Sony a7R IV review

I remember when they said gold award is for the breakthrough camera, not for the "near or best in class in most but not much better than what is around".
Now this great camera, which is just incremental to the great a7riii, gets a gold?
This just reinforces the feeling that any Sony will get a gold whatever it is.

Reading your likes and dislikes I was expecting a poor silver score and thought you must have a spot of bias somewhere when I saw the gold.

And then I had a look at the photo's....

Beautiful landscape photo Rishi! Camera looks nice too and the 17-28 is no slouch either apparently.

Really makes me look forward to the A7m4 (no R). If they can deliver all this AF/ergo with a 24mp FF sensor, perhaps with a better video output to boot, and cost a good bit less that'll be an easier choice.

Honestly, it will take a disciplined photographer to use this camera for wedding work. I use mostly D8xx cameras and am fairly parsimonious in my shooting, can get by with just over 1000 frames snapped over the course of a full day, but I’ve seen people shoot 4000-5000 frames for one wedding, and some teams even more than that. Even 36MP slows things a tad too much. Lightroom can get awfully slow when you gorge it with that many megapickerels ;)

My big problem with this is: four generations, and the ergonomics have not really improved at all. Sure, they made some minor changes here and there, but the overall body size is too small, and it's not comfortable in adult-sized hands.

Me to Sony...
“Deep down in my stomach, with every inch of me, I pure straight hate you Ron Burgandy... but damn do I respect you”

60 seconds Buffer Clear Time? Is this the new world record? Lots of things can happen in 60 seconds.

Z7 clears the buffer almost instantly. Curious why this is not mentioned in the 'comparison' part.

Um, Gold?
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison?attr18=daylight&attr13_0=canon_eos5dsr&attr13_1=canon_eos5dsr&attr13_2=sony_a7riv&attr13_3=sony_a7riv&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=raw&attr15_2=raw&attr15_3=raw&attr16_0=100&attr16_1=1600&attr16_2=100&attr16_3=1600&attr126_2=1&attr126_3=1&normalization=full&widget=1&x=0.841860465116279&y=0.5836295990078544

Looks like a great camera and at that price point it should be.

For Photography, I see better and sharper detail in the Panasonic S1R, especially when looking at the eyelashes of those people in your test scene chart. When switching to pixel shift mode, the S1R seems to literally blow the sony away with much cleaner and sharper images. For Photography, I think the S1R is producing sharper & better quality overall. I'm not a video guy and don't care about video so I'll let others look at that.

It's interesting that DPR mentions 'robust wireless connectivity' right after Tony Northrup spends several minutes in his review showing video of Sony's wireless communications efforts flailing and failing. To be fair, my Fuji doesn't seem hugely better in this department either, but from the reviews I've seen I don't think 'robust' is the term I would use for phone connectivity with this camera.
It seems like especially for a company who actually makes (really good) phones, that wireless connectivity would be built in as seamless from the start.

Glad I saw this. Now I don't have any desire to get rid of my 5DS. I think the 5DS actually looks a tiny bit better. Seems like a nice camera, but I don't think any huge leap in IQ has been made. Wouldn't mind trying one, but not for $3500.

I like how everyone nit picks every review. No camera is perfect, no product is perfect. You can’t compare an older review and rating because the landscape has changed and expectations are naturally higher.

looks good, I'm not really comparing video since I'm not interested in video in the photo camera ... but comparing its native resolution with Canon 5DS R from 2015 or newer Fuji GFX50 ... ehm

"High resolution increases visibility of camera shake and AF misses"
Makes one wonder how much is enough.

I would have liked more attention given to the crop mode. That's a key point for me. The A7r4 60mp gives the first usable crop, in my view.
The cons on the "Is it right for you?" page repeatedly mention the large file sizes. Family, lifestyle, street, candid, and travel photos need not be 60mp, so just switch to crop. Plus, using crop gives you two lenses out of each prime you buy.
My expectation would be to have one of the buttons toggle between full and crop mode and use it extensively.

Oh,and thanks for the review.Real good read.

Compared it with my a7rII and the a7rIV is just slightly better. The BETTER build quality for the a7rIV can not see any difference.

A great camera.Well done Sony.

"High resolution increases visibility of camera shake and AF misses". So you don't like high Mpixel cameras then...

I am missing something or this review did not include any dynamic range test, ISO invariance, etc...

Reading that rather long list of things we don't like, it seems most could be addressed by simply reducing the megapixels. But this impressive camera is certainly good news for SanDisk, Western Digital and Apple.

Well, it's gold because the DPR Team measures how good is a camera like Sony. If you measuring tool is productivity and robustness you give Gold to Olympus..
I shoot a lot of wedding and that camera would be really difficult for this task to me..

My small issue with DPR: they think their measurement is "scientific" but it's highly subjective.

As someone who shoots two Sony cameras, the company's steadfast refusal to implement touch settings and menus is baffling.

Would it be possible to slip that question into a future interview?

Wow that list of cons certainly doesn't make a case for me to upgrade from the 7R2. Especially those related to lagginess of interface and card write times, which I really thought would be behind us now. OK file size are larger, but that doesn't make an excuse for the interface lagginess, which has unfortunately been a trademark of the A7 line for quite some time.

Probably the wrong place to post.. and moderators please delete if so. But is "A" mount officially dead? I have been holding on to all my A mount glass waiting for an update/answer? Anyone?

Thanks for another thorough review DPR.
Not sure if I missed it, but does autofocus tracking improve in cropped mode? I would think it would given the reduced amount of data to analyse on the fly. This could be a key factor to people like me who use cropped sensors for wildlife and full framed sensors for landscapes. Could have both cameras in one!
Thanks
Richard

I'm honestly confused as to why people don't see this update as a major one.

The differences between the R3 and the R4 are exactly the same as the differences between the A72 and A73, and we can all agree that those differences were major.

Redesigned body, brand new sensor, greatly improved AF, updated EVF, upgraded media, improved pixel-shift, improved weather sealing. The only thing that wasn't updated was video specs which is to be expected. I'm not sure what else people want.

With that said this is probably the best stills camera ever created.

Having held the A7R4 for a bit, the star of the show is definitely the improved ergonomics. The camera feels great to operate, compared to any previous Sony, and actually is on par with the operability of a Canon or Nikon or other. Of course the menus and other feature implementations could still use improvement, but hey, at least Sony is listening and taking care of the biggest problems first. Priorities, folks. If they had come up with a fantastic menu system and ergonomics first, but left the terrible old battery and poor AF, the camera would still be a flop to a lot more people...

Dear DPreview team, something which I don't understand, any reason why in the bike tests, for other cameras (eg. A7III & A6400), you showed face in the zoomed view, but for this one and the A9, you show the body and not face? Want to see how sharp the face is, and especially when Sony's Eye AF is claimed to be the best.

For $3500 you get a hell of a lot of camera. Think back 10 years ago and what that bought you. Look at Medium format and see what that buys you. Sony is pushing but the other companies will come along soon enough.

Is the cons list increasing with every new model? :D

Perhaps someone with another high MP cam can tell me, but is a full minute to clear the buffer using UHS-II normal? It sounds excessive but my gear isn't pushing nearly that much data.

@dpreview - I cant see nikon d850 in compare tool. I think you need to revisit categories...

A peace of mind, 91%, Gold Award on top of all FF cameras :-) As I am interested to add the camera in the line of A7r III and A9. I usually carry two cameras into trips. There is a quite gap between A7r III and A9 in base ISO DR and resolution while A7r III AF-C is quite inferior to A9. A7r IV will narrow the gap so in regular landscape type trips I can carry A7r III and IV instead. Or in action type trips I can carry A7r IV and A9.

Initially, I thought all those problems with the slow buffer, drops to 12bit, AF accuracy penalty, UI lag and so on, were due to Sony' stubbornness to increase the body size/volume. But then I remembered the big brothers: A99 and A77II who shared same/similar problems. If you do this, it drops to this; if you do that it drops to that. There are too many droppings for a system with such strong momentum!
Is there something generally wrong with the internals Sony is using?
Maybe that's the reason they shy away from increasing the size so much - because they know it would not fix anything, except handling?
And, if that's the case - then why they suddenly decided to add 20 more megapixels? So that a mirrorless camera would back/forth focus with native glass?
It is a beast on a tripod for sure, but so is R3.
I don't get the timing and the reason for this camera at all!