Price: £1,709 / $1,798
Sony A7C
A small, full-frame camera with great focusing – could this be the camera we’ve been longing for?
x3 © Angela Nicholson
According to Sony, the A7C is the world’s smallest and lightest fullframe camera with optical image stabilisation and a zoom lens. And indeed, the A7C isn’t much bigger than the APS-C format Sony A6600. It also has a similar rectangular design, with the viewfinder in the left corner of the body rather than protruding from the centre of the top plate.
Inside the A7C is a 24.2MP full-frame Exmor R CMOS sensor with a front-end LSI and a Bionz X processing engine. This enables 16-bit image-processing and 14-bit RAW output, with a standard sensitivity range of ISO 100-51,200 (expandable to 50-204,800). There’s also a maximum continuous shooting rate of 10 frames per second with continuous autofocusing and metering.
Being a Sony camera, the A7C is also reasonably well-specified on the video front and is capable of recording 4K (3,840 x 2,160) 4:2:08-bit video at 30p/25p and 100Mbps/60Mbps. There are also S-Log3 gamma profiles to enable 14 stops of dynamic range, and HLG Hybrid Log Gamma for direct HDR movie playback on compatible screens. Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) video can also be recorded at up to 120p for slow-motion playback, and there’s a Slow & Quick mode for recording slow or quick-motion footage in camera at rates from 1fps to 120fps.