this is the a74 if you're on the fence about buying this camera i want to give
you my initial impressions after using this for a few days and hopefully help you
decide whether or not this is a worthwhile upgrade if you're shooting on the a7 iii
or if you're looking to get your first sony camera is this the one you should get
hey my name's jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go
so i want to give you my initial impressions after using this camera for a few days and running it
through a whole lot of different situations i will have a full review coming as well as a setup and
tutorial and a comparison between this and the a7 3 and the a7s iii so that you can decide what the
best camera might be for you so if you want to see those videos make sure you subscribe
so that you can be notified and hit the bell so you can be notified when i post those
videos but for now this is my initial first impressions of this incredible hybrid camera
because this has a new 33 megapixel sensor from sony i really wanted to test out the photo
quality and see how good they are how editable they are how much memory they take and just
what the dynamic range is and just in general how good is the quality of the photos coming
out of this camera i worked at the a7 3 for years and they were great but they definitely had some
limitations i used the a7s iii i've used the a9 the a1 i've used a lot of different sony cameras
and i really want to see if this is truly kind of a do-it-all camera a hybrid where you can shoot
photos and video equally and run around i gotta say so far i've been blown away by the quality
now obviously it's 33 megapixels so your data for each photo at least in raw which is what i
shoot is about 35 megabytes which is not bad but it definitely ends up in this time lapse here i
ended up shooting about 1400 photos a little over 1400 photos so that was a lot of data
but uh as you can see they're exceptional and beautiful images and it really does well
in the interval mode in shooting now also because it's 33 megapixels it gives you a fair amount of
room to crop in and post if you want to so here i was not standing i mean this was shot with a 24
to 105 i wasn't standing nearly as close to this as it looks but you're able to crop in
and get a little bit closer if i had a much more telephoto lens probably could have gotten a shot
of just the eye of this mountain goat but uh yeah the 33 megapixel photos are really very
nice and they edit really well in lightroom if you're shooting in raw the jpegs look nice too
but they just don't give you as much room or as much space in post to be able to edit
and that's where we come to the video quality now shooting 30 frames a second
this having 10 bit 422 10 bit and 422 is so fantastic the xabcs and the x8 abc i codecs are
great i use xabcs because it compresses a little bit my computer doesn't have any problems handling
decompressing that footage and it doesn't take up so much space on the card but being able
to shoot 4k in 10 bit is just fantastic and it looks really good i would say the video on this
looks a little better than my 7s3 because it's down sampling that much larger like around 6k
7k sensor down to 4k so the 4k on this looks just absolutely fantastic and the cool thing is that
they've now given us 4k at up to 60 frames a second the downside of that is that you
it does crop in it does go in 1.4 1.5 times to aps-c mode to be able to read the data off the
sensor fast enough to be able to do 4k 60 but you can still do it in 10 bit and it's still 422
and it does look good and i don't mind shooting 4k 60 in uh you know aps-c mode because i don't shoot
it that often it's really just when i want to do some b-roll or maybe try and get a little bit
longer shot that's extra smooth when i'm shooting things handheld and so if you know that you're
going to crop in 1.5 times when you're shooting it you just compensate and reframe so that it's
what you need or what you want but yeah the 4k 60 and the 4k 30 out of this are fantastic
now snq mode works too you get hd 120 the hd 120 out of this is much better than the hd 120
was out of the a7 3 as far as i can tell but yeah the quality is is really good the video
quality has taken a substantial jump over the a7 3 and it just it's really nice i think this might
become my new kind of general take everywhere with me camera because it really performs well
when it comes to low light i've been pretty spoiled the a7s iii is a phenomenal low-light
camera i mean i've gone out and shot myself in nothing but moonlight and the a7s3 can do it which
is kind of mind-blowing this can do it sort of but the difference is that this starts to fall apart
earlier now up until you get up into like the 20 000 a little bit higher than 20 000 iso range this
actually looks really good and does as well or maybe in some cases even better than the a7s iii
but once you get above twenty thousand forty thousand range it definitely starts to get a
lot worse than the a7s iii so this does really well in low light but if you're going for like
extremely low light situations aka filming yourself under the stars in the moonlight
then the a7s3 is still the way to go but uh but frankly i was really surprised i mean if you're
not filming yourself in the middle of the night this camera does really well in low light and even
in photos here you can see i was shooting is this a 32 3200 iso and it's really clean i mean there
is some noise but it's really super clean still so the low light on this camera is really great
the auto focus on the last few sony models has been just incredible it grabs your eye grabs
your face it does really really well and this is no exception it does an incredible job of tracking
your eye tracking your face in a lot of different scenarios and situations i noticed it does grab
your eye faster than even the a7s iii does it just it does a fantastic job and a couple of
things about the autofocus is one not only is it super sticky like i would have no problem
shooting an interview with this and just let it be on autofocus and follow somebody through
the interview on the focus system sony added something called focus breathing compensation the
camera will automatically compensate for the focus breathing which is incredible because the g master
primes have a lot of focus breathing being able to compensate for that and shoot at 1.4 on the on
the 24 millimeter and not have any focus breathing in the video is absolutely phenomenal and i really
hope sony brings that to the rest of their like a7s 3 or the a1 because that's just it's awesome
while this has the same body as the a7s iii which i really like because it feels comfortable on the
hand it's easy to hold and i love the individual doors that flap open you know for your mic
port and your recharging this is power delivery on usb c2 so it'll recharge the battery fast and
a full-size hdmi port which is awesome um the all these little controls i love the fact that
they copy the a7s iii body and then you've got the flip out screen which is so nice if you're a solo
creator and you're filming yourself or you're even filming other people but you've got to
kind of make sure you get things set before other people come in having a flip out screen is great
this one feels a little more solid than the a7s3 did so i don't know if they made some changes
there or not but one of my favorite things is not only do you have a lot of customizable buttons
just like the a7s iii you can now customize the auto exposure you know compensation
dial to be pretty much whatever you want i haven't really messed with it yet because
i don't know what i'm going to end up using it for that'll be in the setup and settings video
but uh the fact that you can customize that now is awesome and then one of my favorite things is
you have this little jog wheel here that switches between photo video and s and q modes and because
you have three different memory recall settings or memory settings you actually have like nine
because if you switch to photo mode you can go to memory one you can set that to be whatever
mine's not actually set up it's jpegs memory 2 is my raw photo shooting mode memory 3 is my interval
shooting mode and then if i switch to video now this becomes memory 3 is 4k 60 in s log 3. memory
2 is 4k 30 ns log 3 the main thing i shoot in and then memory one is 4k in standard color profile
which i do shoot in sometimes like in situations like this and then if you switch to s and q mode
again you have all three memory settings that are individual that's amazing because basically
i can't imagine when you actually have to go into the menu now and adjust anything you have
basically everything you need right there being able to switch and the switching between those
modes is insanely fast like it's almost instant another thing that is really awesome about this
is the fact that the shutter curtain can be set to close for when you switch lenses that is
awesome i don't know if there's a way to get that in the a1 and the a7s3 but i hope so because being
able to protect your sensor when you're changing out lenses is incredible the battery life on this
seems to be as good may i think a little a little better even than my a7s iii even in the cold it's
done a little bit better i just feel like you know not a lot 10 15 maybe 15 better but it definitely
is a little better one thing you will want to do if you just get yours is go down to page 40
uh so you go to page 40 and then you go over and you go to 48 oh 49
and if you go down to auto power off temperature you want to set that to high
because otherwise the camera will power off thinking it's overheating a lot earlier than it
actually needs to i haven't had any issues with overheating this thing has been running granted
i'm operating in the middle of winter in alaska so it's hard to get anything to overheat outdoors but
i have used this to film some stuff in here and to live stream with for an hour a little over an hour
at a time and it hasn't had any issues so and then one last thing that i like and sort of don't like
is one you can use this is a is this a uh s2 now this isn't even a uh s2 but it's just a
sandisk extreme pro 128 gigabyte and i can film 4k 30 10 bit and 4k 60 10 bit on that card no problem
and then having the top slot be cf express type a or uh sd and both of them are uh up to us uh s2
compatible means that you can do a lot of data and then also transfer the data off those cards really
fast which is nice i wish they'd done kind of the same thing with the a1 and the a7 s3 where both of
them were cf express type a or sd but the fact that the sd card slot 2 is a uh s2 really makes
a huge difference and you know you can shoot 4k 30 10 bit and 4k 60 10 bit and not have to worry
too much about buying really expensive cf express type a cards i think this is going
to become my new daily shooter the the camera that i take out with me pretty much everywhere
unless i'm going to extremely low light situations then the a7s iii is still better for that but
this thing is uh incredible a worthy upgrade to the a7 3 for sure and i think
probably going to be one of the best kind of hybrid photo and video cameras on the market
for 2 500 bucks if you're interested in purchasing one there are links in the description if you have
questions ask me in the comments below i'll do my best to answer them if you want to see what
lenses work really well with sony cameras i put together a small playlist right here i'll see
one of those videos as always you can ask me questions in the comments or you can join my
live stream which happens wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time or 8 pm eastern time until uh
i see you in the next videos i put out about this camera i'll see you again soon cheers