My Honest Thoughts, SONY a7R5 - Long Term Review

After a bit more than 6 months and about 50000 photos later, I have my verdict on the Sony a7R5 or a7RV. It is a fantastic camera, but with a few things I personally could find to be better.

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MUSIC:

0:00 - Long term review
0:36 - Those pesky mega pixels!
2:42 - What's in front of the camera
3:15 - A few thoughts on video features
4:43 - L-brackets or...
6:22 - Sensor protection
7:58 - Another annoyance
9:20 - The infamous error message
10:05 - Flip-flop screen
10:46 - Benefitting from custom buttons
12:00 - Pixel shift
12:10 - Build-in focus stacking
12:58 - Final verdict

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Other stuff:

[ozzibattler]

I’ve had the A7RV for half a year like you and I shoot in uncompressed RAW. Love the camera so much and the quality of the photos. I’ve had no issues processing the files in Lightroom on Windows 11, 16GB RAM on a i7 8700K. I do run Windows and Lightroom on an NVME drive and that has a positive impact on speeds. I’d say there is a possible bottleneck on your system that is causing your speed issues and not necessarily because of the Intel based chip.

Denoise for me takes less than 30 seconds.

I’ve recently in the last two weeks upgraded my system to i7 13700K 64GB RAM with my same 3080 GPU. I’m also using a dedicated SSD each for Lightroom catalogue exclusively and another for the photos. Runs even better than it did before and I was pretty happy with it.

[goodwolf]

7:30 My personal feeling is that the sensor protection feature sounds nice, but may not really be worth using. First, the shutter is actually way more fragile than the sensor, so while you may be saving some time and effort to clean the sensor, you're also risking damaging the shutter. And even if the shutter does block dust from getting on the sensor, unless you actually clean the shutter, that dust still remains INSIDE your camera body. So each time you release the shutter, that dust is getting moved around in there, and is likely to end up on your sensor anyway (or worse, someplace else that might actually damage the camera). Add that to your issue with not being able to use electronic shutter, and it just doesn't seem worth it, to me.

(I also find that it takes a few moments to actually engage after shutting the camera down, which for me, just slows down the lens-changing process)

[RScottNH]

I have the A7RV. I just invested in a new Mac M2 Studio Ultra. It works like lightning on these big files. Denoise just takes a few seconds.

[PhilT]

I was chatting with a Sony Rep about the features of the A7RV and he said that the shutter protection of the sensor sounds like a good idea, BUT strongly advised NEVER to use it. He said that the shutter mechanism is both very delicate and so expensive to replace that is should is best left retracted and not exposed to any possible touching or deposits. The "sensor", on the other hand, is very easy and cheap to clean if it gets something on the glass covering. Something to consider.

[peterrussell]

Yes, on the A7R5 the shutter can be set to close when powered off in electronic shutter mode. Compared with my previous A7R's I get significantly less dust. In dusty environments I prefer to carry two bodies to minimise changing lenses. Once I damaged a sensor glass cover but Sony UK did a fine job replacing it at moderate cost.

I too rarely feel that 42mp is too small but, when cropping hard, 61mp is marginally better. I sold my A7R4 and kept the A7R3 as my second body.

One benefit you did not mention of the A7R5 is the 8x stabilisation which is simply excellent - 1/3 sec shots at 50mm of waterfalls or interiors etc reliably sharp. Take 3 shots at 1 sec and usually one or two are sharp. Leave the tripod behind on a hike! The better stabilisation on the mark V is the main difference I notice compared to the mark 3. I find the 16-shot pixel shift not worth using but the 4-shot mode does marginally improve resolution/clarity - when shot on a tripod. Focus stacking works well.

It may not suit you but I built a desktop PC with Intel i9 13900 CPU, with a very fast SSD NVME (Crucial T700 today rated highly) fitted as C: drive and a pretty fast but cheaper set of NVME (Samsung 980, today 990 available) to store the files in use, plus a graphics card for GPU processing. I use an older but still decent Nvidia 1600Ti but I see in the comments below newer, faster cards give better results - my next upgrade? For storage and backups I use large-capacity (8-16tb) HDDs. Both Capture One and Photoshop are pretty quick, it's not an issue to process 61mp files - even 3gb pano files (DNG or Tiff or PSD) are manageable on the above system. Benchmark test shows this setup is significantly faster than the latest Apple computers when running Photoshop, but that may not apply to laptops which require low-power consumption CPUs.

The exception is the new Photoshop noise reduction but I expect Adobe to do something to speed up future versions, and a new GPU in my PC may help.

[elwick_photo]

Hey mads, the cleanup of noise in files in Photoshop is GPU limited, higher memory on newer powerhouse GPUs really helps, for a 50mb image my ati 7900xtx 24gb takes like 2-3 minutes at absolute max.
Also, with the Intel processors you can't just say i7... The i7 has been around for years we've everything from an i7 920 in the first gen to things like the i7 13700k, in a more recent gen 👍👍

[BenSussmanpro]

Thanks for honest review. I have this model and I’ve spent far more time learning & configuring it than any previous camera. Yet I probably only use 15% of all the features.

[dumbdumbervlogs]

That’s memory and processing time is a very important info. Thanks for sharing !

[blackshadow]

You are absolute right about the megapixel in a machine like this. I sold my DSLM and all the glas. Now I only use a Leica Q3 with 28mm. In this machine 60 MP make sense, because I use cropping a lot. A 50mm crop has 19 MP. That‘ enough for me and I’m on tour with light weight and don‘t have to change glasses!

[Withalenius]

8:00 actually, you can set the shutter to close while in silent mode (atleast on the a7iv). Shooting -> Shutter/silent -> Silent mode settings -> target function settings ->shutter when pwr off -> not target.
A bit of an adventure to try and find it but thought it could be useful :)
Great video!

[edc]

Besides the custom modes you can also set custom recall settings and assign to a button of your choice. I use it when I shoot landscapes and suddenly see an interesting bird flying by. I press and hold a specific button on my A7R III, which completely change the behavior of the camera (shutter speed, aperture, iso, focus mode and so on). It makes it super quick to change from "slow" photographing to action. When the button is released everything resets to whatever previous settings I had. Sony is king when it comes to customization of the camera.

[ForrestWest]

I enjoy using the custom save modes with my A7iv and my R7. One thing I encounter is that if I make any settings changes to the camera as I'm moving around at a location and the camera goes to sleep or I turn it off and turn it back on, the settings revert back to that custom mode instead of whatever settings I'm using the moment before. For that reason I've been using my #2 custom setting to save whatever settings I'm using at that location at any given time. I'll save my settings after I get them where I want them to number #2 and keep shooting. If the camera goes to sleep or I turn it off to change batteries and turn it back on, it returns to those exact settings I was just using.

[kgadeberg]

I use the A7IV which also has the articulating screen and struggle a bit to use it with My L-bracket attached. I have had to offset the bracket some 5mm from the body to articulate the screen in portrait mode and also do some twisting and turning of the screen to use it In landscape mode. But I guess that's just the way it is. I also use the M1, M2 and M3 settings all the time. M1 for quick and easy, M2 for landscape and M3 for fast paced action. Works really well. Thanks for another great video.

[SpecialBrewCan]

Great video thank you. I'm really surprised that you find the 61mp feature as such an issue. The beauty of the Sony A7RV — for me — is that you don't need to struggle with editing and storing huge 61mp files. It's an amazing 26mp (more than enough) camera for the majority of the time, but the 61mp is there for the occasions you need it.

EDIT: Sorry, just realised I made pretty much the same comment on your other video.

[TehGems]

Hey @MadsPeterIversen awesome video as always. I only disagree on one point: I’d much rather get dust particles or snow on the sensor, which is much more resistant than people think and also quite easy to clean, than risk damaging the shutter, which is super delicate! What do you think?

[godsinbox]

Imagine sony adopting a pixel binning algorithm where it is default 24MP and if you want to unpack the high res, you could process it back to 60-80 MP. 4 pixel into 1. Clearly I live in a dream world.

[mickue]

I use a intel i9 12th generation, rtx2070 and 32gb ram and don't have problems in LR. Even the new denoise is done in several minutes. There is something wrong with your system i guess.

I use the A7RV since November 2022 and my biggest issues are battery life and inconsistens in auto white ballace and sometimes the camera freezes in burst mode.

I really benefit from having the possibility to use the high resolution. For example for macro work. Also its great to use the medium m raw and swap to apsc mode with a button press and have the same resolution.

I would never give up on my L bracket, as it also protects the camera and improves the ergonomics.

I never had any issues with shutter vibrations.

[andreasfriedl]

As far as shutter shock is concerned, can you use electronic first curtain? That should still give you the benefits of silent shutter but also a closed curtain at the end. Not sure - not a Sony user.

[Affableambler]

Really pleased with my a7rv and find it much more enjoyable to use than the earlier r series, which is unexpected given that it’s an update rather than new design. I have not experienced any shutter shock.
The Smallrig collar has its own button to operate the lens release, which is tricky on the others I have seen. I find it much more convenient than the L bracket, which has to be released and tightened again every time you change orientation. I don’t have evidence in my photos yet, but I’m pretty certain that the L bracket is more rigid, so for windy conditions it stays on my camera.

[Nils.steiner]

Yes, please do a review of this horizontal/vertical thingy 😁