It’s Too Early for the lame turkey and family jokes that always start Black Friday deals posts, so I’ll just cut to the chase. Sony’s top-of-the-line mirrorless camera, the A7R V, is on sale at the lowest price we’ve ever seen. If you’ve been thinking of updating, now is the time to buy.
The A7R V isn’t our top-pick mirrorless camera, but that’s mainly because at full price it’s expensive relative to the rest of the market. At this price, though, it’s a steal, and while there is no truly best camera for everyone, the A7R V is unquestionably the highest-resolution camera you can buy. And I know, megapixels aren’t everything, but I have never taken an image with this camera and thought, darn, that’s just too many megapixels.
The massive 61-megapixel, full-frame sensor in the A7R V is the largest sensor you can get without moving up to a bigger, bulkier medium-format camera. If you want to go totally nuts, get this, landscape photographers: The A7R V can combine 16 shots into a single 240-MP image. It only works with static subjects, but if you ever worried if your images are hi-res enough to cover the side of a building in Times Square, well, you can rest easy with the A7R V.
Yes, the megapixel race is silly and mostly over, but I will say that I’ve shot quite a bit with the A7R C—which uses the same sensor—and images from this 60-MP sensor are noticeable sharper, and the dynamic range is visibly better than what I get from the A7R II (which has a 40-MP sensor). This is obviously the case onscreen, when pixel peeping, but I also notice the difference when I print images.
That the A7R V is $900 off does make you wonder if perhaps the A7R VI is on the horizon? Anything is possible, but I kind of doubt it’s coming imminently. The A7C R, which as noted above, is nearly identical in features, is still not on sale. Furthermore, rumor has it the A7 V (no R) is due before the end of the year, and Sony rarely announces cameras back to back.
What if you don’t want all those megapixels? They do make for huge files, after all (80-120 MB per image in my experience). The Sony A7 IV (9/10, WIRED Recommends, which uses a 33-MP sensor, is on sale for $700 less than usual.
Photograph: Sony
While the sensor has only about half the resolution of the A7R V, it’s plenty sharp and boasts a few video-oriented features you won’t find in the higher-resolution model. It has very nearly the same excellent dynamic range and one of the best autofocus system on the market.
Without getting too deep in the weeds of video technicalities, the A7 IV can record 4K/30p video by oversampling from a 7K sensor region. On the other hand, the A7R V employs what’s known as line-skipping to achieve the same 4K/30p recording. This method of recording results in reduced sharpness and sometimes causes aliasing issues.
