Sony A7C R Review (2024): A Full Frame Travel Camera Leave a comment

Sony isn’t any stranger to producing impressively small full-frame cameras. The original A7C took the innards of the bigger A7 collection and stuffed them in a extra compact physique. The ZV-E1 went additional, with a tiny physique that appears positively comical hooked up to lengthy lenses.

These smaller our bodies all the time contain characteristic compromises. Nobody needs a heavy digital camera, however some options imply bodily limitations. Whereas the sensors stands out as the similar, the viewfinders are smaller, and different options have been generally absent.

Enter the brand new Sony A7C R. In my expertise testing it for a number of weeks in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, it comes closest to offering every part you want in a digital camera and nothing you do not. The impressively small physique is nonetheless comfy to carry and carry round all day, and has a lot of the options even a professional would need.

All Issues Nice and Small

Two years in the past, I examined the unique Sony A7C and located that whereas the compact, rangefinder-style physique was good for touring, the viewfinder was too small and the 24.2-MP sensor was a step again from the 40-MP sensor in my Sony A7RII. It was tantalizingly near every part I needed, however not fairly there.

The A7C R solves a minimum of the sensor downside, and will get a lot nearer to the best journey digital camera. It is nonetheless loads small at 4.9 inches vast, 2.8 inches tall, and a couple of.5 inches deep. It weighs just below a pound at 15.2 ounces (430 grams) for the physique. With the FE 28-60mm F4-5.6 lens Sony despatched alongside for testing, the entire weight got here to 21.1 ounces.

The 61-MP CMOS sensor within the new A7C R is similar sensor you will discover in Sony’s A7R V, launched a number of months earlier than the A7C R. It is the most effective sensors I’ve examined, able to glorious element, with nice dynamic vary. The low-light efficiency is spectacular as properly, with little or no noise even properly up into the five-digit ISO choices (the A7C R can shoot all the best way as much as ISO 102,400, however as you’ll anticipate, these photographs are very noisy).

There’s nothing about this sensor that I can assume to complain about. It is incredible. The ensuing RAW recordsdata are massive—round 65 MB per picture in my testing, with low mild photographs being the biggest. You may get this right down to round 45 MB per picture for those who go for compressed RAW, however on the time I used to be testing, no software program may open these recordsdata (Lightroom and others have since added assist).