i heard that for birds in flight on the a7rv it’s best to set it to “locked on” and to turn ON aps-c cropping. apparently when using aps-c cropping you got focus points covering the entire frame and it should perform much better

Thank you for a great video that explained many details in a manner that I was able to follow. The charts presented have very good information for making comparisons. The Photos also made a great presentation. I will apply many of your recommendations for setting up a menu for bird, animal and sports action photography.

I am going for a small trip for wild life photography. Itwas great to understand the modes for bird eye auto focus...Thank you for the amazing video.

started shooting the A1 at intro. certainly an upgrade over the A7r4 I was using. shoot mainly wildlife, so the autofocus was game changing. spent about one second debating the upgrade to the a7r5 at intro. yes, I consider it an upgrade for not just the sensor size, but the other features you mention in your video. today the field kit is the 200-600 on the A7r5 and the 100-400 on the A1. birds in flight is a specialty that has many variables and the autofocus/tracking falls pretty to many of them. flight with a bright sky background is wildly different from an owl flying in a dark barn. my latest experience with the A7r5 was pretty remarkable. owl flight from the back of the dark barn to the lighted door. no time to bring the body up to frame a shot. just pointed the lens like a shotgun and followed the bird shooting one burst. 59 shot burst had 12 printable owl images, 20 unprintable, rest had no owl in the frame. what was amazing was once tracking was established, it recovered after scanning past rafters with the owl behind it. you don't go into a barn planning to shoot like this, but with the A7r4, I would have gotten zero printable shots. congratulations on a fine video. it was very informative.

Fantastic review....as always.

Thanks for this video I found it useful

I did a very simple test with eye af on A1 and 7R5. Close range wide open continuous focus on eye then rapidly move the camera and shoot a burst. Beyond a certain speed, sensor read time causes missed focus on A7R5. I think AI cannot predict direction and if it did, it could compensate slightly and adjust after missing. The A1 burst has 90%+ keeper rates on this test. A1 much better when you have relatively fast focus changing action towards or away from camera camera. A7R5 is fabulous but sensor readout is the achilles heel and depending on subject matter it will affect you.

Thank you!

Thank you

Very well done review. Thank you. Disappointing results for BIF. Waiting to see what the A9iii brings.

Thank you for the thorough and great review! Great camera, interesting how AI autofocus is lagging behind the „normal“ autofocus considering birds in flight. I personally think around 40MP to 50MP enough, but getting 26MP in APSC crop is really impressive!

Think I will keep on using my A9. Interesting that you and many others think that its no better on BIF, it will be interesting if you get a firmware upgrade for that but Sony dont do many upgrades as with the A9. Fingers crossed for all the new Sony owners, it could be a long wait..regards.

In short - it's more expensive, the settings are more complicated, the AF is the same (or worse) and there is no change in IQ. Doesn't sound like a great deal, with only advantages being a new hinge for the back screen and higher resolution EVF.

I have my AR7V AF settings on default and I have quite a few soft shots of birds and not detecting eye. I will adjust them to your recommendation, thank you!

Would love to see a review of the sony 600 F4. And maybe a test vs the 200-600

thanks Mathieu for the good info and review of the A7RV, the good reasons for me too buy this camera are, 61mgp for cropping...the Aps-c mode 26mgp...the auto focus bird animal body and eye detection...the AI pross...all the differend settings for the autofocus and tracking...the over the 9 dot EVF and that great looking LCD...and the disadvantages are...10fps ore less...the sensor BSI (roling shutter?) no black out shooting(like my A9, hoping to buy an A1 used or outlet as the A1II comes out) the A9III has only 24mgp and 20-30fps is more than enough for me....a Stacked sensor and a eledtronic shutter is all I need...Bye, Greets from eastern Netherlands

Did you upgrade the 200-600mm firmware for this? made a big difference for me once I installed the new update.

Thank you for another great review. I was waiting for it to decide whether to upgrade from my A7R4 for birds/wildlife. On a separate note, is it just me, or do modern mirrorless cameras suffer more and more from false positive focus? I'm seeing this problem across several camera systems too with blurry photos of even static subjects. That, or subject detection modes that detect a subject's eye then focus on the background around its head and draw a green box around the eye!

Thanks very much for this video, quite interesting that the AF doesn't seem to be improved on the A7RV (compared to its other Sony contemporaries). I'm interested in your thoughts on Panasonic, have you been able to test any of them (particularly the S5II)? They've finally implemented PDAF, but from what I've read about the BIF AF it's not quite there yet.

Surprised the A7RIV had better results. Do you have a video or article on that camera with your testing? Curious what settings worked best

I really couldn't comprehend your 13:23 chart, until you said you only could use it for a limited time. Then I remember my first week with this technology masterpiece. In my first days I was so disappointed with my new A7RV performances. Dozens of video of settings and hundreds of forum comments later, just a slightly improvement. No upgrades. Don't ask me what happened: suddenly the AF became lethal. Not like the A1 I've tried this summer (that is another planet), but really consistent. Nothing comparable with A7x previously. I think there is something with that AI dedicated processor with self learning technology. I hope someone will understand my experience.

Great review. To the point & no fluff. Did you get any bent wings or slanted backgrounds while shooting BIF & panning with a busy background? Thanks for any replies.

I shoot on A6700 and noticed a very strange thing. I tested 4 supertele lens - Sony 200-600, Tamron 150-500, Sigma 150-600 Sport (E) and 150-600 Contemporary from Canon EF MC-11 converter. With all my surprise Sony and Tamron lens has exactly same issue which you describe, alote shot are miss focused. On Sigma lenses this not accruing almost at all, i don't understand how this is possible, especially on Sony but that was my results. I even tested 3 different units of Sony 200-600 and all have the same issue. AF was tracking and was blazing fast but when I check pictures a hole bunch of them were miss focused. Of course, I tested all of them on BIF.

Great review as always. Thanks! I am surprised by the low success rate for BiF. Wonders if this is true also for the prime lenses since I have better results with the 400 mm 2.8 than with the 100-400 mm 4.0-5.6 with the A1.

Thank you for this review that I should of waited before purchasing the A7RV and falling for the marketing hype on the AI. Though I do not shoot BIF I experienced the inconsistent AF lock when taking multiple shoots with lower keep rate than the A7IV. The explanation on the AI. processer is best explained here over all the reviews I had watched. It's accurate in "RECONIZEING" the subject and not necessary "100% LOCKING ONTO" the subject when the shutter is pressed. It's like the left brain is not talking to the right brain in this camera or like an ADHD camera to me which does give me good keepers only when the subjects are not moving too fast at low fps. I do miss the Fuji X-H1's sweet mechanical shutter sound while facing rolling eyes and complains in indoor quiet events and weddings when using the much better Eye C-AF on Sony A7 systems. Should just got the A1 instead as I find myself having the LCD facing the camera body in closed position 95% of the time since the EVF is so good.

A really interesting review, especially for the surprising result on the AF score. I am asking around to see if others have found that performance improves over time through AI learning. I also wonder if it would be better with the Sony 100-400 G Master

Do you use auto ISO !? I will recommend to use either 100 ISO or 320 ISO in good light situations, the sensor have a dual gain, so the 320 ISO setting is better than than 250 and 400 for dynamic range ! The noise level at 320 is about the same as at ISO 125 and 160 and ISO 320 have better noise level than ISO 200, 250, 400+

Fully agree with this excelent review, shooting BIF is really below expectations, compared to Canon R5 and Nikon Z8 the sony AR7 R5 doesn't come into play. Landscape and portrait performance is ok, but then the Sony A7R IV is a better option. Really disipointed, the gap with A1 is deep, consider to sell my Sony gear and go back to Nikon, z8 and z9 , and the new prime lenses are looking good if wildelife is important for you.

I am surprised to see you got fewer sharp photos than the A7RIV ! Would it be the same with a fully side-by-side comparison !? I can also see you had steadyshot off and Hi speed setting, there must also be some of the other settings that can be better !? If the Lens was the Sony 200-600mm 5.6-6.3 G, then it is know that there are problems with stabilizer for the R-series cameras !

Interesting and well done video. Giving a camera lots of features is always going to cause problems for the user, especially the new user. When it comes to AF you are correct it's a relatively complex area with the A75R as there are a number of interrelated settings that influence performance. Now a year on with the camera currently at 2.01 and the 200-600 on 3.0 have you noticed any change in performance? I have to say I tend to put down missing the shot to the inadequacies of the guy holding the camera. I would like to hear any new thoughts you may now have given time has passed and firmware has been 'improved'. we hope. Incidentally Ive had the A7R5 for 14 months. Lets be honest it does take time to become acquainted with a new camera and with a complex one like the A7R5 its a task. Its certainly no a plug and play camera. Complex cameras put a high demand on the user, that for sure.

Wow! Very interesting Mathieu. You just confirmed my impressions. Your results for BIF is the same as mine. I moved up from the A74 because of the "improved" AF but found little to no improvement. Naturally I assumed it was me. I do appreciate the 26mp in crop mode compared to the 14mp with the A74 though. I also agree regarding set up. The menus are so deep and nuanced that more often than not I just throw up my hands and say "forget it! It's good enough". I photographed my grandson playing baseball this spring, and honestly got better results "eyes in focus" with my OM-1.

I tried the A7Rv for wildlife photography when it first came out and concluded it nowhere near the A1 particularly for birds in flight - so I ended up buying a second A1 as I wanted two bodies for African safari. I know the A1 is expensive, but for wildlife it is still the best, by far.

Would be interested to know whether the A6700 fares any better, since the AI auto focus is present and there aren't as many pixels to work with.

Hello Mathieu, tanks for the great video. I use A7RV + 200-600. What I miss is something about phase detection or contrast detection related to BIF. Phase detection should be faster than contrast detection. Curious about your opinion to that. Thanks in advance, Jurgen

I using A7Riv now and mainly shooting landscape, do you think I need to upgrade just for image stability? Thanks

I would do the tests again with the 600mm & the 1.4x !

13:35 please explain why ibis was turned off, if it’s so good with eight stops of stabilization. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and advice.

Thank you for this very interesting video. My big surprise is the difference in the photo success rate between the a74 and the A7R5... which is basically unacceptable given the price difference. A SONY fix is essential in view of the number of photos in burst 6 and the wheelbarrows while we announce the A9 III with 40 images / s. Wait and see...Canon may be can! 😀🙃🙃🙃

I bought this camera after owning the A7r3 and the A7rv. I think at close range the camera is good but at any distance it struggles. I am actually thinking about selling it to get the A7iv. I know id lose a lose a ton of resolution but to me its over hyped. I use the 200-600 for birds and sometimes it takes an age to focus. I am thinking about upgrading both thd lens and camera firmware but unsure.

Would you not recommend this I was looking to upgrade and only use Sony . Would it be with investing in a second hand a1 ?

I have the a7rv and your experiences with its autofocus matches what I have found. For people the ai autofocus is a definite upgrade and can easily be seen. For animals and birds in flight particularly, the ai focus is much less convincing. I also have an a1 and I do think in part the a7rv is a bit restrained by the slow sensor which doesn't show up with people moving around but does with fast moving subjects such as birds flying. Side by side the a1 is quicker to acquire and will hang onto subjects af wise much longer than the Rv. Also I was expecting the Rv to recognise birds and animals easier than it does and again it doesn't appear any better than the a1 (maybe less so in fact). The menu system for the af is unnecessarily complicated and suggests to me Sony knows they may have not got the system right yet. Why else give so many options if you were confident about the af capability. Hopefully because it has a separate ai autofocus chip then Sony can improve its recognition capabilities in these areas. After all it's a first generation idea on this camera and in every other respect the camera is superb.

With the newest major firmware update with several Alpha cameras, I wonder if the updated cameras like A1, A9 III, A7R V and A7 IV would increase their BIF AF-C hit rates.

Same experience after serious testing inna all Sony system. That the AF system has the posssibility of a working setting somewhere in the menu, is not worth the effort in my opinion. Chances are the camera is in a different setting and the shot will be missed. It took a sitting - yes sitting - peacock to reach 30% succesrate. After changing the setting within 'bird', the peacock was gone. This implementation of AI needs some serious technical and user friendlyness firmware update(s) in to even come close to the hype, in my opinion.

I spent a lot of time trying to troubleshoot BIF focusing issues (or to be honest almost absence of AI AF) on a6700 with different range of the lenses and camera settings. Unfortunately it looks like ALL new Sony AI based cameras suffer from the same issue - they cannot detect and properly track fast objects especially if these objects change their form (like bird moving wings during the flight) or "run" from one side of frame to other. Statical (on a tree) or slow moving birds and animals can be detected and tracked on average or average+ level (I would say previous non-AI animal eye autofocus on a6600 worked better!). It is strange but other brands do not have such problems with AI chips / software. For example, in similar conditions (same place, same light and the same flying birds) my Olympus can detect and follow BIF without any hesitation... but bokeh in comparison with Sony is another story...

For bird in flight shots you need to change focus mode to subject tracking.

Let's see... The same ratio obtained with less expensive cameras like XT4, XH2 and XH2s.

WHICH sw vERSION WERE YOU RUNNING?

Thank you for your video! We shot a wedding in June with two Canon R5's. My wife's back and shoulders hurt for five days later. We decided to switch all our Canon gear for Nikon, including my beloved R3. Now, I am pondering a return to Canon, stay with Nikon, or migrate to Sony. Before we do anything, may I ask if Sony produces the sharpest and lightest lenses? My wife will likely just use primes. I will use primes, 24-70, 70-200, and something longer for bird photography. Currently, we are using a 50MM, 85MM, 24-70, 70-200, and a 600 PF. They are all Z-mount lenses. Which Sony camera would be best for weddings, portraits, and sports/wildlife? I also have large hands, so I prefer larger camera bodies. I held a Sony A9 III at our local camera shot. That camera felt a lot better in my hands than the A7R V. Thank you. JP

So in conclusion _ don’t sell your A1 :). I guess Sony wasn’t stupid enough to make a camera that was superior to the higher priced model. I don’t expect Sony will issue a firmware to change this positioning either - unless until the A1 is replaced. And great video btw -your findings are same I have with my a1 and 7r.

I would not even consider the A7RV for BIF. Sensor readout speed forces mechanical shutter, mechanical shutter max FPS is too slow, and shutter blackout cripples AF on faste(er) moving subjects. I don't think the A7rVis intended for BIF; smaller sensor cameras (A9 series) and/or A1 are intended/better suited for BIF.

Not sure how you can say for the A7IV: if bird is covered by a object the camera detects greatly the bird. That’s simply not true: if an object is in front of the bird, the AF detects the object closest to the camera. It will NEVER detect a bird behind another object, like for example a branch, leaves, etc

I think my A7RIII with the small spot AF box works much better than the A7RV for animals and birds after using the A7RV myself. The supposed AI AF is more of a hindrance to wildlife photography than anything else and past medium range, it's completely useless. The human eye detect might be impressive but haven't tried that personally as yet

There are new firmware updates both for the Sony A7RV and the Sony G 200-600mm. Have you update these before you ran the tests? I understand that the firmware update for the lens has a significant effect on focus response.

I find it horribly confusing with regards to Sony's cameras as to which is best for wildlife and macro. You speak to Sony and they point at this camera. However its clear that its not up there with the A9 / A1 in fact according your list its down the bottom of the list...

Canon R7 has better bird eye focus than the A7RV for only $1,399.00 - i have both bodies. I will be returning my SonyA75 to get a full refund ... very disappointed with the gimmick "ai" chip.