Sony isn’t any stranger to producing impressively small full-frame cameras. The original A7C took the innards of the bigger A7 sequence and stuffed them in a extra compact physique. The ZV-E1 went additional, with a tiny physique that appears positively comical hooked up to lengthy lenses.
These smaller our bodies all the time contain function compromises. Nobody desires a heavy digital camera, however some options imply bodily limitations. Whereas the sensors would be the similar, the viewfinders are smaller, and different options have been typically absent.
Enter the brand new Sony A7C R. In my expertise testing it for a number of weeks in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, it comes closest to offering all the things you want in a digital camera and nothing you do not. The impressively small physique is nonetheless snug to carry and carry round all day, and has a lot of the options even a professional would need.
All Issues Nice and Small
Two years in the past, I examined the unique Sony A7C and located that whereas the compact, rangefinder-style physique was excellent for touring, the viewfinder was too small and the 24.2-MP sensor was a step again from the 40-MP sensor in my Sony A7RII. It was tantalizingly near all the things I needed, however not fairly there.
The A7C R solves a minimum of the sensor drawback, and will get a lot nearer to the perfect journey digital camera. It is nonetheless lots small at 4.9 inches extensive, 2.8 inches tall, and a couple of.5 inches deep. It weighs just below a pound at 15.2 ounces (430 grams) for the physique. With the FE 28-60mm F4-5.6 lens Sony despatched alongside for testing, the whole weight got here to 21.1 ounces.
{Photograph}: Sony
The 61-MP CMOS sensor within the new A7C R is similar sensor you will discover in Sony’s A7R V, launched a couple of months earlier than the A7C R. It is top-of-the-line sensors I’ve examined, able to wonderful element, with nice dynamic vary. The low-light efficiency is spectacular as properly, with little or no noise even properly up into the five-digit ISO choices (the A7C R can shoot all the way in which as much as ISO 102,400, however as you’d anticipate, these photos are very noisy).
There’s nothing about this sensor that I can suppose to complain about. It is incredible. The ensuing RAW recordsdata are giant—round 65 MB per picture in my testing, with low gentle photos being the biggest. You will get this all the way down to round 45 MB per picture when you go for compressed RAW, however on the time I used to be testing, no software program might open these recordsdata (Lightroom and others have since added assist).
