Sony A7 IV 6 Months Later | Only 1 Major Flaw

i think every content creator is looking for the exact same thing right the perfect camera one that can handle videos photos and anything you can throw at it well this this is the a74 it shows 4k at up to 60 frames per second has a 33 megapixel sensor that is full frame and it has that fully articulating screen that everyone is drooling over so this should check all the boxes right well not quite because see there's one more box that is typically overlooked by most content creators but wait a minute i'm kind of getting ahead of myself here just because it has these specs doesn't mean that it's actually checking the first two boxes right so let's go ahead and jump into the first box which is all about video now in order to properly break down how this camera handles video we first have to talk about really where this camera sits in sony's lineup for starters this actually sits kind of in the middle but price wise towards the bottom see sony has their a7r series and they also have their a7s series and the benefit of each of these is with the r this focuses primarily on photo and with the s this primarily focuses on video but see with the a74 this is supposed to be this perfect hybrid of the two but at a more affordable price now at the heart of this camera sits its sensor as i mentioned it is a 33 megapixel sensor and it's back lit which is fantastic for this price point now one of the major benefits of this higher megapixel sensor is the fact that when it comes to video you're not just getting 4k at 24 or 30 frames per second you're actually getting 7k that's being down sampled to 4k and this is something that you really won't even find in the a7 s3 or the fx3 for that matter now on top of having fantastic resolution you're also going to get beautiful picture profiles and plenty to choose from just like on some of their more professional cameras you're going to get hlg which is going to allow you to capture hdr you get s logged in order to get the most dynamic range out of your camera and they also packed in cinetone which is their more professional sort of pre-colored look for their cinema cameras that normally just need some minor tweaks you do slightly lose a little bit of dynamic range here but personally this is one of my favorite running gun picture profiles now having all these picture profiles is great but what's most important is that they're all captured in 10-bit this means that we're going to get tons of data this means you're going to have more information coming in from the sensor which means you have more to play with in post now when you hear about all this data you might think this might be too much to work with or can my computer even keep up well the nice thing is that you can actually choose to capture in all eye which is a great compression kodak which means it's actually going to be easier for your computer to edit all this stuff in pose as well now as i mentioned earlier this camera does have that backlit sensor which personally i found really helps out in low light situations about a week ago or so i was out shooting this camera and we decided to stay out a little bit later than golden hour in order to see what this camera could do in low light and when you put this camera in its base native iso you're actually going to get super clean shadows and it's really nice to be able to have that flexibility if you're running a gun now another huge upgrade from the three to the four is with auto autofocus the autofocus that they've added into this camera really brings it on par with the other sony's in the same lineup as well as it really competes heavy with a lot of the canon mirrorless cameras as well this is a huge benefit especially if you are out filming subjects with super shallow depth of field or even along with that flippy screen it helps a lot with solo shooting you know overall the video that you get out of this camera is really stellar i mean personally i've always loved sony's colors i know for a long time a lot of people really gravitated to the canon colors but over the years sony has continued to improve on their color science and they brought that over to this camera particularly as i mentioned with the flexibility of s-log and the ease of use of cinetone it really does give you a camera that you can trust will check that video box but that's just one box now let's hop into photos as you guys know i'm primarily a video shooter but from time to time i do have to take photos whether that's for thumbnails or posts for instagram everybody needs a camera that can sorta do both so i wanted to take a couple shots with this camera and see what i could get out of it but in order to fully break down these photos let's take it into the editor so to open up these photos i'm going to be pulling up luminar neo now luminar neo did sponsor this section of the video but let's be honest we have to look at the photos in an editor anyway and so it just kind of makes sense as far as doing this integration plus with all their new ai features such as background removal ai masking and sky replacement they're really going to help show what we can do with these photos out of the sony a74 now when it comes to checking that photo box one of the first major things that the a74 gives us is eye autofocus when it comes to eye autofocus this is absolutely crucial really because just like in video if you don't nail your focus your photo is pretty much useless and especially when using an editor like luminar neo see luminar neo can use ai to help you do masking so that way you can change certain elements like you can make your background lighter or you can make the subject darker or you can actually do full edits based on certain elements that the ai is able to pick up but if your photo's not in focus well that doesn't work and so here we can look at one of these photos and we can see just how quickly the ai is able to do its job because this camera was able to get tac sharp focus on our subject's eye now sony says that this camera offers 15 stops of dynamic range which although i don't have a scientific way of actually testing those numbers i can say that when i look at a lot of these photos here it is giving me really good dynamic range for example these photos were actually taken very close to sunset actually slightly after sunset and so you can see in the before how my subject is completely in shadow and the sky is almost overexposed but because of those 15 stops of dynamic range in the raw files i am able to actually pull back all of that detail now pulling back that detail doesn't just give me a better image but it actually allows the ai to do some really interesting things for example because i have all this information pulled back now i can do something as simple as a sky replacement see here at this time we were shooting the sky wasn't fantastic but with luminar neo i can actually do a sky replacement and because i have all of that information from the dynamic range not only can it do the sky replacement but even in areas like here down here in the water where it's pretty much almost all shadow it still has the information needed in order to do the reflection of that sky replacement which is something really interesting that luminar neo is actually able to even do to begin with now the third major benefit when it comes to the photography on the a74 has to do with that 33 megapixel sensor i've already talked about why that's beneficial in video but when it comes to photos this can really come in handy when you're needing to crop and reframe your actual photography as we know a lot of times we're taking photos and it might need to be repurposed for a youtube thumbnail or an instagram post and so having all that resolution will allow you to reframe your images another huge benefit with having all that resolution is with luminar neo there's this really cool feature that actually allows you to fully remove the background from your portraits this can be great again when making things like thumbnails or you just want to take your subject and put a completely different background behind them with something that you can do completely here in the editor itself now if you are interested in checking out luminar neo for yourself do check out the links down below in the description as not only is it just a fantastic editor but it also helps support the channel on top of that they do have other effects that they have been adding such as dust removal atmosphere and they even have dodge and burn coming very soon one of the things that makes luminar neo really stand out today is from a pricing structure is that you can purchase this on a one-time buy so unlike lightroom and many other softwares out there you're not having to sign up for a subscription but if you are someone who still uses lightroom the nice thing is that there is a plugin that will allow you to send your photos from lightroom into luminar neo and be able to edit them but now that we've talked a little bit about the photo box let's go ahead and hop into that third box because remember like i said so many creators forget about this box so let's go break it down all right so i'm totally guilty of this too we get a new camera and we get overly excited about the specs when arguably we forget about the most important box which is just simply functionality all right now i get it functionality is completely subjective so the only way to figure out how functional a camera really is is to look at what the camera is designed for and then see how well it stacks up to that in real world use cases so when it comes to the a74 this is clearly a hybrid camera so does it stand up to the functionality that sony was promising when it first came out well yes but also no and the no is really where some of the problems start to fall into line now i've already mentioned that the photos and the video that you get out of this camera are absolutely stellar and that's not gonna change here but it's the speed at which the actual sensor is reading that information that's really slowing down this camera and acting as it's kryptonite now in most cases one fault of a camera really isn't enough to write it off altogether but this issue sort of plagues the camera in a lot of different factors photo and video included for anyone who's gonna take this camera out to capture anything that's fast motion whether that's sports or really just your kids running around in the front yard you're going to notice how the slow readout of this sensor is going to affect your ability to properly capture your image so you actually had to experience this unfortunate issue firsthand when i took this camera out as my b camera when capturing a campaign for fossil i was documenting a skater for a ghost gate day and we were shooting the campaign and when you shoot a skater there's tons of fast motion and there quickly was a lot of instances where this slow readout of the sensor was kind of stifling my creativity now one of the instances where this was sort of an issue for me was when i was shooting at 4k 60. now whenever you have slow readout on the sensor the easiest way to fix this from a manufacturer's standpoint is literally to limit the size of the sensor that is being used this is why when shooting at 4k60 there is a crop now from a creative standpoint this is sort of an issue when you're going back and forth between 24 frames and 60 you either have two options either to step back or to change focal lengths altogether which might include swapping lenses altogether personally i am someone who loves to shoot at 24 frames per second unless i'm gonna slow down the footage at which point i will switch to 60. but with every time switching to 60 meaning that i had to crop in on the sensor this was sort of a creative inconvenience that personally i wish i didn't have to deal with now another area in video where you're going to roll into this issue no pun intended is with rolling shutter the rolling shutter on this camera is fairly bad i mean it's just as bad as it was on the a7 3 so that means we haven't gotten any type of improvement on this now this really is only going to affect you again with fast motion whether your subject is moving quickly or the camera itself is moving quickly so if you're not using this camera in fast motion situations you might not even notice this problem now on the photo side you are going to also see some slight limitations when it comes to this slow sensor readout one of the biggest ones is with your frames per second see sony will tell you that this camera can shoot at 10 frames per second but that's going to be at a compressed raw setting what that means is that you're going to be losing dynamic range going from 14 bit down to 12 bit if you do want to shoot this camera at full raw and have all of the dynamic range then you're only going to be able to shoot this camera at 6 frames per second which personally is going to again affect you in those fast motion situations if you're shooting sports action or again just kids running through the front yard you're going to be missing moments in between if you want that full raw option but hold off remember a slow readout doesn't mean a bad picture it just means less photos i was actually really happy with the pictures that i got it's just really important that you know when buying this camera that yes you are going to get stellar photos but you're just going to have to make sure that your settings are dialed in right in order for you to get those right photos out of the camera now i know this might sound a little daunting on this camera but the functionality of this camera is not all bad that just happens to be one area that sort of affects a few different ones but there are some actual good functionality improvements that sony made to this camera one of the biggest ones being the upgrade to the body not only do you have a bigger grip that now takes the new battery but now you also have something that has been improved from the software to the hardware that makes the camera a lot easier to work with with the upgraded menus and the better button placement on the overall camera itself this is something that i can trust and say that you can go out and shoot with fairly easily another huge benefit with the body of this camera is just how compact it still stays yes they upgraded it but they still kept it lightweight which makes it a great travel camera if you want to pair this with a small lightweight gimbal as well you can easily throw this in a backpack and go anywhere with it that paired with which is one of my favorite new sony lenses their new 24 compact lens will make it a great vlog camera or street photography camera really just makes it a great camera that you can just easily run and gun with without having to build it out into this massive behemoth of a camera if you don't have a gimbal by chance and you are trying to stay really compact this camera still does give you ibis which personally i find that the sony's ibis is a little bit more subtle so this means when you're using those wide lenses you're not gonna get as much warping in your footage which personally as a video shooter i appreciate so if i had to quickly break down some of my favorite new functionality features on this camera obviously one of the first ones is being the new dial layout you actually have four programmable dials on this camera which is great especially if you're trying to quickly rack through settings without having to go into the menus although the new menus is actually my second favorite new upgrade on this camera i love the new sony menu system and especially because the entire thing is touchscreen it's very quick and easy to get through all of it and probably my third favorite new upgrade on this camera has to be the photo video and slowing quick mode switch on the body the nice thing about this camera is you can quickly switch between your photos your video and slow and quick mode and unlike my r5c it doesn't take eight seconds to switch between these modes so you can probably already tell if you shoot sports wildlife things that are moving very quick in frame this camera is really not for you it's not going to check that functionality box and i would strongly probably recommend that you look elsewhere however if you're shooting really anything else this is a stellar camera and at the price point that it's sitting at it is a highly sought after camera because it is a great entry into sony's full-frame lineup now sure they do have other full-frame cameras that you can look at even some that are slightly cheaper but with a lot of the upgrades that they've made to this camera and a lot of the features that they packed into it i do strongly recommend it at least be one of the ones on your list when you're shopping around for full-frame sony cameras so does the a74 live up to the hype well honestly it shouldn't have to look all these cameras are great in today's time it really doesn't matter which one you pick my goal here is just to help you guys see the good and the bad of any camera that you're looking at purchasing so that way you can know what you're getting into before you actually buy it but i want to give a huge shout out to b h and say thank you so much for sending this camera out for me to review and test here on the channel let me know what you guys think of all the things that i said and maybe if i missed something leave that down below in the comments as well and you can also find links to this camera down below in the description but thank you guys so much for checking out this video and i'll catch you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Brandon Washington

Views: 59,701

Keywords: Filmmaking Tips, Photography tips, sony a7iv, sony a7iv review, sony a74, sony a7iv specs, sony a7 iv unboxing, sony a74 vs a7s3, sony a7 iv rumors, sony a7 iv, filmmaking tips from directors, sony a7 4, sony a7m4

Id: u_DidCxTnCQ

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022