so this review is coming from a couple of weeks of heavy use I've done real
estate videos and stylized wedding shoot I've done product photography of my tie
event and far too many pictures of my dogs
I could have posted this sooner with a lot less use but I wanted to get a real
kind of feel for this camera you have to truly test it properly with different
scenarios and now I feel like I've done that so here's my review
so I've got a lot to talk about today I apologize if you see me looking this way
is because I have my phone set up just here and I'm reading from a list of
notes I've made for me to talk about so these are my experiences and what I
found I've come from an a 6300 so you may hear me compare it to that other
people may say different things other people might have different opinions but
this is what I think it's also good to mention as well I do shoot primarily
video so that being said a lot of this can be related to photography as well
but mostly I do video so the ISO and the low-light performance great exactly as I
expected it to be done reviews ton of comparisons with this camera and it was
really good I shot on some indoor venues and it handled it like a champ the ISO I
could boost it all the way up to 8,000 in video and you can't even tell so yeah
really really happy with the ISO and low-light performance of this quick know
on that if you are using a cropped lens I love my Sigma 16 mil F 1.4 and as a
crop lens on my full frame body if you are using that you're not gonna get
quite the same low-light performance because you're not using the entirety of
this sensor which is kind of why the low-light so good on this camera anyway
it's using a full-frame sensor and not the crop using the Sigma 16 mil and any
other crop lens will result in not quite as good low-light performance there's
definitely a difference in terms of the noise level at higher ISOs if you're
using a crop compared to a full-frame you have more noise at the same ISO
compared to a few using a full frame lens now I know what you're thinking why
is this shot slightly different well I'll be honest with you this is actually
being filmed a few days later I was in the process of editing see edit in the
video and I realized I completely forgot to talk about something so now I'm a few
days later filming it again hopefully with a very similar angle you stole all
the same clothes so 120 frames per second 1080p video something I use a lot
a big improvement over one used to before which is the a 6300 that footage
sometimes looked really muddy and just didn't look great in 1080p when you
slowed it down and this looks a lot better a lot cleaner when I was testing
in some of these videos you're gonna see in a bit I probably shot like 80% of it
120 frames per second because of why I was shooing and what I was gonna do when
I edited it when I shoot videos like this I use 4k because it's
be crispy clean and look super nice and I can jump in if I wanted to but when
I'm filming other stuff why there's gonna be slow motion involved I always
do 120 frames per second it just looks nicer b-roll weddings all that kind of
stuff when you can slow it down super cinematic and just looks way nicer
in 120 frames per second but yeah a lot better huge improvement there were times
when I look at the video afterwards and not every time mind you but I look at a
clip I couldn't tell whether it's 4k or 1080p so that is a huge thing massive
improvement very happy with the 1080p video on this looking forward to be able
to using it a lot more because it just looks that much cleaner that much nicer
so yeah that is a really great feature of the a7 3 I'm happy with okay so now
back to the past picking up the video from the other day and you get a little
jump cut again sorry so the battery life was insane
coming from an a 6300 and even people that had a 7s twos they all use those
very similar star batteries and we all know the battery life is just not good
and sunny so the new Sony's dead battery is far far better and even in a real
world test just performed way past my expectations I'm going to show you a
quick edit in a minute of a Maitai event but just to give you an idea of battery
life I shot a combination of photos at max resolution both raw and JPEG ton of
120 frames per second 1080p video 100 megabits 4k video 100 megabits over
about a four-hour period in total I put all the clips into Premiere and it told
to be about 35 minutes of video which doesn't sound like a lot but continuous
recording on a Sony to get 35 minutes normally you'd be looking at probably at
least one battery maybe even one and a half two batteries so all that stuff I
shot and the battery is 100% when I started when I finished for the night
the first battery hadn't even touched the second battery first battery was
still at 39% so there you go battery life fantastic even in real
world scenarios we actually using it and instead of just leaving it on record
works like a dream I think I could probably shoot a wedding on into
batteries I note right now I've only got two and I don't want to buy another one
because they're really expensive so I'm gonna try our wedding next month with
just two battery so now I'll let you know how I get on so here's a short edit
of Tyburn I shot over the weekend using the
73 it showcases the low-light abilities of this camera the continuous auto focus
focus abilities of this camera and the 120 frames per second video quality
because I shot a lot in slow-mo because it looks super cool you'll see in a sec
now quick warning for you if you don't know what my tie is it is a beautiful
martial art but it does involve kicking punching needing that kind of thing so
yeah if you don't like that kind of stuff maybe skip ahead but you should
watch it because it showcases the abilities of this camera
super
we
right makes them more genuine I think when I can provide video that showcases
and demonstrates what I'm actually talking about so next up the crop mode
on the a7 3 as is a full-frame camera you can specify a barn and select crop
mode or super 35 mode and use your full-frame lenses in a crop mode which
gives you 1.5 times zoom love this this is probably my favorite feature of
moving to a full-frame Sony mainly fire becomes 127 and my 200 becomes 1.5 times
200 the crop mode is super cool I love it
all your lens has become way more useful and you can use it for both photo and
video it's just really cool if you don't know about crop mode collect my video up
here I talked all about it and how it works and I show you some examples too
it's definitely something people should utilize more of if they're not aware of
it it's a super cool and definitely my favorite feature of using a Sony
full-frame camera so far so the screen this is a weird thing for me to talk
about but I think it's important because it's something I liked I know the pixels
the dots the DPI whatever you want to call it is exactly the same race as in a
6300 it's not the same as the a7 r3 screen which is like 1.4 million dots
this is only nine hundred and something thousand dots so the res isn't quite as
high that being said something doesn't feel
the same as the a 6300 screen which allegedly is the same as it definitely
feels brighter maybe it's the new menu system I really don't know but something
feels different public good different maybe it's the plateau effect as well
maybe it's actually not any different I just kind of want to think it is
different though it feels different and better I think this is Square as well
and the other ones widescreen now this will still show widescreen and use have
bars at the top but I'm pretty sure that's what's different too now that
being said it's still a difficult screen to view in sunlight I did use it at the
weekend directly in sunlight and you still can't see anything so you have to
use the yes still for that no big deal really I mean I was used to using EVF
before continue to use the EVF again I talked about this in one of my other
videos but I love the weight of this some people say lie there and smaller is
better more easy to carry around I like the weight it feels like a solid piece
of equipment and I really love the grip too it is a solid grip and it just feels
comfortable in the hand there are multiple time so I just kind of had it
hung up my waist and I entirely felt comfortable with
they're just kind of hanging like that it's it's a good grip and your fingers
wrap around and I see I don't feel like it's going anywhere so yeah it's
important for you to know about the things I like and this was one of them
now onto the subject of the weight and the grip which I just talked about
because it's got a good weight to it I actually tried shooting some video
handheld now it does have Ibis go into the body meaning the sense it kind of
moves around a bit to counteract your movements but it's not great compared to
like the gh 5 so I kind of shot some stuff handheld moving around nothing big
and I also shot some stuff on this young crane but when I'm looking back at my
clips it's not obvious to me which was handheld and when she was on a Zeon
crane so yeah not a lot of movement but still really impressed with the is it
five or four exercises inside huh - sure either way it worked really well so
that's all you need to know so the autofocus speed the a 7-3 uses the same
autofocus system as the a9 which is like a five thousand dollar camera crazy
expensive but a really good autofocus system gonna be the quickest out there
for something I guess and yes it's technically quicker however coming
from an a 6300 and using video honestly couldn't tell the difference it doesn't
feel that much quicker maybe it's milliseconds and that's why but it's
still really good and really quick but you can't really tell the difference
between this and a 6300 which is the same as the 860 500 which is better than
the a7s2 so yeah it's it's quick maybe not what
you want to hear but honestly it's so quick anyway like those extra few
milliseconds really are there that much of a big deal probably not at least for
me it didn't matter that being said the focusing system is really good it did a
really good job at picking up faces and staying locked to them there was a
couple of times I sat below the boxing ring
and the rubs right in front of me and it didn't kind of hunt focus between the
ropes and the person's faces stuck onto the face really well which I was
impressed with all right so here's another quick edit I did have a stylized
wedding shoot a stylized wedding shoe in case you didn't know is like a set up to
look like a wedding with models and decorations and it was for a venue but
yeah this is a few Clips thrown together just for a quick edit a lot of beer also
okay so now on to some of the issues or annoyances I guess maybe not issues
camera does get warm doesn't overheat as I said before it does not overheat at
least in my experience but it does get warm consistently every single time
using it whether it's on an IED or whether I'm filming recording just
taking photos it gets warm not like hot but it does get warm mainly just under
here and on the bottom you can feel it for sure
having this screen out normally help this doesn't seem to make much of a
difference for this haven't tried with the battery door unclipped yet
apparently that makes a difference too so I'll try that now there is a firmware
update available for this already which does apparently help it haven't tried it
yet because I tried to update it with a Mac and it doesn't work good job Sony
maybe try and fix that I don't want to buy a Windows machine just to update my
camera so please get on that I'm using a 2015 MacBook Pro with the latest version
of OS X and it will not work tried multiple times restarts redownload it
all different possible combinations with the camera plugged in and unplugged
exactly how it says and it just doesn't work so please sort out I digress anyway
so yeah it does get warm but it doesn't overheat there are people talking about
overheating easily maybe you have a dud camera I don't know my case it was fine
I shot a ton got warm but it didn't know the heat didn't turn off so it good the
record button so good and bad about this this is in a fantastic place it's no
longer up here it's right there really easy to find even if you're kind of
shooting a video like this and you want to click it from the back you know where
it is it's right next to the EVF so love the location of this bad thing about
this it's spongy and you don't really know if you're pushing it or not there's
been times where I've clicked it and there's a little bit of a delay from
when you click it to an actually starts recording so because it feels spongy and
there's a delay sometimes you'll click it and you'll be like oh it's not
recording ok let me kill you again oh wait it was recording now it's stopped
now I'm gonna do that whole thing again yeah that happens quite frequently and
it's kind of annoying so be aware of that the I autofocus in photography it's
like super quick as soon as you click it picks up the eye boom done ready to go
using it for photography too and there's multiple people in there you
can use the touchscreen click on the person you want it to focus on and then
it'll pick their I so that's really clever part of the a9 focusing system
it's beautiful for photo for video it's useless
doesn't appear to work properly for me the face detector puts the green square
around your face works in photo and then exactly the same in video but the eye
autofocus in photography works and then when you put into video and it doesn't
work the same never appears with a little square on the eye and I can't
figure out why maybe it's me I don't know if you know how to do it put it
down below because I've tried out tons of different combinations of settings
and it just doesn't appear to work properly so down below put a comment
thank you in advance if you do and then similarly talking about the touch screen
if you're in photo mode and you click on something on the screen it will focus on
it if you're in video mode you click on something it won't focus on it you then
have to depress the shutter then it'll focus on it so it's great for
pulling focus smoothly and slowly but if you want to quickly focus on something
just by touching on the screen it doesn't work like that so maybe I just
don't know how to use it again again down below if you know please help me so
as for photography I don't take a ton of pictures but I wanted to test out
because I know the dynamic range is meant to be really good on this camera
and I tried it out at the muy Thai ban which is a really dimly lit and dark
venue and purposely underexposed some photos so I could kind of expose them
properly in Lightroom and really impressed it brought a ton of color a
ton of the shadows back up to how they should actually look I'll show you
something quick from Lightroom here pretty much talks for itself but you can
rescue a lot from the RAW files and here's the blown a sky in the windows in
the background they're pretty much completely white look if I bring them
down here you can rescue color now they're blue again this guy is back to
being blue from being completely blown out that's super impressive so yeah for
photography I was impressed the only thing I'm not too sure about maybe I'm
just expecting too much but on high speed mode here obviously shoots 10
frames and I think but the buffer seems really
slow so look but mostly shooting a ton of photos but then if you look at the
top the buffer seems to take a long time just here
see how it's taking a while does anyone know if that's right I'm using SanDisk
Extreme Pro cards so they're quick cards so I don't know why I do that
maybe I'm just expecting too much I don't know I don't know you tell me down
below is that right or not I wanted to give you guys a proper review which I
think I have hopefully done but I want to play with it more still I'm not using
it to its full potential and I know should be able to do more than what I
think I'm able to do with it right now and I think the issues that I'm talking
about are really issues I think I'm the reason that they're actually issues or
annoyances I think once I've learned how to use it properly I think they may be
it might not be issue so much anymore and there's only one way to learn and
that's to continue making more content more films taking more photos through a
more videos playing around with the camera and just begin to know a little
bit more so that's what I'm gonna do so overall am i happy with the camera
absolutely like still love it to bits so happy I picked up the a7 3 the good
completely outweighs the bad bad to the annoyance is I guess and honestly no
company is ever gonna make a perfect camera my annoyances might not be
someone else's annoyances the issues I have with it might not be the same for
someone else like the spongy button there someone else might really like
that button so yeah like for the amount of money this camera costs the quality
delivers it's just it's really good it's fantastic actually I think fantastic is
a better way to put it I'm super happy with it you you get an amazing piece of
kit for such a low amount of money really good job sony for your basic
model it's it's impressed very happy very impressed I hope I've
given you a detailed review of actually using in real-world scenarios things
that actually can help you opposed to me just talking about specs I've used this
camera I've tried out on a whole bunch of different environments
I've now related to you my experiences and yeah so thanks for watching if you
like this review or if I helped you learn something or gave you some
feedback you may be needed to here hit that like button down below and
subscribe to my channel if you're not part of it already and as always I shall
see you in the next one see ya I'm waiting for the dog to disappear leaves
walking around and you just hear this everywhere okay I think you stopped