Hey what's up it's Jerad with Ditch Auto and I wanted to talk about my first
three months with this camera this is the sony a7r 3 and I wanted to talk
about my experiences with this camera having came from the a9 I was used to
some of the features of the a9 which I'm glad that they brought to this camera
such as the multi-select this kind of like joystick or d-pad or whatever you
want to call it back here that allows you to move the focal point around I
absolutely love that as you can see I have the battery grip on here which
gives me two batteries which is just an extremely long amount of time that you
can use this camera even if you're shooting 4k video or whatnot you're
gonna get amazing battery life out of it if you put the battery grip on it plus
for me I just I have a bigger hand and the battery grip just gives me a little
bit more to hold on to and I feel that I need that especially when I'm doing long
events that are all day for multiple days not having enough grip on the
camera actually gives me a little bit of fatigue in the lower part of my hand so
I absolutely like having a battery grip on there even though it does add to the
weight but having the extra battery in there means pretty much all day battery
life for me especially if I'm shooting predominantly photos I've been able to
get two days worth of battery life out of this camera shooting you know a ton
of photos every day you know around a thousand 1200 photos a day I'm able to
get out of this in two days without changing the batteries or even charging
them so I'm gonna talk about a couple of things that I really like about this
camera I love the fact that it has USB C and the side of the camera here not this
door but this door USB see right in the side of the camera all of my phones and
tablets and stuff like that pretty much are USB C and so I can actually just
plug in the charger there and it will charge the batteries of the camera which
is nothing new but for this camera you can actually charge the batteries that
are in the battery grip as well that is kind of new on the previous versions of
the a7 cameras that I've had you you've only been able to charge the battery
that's actually inside the camera what means no battery grip but now able to
charge all of this it does take a while because you're charging two batteries
over a small cable so it does take a while to charge but I found like I go
and shoot a hold a plug in the cord into the camera when I wake up in the morning
it's fully charged and ready to go for another day I don't even have to take
the batteries out I don't even have to bring an extra charger and or maybe two
chargers if I want to try and charge both batteries at the same time it just
works really well so I like the fact that the camera has gotten a little bit
bigger that's something that I really liked about the a9 as well the a9 body
just had a little bit better feel to me so I like that there's more a little bit
more to hold on to I mean there's something to be said for where the the
a7 line started out with the extreme extremely thin body I think you know it
was more of a look we can make this tiny powerful camera than it was making
something comfortable I like the fact that it has a good grip on it the dual
SD card slots I definitely like I don't utilize them too much because typically
I have plenty of memory on one card but when I'm gonna be shooting a lot of 4k
video I run duel cards in there and then if it's a like a wedding I'm shooting I
will run duel cards and actually have the photos saved to both cards so that I
just have some redundancy I like that it definitely makes me feel a little bit
more secure with that having the the redundancy there so I also like the
location of the new record button used to be over here on the previous versions
of the camera I'll tell you though it took me a while and still messes with me
having that button there because I've been so used to it being over here on
the side I go to hit record the button is not there obviously this is a much
better button placement but after so many years of the button being over here
on the side I've just I've gotten used to it so it's a muscle memory that needs
to be kind of relearned there now I have customized this camera a little bit
there's another video that I'll be uploading later on this week that are
the top 5 settings that I changed on this camera when I got it
these cameras are getting better in bed and I typically have things that I
change and adjust on my cameras but with this camera and even the a9 there are
things that I change that are a little bit different but even going from the a9
and there were some things I changed on the a9 that maybe I didn't necessarily
need to change they were just creature of habit changes I have some new things
that I change on this camera and so make sure to check out that video click on
the subscribe button here on ditch auto to be notified when that video comes out
one of the other additions that I really like about this camera is the dedicated
AF on button the AF on button allows me to not have to remap some other button
for back button focus I don't like when I press down the shutter button a little
bit for the camera to go and do automatically searching this is
something I'm going to talk about in my settings that I change video the AF on
button right here makes it really nice because I don't have to worry about I
can have my finger ready to go on the shutter button kind of just resting on
it and if I tap it just barely on accident it's not going to mess with my
focus the camera's not gonna do any focus searching unless I press down the
AF on button I like that much better because a lot of times I am kind of
sitting there waiting for the shot or standing there just waiting for a good
opportunity I have focus pulled already and even though some of these lenses do
have a an AF lock or an AF off or whatever you want to call it button on
the side that would basically disable autofocus even if you had the shutter
button pressed down a little bit not all of my lenses have that most of my G
master lenses do but pretty much all of my other lenses don't have that option
so I need to have that enabled still because half of my lenses are not G
master lenses and so back button focus still definitely really comes in handy
and sometimes like if I'm holding if I'm trying to shoot portrait
this button is annoyingly placed for that there's no button up here or even
on the top and so I can't like go it just doesn't make sense for me to really
kind of contort myself so using AF on even with some of these lenses that do
have the auto focus lock button still is beneficial and I'm this videos turning
in the things that I changed trust me
there's more content in the top five things that I change on the a7 r3 as far
as as photos go this takes just beautiful photos I just love the quality
of image that comes out of this camera one of the things that has been a little
interesting to me is the autofocus you know I had the a9 before so I had this
amazing autofocus with that camera and a nine is just an fantastic camera but I
was having a hard time justifying keeping that camera because of how
expensive it is and I knew that I wasn't gonna be using we hadn't really need
that big of a camera that expensive of a camera going into the next probably four
or five months so I decided to sell it and keep this camera this camera is bit
cheaper it's not much cheaper but it is a bit cheaper and it does a lot of the
things that the a9 does what I didn't realize and didn't think was gonna be
such a big issue is how much better the a9 is at autofocus than this camera now
the a7 r3 does a fantastic job at autofocus but it definitely does some
things that are a little bit weird to me it has some things that you're gonna
have to turn off just because focus it really depends on what you're shooting
at the time but sometimes focus can get messed up like the face detection is
actually really good but if there's anything weird that happens with faces
it may automatically yesterday actually and one face kinda I don't face that I
wanted captured it was of kids and hair was over the face which I would have
rather had that face captured but it actually took focus and put it on a face
in the background which was not what was in the foreground and so that face
detection feature actually messed things up for me and I've had in situations
where that face detection I'm taking group photos that face detection decides
to focus on more on somebody the back row than the front row and the
front row people ended up being a little bit out of focus I know that that could
have to do with my camera settings as well I should be able to focus on
anybody but I tend to as a practice focus on the face and the center front
row and then just make sure that my depth of field is good enough that the
people in the back row are still tack sharp but I just that was just something
that I noticed so I tend to kind of turn that off I mean the face detection is
great if you maybe are trying to take pictures of a kid running around and you
just want to make sure you're getting their face in focus but I've gotten so
good at using selective point focus so quickly that I don't necessarily need
that face detection and that face detection has kind of messed me up a
couple of times so it's something that I turned off I think I'm actually gonna do
a whole video on customizing the autofocus and like which autofocus
settings to use for which situations because autofocus isn't just autofocus
anymore where the camera is auto focusing on whatever autofocus is so
much more than it used to be and there's so many things that you can do with a
camera like this with autofocus and they all work in different ways so another
thing that that I really do like about this camera is just the the weight
distribution with the the grip now without the grip of course it becomes
very heavy lens side with the the weight distribution with the heavier batteries
the blow a bit bigger batteries a little bit beefier camera it's much more
balanced in the hand now and I really like that when you're shooting along
like a long day all day long it's good to have a camera that's balanced that
isn't kind of leaning in one direction or another putting a lot of weight on
one hand or something like that this is a good package right here and this is
the 85 millimeter G master lens I often shoot with this lens but the 24 70 G
master a lot of the other G master lenses are well balanced with this
camera with the exception of like a 70 to 200 or a big telephoto lens obviously
those lenses are going to be a bit heavier but all of the
hundred and below or hundred and wider lenses are just really well balanced
with this camera now another thing this camera does well is shoots video now
video is very important to me because I shoot a lot of video with my Sony
cameras this shoots beautiful 4k video I shoot pretty much everything in 4k these
days not very often going down into 1080 because most of the videos that we shoot
were putting out in 4k and even if we weren't I would like that extra image
detail so that I can down sample to a 1080 or maybe even do a little bit of
cropping with that larger image having the touch display on the back makes it
so much easier to do kind of rack focus shots using auto focus by like tapping
on one area to to get focus and then tapping on another area and having the
camera rack focus the focus is so smooth that it's almost like you're doing it by
hand except it's becoming much easier because
using auto focus it's going to auto focus on those two things and so there's
no chance of you really missing that rack focus which is just fantastic
feature so with all that said my experiences with this camera have been
really great I definitely don't necessarily need the
large image size that it produces I would probably want to trade that out
for maybe better low-light performance or maybe some additional performance
with the autofocus but I really do like this camera and I'm glad that I spent
some time with it it's a valid upgrade from the a7 r2 which came out a couple
of years ago and I shot with that camera for basically since it first came out
until I got this one so the a7 r2 is a great camera and a lot of people have
wondered if the a7 r3 is a valid upgrade and after three months I could say that
it definitely is not only just is it faster and better at standard camera
operation but adding in the dual SD card having the the multi-select
on the back for focus moving around the focus point having the touch screen
those are all things that are just game changers for me the bigger battery is
definitely a huge plus as well so I am really looking forward to getting my
hands on an a7 3 and spending some with that what I do miss about the a9 is
the autofocus that it had I feel like the autofocus on the a9 is just the best
autofocus on any camera out right now it's absolutely fantastic
and there are just a lot of things that I like about that camera however I am
glad that I got this camera and have spent time with it because this camera
does have a specific place in the whole product lineup for the for the Alpha
series cameras and that is the higher megapixel producing image I mean if you
need an image that's that large you know 40-plus megapixels
then this is the camera for you if you are wanting maybe a little bit more
performance out of your camera as far as autofocus and and low-light performance
you could probably wait around for the a7 3 it's gonna be a fantastic camera
and I should be receiving mine any day now
so I look forward to coming back and sharing the details on that camera with
all of you so I hope that you enjoyed this video I've spent a lot of time with
this camera and do absolutely love it I've shot some events with it I've shot
some holiday stuff with it with my family and it's just been a really good
camera I think that it is well worth the money
Sony definitely you know deserves the price that they're getting for this
camera and it does perform really well I just think that and it'll be interesting
when I get my hands on that a7 3 just to see the differences there how much that
camera really relates to the a9 because I do miss my a 9 at this point I just
don't miss the price point of the a9 so that's gonna do it for this video thanks
so much for checking it out if you liked it give it a thumbs up and click on that
subscribe button so you could be notified when I put out the top 5
settings that I changed on this camera when I first got it and also some of my
initial thoughts when I finally get my hands on that a 7-3 so until then keep
ditching auto and we hope to see you back here soon take care