Sony A7 II Review – Performance

Sony claims that the Sony A7 II delivers faster focusing speeds than its predecessor – the A7. The AF performance on the A7 was impressive and certainly prompt enough, and the same can be said of the A7 II. As a result, it is a touch difficult to tell the difference between the two in this area.

There have also been improvements made to the tracking and lock-on AF functionality, and these are certainly more noticeable. That being said there are still a few issues when it comes to tracking fast moving subjects, and it’s safe to say that the A7 II is better with slower or static subjects.

The A7 II focuses well in low light conditions, and when conditions get particularly dark you can always turn to the strong AF beam to assist you.

Although the A7 II isn’t exactly a camera built for speed, the presence of Sony’s latest processor means that it performs more than capably in this area. During testing the camera managed some 25 frames of Raw and JEPG at 5fps when loaded with a Lexar Professional 2000x 64GB SDXC card before slowing.

This increased to 27 files when shooting just Raw, and if you’re happy shooting Extra Fine JPEG files then it’ll manage some 60 frames before the buffer fills.

EVF and LCD

One criticism of the A7 was that the EVF, while impressive in specification, struggled somewhat when it came to colour rendition. With the A7 II this situation is slightly improved, although the image reproduction does still appear a little muted and lacking in saturation.

This is can be improved by upping the viewfinder brightness, an action which makes the image production more faithful. In other regards the EVF is excellent, with a great refresh rate and the addition of a new, softer eyecup with makes it more comfortable to shoot with.

While the EVF might struggle with accurate colours, the same cannot be said about the model’s LCD screen. The unit features Sony’s White Magic technology that delivers an excellent level of brightness and image reproduction.

As mentioned previously, the real headline new feature on the A7 II is the introduction of a 5-axis image stabilisation system that promises some really impressive results.

In real world testing conditions the 5-axis system really does work well, allowing hand-held shutter speeds of as slow at 1/10sec and still delivering sharp images. If you’ve got a particularly steady hand you could even shoot with a slower shutter speed and get acceptable, albeit not pin sharp, image quality.