Shooting landscapes on Sony since 2015

I’ve been shooting on Sony cameras since 2015. When I first got my hands on the A7R II, it upended how I approached nature and landscape photography. 

The handheld stabilisation was sturdy. The high resolution encouraged tight crops and big prints. While the dynamic range—and low-light—performance delivered clean results time and again.

In early 2020, I upgraded my kit to the Sony A7R III. The speedy autofocus allowed me to expand into event and wedding photography. The touchscreen was a breath of fresh air. And the battery lasted beyond a single session.

The A7R III is fantastic—and it’s what I’m still shooting on today.

Well, that was until Sony reached out to loan me the new A7R V. So I’ve put the A7R V through its paces over the past month. You can check out my full review on Australian Photography. In that, I opened with:

What direction did Sony take with a camera line already at the top of its class? Well, the A7R V has been upgraded in several core areas to help it overcome challenging situations.

The newly developed AI processing unit better tracks fleeting subjects like vehicles and insects. The reimagined back screen tilts, twists and flips for greater angle flexibility. And the redesigned sensor stabilisation unit counters 8 stops of camera shake.

In this article, I want to explore how the Sony A7R V handles nature and landscape nature photography—and whether it’s a worthy upgrade.

(Stay until the end for a few RAW files you can download and play with.)

What’s new: Minor tweaks and major features

The A7R V body is mostly similar to the previous generation. But it has received a few welcome new features.

The fully articulating 4-axis back screen now tilts, twists and flips out to the side. The result? Greater viewability when shooting high, low or vlogging from in front. 

The OLED viewfinder received a resolution boost to 9.44 million-dot and 0.90x magnification, compared to 5.76 million-dot and 0.78x magnification on the A7R IV.

The A7R V retains the last-gen 61MP sensor. (Which isn’t a bad thing—it remains class-leading.) But that sensor is now more likely to take crisper shots thanks to the updated stabilisation to better detect and correct camera shake.

And, in welcome news for wildlife photographers who need to focus on skittish subjects, the new AI processing unit powers improved animal and bird subject recognition. While the number of phase detection points has shot up from 567 to 693.

Somewhat overlooked in other reviews, the A7R line has become bulkier with each generation. (When it comes to lugging around hiking and camera gear in remote landscapes, every gram counts.) 

The A7R V body is now 82mm deep and weighs 723 grams. That’s a big jump from the first-generation A7R ten years ago. That measured a slender 48mm deep and weighed only 465 grams.

That added volume has ushered in many worthwhile feature upgrades—such as the more comfortable grip, weather sealing and more processing power. But today’s pro mirrorless bodies aren’t as svelte as they once were.

In the field: How the features performed

After testing the A7R V for over a month across Victoria, three features stood out when it came to nature and landscape photography.

Steadier stabilisation: Up on the Otway Fly treetop walk, people were vibrating the elevated walkway and it was much too narrow to set up my tripod.

Thankfully, the eight stops of stabilisation worked a treat as I found myself forced to take handheld shots amongst the canopies. 

Shooting at 200mm, I bumped the ISO to 400, used a slowish shutter speed of around 1/40 seconds and still captured many crisp shots. I even tried 1/13 seconds for one scene at 188mm where about 3 in 10 frames were useable.

The new stabilisation may be brilliant for handheld shots on the go. But if you want to do an exposure blend, you’ll need aligned frames that only a tripod can produce.

Powerful focusing: To test the improved AI-powered autofocus, I hiked out to Cape Woolamai on Phillip Island. It was late evening and scores of curious wallabies darted across the track and skitted off into the brush. 

Using wide autofocus, the A7R V locked on with a green focus box over each wallaby's face and tracked them through the grasses. The results were sharp and the eyes were reliably in focus—even when shooting at f/2.8.

Plus, if you like to emphasise and get ultra close to foregrounds—such as fern fronds or seascape rocks—you’ll find the new focus bracket drive mode a massive time-saver.

The a7R V will continuously shoot a series of images as it shifts focus points through the scene. Then you can then blend the necessary frames back in Photoshop.

(Just make sure you capture some focus overlap between frames. If you’re shooting with a wide-angle lens and at f/11, a step width setting of 7 or 8 should be fine.) 

All-angle versatility: The versatile back screen was particularly helpful as I crouched low to photograph the wallabies. And it just so happened to be the ideal scenario to test three features at once:

1. Focusing on fleeting subjects

2. Shooting handheld telephoto images from a shaky position

3. Framing and viewing from odd angles

The A7R V performed brilliantly. I flipped the screen to the side and twisted it to face the sky. I then held the camera—and the hefty 70-200mm lens—about a foot off the ground. 

Despite my less-than-steady set-up, the camera captured sharp shots of the wallabies and tracked them through the grass. 

Final thoughts: Confidence at a price 

To conclude my review for Australian Photography, I wrote: 

At $5899 AUD, the Sony A7R V is a pricey piece of gear.

It will take care of (almost) everything for you—so you can focus on capturing the decisive moment with ease. And sometimes, having that confidence behind you is worth every single cent.

In theory, you can take identical photos on the A7R IV and the A7R V. But in practice, as outdoor photographers, we’ll often face tough conditions in harsh landscapes.

If you’re a wildlife, travel or wilderness photographer who’d rather shoot on the go and leave a bulky tripod behind, the A7R V has you covered.

But if you tend to shoot steady scenes on a tripod, choose the A7R IV—and save some money to help fund your next photography trip away. You’ll capture better photos than you would have had you got the A7R V and not travelled. 

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