Sony's latest A7R IV in pictures

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Note: This article was first published on 30 July 2019.

Meet the latest addition to Sony's A7 family - the A7R IV! Available at all local authorized dealers from 24 August 2019 for S$4,999, this features the world's first 35mm full-frame 61.0MP back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor. That's paired with Sony's latest Bionz X image processor, allowing the camera to produce images with up to 15-stops of dynamic range. 

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The A7R IV comes with a noticeably larger handgrip for better balance with longer lenses. We're told the camera also has upgraded dust and moisture resistance, with added sealing at all the body seams, battery compartment, and media slots.

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The multi-directional AF joystick seems to be slightly larger now, and that's a good thing because the camera now has a whopping 567 focal-plane phase detect AF points, and 425 contrast AF spread across approximately 74% of the entire image area for even better tracking performance.  

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The EVF has also been massively improved, as the camera now boasts a 5.76 million dot UXGA OLED Tru-finder EVF. That's about 1.6x the resolution of the previous model, and you can set it to either 'Standard' or "High' mode as well as choose between a 60fps refresh rate or a 120fps one. 

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On the left of the camera you'll find a full set of ports. Type-C USB has been implemented for faster wired transmission, as this camera is meant to be used tethered, and of course you have full microphone jacks for video purposes. 

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Further support the fact that this is meant to be used in studio is the presence of a flash-sync terminal. It's worth noting that the camera also supports wireless tethered shooting over both the 2.4 GHz band as well as the 5GHz band, so you'll be able to move freely in the studio without fear of tripping over wires.

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Stare a bit carefully and you'll notice something slightly different about the hotshoe. That's because it's now a multi-interface shoe which allows for direct connection (and power) to Sony's new ECM-B1M shotgun microphone (seen here) or to a XLR-K3M XLR adapter kit. Better audio when you're capturing video, all from one compact solution.

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In line with the focus on speed, is the fact that both card slots now support the faster UHS-II SD cards, so you won't have to prioritize video over stills or vice versa. 

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To show off the new continuous shooting and focus tracking capabilities of the camera, Sony organised a futsal match for us to capture. As you can see, the camera has no issues freezing action, helped by the 8fps capture that goes up to 10fps with the new APS-C crop mode that gives you 26MP pictures. 

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Here's a 100% crop, and you can see that while the image seems to have a fair amount of noise reduction applied, there's still some detail retained. (Capture information: 200mm at f/5.6, 1/320s, ISO 3200)

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The studio section gave us a better chance to evaluate the ISO characteristics of the camera. Here's one taken at a relatively low setting of ISO 500. (Capture information: 135mm at f/5.6, 1/250s, ISO 500)

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At 100%, you can really appreciate the resolving power of this camera. It's easy to make out individual eyelashes, and you can even see how the individual flakes of make-up have been applied. 

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And here's one at a high ISO setting of 25,600. (Capture information: 135mm at f/8.0, 1/4000s, ISO 25,600)

From this view, you can already see some loss in detail in her hair and the fur backdrop. Given that the high ISO setting though, it's incredible that we're not seeing patches of colour noise outright.

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It's only when you zoom in to 100% that you'll note that the image is fairly noisy. However,  because the noise seems very fine-grained in nature, it should still give you a good print. Note that despite all the noise, there's still detail in the eyebrows and you can still make out individual lashes. Impressive!