Sony A7s iii Review - The Perfect Camera??
SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE FOR MORE! (120+ FILMMAKING TUTORIALS):
https://youtube.com/alliandwill
OUR VIDEOS ARE EDITED IN ADOBE PREMIERE PRO. GET IT HERE:
https://adobe.prf.hn/click/camref:1101lr4SX
In this video, Will reviews the new Sony A7s iii and explains why we canceled our Preorder of the Canon R5. The Sony A7siii mirrorless camera is a fully packed system of features that every creator dreams of! Sony really listened to feedback from their prior Alpha series cameras and provided features that are practical in a real-world filming environment such as 422 10bit in all modes, 4k 120p, 240fps in HD, raw 16bit output, an articulating screen, great lowlight, IBIS, reduced rolling shutter, and near-perfect auto-focus.
GENERATED CAPTIONS:
About three and a half months ago, I canceled my pre-order of the canon R5 which was supposed to be this incredible amazing camera for video, but it ended up being better suited for a photo. With all the overheating issues, I decided to cancel it and go with the Sony A7SIII. So in this video, I'm gonna be reviewing that new camera the Sony A7SIII. Let's jump in.
For about 10 years now I've owned Panasonic cameras. I started with the Panasonic AF100 and then bought a couple of GH4s. From there, I invested a lot into the micro four-thirds lenses. So i was heavily into that ecosystem and then the GH5 came out and we bought a couple of those. We almost switched to the Sony A7SIII when that came out. There wasn't enough reason for us to make the switch but with the Sony A7SIII, they've basically changed and improved everything. They gave creators exactly what they asked for - 4k, 120 422, 10 bit, great autofocus, and articulating screen. The rolling shutter was reduced and they really made a beast of a camera.
So let's dive into the review.
I'll start with the rolling shutter on the Sony A7SIII even though it's not a global shutter. The rolling shutter is almost non-existent in comparison to old cameras. It's there a little but I would say this camera has solved that problem and it's not something people will be complaining about anymore.
Now, let's talk about the resolution. I think 4K is enough especially for the next few years for the things that we shoot and the fact that they gave us 422 10-bit recording in all modes, even slow motion, is a huge win. Plus no recording limit unlike Canons where it caps out around 30 minutes, on the Sony you can record for as long as the battery will last or until the card fills up. I think this will prove to be one of the best camera releases for video because the features it has are comparable to some of the higher-end cinema cameras.
We are in downtown Toronto right now and we're just skating up to Dundas square. There's a building called the MHM building.It has these really cool white panel windows that you've probably seen before in other videos but we're gonna go get some skateboarding shots in front of there.
I think this camera will do very well for Sony. It's getting great reviews and it fits right into a professional workflow. I think that's what I like best about this camera. They've given you all professional modes and this can be used alongside cinema cameras like a B or C camera. In a lot of cases, this actually could be a great camera, for example through the full-size HDMI port they've given you the ability to record 16-bit raw using an external recorder. At the time of making this video, I think there's only one monitor that can take advantage of that. As time goes on more monitors will be released and more external devices can record the full potential of what this camera can output. Talking about frame rates on the GH5 cameras, we couldn't shoot 120 frames in 4k. We were limited to 1080. But on the Sony A7SIII, we can shoot 120 frames a second in 4k and again it's 422 10 bit, which so far has been awesome.
After reviewing all the footage over the last few days that we've filmed. I'm really happy with the look of the 4K 120 mode. If you want a higher frame rate, they offer 240 frames a second in full HD. So that's a cool feature for some higher-speed shooting. On the GH5, we were limited to 180 frames a second. So I'm pretty happy with the frame rates they offer with this camera. At 120 frames a second shooting on other cameras it's always felt like the image was a little too soft or the bitrate wasn't high enough. On the Sony A7SIII because the bitrate is much higher than these other cameras. It allows for much higher quality for these slow-motion modes.
Even though this camera doesn't have a fan inside, they've improved the way the heat is dispersed away from the camera so that it maintains a cooler temperature while operating and I have not had it overheat once on me. I did change the overheat setting to the high mode so that it can go a little further before it'll give you the warning and I've gone through three full batteries shooting at 120 frames a second pretty much all day long. I don't think overheating is going to be that big of a deal on this camera.
Another feature that we're pretty happy about on the Sony A7SIII versus other cameras especially even the Canon R5 is the dynamic range. I don't have an R5 so I can't test that but on paper, it shows that the Sony A7SIII has a few more stops of a dynamic range over the R5.
Next, let's talk about low light. I love shooting in low light scenarios because you can control the lighting and it just makes for a much more fun and creative shoot. So when the Sony A7SIII was announced, I was excited about the low light performance because they decided to go with 12 megapixels instead of 24 or more like the A7III had, and typically with their prior cameras or even on you know the GH5 to the GH5s, when they say s that means that it's meant for lower light scenarios. The Sony A7SIII when compared to the GH5, just destroys the GH5. It's not even a comparison. However while this is very good in low light, I didn't really see that much of an advantage over the A7III because they were going with the higher bit rates, higher dynamic range, higher frame rates 422 10 bit in all modes. They focus more on that side of things instead of making it drastically better than prior cameras.
Now for stabilization this camera does have ibis but coming from the GH5 I think the A7SIII isn't as good at stabilizing the footage in the body as the GH5 was, but Sony also included something called Steadyshot by default. It set the standard but you can also set it to active and then it'll crop in slightly. I found that this does a pretty good job, especially when shooting 24p and just doing some handheld stuff. You can get much more stable footage and it's a little closer to what you'd expect from a GH5. If you wanted to take that a step further, there is a software called catalyst browse that you can download and you can run your Sony footage through it. It's actually pretty incredible how stable it can make it. However, you have to crank your shutter speed really really high. I prefer to shoot double the frame rate or as close to that as I can it's not that big of a deal for us to not stabilize footage because I'd prefer to not shoot with such a high shutter speed this just means we'll spend a little more time shooting using the gimbals instead.
Regarding the color and tone and you know the picture profiles of the camera I shot a whole day in s-log 3, which gives you a little bit more dynamic range. That's the purpose of shooting s-log. However, I found in low-light scenarios when shooting an s-log it introduces a little more noise than I'd like to have so we're gonna pick and choose when to use a standard profile and when to use s-log on commercial shoots or in bright daylight. We'll definitely go the s log route because that will give us a higher dynamic range, and for low-light scenarios, we'll switch to something else. I think s-log 2 is a little better in low-light so it really depends on the situation and what you're going for, but if you want a quicker post-production process and you don't really care about getting things exactly, the best they can be then just turning off the picture profile and going with a standard profile is the way to go for memory cards the A7SIII can shoot with the new CFxpress type-A cards.
I believe Sony is the first manufacturer to make them and it can also shoot with sd cards so it has two cf express type a and two sd slots on the camera. So I think that's really cool that they added four slots total. It allows you to choose which ones you want to go with. The cf express type is super expensive. We actually ordered to receive them and found out that V90 sd cards can do almost every single mode except for the s and q 4k 120 all intra mode. That's the highest bit rate you can record on the camera apparently. It captures at 1200 megabits per second which would be higher than the V90s, can handle, and then saves it at 600 megabits per second. I talked to Gerald on Twitter about this and he confirmed that there is something else going on. If you look at the fine print, it actually does say 1200 for the all intro 120 mode. That means sd cards cannot be used for that specific mode. But because it's all intro, the file sizes are going to be gigantic. So for me personally, I will not be using that probably ever. If I want that really really high quality I'm just going to use an external recorder and shoot raw that makes far more sense than filling up all this hard drive space and not taking advantage of the full camera. So about a month ago before we received the camera, I sent back the cf express type a cards and then decided to buy V90 sd cards instead.
Coming from the GH5 where when you shoot slow-mo, it interprets the footage and saves it in camera as slow motion. So if you shoot 120 it saves it at 24 which means it stretches out all the frames and you get slow motion on the Sony A7SIII. To do that you need to go into the s and q mode which is slow and quick. I didn't know that initially and when I first started to shoot in the 120p mode. When I got home that footage was 120p, it was still 120 frames a second even though my timeline in Premiere was at 23.976. It was basically just dropping all those frames and playing back at real time to get around that you have to go into. Premiere interprets all the footage to 24 and then you can drag it back down and then it'll be slow motion,
And now let's talk about autofocus. On the A7SIII, this was one of the reasons why we didn't switch the sony ahead of time because Sony A7SIII's autofocus was okay but not perfect. You'd find it would hunt a little bit for finding the focus mark or would randomly just fall off and focus on the background. For that reason it wasn't really going to work for me and for that reason I'm out but on the a7s3 they've drastically improved how the autofocus system works. So far I would say that it is perfect. I haven't had any issues with it and this is the first camera that I can feel confident using autofocus with. I've always done manual focusing. I come from doing feature films or short films using cinema cameras. You need a dedicated team so for me using manual focus has always been very comfortable. It's like second nature. However, I gotta say it's pretty pleasant to use autofocus on the A7S3 because it just works. I can't believe how accurate it is. It's so fast and even at night like the footage right now is at 12,800 iso that's brighter than what I can see in actual real life with my eyes.
It's pretty good in terms of the ergonomics of the camera. It just feels good to use it seems like it's weather-sealed very well. The button layout seems familiar to the A7III. I think it's a very similar casing but the menu system in the layout has been improved on the A7SIII.
I know from talking to other Sony users and from using the A7III that the menu on other Sony cameras or older Sony cameras has always been pretty complex and kind of confusing. So I'm glad that they improved it and I still think there's some tweaking that needs to happen. But overall it's nothing to really complain about. Now I think you can find everything that you're looking for fairly quickly, especially with all the customized settings that you can implement into the camera for us. Overall the A7SIII is I would say the perfect camera the only thing that I think would make this the more perfect camera would be if it could shoot raw internally and the other thing would probably be a higher megapixel count because 12 megapixels is on the lower side for social media.
That's fine, I think I'd still default to shooting time lapses on the GH5 which isn't really ideal for photos but it does have an 18-megapixel camera. Again for time-lapses, that's a little better for what I need it for so overall after shooting with this camera for about a week and going through all the footage, it really has all the features that I'd want in a camera. t's just fun to use and I love that autofocus just works. Really happy with this camera however there's one important factor that I want to talk about it is a bit pricey so if you already have a camera system such as you know GH5e a7 iii those are still excellent cameras and you don't need to upgrade we switched because it just made sense for us at this time. If you're on a limited budget or you already have a camera you really don't need to upgrade and switch to a different system just because it's new. Quite honestly I could keep shooting with the GH5, I could still get the job done.
It would just be a little different maybe a little trickier or harder in certain situations. So that's the review of this camera I hope you found it helpful let me know if you have any questions about it. I'll try to answer those and thanks for watching. Since you've made it this far in the video you've probably liked the video. So give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below subscribe and hit the bell to be notified when we release new videos.
We have over 120 other filmmaking tutorials on the channel so again, subscribe hit the bell to be notified when we upload and we'll see you next time.
SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE FOR MORE! (120+ FILMMAKING TUTORIALS):
https://youtube.com/alliandwill
OUR VIDEOS ARE EDITED IN ADOBE PREMIERE PRO. GET IT HERE:
https://adobe.prf.hn/click/camref:1101lr4SX