today we're going to test and compare the a7 3 to the a74
and see if it's worthwhile to upgrade and what the differences are between these two cameras
so
hey my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go i do lots of drone
camera lens reviews and tips and tutorials on how to use them so if that's something interests you
consider subscribing today we're comparing the a74 to the a7 3. this was an amazing
camera when it came out probably the best hybrid camera on the market but now the a74 has arrived
from the photo standpoint the a7 iii will shoot raw photos uncompressed it'll shoot
up to 10 frames a second they're 24 megapixels they're really nice detailed it's a good size
fairly easy to work with and it does a great job but it has a fairly small buffer if you shoot
in high frame rate modes where the a74 shoots 33 megapixel stills it'll shoot raw uncompressed but
it actually won't shoot as high it'll only shoot up to six frames a second if you're
shooting raw and uncompressed on the other hand it has a nearly unlimited buffer because of the
faster write speeds on the cards which we'll get to that in a minute because that's a little bit of
some of the differences but as you can see here the photos are really excellent
both of them perform spectacularly well in a lot of different situations i shot
with the a7 3 for years and captured some of my favorite photos that you're seeing here
on this camera so it's a very capable photo camera but getting a nine more megapixels is really nice
it gives you a little extra room to crop in and when it comes to photos if you're doing
a lot of wildlife stuff the a74 has the new bird iaf and animal iaf and we'll detect those things
and it does it in movie mode where the a7 iii will not but we'll save the movie stuff for a little
bit but as you can see overall both of these cameras will shoot excellent spectacular photos
um just if you want a little bit more megapixels obviously the a74 is going to win so it does give
you a little bit more detail and i feel like the dynamic range isn't that much better in raw but i
do feel like there is a little bit better dynamic range in the a74 not a lot but a little bit
when it comes to video there's a big difference between these two cameras the a7 iii while it
does shoot really nice 4k because it's down sampling that 6k 24 megapixel sensor to 4k
it is limited to 4k 30 and it's limited in its codec it only will shoot 8 bit 420 which is
very limiting when it comes to color grading and if you're going to shoot in log profiles
that being said the a7 3 can shoot really nice video just straight out of the camera no problem
on the other hand the a74 shoots spectacular 4k video up to 60 frames a second with a crop but
it also shoots in 10 bit 422 which gives you a lot more leeway and just unbelievably more uh headroom
and the ability to be able to shoot and color grade this in post so if you're shooting an slog 3
you get a lot more dynamic range you get a lot more range and what you can do with the
colors in post now both of these cameras can shoot hd 120 but the a74 is vastly improved
it's much sharper looking and much more usable as far as a video codec it looks much better
than the a7 iii is a little soft and a little mushy so if you find yourself shooting
you know 4k 60 obviously the a74 is to win but if you find yourself wanting to shoot hd 120 more
the asm4 is going to give you a pretty substantial improvement in the quality of that hd 120 footage
when it comes to autofocus both of these cameras do have really good autofocus
but the a7 3 is limited to face tracking in video modes it does do eye tracking
in photo mode but not in video mode where the a74 has a lot more options it'll do bird iaf it'll do
animal if it'll do human if and it does it all full time in every mode unless you turn it off
and you get a lot more flexibility in how you can make the autofocus function so if you want it more
like a rack focus you can slow it down and have it be a little slower a little smoother with the
a7 3 you don't quite get that much granular control over how the autofocus responds to
whatever the subject is in your in your thing uh the autofocus on the a74 is also a lot quicker it
recognizes subjects much faster and grabs hold of them and follows them through a scene a lot better
the other difference is that while the a7 iii has really good tracking modes it
has nothing to compensate for breathing where the a74 will compensate for breathing on sony
g lenses and g master lenses especially the primes the g master primes have a fair amount of focus
breathing on them but the a74 will crop in the correct amount so that you get no focus breathing
at all and that's a big deal if you shoot video with the primes which i do
frequently and it makes it really nice to not have to worry about the focus breathing
as far as low light's concerned both of these cameras perform really well in low light i did
a bunch of astrophotography i've done tons of astrophotography with the a7 iii because i owned
it for three years and i've done some with the a74 and they both perform really well so this is the
a74 at uh 6400 iso which is really not bad at all i'm gonna crank it up there we are at uh this is
the a74 now at 12 800 iso standard color profile no s-log or anything like that this is the a7 3
at 6400 iso this is 12800 on the a7 iii definitely noisier i feel like their noise reduction in
camera noise reduction is maybe just a little better a little more refined in the a74 but i
think it's probably also partly that the noise is a little bit finer because you have 33 megapixels
to work with instead of 24 but yeah the difference definitely the a7 wins a little bit in low light
over the a7 iii but not by a lot they both perform really well in low light
so this is in the standard color profile i'm using the 24 to 105 which has an optical steady
shot built into the lens and then also active stabilization handheld just walking down through
the woods here pretty good pretty smooth now let's switch to the a7 iii and see how that
looks with the same exact setup so again this is the same exact setup no active steady shot because
the a7 iii doesn't have it but it does have optical steady shot built on the lens 24 to 105
and then the ibis built into the camera how does it look pretty smooth
trying to do the same thing might be shivering a little more now because it's really really cold
and then we come to some of the major differences on the a7 3 you have only a flip out screen
like this so it won't flip out to the side it won't be fully articulating it just folds out
goes up and you can look down some people prefer that especially photographers seem to prefer that
the custom controls are all basically the same except for that this button on the a74
the exposure compensation dial can be customized to be almost whatever you want
you get more memory modes on the a74 and then you also get a much faster ability to flip between
modes the other thing that sets the a74 apart from the asm3 is how you can switch between video and
photo mode and have it recall all the settings from photo mode and all the settings from video
mode so you don't change your shutter speed um in video mode and then go back to photo mode and your
shutter speed remains the same as what it was from video mode it'll remember whatever you had your
previous shutter speed set at the other difference is these flappy things which i forgot how much i
hated until i was using this camera again but these basically they come out they're attached
by a little hangy thing and they just kind of flap around and then another difference is that
this doesn't have any power delivery charging it's a trickle charger through the usb port
and one more thing is you have a slot one slot two and only one of these is actually a uh s2 the
rest is uh or the other one is a uhs one card and when it comes to the a74 you get these nice fold
outdoors plus you also have a full size hdmi port which you don't get in the a7 iii you have the
individual doors for the mic jack which is more robust and the headphone jack and then usb and uh
micro usb but the nice thing is with this is you get power delivery charging so this can basically
last forever if it's plugged into a power delivery port because it will keep the battery charged as
much as you're using it and of course on the other side you have the single card door where you have
two uh s2 cards for sd cards but you also have the option of using the cfxpress type a which
not a lot of people will need to it doesn't really do much as far as the performance of
the camera you can shoot everything on this on a uh s2 card or even a uh s1 card but if you want
to offload your photos faster or have it clear be able to write basically unlimited into the buffer
that is nice to have a uh s2 card at least or the cfx press a type card and then of course we have
the fully articulating screen which i really like because if you're shooting portraits it makes it
easier to do that if you're shooting selfies you can do that much easier but the other difference
is uh you know when this is fully programmable you get three memory modes per photo and video and s
and q modes so you can switch between photo video and snq mode really quickly here and then on each
one of those modes you have three separate memory recall positions another big difference is the
menus one this is the older sony sony menu system which is not laid out the easiest to find and it's
not a touch screen you can't touch the screen and change anything so you have to cycle through
everything using the 5d or the scroll wheel here and then select and change whatever settings you
want to change so it's a little bit harder to navigate around you can set up the a7 3 in a
way that you really don't need to go in the menu very much but it is much harder whereas the a7
s3 and a1 and the a7 4 all have touch screen menus so you can go into the menu and get
in there the only difference is it's not a full touch screen like canon where you actually have to
you can touch anything on the screen and change it you actually have to do it uh you have to get
into the menu using the menu button like you can't tap these settings and have it change and another
difference between these two cameras is this camera has a little bit better weather sealing
which if you're somebody like me does make a big difference but it also has a slightly larger body
i don't know if we can see that there exactly it's just not a lot larger but just slightly
larger and the hand grip is slightly bigger which makes a big difference if you've got larger hands
uh the a74 is a lot more comfortable to hold for longer periods of time a couple more upgrades is
the screen and the viewfinder are improved over the a7 iii they're a little bit more detailed
and a little bit more accurate not a lot but definitely there's some more detail there and
a little more accuracy there and of course the price went up this started out at 2000 when it
came out three years ago this starts at 2500 so that is a little bit bigger price but if you want
that extra performance for 4k 60 if you want the extra megapixels and the autofocus performance
the a74 is a really fantastic upgrade and it has made being able to be a hybrid shooter with one
camera body being able to switch from photos to video really nice because this thing switches
almost instantaneously and you can program all of your most used photo modes and video
modes into memory recall positions and then just switch between them seamlessly and have all of
the settings that you want recalled ready to be recalled and just keep going and shooting one of
the only other differences i noticed is that the a7 iii has better battery life over the a74 i did
a whole lot of shooting yesterday and today and between everything i shot yesterday this had about
63 battery life where the a74 was still at about 69 70 battery life is it worth it for
you to upgrade that really depends on you how you shoot and your budget if you have the budget then
i would say the a74 is a fantastic probably the best hybrid camera i've used so far the photos
are beautiful the videos are beautiful because you get that extra 10-bit codec and you get the extra
megapixels so the 4k is extremely sharp the hd 120 is definitely improved over the a7 iii um but
it is an upgrade cost so that might be something that stops you nothing is stopping you from still
shooting great photos and great video with the a7iii now if you want to see other comparisons
of the a74 click or tap right there i put together a small playlist i will see you in one of those
videos as always if you have questions ask me in the comments below or join my live stream
wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers