hi this is the sony a7s mark iii and in all honesty a lot of you don't necessarily
need this camera the a7 iii or one of sony's other cameras is gonna work just
fine but with all that said this is a monster of a camera my favorite camera i've ever used
let me tell you why my name is chris i'm a content creator using these sony cameras so
if you're into that maybe try clicking the subscribe button down below so first things
first the flip screen we have a sony full frame camera with a fully articulating flip screen now
you know that vloggers want this i don't really vlog but it has so many more uses than just that
you no longer have just the weird little angled flip screen so that was good for certain low stuff
or certain high things but in general it had its limitations we now have a flip screen that is way
more adjustable for many different angles you can go down super low super high you can see it
clearly it's great for all that it's great for if i'm going out and about i'm shooting a video like
this in the field i don't want to have to bring a monitor with me i can now flip the screen around i
can film myself talking head segment is no problem i didn't think sony would do as well as they have
with this it hasn't got loose over time it still works exactly as it did when it came out the box
close to three months ago i don't really see the ergonomics of the a7s 3 talked about too too much
but some things here that really stand out for me after using this for a few months the grip is a
lot deeper and it feels really good in the hand in this small rig cage which i've done a whole video
about i'll pop up here for you it just feels like the absolute dream setup i don't have a lens on
right now but it still has a real solid weight to it some people don't like that i like things to be
heavy i like to shoot handheld and having a heavier rig handheld just means it's going
to be smoother less little micro shakes jitters this is a real almost perfect setup it almost
rivals the usr's grip which is my favorite grip i've ever used really really happy with the
overall design of the a7 s3 couple other little design things i really like the sony's done the
record button right on the top here is perfectly placed it's obvious what it does it has a round
red circle on there which means it's obviously for recording it's right next to the shutter
button you can't not feel it with your finger if you know where the shutter is it's the biggest
button it's right behind that it's easy to push it's nice and tactile it's got a
good little click to it great work with that sony another little thing they did which i love is the
doors on here it's no longer any flappy flaps that rattle when you shake it around they're literal
doors that open and close and the microphone port is up here just above where the flip screen is
which means it does not interfere with that now the hdmi port is a full hdmi which means there's
no longer the little tiny mini hdmi port um which we could plug cables into and they would just snap
off very frequently you now have a full hdmi port in there so it's a lot more of a secure connection
it's not going to get as loose and yes it does get in the way if you have an hdmi cable plugged
in there but if you have an hdmi cable plugged in it means you're probably outputting to a monitor
which means you don't really need to use the flip screen anyway the screen res on this is 1.4
million dots now previously i had the sony a7 3 which was 950 000 something like that and there's
a big difference and having a higher screen is a big deal because it means you can quickly glance
at things and see if they're in focus so having a high-res screen is a real big deal and it works
flawlessly and i love it the evf is i think nine million dots as well and i did see someone say
it's like looking through a window and i gotta say it's it's not it's like looking at a screen but a
real high-res screen and it's definitely the best evf that i've ever used even coming from the a7
3's evf which i loved this is even better it's a step up it just feels and looks really nice it's
a joy to use we're going to improve menu system on the a7 s3 and having come from the older style of
sony menus i was pretty proficient with those but let me tell you they're not great and it took me
a long time to get proficient using those menus to get to that same level of proficiency with
this was a lot less time i'm close to being there already now so that tells you all you really need
to know the menu system on this is substantially better it's a huge upgrade you'll be happy with it
i'm starting to not enjoy shooting with gimbals as much and i've been finding myself shoeing a
lot more handheld recently and with the active steady shot on this i pretty much leave it on
all the time it just gives you a little tiny crop but it just smooths out so much when you're
shooting handheld enough that it really looks like you're almost on a tripod if you've been
watching my channel the past few videos i've been putting a lot more b-roll out and that's
because it's just so much easier for me to shoot now i can shoot all this b-roll hand-held and
it's completely usable and so this has literally changed the way that i shooting my videos now i'm
shooting b-roll it's made it better easier and faster i urge you to go out and try it if you
have this camera just turn it on and go out and shoot handheld for a day and see what you think
i think you'll find that shooting handheld versus going on and off a gimbal all the time it's just
so much more freeing you don't have to worry about bringing all this extra gear and it is completely
usable give it a go now i said earlier in the year before this was even announced before the rumors
were all confirmed that i did not need 4k 120. now let me tell you at the time i thought it was right
but after having used it i was very very much wrong 4k 120 is like using 1080p 120 frames per
second for the very first time apart from now everything is just crispy clean sharp
and i love it up until recently any corporate work any weddings i shot it all in 1080 and i didn't
really think too much about it now having used 4k 120 on this i've completely changed the way that
i'm thinking and as of next year i'm going to be grabbing another one of these for a b camera or an
fx6 i haven't decided yet and everything is going to be in 4k having things crispy sharp looking
that good looking that clean having the ability to reframe because i can crop in a little bit
crop ability is that word crop ability i just made it up crop ability is flexibility remember
the first time you watched 4k you saw 4k video and you just were wowed by it imagine that but
now it's super slow motion and that is exactly how i feel about 4k 120. let's talk about the weather
ceiling on this camera now i really did drop this camera almost literally into the deep end
the first few times i used it very first thing i shot with this camera properly was actually a
wedding and it poured with rain here's a picture so you can see i mean it doesn't really do
it justice the camera got absolutely sucked not to mention the bride and groom had a uh
champagne fizz you know what they do in formula one and it got sprayed all over the camera so it
really did get tested to the max and there's not an issue with it i've had out in the rain multiple
more times i've had on the snow i dropped it in the snow it's fine trust your camera it's
perfectly weather sealed it works great let's talk about 10-bit color which we now have on the a7
s3 the first mirrorless body like this that sony has put 10-bit color in now if you don't know why
it's a big deal essentially it records a ton more colors than what we previously had with something
like the a7 3 which was 8-bit color 8-bit color is 16.7 million colors that's how many colors it
can record 10-bit color although it doesn't sound like a lot two bits more it actually records 1.07
billion colors which is almost too much to just comprehend so what i've done is i've converted
16.7 million and 1.07 billion to something that we can comprehend a little bit easier which is a
method of time days so i've converted 16.7 million colors to the equivalent of 200 days 1.07 billion
using the same conversion works out to be 32.1 years so you've got 200 days versus 32.1 years
it gives you an indication of how many more colors you can record with 10 bit now what does that mean
it means essentially you can change colors to pretty much anything you want you have complete
flexibility i am no colorist but with little to no knowledge you can go into premiere pro or final
cut and change shades of colors to something you want to use i typically change greens i don't like
how greens look straight out of any camera you can change it to something you like
easily it's completely usable 10-bit is a big deal but all that does come at a cost size
and ability to edit now this does record in different codecs the more compressed the codec
the harder it is the more taxing is for your computer to edit unless you have one of the
macbook m1s which we'll talk about in a bit i've been shooting in s i which is the least compressed
of all the files so the biggest and on my 2019 imac it handles it just fine for 4k video at least
if i want to go to 4k 60 it's a lot more taxing it can still handle it but it's a little bit choppy
now and then if i want to use 4k 120 you have to go xavc-s there is no si option so it's more
compressed and it's near impossible to edit on pretty much any machine you have to use proxies it
will take down even the most specked out macbook imac pro like people have a real hard time editing
with 4k 120 from the camera so you have to use proxies actually just put out a video about
proxies if you're interested i'll pop that one up there for you too in general if you want to use
any codec other than si and you have a little bit of an older machine be prepared to make proxies
for everything so you get that really really nice color but you get video files that are intensive
to edit almost borderline impossible to edit unless you use proxies and also on top of that the
size of these files they are big for an example i've got this written down here so a 10 bit 42 4k
24 frames a second file that is a minute and 43 seconds long is three gigabytes 4k 60 in si a
three second clip uh this three second clip right here of me waving is 268 megabytes that's 4k 60nsi
so the files are big which means you need a big memory card and not just a regular memory card
you need a fast memory card and there aren't a lot out there that work for everything but the general
consensus is that these which i have been using is probably not going to focus i'll put some b-roll
over the top this is a pro-grade v90 sd card and they're not cheap a 128 gigabyte sd card will cost
you 130 us a 256 gigabyte one will cost you 240 us but i've been using these and 4k 60 4k 120 handles
it all flawlessly they're also really quick to transfer to your computer because they have a
fantastic read and write speed uh we're talking about 300 megabits a second for read 250 for
right so these are fast cards but you're paying a premium for that now with the file sizes as well
these cards fill up quick so as an example here to give you an indication a 128 gigabyte card um
4k 24 frames a second 10 bit 422 si will fill a card in an hour and eight minutes 4k 60 si 10
bit 422 will fill a card in 27 minutes and 4k 120 xavcs will fill a card in 57 minutes so you're not
getting a lot of video out of 128 gigabyte card so be warned fantastic camera but you're gonna
chew through money when it comes to buying media now you're probably thinking well i'll just shoot
more compressed which you can do but if you shoot more compressed it means you're making proxies of
everything if you're making proxies of everything it means you now need space to hold that too so
if you work off an ssd like i do you now need a bigger ssd so you're buying storage one way
or the other is something you should be aware of as a stills camera this is actually really
enjoyable to use the auto focus the touch screen even the shutter the shutter has a let me turn
this on here the shutter has a beautiful sound to it it's very different to any sony camera before
i really like it and it just sounds nice when you're out using it it's a great stills camera as
well yes it's only 12 megapixels but unless you're blowing up on a massive billboard for the most
part let's be honest it's just going on instagram it's going on youtube it's going on the internet
12 megapixels is more than enough don't let anyone tell you otherwise let's talk about overheating
now there's a certain brand of camera out there which we all know had a bit of a debacle this year
with overheating issues i'm happy to say haven't had any such issues with this camera even showing
4k 120 for like an hour one day just random b-roll of different things i needed for a specific video
no issues it did get very very warm everywhere warm to the touch but not once did it give me
the overheating warning not once it is shut down now i do have it set to the higher level
but still no issues now we do have a flip screen and it's a touch screen and the touch works for
in the menus as well so the new menu system you can touch to go through and i've got to
be honest sometimes i forget you can do that i don't forget when i'm out shooting and i use
touch to focus i use that a ton in fact it's really useful especially for shooting things like
b-roll um let's say i'm shooting b-roll of this uh this light over here i would tap to focus on
the screen and i can literally just move my camera around wherever i want to get the movement i need
and i know it's tracking in is keeping in focus so touch to focus is incredible to use with this
camera and it does work with the menus if you want to use the touch screen but i forget and i end up
just using the the joystick for the most part but it's there and it works if you want to rolling
shutter big issue on the a7 3 which i'm shooting on right now with the a7 s3 it's not an issue
there's next to none next the auto focus on this is incredible now i never had a
problem with the auto focus on the a7 iii all sony cameras in fact have fantastic autofocus
but this is just a step above that we now have eye autofocus in video all the time which just
stays locked onto an eye somehow i don't know what kind of wizardry that is doing but it's incredible
it works great but one of my favorite features is the ability to adjust the autofocus speed one
thing i've always said and kind of a reason why i think people think canon's autofocus is a little
bit better it's just the way that it actually focuses it's a little bit slower it's more natural
it racks focus like someone's actually pulling focus and that's why i think people like canon
sony's autofocus is quicker it always has been but it just looks a little bit unnatural because
it's so quick it's almost jarring sometimes but what sony's done with this now is they've made
it completely adjustable so you can change the speed to however you like if you want to have
it super slow so it's a real slow pull of focus then you can if you want to have it blazingly
fast and quick you can do that too you can go anything between here's an example i'm showing
you on the screen right now of just how smooth it can go from one thing being in focus to the other
being in focus and the great thing about this is it works with touch to focus too so you can be
focused on one thing tap on it and it will slowly rack focus to the next thing based on your speed
so the auto focus speed being customizable is something i really love i almost want to say it's
my favorite feature on this so far another little tiny thing that they've done is the little straps
well where you put the straps on here typically with sony cameras you shake it and they rattle
not the case with this i talked about this before but they've been made ever so slightly bigger so
that now they move but they don't move when you move the camera around the buttons on this overall
feel a little bit more refined the af on button is obviously a lot bigger you now have your record
button on there which i've already talked about before and the buttons just feel a little bit more
spongy they all feel like they stick out a little bit more and i didn't think i liked that to begin
with but after using it for a while i can say i do it just feels like there's more button to push and
you feel like you're getting an actual response from it when you click it so that's all the things
i've got written down in terms of things i like things i've noticed out of using this for the past
two and a half three months but let's talk about some things that i'm maybe not so much a fan of
the biggest thing for me is not being able to shoot in aps-c mode when you're in 4k so i would
typically have a button assigned right up here and i would just tap that before i'd record and i can
just punch in 1.5 times and just get more out of a lens if i'm using a prime lens so i don't like
that i can't do that now in 4k and it's mostly because the sensor here is only a 12 megapixel
sensor so it's way better in low light which i didn't talk about camera is great in low light
i haven't had a lot of opportunity to use it in low light and all honesty um but it is a
solid camera if you're using in low light it's kind of odd because once you get into like the
six to eight thousand it does start to fall apart real quick which it doesn't on the a7 3 but then
when you get above i think it's 12 800 it gets instantly better basically if you want to shoot
a high iso you want to go above 12 800 whereas you want to stick below like 6 000 eight thousand dish
based off what i've tried anyway what were we talking about
no 4k crop yeah so you can't 4k crop you just learn to deal with it you can't have everything
i guess battery life is not nearly as good as the a7 iii i talked about this in a video about
when i first got this it was one of the first things i noticed in fact i would say it's
probably like 60 to 70 percent of what you get of the a7 iii now it is exactly the same battery but
the reason is you're powering well i'm guessing is because you're powering much more of a camera
you've got 10 bit color 422 4k 120 4k 60. so i'm sure those things use more battery power and that
is likely why i really hate the dial lock on here having to push this down to be able to turn it
i haven't tried using gloves yet in the winter but i know it's going to be a pain in the ass to do so
so yeah i don't like that i wish they'd have gone with the exposure compensation style where you
push it you can turn it and you push it again to lock it i don't like that the screen orientation
on the flip screen here is kind of annoying if you have it straight out like that like facing
yourself and then you slightly angle it it flips upside down and there's no way to get around that
so i hope that they can fix that in a firmer update even the ability just to turn off that
it does that um i'm sure there's a way you can just assign a button to be able to just
flip orientation of this quickly that would be an easy way to fix it but it is frustrating when you
use it and that is everything i've got written down that's all my notes the way i constructed
this review is i used the camera and every time i had an idea or a thought about something i wrote
down and that's what we talked about that's how i think a review should be constructed and hopefully
that's how it came across so that is my thoughts on the a7 s3 after using it for the past two and
a half to three months if there's anything else you're interested in learning about or something i
didn't cover maybe you have a question about just pop a comment down below and i'll try my best to
get to that otherwise i appreciate you watching and i'll see you guys in the next one take care
you