Alright, there's a lot
going on in this video, so bear with me please. First of all, we're gonna be reviewing, sort of reviewing three different
products at the same time. Also this is a new set, where I have three
different cameras running. I'm not that experienced
yet with using this set. I'm gonna give you a full tour of this, probably like, early to
mid-September, but for now, you'll get some little
sneak previews on it. I've got a bunch of
information to disclose, which we'll get into right now. So this is about two
Sony cameras and a lens. We've got the a7C II, the a7CR, and the new 16-35 G Master II. Now, when it comes to disclosure part, as usual, these are just loaners,
I don't get to keep them. No money changed hands,
Sony doesn't get any input on this video's production, and this video does have
an actual sponsor, though, and that's Storyblocks. I keep getting confused about
which camera to look at. I'm gonna have to get used to that. But then there's also an
extra bit of disclosure here that I want to be open
and transparent about. I believe that these products
are gonna be launched at Sony Kando, which is
a sort of press trip kind of getaway thing that Sony runs, so they're gonna be launched there. Now, some people are gonna
get the cameras ahead of time, like me, and get to do
reviews ahead of time, which is important to me, because I have sort of an ethics thing
where I don't make content at press trips, because I
find it to be a little bit of a conflict of interest. Now, me knowing that these
cameras are also being launched at Kando, and the fact that I'm going to Kando could also be
a conflict of interest. I just wanna make you fully aware of that. I'm not gonna be making
any content at Kando, and my opinions are gonna
be based on my experience with the cameras before
that trip ever took place, but decide whether you wanna
take anything I have to say to be useful or not. And also if you can't tell,
this video is not scripted. I'm kind of doing a "Gamers Nexus" style. I've got my sheets of paper here, but it's gonna be kinda easy. This is gonna be more
of an overview anyway, because these cameras
aren't exactly new cameras. The a7C II is an a7 IV,
and the a7CR is an a7R V, and I already reviewed
both of those cameras, and those videos are still up,
so I recommend you watch them if you wanna go into deep dives on them. And so today we're just gonna be talking about what's different, what's new, you know, any limitations,
and stuff like that. Now, these have the same or very, very similar form factor to the a7C, but that camera was
modeled after the a7 III, so there's a huge upgrade
if you're an a7C owner. Going from the a7C to the a7C II, it's actually greater than the upgrade of going from the a7 III to the a7 IV, because in the case of the C II, it's actually slightly
better than an a7 IV. Think of that if you're an a7C user, this is a massive upgrade. If you have an a7 IV, it's
kind of a compact lateral move, same with the a7R V. Both of these cameras
are almost identical, except for the sensor is
different between them, and again when it comes to that sensor, this is the 33 megapixel
sensor that we saw an a7 IV, and this is the 61 megapixel
sensor from the a7R V. But keep in mind that
if you're from an a7C, that's still using the
old interface, 8-bit, the old menu structure, all that. All these cameras are on
the new menu, new interface, 10-bit video, all that kind of stuff. Now, like I said, I'm not gonna go back
and review those cameras, but I did spend, you know,
a week retesting everything like a moron. The dynamic range, rolling
shutter-- it's the same. I like, I don't know why. I'm not even gonna waste your time like, going through all the
numbers and everything. They're the same,
they're the same sensors, they perform the same. Let's talk about what's
actually different. So the smaller body on these
means that there's gonna be changes to the input and
output, and you know, this might not be foreign to
you if you're an a7C shooter, but if you're an a7 IV
user and you're like, you know, "What's gonna be changing?" Let's take a look here,
over to angle number three. So you can see all the input
and output ports there. So we've got a headphone and
microphone jack, which is nice. We've got a USB-C port with power delivery, and we're gonna talk more about that, because it's pretty impressive, but only one SD card slot, so no redundant recording in the camera, and then as you can see there, it uses a micro type D HDMI port, which obviously isn't great, but they weren't gonna be able to fit a full-size HDMI port on this
camera, so if you need that, the a7 IV, like I said, is
pretty much the same camera with a full-size HDMI port,
and two SD card slots. When it comes to controls,
it's very similar. You actually still get three
dials too, which is nice, the one in the rear, the one in the front, and the thumb dial down there. There's no joystick, though, so that can be a bit of an annoyance. I think the viewfinder's slightly worse, but the LCD screen is
pretty much the same. The bigger difference in
the screens is more gonna be with the a7CR, where again, it's just going to your basic flip screen, where the biggest, one
of the coolest things about the a7R V was that
multi-way, nine axis, tilty flippy, you don't get to have that, and the viewfinder is a massive
reduction in quality going to the a7CR from the a7R V, but again, not as big
of a deal on the a7C II, and there's obviously
quite a bit of a reduction in grip depth, as you can see here. It's not bad, I believe it's
been improved over the a7C. I don't have an a7C anymore
to really compare it to, and you know, it doesn't
feel terrible in the hands for a compact camera, but it's
definitely not the same grip that you would get from
the full size cameras. Now, with the a7CR, it actually
comes in the box with this, it's about a finger with
thick little grip attachment that you can put on the bottom. It just threads in here like this, and it does actually
give you a lot better, you know, more place for your pinky, and it does feel a little
bit more firm in the hand. Adds a little bit more weight too, which some people might like, and you can still get at
the battery compartment. And interestingly is that
it actually balances okay on that thing, even though
it's not a very broad point of contact with the
surface, but it's not bad. Now, this grip can also
be used on the a7C II, but it does not come included. And then lastly, when
it comes to cosmetics, it's not just that the a7C II is silver and the a7CR is black. You can get them both in
black, both in silver, either or, both options are available. Now, like I alluded to
earlier, there's actually been some improvements to the cameras as well. They're not just smaller
with some drawbacks. Both of these with the USB-C port now offer the improved live-streaming
and webcam functionality codec, so you can go all the way up to 4K30, where the previous cameras
like the a7 IV was 1080p60 or 4K15, which is pointless. So now you can do 1080p60 or 4K up to 30, which is actually a
significant quality bump, but I do have some notes about
that webcam functionality when we get into overheating. Now, also when it comes to
the a7C II, this camera, unlike the a7 IV, now has
that AI processing chip, so you're gonna get better
subject detection in autofocus, and theoretically bringing
this camera above the a7 IV for overall autofocus performance. Stabilization is different,
and something to consider. So both of these are using
the same stabilization now, which is a new IBIS design
just for these cameras, which is a slight
downgrade from the a7R V, but a slight improvement from the a7 IV, kind of meets in the middle. They're rated at like seven stops, where the a7R V was rated at eight, but the a7 IV was rated at 5.5, improvement from the a7 IV,
downgrade from the a7R V, but a massive upgrade over an a7C, a7 III, all those other previous cameras. So I'd say that's a win overall, especially because again
from an a7 IV shooter, this is an improvement, but
you see the trend, right? It's slightly worse than an
a7R V, that keeps happening. Now, also the same is true
when it comes to burst rates. With the a7C II, it's
maintaining 10 frames per second in mechanical and electronic shutter. With the a7R V, it could do 10 frames, but the a7CR has dropped
to eight frames per second. I don't exactly know the reason for that, but it is worse when it comes to how quickly you can fire
off shots with the a7CR, but it is not worse with the a7C II. Now, both of these new
cameras also feature all of the same little bells
and whistles that we've seen. You know, we can knock Sony for
not doing well in going back and adding firmware upgrades
to their previous cameras, which annoy me, but what
they do do well is that whenever they raised a new camera, everything that's kind of
come out up to that point goes in the new camera regardless
of its price point. So it's getting all the new like, the new video priority displays
with the touch functions. It's got log shooting mode, user LUTs, the improved clear image
zoom so that you don't lose subject detect action
and that kind of thing when you're zooming in
with clear image zoom, which is actually pretty important. You now get the self-timer
for video, AI auto framing, which is sort of a cool
feature if you, you know, a self shooter where it kind
of follows you around the frame based on where it's
autofocusing, crops, it crops in, and then follows that crop
around inside the frame. Focus breathing compensation, that complaint I made about
them not updating old cameras, but obviously, these cameras get everything that came with it. They really haven't
pulled any punches at all when it comes to features. The only thing it doesn't
have, but no cameras have, is some of those like,
vlogging features that were in the ZV-E1 that only that camera has, like dynamic active,
and that kind of stuff. That's still only that camera, but all the rest of the
AI stuff is on this one. The a7CR does have another
limitation, though, and it's video resolution, so it's not 8K. There's no 8K functionality. They basically just sort of
disabled it in the camera, probably because the a7R V 8K, you know, had some caveats, so putting in the smaller body was
probably just a non-starter. So it's now 4K60 max. All the same sort of quirky crops, and when it's pixel binning
and when it's, you know, oversampling stuff still apply, so anything that's full frame
isn't going to be oversampling from 61 megapixels,
but then you can switch to APS-C mode, and you'll
get that 6.2K oversampling, and the other modes it, you know, either crops a little bit and then like, bins what's left over, or
bins the full image, you know, depending on your frame rate. So those things still
apply, the 24 versus 60, and then the APS-C up to 30
frames per second, just no 8K. But let's talk about overheating in all those different modes. So first thing I did is I put the a7C II against the a7 IV in sort
of a head-to-head test to see if there was any differences in thermal performance in my studio. Now, the conditions were identical, because I wanted to
eliminate any variables, so they had the same battery,
the same card, the same lens, they were using the same mount system. I had the same settings in camera, everything was exactly identical. They were both shot at the same time, so the ambient was the same, which was about 22
Celsius or 72 Fahrenheit. I had the heat threshold
set to high on both cameras. The LCD screen was flipped
out, and autofocus was enabled, and I had them tracking
my face on this TV, so they were both
shooting the same subject with the same amount of compression, and they were both required
to do the same eye tracking. I suppose the only difference
is that the a7C II has the AI processing unit when
it comes to subject detection, where the a7 IV didn't, which might explain the battery
life discrepancy that I saw, because at 4K 24, both cameras
ran until their battery died, with no overheating warnings whatsoever, but it was sooner on the a7C II. For a7C II, I got two hours,
almost two hours exactly, and on the a7 IV, it was
2 hours and 17 minutes. So it seems like the extra, you know, bells and whistles do seem
to cost you some battery. It could also be that
maybe because it's smaller, the battery's closer to the
heat generating components, which warms up the battery more, and then reduces the battery
life, but either way, 2:17 versus 2 hours,
and they were using the same generation of battery,
both fully charged, too, and I ran that test twice. And then I connected power
delivery to the cameras, and ran the test again,
but this time at 4K60, just to see if power
delivery caused any issues, if 4K60 was more demanding, even though 4K60 is now in an APS-C crop so it's not oversampling from the 7K. So really, 4K60 might
actually be easier to do than 4K24 for the camera, but either way, first off, let me just say that that power delivery
performance was excellent. So the batteries didn't even lose 1% over the entire run with
power delivery connected, so I really like where we're at now with USB power delivery in these cameras. It's definitely I think a better option than a dummy battery. You might as well leave the battery in, hook up power delivery, when it shuts off, you've still got the battery
back up, and you like, it didn't even go down
by 1% the entire run, and that run was close to 2.5 hours, the 4K60 with power delivery. So what I can say regarding
the a7C II is that in a climate controlled environment, I did not see a functional difference when it comes to overheating
between this and the a7 IV, meaning that I can record
for as long as I want without any issues, basically. Now obviously, that is going to change in hotter ambient temperatures, and that's gonna require
more testing, but luckily, if you watch the tour of
"Gamers Nexus" that I just did, Steve offered to help with some, you know, much more methodical data when it comes to camera overheating tests, so maybe we'll start doing
that, and if we do do that, we'll add these cameras to the list so we can see how they stack up. Lemme know in the comments if it's something you'd be interested in. Now, when it comes to using
this camera as a webcam or live-streaming, I was
able to get it to overheat. If you run it at 4K30
and record simultaneously, which is an option, I mean,
even in a 22 C environment, I was getting like, 30 to 40 minutes. That really cooks it up. But if you don't record internally, and you just do a 4K30
Zoom call or a live stream, I did notice that, you know, up to the first hour or so, nothing, and if I let it run for about two hours, then I did get a warning on the screen. It didn't shut down, but I
did start to get a warning. So if heat is a concern,
then you can always pop it in 1080p mode and it'll last longer, but then you won't be able to, you know, show off your incredible 4K video quality to all the other plebs in your Zoom call. It actually looks pretty good. Here, let me show you an example of it. Okay, so here you go. I just set this up in like, two minutes. It's the a7C II, I grabbed
that 16-35 G Master II, put it on there, put it on
a little Manfrotto tripod, plugged it in USB-C in the computer, opened up OBS, pressed
record, here you go. I mean, it's not lit well or
anything, I just, you know, I'm just under the house
lights, but I think, I'm looking at it at
OBS, and I think like, the video quality is fantastic. This is the 4K 30 mode here. Yeah, so I mean, it's great
to have that as a feature, like I said, if you wanna
flex on everybody else in your Zoom call, but
while I have you here, allow me a minute to tell
you about today's sponsor, Storyblocks in all this
great webcam fidelity. So Storyblocks is a stock
media platform that boasts a massive library of
high quality assets aimed to strengthen your video production. Their subscription model
provides predictable costs without any pay per clip pricing. Just pick a plan, pay
that fee, and that's it, and you'll enjoy limited downloads
of HD and 4K video files, images, and motion graphics templates, and the platform is
intuitive and easy to use, and new content is added regularly with a focus on in-demand
keywords to make sure that you have access to updated assets to satisfy your project. And if you're an Adobe
Creative Cloud user, you can now access the
entire Storyblocks library right in Premiere Pro or After Effects by installing a clever little plugin, which can really speed up your workflow. And whether it's those motion graphics or the high quality stock footage, remember that with Storyblocks, anything you download is
100% royalty free forever, with no restrictions on where you can distribute your projects. So to get started with
unlimited stock media downloads at one set price, head
to Storyblocks.com/undone or just click the link in the description. Now, when it comes to
the a7CR and overheating, I don't have an a7R V to do that same sort of head-to-head test with, so instead, I just ran it on its own but,
in the exact same conditions that I did the other camera, same lens, same memory card, same battery,
same setup, same target, everything exactly the same. In 4K60 on this camera,
which again is sort of the most intensive
non-oversampled mode, I guess, I recorded for two hours
with no heat warnings, camera died due to battery life. So it seems like the battery
life is about the same between these two cameras
now, it's about two hours. Then I ran the test
again, but in APS-C mode, which is that 6.2K oversampled one, and I added power
delivery into the mix too to see how that would affect things, and I still managed to
record for nearly two hours before I just shut it
down because I was bored, again with no overheating warnings. So when it comes to a
controlled studio environment, I don't have any concerns
with either of these cameras using any of their
record modes, but again, more intense thermal testing is required for me to make any recommendations about people using it in hotter environments. Let's do a little quick
summary on these two cameras, wrap it up, and they'll
move over to the lens, which I have things to say about that that make me kind of angry, but okay, so when it comes to a7C II, basically, it's a slightly worse
viewfinder, but same LCD, improved Ibis, and they
added more features, like the AI chip, better
autofocus, the LUTs, auto framing, a better streaming codec, just a whole bunch of nice
quality of life updates over the a7 IV, and it's
cheaper than the a7 IV. I think in my briefing, they
said it's gonna be like, two or $300 less than what
the a7 IV is selling for now. So because it performs just as
well in a studio environment for me where, you know, like, the viewfinder doesn't
really matter, you know, I'm just putting it on a
tripod and shooting myself, it's just a cheaper version of the a7 IV, and a7 IV was already,
you know, one of my sort of favorite choices for
YouTube A-roll for the money. Well, now this is better, it's cheaper, so if it's doing the same job for cheaper, that's a win, right? And it's even got, like I said, some extra features in
there, which is nice. So this is just, this is
an overall great product, in my opinion. For the a7CR, it's a bit more challenging, because it's still considerably cheaper than the a7R V, which is great, obviously, but you're giving up
a few of the aspects that makes the a7R V kind of special, which would be that, you
know, crazy flip screen thing, the really impressive viewfinder,
and to a lesser extent, you could say things like 8K
recording, which is absent, and the phenomenal image stabilization. Again, I can't do a
side-by-side comparison in terms of IBIS between
this camera and the a7R V, but the a7R V's IBIS
is great, so you know, even giving up a little
bit of that does feel a little bit of a pain point, but it's still a much more
affordable entry position to this sensor for somebody
who maybe doesn't care about those other things. So if you want that a7R V sensor with the AI processing chip, this is the cheapest way
you're gonna be able to get it, but it doesn't have the
same magic of the a7R V. Now, moving on to the lens, which like I said, is kind
of an interesting thing. Sony announcing and releasing,
not releasing, but like, the embargo, the announcement
of this lens at the same time as the cameras is frustrating. They did this last time with
the a6700 and the 70-200 f/4. Lenses are kind of more
important than cameras, you know? If you buy this lens, you're
gonna have it probably longer than you're gonna have bodies, especially with how quickly
Sony puts out bodies, and sometimes the lenses are pretty neat. That 70-200 f/4 was neat,
but I only had time to make that sort of
in-depth review on the a6700, so I didn't even cover the lens. And as a YouTuber, posting two videos at the exact same time isn't good for us, it's not good for the audience, 'cause they're not gonna
watch 'em all necessarily, it's not good for like,
one's gonna get buried. And what I can tell you from views is that cameras beat lenses in terms
of just, you know, engagement. So these cameras are gonna come out, and this lens is gonna come out, and I think the lenses are gonna bury, or I think the cameras are gonna
bury the lens a little bit, which is annoying, because a
16-35 G Master II two has been something that I've seen
a lot of requests for. Now, I do actually have a few
comparison images for you, and we'll pull 'em up on
the screen in a second. I don't wanna bore you with
too much pixel peeping, because we're literally comparing like, pretty similar lenses here, but build quality, it does
have some differences. So here's the, can we
see this in this shot? Here's the original GM I. Here's the GM II, you can see
it's a little bit smaller. When you extend the barrel,
there's a bigger extension on the Mark I, and this is also changing, you can feel the balance change more on the original than
you do on the new one, which means that if you're a gimbal user, and you like a 16-35, this is gonna throw off your balance less than the original did, and it's lighter. It's actually considerably lighter. Often, I put numbers up, but it's like, the numbers
don't mean anything. I'm telling you that like,
when it comes to holding it at the back, this one's got
much more of a tip to it. If you've ever used a 16-35,
this is lighter, smaller, extends less, balance is
better, that's a win-win. And then really, in terms of changes, there's not a lot, other
than they've added a second, you can see here, the GM I just
has the one function button and obviously, no aperture
ring, just an AF/MF switch. With this one, they
have the aperture ring, you have the ability
to click it on or off, and it has an iris lock, and it also has more
than one function button. You got one here, and one here. Same frame filter thread,
which is 82 millimeters. I'm pretty confident,
yeah, it's 82 millimeters, but they have improved the
minimum focus distance, which is nice as well. So overall, build quality-wise, it's a better lens, as you would expect. The rings feel a little bit nicer too, a little bit better dampened. It's all linear, linear manual focus, but with a shorter throw, and it's got, you know,
the XD linear motors in it, so the focus is super
fast, and they actually, I think they claim something
in the briefing like, oh it's, you know, focus is 10% faster or something than this one. I don't know if you're gonna
notice that in the real world, but it's just better,
it's better in every way. But what'll happen is the
price will probably get reduced on this one, and so then it'll
be more expensive as well, you know, 'cause this will come out at the sort of full price of a 16-35, and then this one will get reduced. Let's look at some images, though. All right, so this is kind of cool, first time doing this practically. So you can see the tight shot here, but then the wide shot
shows that screen behind me, which is a duplicate of
the screen I'm looking at that I can control wirelessly from here, and we can pixel peep altogether now. I don't know what I'm doing. Anyway, let's take a look here. So G Master I is on the left, and G master II is on the right, and this is to just show
a couple different things. So if we punch in, let's
zoom in quite a bit here. You can see that it's
slightly sharper on the one on the right, which is the G
Master II, which makes sense. But also when it comes
to chromatic aberration, as we go through the side, you can see, you can see a little
bit of like a blue line, a blue fringe running here,
and there's not much fringing at all on the GM II, so
little improvements like that. The further out that we
go, the more, ooh, look at, that's like a weird hair in the shot. I didn't notice that on the table. It looks like an eyelash, and the eyelash is sharper on the GM II, but that's what I was gonna
say, as we go to the side, the fringing gets worse, the distortion and
skewing is kind of worse, and this was at the one
end of the focal length. Let's switch over to
the other one like this, and still GM II is still on the right. Again you can see that there's more detail in
the one on the right, and it maintains that
detail as we go to the edge. This one's a little bit of a closer call on the other end of the
focal length, focal range, but yeah, just slightly sharper,
a little bit less fringing. I mentioned that the close like, the maximum reproduction
is actually greater, 'cause you can close focus better. On the GM I, it was 0.28
meters or 0.92 feet, and on the GM II, it's
0.22 meters, I think now, yeah, 0.22 meters or 0.73 feet. So you get closer, but
you're still maintaining 35 millimeters means
this is the difference. So this is what it looks
like as close as you can get on the GM I, and this
is what it looks like, the same Rubik's Cube as close
as you can get on the GM II. And then lastly, I just
did a couple checks on focus breathing in case
you're still using a camera that Sony never gave focus
breathing conversation to. The GM I breathed a little bit, yeah-- I don't know if it's a
huge deal when it comes to practical use case, but
did breathe a little bit. The GM II has significantly
reduced the focus breathing, which you can see on this little
tape measure I've got here, how much of the tape
measure's kind of appearing and disappearing as you focus
from minimum to infinity. The GM II does a better job of that, so you know, it's minor improvements. They're improvements that
matter, though, you know? Better chromatic aberration
performance, better sharpness, less distortion, better
focused breathing, you know? Like, all these things are relevant. The build quality's better, it's got more features
and functions on it, but like a lot of the
sort of GM II versions that have come out, I don't
know that I would rush out and sell my current GM I to buy a GM II if you were going to do
that at a significant loss. But if you were shopping for a 16-35 now, or were waiting for the
update, or you're new, you just started getting
your Sony cameras, you're looking for what lenses to get, the GM II is the clear winner
between the two of them, and that's the one to buy
in 2023 moving onward. I just don't know that
it's a massive upgrade if you're thinking about switching. Anyway, that's about it. What do you think of this announcement? You know, is it sort
of a minor one for you? Are you interested in
these compact cameras? Are you interesting in the GM II 16-35? Lemme know the comments what you think, if you're excited or not, and yeah, thanks for watching. Thanks for sort of helping me
test out the new setup here. I'm still switching my eyes
from one camera to another. I'm gonna figure that out. Anyway, Alright... I'm done.
