Sony isn’t any stranger to producing impressively small full-frame cameras. The original A7C took the innards of the bigger A7 collection 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 characteristic compromises. Nobody needs a heavy digicam, however some options imply bodily limitations. Whereas the sensors would be the identical, the viewfinders are smaller, and different options had 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 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 good 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 not less than the sensor drawback, and will get a lot nearer to the perfect journey digicam. It is nonetheless lots small at 4.9 inches vast, 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 entire 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 the most effective sensors I’ve examined, able to wonderful 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 photos are very noisy).
There’s nothing about this sensor that I can suppose to complain about. It is improbable. The ensuing RAW information are giant—round 65 MB per picture in my testing, with low gentle photos being the most important. You may get this all the way 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 may open these information (Lightroom and others have since added help).