I've been using the a7c for over six months now i've learned what works and what doesn't
so i thought i'd make a video about it because i think it's quite interesting
especially if you're thinking of upgrading or switching across from the a7 iii
now i've owned the a7iii since it first came out early in 2018 and i'm actually filming on it now
and when the a7c came out last year in 2020 i was wondering what it would be like compared to
the a7 3. now if you're a video shooter there is a massive advantage with it over the a7 3 and i'll
talk about that a bit later in the video there's no denying that the a7c is a great little camera
and if you're used to using the a73 it feels quite similar not so much in the size of it
but how it shoots and how it feels i do have a few annoyances with it as well as a few pleasant
surprises now a lot of people were saying that this has been designed for videography only but
it is a great stills camera as well it takes 24 megapixel images this gives them a resolution
of six thousand by four thousand and i've been comfortable in taking it out and leaving the a7
iii at home the main upgrade compared with the a7 3 is the focusing system it follows the basic
principles of the a7 3 but then the live focus tracking is so sticky that it just doesn't want to
come unstuck from the thing that you selected and the focusing is surprisingly good when you do this
so you touch something on the screen on the back and it'll pretty much track it wherever it goes as
long as it stays in your frame and sometimes i've had a few things that have come out of the frame
then they come back in the frame that focusing system just locks back on it exactly where i
touched it it doesn't happen all the time but it happens every now and then and i absolutely love
this focusing system it works both in photography and videography and this really is a game changer
i can't wait for the a74 to come out as i'm pretty sure it will have that on it as well and with any
luck it'll be an even better version in that newer camera now i was surprised that they missed that
third dial just below the shutter button here but i haven't actually missed it as much as i thought
i would i shoot in aperture priority or shutter priority a lot of the time and so i only really
change the aperture or shutter speed depending on which i'm prioritizing and then i change iso so
this wasn't too much of a problem the only time it was annoying was when shooting in manual mode but
i did get used to this after a while now the flip out screen has its pros and cons and there's a lot
of you that love it but there's also a lot of you that hate it but it's amazing how nice that old
tilt screen actually is now i actually like both systems i like the flip out screen for shooting
in that low position or the high up position but i also like the old screen that just tilts out
because of the compactness of that screen now as for that one card slot this doesn't bother me too
much either i've never had a card fail on me in camera kind of dutch word i actually did a poll
on this a while back and out of almost 900 of you 81 have never had a card fail at all and i know
a lot of you have been shooting for quite a while and i do have a confession to make i only ever use
one of the two card slots in the a7 iii 99 of the time i shoot on so many shoots as well i've not
had one card fail either now i'm sure there are of those of you that have had a card fail and that
would absolutely suck and if this had happened to me i probably would think differently about this
camera now for the things that annoy me a little bit more some of these seem to have been made to
make it a more budget-friendly option compared to the a7 iii but some seem like an intentional
crippling of the camera to make it a little bit more different to the a73 than it really has to be
now the first one is a little bit unavoidable but you can't really use an l bracket with this if you
are using it for photography because the l bracket go along the bottom and up the side and that would
get in the way of this flippy screen i've done a video on this in the past and there is a way of
pulling out or sliding it forward slightly but the small rig one that i had really got in the
way and it was a compromise with either not being able to use the flippy screen or not being able to
get at your sd cards or the other ports so it was pretty useless and i actually threw it away now
onto that evf this is absolutely rubbish as soon as you're out and about and trying to use it in a
real world environment it absolutely sucks and i don't actually use it when i'm shooting with the
a7c anymore i just use the monitor on the back and i crank it up to its brightest level if the sun's
out but the evf might as well be removed as it's just taking up space now with the shutter it is
a different mechanism than the a7 iii and it only goes up to a maximum speed of one four thousandth
of a second instead of one eight thousandth of a second in the a7 iii it doesn't sound much but
it's a stop of light and when you're shooting in the midday sun or it's really bright and
you want the shallow depth of field look it feels limiting a couple of times out on the street i've
had the aperture at f 1.8 the iso at 100 and the shutter speed at 1 4 000 of a second and
it's been a little bit overexposed so more speed would have helped but thinking about it if you
have picture profiles turned off you can drop the iso to 50 which gives you back that stop of light
now if you use a flash with this camera the sync speed is a lot lower than the a7 iii in the a7 iii
it's 1 250th of a second whereas in the a7c it's at 1 160th of a second now this isn't too much of
a problem if you have a flash with high-speed sync but if you're trying to control the ambient light
and the flashlight this could cause a problem and you could get that ambient light creeping into
your shot now with the lack of those customizable buttons this was quite annoying and could have
been avoided especially when you see how many are on the a6600 just a few more on this camera would
have come in really handy another big annoyance for me was the lack of a multi-port in this little
flap down here i've got a usbc the hdmi and a headphone port but no multi-port so this means i
can no longer use any of my remote wired triggers with it i ended up getting this bluetooth trigger
which is also a tripod i did actually want just the remote but every single shot that i went to
seemed to be sold out of it but it was another thing i had to buy even though i've already got
remotes for it now for those of you that shoot a lot of video the one thing i have found to be a
huge advantage and one reason why i would get this over the a7 iii is that stabilization data that
can be used in catalyst brows to get gimbal-like shots without a gimbal i've been using this a lot
and all of the b-roll shots in my first street photography video were stabilized with this even
though my wife was just using the camera with the bluetooth handle that i've just shown you and not
worrying too much about keeping the camera stable i just stabilized it with that gyro data that
staved in those files and it did a surprisingly good job now i just wish the guys over adobe
would start to incorporate this into premiere pro as an option instead of warp stabilizer this
would really make it a game changer instead of having to round trip to catalyst browse and back
now apart from these few issues i really like the camera it is a bit smaller and i keep it
in this handy cage which kind of protects it i haven't dropped it yet but if i was to drop it
this would protect those corners it kind of beeps it up as well i've got quite big hands and on this
bottom bit i can kind of catch my little finger there it does make it feel like a nicer a better
sized camera for my hands as for changing it if you have the a7 ii or the original a7 it would
definitely be worth an upgrade to this camera if you're a photographer and already have the a7 3
stick with the a7iii but if you're a videographer i'd say it's a really good option to give you