Exciting news! I just got off the phone with the guy from our
local camera store, Henry’s, that the camera that we’ve been
waiting for for a couple months now--
well, it’s been about a month since it came out,
but we pre-ordered a couple months ago,
cause it’s a hard-to-get item, especially in our area.
There was a really long list and they’ve been filling them
as they go, and finally our ticket came up,
so they gave us a call and said
“your camera’s in store. Come get it!”
So I just got back from the gym, just had a shower...
and now we’re gonna go get the camera!
Let’s get Undone. [offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He's crazy ♪
[funky, up-tempo music]
[beep]
♪
All right, so this is the a7 III from Sony.
Let’s see what’s in the box.
So you got your paperwork, strap...
The camera body itself.
♪
The battery...
♪
And then the charger.
Now, this camera doesn’t come with a battery pack charger.
This one instead is more like a phone.
This is a USB cable, and you plug that into here,
just like you would with your iPhone or whatever.
And then the USB cable plugs into the camera over here,
and you can run it on power this way,
you can charge it this way. Then also on this end instead,
you could plug it into one of those USB power pack things
and use that as an extra power situation for your camera.
Now, some people have complained
that they didn’t come with the type of charger
that you could charge your batteries separate on.
I don’t know how big of a deal it’s gonna be for our usage.
I mean, we’ll see. If it turns out we really need one,
then you could pick one up,
but they do cost a little bit extra.
But the value of the camera
is still outstanding regardless of that,
and I’ll get into that in a moment.
♪
OK, so full disclaimer: we did have the a7R III
before getting this camera, but we took it back
because when this camera was announced, we were like,
“wait a minute, that seems like a much better value buy.”
And that’s kind of what I want to talk about today,
mostly, just the value situation here.
Now, I would say that the a7R III is a more complete package.
You know, unboxing this, there’s not that much to it,
and like I said, there is no charger.
You use the USB cable here.
And I’m also noticing that this is just a USB--
it’s, like, a Micro Type-B cable connector,
and when you pop open the port here on the camera,
there’s both: there’s a Type-C and then also the Type-B.
Now, I’m guessing the Type-B isn’t good for much other than,
I guess, like, slow data transfer and some charging,
but the a7R III came with a Type-C cable.
There’s no Type-C cable here. You can buy it yourself.
I think Sony claimed that they should work
about the same for charging your battery,
so that might not be that important
if you’re just using the cable for a charger.
But yeah, you get a charger, you get a cable
for the charger, you get a Type-C cable,
you get all that stuff with the a7R III,
but the a7R III is significantly more.
In Canada here, this camera goes for about
$2,600 Canadian-- so that’s, like, $1,999--
and the a7R III goes for $4,000 Canadian, or $3,200 US.
So with tax, you’re paying about $1500 more, for what?
A battery charger? I mean, yeah,
there’s more to the a7R III. It has a bigger sensor.
It’s, like, 42 megapixels, this one’s only 24.
But there’s trade-offs that you get with that as well.
That’s why this is the “balanced” model.
When you have fewer megapixels, you can often get more
room for better low-light sensitivity
and some other video configurations that work
a little bit better for the processing of the image into,
say 4K depending on how you crop or scale.
What makes this camera so awesome is that it’s a
full-frame camera that can do 4K video with no cropping
while having exceptional low-light, and you wouldn’t be
able to do that with the a7R III’s specs.
So it’s not that big of a deal to me that--
you know, that it doesn’t come with an external charger,
cause you can buy one of those,
and you can buy extra batteries.
And yeah, they’re a little bit pricey.
You know, the chargers and the batteries,
they’re like $110, $120 respectively Canadian,
so it’s, like, $80 and $90 US--
for a battery and for a charger.
And that’s a bit of money, but it’s still nowhere near
the $1,500 that you’re gonna save.
So let’s go through a few of the specs here,
and like I said, I’m already pretty familiar with the body,
cause it’s exactly the same as the a7R III. Same battery.
I believe all the ports and all the buttons
and every part of the layout is exactly the same.
It’s just the internals that essentially changed.
But I’ve got the specs up here so I don’t make any mistakes,
but I just kind of want to talk about value.
So for US it’s $2000, for Canadian, it’s $2600,
keep that in mind. So for a $2600 camera,
you get a 24.2 megapixel sensor,
which has great ratings on DxOMark and stuff like that.
So that’s gonna be 6000x4000 pixels, the image.
It has a native ISO of 100-51200, so that’s--
just a few years ago that would be considered, like,
“an insane low-light camera,” and that’s just sort of
the standard native one on this.
It’s expandable up to 204,000 ISO.
It takes the autofocus system almost in its entirety from the
a9-- which is Sony’s, you know, top-level sport shooter--
almost cannibalizing the a9 I think completely and making
it almost irrelevant. So you’ve got your 425-point contrast
detection system, and then an additional 693-point phase
detect autofocus system. So you’ve got, you know,
maybe the best autofocus system in the business.
It kind of-- you fight it out with Canon a little bit,
but Sony’s got the EYE-AF, the eye autofocus,
so that when you press that button, it finds the eye of
the subject and just focuses so quickly, so they’ve got
Canon kind of edged out in that regard.
Other important specs: it’s got a 10 frame per second
maximum continuous shooting speed. So yeah, it’s not as
fast as the a9, but in so many ways--
unless you need that specific, you know, dual part of the a9
or the drive speed... you know, this is for less than half
the price of the a9. You’re laughing.
Now, when it comes to the resolution of the displays
and screens, the a7R III is better,
it has a higher-resolution display.
The a7R is all about resolution,
so it would make sense the display is better.
Now, I haven’t used this one extensively yet, but from what
I’ve seen in the demos and stuff like that, the display--
you’re not really being handicapped that much
by having a slightly lower-resolution display,
but it is worth pointing out that the a7R III does have a
nicer screen than this one. But the screen on this is fine.
It’s better than the cameras from a couple years ago,
so it’s fine. Now, the video is where this one shines as well.
That’s why this is gonna be Julie’s new main shooter,
because Julie’s been trying to get a little bit more
into video now, but she’s also a photographer,
so this is a great photographic camera. You know, maybe not as
good as the a7R III, but the video options are outstanding
as well. So what it’s doing is it’s gonna take the full image
which is more like a 6K image-- and it’s gonna push that down
into a 4K, so you’re really kind of, like, super sampling
your 6K down to 4K, and you’re getting a full
readout from the frame, so you’re getting a full frame.
You’re not gonna get any cropping.
Whatever millimeter lens you have on, that’s what
you’re gonna see through, and that’s something I don’t
get the advantage of with my GH5 currently.
Now, I love my GH5, and I think from a video
perspective I might do another video on this with the GH5
versus the a7 III. I think the GH5 is still
gonna be a better, you know, for-video-type camera.
But it’s gonna be tough to compare a full-frame camera in
terms of the flexibility, the light options, the low-light
situation, you know, and some of the different lens widths
and that kind of thing compared to when you’re working with
with a camera like the GH5, which has a 2x crop in 4K.
Now, I still think the feature set is better than the GH5,
but the just sort of, like,
“this is my full-frame camera and it just does it all,”
I think the a7-- and for the price, too, because this comes
in around the same price as the GH5.
I think for your, you know, renaissance shooter,
somebody who wants great photos, great video, be able to
do it all, flick some switches, lightweight, know your camera,
all that stuff... this thing’s a beast for that.
And now that they put the new battery in it,
Sony made a new battery in the last couple models that’s
WAY better than their previous ones, cause one of the biggest
issues with Sony was that the batteries didn’t last
very long, so now you’re getting much closer
to what you would expect from, like, a DSLR-type battery.
Still not quite there, but quite a bit better.
The better menu system-- Sony’s menu was kinda,
you know, but now they got the good menu system.
I mean, this is a no-brainer in that budget.
Really, it’s not very often that I say--
there is no perfect camera, I say that all the time,
there’s no perfect camera--
but... pretty close! Like, I would say it’s pretty close.
If you’re just, like, “what’s the camera”--
cause whenever you read these forums, it’s always
“I’m trying to do this and I’m trying to do that.”
This is the camera. Just get that. If you got the money, if
this is in your budget-- and if you’re looking for a
pro camera, this is definitely in your budget, it’s probably
one of the least-expensive ones that are out there,
because most of the rest of them are in around the $4000
and above-- for Canadian, $2600 or for US $2000
you can’t do better for the budget. It’s just--
it’s not out there for what you get out of this camera.
Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it.
I basically just wanted to make this video to express
my excitement, but I didn’t want to make one of those
videos about-- you know, before a product really comes out
and you’re like, “oh, I’ve heard about this product.”
I’ve got it in my hand, I know the specs... it’s factual.
Now, the product’s been out for a few weeks,
but we finally got ours. It exists, it is what it is,
and it is the best value camera available today, and probably
that I’ve seen... I don’t know. I think back to some cameras
that I thought were great for their budget--
you know, 5D Mark III from Canon and so on--
and I think... I don’t know that there’s ever
been a better-valued camera released to date.
I think this might be it. And I’m not--
there’s no fanboyism in here or whatever.
Like, I don’t-- you know, I shoot on a Panasonic,
I got a Canon back there, we use some Sony stuff.
I just go for the best bang for the buck and when I saw the
release notes on the a7 III when it was first announced,
I just thought “that thing is gonna fly off the shelves.”
And it is. Like, the pre-order lists
are long and stuff like that. But if you’re looking at it,
get yourself on the list, because...
I don’t think there’s ever been a better value camera.
It’s outstanding. So we’re gonna put it through
the grinder the next couple weeks. Look forward to more
content about that, among other content that I’ll be making.
If you have any questions about this, or, you know, specific
things that you want to know, let me know in the comments
and I can, you know, run some tests or answer
them to the best of my ability in upcoming videos,
and maybe help you with your decision
if you’re looking to jump over here.
It’s the best time. If you’ve been waiting
to jump to Sony, this is the best time to do it, I think.
Alright! I’m done.
♪