Introduction

Ease of Use

In terms of its external design, the new A7 V is almost exactly the same as the previous version. The only visual differences are the 4-axis LCD screen inherited from the A7R V instead of the free-angle one and the slightly larger handgrip that's also borrowed from the A7R V. Otherwise the two models are virtually identical.

The magnesium alloy bodied Sony A7V is slightly thicker and slightly heavier than the 4-year-old Mark IV that it replaces, but it's still quite small and slender overall, measuring 130.3 x 96.4 x 72.3mm and weighing 695g without a lens, battery and memory card fitted, 37g more than the A7 IV.

The increase in depth and weight is largely down to a more generous handgrip that makes this new camera even more comfortable to hold than the A7 IV, which was itself no slouch in that department.

It feels slightly chunkier than its predecessor mostly because of the new LCD screen, but in a good rather than negative way, with the new handgrip being a nice upgrade.

It features a brand new 33 megapixel sensor partially-stacked CMOS sensor paired with the equally new Bionz XR2 processor. This combination primarily offers even greater dynamic range, less rolling shutter and 4.5x faster readout speed than the A7 IV.

The A7 V offers 16+ stops of dynamic range, 1 stop higher than the A7 IV, with shadow noise claimed to be much less than its main rivals.

The native ISO range ranges from 100-51,200 for stills, which can be pushed two stops further to ISO 204,800, and can drop down to ISO 50 if required. For video the A7V has a slightly more restricted range that starts at ISO 100 and tops out at an extended 102400.

The A7 V provides improved Auto White Balance with AI deep learning technology that can recognise the light source and adjust the AWB accordingly.

The Composite RAW Shooting feature, first seen on the A9 III model, uses the Imagine Edge Desktop software to combine 4, 8, 16, or 32 RAW images to reduce noise and improve image quality.

Extended RAW processing is a brand new feature for the A7 V that uses AI to generate a high resolution 132 megapixel image in the new .axr RAW file format, again via the Imagine Edge Desktop software. This mode is better suited than Composite RAW Shooting to fast moving subjects such as animals.

Unlike the older A7 IV, 14-bit RAW recording is available on the A7 V even when shooting continuously with the electronic shutter.

The A7 V has a hybrid autofocus system with 759 phase-detection points and 25 contrast points that cover 94% of the frame, with the system working all the way down to -4EV low-light.

Sony has added an AI deep learning processing unit to the A7 V which enables it to recognise more subjects than the previous model, and also greatly improves the detection of humans and animals/birds.

It can recognise a human via its pose as well as its eye and face. So if the person's head is turned away from the camera, it will still accurately detect the subject as human based on the AI deep learning. Animal and bird detection has been expanded from just being able to recognise the eye to the eye, head and body.

As well as humans and animals, the A7 V is also able to recognise birds, insects, airplanes, and cars/trains. In the latter category, it is capable of focusing on helmets, it can recognise the eyes of some grazing and small animals, and more easily pinpoint the eyes of a variety of bird types as well as recognising bird bodies.

There's also a very welcome brand new Auto mode which will choose the most appropriate subject mode (although this is slightly slower than choosing the specific mode yourself).

Located on the front of the A7 V is the lens mount and a small porthole on the left for the self-timer/AF illuminator.

On the right-hand side of the top panel is the large shutter release button that sits in a logical position on top of the larger handgrip, encircled by the On/Off switch.

There's a traditional shooting mode dial with a separate Photo / Video / S&Q switch underneath it, with the camera remembering basic exposure settings in each mode.

There's also a one-touch movie record button, twin exposure command dials, a customizable C2 button plus an unmarked, lockable dial which can be customized to set either the shutter speed, aperture, ISO speed, drive mode, focus mode or exposure compensation, which can also be changed via the menu provided the dial is set to 0.

On the top of the A7 V is a familiar external hotshot, dubbed the Multi Interface Shoe, for attaching one of a range of accessories, including an external flash. As with the other Alpha cameras, thanks to its electronic front curtain shutter the A7 V has a sync speed of 1/250th sec, making it well suited to flash-based portrait photography.

There is no top-panel LCD screen on this camera as found on some rivals, with the left-hand-side still completely and curiously bereft of any controls at all.

The rear of the camera is identical to the previous version with the exception of the LCD screen. We really like the tactile AF joystick which is used mainly for navigating the auto focus area, plus the large AF-ON button is conveniently placed just above, right by where your thumb naturally rests. 

The rest of the rear control layout is straight-forward, with two more Custom buttons positioned either side of the viewfinder, a useful AEL button, the Fn button for quickly accessing the camera's key settings, and a traditional scroll wheel with Set button at its center. Playback and Delete buttons (also the C4 button) complete the rear.

There are plenty of custom buttons which become increasingly useful as you grow to know the Alpha 7 V and what it is capable of. Any shortcuts for controls on a camera like this are welcome.

The A7 V has a high-resolution 3.69m-dot electronic viewfinder (EVF) that has a refresh rate of up to 120fps, the same as the one used on the previous IV model.

This features 100% scene coverage, 0.78x magnification and a 120fps high frame rate option to help track moving subjects more smoothly with virtually no lag.

One of the most significant upgrades on the A7 V is its staggeringly good LCD screen. Bigger and higher-resolution than its predecessor's, the biggest change is the new screen's sheer versatility. It has a 3.2-inch, 2095K dot resolution screen compared to the A7 IV's 3.0-inch LCD screen with 1037K dots of resolution.

This incredible 4-axis multi-angle screen can be flipped out to the side, rotated to the front, folded against the back of the camera to help protect it, and set to many other positions in-between. 

It makes the camera ever-so-slightly thicker than its predecessor, but more than makes up for that with its incredible versatility - this is simply one of, if not the best, LCD screens that we've ever used.

The A7 V has more advanced video recording specs and performance than the older A7 IV.

It offers 4K/120p in super 35mm crop mode and 7K oversampled 4K/60p full-frame recording with no pixel binning.

It can record Full 1080 HD at up to 240fps, with the dedicated Slow and Quick motion mode offering frame rates ranging from 1fps to 240fps at 1080p quality.

It supports the S-Cinetone, HLG, S-Log3 and S-Log2 profiles and additionally M-LUT and Log recording with LUTs.

The recent Digital Audio Interface (via the Multi Interface Shoe) enables use of the ECM-B1M digital shotgun microphone or similar.

There's a new noise reduction function on the A7 V for the integrated mic which reduces constant background noise.

The A7V offers longer recording times at 40 degree celsius – 60 mins versus 10 mins on the A7 IV.

The newer A7 V also offers the clever Auto Framing feature which uses the camera's AI-based subject recognition technology to automatically crop the frame to keep the subject in a prominent position when shooting movies, even when the camera is mounted on a tripod.

There's no Open Gate or RAW format video recording available on this model.

The Sony A7 V features an in-body 5-axis image stabilization system to help prevent unwanted camera shake in low-light. It automatically corrects for pitch and yaw movement, plus horizontal shift, vertical shift and rotary motion (rolling) for both still images and movies. 

The use of an in-body system, rather than a lens-based system, ensures that the Alpha A7 V can stabilize all kinds of lenses, not just those with the FE designation, including E-mount lenses without Optical SteadyShot (OSS), A-mount lenses and even third party lenses mounted via the popular Sigma MC-11 or Metabones adapters.

Note that lenses without any electronic contacts only benefit from three axes of compensation, and you also need to manually input which focal length you’re using to ensure that the stabilization works properly.

Thanks to a newly redesigned stabilisation unit, the new A7 V offers up to 7.5 stops of in-body stabilisation at the centre of the image and 6.5 stops at the edge, making it one of the more capable Alpha camera in this regard.

This camera benefits from having a special Active Mode that increases stabilization for hand-held movie shooting which now supports 4K 120p recording.

The new Dynamic Active mode increases stabilization by 30% compared to the normal Active mode for hand-held movie shooting.

The A7 V can shoot a blistering 30fps blackout free burst, the same shooting rate as the flagship A1 II, which is much faster than the 10fps rate on the A7 IV. The continuous shooting rate for the mechanical shutter on the A7 V is up to 10fps.

The A7 V's buffer size with compressed RAW goes to 1000 shots+ and in the compressed 14-bit RAW mode you can get up to 95 images continuously.

Pre-capture is a new feature on the A7 V that has made its way from the A9 III sports camera. When activated, up to 30 frames per second are temporarily stored while the shutter button is half-pressed, and up to 1 second before can be captured once the shutter is fully pressed, providing a degree of leniency for fast-moving action.

The Continuous Speed Shooting Boost is another new function which provides an easy way to quickly engage one of the various burst modes (30/20/15/10/5fps) at the press of a button.

The A7 V has 60 AF/AE calculations/second versus 120 fps on the A9 III and A1 II models. It offers 1/16,000th sec electronic shutter speed and 1/8,000th mechanical and there's no flash shooting available with the electronic shutter.

Look under the memory card flap on the right-hand flank of the A7 V, when viewed from the rear, and you'll find two card slots. Slot 1 can interchangeably use UHS-II SD-cards and faster CFexpress Type A cards whilst Slot 2 only uses UHS-II SD-cards.

There's the usual customisation for simultaneous dual card recording, plus it is possible to record full-size video files on one card and proxy files onto the other - handy because you'll most likely be working on proxy files in post.

Over the left-hand side of the camera is a veritable cornucopia of connection ports - there really isn't much that you can't connect to the A7 V.

Sony have included dual USB-C ports rather than a single one, with one faster USB-C 3.2 10 Gbps port for file transfer and one slower USB 2.0 480 Mbps port for recharging.

As well as a 3.5mm headphone and MIC sockets, it is also possible to connect an external monitor directly to the A7 V via the full-size HDMI port.

The A7 V now offers 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz wi-fi compatibility and it has 2x2 MIMO antennas which provide 2x faster transfer speed than the A7 IV.

The newer model offers faster live streaming than the A7 IV, supporting 4K/30p UVA/UAC versus 4K/15p on the older version.

The Sony A7 V uses exactly the same large capacity NP-FZ100 battery as the A7 IV model, but thanks to the more efficient Bionz XR2 processor, battery life has been improved up to 630 shots with the EVF and 750 with the LCD, versus 580 shots when using the LCD screen and 520 when using the viewfinder on the Mark IV.

It can also be powered and charged via the USB-C connection, which is useful if you're out and about and have a compatible powerbank to plug the camera into.

There's also a new low brightness mode available which auto-reduces the LCD brightness instead of sending the camera to sleep to help further conserve battery life.

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Sony A7 V camera, which were all taken using the 33 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Sony A7 V enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Sony RAW (ARW) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movies & Video

Product Images

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Sony A7 V.

Specifications

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