Back in 2018, Sony raided its flagship cameras for the third generation of the a7 full-frame mirrorless camera. Now the company has pulled back the curtain on generation four, which boasts a newly-developed 33-megapixel image sensor and performance improvements across the board.
The a7 IV comes with a 33-MP back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS full-frame (35.9 x 23.9-mm) image sensor that's paired with the latest Bionz XR processing engine, for 15 stops of dynamic range, ISO light sensitivity of 100 to 51,200 that can expand down to ISO50 and up to ISO204,800, and continuous shooting at up to 10 frames per second with AF/AE tracking.
Thanks to the camera rocking the same image processing engine as the Alpha 1 flagship, the a7 IV also benefits from fast autofocus. Its hybrid autofocus makes 759 phase-detection AF points available, which cover almost 94 percent of the image area, and the face and eye detection for humans gets a 30-percent improvement on its predecessor. The real-time eye tracking can now zero in on birds and animals for still images and video too.
The a7 IV can record 4K/60p video in Super 35 crop mode, or 4K/30p with 7K oversampling in full-frame mode at 10-bit 4:2:2 detail, and there's support for the BT.2020 color gamut, as well as H.264 and (the more efficient) H.265 long-GOP compression. The camera also benefits from 5-axis in-body image stabilization for up to 5.5 stops of shake compensations, with an optical active mode available to give stabilization performance a bump during video recording.
Framing up can be undertaken using the 3.68-million-dot OLED viewfinder or 3-inch, 1.03-million-dot side-opening, vari-angle touch monitor. And there's a dual-layer mode dial up top that allows users to quickly switch between settings – having stills, movie and slow/quick (slow-mo/time-lapse) selection on a lower layer, and P/A/S/M/Auto and Memory Recall on a upper layer.
Elsewhere the camera comes with an improved grip on the magnesium alloy body, Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi for remote operation and wireless data transfer, and there are two media slots – one can take either SD or CFexpress Type A, while the other is just for an SD card (CFexpress caters for extended burst shooting). The a7 IV can even serve as a webcam for video chats at up to 4K/15p or FHD/60p.
The Alpha 7 IV goes on sale in December for a body-only price of US$2,500, or a kit version with a FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS zoom lens can be had for an extra two hundred bucks. The video below has more.
Product page: a7 IV