News

It’s been a few weeks since the conclusion of another epic edition of The Digital Shootout, a two-week extravaganza of diving, photography seminars, and competition. But the folks at Backscatter haven’t been sitting around dreaming about Bonaire’s azure waters: There’s a flood of content on backscatter.com coming out of all that activity, and it begins with Jim Decker’s review of the “entry-level” Sony full-framer—the a7 Mark IV.

If your immediate thought is, “Why would I go for the a7 IV when I could pay a bit more for the more impressive a7R IV, a7S III or even a1?”—then you’re asking a question that, it seems, plenty of Backscatter customers struggle with when purchasing a Sony Alpha full-frame camera. Jim usefully addresses this conundrum from the outset and returns to it throughout the review as he evaluates image quality, continuous shooting speed, autofocus performance, white balance performance, and video quality.

Given all this build-up, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that Jim was pleasantly surprised by the a7 Mark IV’s performance in a number of areas: It seems many of the “best bits” from Sony’s recent higher-end models—of value to underwater shooters—have indeed filtered down to the base model Alpha 7. The result, in Backscatter’s estimation, is “a really good value camera, that can produce good quality stills, and will work well for a hybrid video/photo shooter.”

Check out the review to discover Backscatter’s take on a7 Mark IV.