The rolling shutter talk reminds me of Panasonic S1R II, also a camera controversial for its rolling shutter. That was quite some internet drama.
Not a problem for me who shoot stills and almost never turn off mechanical shutter (and I think people are way overreacting again), but I hope these numbers are helpful to others for clarifying:
KEH has the A7Riv slightly under $2k. They may not have reacted yet. Just a quick glance a minute ago so prices will likely fall but not likely as fast as buyers might hope or sellers fear?
Craig Gillette wrote:
KEH has the A7Riv slightly under $2k. They may not have reacted yet. Just a quick glance a minute ago so prices will likely fall but not likely as fast as buyers might hope or sellers fear?
Prices on KEH and the like are pretty crazy, have been for the past several years. I'll hop on facebook marketplace before I buy from one of those shops, or a smaller used dealer.
highdesertmesa wrote:
Canon R5 was not a 67mp camera and was limited to 12-bit ES in all modes.
Sure, but how is that relevant to the effect of rolling shutter/sensor readout speed on the image?
Isn't 18ms or whatever speed creating image distortion the same way for all cameras since the readout speed is for the same 24mm sensor height?
GUYS, this killed the camera (as original A1/m2 replacement)
You can only choose between
1. 60 AF calculations per second with 12 bit file (compressed)
2. 30 AF calculations per second with 14 bit file
30 calculations is not going to work for fast action, and 12 bit file is bad
EB-1 wrote:
You cannot stop redesiging tech products. At a certain point it costs more to keep making an older model of something and eventually you cannot even get all the parts. Maybe Sony has a stockpile of a7rV sensors, but there could be difficulty making them in the 2030s.
EBH
I understand that. But demand can still drop. Used to be that I felt the newer camera was worth upgrading too. No more. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t keep improving their cameras, just that fewer people might buy them.
gordonyz wrote:
GUYS, this killed the camera (as original A1/m2 replacement)
You can only choose between
1. 60 AF calculations per second with 12 bit file (compressed)
2. 30 AF calculations per second with 14 bit file
30 calculations is not going to work for fast action, and 12 bit file is bad
25 minutes 05 seconds on this video
?t=25m05s
How do you know that 30 calcs/s is not going to work for fast action?
The main prerequisite is that the calcs/s should be greater or equal to the burst rate.
And then it's about the quality of the algorithm and not just the number of calcs/s.
I'm pretty sure than this camera tracks better at 30 calc/s than the original A9 did at 60 calc/s.
α7RVI readout in 14 bit RAW — 19.5 ms
α1 & α1ai readout in 14 bit RAW — 3.9 ms
...so it's not even close = it's not A1 killer it's snowflake ❄️ edition of it. Hence the Snowflake on the mode dial.
Alex was in here trolling hard saying it would be 6-10 ms. What a scammer that dude is…that’s like someone promoting a new Sports Car that can do 300mph, when in fact it cannot go over 150mph.
This camera really makes me vehemently angry as a α7RIVA operator. They sold out for the snowflakes (hence the mode dial) and gave the peasants a measly 9.84% increase in pixels after a 7 year wait…. Now they will not go above 67 MP until 2032.
The illuminated buttons are a ridiculous joke. You mean to tell me I haven’t developed full muscle memory in over 6,000 miles backpacking across America with both α1 & α7RIVA on 16-35GMII / 50GM 1.2 / 135GM? Because that is my EDC setup and I’m Rebel & I am one of the most accomplished backpackers in American history.
Someone explain to me how I would benefit? I have so much experience in different situations over a long period of time with these cameras & also I always have a rubber protective housing around both bodies 24/7 to further protect it from abrasions and bumps. Plus all the buttons are covered up in rubber on both my cameras, so there would be no way illuminated buttons would work on my setup.
I eat 14,000 footers in Colorado for breakfast & Trainhop coast to coast shooting 8K like a wrecking ball stacking wood that the peasants aren’t prepared to lay witness to…
Absolutely insane marketing brainwashing by the major players and these people who sold their α1 & α1ai bodies in anticipation of this because of the rumored “α1ai killer” specs…. The people who are replacing their stacked 50MP cameras with this partially stacked 20% readout speed joke of a camera are super low IQ. They definitely took multiple COVID vaccines, and they should be avoided at all costs because of the shedding…
That 100-400GM having a silver badge on it, while not made in Japan is the icing on the cake for how disastrous today was. As someone who has invested over $30,000 in your camera division, today was the second worst day for Sony, after the debacle that was the α1ai announcement.
The great thing about this entire situation is that now we are closer to the real α1ii release and possibly a α7CRii that isn’t inherently crippled with a flappy screen…
Great things are coming!!! When that Sony guy during the presentation said that the 100-400 f/4.5 was “World Cup Glass” I literally fell over dying of laughter…you’re telling someone who owns the α1 & 400GM f/2.8 that a camera with 5 times slower readout speed combined with only 50% the calculation speed of my α1 when paired with a f/4.5 lens that needs to be shot at 1/1600-1/2500s shutter speed under nighttime stadium lights is going to compete against the Canon Professional two person setup of R3 or R1 on 100-300 f/2.8 RF & 400 f/2.8 RF?
The Corporate brainwashing is getting out of control, the hype machine of these shill YouTubers and social media influencers is such a detriment to our world and society.
I’m going to fly 6,000 miles tomorrow and absolutely wreck Salt Lake City and shoot up the Tabernacle & climb the mountains and leave no doubters…that the “Alpha Rebel” is in town and you best get out of way and let me cook.
✌🏻
Screw the Canon R5ii & Nikon Z8. Those are 45MP toy cameras that cannot compete with the Sony “R” series for landscape and details. I never wanted a sped up readout coming from the α7RIVa, all I wanted was pure MP beast mode and going at at least 77MP with the same readout speed as before. To hell with all you video shooters complaining about warping in video…the Sony “R” series is not for you. You have every single freaking camera by Sony designed to cater to you, and now you caused Sony to make a completely wrong turn with this product announcement, and everything since the α9iii release in terms of cameras has been a real disappointment.
People need their heads chopped off at Corporate over this. I do not trust the research they are conducting, and what they did with the α1ai & α7RIVa is peeing down our backs while telling us, “It’s raining!”
Nikon is for boomers, Canon can’t make a freaking tilt screen. The only company that can make bleeding edge cameras to propel backpackers and adventurers is Sony, and I will die on the hill for Sony because I love Sony and I want to see Sony dominate and get stronger and leave the competition licking it’s feet.
I want to see a reversion to the hungry Sony that helps artists create magic and inspire the dreamers to dream bigger and appreciate and savor all the great things God gave us to look at on this planet. I am a warrior and I will fight, I need Sony to fight with me and not against me.
QuadCrownRebel wrote:
I eat 14,000 footers in Colorado for breakfast & Trainhop coast to coast shooting 8K like a wrecking ball stacking wood that the peasants aren’t prepared to lay witness to…
Have you been known to remodel train stations on your lunch break? - Hugh Gallagher, College Essay
Sundial wrote:
On paper, the A7R VI sounds cool: new sensor with more megapixels, new processor, higher burst rate, and body refinements. But once you look past the marketing language, it becomes difficult to identify what has actually changed in a meaningful way for the photographers this camera is supposedly built for.
The increase from 61MP to 67MP is only about a 10% increase in linear resolution, which translates to a relatively negligible real-world gain for landscape work.
High ISO performance also appears to remain broadly similar. It stills excel at low ISO, but once you move into ISO 1600+ territory, IQ starts to fall apart. There doesn’t seem to be a meaningful leap forward. I myself was hoping for improvements in read noise, shadow cleanliness, or downstream processing flexibility rather than simply more pixels.
Despited being a fully stacked sensor, the readout speed is still behind cameras like the Canon R5 II and Nikon Z8, both of which are years old already.
The only upgrade that actually feels meaningful is the higher-capacity battery.
The issue isn’t that the A7R VI is a bad camera. It’s that this release doesn’t push the envelope far enough to make Nikon, Canon, or even Sony’s own previous-generation offerings any less compelling.
This release feels like a sign that Sony understands the market has matured. Canon and Nikon users are no longer switching systems purely because of body specifications.
That may make business sense for Sony. But for photographers hoping to see the company aggressively innovate again the way it once did, the A7R VI feels surprisingly underwhelming.
...Show more →
The A7Rv is my primary body, and this is a significant and meaningful upgrade. Precapture at 30FPS and fast enough e-shutter to shoot concerts indoors make this an immediate buy for people like me who use their cameras to shoot travel and street photography. If I was only focused on landscapes, it would be a "maybe" if better dynamic range makes a difference.
Personally, I am looking forwards to precapture and some silence for shooting scenes like folks throwing boxes of food while unloading from boats in Venice, Italy, where I am currently on a photo trip.
For sports, shooting events with a strobe and video work, I'll reach for the A9iii. As with any actvity, different horses for different courses. And I don't give two whits about how the A7Rvi compares to Canon or Nikon bodies. I'm dating the bodies and married to the glass. So the body spec by spec comparison seem silly; it makes more sense to me that someone would switch to Nikon for the built in TCs on long primes than because a body has a specific capability. I suspect the biggest system switching that occurred at a body intro was with the OG A1 because it actually read like an April Fool's joke of impossible specs at the time.
gordonyz wrote:
GUYS, this killed the camera (as original A1/m2 replacement)
You can only choose between
1. 60 AF calculations per second with 12 bit file (compressed)
2. 30 AF calculations per second with 14 bit file
30 calculations is not going to work for fast action, and 12 bit file is bad
Always read the fine print!
However, I must say worrying about the two extra bits isn't usually necessary. A 14-bit raw file theoretically speaking captures darker details than a 12-bit one, and thereby offers better shadow recovery abilities. Such lighting condition is so harsh it's rare to find. In this article, the author had to very artificially create highly underexposed raw files to see a difference between 14-bit and 12-bit.
14-bit is still "nice to have just in case", but I won't miss it if the need to give it up for fast AF comes up.
“Have you been known to remodel train stations on your lunch break? - Hugh Gallagher, College Essay”
- No, & that was a lame attempt at sarcasm. However the last two weeks of May in 2025 I was in your neck of the woods at Black Butte when I trainhopped Union Pacific out of Brooklyn Yard in Portland down to Dunsmuir, then made the jump back to K-Falls and went to Winnemucca over the Keddie Wye through Portola.
My favorite shot was captured with the 135GM from the Dollar General parking lot in Weed in the golden hour with Shasta perfectly framed with a ♥️ visible, because the middle of it looks like a ♥️ when you shoot it telephoto from that exact perspective. I also was able to capture the iconic Dunsmuir Oil tanks that were there for nearly a century before being removed last summer.
I’ll have the best final image ever captured of it in Dunsmuir, because I shot it a week before UP dismantled it. I can’t post photos here but if I could I would share them with you. You live in one of the most beautiful parts of the USA. I loved that part of the PCT, and I remember the awesome porcelain bathtub with collected spring water that was like halfway up the climb from Seiad Valley to Oregon. I have the “State of Jefferson” stickers next to my Sony Pro stickers on my Pelican Air 1535. That is definitely a “Rebel” sticker and y’all are Rebels up there
Y’all are awesome!!! When I got into Ashland for the resupply I was walking through downtown with all my gear on and someone said, “Hey are you hiking the PCT?” I said, “Yes, Sir & I walked up here from Campo & I ain’t gonna quit like that heroin junkie Cheryl Strayed did at the Bridge of the Gods…I’m gonna keep hiking until I can take an epic dump on Canadian soil and then I’ll leave it then I’ll turn around and hike back to Hart’s Pass and complete the PCT!”
At that point the guy had a huge grin on his face and said stay right where you are young man, I’ll be right back…. Then he went to his pickup truck and came back and threw me a zip and said this will get you to Canada to take that dump and you leave it.
However, I must say worrying about the two extra bits isn't usually necessary. A 14-bit raw file theoretically speaking captures darker details than a 12-bit one, and thereby offers better shadow recovery abilities. Such lighting condition is so harsh it's rare to find. In this article, the author had to very artificially create highly underexposed raw files to see a difference between 14-bit and 12-bit.
14-bit is still "nice to have just in case", but I won't miss it if the need to give it up for fast AF comes up.
Regarding that article, remember that if the camera cant produce 12 bit worth of output then it doesn't matter if you store it in a 14 or 12 bit file.
The A7RVI sensor (16 stops) should be considerably better than the D810 (14.8 stops) used in the article, at the very least the DR is considerably higher at base iso. We would need to test the A7RVI at 12 and 14 bit before we can draw any conclusions
aCuria wrote:
Regarding that article, remember that if the camera cant produce 12 bit worth of output then it doesn't matter if you store it in a 14 or 12 bit file.
The A7RVI sensor (16 stops) should be considerably better than the D810 (14.8 stops) used in the article, at the very least the DR is considerably higher. We would need to test the A7RVI at 12 and 14 bit before we can draw any conclusions
Would be nice to see experiments on the latest sensor for sure. The most recent test I can find is on the Mark IV:
In the case of this camera, you would probably only choose compressed raw (12-bit) in order to achieve much bigger buffer for action, and since we are talking action, we are also moving into higher ISO where dynamic range is reduced anyway. I would be more concerned about the delta step artefacts in high contrast areas with this format than loosing dynamic range.
I don't think Sony ever changed their compressed format, but I can't remember whether it was always forced into 12 bit though?
arbitrage wrote:
One could dream....I always thought it should have been 60FPS from the start as that would be similar data rates to the 120FPS in the 24MP A9III.
So no FW update to give the A1II 60 FPS. The A7RVI is no A1II killer, at least for most people who bought the A1II for its sensor speed. I don't want funny looking hummingbird wings.
Sometimes we tend to judge cameras based on what we shoot, not what the intended target the manufacturer tries to appeal to. Serious question, what kind of subjects do people shoot 30 FPS with the A7RVI given the relatively slow sensor scanning speed? OK for fast jets and big birds?? I would imagine it could be problematic for propeller planes. Duade Paton's review on Youtube shows very visible warped fan blades.
Douglas L wrote:
I may actually buy an A7RV in a year or so to use it purely as a landscape/travel camera when the used price falls to $1500. I think it will drop below $2000 pretty soon. I don't want to take my A1II cameras for that kind of shoot, not that the A1II is bad but the A7RV is better for that type of work. If I damage it or lose it, it won't hurt so bad. I think by Thanksgiving/Christmas, we could get the A7RVI for $500 less.
I disagree about the price drop of the A7RV. Sure right now GAS is pretty high for the new toy, but I expect that in 6 months the used A7RV price to stabilize around the $2350-$2700 range (depending on actuations and conditions) — especially in light of the A7RVI costing effectively $2000 more is going to help the already amazing A7RV not to bottom out like you suggest
Jazzgear296 wrote:
I disagree about the price drop of the A7RV. Sure right now GAS is pretty high for the new toy, but I expect that in 6 months the used A7RV price to stabilize around the $2350-$2700 range (depending on actuations and conditions) — especially in light of the A7RVI costing effectively $2000 more is going to help the already amazing A7RV not to bottom out like you suggest
If one can buy a brand new A7RV with US warranty for $2850 on the B&S board right now, who in his right mind would buy a used one for $2500+ if he cares to look around and do some research? I predict the used A7RV price will fall below $2000 by Thanksgiving/Christmas. We will see...
Douglas L wrote:
Serious question, what kind of subjects do people shoot 30 FPS with the A7RVI given the relatively slow sensor scanning speed?
If they don't mind mildly slanted background, panning shots tracking birds or racecars?
BTW I think propellers that aren't idling are too fast for even mechanical shutters: even just at 1500 rpm, a propeller rotates 36 degrees in 4 ms. Often, we set the shutter speed so slow the propellers are blurry. This is more to convey the speed of the aircraft, but it has the side effect of hiding rolling shutter.
