The Sony a7C II ($2199.99, body only) is a good example of how a few thoughtful tweaks can turn a good product—in this case, the Sony a7C ($1,799.99)—into an excellent one. The new A7C R attempts to bridge the gap between Sony’s A6000-series and A7-series cameras by squeezing the larger full-frame sensor of the latter into the smaller, lighter body of the former.

Sony have decided that it’s time to considerably up the ante for its latest range of of 35mm full-frame Alpha cameras, with the “C” in the product name standing for “Compact” and the R standing for “Resolution”.The A7C R sits above the popular A7 IV and equally new A7C II model, and just below the A7R V in terms of both specification and price.

Sony have principally added a new 61 megapixel sensor and processor, more advanced video recording and auto-focusing, and a more refined design to the high-resolution 2023 version of the A7C.

There are two colour versions of the Sony A7C R, a black and silver design and a more sombre all-black version.

Ease of Use

The new Sony A7C R essentially combines the sensor, processor and key specifications of the flagship A7R V model with the smaller, lighter body of the A6700 APS-C camera.

At the heart of the Sony A7C R, we find exactly the same 61-megapixel Backside Illuminated (BSI) Exmor R CMOS sensor as the one found in the Sony A7R V and IV cameras.

This sensor gives it a clear advantage in resolution over the equally new A7C II with its 33-megapixel sensor by 46%, allowing you to apply more aggressive crops or make bigger prints.

The original A7C had an even lower resolution 24.2 megapixel Backside Illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor, so the A7C R is a giant leap forwards in this regard.

The A7C R offers a native ISO range of 100-32,000 which can be expanded to ISO 102,400 and dropped down to ISO 50 (only when shooting stills, though, not video).

The new processor also offers 8x more processing power than the BIONZ X processor found in the original A7C, which was itself no slouch.

The A7C R has a special multi-shot shooting mode in which it can take 16 different images which are then combined using the Imaging Edge Desktop software to produce a single, 241-megapixel image.

This new model can automatically detect and correct small movements in the 16 images, such as leaves in trees or people, greatly expanding where and when you can deploy the Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode.

mpressively the larger 35mm full-frame sensor is housed inside a camera body that’s roughly halfway in size between the full-frame A7R V and the APS-C A6700.

It measures 124mm (W) x 71.1mm (H) x 63.4mm (D), compared to 120.0 x 66.9 x 69.3mm for the A6700 and 128.9 x 96.4 x 77.5mm for the A7R V, making it slightly larger in volume than the A6700 and much smaller than the A7R V.

The aluminium bodied Sony A7C R weighs 525g without a lens, battery and memory card fitted, amazingly just 22g more than the A6700 (503g) and a whopping 198g less than the A7R V (723g).