Sony A7C R Review (2024): A Full Frame Travel Camera

Sony is not 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 connected to lengthy lenses.

These smaller our bodies all the time contain function compromises. Nobody desires a heavy digicam, however some options imply bodily limitations. Whereas the sensors often is the identical, the viewfinders are smaller, and different options have been generally 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 every thing you want in a digicam and nothing you do not. The impressively small physique is however snug to carry and carry round all day, and has many 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 every thing I needed, however not fairly there.

The A7C R solves no less than the sensor drawback, and will get a lot nearer to the perfect journey digicam. It is nonetheless loads 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 overall weight got here to 21.1 ounces.

The 61-MP CMOS sensor within the new A7C R is similar sensor you may discover in Sony’s A7R V, launched a number of months earlier than the A7C R. It is among the best sensors I’ve examined, able to glorious element, with nice dynamic vary. The low-light efficiency is spectacular as effectively, with little or no noise even effectively up into the five-digit ISO choices (the A7C R can shoot all the best way as much as ISO 102,400, however as you’ll count on, these photographs are very noisy).

There’s nothing about this sensor that I can assume to complain about. It is improbable. The ensuing RAW recordsdata are giant—round 65 MB per picture in my testing, with low gentle photographs being the biggest. You will get this right down to round 45 MB per picture in the event 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 help).