this is the a74 i've been using this almost exclusively since it first came
out and to show you what a great hybrid camera this is we're going to drive way
north of the arctic circle to photograph and videotape wildlife landscapes and the entire
trip using just this camera and probably a few drone shots thrown in just for fun
hey my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go so i
test and review drones cameras lenses in places like this in alaska and i give you
tips and tutorials on how to use them so if that's something interesting consider
subscribing today is day two we're gonna push our way up into the arctic i'm gonna
talk about why this camera is such a great hybrid camera because of the photo quality
and the video quality we're gonna see a lot of spectacular landscape and wildlife on this trip
welcome to the arctic at 12 30 in the morning the sun is uh behind some clouds
it is going to be this way for the next hour and a half and then the sun will be
back up uh over there so but this is 12 30 in the morning way above the arctic circle
for an all-in-one hybrid camera that shoots both photo and video the a74 is really very good and
very capable of doing a lot of different things so let's start off with talking about video quality
for video quality one of my favorite things is that they added 10 bit video which gives you a
ton more leeway to be able to color grade and be able to push the colors in post but not only that
they added 4k 60s so you can get really great shots and even when you're shooting on a really
long lens out there at 4k60 it's great because you don't have to get as much footage you can maybe
just slow it down a bit and get a more usable piece of footage but the 4k 60 looks really nice
the 4k30 looks fantastic 4k 24 looks great and you can also shoot hd up to 120. now the hd 120 is i
think maybe just a little better than the sony a7 3 was but it definitely does come in handy if you
really want to get a little bit of slow motion something this is obviously shot in hd 1080
and then upscaled to 4k so it's certainly a very usable thing and the nice thing is you also get
it in that 10-bit codec so i like to shoot in s-log 3 and then color grade from there because
it gives you a ton of dynamic range which i really appreciate for low light the video on this camera
is actually pretty good as well it's not as good in the as the a7s3 is when you go into
really low light situations but it's certainly usable i've used this all the way up to iso
16 maybe 20 000 somewhere in there and it's certainly usable above that it really does start
to fall apart and that's where the a7s iii still kind of rules over that in a low light camera but
this is not meant to be a super low light video centric camera this is kind of a hybrid of both
so there are going to be some trade-offs but the video quality of this camera is great and i've
really really enjoyed shooting with it especially on this trip but video is not the only thing
we also need to talk about photo quality however it's 28 degrees here the wind is blowing really
hard and i'm freezing so we're gonna go somewhere else and we'll talk about the photo quality of
this camera now that i'm back from the arctic and i can think a little more clearly because i'm not
freezing i can talk about the photo quality of this camera which is spectacular coming in with a
new sensor design at 33 megapixels i think it's a really nice sweet spot that you get a fair amount
of data to work with you can crop in quite a bit and especially if you shoot raw you get lots of
information to be able to work with in post to process the image how you want to process but
33 megapixels i feel like is a really great sweet spot for being able to shoot both video and photo
because it gives you a fair amount of real estate but it also keeps the amount of data you're having
to manage usable and manageable i've shot with cameras like the alpha one and the alpha seven
r four which are all great cameras but you do get a lot more data and so like on this
arctic trip when i was up there shooting a few thousand photos about four thousand five
thousand uh coming away and be able to put all those photos on my hard drive on my computer
and not worried about having to sort through them right away and run out of space made it really
great now in photo mode i've used this camera a lot for astrophotography and even some aurora
stuff and it is spectacular you get great images they're really clean they're very sharp and you
can get some incredible stuff with low light in this camera so i feel like this is one of the best
astrophotography cameras on the market right now because of the amount of megapixels you get but
also because of how much or how well it does in low light can just get some spectacular images
like these time lapses these photos were all shot with the a74 and they all turned out
really just incredible one more thing that's spectacular about this camera is the autofocus
system it's extremely quick to grab your eye or your face even in pretty low light situations it
does a great job of tracking something because it has touch tracking autofocus which means you
enable touch and then you can tap something and have it track through which is fantastic but also
one of my favorite things is that now sony has been giving us the ability to adjust how fast or
how slow the autofocus works based on a scale of five and it gives you a lot more ability to have
it slowly ramp up and then ramp down as it focuses on a subject which makes it look a lot more
natural a lot more like somebody actually pulling focus and it's one of my favorite ways to use this
camera when it comes to usability this camera absolutely shines as a hybrid camera because
of the way sony modified some of the controls now you've got the normal front dial rear dial
5d joystick all that which is all great gives you lots of options lots of control you have a lot
of customizable buttons which is fantastic so you can set the camera up exactly the way you want it
i've got a camera setup video over here over there it'll pop up but the other thing that makes this
camera absolutely fantastic as a hybrid camera is this little control dial that they put on the top
to be able to switch between video photo and snq modes and because it has three memory sections
in each one of those modes you get up to nine basically user memory presets that you can set
so i have mine set up to where i can use every mode that i ever shoot in 4k 60 4k 30 all both
in s log and then 4k 30 or 4k 24 depending on what i'm shooting in the regular mode or and
then in photo mode i have a time lapse mode set up i have a regular like full on just straight up raw
uh can't photo workflow and then i also have a high-speed shooting workflow which is great
because it takes two flicks of the dial and you're there it's set up it's ready to go it
switches almost instantaneously so it's incredibly useful as a hybrid camera because of how fast
you can switch between photo and video mode in all these shots here where i'm out shooting wildlife
i was doing that the whole entire time where i was shooting some photos and then switching to
4k60 or 4k 30 and shooting some video and it was absolutely fantastic and that makes this camera
so versatile and so useful and such a great almost very near perfect running gun camera
but like any camera there are some drawbacks and we need to talk about those and one of the
biggest ones that most youtubers have complained about but i don't think is that big of an issue
in fact sometimes it kind of helps you and gives you a little extra reach is the crop
in 4k 60 it doesn't shoot the full sensor size in 4k 60 it crops into aps-c so one and a half times
which means you're going to get a little tighter typically i find i'm using 4k 60 for b-roll anyway
they're usually tighter shots so it doesn't matter that much but if you really have to
shoot full frame in something like 4k60 then you're gonna have to do go with another camera
again i don't think it's that big deal because the 4k60 looks so good and it's so useful and for me
at least in these shots here where i was shooting wildlife uh the extra one and a half the aps-c
crop actually really helped because i was able to get a little more reach out of my 150 to 500 and
get a little closer than i would have been able to get otherwise one big drawback on this camera for
photo mode is the fact that you only get up to 10 frames per second compressed raw but as
soon as you switch to like regular raw full on raw photos then you're down to about six frames
a second which is still fast but definitely not as fast as a lot of the other cameras on the market
so that might be a deal breaker for you if you do a lot of high speed shooting i don't really but
you know i found six frames 10 frames depending on if i'm shooting compressed raw or regular raw
will work just fine for most everything i do another downside that i and other people have
mentioned is the screen the screen on the back is not a great screen it's okay and it certainly will
help you with getting framing and getting general stuff for exposure but it's not great it's nowhere
near the a7r iv series or the a1 or the a7s3 series but fortunately even though this screen
isn't great on this camera the evf the electronic viewfinder is so if you do lots of photo work
or if you want to just make sure that you're really getting things dialed in then using the edf
the evf really helps you be able to dial those settings in and make sure you're getting a
good shot another one of the big downsides is the rolling shutter because it's a 33 megapixel sensor
it does have rolling shutter especially in fast action situations this maybe not the camera for
you for doing you know sports photography sports video cards anything like that anything really
fast action this is probably not the camera that's going to work best for you something like the a1
is gonna be better or the a9 obviously the a9 series is much better for that kind of stuff but
this camera does do fairly well it just definitely suffers from rolling shutter
more than of the other cameras that are out there that are obviously also much more expensive so
not to say you can't do it with this camera it's just not the best because of the rolling shutter
one more thing you need to be aware of with this camera which has not been an issue for me
but i shoot in alaska where things just don't overheat very much i mean
winter obviously nothing's going to overheat but even in the summer we don't get extremely
unbelievably hot temperatures but this camera does have a tendency to overheat a little more
it's partly because it's having to process a lot of information 10-bit it's down sampling a 7k
image sensor so that's a lot more work the processor is having to do so there are a few
things you can help mitigate that one if you're going to do longer sessions or longer record times
obviously pulling the screen away from the body is a big deal also changing your shut
off your auto shut off temperature from whatever the default is to high will help you quite a bit
but if you're recording things like interviews or longer form sit-down stuff where you know you're
going to be record live streaming anything like that you're gonna be recording or doing
something for you know a half hour an hour hour and a half which i've done with this camera
then the best thing you can do instead of plugging in usbc and powering the camera
where it's charging the battery it's drawing power through the usbc port with power delivery is use
a dummy battery instead the dummy battery will take away that charging component which builds
up a lot of extra heat in the camera if you want to see how this camera stacks up to other cameras
like the r6 the a7s iii click or tap right there i've put together a small playlist as always if
you have questions ask me in the comments below or you can join my live stream which happens
wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers