Sony A7 IV Hidden Feature

We recently got our A7 IV and playing with the camera and settings things up made us discover a feature that at the moment we think only this camera has which can actually be pretty useful in some situations.

SONY A7 IV divider frame

In the A7 IV Sony added several new features that did not exist on other Sony cameras until now including the focus breathing and focusing map (focus breathing correction was recently added to the FX6 and we can only hope that it will be added to more cameras soon).

These are well-known features that Sony pushed hard with the announcement of the camera last year and we covered ourselves in our review of the A7 IV from late November 2021.

But the camera actually has more hidden features which might not be as groundbreaking but can still be pretty useful.

One of these is the ability to add a divider frame between two images (note that this doesn’t work in video mode, which is actually a shame since there is no simple EXIF in video and a divider can help you understand what clips were shots with what lens for example).

The divider frame is a black frame with a white arrow JPEG file that you can add to your stills shooting folder on your camera (see example below).

So how do you add this? the only way that we could find (and feel free to let us know in the comments if you know of another way of doing this) is to assign this function to a button on the camera.

This is how we did this:

Setup>
(3) Operation costumize>
(A) Custom key/dial set>
Choose a key to assign>
(Red camera menu) Shooting menu>
(8) Selection / memo>
Create divider frame

Now each time you press the assigned key (we choose arrow down on the back control wheel but you can choose whatever you want) you create this divider frame.

A divider frame

What is the best way to use this feature? good question. We use it when we test several MF lenses that do not have EXIF to help us remember where we switched lenses (we just need to remember which one we used first. You might be able to come up with a better use than we did – let us know in the comments!

Bonus feature: star rating with a click

You might have noticed in our video that when we added the divider frame there were also a few other options buried in the same menu. These were all-star rating options. This means that you can assign up to 5 different star ratings to an image (1-5 per image, not all at the same time of course).

This has been something that Canon cameras (and some Nikon) had for a very long time but not Sony for some reason. However, the way that this is hidden in the menu and even more so the way that you can actually view the ratings certainly leaves something to be desired.

Update: Some users have told us that this was possible with some other (older) Sony cameras as well in a different way through the playback menu but you will need to dig in the menu to find out specifically how you do that with each camera. This again only works for stills for some reason (assigning a star or other rating to a video would have really helped when recording many takes of the same shot). Here is an example with the A7R III.

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Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.