Sony Alpha a7 IV

Hi, I'm the author of the above. I also got a Sony A7 IV camera a few days ago. I already have a root shell on it. Although that wasn't even required to break Sony's C2PA implementation... I'll write more about this in the future.

Yep this. I’ve been getting into photography over the last 9 months or so. I got a Sony a7iv and an increasing pile of lenses for it. It’s making me a huge camera snob. The truth is that nothing a phone can do can come close to the image quality of a proper modern camera. You can spot the difference a mile off. Photos from phones look like they’ve been passed through stable diffusion or something. They just look wrong in comparison to a real camera with real lenses and real lights. It shouldn’t be surprising. Real depth of field is physically impossible with a small lens. And cameras have teeny tiny lenses and sensors. It’s impressive how good the photos are given the hardware, but the hardware is very very bad in comparison to a dedicated camera with replaceable lenses.

Makes sense. On my sony camera (a7iv), it does continuous autofocus in video mode. You don't need to hit the record button - just set the focus mode to AFC (autofocus continuous) and it does its thing. I also just tried connecting it as a webcam over USB, and it does continuous autofocus when set up like that too. I'm sure it uses more power, but the camera can power itself over the USB port while connected, so thats not a problem.

I use my Sony a7iv as a webcam. Plug the USB C in and it is recognized as a webcam. I got asked a lot im teams calls what webcam I use

I think I disagree on every point you've raised here. First, my sony camera (and all sony cameras released in the last ~3+ years) support USB video streaming out of the box, with no drivers. I suspect other brands are the same. It looks like canon is just stuck in the dark ages on this one. They also support remote camera control over USB, and all sorts of other things. Mostly - but not entirely - in an open ecosystem. I have several devices which can control the camera over the USB connection - so it can't be that hard. Second, are you sure your android phone takes better photos? What camera & lens do you have on your digital camera? Have you upgraded from the kit lens it came with? I got a sony a7iv last year. If I take the same photo with my a7 and my iphone, the photos are wildly different. The iphone's photos are lovely, but they have this very slightly AI generated gloss about them. Everything is slightly too clean somehow. Its like I'm looking at reality plus. In comparison, The photos from my sony camera feel like real photos. Dark things are dark. Light things are light. If I crank the ISO at night, the photos are noisy. If I blow out the aperature, the depth of field hits you like a truck made of clouds. The photos look like what I pointed my camera at. In short, I massively prefer the photos I get from my dedicated camera. I suspect if I showed you, you'd prefer them too.

a7iv + 70-200 GM II shooter myself too, I feel you! Even in my day to day travel photography with my partner I'll still drag that combo with me. It's the one range that you just can't easily replicate with a phone and it looks totally magical, whereas things like wide angle photo and your regular 35mm are "close enough" that often I'll just use my phone instead.

Don't be afraid of Iso, you might want manual focus, mirrorless cameras even as good as the R5 have a hard time focusing on "nothing at infinity". Largest aperture your lens can do (biggest hole, smallest f number) and the recommended shutter speeds. I had luck with iso 3200, f1.4 and 1/6s shutter handheld on a sony a7iv with a 35mm f1.4 GM.

Not just global shutter, but shutter speeds up to 1/80000, flash sync the same (which is simply bonkers, but possible due to global shutter), and pre-recording? I love my A7IV, but the A9III makes it look like a toy.

I agree but for the average user who takes sunset pics, kid pics or pet pics and then view those pictures on the same device they shot it on, apple’s incentive isn’t so much about competing with full-frame mirrorless cameras, but instead to make the pictures shot on the iPhone look as good as possible on the iPhone. That way, the shooter gets the dopamine hit when they shoot something that triggers our visual sense in a positive way. My Sony a7iv gives me the same dopamine hit, maybe more so as there’s no better feeling than getting home, loading your footage into DaVinci and see that your exposure, focus and colours are nailed (on the other side of the coin, it’s a huge punch in the gut to get home and see your focus a little off, giving the opposite effect of a dopamine hit). But it’s more of a process to get there and the average user needs a faster feedback loop from shot to hit.