Sony A7 IV Sony a7 IV Images and First Impressions

Tim Mayo

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With the a7 IV now being delivered in Europe I thought I'd create a thread where early owners can share their first photos and impressions.

My own a7 IV arrived today and fortunately the sun managed to shine long enough for me to grab a few shots of Frank. All shots are SOOC JPEGs taken with the 70-200 F2.8 GM II lens.

The animal eye tracking is a big improvement over the a7III which rarely locked onto the eyes when Frank was running. It now locks on from quite some distance already and tracks really well. That said, it still missed his eyes a few times, more so when the light dropped. The orange ball would also grab the focus sometimes. But I think dog shooters will be quite happy, although milage may vary depending on your dog!

I used a CFexpress Type A card and it cleared the buffer almost instantly, even after a burst of 10-20 shots. It's just a pity these cards are so expensive and only slot 1 supports them. If you aren't shooting a lot of continuous bursts then I'd definitely stick with the much cheaper UHS-II cards.

I think it's going to take me a while to get used to the new menus, but they seem to be pretty intuitive.

The buttons and grip are similar to my a7R IV, but a big improvement over the a7III body.

The flip out screen is useful and makes taking low vertical shots a lot easier. You can also rotate it to help protect the screen whilst it's in your bag.

So, just a quick first impressions really as I've only used it for about an hour so far. Hopefully if the weather plays nice I'll be able to test the eye af on some birds over the next few days.

Please ask if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them. I also created an a7 III vs a7 IV comparison over on the blog if you are interested in all the differences between these two cameras.

DSC00017-2048px.jpg DSC00220-2048px.jpg DSC00253-2048px.jpg DSC00340-2048px.jpg DSC00357-2048px.jpg DSC00380-2048px.jpg DSC00436-2048px.jpg
 
Are the images crops or full size? If cropped, how much?

Can you give us a link to a RAW file for one?
 
Nice shots and nice dog. I’m jealous - just checked with my dealer and I’ve moved up from 71st to 32nd on the waiting list. They are awaiting their December allocation - hopefully, it’s at least 32.
looking forward to reading more as you use it a bit more + seeing some nice piccies, of course.
 
Frank is beautiful! We have one too.
 
My very first impressions (as a previous 3y long M3 user/owner, and current A1 owner - M4 will be my 2nd/backup body).
1) M4 feels (I know it is not) lighter than the M3 due to its better/larger grip.
2) M4's EVF is halfway between the previous (obnoxious) M3 EVF and the excellent A1 EVF. (one of the main reasons for my M3->M4 upgrade)

3) A1's battery grip fits/works perfectly on the M4
21-11-30 15h57m33s #0001 M.jpg

4) M4 comes with the same mini power brick that M3 had, no external battery charger.
M4's brand new battery refused to be charged on A1's external battery charger, had to place it inside M4 and charge it with the power brick. Hope this is just a first charge incident as I need to be able to charge any of my 3 batteries in any of the available to me ways/methods (internal or external)
M4 power brick.JPG

5) M4's RAW files cannot currently be ingested/imported by CaptureOne latests version (v21) so will need to wait for release of v22 (due next week) to be able to post A1 vs M4 studio comparisons. But I can tell right now that the 33mpx SOOC M4 JPEGs look very good indeed.
 
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Nice shots and nice dog. I’m jealous - just checked with my dealer and I’ve moved up from 71st to 32nd on the waiting list. They are awaiting their December allocation - hopefully, it’s at least 32.
looking forward to reading more as you use it a bit more + seeing some nice piccies, of course.
Thanks David. Hopefully it arrives before Christmas for you! Sometimes it's worth calling the smaller stores as well just to check what they have.
 
M4's brand new battery refused to be charged on A1's external battery charger, had to place it inside M4 and charge it with the power brick. Hope this is just a first charge incident as I need to be able to charge any of my 3 batteries in any of the available to me ways/methods (internal or external)
Mine charged fine with an old charger but it did think about it for a couple of minutes before the green charging lights came on.
 
Thanks. I use Darktable. Will give one a shot tonight and report back.

I have to say, the colors in those jpegs are very pleasant.
 
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Tried to cheat my way into cloning my A1 customisations into the M4 by copying the A1 setting file from the A1 sub-folder to the M4 sub-folder (on the memory card where the setting are saved (via the [Setup - Save Settings] menu option).
The M4 does show both setting files but only accepts "Load"ing from the one it saved itself. I read-only edited both and the files have a header specifying wich model is their source/target.
So, no short-cuts, time to manually sync the beast's customisations...
Screenshot 2021-11-30 at 20.35.31.jpg

Screenshot 2021-11-30 at 20.36.04.jpg
 
Timothy, I'm pretty damned envious. B&H told me that mine won't ship until after January 8th. :cry:
 
Darktable won't open the files, they'll need to catch up like everyone else. However, much to my surprise Affinity Photo recognized the camera as the A7 IV and I was able to process the RAW files. Important to note that I just purchased Affinity a couple weeks ago, so if anyone has Affinity make sure to update before you try. They must be thinking ahead.

I was going to use Affinity for editing and keep using DT for processing, looks like I'll need a crash course in Affinity until DT adds the profile.
 
The sun shone for just long enough this morning to try out the bird eye af. My first impression is that it works pretty well but it does need good light or you need to be reasonably close to your subject, especially for small birds. If it loses the eye it just jumps to the body. Although depth of field isn't too much of an issue at these distances anyway, even at f/6.3 with the 200-600 if the focus hits the body the eyes will be in focus with such small birds.

All shots are out of camera jpegs and have just been cropped to 3000px. Would really of liked a better shot of the woodpecker but he wasn't playing ball. Perhaps next time!

DSC00804-3000px-bluetit.jpg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
  • 600.0 mm
  • ƒ/6.3
  • 1/1000 sec
  • ISO 500


DSC00851-3000px-bluetit.jpg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
  • 600.0 mm
  • ƒ/6.3
  • 1/1000 sec
  • ISO 500


DSC00858-3000px-bluetit.jpg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
  • 600.0 mm
  • ƒ/6.3
  • 1/1000 sec
  • ISO 800


DSC00810-3500px-nuthatch.jpg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
  • 600.0 mm
  • ƒ/6.3
  • 1/1000 sec
  • ISO 800


DSC00837-3000px-woodpecker.jpg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
  • 485.0 mm
  • ƒ/6.3
  • 1/1000 sec
  • ISO 500
 
Very nice shots. It's pretty cool to see the bird in the last shot in focus and not the branch in front of him.
 
My M4 SOOC JPG contribution, dull day, no flash.
DSC00051.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/80 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00052.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/60 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00053.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/100 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00055.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/2.8
  • 1/160 sec
  • ISO 400
DSC00056.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/250 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00057.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/400 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00058.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/200 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00059.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/200 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00060.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/200 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00061.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/1600 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00062.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/320 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00064.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/1000 sec
  • ISO 100
DSC00065.JPG
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 135mm F1.8 GM
  • 135.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/1000 sec
  • ISO 100
 
Very nice shots. It's pretty cool to see the bird in the last shot in focus and not the branch in front of him.
Thank you Jeff. The eye AF definitely helps when they are hidden behind branches like this, although it doesn't always nail it.
 
My M4 SOOC JPG contribution, dull day, no flash.
Lovely shots! Thanks for contributing Afonso! :) Looks like a wet week ahead for us, so a good chance to test its low light capabilities :)
 
Nice shots and nice dog. I’m jealous - just checked with my dealer and I’ve moved up from 71st to 32nd on the waiting list. They are awaiting their December allocation - hopefully, it’s at least 32.
looking forward to reading more as you use it a bit more + seeing some nice piccies, of course.
Hi David,

I've got mine from Jessops on 1st of December.
Traded in my old one and trade-in value with lens was around £405.
On top of that Sony has £300 cashback running at the moment so I really hope you catch it in time.
Overall I am £700 better off towards the camera so I am quite happy.

I am told that you wait significantly longer for body only.
 
Thank you Jeff. The eye AF definitely helps when they are hidden behind branches like this, although it doesn't always nail it.
I ws thinking that the "Zone" focus area would be helpful in this situation.
 
I ws thinking that the "Zone" focus area would be helpful in this situation.
Zone is still too big to help on these situations. Has to be spot-M or spot-S, even with eye-AF assist
 
CaptureOne (C1) v22 just released and now supports 7M4 RAWs.
Left are the C1 exports after just allowing for auto-adjust on import, right art the SOOC JPGs
21-12-03 11h58m10s #0007 XL.jpg DSC00007.JPG
21-12-03 12h00m45s #0013 XL.jpg DSC00013.JPG

The M4 had immense difficulty focusing on the man in the foreground despite a small focus point. Most of the frames were out of focus.
On normal lighting conditions the difference between auto-adjusted RAWs (no further editing applied) and SOOC JPGs is much smaller.

Probably going forward, for unpaid casual social shooting, I won't bother with RAW editing most of the times.
I think (subjective) the dynamic range of the M4 RAWs is greater than that of the A1 RAWs, that will also be a factor on which camera I will use depending on the light vs action mix. If shutter noise is tolerated I think I will prefer the M4 to the A1 for indoors shooting.
 
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Lovely shots! Thanks for contributing Afonso! :) Looks like a wet week ahead for us, so a good chance to test its low light capabilities :)
I will be covering a very low-light event next week. Plan on using M4 as main body for that and A1 as 2nd body.
Will ask permission to share here some pics. Will be shooting both ARW and fine JPGs
 
So a higher line on the chart is better?
In theory, yes. ISO is shown at the bottom, stops of dynamic range up the side. Read each node individually. You'll note some are directly over the top of one another. Also note the legend for native, extended, noise reduction, etc. If you hover over the nodes, it'll give you the exact reading. For example, The A1 at ISO 100 has a DR of 11.34, while the MK3 at 100 has a DR of 11.6. The real-world difference in those two is negligible.
 
So a higher line on the chart is better?
Yes. Higher dynamic range. It also shows that interesting bump with the increase of the dynamic range at 640 with M3 compared to 500 for the A1 which means that with the M3 if you are at 500, it is better to bump it up to 640 to improve the dynamic range.
 
Glad that M4 RAW support has arrived as one cannot (easily) edit an 8-bit JPEG in such a big extent without leaving ugly tone banding, etc.
14-bit deep RAWs are on another level altogether.
M4's 33mpx is plenty of resolution for a 1/3 crop and still have enough resolution left for print.

21-12-12 17h03m55s #0056 M.jpg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN | A (Sony E)
  • 85.0 mm
  • ƒ/2
  • 1/800 sec
  • ISO 100

21-12-12 17h03m55s #0056 L.jpg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN | A (Sony E)
  • 85.0 mm
  • ƒ/2
  • 1/800 sec
  • ISO 100
 
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