A while ago, we published our Sony a7v review. Along with several other journalists, we all found problems with it. These problems specifically had to do with using third-party lenses. Those lenses are from Chinese brands that do not pay Sony to have a license to work with the brand. It’s one of the reasons why Nikon is suing Viltrox right now. Sony hasn’t done that. But here’s the problem, the autofocus issues that we found affect even Tamron lenses — and Sony owns part of Tamron.
The updated text for our review is below. But if you want to see the whole thing, please click this link. We’re still not recommending that anyone actually spend money and buy this camera.
Experience (Updates)
Sony hasn’t done firmware updates with the a7v since our original review was published. But Viltrox did. It’s really awesome that Viltrox was THIS fast on updating the firmware. But admittedly, we’re behind on updating our reviews because of the holiday season.
This truly feels like Sony is punishing Viltrox because any lens that we tested from Tamron didn’t have problems with the a7v. Especially because Viltrox doesn’t pay for the Sony license to have support from their camera system. Honestly, it feels like Sony is being greedy here.
Here’s something that I’ll say over and over again: the Sony a7 series feels like an abomination to the Minolta heritage. The only thing that feels Minolta about it is the fact that there’s an “alpha” symbol on the camera. Even a camera like the old Minolta Maxxum A7 had dials on both sides of the viewfinder. I also really wish that Sony put buttons on the left side of the camera.
Off the bat, I hate that the viewfinder doesn’t really support folks with glasses all that well even after calibrating the diopter. In my opinion, this is one of Sony’s worst viewfinders.
Something also worth noting: this is some of the worst battery life I’ve ever experienced. Within only a few minutes, the camera went from 100% battery down to 92%. I’ve said this many times before, but we’re back in the era of Sony’s battery life being really awful. By the time I was done testing within two or so hours, the battery life was down to 82%. I’ve got the EVF frame rate set to max and that’s really the only thing that would drain the battery that fast. Still, it’s unacceptable.
What’s really weird to me personally is why the video record button is located where Sony puts a Custom function button is normally. Why would you do this?
Otherwise, with the Viltrox lenses, the Sony a7 V performed impressively quick overall in the AF-A and AF-S modes. But they still feel behind Sony’s own in some ways. I’d liken them to the way that Sigma lenses used to perform on Sony bodies where the focusing performance just wasn’t there. But we know for a fact that it’s the camera manufacturer causing the issue this time around.
In the AF-C mode, it seems like even Tamron lenses and Sony’s own older prime lenses have a few issues. Specifically, using subject detection with AF-C and finding subjects in near darkness using Tamron lenses and Sony lenses both feels like it’s nowhere as smart as Sony’s camera system used to be. It used to be that Sony’s system would primary search around the area where the intersection of the rule of thirds were. But the camera will search behind God’s back on the edges of the scene instead at times.
That’s quite odd as I’m not sure who composes that way.
To clarify even further, I was using the wide-area AF mode. This means that if you want to get the best results, you still need to really tell the camera where to focus by using the manual autofocus selection setting.
After I put both Sony and Tamron lenses on the Sony a7V, I decided to come back to my Viltrox lenses. I first tested the Viltrox 50mm f1.4 in AF-C mode and with the smallest autofocus point selected. This is the point that I’ve been using the most these days, and its what I used before. The Viltrox performed very slow and very inaccurately at f1.4 and when focusing on a really small detail. When I went back to the wide-AF focusing area and used scene detection, the Viltrox performed better.
Even the 14mm f4 had issues in AF-C mode. That’s crazy!
Image Quality (Updates)
Aside from the autofocus issues, the Sony a7v’s RAW file versatility in Capture One is excellent when it comes to highlight and shadow detail retention. Like every other Sony camera that’s come out in the past few years though, you’ll get much better results if you just underexpose the scene that you’re photographing.
If you do that, then even the color depth will really surprise you.
All of this is just standard for any camera these days – at least with full-frame. And that’s why you choose it over APS-C cameras.