Sony isn’t any stranger to producing impressively small full-frame cameras. The original A7C took the innards of the bigger A7 sequence and stuffed them in a extra compact physique. The ZV-E1 went additional, with a tiny physique that appears positively comical connected to lengthy lenses.

These smaller our bodies all the time contain function compromises. No one desires a heavy digicam, however some options imply bodily limitations. While the sensors will be the similar, the viewfinders are smaller, and different options had been generally absent.

Enter the brand new Sony A7C R. In my expertise testing it for a number of weeks in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, it comes closest to offering all the pieces you want in a digicam and nothing you do not. The impressively small physique is however comfy to carry and carry round all day, and has many of the options even a professional would need.

All Things Great and Small

Two years in the past, I examined the unique Sony A7C and located that whereas the compact, rangefinder-style physique was excellent for touring, the viewfinder was too small and the 24.2-MP sensor was a step again from the 40-MP sensor in my Sony A7RII. It was tantalizingly near all the pieces I wished, however not fairly there.

The A7C R solves not less than the sensor downside, and will get a lot nearer to the best journey digicam. It’s nonetheless lots small at 4.9 inches vast, 2.8 inches tall, and a couple of.5 inches deep. It weighs slightly below a pound at 15.2 ounces (430 grams) for the physique. With the FE 28-60mm F4-5.6 lens Sony despatched alongside for testing, the whole weight got here to 21.1 ounces.

The 61-MP CMOS sensor within the new A7C R is identical sensor you will discover in Sony’s A7R V, launched a couple of months earlier than the A7C R. It’s among the finest sensors I’ve examined, able to glorious element, with nice dynamic vary. The low-light efficiency is spectacular as effectively, with little or no noise even effectively up into the five-digit ISO choices (the A7C R can shoot all the way in which as much as ISO 102,400, however as you’d anticipate, these photographs are very noisy).

There’s nothing about this sensor that I can assume to complain about. It’s implausible. The ensuing RAW information are massive—round 65 MB per picture in my testing, with low mild photographs being the most important. You can get this right down to round 45 MB per picture if you happen to go for compressed RAW, however on the time I used to be testing, no software program might open these information (Lightroom and others have since added help).