Sony A7R VI： Here's What I Really Think (After 20,000 Photos)

This video is brought to you by Squarespace, the number one website platform for entrepreneurs. The Sony A7R6, after about two months, the biggest problem with this camera isn't the camera itself. And I actually found myself enjoying using it more when I finally realized what that was. Since the launch, I've been using this camera for pretty much everything, right? Portraits, sports, wildlife, filming myself. I've learned some new things about this camera that I didn't know when it was launch time, both good and bad. And I think it's important to share. First, I want to say thank you to all you guys that watched my last video and commented on it. I made a video talking about leaving my photography studio and just building one out in my garage because it started to just become a storage unit. And the amount, I read almost every single comment. The comments were so inspirational to me. They kind of validated the thoughts that I was having. And so I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to start the process of renovating this whole thing. I'm going to take you guys along for the ride. But you guys don't understand. You guys always blow my mind with the creative ideas and how smart my audience is. I tell my friends this all the time. Technically, I can't mess with my audience. They are smart as hell. So anyway, thank you for that. Now, the first thing I want to talk about, and you can go ahead and skip this part if you want, about the big problem of this camera that I mentioned in the beginning in the biggest problem of the A7R6 were the expectations before launch. OK, we've never seen a fully stacked sensor faster than you know, slower than eight milliseconds. So it's got to be good. It's got to be great. And so when I had the camera and I was using it, I kind of I felt a little disappointed because it wasn't what I thought it was. But look, you take a step back. Take a step back. You realize that the R series never was never meant to compete with the A1 or even cameras like the R5, R5 II and the Z9 series. Those are more Swiss Army knife cameras. You compare the A1 and the R5 II and the Z9. Sure. See the way Sony's been doing it, you know, they have more specialized classes of camera more than anybody else. Right. They have the A7R, the A7S, you got the 9 series, then you got the more, you know, do it all A7, you got the A1, got the FX, the ZV-1. Eight years ago, maybe like around eight years ago, it made more sense. The R series made more sense when all we had was an A7 III, 24 megapixels. Then we had the A7R III with 42-ish megapixels. But in 2026, the R series or upgrading, continuing to upgrade the R series is harder to justify. It's the camera landscape has changed. It's almost like the NBA. The way NBA lineups used to be where you had a traditional point guard, you had a traditional center, where now everyone wants a 6'8 wing that they can build around, want a god that can guard every position, that can shoot the three, that can dunk it, that can do it all. It kind of reminds me of the camera world, right? Where more specialized cameras like the R series, they're just becoming harder to justify when you have these 40, 50 megapixel sensors that are stacked, where there's very little compromise in speed and resolution. So it all really comes down to like, how important is that extra 30% resolution to you? And how important is speed to you? Because if you just need resolution, you don't need to upgrade to the newest camera. There's plenty of other 60 megapixel cameras out there that you can get for much cheaper than this one, like the A7R V, like the A7CR. And so you get where I'm going with this? So anyway, let's just dive right in. So let's talk about portrait photography. So I've done a couple of shoots with this camera outdoors using flash. I've learned some things, some things to learn there. And I also compared it with the Hasselblad X2D mainly for a dynamic range test, which is my, actually my actual previous video that I must've just launched because I just filmed it. All right. So with the A7R VI, you are not getting that much more than you would on an A7R V or even an A7R IV for portrait photographers. Right now with this camera, you are actually getting better dynamic range. So if you look at photons to photos, you'll see that the dynamic range of sensors all through all the years, it hasn't really changed that much. Image quality, yes. Dynamic range, it's been stagnant. This camera now has dual gain output and it utilizes that under ISO 400 with mechanical shutter. And in my test against the Hasselblad X2D, which in my opinion were, for me, this was the camera that like no full-frame camera could beat, right? You are getting better dynamic range than the Hasselblad at the very extreme, very extreme end. But I also noticed that the way the highlight to shadow transition, I'm assuming also because of the increased dynamic range, it is more pleasing. It is smoother. It's less contrasty. So image quality, you are getting a slight bump in that arena, but don't expect it to be dramatically different than the A7R V or the A7R IV. The A7R VI white balance is night and day better than older cameras like the A1. I took a couple of auto white balance shots and it was just wow. The auto white balance of the A1, it was way more orange than it was on the A7R VI. Really good white balance performance. With this camera, you are getting a full mechanical shutter. I know it shouldn't be one of the highlight features, but the A1 and the A1 II, they have, it's an electronic first curtain disguised as mechanical. So when you're shooting with flash and this camera, your backgrounds are not going to be degraded in any form. But other than that, there isn't much more for portrait photographers. I mean, what is innovation for portrait photography? I mean, in that case, we've had everything we needed with A7R II, A7R III. What is it? What does innovation look like? That's where I would like to hear from you because I think about this and it's like, okay, even if this camera had a hundred megapixels, that's still not considered innovation for portrait photography. So what does it look like? Now, the things that I wish were better as a portrait photography camera, I will tell you that this screen, I've talked about it. I've give Sony a really hard time about the screens, but this screen is still not bright enough. When I shot with the Hasselblad X2D and this camera side by side on a hundred degree day, super, the sun was right above us. And I wish I had more clips of Carmen, literally like when I hand her the Sony and I show her the photo, she's like, I can't see it. I can't, I can't see it. It was on sunny weather. She could not see it. She had to put her eye to the viewfinder. And then I had sweat all along here. So I'd had to clean it off and hand to her where on the Hasselblad, she could see it clearly on the rear screen. And she was way more like, whoa, she was looking at the photos on the back of the screen that has scenes like, damn, like that looks fire. I'm telling you, this screen thing is not a niche problem. I think a lot of people feel the same way. And the screen is just still, I love the four-way screen. It's just not bright enough. Another thing that really makes me scratch my head is the one 8,000 shutter speed limit that this camera has in both electronic and mechanical. Well, mostly electronic because well, it's a fully stacked sensor. I thought maybe they could push the electronic shutter a little bit so that we can use our F 1.2 lenses on a really bright sunny day and not have to stop down. That's not the case here. The fastest I'm able to go is F 1.8 on a really, really bright day at ISO 50. But other than that, there shouldn't be a one 8,000 cap in electronic in this camera. I wish it were to be a little bit better than that. Now, this one is something that I noticed when I was using the mechanical shutter. I need anybody else out there that has an A7R6, I need to know from you if this you've noticed. So I've noticed this weird exposure shift at faster shutter speeds. I text Sony about this. I haven't heard back yet. This is a loaner. So I don't know if this is just something specific to this camera, but at higher shutter speeds, like one 8,000 of a second, there is a weird little exposure shift where part of the image will actually get covered in almost like a slight band on the corner of the picture. And then you kind of see the image brightness shift from left to right. And I noticed that sometimes it wasn't all the time, but I noticed that sometimes. So if I go from one 8,000 back down to like one 2,500 of a second, you'll notice an exposure shift on the frame. And I need to know, is that something that is common? Is that something that you can replicate? Or is it maybe just this camera? I don't know. But that's something that I, that I had to mention. Now, what about sports photography for the launch video? I went to shoot the Chicago Cubs and this camera quickly revealed that it was not capable of shooting professional sports. And by that, I mean bats at maximum velocity, meeting the ball bats were getting warped. The balls would also get warped and shooting with a 300 millimeter lens, panning someone running to first base on the first base side. Yeah. Things behind them were, were, were bending. So again, this goes back to the expectation part, right? My expectation was that this was going to be or like an A1 competitor. This was going to, you know, like it was going to be good enough for sports, but it is not a dedicated sports camera. It's not that. It is a photography high resolution camera that it is now capable of shooting fast things, but not professional sports. So after the launch video, I learned it's rumored that the compressed raw out of the A7R6 gets a speed bump. So when you're shooting lossless, it's around 18, 19 milliseconds. Shooting compressed, it's around 12 to 14 milliseconds, which is still not fast enough to make, you know, straighten out bats with, from professional athletes. But I think that for most people that are not shooting professional sports are going to be perfectly fine with this camera. So I was recently in Toronto for the blue Jays game. I brought the A7R6 and the 70 to 200. That's all I had. And I left that game with more usable photos than I expected to. Okay. So I shot in compressed raw. I didn't shoot super tight. So I had only the 70 to 200. I was at the near first base. And since I was farther back, no bats bended. There was no evidence of any rolling shutter anywhere. And so obviously, and I said this in my first video, if you're not going to shoot super tight, you're going to minimize the rolling shutter effect. Now, yes. Is, would I rather be closer with my lens? Sure. Would I not like want to rely on cropping after the fact? Sure. But using a camera like this and in a pinch, if you need to get a shot of someone swinging a bat, a golf club, or a tennis racket, zoom out a little bit. And in, you can just crop a little bit in post. I mean, you have all the megapixels here. Jared, please just tune out now. Okay. I'm not, I'm not promoting cropping, but what I'm saying is in a pinch, if you need to get a shot that zoom out a little bit, and you're not going to get any rolling shutter and just crop in after the fact. And that's in a pinch, but I was able to walk out of that baseball game with shots, no rolling shutter, no bats or bending. It was great. Like I said earlier, if you're shooting amateur sports or non-professional athletes, this camera is going to hold up very well. I went golfing with my buddies. I've been a baseball player all my life. And you know, I have a pretty good swing and yeah, the, the, it bends a little bit, but all, if they all, all they have to do is just step back a little bit and there would be less of the rolling shutter. So I think for amateur work, it is going to be fine. Okay. And as a sports photography camera, I think the, you know, the autofocus, like I said, it, this is the best autofocusing camera that Sony has. I know it's only 60 calculations per second, but it identifies people from farther away. And it also locks onto some more locks onto the player better. And it doesn't get confused as much as the other cameras do with focusing on the crowd at times. Having the pre-capture is amazing. And even using, using the pre-capture along with the speed boost button, we don't have that extra button here, but that's fine. I have plenty of buttons here to map the speed boost where I'm not always shooting 30 frames per second. I can tap that. And if the player's walking toward, toward the bench or something like that, I can hit the speed boost button and now I'm only shooting five seconds, five frames per second, which that is really nice to have. Using the pre-capture along with, you know, and in the buffer of the camera, I never had any issues with the buffer in compressed raw, even with pre-capture on. So for me, other than the rolling shutter shooting in, you know, professional sports, the highest velocity moments, this camera is actually really capable. Now this video would not be possible without my sponsor Squarespace. So I've been using Squarespace for eight years now, and it truly does everything that I need to run my business. I use it for everything, my portfolio, my online store, even my off-camera flash mini course, which I built from start to finish using their templates and AI tools, no coding, no headaches. And on top of that, if a rare occasion you get stuck, there is 24 seven customer support. So look, if you've been putting off building your website, stop waiting, head to Squarespace, use the code Manny for 10% off your first purchase. Now, what about wildlife photography? You know, I'm not as experienced with birds, like I am with portraits and sports, but it's certainly a growing hobby of mine. Like I'm a suburb guy. Now we've got forest preserves everywhere. It's, it's very, it's very pleasurable to go out here with your camp. I could probably find a better word. It's very satisfying to walk the trails or on a bike and have my camera with me. Now, one thing I've learned, and I learned really quickly with bird photography is that you're never close enough. You're never close enough. And with this camera, just being able to crop into a tiny portion of a photo. I know the purists are going to have a lot of issues with that. Right. But Hey, you got all these megapixels. What are you going to just waste it? Right. Like, Hey, you're able to crop into a tiny portion of the photo and you're still somehow able to, like, you still have over 20 megapixel. It's not even fair. It's not even fair. This camera now having pre-capture, it takes so much of the anxiety away from missing the shot, right? Birds in flight. On the Sony side, this is the best autofocus that I have ever used for birds, big birds, easy, small birds. This camera still struggles a little bit with the smaller birds, depending on if you're shooting through brush or through branches, it does struggle. What I have done with this camera is I map the AEL button and I'll, I'll cycle through a couple of different focusing modes. So it'll go from like a wider zone and then it will go, I'll press two times and it'll go to an extra small point. So then I could pinpoint the bird through brush. I still give Canon the edge in autofocus for wildlife, but this camera is in my opinion, even though it has only 60 and I say only 60, but you know, 60 calculations per second, the A12 has 120, but I find the autofocus, I don't feel at any disadvantage with this camera. Now I've seen some videos online where people talk about the rolling shutter and it being an issue for them. And for me personally, I don't, I don't have that issue for smaller birds. Yes, you are going to get a little distortion on the wings, but the regular size birds, and I don't know the names of the birds yet, but regular size birds, bigger birds, that's not an issue. If you're panning super quickly and you have some structures in the background, yeah, you might, you might get some warping, but overall I think the rolling shutter is mostly going to be an issue for high velocity sports, bats, tennis rackets, golf clubs. Panning super quickly, yes, you're going to get it, but I think it's, this is a highly capable wildlife camera. Now one thing I wasn't, I was not anticipating with this camera. So when I get home and I look at my images, the first time, the first couple of times that I used it for wildlife, I, the images look sharp when I'm looking at it on the screen, but then when I zoom in, it'll look like it's slightly out of focus, just slightly. And I realized that, well, yeah, this is what happens when you use a high megapixel camera is that you're going to notice these smaller details, right? With these micro jitters in the camera. So, um, last, I went, you know, I went out again. The next time I went, I made sure to use a higher shutter speed to compensate for that micro jitter. And, you know, yes, you have to, my ISO jumped significantly. Thankfully, a lot of the noise reduction software, um, the noise reduction is unbelievable to combat the raising of the ISOs to compensate for the higher shutter speed. So I found, I didn't find any, you know, it, you just got to work with it. And I still think this is one of the best wildlife cameras that you can buy simply for that reason. Okay. That was a little bit long-winded, but now I want to talk about the camera and the camera, the actual camera body and how the usability of the camera. So I will tell you, just like the A75, the, the battery life is one of those, one of the biggest, just life improvements. This battery, I can go all day on one battery. And I'll tell you what, man, you can look at specs on a, on a spec sheet, but what's actually going to make the things that actually matter are the ones that, that you genuinely feel the difference, right? Not like a feature that you may use every now and then the battery life is a really important one and you don't realize it until you have a camera that it feels like it's just, it's always going, you know? So the battery life on this camera is outstanding. It's, it's better than the A75 and the A75 has some insane battery life as well. The camera body itself, you know, this camera feels so much better than the A7R5. I always, you know, I talked about the A7R5 if you've seen any of my previous videos where it feels cheap, right? It's got like a plasticky kind of grip where there's not a lot of grip on it, or this one has like a more rubbery texture, but the body feels hollow inside. It feels hollow. It feels empty and it's nice and light, but it feels, it doesn't feel premium. This camera feels premium with a more rubbery texture grip. So this is great. And it's more comfortable to use with larger lenses, with a deeper grip. And I find it, someone that doesn't like to use camera straps, I find this to feel more secure and more comfortable in the hand, especially when I'm using larger lenses. I love that it has dual USB-Cs right here, one with a fast charge. You know, this is one underrated part about Sony cameras. And Lumix, you could do this as well. I love that the computer recognizes the camera as a drive. Amazing. I don't always want to take out my CFexpress Type-A card because I have to look for the reader. Who knows where that is. I love being able to just connect this to USB-C directly to my computer and the transfer speeds are pretty good. Final thoughts after a I've been really enjoying this camera, whether I'm shooting photo or video, I don't feel like I'm at any disadvantage when I'm using it. I feel like it could do everything at a pretty high level. You know, and just like the a7V, when we looked at the rumors, based on the rumors, I wasn't too impressed, but in actual use, it changed my mind. The a7V has become one of my favorite cameras and I consider it, I'm filming with it right now, I consider it a worthy upgrade over the a7IV because the a7V essentially replaced my a7S III and my a7IV, all for under $3,000. The a7R VI could have done the same thing for me if I didn't have the a7V. But obviously, this is at a higher price point and that's why this is going to appeal to a more niche crowd. In my opinion. And so if you're coming from an a7R V, I would have to ask you, I would have to grill you and ask you multiple questions to see whether or not this camera would be worth the upgrade. Again, like I said, like I said in the intro, it's becoming more complicated. It's not as straightforward when we're talking about upgrading to a camera like this that specializes in something that it's not very rare nowadays. So if I were shooting with the a7R V and I wish that I had something that was more versatile, this would absolutely be worth it. It is an extremely capable video camera. It is extremely capable with speed with everything, honestly. But if I had an a7R V and I had something like an a7IV, maybe I picked up an a7V or had an a7C II or something like that, then you got to think it's a bit of a tougher, bit of a tougher, you know, because the a7V with this 30, with this measly 32 megapixels is such a capable camera. And the reason why I don't talk about the a1 series, you don't hear me talk about the a1, that makes the most sense, right? It's the most capable camera, the most unbelievable sensor, but I'm just, I guess I'm just still bitter that it doesn't have a full mechanical shutter, but it's labeled mechanical. And when I go out and I do my flash photography, I, I just, it's just like the principle. I don't want to go out with a camera that I know is just going to degrade my backgrounds. I just want things to work the way they're supposed to work. I think I'm real, again, I really loved it. I really enjoy using this camera, but it is, it's more complicated when you're trying to recommend a camera like this because it's, it doesn't, yeah, I would need to, I would need to have you fill one of those questionnaires out, but when you go to the doctor, I need to know a little bit more about you, see if it fits you. You know what I mean? I'm going to just end it here. This is getting out of hand. Um, thank you so much for watching. If you made it up to this point, look, I, I appreciate it. And if you want to support what I do here on YouTube, all right, check out my Lightroom presets. I have an off-camera flash mini course as well. The links to those will be down below. Appreciate you very much. After I make these videos, I'm going to start focusing on the garage. I still got some carpenter ants. When I go out late night, I see some carpenter ants out there. We going to have to do some about that. We're going to have to do something about that. All right. Take care. Um, all right. I'll see you. I still don't know how to end the video.