Q: Likelihood of feature additions in future firmware updates?

[brockgs]

Disclaimer: I'm not asking for rumours or expecting people to see into the future.

I very happily own an a1 and a7RIV. Tremendous cameras. I dove deep into Sony a couple years ago when the pandemic decided to make me want to explore nature and photograph it. Being new to this level of photography and Sony's professional products, I don't know what to reasonably expect as far as future feature additions or refinements via firmware updates.

Since I bought my a7RIV I've only had one firmware update, which came out shortly after I bought it almost two and a half years ago. Nothing since.

Since I bought my a1, there have been a few firmware updates, with some more recently changes that were nice tweaks (eye detect improvements and more RAW file options amongst others), but nothing to my knowledge that introduced a new feature or overhaul of existing one to really improve its performance for many common situations.

The reason I am thinking about this more now is because I REALLY love the new subject detection system in the a7R V and am wondering if I need to look at selling my a7R IV to move up to that type of feature, or if there is any chance that type of feature might find its way into slightly older products like my a1 and a7R IV. I absolutely, 100%, know deeply that many features are dependant of certain hardware systems that if not present in a given body would make it impractical or impossible to implement. That said, I don't have enough history with Sony pro products to know if there generally is some investment to back port (for lack of a better term) features that *may* be able to be implemented on prior hardware platforms.

I hope that makes sense. I don't expect the impossible from my cameras in terms of them magically being able to gain radical new features...without the hardware changing. More akin to what I'm asking about is just like with Operating System updates. The older your hardware is, the fewer the new features will be able to function, but you still get the benefit of *some* of the performance and feature additions for a short while that were able to be developed in a manner to run (even if less efficiently) on two or three year old hardware.

Thanks for reading.

Brock

[e-on-alphaU]

so grateful to be using A7R IV with the power of this sensor and a pixel count that provides additional creative choices …. BUT… with the improvements to the A7R V focusing capabilities and image recognition (which for those of us with older, less flexible eyes are HUGE updates), agree with previous posting that updates to the A7R IV (menus at least?) would be helpful.   So looking forward to what Sony develops next.

[Drew_Geraci]

I'm sure (or at least I hope) at some point Sony will implement a lot of updates for their flagship cameras because it's something that definitely needs to happen. That being said, some of the features you'll find on the newer cameras like the A7RV are only possible because of the additional AI processor which no other Sony camera has yet so those features will only be native to that body for now.

[brockgs]

I'm sure (or at least I hope) at some point Sony will implement a lot of updates for their flagship cameras because it's something that definitely needs to happen. That being said, some of the features you'll find on the newer cameras like the A7RV are only possible because of the additional AI processor which no other Sony camera has yet so those features will only be native to that body for now.

I suspect you’re spot on. As soon as I saw the A7RV launched with the addition processing power I figured it might be challenging to bring some of the subject detection features to other cameras, but hopefully it can still be done even if  less fidelity or speed in terms of running those models. If not, I totally understand. 👍

[jb]

Sony's history with firmware updates is mixed.  Do not expect any feature updates to the a7RM4.  The only firmware updates I expect there would be those required to fix a bug or compatibility issues with future lenses.  Once a new model is released, Sony typically stops any further feature updates on existing cameras.  As Drew noted, this can be due to hardware limitations but not always.

The only camera to receive any significant number of firmware enhancements was the original a9.  Those updates stopped soon after the release of the a9M2. 

I certainly wish Sony would provide more ongoing support to existing camera models.  But they have not up to now.  So it is important to have a clear understanding of their approach.  Don't buy into the Sony ecosystem expecting major new feature enhancements via firmware.  New features go into new cameras.

[MattK]

Hi. While I think you’ll get some minor updates, I don’t think you’ll come close to seeing the subject detection of the a7r5. I think (not sure) that a lot of it has to do with the hardware / processor in the camera. Judging from past history, it just won’t get added to an older camera. All that said, I hope I’m wrong 🙂