Excellent 42-megapixel image sensor. Superb high ISO imaging. In-body image stabilization. 5fps continuous shooting. Hybrid autofocus system. Hinged rear display. Excellent EVF. Dust- and moisture-resistant design. 4K video capture.
The Sony Alpha 7R II is a full-frame mirrorless camera that delivers absolutely incredible image and video quality, but it will cost you.
Sony doesn't pull any punches with its second-generation Alpha 7R. The 7R II ($3,199.99, body only) ups its full-frame sensor resolution to 42 megapixels, and it uses a back side-illuminated (BSI) design to keep the low-light performance of its high-res sensor strong. Add internal 4K video recording capability, in-body image stabilization, and a lens system that's getting better and better in terms of selection, and you have a very appealing camera. We're not naming it Editors' Choice—the 24-megapixel Alpha 7 II is a better option for most photographers. But if you want more resolution than the 24-megapixel Alpha 7 II offers, or if 4K recording is a priority, the Alpha 7R II is worth a look—just get ready to open your wallet.
Design and FeaturesThe Alpha 7R II is physically identical to the other current models in the series, the Alpha 7 II and Alpha 7S II ($2,999.99). It's on the bulky side when compared with other mirrorless cameras, but is certainly a more compact option than a full-frame SLR. The 7R II measures 3.8 by 5 by 2.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.4 pounds. The handgrip is deeper than first-generation Alpha 7 models, and the metal body feels very solid. The front grip is covered with textured rubber that wraps around the side and to the area where your right hand rests on the back of the camera.
Sony has covered a good portion of the A7R II's surface with controls. The top plate features a locking mode dial, programmable C1 and C2 function buttons, an EV compensation dial that can be set from -3 to +3 EV in third-stop increments, and an integrated shutter release and power switch. All of these are located to the right of the hot shoe, with the shutter release and power switch positioned on the top of the handgrip itself. The locking mode dial is the style that is always locked—you need to hold the center button down in order to turn it.
There are both front and rear control dials—they're slightly off axis, with one at the front of the handgrip and the other positioned slightly to its left, at the top of the rear plate. The Menu button (to the left of the EVF) and the programmable C3 button (on the right, between the eyecup and rear control dial) also run across the top of the rear plate; each is situated at a slight angle.
Running from top to bottom just to the right of the LCD, you'll find a button that can override autofocus or lock exposure when pressed—its function is controlled via a toggle switch. Next up is the Fn button, which launches an on-screen overlay menu of shooting controls. Then comes a rear control wheel, with a center button and four directional presses (by default the left sets the drive mode, the top changes the amount of information shown on the rear LCD or in the EVF, and the right sets the ISO. Finally the Play and Delete buttons sit at the bottom of the rear plate. There's also a dedicated button for recording movies, but it's placed on the right side of the camera—it's easy enough to press when you're holding the A7R II, but you're not likely to do so by accident.
Most of the A7R II's control buttons can be remapped in the menu. You can assign a function to the bottom direction of the control wheel or to the Delete (C4) button, neither of which have a function out of the box. The flat rear dial can also perform a function; past models had this set to direct ISO control out of the box, but it's disabled by default with the A7R II. The functions are displayed in the on-screen Fn menu, which includes space for 12 settings, all of which can be customized.
While I'm generally happy with the A7R II's control layout, there's one capability that is sorely missing. If you use any of the three Flexible Spot AF settings (small, medium, or large), there's no way to move the spot around directly. You need to first press the button at the center of the rear dial in order to use its directional presses to reposition the focus area. This won't bother you if you opt for one of the other focus modes, but for fans of Flexible Spot AF, it's a pain to deal with.
The A7R II has an OLED electronic viewfinder and a hinged rear LCD. The EVF is one of the largest you'll find in a mirrorless camera—its magnification is rated at 0.78x when a standard-angle (50mm) lens is attached. That makes it slightly bigger to your eye than one of the best optical viewfinders out there, the 0.76x finder found in the Canon EOS-1D X. The EVF is also quite sharp, thanks to a 2,359k-dot resolution. Its size and crispness work together to make it easy on your eyes, and when coupled with focus aids like magnification and peaking, it offers a more precise manual focus experience than modern optical viewfinders.
Another advantage to the electronic viewfinder is a real-time exposure preview. The A7R II shows you just how bright your exposure will be in real time by default. This can be disabled for those times when that's not desirable—like when you're working with off-camera studio lights. The A7R II doesn't include an internal flash or a PC Sync socket, but you can use an external trigger like a PocketWizard to fire external flashes at a minimum 1/250-second sync speed.
But, like any EVF, the A7R II's finder can get a little choppy in low light. I found it to be quite smooth in most situations, even a dimly-lit home—but if you're working in a very dark environment, expect some choppiness. The same is true for the rear LCD, which shows the same feed. It's a 3-inch panel with a 1,228k-dot resolution. It's mounted on a hinge, which allows you to view it from above or below, but it doesn't face forward—this isn't exactly a selfie camera. The LCD also lacks touch input support, a feature that is available in more and more mirrorless cameras.
The tilting design is a plus when working at a low angle on a tripod, and also allows you to hold the A7R II at waist-level like you would a medium format camera with a top-down viewfinder. But there's one problem with using the camera at waist level. The eye sensor, which automatically switches the video feed between the EVF and rear LCD, is very sensitive. It turns off the LCD quite liberally, even when the sensor is a good six inches from your body. You can disable the eye sensor and switch to the LCD only via the menu, but that's a pain. Other cameras with EVFs, including the Olympus OM-D E-M1, include a button that can toggle LCD only, EVF, or eye sensor control, eliminating the need to dive into a menu to do so. The A7R II lacks this function. You can set one of its programmable buttons to act as a Finder/Monitor select to toggle between the two, but in order to do that you'll need to disable the eye sensor entirely. It's odd that there's no way to use a single bu tton to toggle between the EVF, LCD, and automatic switching via the eye sensor.
Wi-Fi and AppsAs with the first-generation Alpha 7, Wi-Fi is built into the A7R II. Its basic function, copying images and videos over to your phone, works as expected. Even if you're shooting in Raw only, you can copy images in JPG format over (the camera extracts the JPG that's embedded in a Raw image for transmission), as well as videos recorded in MP4 format. But footage shot in XAVC S or AVCHD cannot be transmitted wirelessly.
Remote control is also available. By default, the included remote software is very basic—it can only be used to adjust exposure compensation and fire the shutter. But you can upgrade it to a more robust version that allows for manual shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, focus mode control, and adds the ability to tap an area of the frame to set the focus point. It is still limited to capturing JPG images, however, so Raw shooters are going to feel a bit limited. In order to download apps you have to create an account with Sony, or log in with an existing one, and connect the A7R II to a Wi-Fi network. This involves quite a bit of typing using an on-screen keyboard; a touch screen would have come in handy for that.
There are additional apps available beyond the updated remote control. Some are free, like a Direct Upload app to post pictures from the camera to popular sharing apps, and Touchless Shutter, which lets you fire the shutter by waving your hand in front of the eye sensor. But others are priced anywhere from $4.99 to $9.99. I'm glad that Sony is expanding the functionality of the camera via apps, but it's a shame that it has decided to charge a premium for apps when the body is already priced above $3,000.
Performance and Focus System
The Alpha 7R II is a little slow to focus, requiring 0.2-second to lock and fire on our bright light target when paired with the FE 55mm f/1.8. The Alpha 7 II locks in 0.05-second, which explains why it takes the Alpha 7 R II just a little longer to power on, focus, and fire. In very dim light the A7R II locks in 0.7-second, about the same speed as the A7 II. With continuous autofocus enabled our tracking tests, the camera maintains its 5fps shooting rate, with a good, but not quite perfect, hit rate for in-focus shots.
Autofocus is handled by a hybrid on-sensor system. The A7R II uses both contrast and phase detect points to acquire focus. Sony has used on-sensor phase detection before, including in the Alpha 7 II and the APS-C Alpha 6000, but the A7R II is the first model that promises to focus SLR lenses just as quickly as it would with a native mirrorless FE-mount lens.
This allows owners of Sony and Minolta A-mount lenses to use the comparatively inexpensive LE-EA3 ($199.99) adapter and take advantage of the A7R II's focus system, rather than opting for the pricier LA-EA4, which includes its own dedicated autofocus sensor. Focusing off the image sensor itself has another advantage that has nothing to do with cost—there's no need to make autofocus microadjustments to a lens and body pair as is sometimes necessary when using a dedicated autofocus sensor.
But the technology is not limited to Sony lenses. With the right adapter, Canon EF lenses can also be focused at full speed—and it's likely just a matter of time before a similar device for Nikon lenses is available. Sony supplied a Fotodiox Pro Lens Mount Auto Adapter ($109.95) along with the Alpha 7R II for testing. I tried it with several EF lenses, including the EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM ($1,249), the EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM, the EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Extender 1.4x ($10,999), and the Sigma 150-600mm DG OS HSM Sports.
The results were mixed. I found that, with all but the Fisheye (which focused consistently in the field), the camera would either lock on immediately and easily track moving targets, or it would hunt back and forth, never locking on. The focus mode had a lot to do with it—when I used a wide field with AF-S I had the best luck in acquiring focus quickly. Switching to AF-C made that hit or miss, and using any area smaller than the Wide option made the lens hunt back and forth. Now, your results may vary based on the specific lens you use and the adapter you choose—I didn't have a Metabones adapter on hand to see if its performance was better. But if you're considering the Alpha 7R II specifically as a back to use with Canon EF lenses, it's worth the time and cost of a rental to see how it performs with the specific lenses which you wish to adapt.
Of course, that leads to the question of why you need to adapt lenses at all. One reason may be if you already have a hefty investment in Canon glass and are intrigued by the image quality that Alpha 7R II delivers. Or you could simply be looking to fill gaps in Sony's lens lineup. Despite having a wide range of solid full-frame lenses ranging from 16-240mm, longer telephoto lenses are, to this point, absent.
And, for manual focus, you can use Leica M lenses with the A7R II via a mechanical adapter. Given the high cost of digital Leica cameras like the M Monochrom (Typ 246), it's no surprise that some owners of M lenses look to Sony cameras as a digital platform. We looked at the performance of adapted lenses in detail with the first generation of Alpha 7 cameras. The Alpha 7R II adds stabilization to adapted lenses via an internal 5-axis system, and does a very good job of controlling color shift at the edges of the frame. Certain wide angle lenses, including the original version of the Voigtlander 15mm, are very prone to color shift when paired with digital bodies. When paired with the Alpha 7R II there is no color shift evident, although the corners are still a bit muddy in tems of sharpness. The Voigtlander 15mm is a torture test when it comes to digital sensors, so the lack of color shift is a very good sign for owners of M lenses looking at the A7R II as a digital pla tform. The shot of the headstones directly above was shot with the Voigtlander 15mm lens.
Image and Video QualityWe're reviewing the Alpha 7R II as a body only—Sony doesn't offer it as a kit—but we did benchmark a few different lenses using the camera. They include the Sony 90mm Macro, the Zeiss Batis 25mm, and the Zeiss Batis 85mm. As with other high-resolution camera bodies, it takes care to take full advantage of the sensor's resolution. You'll want to keep your shutter speed shorter than you'd think you need—even with the aid of in-body image stabilization and an electronic first-curtain shutter—and make sure that you're using top-end glass.
I used Imatest to see just how well the A7R II's 42-megapixel image sensor performs across its ISO range. When shooting JPGs at default settings it keeps noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 12800, which is a fine result. There is certainly some in-camera noise reduction going on here, as there is with any JPG engine. I took a close look at images from our test scene on a calibrated NEC MultiSync PA271W display. Detail holds up quite well through ISO 6400, with a slight drop in clarity at ISO 12800. There's another drop at ISO 25600, but it's not until ISO 51200 and the top ISO 102400 setting that I'd consider JPGs to be overly blurred.
Of course, you'll likely want to shoot in Raw format when working with a camera like the A7R II. I converted Raw images using Lightroom CC with default develop settings enabled. Image detail is strong through ISO 25600, and while there's some noise when you push the sensor that far, it's not overly distracting, nor does it detract from detail. Noise is stronger at ISO 51200, and very fine detail is blurred, but it's still a setting that I wouldn't hesitate to use if the shot called for it. Noise is more of an an issue at ISO 102400. I've included pixel-level crops taken from both JPG and Raw images in the slideshow that accompanies this review so you can judge performance for yourself.
At launch time, the Sony Raw format is compressed. A firmware update is coming to add uncompressed 14-bit Raw capture as an option. The effects of the compressed format are most evident in transition between bright light and shadow. Our studio and field tests were shot before the firmware update was available.
The A7R II is a formidable video camera. It supports recording at up to 4K resolution using the XAVC S codec at a 100Mbps rate at either 30 or 24fps. The camera can shoot 4K footage using the full width of the sensor, or you can set it to crop to a Super 35 (roughly APS-C field of view). The cropped footage is of higher quality, as it avoids the pixel binning that is performed when recording in full-frame, but don't feel as if you need to shoot in the cropped mode. If you're looking to capture a very wide field of view, there's no reason not to shoot full-frame.
Standard HD capture at 1080p is also supported. When working with the XAVC S coded at 50Mbps you can shoot at 24, 30 60, or 120fps. When recording in either XAVC format you'll need a fast UHS-3 SDXC memory card. AVCHD and MP4 are also supported at 1080p, and don't require the latest memory cards to work.
The 4K footage is superb. The footage is quite sharp and thanks to the 5-axis in-body stabilization system, handheld video is steadied, even when you're working with a lens that doesn't include its own stabilization system. The footage is saved to a memory card at a 4:2:0 sampling rate, but if you have an external recorder you can take advantage of 4:2:2 output via its micro HDMI port. There's an internal microphone, which is fine for casual clips, but for more serious video projects you can add an external microphone, either via the standard 3.5mm input jack, or by adding an XLR accessory via the hot shoe. There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack for monitoring, and a micro USB port for in-camera battery charging.
Sony also includes an external battery charger, and the camera ships with two batteries. Battery life is a concern with this and other cameras in the series. CIPA rates the Alpha 7R II for 340 shots when using the LCD, and 290 shots with the EVF. Results can vary based on how you use the camera—I managed to get 435 shots and a few minutes of 4K video on a single charge, but I was careful to turn the camera off when not in use. When working on lab tests, which use a self-timer and leave the rear LCD on for long periods of time, I burned through 30 percent of a full charge in about 120 shots, which is more in line with the CIPA rating.
Standard SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards are supported. But you'll want a fast UHS-3 SDXC card to get the most out of the camera in terms of shot-to-shot speed and video quality.
ConclusionsThe Sony Alpha 7R II is a worthy update to its predecessor. It improves upon image quality, adds in-body image stabilization, offers improved EVF magnification, adds 4K video, and is more comfortable in the hand. But it comes at a pretty steep uptick in price—the A7R II's MSRP is a full $900 higher than the original Alpha 7R. When we reviewed the first generation Alpha 7 cameras, we awarded Editors' Choice honors to the Alpha 7R, with the Alpha 7 as a strong second-place finisher.
With this generation, however, the results have flipped. Even though its video capture capabilities are limited to 1080p and its image sensor is "only" 24 megapixels, the Alpha 7 II is our Editors' Choice for full-frame mirrorless cameras. The fact that the Alpha 7 II is $1,500 less expensive than the 7R II plays a big part in that, but the simple fact of the matter is that the standard 7 II is plenty of camera for most photographers. The 7R II is more specialized, meeting the needs of shutterbugs after the most in resolution. Sony has another model in the updated family, the Alpha 7S II, which is aimed squarely at videographers—but it's not yet shipping.
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By Jim Fisher Senior Analyst, Digital Cameras Senior digital camera analyst for the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team, Jim Fisher is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he concentrated on documentary video production. Jim's interest in photography really took off...
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