- Hey, my name is Matt Johnson.
It's 2021, and one of the most common questions
that I've received lately is should I buy a Sony a7S II?
The a7S II has been discontinued by Sony
and they aren't making any new models.
But the used market is practically flooded
with used a7S IIs.
So you can pick one up for a pretty reasonable price
at around 1200 bucks.
So you may be thinking to yourself,
should I buy A Sony a7S II?
Today I want to answer that question.
And in a surprising twist I wanted to actually
give you three reasons why I do not think
that buying the a7S II is a good decision.
And why I think you should look at the a7S III
and a7C instead.
To (indistinct) it out though
I do have one reason why I think the a7S II
is a good buy
even in 2021.
So grab your beard
and let's talk about this camera.
Starting off, let's look at the auto-focus
the a7S II has two has auto-focus
but it's a contrast based autofocus system
that's mediocre at best.
I don't consider it reliable enough for professional work.
So for the five years
that the a7S II is my primary camera.
I basically only used manual focus
and pretend to the autofocus didn't exist.
Thankfully, Sony recognized that autofocus
was a shortcoming.
And just a few years later, they released the a7S III.
A camera that contains many of the same video features
as the a7S II,
but it also includes a much improved
phase detect autofocus system
that is light years better than the a7S II.
I actually trust the a7S III's autofocus
I think it works quite well.
And it makes The a7S III a very compelling choice
over the a7S II.
Likewise, the newer Sony a7C is even cheaper
than the a7S III
and also includes a similar autofocus system.
And I think that's a great choice over the a7S II as well.
Moving on now, let's go into the second reason
that I don't recommend the a7S II.
And whereas you may have not thought the autofocus
is that big of a deal
you can get by with manual focus.
That's what Hollywood does.
Well, this second reason here is a huge deal,
and I guarantee it will affect you
if you purchase the a7S II.
The second reason that I don't recommend the a7S II
is the battery life.
The a7S II uses very small,
low capacity in NP-FW50 batteries.
And if you're shooting in 4K, which I would argue
is one of the primary reasons you would want
to be considering purchasing this camera.
You can expect roughly
one hour of battery life,
maybe a smidge more at best, at best.
This means you don't need to buy just one or two batteries.
You're going to need to buy a lot of batteries.
If you're filming a longer event,
like a wedding, which I film a lot of.
I would commonly go through between four to six batteries
on a wedding day.
Factor in that I also recommend only using name brands
Sony batteries, to prevent in compatibilities.
And you're looking at spending
hundreds of dollars on batteries for this camera as well
I currently own 12 batteries for my two a7S IIs,
that's $600 in batteries at today's current prices.
And I actually paid more
whenever I bought many of these batteries several years ago
when they were more expensive.
Let's contrast this battery life now
with Sony's newer cameras.
The a7 III, and a7C, as well as most of Sony's
other newer cameras as well use the new NPFZ100 batteries
which are significantly larger
and offer two and a half to three times
the battery life of the NP-FW50s the a7S II uses.
You can expect two to three hours or more
of battery life from these batteries.
And whenever I filmed a wedding with the a7S III.
I suddenly found myself only having you use two batteries,
instead of six.
I was under less stress.
I wasn't worried about battery life or charging.
And I also saved a lot of money
because I didn't need to buy as many batteries.
So in short, the battery life of the a7S II is short
and considering how much the battery life
of Sony's newer cameras has improved.
I don't think that the a7S II is worth it.
Now, closely tied to battery life and batteries in general
is the third reason that I don't recommend the a7S II.
And that third reason is future upgradability.
If you invest in the a7S II
and it's smaller NP-FW50 batteries.
In the event that you ever decide to upgrade in the future
to a more advanced Sony camera, like the a7 III, a7C
a7S III, or any other future camera
that may come out like the a7 IV.
All these batteries that you bought for the a7S II
of which I'm sure there will be many.
They're not gonna work with any future Sony camera.
There's basically zero chance that Sony is going back
to these batteries.
And so while yes,
there are currently better deals to be found
for the a7S II camera body.
Once you factor in the you're going to need
to spend hundreds of dollars on batteries.
The price gap between the a7S II, and the a7 III, and a7C.
Starts getting smaller and smaller.
Especially if you start looking at used models
of these cameras.
Because all of Sony's newer cameras
share the same FZ100 battery type.
I'm confident that the odds they're going to most likely
continue supporting that same battery type into the future.
I think that the a7 III and a7C
offer you a much better upgrade path
where you can bring along at least some of the accessories
with you whenever you upgrade to a new camera in the future.
Now, if I haven't convinced you yet,
I actually do have one last bonus reason
that I don't recommend the a7S II.
And that is, this camera only has one SD card slot.
All of Sony's newer full frame cameras from the a7 III on
have dual SD card slots.
Meaning that if you ever experienced a memory card failure
you will have a backup.
And if you are a working professional
and you're doing things like filming weddings like me,
that are one take events where you don't get any do overs.
Having that extra security of a second SD card recording
makes me feel a lot better.
And I think it's completely worth it.
Now, all that said.
I did promise you one reason why I think the a7S II
is still a good choice.
Even so many years after it came out.
And that one reason is that this camera it's still dang good
in low light.
For the price, I don't see you finding a cheaper camera
that will compare in pure low light performance
at extremely high ISOs.
And when I say extreme I really do you mean extreme
because having used both the a7 III, and the a7S II.
I'm completely confident using the a7S III up to ISO 16,000.
But once you start to push past that
the image starts to fall apart quickly.
In comparison the a7S II performs well up to ISO 32,000
and I've even filmed with it in moonlight up to ISO 64,000.
And this is a really weird niche use,
but if you find yourself commonly filming in moonlight
with no external lighting,
or other extremely dark scenarios over ISO 16,000,
where you need stellar low light performance,
then and only then
do I recommend the a7S II.
Otherwise, considering that the a7 III and a7C
both have the same exact video features as the a7S II.
The exact same 4K resolution, exact same Codec,
exact same bit rate, exact same frame rate options.
But they build on that camera with stellar auto-focus,
and incredibly long battery life,
and an upgrade path to use those batteries into the future.
That's why I don't recommend you purchase the Sony a7S II.
In conclusion let me wrap this up and throw one more wrench
into your buying decision making process.
By saying that if you have room in your budget.
And you want a camera that will solidly beat
all of these cameras that I've talked about today.
Stop agonizing over which one to buy
and just buy a Sony a7S III.
It's better than all these cameras in basically
every single way.
It makes improvements in every area
and it's easily my favorite and best camera
that I've honestly ever used.
That said though, if you can't afford the a7S III,
the a7 III or the a7C would be my second choice.
With that thank you so much for watching this video.
I really hope it was helpful to you
if you're considering picking up an a7S II,
an a7S III, a7C, an any camera at all,
I hope it's helpful.
It would be a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video and subscribing
if you wanna see more videos like it in the future.
Also, if you happen to be a wedding filmmaker like me
I used a lot of wedding filmmaking examples on this video.
If you're a wedding filmmaker
you probably want to book more couples
and film more weddings.
To help you out with that I've created a free guide.
That's gonna walk you through some practical steps
that you can take right now in your business
to book more couples and film more weddings.
It's a completely free gift to you.
You can download it at the link
down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.