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Sony A7 IV review 20k photos later! Still the best hybrid mirrorless camera in 2023!?
After using the Sony A7 IV for a year, I share my long-term review about this Sony camera and how it compares to my Canon 6D Mk II. I also answer if this is the best hybrid mirrorless camera to buy in 2023 and if I regret buying the Sony A7 IV.
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► CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:37 Why I switched to Sony from Canon?
01:44 Ergonomic Comparison
03:14 Autofocus (photos and videos)
05:12 Low light performance (photos & videos)
07:57 Stabilization (IBIS, digital and Catalyst Browse)
09:41 Colors (photos & videos)
10:43 Visiting Aiguille du midi (4k test footage)
14:29 Photography Image Quality
16:02 Video Image Quality
18:34 A small issue...
19:14 The menu system
20:55 Build Quality
22:06 Editing the photos and videos
22:55 Data Storage Issues
24:15 Lessons I learned after 1 year
26:08 Answering the questions!
26:59 Bonus!
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- 0:00 Introduction
- 0:37 Why I switched to Sony from Canon?
- 1:44 Ergonomic Comparison
- 3:14 Autofocus (photos and videos)
- 5:12 Low light performance (photos & videos)
- 7:57 Stabilization (IBIS, digital and Catalyst Browse)
- 9:41 Colors (photos & videos)
- 10:43 Visiting Aiguille du midi (4k test footage)
- 14:29 Photography Image Quality
- 16:02 Video Image Quality
- 18:34 A small issue...
- 19:14 The menu system
- 20:55 Build Quality
- 22:06 Editing the photos and videos
- 22:55 Data Storage Issues
- 24:15 Lessons I learned after 1 year
- 26:08 Answering the questions!
- 26:59 Bonus!
Hello everyone. About a year ago I bought the Sony A7 IV after using Canon cameras for over 10 years. In this video, while I'm visiting the Beautiful Alps, I want to talk about how the switch went during the last year. I also wanna answer two questions. First of all, do I regret buying the Sony A7 IV? And is the Sony A7 four the best hybrid mirrorless camera in 2023? Let's get started by rolling the intro. For those of you who need to this channel, I'm Loic Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at this art. Let's start by talking about why I stood from Canon to Sony in the first place. So for the last few years I've been looking to buy a new camera because I wanted to be able to start filming some 4k videos with better video qualities. I also wanted a slightly better photo camera. So this is what I was looking for inside of the cameras. Canon was really so to come out with its mirrorless line and it was waiting for mirrorless cuz I knew they're gonna be the future, but it didn't come with any of the cameras that were really interesting. For me, the R5 was way too expensive and the R6 had most of the features I wanted, but also they cut in weird places for some features I really was looking for. On the other side, Sony came out with the Sony A7 IV and it had everything I wanted on the video side and it also had everything I needed on the photo side. So overall it was just a perfect fit for me. I knew I needed to change all my lenses because the RF system was new. So this was the perfect time to switch to Sony because anyways, I would have to change everything for my camera system. Now let's talk about the ergonomics of this camera. Overall, it feels really good. The grip is good and feels solid. Once it's in your hand, it's not as big as something like the Canon, so it's not as good as the grip on the Canon camera, but overall it feels perfectly fine. One neat, very neat feature here that I really like is being able to toggle between photo and video mode simply by using the dial here. It's super quick and fast and for somebody like me that just passes between photo and video all the time and can keep my settings for both modes separate. It's a must-have feature and I really love this on this camera. Another little neat thing is on the side right here and can actually open my microphone and plug in and microphone and it still works with the tilt screen, which is a great thing because it was so annoying on my Canon camera having to unplug the microphone every time I wanted to tilt around the screen to get a different view angle. So overall there's not much I can say for the agronomics here. It's just amazing. It feels good, it works well. The buttons are well laid out so there's not much I can say that isn't great about it. And one is a little gripe here is when you're taking out the uh, battery right here, it's on the opposite side of the uh, Canon cameras. It just doesn't feel natural here because the shape of the battery right here fits to go on the side here, but it goes on the other one. Just small little things but one is really great. The other one is just a little bit annoying and I'm sure there's a reason for that, but I don't know why. Maybe a patent that Canon hold or something like that. Now let's talk about the auto focus of the Sony A7 IV because this is one of the main reasons why they decided to buy this camera. I remember the few years ago I was laughing about how bad the to focus was on the Sony cameras, but they definitely catch up and I even think they're better than the Canon cameras these days when taking some photos. It's super quick and accurate with about a hundred percent coverage, which means that whatever you have inside of your shot, it's always gonna be in focus. It's also really great because it's super sticky with a subject. So for example, if I'm in a burst mode, taking some pictures of my sister or friend, uh, going down skiing, it's actually gonna stick on the subject, the person going down while skiing and it's gonna make sure that that subject is perfectly in focus. In the video mode, the auto focus is also really good and it's super sticky on faces and even on eye detection, making sure that when I'm blogging or making these types of videos I don't have to be thinking about the auto focus too much. I know my shots are gonna be perfectly in focus. So overall I really love the auto focus on the system. It's really fast, it's accurate, there's really nothing to say that is bad about it. It's almost perfect a hundred percent of the time I decided to come out and take some pictures of the stars at night. If you know me, you know I love doing some astrophotography and one very important thing when I chose a Sony A7 IV was there was gonna be a good low light camera. It's simply amazing in video right now. Even though the picture might not be perfect, it's still totally usable, which wasn't the case with my Canon camera before and the picture and the video just look really great at night. I would say the big difference is much more on the video side where it's much more usable than the one from the Canon, but the pictures look great too. Uh, so now I'm just gonna find a spot out here where I can take some astrophotography shots, set it up and talk a little bit more about why this is so good on the Sony A7 IV. I finally found a spot to take some pictures of the stars. It's not exactly the one view I wanted, but there's a mountain, there's some nice houses here and there's a stars at the top so it's good enough. It was actually really hard finding some stars inside of downtown Chamonix because there's just so much light pollution everywhere, but I still got a bunch of cool shots at night of the village instead. Now I really like taking some nice shots using my Sony A7 IV and this is because it's a really good camera and low light conditions. This is probably just because it's so good at handling the ISO. So when you're taking the pictures of let's say the stars or things like that, it comes out so sharp, so detailed, uh, there's so much information and it's really clean overall. It doesn't mean that there's no problems with the ISO at all. I still have to apply some noise directions or things like that. But for example, if I'm taking a shot of astrophotography with the stars on my Canon, I might see something like something like a thousand stars in the sky and if I take the same picture with my Sony camera I might see something like I would say 10,000 stars. I'm exaggerating a little bit here, but you understand the point that I just see very much more detail inside of the shot on the Sony. So for astrophotography, it's actually a really good camera. Then on the video it just, this destroys whatever I was getting on the Canon. The Canon above 1,600 was just terrible and low light. I know they're better these days, but still Canon still struggles sometimes when you're in low light conditions where there's Sony right here. Uh, this is not even the best Sony camera for light conditions. Uh, but I can get really good videos at night. So if I'm at eight a thousand ISO or 3200 ISO, these are two native ISO, you can get really clean and good looking images at those ISOs. But right now I'm filming a 12,800 ISO. This is crazy high. I know the image is not perfect but it's still good enough to be filming in 4K and getting a nice little shot While I'm walking towards Aiguille du Midi for fabulous 360 degree view. Let's talk about the image stabilization. The Sony A7 IV has IBIS or in body image stabilization, which was a big selling point for me cuz it meant I would get more stable shots. In the photo modes, it works great! It allows to get some photos at 1/30 second or even 1/10 of a second in good conditions and it works great by selling the shot and to get chrisp and sharp photos. In the end, it's more in the video modes where have some problems because it doesn't work quite as well as Canon does. I think the reason for this is that most Canons lens have image stabilization I inside of them, which is not the case for most of the Sony lenses and third party Sony lenses that only have image stabilization I inside of lense only inside of the IBIS and digital one. Right now I'm filming when I'm filming this talking headshot, I'm using the active stabilization so digital stabilization plus the IBIS and it's still quite wobbly. The good news of Sony is actually that there's a solution to this problem and it's using their software, which is called Catalyst Browse. It allows you to use the gyro data that's embedded in every file that Sony creates to stabilize the shot and get almost gimbal like shots in the end. I wouldn't totally rely on this because it's quite a long process, it's a bit slow to use that that software to stabilize the shots. But when you need to get some stable shots and you don't have a gimbal with you, it's actually a pretty good option in the end. Just make sure you don't use the active mode on the camera and just leave it at standard or even no stablization at all and leave the software, do all the job afterwards. It's actually gonna be really impressive what you're gonna get in the end. Before I get to the top of mountain right here, I wanna talk about the colors on the Sony A7 IV. This is one of the reasons it took me so much time to see Sony because the colors were never that quite good overall. I think these days they're pretty good but they're not perfect especially in photo modes in video usually I think their perfect profiles are pretty good and can edit the a little bit of it and make them look pretty good pretty quickly. But in the photo modes I don't understand but this camera likes making everything very blue or very green and this is kind of a problem when taking some pictures because when you get to edit them where you feature, just wanna quickly post them, it's almost impossible to get the perfect look. This is something where Canon has always been really, really good at producing just very natural and good color looking colors. I know not everybody love them but usually if you just wanna take a picture post it right away, Canon is just much better at doing that than the Sony cameras. With that being said, it's not a big deal because I edit it all my photos anyways so it's just tweaking the temperature and the color tint in the end. Uh, but it's just a little another set to do which is a little bit more annoying when using the Sony A7 IV. I made it to the top here and while this is one of the craziest tourist attractions I've ever seen, the views are simply crazy. It all starts here on the crazy cold platform here. The winds are truly crazy but we quickly start going inside and walking through different tunnels which is much more warm. So exiting the tunnel right here, we get our first amazing views in the background here. It's simply amazing. Wow. But you're gonna see there's something even cooler coming up in just a moment. Walking to the end of the viewing deck right here, we get to this pretty cool thing and right here it's a ice tunnel. I wasn't expecting this at all. How cool is it to be able to walk around underneath the ice here all around and you have crazy views in the background here and all around. This is so cool! Heading to the end of the tunnel here we have some few steps and we go up to reveal some even crazier views right in the back here we have Mont Blanc. It is right there. We're so close to it. Kind of crazy! It's pretty cool. I have a full viewing deck to myself right here. I can have a 360 view with nobody around but my hands are freezing. It's minus 26 degrees if not worse here and with the wind it's even colder. So I'm gonna head back down and continue to and next point we're gonna see we're gonna go in a little tunnel or in the next point, which is pretty cold. But first we have to go through the ice tunnel again. This is so cool. I still cannot believe all of what we have around here. I wasn't expecting most of this at all, but look at the next tunnel we're going through right here. Am I the only one that really loves this little tunnel? It's so cool. It's funny going up these stairs, I can really feel that I'm missing some oxygen. Uh, I kind of got adapted cuz I'd been here for over an hour. But going up these stairs you really feel the altitude kicking in. That's kind of crazy but we're here at our next crazy viewpoint. Let's get out right here to look at it. It's amazing. While I'm basically alone on the deck here, let's talk about the image quality the of the Sony A7 IV. It's simply amazing the pictures with the 33 megapixel sensor are super sharp in detail and there's so much information inside of there. The in little thing can nitpick is that the highlights tend to clip a lot. So you have to be careful not clipping them when taking pictures. So you tend to be better to underexposed and then you can recover it afterwards. Other than overexposing, this can be quite a problem with things like right here with a lot of white and the snow. So I have to be careful for small little things, uh, for that. But apart from that, the pictures are just amazing overall. There's not much to say here. They're just great. I made it to the top here and while the views are amazing, so again we have Mont Blanc background here. We have Italy, we have some super nice looking mountains in the background. It's just crazy. The views get all around here and it's basically 360 degree views, uh, all around but they're just super amazing. So wow, enjoying the view now The view is amazing, I just cannot get enough of it. Talking of amazing and the everything that's amazing on the Sony A7 IV is the video of quality. It's super high resolution if it's over sampled 4k. So it just looks really sharp and detailed. There's so much information instead of it. I recently also started filming you with SLog-3, which just adds more dynamic range inside of it, which makes it really great when I want to calibrate it afterwards so I can have more of the highlights and also the shadows inside of the shot and just makes the whole image look really, really great. There's some things that some people complain about. So for example that there is a crop when you use 4K 60 frame per second. That's not an issue for me because I'm actually usually using that when I taking slow motion. So I don't really mind it cropping in. In that case I also only have 120 frames or second at 1080p, but honestly I never really, okay, so I actually got really unlucky here, my microphone completely froze and I lost the audio for the rest of this clip and only realized a few days later. But basically what I was saying here is that I really don't care not having 4k for 120 frames per second just because I don't really use that mode at all and most of the times and when I do need it, 120 frames per second at 1080p is good enough for me simply because the video quality is so good at even 1080p is good enough in this case. Overall, I really don't have any complaints about the video quality. It's surpassed my expectations with the over sample 4k. It looks really sharp, detailed, there's so much information with 4:2:2, 10 bit, you can pretty much color grade it however you want. There's information that highlights the shadows and there's a lot dynamic range. So really there isn't much I can complain about. The audio focus is also really strong in video mode. So overall it's a great video camera. Let's go back to Chamonix. I was heading towards the next ski station but didn't realized there were super nice views along the way. So decided to drop off, take a few pictures and videos and while I'm walking where I want to get, I want to talk about why the videos of a jittery today. So it might look a little bit choppy and that's because I forgot my ND filters back home when leaving for this trip. I didn't bring any with me so that's why I cannot use anything to get some nice motion blur. If you don't know it's motion blur. I have other videos to talk about that. Uh, but that's not the Sony that has a problem and mix the video jittery, that's a user error where I didn't bring the proper equipment to fix this. Let's talk about the thing that annoys me the most on the Sony A7 IV. And this is the menu system. So this camera has a new Sony menu system, which is much better than the old one, but still not great at all compared to Canon. Canon is so easy to use, you just understand what you're doing. But here it's just so complex to use. One really good thing about the Sony menu system is that you can customize everything. When I say everything, basically anything you think about, you can do it and you can customize it, which is really great. The downside with that is that there's so many options that a menu and a lot of them, even though they're written in English, it doesn't really sound like English and you have to Google all the time the terms that they're using to understand what it's doing and how to change them to get the results you want. So that's super annoying and this is so complex. So by accident, when I was on my trip last time, I reset the whole camera and when I did that I had to pass them for like three, four hours to reset all the settings on the camera because there's so many things to do, so many things to understand, so many errors you can do. So it's just a pain having to reset everything from zero. Uh, and that's not a great thing. You want things to be easy to access and customizable. Another thing that's missing inside of the mini system and that's, I don't know why they don't have this option, um, my Canons had that option was that if I'm doing some bulb timer uh, bulb photos, there's no option to set a timer. So for example, if I'm thinking a five minute, 10 minute picture on a Canon camera, I can tell them that in bulb mode you I want to have a maximum shooter of five or 10 minutes and this is great for astrophotography, but here I have to use an external app or use a remote control to be able to control the camera for the settings. So this is just a little bit annoying. Why put all these menu options and not even have these more basic options inside of it? Okay, so let's talk about the build quality of this camera. And overall it's phenomenal. It's all built in plastic but it's super hard plastic and it doesn't feel bad at all in the hand. It actually feels really good. And solid plastic in this case I think is better because when you go outside in cold, if you go under rain or things like that, plastic is just gonna resist better in all these conditions. And that's exactly what I did. I brought inside of snow instead of rain and it always works perfectly whatever the type of conditions I have it in. So for that I think it's really great. The batteries also last really long, so that's a good thing because there's not as much metal or things like that. So they keep lasting for days even in cold winter. And the only little thing I have about the build quality is that they don't have this little plastic thing at the top. Actually they had one at the beginning but I lost it and I have to buy some new ones. And when that's missing, uh, actually if the water goes in, the camera starts complaining that there's a problem with the connection at the top of the hot shoes mount. So that's a small little thing of it. But apart from that, it's really great overall and there's not much I can complain about the bill quality of this camera. While I'm alone in the cabin, let's talk about editing the files. So for the photo files, like I said before, just a little bit more editing involved here compared to the Canon files, because you have to change the color temperature and the tint on almost every single picture. It's crazy the amount of detail and data you get inside the files. The raw files have so much detail inside of the highlights and the shadow. You can really play with it and create the unique look you want with the fast. On the video side too. Like I mentioned earlier in this video, I started in creating my videos with SLog-3 and I love this. There's so much to play just like with for our photos, it's not as much information but still a lot of information inside of the highlights and the shadow and can really create a better looking image. So overall it's not a problem at all. Being editing these vi photos and videos, you really have a lot of options on that side. I would say one of the problems of editing others files is not necessarily editing related to editing, it's the data storage you have to have for all of this. So the files are huge. So rough photo on the Sony, A 74 is about 40 to 50 megabytes, which is insanely big when you take a off photos. And then the 4K videos are insanely big, especially when you're taking some um, SLog, some 10 bit videos like I met doing with SLog-3. Uh, these files can be easily gigabytes big and for a video like in filming right now. Uh, so for just this 12-20 minute uh, YouTube video, it's gonna be about 500 gigabytes of videos. This is why I have a NAS back home to store all of these files. But if you're getting a camera like this, you really need to be ready to store a ton and a ton of data. You cannot just have a laptop, a hard drive or something like that. You're gonna fill it up right away super fast. So just make sure you have plenty of storage if you're planning on buying this Sony A7 IV. It's so beautiful all around here. Before concluding this video, I wanna talk about a few things I learned in last year while switching from Canon to the Sony A7 IV. So first of all, you should buy some lenses that are made for the Sony cameras, not try to do like I did and buy a Metabones adapter that allowed me to put my Canon lenses on the Sony camera because the experience just wasn't good. I actually returned the meta bones adaptor a few weeks later because it was working fine for photos, but it was terrible for videos. So I just ended up investing in some Tamron lenses. These a little bit cheaper, but they're still really great quality and have three of these lenses these days. So this was a great investment to really get the full potential of the Sony camera. The again, is to customize the menus and buttons to make everything work exactly as you want. This just makes the whole process a lot easier to use because I have my own custom menus and also have my own custom buttons. So I can always quickly fine and fine tune the settings as I wish without having to go through the home menu because like I said before, going through the home menu is a terrible experience. And another little annoying thing that I never figured out is that when I take a picture on the Canon cameras, you get a preview right away by default on Sony, this is off, there's an option to put a two second preview, but I don't lift this option because when it shows up, if I have press the shutter button, it doesn't always automatically go back to the live preview. So sometimes, especially when on burst mode or something like that, it can be a little bit hard to get the pictures I want to when using this two second preview mode. Overall it's not that bad, but it's just a little, little thing in the sun camera that annoys me a little bit more. The final thing that definitely annoys me the most on the Sony cameras, and this is for all the murals cameras, not only the Sony A7 IV and it's a dust on the sensor, sir, on my Canon camera, I basically never cleaned the sensor and it was totally fine. It was never dust either on my lens or on my camera. But here almost every single time I'm switching my lenses, I have to remove some dust from the sensor or the lens. So this is just super annoying with these types of mounts that you get so much dust on them. Now the two questions I'm left to answer is, do I regret buying the Sony A7 IV? And is this the best hybrid mirrorless camera in 2023? So first of all, I do not regret at all buying this camera. It's great. I think you understood why in this video. Overall it works really well for what I want. It takes great photos, it takes great video. So I do not regret buying it at all. And switching from Canon to Sony, it's not a perfect camera, but I would also say that it's a pretty good one in 2023, uh, Canon did come out with a Canon R6, Mk II that is more similar to this camera, but I still think that Sony just has overall a lot more for your money when buying this camera. So I think that even in 2023, if you're looking for a really good photo camera that can take really good videos too. This is a really good choice for you. If you enjoy this video, please let me know by hitting like button below and definitely subscribe for more content on photography and filmmaking See you in the next one,. It's simply amazing in video, right? Also looks amazing in photo. And while this is one of the craziest tourist tracks, simply crazy amazing, totally crazy player, wow, it all starts here on the crazy cold platform here. The winds are totally crazy, but we put amazing views in the back, simply amazing. Wow, even cooler cutting to this pretty cool thing. How cool is it to be able to walk around all around And you have crazy views in the background here. This is so cool. The even crazier views kind of crazy. It's pretty cool. I had to find the next point. Just pretty cool. This is so cool. I still cannot believe all of what we have around here. That's kind of crazy but crazy viewpoint. It's amazing. Really love this little tunnel. It's so cool. Amazing views at the top here. Wow. The views are amazing. It's just crazy. The views will get all around here. Super amazing. So wow, it's simply amazing. The pictures are just amazing Overall. Overall, they're amazing. It's so beautiful all around here. Can stop looking around at the beautiful views.
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What is this video about?
A year ago, I made the leap from Canon to Sony, and I shot 20,000 photos with the A7 IV to really put it through its paces. In this video, filmed while visiting the Alps, I'm answering two big questions: do I regret the switch, and is the A7 IV still the best hybrid mirrorless camera in 2023?
The ergonomics feel fantastic. The grip is solid, and I love the photo-to-video mode dial—it lets me switch between the two instantly while keeping separate settings. The autofocus is exceptional, particularly for video. Sony's eye-detection and subject tracking are sticky and reliable, a massive step up from what I remember laughing about years ago. In low light, this camera is a game-changer. The ISO performance is clean and detailed in both stills and video, handling 8000 ISO or higher gracefully. For astrophotography especially, the detail recovery is stunning compared to my old Canon.
The video quality genuinely impresses me. The oversampled 4K is sharp and detailed, and since I started shooting SLog-3, I've got dynamic range that makes color grading a joy. The built-in stabilization works well for photos, though for video I pair it with Catalyst Browse, Sony's software that uses gyro data for gimbal-like results. Battery life is excellent, even in freezing conditions, and the build quality feels durable despite being plastic.
But there are real trade-offs. The menu system is complex and frustratingly unintuitive—Canon's approach is far more straightforward. I also notice the color science leans blue and green in photo mode, meaning nearly every image needs temperature and tint adjustments. The files are massive—40 to 50 MB per raw photo, and 4K SLog-3 video consumes gigabytes per clip. You absolutely need a robust storage system; a laptop drive will fill instantly.
One big lesson: invest in native Sony or Tamron lenses. My early attempts with a Metabone adapter were frustrating for video. I've also had to clean the sensor far more often than I ever did with Canon, which is annoying but part of mirrorless life.
Do I regret it? Not at all. This camera delivers on both stills and video. Is it the best hybrid option in 2023? I'd say yes. Canon's R6 Mark II is closer now, but the A7 IV still offers more value for the money if you want a camera that genuinely excels at both disciplines.