The answer — one pick, priced
Get the
Sony A7 IV
No budget ceiling
The safest single-body pick for your own kit — most-recommended by working pros across every source, with 33MP sweet-spot files and the deepest lens catalog to grow into.
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Fit ledger — need → measured evidence
■ The catch — co-equal billing, always
Silent ceremonies need care. The A7 IV's non-stacked sensor reads out in ~68ms — silent electronic shutter can band under LED venue lighting, so you are managing shutter speed (~1/100s or slower) instead of just shooting.
Dealbreaker? Runner-up №1 fixes exactly this for $900 more ↓
■ Every product has a catch. Verdicts that hide it are how bad buys happen.
Runners-up — if your needs differ
Adjacent verdicts — same method
Traps — this verdict avoids
The one-slot gamble
One corrupt card loses the wedding — dual card slots are non-negotiable for paid work. The Sony A7C II carries only one SD slot, so it can only ever be a secondary body, never your primary.
The mount-switch tax
Lens ecosystem outweighs the body. Switching mounts costs $5,000–$15,000 in new f/2.8 zooms and f/1.4 primes — stay in your system unless AF or low-light is genuinely failing.
LED banding roulette
Silent shutter is mandatory for ceremonies, but under LED venue lighting non-stacked sensors band whole frames. Keep them at 1/100s or slower — or buy a stacked or partially-stacked body (~15ms readout) and forget it.
Provenance — 10 sources, dated
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