Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
An Edinburgh man was excited to get his Sony a7 IV he ordered online. However, he was scammed and received a suspicious package instead of the £2,400 camera.
When the package arrived at his address, there was no camera inside, or anything related to photographic gear. instead, the man received a box that contained bags of suspicious white powder.
There’s a group of people out there that are often ignored when it comes to photography. That group is the visually impaired. With photography being such a visual medium, it’s an easy group to ignore. That being said, I don’t think camera manufacturers are intentionally neglecting this group of users. At least, no more so than they ignore any other kind of impairment. Accessibility options common to other electronic devices have always been lacking from cameras.
Sony appears to be changing that thought process, though, building a screen reading feature into the Sony A7 IV. This video from Sam at The Blind Life, who lives with Stargardt’s Disease, walks us through enabling the feature and its current state of usefulness. It appears to be an “in development” feature, for the most part, but it’s a fantastic start that other manufacturers should take note of.
I’m not sure if this is a new feature that’s been added in a recent firmware update or if it’s just remained a well kept hidden secret, but the Sony A7 IV has a pretty cool feature that will be very valuable for anybody who shoots timelapses, macro or landscape stacks, or anything else that requires you to shoot a bunch of images at a time in sequence.
It was spotted by the folks at LensVid and it’s called the Divider Frame”. Essentially, it places a new image on your memory card that is simply a black frame with a big bright arrow on it. Its purpose is as the name sounds, to act as a visual divider between one set of images and another – very handy when you need to quickly and easily split different sequences of images once they’re all on the computer.
People waited a long time for Sony to replace its ageing A7S II body. It finally came mid-2020 in the form of the not surprisingly named Sony A7S III. And despite being no slouch at stills, its video capabilities were its big selling point. It lacked the 8K capabilities of the Canon EOS R5 and it can’t record internal raw video, but it does offer the core of features that many Sony video shooters want.
Last year, we saw the release of the Sony A7 IV, the successor to the popular Sony A7 III. It, too, brought some very impressive video features with it and it offers some distinct advantages over the A7S III when it comes to shooting stills, but how do the two stand up when shooting video is your primary need? Well, in this in-depth comparison video, Caleb Pike answers exactly that question.
The Sony A7 IV has been shipping and already gotten into the hands of a lucky few judging from the posts I’ve been seeing on Facebook lately. A lot of people are still waiting, but yet more are still on the fence. Is it worth upgrading my Sony A7 III? If I don’t have either, is it worth the extra to get the A7 IV or just wait until the A7 III is discounted?
Well, William Svrček, otherwise known as The Hybrid Shooter, takes an in-depth look at both of these cameras in this almost-27-minute long video covering just about every useful and important detail you could possibly imagine. Unfortunately, there are no chapters for the video, so you may have to hunt around a bit to look for specific things or just watch the whole thing.
Sony has now officially announced the new Sony A7 IV. It features a 33-megapixel (not stacked) BSI CMOS sensor with their latest generation BIONZ XR image processing engine. It includes a number of new features not found in other bodies as well as inheriting some advanced features from its big brothers the A7S III and the Alpha 1.
It gets a flippy out LCD, 10-Bit 4:2:2 All-I, real-time Eye AF, “Active Mode” image stabilisation, post-shoot image stabilisation, live streaming via USB with multiple resolution options all the way up to 4K, 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2, continuous shooting at up to 10fps with either the mechanical or electronic shutter, a huge 828 shot RAW+JPG stills buffer and it can even compensate for focus breathing.
Well, after a blurry photo of what was claimed to be the Sony A7 IV was apparently posted and then deleted by Sony China over the weekend, now it seems that Sony might be finally ready to announce the Sony A7 III successor – and not a minute too soon. The A7 III is a great camera, but it’s been fraught with shutter problems that Sony seems to have thus far evaded.
Still, Sony has today teased a new camera to be announced on Thursday, October 21st and it’s expected to be the Sony A7 IV. Obviously, Sony hasn’t confirmed what the camera is – because they never do – but all signs seem to point towards it.
Well, there haven’t been all that many rumours about the apparently impending Sony A7 IV. We’ve figured it must be coming at some point relatively soon, given Sony’s typical release cycles and the fact that it was possibly a body Sony registered in April, but there hasn’t been a lot of information leaked about it at all.
It seems, though, that an announcement had been planned for mid-September. Now, according to Sony Alpha Rumors, that announcement has been delayed until late October. And, not surprisingly, even after the announcement comes, there will be a limited supply for the first few months due to the global silicon shortage.
According to a tweet from Nokishita, Sony has registered a new camera body, labelled WW734234 with an overseas certification body. It’s equipped with 5Ghz/2.4Ghz WiFi and Bluetooth. It’s the second currently unreleased-but-registered body we know of, alongside WW356015 (which also has 2.4Ghz WiFi and Bluetooth).
They also confirmed that these aren’t the recently announced A7R IIIa and A7R IVa (which are basically the old A7R III and A7R IV but with a higher resolution LCD). The A7R IVa is WW447485/WW778752 and the A7R IIIa is WW186333. It’s been suggested that the new code could be the Sony A7 IV.
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