Sony A7CR First Impressions

Hey ya’ll. In this blog, I’ll be discussing about the Sony A7CR and my thoughts the camera after a month of using it during my time out taking photos. I mainly got this camera for the same reasons as many other people: the small form factor and the weight of the camera. I mean at the size of Sony’s APSC cameras such as the A6700 and weighing at around 200 grams under the Sony A7RV, it’s undeniably smaller than the “big” normal full frame bodies Sony has to offer. But does that make a difference? Keep reading to find out my opinions of it!
As I’ll mention later in this blog, it wasn’t just about the positives of this camera, which by the way, offers a lot. I had to also think of the negatives and features I’d be willingly sacrificing with this camera with switching from my Sony A7IV to the A7CR, but as you’ll see, some of the sacrifices weren’t as bad in my opinion as other people I’ve seen made them out to be.
With the first portion of this blog, I’ll be talking about the positives of the camera, then going into the surprisingly positive features, then of course, the negatives.

Positives

The first positive I want to say is the very obvious one, which I already mentioned in the introduction: the weight and size. There’s really nothing else to say besides this, as it’s pretty self-explanatory. They’re smaller and lighter than the bigger full frame Sony cameras. Onto the next point.

The second positive is the similarities this camera shares with the Sony A7RV. With my main camera being the Sony A7RV, I wanted my second camera to not only be similar to the Sony A7RV, but to also give me a reason to choose it over the A7RV. That may not make sense, but give me a second to explain. So with the A7CR, it’s basically the Sony A7RV’s little brother in terms of the sensor and hardware being the same. There are of course differences, which I’ll talk about later in other sections, but they’re very similar. They both give me the ability to crop with both being able to produce 61 mp images. I really value the ability to crop because if I’m out in the field and I see a shot I can get, but I don’t have the lens to reach, I can easily just crop in and get the shot I want without having to lose too much resolution in the final picture. I really like to travel light, not only from destination to destination, but just on your normal typical hikes or walks, so this has saved my ass many times during my time with the A7RV and I have no doubt the A7CR will end up saving me.
Onto explaining the “giving me a reason to choose it over the A7RV”. Well, the Sony A7CR with it’s many external differences, mainly the weight and size, it’s basically a different handling and shooting experience compared to the A7RV for me. Even though I just mentioned the weight being 200 grams lighter than the A7RV, in real life, 200 grams may seem like nothing. But when walking around for hours during street photography or when hiking up a mountain to get some landscape pictures, the A7CR being 200 grams lighter feels pretty damn great. The size of the A7CR being a smaller camera compared to the A7RV makes it really easy for me to just carry around and take photos (see my video for how I like to hold the camera).
With the camera being a different experience to shoot with, I really gives me a reason to choose it over the A7RV when going out for walks in comparison to when I had the A7IV; I basically shot with the A7RV 99% of the time and the A7IV was just collecting dust and being used as a camera to record my talking head videos for Youtube.

Surprisingly Positive

The feature (or lack of a feature) I thought I would miss the most was having no joystick. I use the single point spot and the zone focus area the most when taking photos. I use the joystick on the A7RV (and all my past cameras I’ve had) to move the point around the screen, which is how I’ve operated ever since I started photography. So having no joystick and being subjected to tapping on the screen to move the focus area around really worried me. But surprisingly, I didn’t need to do that! On the A7CR, you can actually just use the directional pads on the wheel to move the focus area around and I’ve really found a great workflow with the button mapping and what not to really be efficient in getting the photos I want even without the joystick.
There is one thing that’s making me worried though and that is the lifespan of the directional pads on the wheel. On my A7III, the directional pads actually wore out and didn’t have the “click” feeling that the camera should have when press the directionals. I’ll see how it lasts after a year or two, but for now, I love using the directional pads to move around my focus area on the A7CR.

I’ve read many comments and reviews from other owners of the A7CR talking about how the smaller camera form factor was actually an annoyance and they have to use the base plate the A7CR comes with to be able to have an enjoyable experience with the camera. That’s the last thing I wanted to do because that just destroys the whole purpose of me wanting a smaller form factor sized camera. Luckily, after shooting with the camera for a while, I can safely say this camera is not only a joy to shoot with, but it is a very enjoyable experience that leaves me wanting to take it on more of my photowalks.
One thing I do want to add to this point as well; I initially thought I was mainly going to be using the A7CR with my smaller lenses such as the Zeiss 35mm f2.8 or my Zeiss 55 mm f1.8, but surprisingly (there goes that word again), the lens that I actually love to pair with this camera is the Sony 24-70 GM II f2.8. It’s a much difference shooting experience compared to my time with the A7RV and the 24-70 GM II. Again, the weight and the size really do make a difference in the ergonomics and the handling when out taking photos. It’s really been a joy to pair the A7CR and the 24-70 GM II and just go out and take photos.

Negatives

I just want to start this section off by saying this: Yes, these are negatives, but personally for me, they aren’t even close to being dealbreakers or anything like that.

The main thing I’ve seen people shit on this camera for is the viewfinder resolution. Now, I’ll be the first to say, as an owner of the Sony A7RV, with the viewfinder resolution on that camera being around 9 million dots, the Sony A7CR’s viewfinder resolution being only 2.36 million dots is actually hilariously terrible. To put that into perspective, the Sony A7CR has the same viewfinder resolution as the Sony A7III, a camera that came out 6 years ago in 2018. The Sony A7IV has a better viewfinder resolution than the A7CR.
Let me repeat those couple of sentences: the Sony A7CR has the same viewfinder resolution as the Sony A7III, a camera that came out 6 years ago in 2018. The Sony A7IV has a better viewfinder resolution than the A7CR.
Now that I got that out of the way, again, let me mention. Am I disappointed? Yes, of course. But, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t affect my photography or my ability to take photos. I can still see clearly when I do use the viewfinder and I can still get great pictures with the camera. Those are my priorities and anything else is a bonus.
Now of course, for the price I’m paying for this camera, I’ll always think like “Damn, they couldn’t have made the resolution be at least the level of the A7IV?”
But that’s a business decision from Sony and I would think there is a good reason they did that, such as keeping the camera’s price as low as possible or maintaining the weight and size of the camera. I don’t know the whole manufacturing process of cameras so I could only guess why they did it.

I’ve already mentioned this before, but the lack of buttons is just something you can’t overlook. It’s understandable though as a quick glance at how much they cut from the bigger Sony bodies to get the smaller Sony cameras is pretty easy to notice right off the bat. With the button mapping on my Sony A7CR, I wanted to make them as similar as possible to my buttons on the Sony A7RV. That way when I go out with either camera, I’m not stuck trying to remember which button does what on the A7CR. I can quickly get into my photography without having many barriers that’ll block me from getting the shot I want. I did come up with a set up that is as close as I’ll get to mimicking my A7RV set up, but it isn’t exactly the same and because of that, I’d consider it enough of a negative to mention in this section, even though it’s once again completely understandable and a trade off us A7CR users just got to deal with.

The last point I want to mention in this section is the max shutter speed. So with the bigger Sony cameras, the max shutter speed typically is 1/8000. This can come in handy when you need a faster shutter speed to capture something really fast to freeze the action or if you want to close your aperture for creative reasons and you need to up the shutter speed to compensate for that. It does suck that you aren’t able to do that with the A7CR as the max shutter speed is 1/4000 for that camera. I’ve rarely shot over 1/4000, but there are situations where I do opt for a faster shutter speed for the reasons mentioned above. It is what it is though.

A thing that I did want to address is why I chose the Sony A7CR rather than the Sony A7CII. And the answer to that is pretty simple: As mentioned before, I wanted to have the camera that was closer to the A7RV to be as consistent as possible so I ended up going with the A7CR. The ability to crop if I ever needed to is something I truly value and appreciate with the R series, especially when traveling as minimalistic as possible.

This camera has been an absolute joy to use and I finally feel with the Sony A7CR and the Sony A7RV, I have the perfect two cameras for me, with each camera having a specific usage when I’m out taking photos as well as also being pretty interchangable so incase one camera malfunctions for some odd reason (knocks on wood), I still have a back up so I can continue taking photos.