A7rIV!  I finally bit the bullet and picked up the a7riv.  I hadn’t originally planned on it, in fact this is a camera that had almost no apeal to me at launch.  Some of the software updates sounded nice and the bigger button’s coudn’t hurt but I was happy with my a7riii so why take the time and effort to upgrade?  I didn’t need 60mp as 42mp is already more than I need and a bit of a bottleneck at times… Then my sony 200-600mm review got me thinking a bit.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather crop a file than use a teleconverter with a long lens.  The range with the 200-600 becoming a 200-900 effective lens is just amazing.  And while I didn’t need more resolution in full frame mode, 42mp was plenty, it’s that the fact the a7riv’s sensor is 60mp at full frame and 26mp at crop mode just means I can crop the smaller file a little bit more while retaining details…  Effectively if we take the 9504 resolution on the long edge of the a7riv and do some math with the 5168 long edge of the a7riii’s crop mode we get a crop factor of 1.83 if we’re happy with the 18mp file size…  Yes that means I’m shooting a 26mp file then cropping it further in post.  This won’t be something I’ll do all the time but when I need the reach it gives me even more confidence in cropping an already cropped in camera file.  

Initial impressions:

• the red AF point is a massive improvement
• the shutter is very quiet -vs- the a7riii
• The body is much more comfortable to hold (this is partially because my new grip/l-bracket is taller but also because of the larger body).
• The viewfinder looks weird, I might have a setting wrong?  It almost looks like you’re looking at heat shimmer (this was a setting issue, turn off ‘flicker reduction” and this goes away!)…
• the AF point “wraps”, you can go from far left, press left again, and it wraps around to the right side!
• the AF tracking is much better, it’s very “sticky” and hard to knock off it’s tracking target, the a7riii is actually pretty easy to shake.  I’d say the IV sticks 90% of the time, the iii is shaken 75% of the time (when trying to shake it on purpose)
• the af tracking keeps a square box which I much prefer to the iii’s changing it to the shape of the subject…
• the CF door is nice and tight and a better design
• the lens mount seems tighter but it could just be newer
• the buttons have a much nicer feel to them, ALL of the buttons.
• my IV l-bracket gives a better grip, RRS’s version (and all the knock offs) have the door stay on the body for waterproof reasons.  Mine will be less waterproof but it’s MUCH more comfortable -vs- the other IV versions as well as the RRS iii version.  I need to fix the spring on the door though so it pops open.  
• side port doors hinge open now at central hinge -vs- rotate on skinny rubber “string” piece.
• formatting a card still takes longer than it should
• firmware updates require a computer, USB cable and to tether the camera to said computer.  Oh and about 15 minutes AFTER you’ve downloaded the firmware?  Why does this need to be so hard and slow?  Every other camera I’ve owned takes the file on the memory card and takes a few seconds to update….
• no more apps?  
• PDAF now works down to f/11 which means you can get better AF with long lenses with teleconverters. 

History:

I’ve now owned every single a7r variant to date.  I picked up an a7r just before the a7ii was announced.  I was lucky enough I could return it and switch to the a7ii immediately after it was announced.  I owned the a7ii for a while but then switched to the a7rii when it was announced.  I owned the a7rii from it’s launch until the a7riii launch when I picked it up.  I’ve owned the a7riii since it’s release until now (May 2020) but I’ve sold it now that I’ve settled in with the a7riv.  Here’s how the 4 bodies compare (stock images put together in Photoshop by me):

Build:

The bodies grow a bit each time as do the buttons.  The good thing is the body gets bigger in the grip mostly, not height or width so it fits in a bag just as easily.  The new battery with the iii has made it nice using 1~2 batteries in a day -vs- 3~4+ with the old smaller batteries.  The buttons are all much easier to find and use now, especially with gloves. 

Along with the new improved body comes the new improved AF system.  It borrows heavily from the a9/a9ii which is a good thing.  The a7riii had good AF but the IV improves on the iii’s AF which is never a bad thing.  Tracking is improved as is eye-af and eye detection.  Yes the iii got these features via a firmware update which I’ve used but the IV’s system is better still which is great.  Some of the other improvements might seem insignificant but are huge usability improvements for me.  Notably the red AF point option makes seeing your AF point in the finder MUCH easier.  Another huge improvement is allowing the AF point selection to “wrap”.  If you’re at the farthest left point and press left again the point now (optionally) wraps to the right side and keeps going.  For me this makes for much easier use.

Those 60mp files!

The other big improvement is with the files.  This is two fold.  The resolution goes from 42mp to 60mp which is a nice bump if you print massively.  I don’t have a huge need for that increase.  But I LOVE the added MP when using my long lens (sony 200-600mm) because it lets me crop a bit more.  As I mentioned in that review I prefer to use crop mode in camera over a teleconverter.  With the new sensor this means I get 26mp in crop mode vs 18mp with the iii.  This is more resolution than my a6300 (crop sensor) and even an a9 (full frame) has in their full resolution modes!  This allows me to crop further if needed but also just means I get sharper images with more detail in crop mode. 

Now with that larger sensor you might expect the files aren’t as good.  But they’re even better in a few ways.  ISOs are roughly the same.  “Colors” are better with the IV.  It’s hard to put a finger on but the best way to explain it would be I’ve had much fewer cases while editing an image where I can’t get it to look like I want it to look…  With the III I’d struggle tweaking WB and colors a bit with images and this just happens less often now.  The other change is the dynamic range.  I would have guessed it’d be worse with the MP increase but the opposite is true.  I’m finding myself able to use more shadow and highlight adjustments and especially with real estate images I’m controlling the DR with window shots better than with the III.  I got the IV this spring while I’ve been shooting a lot of real estate work so I’ve seen this change with plenty of shoots before and after the switch.  It’s subtle but it’s there.

Issues that Sony needs to fix:

• buffering and using menus
  • buffer is big enough, inability to switch to video or switch options is the problem
  • figure out how to allow use of options (crop, video, menus) while camera is writing to a card.
  • faster cards would help, q-fast cards could be 50% faster and they’re sony’s design, or the new SD standards
• firmware updates, these need to be done via dumping the file on a SD card and turning the camera on.  Hooking it up to your computer and jumping through all the hoops AND it taking ~10 minutes to update is crazy and a horrible way to do it.  I’ve owned a lot of cameras and with my sony’s I dread firmware updates where they were simple DL drag and drop with other cameras.
• no flip screen, at least give us vertical flip if not vlogging flip.
• needs an mRAW/sRAW option, of the 2 options I prefer “cropped RAW” but I’d love the option for both.  I don’t need 60mp files all the time (or really a lot of the time) but I also don’t want to shoot in crop mode to get smaller RAW files.  It’d be great if there was a 26mp mode that had the same 26mp RAW files in both full frame and crop modes. 
• menus could be better (but are they really that bad at this point?  my menu fixes most issues once you’ve setup the camera)  Function names are pretty bad.
• make meter modes for ETTL and ETTR where it just doesn’t clip the end you choose, these are computers, put some smarter metering modes in there
• more than 30s in shutter speed, or bulb where I can assign it.  

Conclusion:

This is a body that I didn’t think I’d ever get.  It was a “small” improvement over the a7riii.  I’ve recently started shooting with a long lens a lot more so the increased resolution meant I could crop more giving me more effective reach with my 200-600mm.  That was the one big reason I upgraded.  Along with that came the better body, better AF and better files.  Now that I’ve used both cameras and spent some time with the a7rIV I can appreciate all the small changes.  For me I appreciate all the small changes just as much now as I do the files.  The AF and body just make everything work better for me.  Less miss shots is always good as is more DR.  In short I’m thrilled with the new body and it was well worth the ~$1k spent to upgrade (after selling my a7riii).  It’s the best sony I’ve owned.  I’m sure it won’t be my last.  I’m very curious to see where this series goes from here.