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Customer Review
Reviewed in Canada on November 9, 2020
Ok so after a few days upgrading from my good old Canon 6d, here are a few cons :
Noise :
- noisier than A7R3 and A73 so not great for taking pictures of my kids inside with only ambient lightning
- A7R4 is about 1/3 stop noisier than A7R3 which means, to have as little noise, you need to let enter 1/3 stop more light
- which means you need to lower your shutter speed (or increase aperture) by 1/3 stop, for example from f/250 to f/160, which means you will have more difficulty freezing action so your image have chances to be blurrier
File size :
- uncompressed raw files are huge (120mb)
- there is no lossless raw compression
- you will a fast computer ($$) and a lot of SSD space to process these files
- you will need large fast SD cards (UHS-II, U3, at least 256GB) that are expensive ($$)
- even Sony SF-M sd card is relatively slow and won't allow me to quickly see my photos to review focus for example, I have to wait for the buffer to clear, else it's laggy, which is quite annoying, I will have to try Sony SF-G
- Canon r5, Sony a7rIII, a7s3 files are much smaller so they are faster to process, think about it since your time is valuable
Complexity :
- not much is simple with this camera
- menus could be worst but they are not user friendly at all
- a "slow" SD card makes shooting in continuous mode quite annoying/odd/slow, Sony should warn the user
- no scene selection mode like on my Canon 6D for people that want or need simplicity (I don't trust full auto mode)
- saved settings for memory recalls can't be renamed to meaningful description
- touch tracking not enabled by default
- limited touch screen functionalities (only useful to set tracking point basically)
- enabling Preview makes Continuous Mode atrocious because the Preview also appears in the Viewfinder
- to zoom a Sony lens, it's the inverse direction than on the Canon (might be Canon's fault)
- would be nice if Sony gave recommended settings (some kind of pre-sets/suggestions for Custom Keys/Buttons and My Menu Favorites)
- no automatic focus bracketing
- PlayMemories software keeps creating .modd files and importing my PC pictures in its library even if I unselected all folders from being imported.
I tried the feature "View on TV", I get "could not authenticate the connection" on the camera and Registration failed on my sony TV (xbr 65x900e). I tried multiple times. Then I tried connecting by entering the password, I got "could not find the access point".
Then I tried the new app for ios devices called Visual Story. First, why not on android ? This is not very respectful of android users. Second, it was not available in Canada. Third, (once I changed my country in apple store) the process to set it up is a mess, the ipad does not see the camera when trying to connect via bluetooth to set up the FTP and I tried with multiple ipads.
Update after a few months : I got used to its many flaws and I was able to get good results without too much trouble. But this does not make it a better product. Another missing opportunity : there is no way to see the focus points using Sony Imaging Edge. Let's say you want to check where your focus was to better understand the end result. Finally, for video, the image stabilization is disappointing. My phone and my gopro are miles better and both are less expensive. Now Sony released the A1, double the price of the R4 and they have not updated the firmware on the R4 since over 6 months, pretty disappointing, not sure I will buy another camera from Sony because I don't want to encourage Sony to release more expensive products instead of improving flawed products already released.
Any pros ? Ok cropping when you have images of that size/resolution is pretty insane (as long as you have low iso and no motion blur), dual slot is always good to have, dynamic range is good, battery life is ok and it survived to Canadian winters.
Noise :
- noisier than A7R3 and A73 so not great for taking pictures of my kids inside with only ambient lightning
- A7R4 is about 1/3 stop noisier than A7R3 which means, to have as little noise, you need to let enter 1/3 stop more light
- which means you need to lower your shutter speed (or increase aperture) by 1/3 stop, for example from f/250 to f/160, which means you will have more difficulty freezing action so your image have chances to be blurrier
File size :
- uncompressed raw files are huge (120mb)
- there is no lossless raw compression
- you will a fast computer ($$) and a lot of SSD space to process these files
- you will need large fast SD cards (UHS-II, U3, at least 256GB) that are expensive ($$)
- even Sony SF-M sd card is relatively slow and won't allow me to quickly see my photos to review focus for example, I have to wait for the buffer to clear, else it's laggy, which is quite annoying, I will have to try Sony SF-G
- Canon r5, Sony a7rIII, a7s3 files are much smaller so they are faster to process, think about it since your time is valuable
Complexity :
- not much is simple with this camera
- menus could be worst but they are not user friendly at all
- a "slow" SD card makes shooting in continuous mode quite annoying/odd/slow, Sony should warn the user
- no scene selection mode like on my Canon 6D for people that want or need simplicity (I don't trust full auto mode)
- saved settings for memory recalls can't be renamed to meaningful description
- touch tracking not enabled by default
- limited touch screen functionalities (only useful to set tracking point basically)
- enabling Preview makes Continuous Mode atrocious because the Preview also appears in the Viewfinder
- to zoom a Sony lens, it's the inverse direction than on the Canon (might be Canon's fault)
- would be nice if Sony gave recommended settings (some kind of pre-sets/suggestions for Custom Keys/Buttons and My Menu Favorites)
- no automatic focus bracketing
- PlayMemories software keeps creating .modd files and importing my PC pictures in its library even if I unselected all folders from being imported.
I tried the feature "View on TV", I get "could not authenticate the connection" on the camera and Registration failed on my sony TV (xbr 65x900e). I tried multiple times. Then I tried connecting by entering the password, I got "could not find the access point".
Then I tried the new app for ios devices called Visual Story. First, why not on android ? This is not very respectful of android users. Second, it was not available in Canada. Third, (once I changed my country in apple store) the process to set it up is a mess, the ipad does not see the camera when trying to connect via bluetooth to set up the FTP and I tried with multiple ipads.
Update after a few months : I got used to its many flaws and I was able to get good results without too much trouble. But this does not make it a better product. Another missing opportunity : there is no way to see the focus points using Sony Imaging Edge. Let's say you want to check where your focus was to better understand the end result. Finally, for video, the image stabilization is disappointing. My phone and my gopro are miles better and both are less expensive. Now Sony released the A1, double the price of the R4 and they have not updated the firmware on the R4 since over 6 months, pretty disappointing, not sure I will buy another camera from Sony because I don't want to encourage Sony to release more expensive products instead of improving flawed products already released.
Any pros ? Ok cropping when you have images of that size/resolution is pretty insane (as long as you have low iso and no motion blur), dual slot is always good to have, dynamic range is good, battery life is ok and it survived to Canadian winters.
