. The A7IV has Active Stabilization to help with this, which is great, or you could use Catalyst, which is great. But Catalyst needs a faster shutter, which is not great, and both introduce a significant crop.
To shoot clean video without focus breathing, you need to use Focus Breathing Compensation, which introduces a crop. Then, if you want good stability, you have to use some sort of digital stabilization, which introduces even more crop. Now you’re running around shooting 4K video with a massive crop to work around the weak IBIS and lenses that focus breathe.
This is why other systems, like Nikon or Fujifilm, make more sense to me – they don’t have these fundamental hardware problems, although I much prefer Sony’s way of doing things to Canon. At least the A7IV feels like a complete camera, with nothing intentionally removed. If you want a detailed side-by-side, the camera brand comparison guide covers Sony, Canon, Nikon, and Fujifilm in depth.
Sony A7IV vs A7V: What Changed
The A7V keeps the same 33MP resolution and the same card slot layout, but almost everything I complained about above got fixed. Here’s how the two compare on the specs that actually matter.
| Sony A7IV | Sony A7V | |
|---|---|---|
| Sensor | 33MP BSI CMOS | 33MP partially stacked BSI CMOS |
| Processor | BIONZ XR | BIONZ XR2 with AI processing unit |
| Max burst | 10fps (about 6fps in lossless or uncompressed RAW) | 30fps electronic, blackout-free / 10fps mechanical |
| Pre-capture | No | Yes, up to 1 second |
| IBIS | 5.5 stops | 7.5 stops (center) |
| Subject detection | Human, animal, bird | Human, animal, bird, insect, car/train, airplane, plus Auto |
| Rear screen | 3″ 1.03m-dot vari-angle | 3.2″ 2.1m-dot 4-axis multi-angle |
| EVF | 3.68m-dot, 120fps | 3.68m-dot, 120fps |
| 4K 60p | 1.5x crop | Full width, oversampled from 7K |
| 4K 120p | No | Yes, APS-C crop |
| Full HD | Up to 120p | Up to 240p |
| Codecs | 10-bit 4:2:2, Long GOP and All-Intra | 10-bit 4:2:2, Long GOP and All-Intra |
| Card slots | Slot 1 CFexpress Type A or SD, Slot 2 SD | Slot 1 CFexpress Type A or SD, Slot 2 SD |
| In-camera card speed (my tests) | ~325 MB/s CFxA, 222 MB/s fastest SD | ~310 MB/s CFxA, 225 MB/s fastest SD |
| Weight | 658g | 695g |
A7V specs are from Sony. Card speeds are from my A7IV and A7V in-camera tests.
The Upgrades That Matter
The partially stacked sensor is the big one. It’s what makes 30fps, blackout-free shooting and full-width 4K60 possible, and it takes care of most of the rolling shutter I complained about. It also makes the electronic shutter actually usable for moving subjects.
Pre-capture and 30fps make the A7V a real option for wildlife and sports. The A7IV was never that camera at 10fps.
IBIS went from 5.5 to 7.5 stops. That goes straight at my biggest complaint about the Sony system. With better IBIS, you’re less dependent on Active Stabilization and its extra crop when shooting handheld video.
The screen. 3.2″ and 2.1m-dot, finally. It’s also the 4-axis multi-angle design from the A7rV, so you can tilt it up and down for waist-level shooting without swinging it out to the side, which fixes my main gripe about the flippy screen for street work.
What Didn’t Change
Same resolution, same EVF, same codecs, and the same card slot layout. Your A7IV memory cards carry straight over, and in my tests, both cameras write to CFexpress Type A cards at roughly the same speed. The difference is that at 30fps, the A7V fills its buffer about three times faster, so a CFexpress Type A card matters a lot more on the A7V than it did on the A7IV.
Which One Should You Buy?
The A7IV still makes sense if you shoot portraits, landscapes, events, or travel, where 10fps is plenty and you’d rarely see rolling shutter. For video, it’s still great at 4K30 from the full sensor or 4K60 with the crop, and the 600 Mbps All-Intra is the same codec the A7V uses. If you already own one and that’s how you shoot, I don’t think you need to upgrade.
Get the A7V if you shoot action or wildlife, shoot a lot of handheld video, or want full-width 4K60 and 4K120. Those are the areas where the A7IV falls short, and the A7V fixes every one of them.
Sony A7IV vs Nikon Zf
The Nikon Zf ends up in the same conversation as the A7IV for a lot of people, and on paper it beats it in quite a few areas. But they’re very different cameras built for different people.
| Sony A7IV | Nikon Zf | |
|---|---|---|
| Sensor | 33MP BSI CMOS | 24.5MP BSI CMOS |
| Max burst (RAW) | 10fps | 14fps (30fps JPEG) |
| Pre-capture | No | Yes, JPEG in C30 mode |
| IBIS | 5.5 stops | 8 stops, with Focus-Point VR |
| Rear screen | 3″ 1.03m-dot vari-angle | 3.2″ 2.1m-dot vari-angle |
| EVF | 3.68m-dot | 3.69m-dot |
| 4K | 30p oversampled from 7K, 60p with 1.5x crop | 30p oversampled from 6K, 60p with 1.5x (DX) crop |
| Video codecs | 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265, 600 Mbps All-Intra | 10-bit H.265, no All-Intra |
| Card slots | CFexpress Type A or SD + UHS-II SD | UHS-II SD + UHS-I microSD |
| In-camera card speed (my tests) | ~325 MB/s CFxA, 222 MB/s fastest SD | 228 MB/s fastest SD |
| Extras | Focus Breathing Compensation, digital hotshoe audio | Dedicated B&W switch, 96MP pixel shift, physical dials |
| Weight | 658g | 710g |
Zf specs are from Nikon.
Where The Zf Wins
The Zf fixes a lot of what I don’t like about the A7IV. Eight stops of IBIS with Focus-Point VR is a big jump over 5.5, and it goes straight at my complaint about Sony’s stabilization. The 3.2″ 2.1m-dot screen is what the A7IV should have had, although it’s still a fully articulating flippy screen. It shoots 14fps in RAW versus 10, and it has pre-release capture, though only for JPEGs.
The real difference is the experience. The Zf has real shutter speed, ISO, and exposure compensation dials, plus a dedicated black-and-white switch. I really love having that kind of information on top of the camera, and it’s something Sony still doesn’t do. The A7IV is a tool; the Zf is more fun to shoot with. Nikon has also kept improving it through firmware, adding things like a dedicated bird-detection AF mode, focus limiting, and a film grain effect.
Adapted Leica M lenses. From my experience with both systems, Nikon’s sensor stack handles adapted M lenses much better than Sony’s. If you have a collection of M lenses or other rangefinder glass, this alone could decide it, and it pairs naturally with the Zf’s retro styling.
Where The A7IV Wins
Resolution and video. 33MP gives you noticeably more room to crop than 24.5MP. For video, the A7IV has 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 and 600 Mbps All-Intra, and the Zf has neither. Both cameras crop 1.5x for 4K60, so that’s a wash.
Memory cards. This is a big one for me. With SD cards, the two are about even: the fastest V90 card hit 228 MB/s in my Nikon Zf memory card tests versus 222 MB/s in the A7IV. The difference is that the A7IV also takes CFexpress Type A, which hit about 325 MB/s, and its second slot is a full-size UHS-II SD slot. The Zf’s second slot is a UHS-I microSD slot, which is much slower, and from experience, microSD cards aren’t as reliable as full-size cards. They’re also a little annoying to deal with; they’re tiny, easy to lose, and fiddly to get in and out of the camera. I’d only use it for JPEGs or as a backup. You can read more about that in my microSD memory card guide.
Battery and ergonomics. Sony’s NP-FZ100 battery lasts longer than the Zf’s EN-EL15c. And while the Zf looks like a compact film camera, it’s actually quite a bit bigger and clunkier than the A7IV, and I don’t love the way it feels in the hand without an additional grip. Adding one makes it even bigger. The A7IV’s deep grip is just more comfortable for long days, especially with heavier lenses.
Which One Should You Buy?
If you’re mostly a photographer who wants a camera with dials that’s fun to shoot with, and especially if you adapt Leica M lenses, the Zf makes a lot of sense. I’d love to see a higher-resolution version of it. Just handle one first, because it’s bigger and clunkier than it looks. If you shoot a lot of video, or need the extra resolution, the better grip, and the better card setup, the A7IV is the more capable tool.
Conclusion
Overall, it’s not a bad camera; it does everything you need it to do very well, and it fixed so many of the big issues we saw in the A7III. New menu, lossless compression, H.265 video, the autofocus you were expecting, and more. While the A7III was the most overrated camera of all time, the A7IV fixes so many issues that it puts it more in line with the competition, and it’s overall a very practical choice compared to a lot of the other cameras out there.
While in the past I would say you were crazy to buy an A7III over a Z6, Z6II, or Canon R6, I can’t say the same about the A7IV. Sony attacked the competition and attacked it well. If burst speed, rolling shutter, or the screen are deal-breakers for you, the A7V fixes all three.
For the glass side, here’s a full list of lenses for the Sony A7 IV — every native FE option and third-party lens currently available for the E-mount. If you’re building out the kit, the Sony A7 IV accessories guide covers recommended grips, batteries, and filters.
One other point: it’s also fast at writing to memory cards, which means it has some nice hardware inside. You can see the Sony A7IV Memory Card Speed Tests here.
Sony A7IV Quick Answers
Is the Sony A7IV still worth buying?
Yes, if you mostly shoot stills or standard video. The 33MP sensor, autofocus, and 10-bit 4:2:2 video all hold up well. It falls behind the A7V in burst speed, rolling shutter, stabilization, and the screen, so if any of those matter for how you shoot, get the A7V.
Does the Sony A7IV shoot 4K 120p?
No. It tops out at 4K 60p with a 1.5x crop, and 120p in Full HD. The A7V adds 4K 120p, but with an APS-C crop.
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