I myself personally woke up at 7 a.m. on the west coast the day it was announced and pre-ordered
my not right away I've been shooting with it almost exclusively for the last two months
now it's one of my favorite cameras that I've ever used and you might be considering purchasing
one yourself especially if you're watching this video now before you go ahead and hit
add to cart there's a few warnings that I've discovered over the last 2 months of shooting
with it and I think you should probably be aware of what's going to do it the first thing
that I wish I knew before purchasing the Sony A7 S3 was at the files were going to be very
sluggish to edit with I'm personally running a 2017 15 inch MacBook Pro that's pretty spectacular
and I have a lot of trouble editing these files in Premiere Pro something I did not
know is that you can actually create proxies in the camera while doing your normal recording
and then you can link these properties up to completely streamline your workflow you
edit out the proxies and then run to your final project using the full video files now
editing with Roxy's is nothing new but the ability to record them in the camera is actually
very very handy and it's something that I wish I knew and could have stayed sometime
on in the past Xavier Mercedes has a great video on how to set this up for Premiere Pro
I'll link to it somewhere up there dancing UCF Express Taipei cards and the accompanying
CF expresate reader these two things 3 if you get two of the cards are very very expensive
and wow the transfer speed is you don't really need these Hearts the only time you're really
going to need to use these cards is if you are recording in the super high bitrate 4K
120 in smq mode I think I've used that mode exactly one time just to test it out this
is pretty much overkill for most things and I personally like the ability to record audio
which you cannot do that thank you mode so it's kind of no point for my purse so nice
again I preorder this at 7 a.m. to a little bit groggy and I was worried that they were
going to sell out so I just purchased two of them a place to see if Express a reader
the reader also does double as an SD card reader which is pretty handy but it is pretty
big and heavy especially when compared to a normal SD card reader so I'd personally
opt for saving a couple hundred bucks and opting for some fast SD cards I personally
prefer Kingston pro-grade or Lexar memory is probably the most painful for me currently
on Mac finder you cannot preview the thumbnails for photos or video clips with in the fire
this is extremely extremely annoying for all of my file management sorting clips from different
shoots sorting different scenes from the same shoot sorting photos from one another it can
be very very daunting when you can't actually see the files that you are looking at even
when previewing Clips you have to open them in VLC QuickTime cannot even run them now
a point to note I am currently using Mac OS Catalina I think that this might be solved
by Big Sur but currently I am unable to update because my system administrator says I can
update for security reasons so hopefully that one is that we solve fairly quickly next is
a few quirks that occur at 4K 120 now this is build and advertise as a 4K 120 camera
however there's a few things that don't actually work in 4k 120 rim of the super helpful proxy
that was talking about earlier well you can't actually generate proxies in the camera when
shooting in 4k 120 or 1080 120 for that matter so if you're shooting a mixture of 24 + 120
frames per second you have a mixture hodgepodge of some clips already having proxies the other
ones you have to generate within Premiere it's a little bit of ask another thing that
does not work in 4k 120 is active steadyshot active steadyshot has been a huge Improvement
for the A7 S3 and I love it it has turned a lot of my handheld shots into the symbol
looking shots when not filmed in 120 because the active steadyshot image stabilization
does not work in 4k 120 the normal steady shot does work but it doesn't give you that
same level of stability that the active stabilization does now of course when you're filming in
120 you already have the added stabilization that comes from slowing down your footage
so it might not be a deal-breaker for everybody but I've currently found myself doing more
of the film in 4k 60 because some of those features like proxies and active steadyshot
are not available in 4k 120 last one is actually something that I did know about but I want
to make sure that you know about it that is the use of third-party batteries sosoni has
their special Sony batteries and there are companies that make knock off third-party
batteries that are way cheaper the issue is that Sony has firmware installed in these
cameras where if you use a non Sony battery in your camera and error message will pop
up and I will say that it cannot guarantee the safety of this battery well that sounds
pretty freaking scary the thing is is you can actually use the battery nothing bad is
going to happen but you have this to I knew that will pop up in the middle of your workflow
and ruin your workflow and ruin your shot not to mention if you click cancel your camera
will just straight up shut up just it's just off now like that's not helpful at all obviously
so me personally I have one third-party battery it does work but I keep it for absolute dire
emergencies I always keep a charge I keep it in my bag as a last-ditch effort in case
all of my other batteries are currently dead so for me this is one area where I would personally
spend the extra to get the certified real sewing batteries to save yourself a headache
and you'll probably just want to throw these away so you're going to waste 15 so are any
of these things deal breakers for me personally know I think I'll probably eventually upgrade
my computer that will have an easier time handling the files I have plenty of you so
many batteries already and I can deal with all those other quirks I just want to make
sure that you're aware of the quirks before buying them so that you're not disappointed
with your $3,500 purchase at some point in the future because it's going to end up being
a purchase when you have to buy the expense batteries and hopefully you save some money
by not buying to see if Express Taipei cards now because I do a lot of other camera rated
stuff so you like this one you might like some of those as well since you haven't already
now editing with proxies is nothing new but you're so I personally just save a couple
of hundred a hundred bucks couple hundred bucks, so I opted for saving a couple hundred
bucks and just go for some fast SD cards