Sony Alpha A7R VI Review

Sony has the most extensive lineup of Full-Frame Mirrorless Digital Cameras. Among its series the A7 and A7R are the most widely used by professional photographers. The other A1 and A9 series offer some advantages for specialized photography. As such the Sony Alpha A7R VI is currently the most well-rounded camera available.

All professional digital cameras, including this one, offer full manual controls, a choice of metering patterns and control over white-balance with both custom settings and fine-tuning along two axis. They also all support manual focus and various autofocus modes. The A7R VI extends several of these further than most:

• Full-Manual Controls come with Bulb mode, Program Shift and Customizable Auto ISO behavior. Shutter-Speed while using flash can have user-defined limits too.
• On top of the ubiquitous Multi-Segment, Center-Weighed and Spot metering patterns, Sony adds Highlight-Weighed metering and Average, plus there are to Spot area sizes. Spot metering can be linked to focus or always centered.
• There are extensive White-Balance Presets plus 4 Auto White-Balance modes, more than cameras from any other brand. WB Fine-Tuning can also be tweaked with incredible precision, 29 steps along the Amber-Blue axis and a whopping 57 steps along Green-Magenta. Additionally, the Sony A7R VI introduces a dedicated IR sensor to improve Automatic White-Balance accuracy.
• Every mirrorless has Single (AF-S), Continuous (AF-C) and Manual (MF) focus modes. Sony cameras also feature Direct Manual Focus (DMF) mode which it inherited from Minolta. This turns every lens into a Quick-Shift AF lens by disengaging the autofocus control as soon as AF is locked. Now, there is a Full-Time DMF option that allows Manual Focus anytime. Continuous AF is extremely sophisticated, which is covered in the Advanced Features section further down.

Bracketing is a common feature of advanced cameras that captures a scene multiple times with some parameter variation. The most common is Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB). Sony offers a really wide latitude for its AEB implementation. Between 2 and 9 frames can be captured with ±3 EV steps between frames for brackets of up to 5 images. This is ideal for HDR photography. Brackets of 9 frames have at most 2 EV increments.

Extra bracketing capabilities of the A6R VI include WB, DRO and Focus Bracketing. Both WB and DRO brackets are performed virtually. This means that the camera captures one image and saves three using different processing. This is provides a subject that is completely consistent across the entire bracket.

While Exposure, White-Balance and the Dynamic Range Optimizer can easily be bracketed manually, Focus bracketing is nearly impossible with any level of accuracy with a camera that does not offer Focus Bracketing. The reason is that it is practically impossible for someone to move the focus ring in precise increments between shots. The camera can are up to 299 frames, with 10 step sizes to choose from, starting at the current distance and gradually shifting focus towards infinity.

Continuous shooting has existed since the days of film cameras. It is an essential feature to improve chances of capturing peak action or simply getting images where no subject has its eyes closed. With different frame-rates up to 30 FPS, plus its pre-buffering feature, photographers have a great chance of capturing a decisive moment. The deep buffer-depth of this camera makes it possible to follow a subject for several seconds while shooting continuously.

Built-in Image Stabilization is unmatched in its versatility and the 8½-Stop 5-Axis IBIS mechanism of the A7R VI is the most effective among Full-Frame cameras.

The importance of IBIS cannot be understated. With a system capable of compensating for up to 8½-stops of shake, there is simply no lens that can deliver this level of image stabilization. Plus, IBIS works with every lens, regardless of if it is stabilized, autofocus or electronic. This includes bright prime and fisheye lenses that are rarely stabilized. Even adapted legacy lenses benefit from IBIS. For lenses with no electric contacts, Sony allows users to input their focal-length manually to ensure that stabilization works effectively.

Other features expected by professional photographers include a weatherproof build and dual memory card slots. This increases the odds of getting a desired image. In the unlikely event that a memory card fails, when using reliable brands like Sony, Lexar, Pro Grade or SanDisk, professional cameras can save images to two cards simultaneously. The Sony A7R VI does this for both images and video, which is rare. Plus, the Sony A7R VI is the first camera to deliver a completely implementation by allowing to delete simultaneously from two cards at once.

The lack of simultaneous delete is a short-coming of every other dual-slot camera. By enabling it on the A7R VI, missed or accidental shots can cleaned up properly. Otherwise, only one copy gets deleted which blocks of space since cameras stop saving images when either memory card is full. This is a safety measure to make sure that backups are being saved but wastes space if files are not deleted from both at once. Another neat advantage Sony implemented a few years ago is to offer dual memory-card slots that accept dual formats. Plenty of professional cameras use frustrating asymmetric slots which are annoying to manage.

Finally, an automated sensor cleaning system is quite common on modern mirrorless cameras. These systems are generally not very effective though. So, photographers have to learn to handle cameras to reduce chances of dust landing on their sensors. What only a handful of models, like the A7R VI, do is close the shutter when powered down. This simple feature does not guaranty there will never be dust but it greatly reduces the chances.

The Sony Alpha A7R VI is a true feature powerhouse. It brings so many new features and customization options, even compared to its predecessors, to make it that much more capable and a desirable upgrade. Sony also revamped the interface to make the A7R VI their most usable camera yet. That is the topic of the next page of this review. Before that, here are its major powerful and unique advanced features.

Autofocus with AI Trained Subject Recognition

Autofocus is central to the capabilities of this digital camera. There are six overall Focus Area modes that are replicated for Tracking Autofocus too:

• Wide: This is the name Sony gives to All. The camera automatically selects any of its 759 AF points.
• Zone: Similar to Wide, except it avoids two or four edges. Users can select one of nine zones which overlap and cover more than a quarter of the frame.
• Center Fix: A fixed central square that is covers about 2% of the entire frame.
• Spot: A movable square, available in 5 sizes: XS, S, M, L and XL. Large has the same area as Center Fix, XL covers 4X more area. M and below cover half the area of the preceding size.
• Expanded Spot: This Sony exclusive mode provides movable squares. The inner square covers ½% of the frame and indicates the intended autofocus point. The outer square covers 2% of the frame and is used to focus when the camera does not manage to lock on anything within the inner square.
• Custom: This mode lets users create three preset rectangles of any size and aspect-ratio. The selected rectangle can be moved all around the frame.

When the Focus Drive is set to AF-C, the A7R VI unlocks a second Tracking variant of the above Focus Area modes, plus a host of subject tracking controls. It is important to understand why these modes are duplicated. In their standard version, AF-C makes the camera continuously focus within the selected area. Tracking modes instead start by detecting an initial subject and then continuously adjust the focus area to follow so that same subject.

Autofocus controls on this camera are one of the most sophisticated yet!

Subject Tracking can be toggled On or Off. When On, a Recognition Target can be selected. This can be Automatic or Human, Animal/Bird, Animal, Bird, Insect, Car/Train or Airplane. For Animal or Bird, the Recognition Part can be selected. Choices are Body, Head or Eye. When either Human or Animal but not Bird/Animal is selected, the camera enables three Eye Tracking options: Auto, Left or Right. This demonstrates how incredibly specific the camera and tune its tracking behavior.

This degree of control lets photographers make their focus subject as specific as they want. The camera can track subjects even when all settings are automatic but it will perform better with more specific settings. This provides the most advantages when there could be multiple moving elements visible within the selected focus area. Neatly, depth-of-field is automatically taken into account.

Multi Frame RAW Capture

Multi-Shot Image Capture is a feature that grabs multiple sequential frames and outputs a single composite image to improve some aspect of image quality. Most cameras nowadays have an HDR mode based on Multi-Shot Image Capture. This technique blends different exposures of same subject into a High Dynamic Range image (HDR). Sony has not implemented this in any of their Alpha cameras. Instead, they introduced a different approach two generations ago, Multi Frame RAW Capture. The A7R VI extends this further in the same direction.

IBIS is fundamental to Multi Frame RAW Capture. Its mechanism is used to place the sensor with sub-pixel accuracy and capture perfectly matched frames. The main distinction of the Sony approach is that the camera captures between 4 and 32 RAW files that must be processed on a computer running Sony Imaging Edge Desktop, currently available for Windows and Mac only. There are three Pixel Shift Multi Shoot modes of operation:

• Pixel Shift Multi Shoot: This technique is designed to quadruple resolution and optionally generally full-color pixels. There are two modes of operation of Pixel Shift Multi Shoot. Both capture images offset by a pixel fractional to build a 270 megapixels image file using a computer. The 4-Shot mode can only shift to grab more detail from a scene. The 16-Shot mode grabs 4 groups of 4 shots. Each group records full color information at each pixel across the 4 RAW files. The groups are aligned to boost resolution.
• Noise Reduction: From 4 to 32, in doubling increments, perfectly aligned RAW files are captured. All sub-pixels are expected to capture the same part of a subject. Since sub-pixels are expected to be the same but noise is random, averaging such RAW files smooths out noise. The more frames the better but it always increases the risk of subject motion which introduces artifacts in the merged image.
• HDR Set: This mode also uses from 4 to 32 RAW frames with sub-pixels in perfect alignment. The difference is that RAW files captured for this mode use different exposures. The outcome of composing these images is an image that captures a wider dynamic-range than the camera can natively do. Under ideal conditions the Sony A7R VI can capture 16-stops of dynamic-range in a single for at its base ISO 100 sensitivity.

Dynamic Range Optimizer

Sony sensors are known for their class-leading dynamic-range. It has been a long time since their sensors have eclipsed the dynamic-range that can be represented in a JPEG image. That is the primary reason why some photographers capture RAW files exclusively or last RAW + JPEG. RAW files store the exact dynamic-range the sensor recorded which is then developed into an image. During processing the user choose which part of the dynamic-range to clip and which part to compress. Clipping is necessary most of the time to prevent developed images from looking dull.

Years ago, Sony introduced their Dynamic Range Optimizer (DRO) system to control how RAW sensor data is transformed into an image. When DRO is set to Off, a standard heavily clipped mapping is applied. This produces an image of maximum contrast. On the other hand, this also means that details are lost permanently at both ends of the dynamic-range.

Once DRO is turned On, it can be set to Auto or one of 8 levels. All other existing Sony cameras have 5 levels. Each level brings in more shadow detail by bringing it into the JPEG dynamic-range which forcibly compresses remaining tones. Users have to judge the right level for a particular scene. Higher DRO levels lower mid-tone contrast, so it is important not to avoiding setting a stronger DRO than necessary. Also, since shadows are lifted, noise increases for each DRO level.

The same subject captured with DRO off, DRO Level 1 and DRO Level 2. Notice how the low levels are subtle and lift out shadows without dulling down the image.

Rendering Parameters

Every digital camera manufacturer has their own evolving rendering parameters that serve the same purpose yet with different names. These are the set of controls that determine how an image, regardless of its format, is produced from RAW data. Since at least the A7R IV, Sony even has two!

The original Sony rendering parameters are called Creative Look. A specific rendition is defined by selecting a Style, Shadow Contrast, Mid-Tone Contrast, Highlight Contrast, Fade, Saturation, Sharpness, Sharpness Range and Clarity on the A7R VI. This list of rendering parameters comes with some new additions. Specifically, there are now three contrast controls instead of a global one, plus a new Sharpness Range parameter. In the Performance page of this review, Sharpness and Sharpness Range will be discussed along with an interactive demonstration of how they interact.

Creative Look new provides one of the most flexible set of parameters available except that the more recent Sony Picture Profile rendering parameters far exceed it in both capabilities and complexity. Here is an extract from the introduction of this review that lists Picture Profile Parameters:

• 11 Profiles
• 31 Black Levels
• 14 Gamma Curves
• 15 Black Gamma Levels, 3 ranges
• Knee Adjustment: Auto or Manual:
  • Auto: 90-100% Max Point, 3 Sensitivities
  • Manual: 75-100% Point, 10 Slopes
• 11 Color Modes
• 65 Saturation Levels
• 15 Color Phase
• Color-Depth, 15 steps for RGB+CMY
• 15 Detail Levels
  • Adjustable V/H Balance
  • Adjustable B/W Balance
  • 8 Detail Limits
  • 8 Sharpening Levels
  • 5 Highlight Detail Levels

There are over 27 quadrillion possible combinations of these parameters! This level of flexibility is mind-blowing! With such complexity, it is practically impossible to find optimal values and trying to tune them per scene or subject type is inconceivable. Still, these controls are there for users to make adjustments.

Drive Modes

Sony really packed the A7R VI with variations of most features. Everyone expects Single-Shot, Continuous and a Self-Timer mode. On this camera this is also a Continuous Self-Timer, that captures 3 or 5 images with a 2-10 second wait in between, Continuous and Single-Step Bracketing, plus an independent Self-Timer for Bracketing. There is also a Continuous Drive Boost function. so photographers can select relatively slow Continuous Drive mode and occasionally speed it up to capture a decisive moment.

There is also a sophisticated Interval Timer that can run for 9999 frames with a customizable interval and start delay. It comes with several extra options to decide how to handle exposures that are longer than the shooting interval.

There are a lot more features in this camera. So many, in fact, that the user manual for the Sony Alpha A7R VI is 701 pages long! It covers features high level with little information on how and when to use them.

Extensive video features are available in the Sony A7R VI. While still primarily a photography camera, it can record high-quality video in a wide array of resolutions, frame-rates and bit-rates. The Intro page of this review lists the maximum of each yet there are good reasons to work below that.

This Full-Frame Mirrorless Digital Camera is among the select group that is capable of recording 8K video. This format has 4X the resolution of 4K Ultra-HD. All the way back in 2012, Sharp introduced the first 8K LCD prototype. They followed with an actual 8K TV in 2015 to start pushing 8K as the next level for video. After early adopters got 8K televisions, the popularity of the new format waned due to high cost, bandwidth requirement, lack of physical media and the realization that the extra resolution requires a much larger screen to make a difference. For a human with 20/20 vision to perceive more detail than 4K offers, the display they are watching must span more than 60° of their field-of-view. One has to sit less than 1.5m from a large 75" TV for that.

The A7R VI can capture standard 8K video, with an 7680 x 4320 resolution and 16:9 aspect-ratio, at 24, 25 or 30 FPS. These are encoded using an XAVC HS codec at a bit-rate 200, 260, 400 or 520 MB/s. All these use Long GOP compression for efficiency. All 8K codecs store 10-bit color with 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 subsampling.

The more common 4K format allows significantly more options. It can be encoded using the XAVC HS codec, just like 8K video. A lower compression XAVC S code is supported plus XAVC S-I, which is an All-Intra version more suitable for video editing. Some XAVC S variants encode 8-bit color. Ultra HD video can be recorded at 24, 25, 30, 50, 60, 100 or 120 FPS, although 100 and 120 FPS are not available with All-Intra codecs. For Long GOP encoding, the 4K bit-rate ranges from 45 to 280 MB/s. For All-Intra encoding, each supported frame-rate uses a specific bit-rate: 600 MB/s for 60 or 50 FPS, 300 MB/s for 30 or 25 FPS and 240 MB/s for 24 FPS.

A dedicated Slow&Quick mode which limits video resolution to 4K. Otherwise, the camera records a normal video stream without an audio track and can set the playback frame-rate independently from the camera frame-rate. Supported playback rates range from 1 to 120 FPS. Depending on the capture rate, the resulting video can play from 5X slower to 120X faster. Time-Code is automatically disabled in Slow&Quick mode.

The Sony Alpha A7R VI can generate Time-Lapse videos. In this mode, the camera captures a frame every 1 to 60 seconds which are encoded into a 4K or 1080p video. The Time-Lapse can be played back at 24. 25, 30, 50 or 60 FPS for a maximum of 2 hours. This saves a huge amount of storage compared to shooting with the Interval Timer, which be used to assemble longer and high-resolution Time-Lapses.

Proxy Recording produces smaller videos that can be published quicker and require less computation power to work with.

This camera also offers Proxy Recording. This is a second lower resolution version of a video being captured that can be previewed much quicker. Proxies can be saved at 1920 x 1080 and 60 FPS, encoded as 10-bit 4:2:0 using the HEVC H.265 codec. They can also be stored at 1280 x 720 and 60 FPS. Those get encoded as 8-bit 4:2:0 using an MPEG-4 H.264 codec.

Sound can be recorded in videos that are captured and played back to the same frame-rate. This can be disabled for silent video or if an audio track is getting recorded using a separate device. When enabled, there are 32 audio levels to choose from. The selected level applies to analog audio conversion only. This includes audio from the internal microphone, the stereo line-in and a mounted analog microphone. When a digital microphone is used, the level is set by the recording device.

Two Noise-Reduction filters are available. One is tuned to wind-noise, while the other covers more broad background noise. Each can be enabled independently for internal and external audio. These filters also apply to analog audio input only. The Sony Multi-Interface Hot-Shoe on this camera supports several digital microphones. There are five audio formats to choose from: 48 kHz 16-bits, 24-bits or 32 bits plus 96 kHz 24-bit or 32-bit float. It is possible to select between 2 and 4 audio channels, but only when a microphone that actually records four channels is attached.

The last major video feature is direct streaming over a USB or LAN connection. It can stream 4K plus 2560 x 1440 video at 30 or 25 FPS. Full HD is also supported and allows 50 or 60 FPS. Streaming 4K video are encoded as H.265, while HD is stored in MPEG-4 H.264 format. Regardless of the format the audio track is always 48 kHz 16-bits stereo.