Today we’re gonna be testing the autofocus
performance between the GH5 and the new a7 III from Sony.
Let’s get Undone. [offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He’s crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody?
I’m Gerald Undone, and today we’re gonna be
conducting a few tests to check the autofocus performance
between my current GH5 and my new Sony a7 III.
To keep things as fair as possible,
the conditions for the tests are going to be as follows:
we’re gonna be using native glass on both lenses.
Now, the Sony lens is faster than my Panasonic lens,
so we’re gonna stop them both down to f/2.8.
Both cameras are gonna be recording in 4K at 24p.
I’ll be using my optimized GH5 autofocus settings
from that video that I made on it.
I’ll put a link in the description for that.
And on the Sony camera, I’m gonna be using Sony’s
recommended balanced autofocus continuous settings.
I’m gonna be using that single square box area autofocus mode.
On the Sony, I think it’s a medium size, but relative
to the frame, it’d probably be, like, this big, I guess.
Something like that. And lastly, I’m gonna attempt
to expose them as evenly as possible.
OK, I think that’s everything pertinent, so what I’m gonna do
now is I’m gonna put on my native lens-- right now,
I’m actually using a Sigma lens on my GH5,
so I’m gonna put on a native lens because the one I have on
the Sony right now is an 85, so I’m gonna put this to as
close to focal length as I can get, stop them both down
to 2.8, and I’m probably gonna have to back up a little bit.
And then I’ll talk to you about a couple of other
things that we’ll be testing at the same time.
Stand by. [clapping]
Banana! There. So I think I’m all set up.
I have just come to discover, though,
that doing an autofocus test like this...
it’s pretty difficult with just one person,
especially because I don’t have flip-out screens for the Sony,
and I’m trying to monitor things on the phone at a remote
distance and make sure everything is working...
[chuckles] Uh, there’s a bit of challenges here,
so I apologize for any kind of weirdness in
the test where maybe it’s not completely optimal.
But anyway, there’s a couple of other things
that we’re gonna be testing here.
They’re secondary to the autofocus test,
but they’re worth noting. One is going to be sort of
minor image quality checkups because I’ll be recording with
both cameras and I’ll be switching back and forth,
so you can kind of take an idea at the image quality
because they’re both doing, like, a 6K down to 4K
kind of oversampling. And I also wanted to check
how accurately I can match the Sony’s footage to the GH5,
and this will be useful for anybody that’s thinking
about maybe picking up this camera, ‘cause these cameras
are the same price. So if you were thinking about picking
this one up as maybe your secondary, so you have,
you know, maybe some full-frame options and maybe some
better autofocus, or different low-light things on one side,
and then had the GH5 and sort of complement
each other that way. This will hopefully--
I don’t know which lens I’m supposed to look at here.
This will hopefully help with that idea,
‘cause I want to try to match the Sony to look like the GH5
because I’ve really gotten the GH5 to a place where
I like the way that it looks.
And then the last thing, obviously,
as part of the image quality idea will be--
you know, a little bit of low light, that kind of thing.
I’ve made the image a little bit underexposed here
because I think that should labour the autofocus
a little bit more so, and also when I do
the post stuff on it, we’ll see, you know,
how much noise was introduced and that kind of thing.
Because obviously, the Sony should be a lot
better in low light, so we can see maybe
if it comes into effect in practical shooting situations.
I’m obviously not shooting this at 12,800 ISO,
I think I’m-- I don’t know, 500 or something on the GH5.
Now, I don’t know how any of these tests are gonna
work out, but you guys are already seeing
the results of the two different cameras right now.
I’m gonna have to edit this before I get to see any of it.
OK, so let’s start the autofocus test.
So for the first test, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna
do just a classic pop-in, pop-out of the frame.
I’ve got a high-contrast lightbulb box here,
and I’m just gonna try to use this, so I know
about where to put it. Hopefully-- maybe I’ll
do it horizontally, so we have a better shot.
The focus points aren’t exactly the same between
the two cameras, so I’m gonna try my best here.
So it’s on my face, and then now...we got a lightbulb box.
OK, back to my face.
The GH5 is a bit more user-friendly out of the box
for this kind of purpose. One, because of the flip-out
screen, the Sony doesn’t. Two, the Panasonic app on the
phone is really, really easy to use, so you can monitor
yourself that way. With the Sony, I’m just guessing,
but I have it-- I have the Sony pointed a little bit
better at me, so it’s like pointed right at me,
so hopefully I can kind of, like...you know, get it
in the right thing there. For the GH5,
I’m kind of using the monitor a little bit.
For the GH5, I’m kind of using the monitor a little bit.
OK, so that’s that one. Now, for the next test,
we’re gonna do the one where you move an object ever closer
along a linear path. This works when you’re walking up
to the camera, you’re walking away from the camera,
that kind of thing. Now, I think to best do this,
I’m just going to wheel myself in and out.
Try to keep myself in those boxes...and then now
I’m just gonna bring myself closer...and closer...
and see... try to stay outside of the close focus distance.
I think both of these will focus just inside of a meter,
so I should be fine where I am now.
And then now I’m gonna back up again...you guys
are gonna get a freaky close look at my face.
And then let’s go closer again...
I’m wheeling in like a weirdo.
One more time, a little bit faster.
So now what I’m gonna try and do is-- do more
of a handball thing, which I guess will sort of
slightly test the image stabilization as well
between the two cameras, but not really that much.
I’m using a long focal length, so it should be pretty wobbly
and not great, so hopefully, I don’t make you too nauseous.
But I’m just gonna point it at different objects
at different distances and see how quickly it responds.
This is gonna be a bit more accurate and a bit
more aimed because I’m gonna be controlling it,
boom, hitting the objects that way.
And I might increase the lighting a little bit.
So let’s do that now.
[uptempo music]
♪
OK, so now I’m gonna stop the video here,
and I’m gonna edit it up to this point so that I can apply
the colour matching, take a look at some of
the image quality stuff, and put the autofocus tests
side-by-side so I can actually draw conclusions.
And then, I’ll come back and let you know
what I observed while editing and see if we can come
up with a definitive conclusion on these tests.
Be right back.
♪
OK, I’m back! The first part of the video was edited,
and I think that I have some conclusions figured out.
A couple of quick notes I noticed about the autofocus,
just some mistakes on my half, and maybe some
improper testing: I think that there was a couple points
where the Sony went a little bit wonky, and that might have
been that I got a little bit-- I got a little bit past
the close focus distance on the 85mm where the Panasonic
lens was still within its range, so I think that might
have caused it to not be able to focus at a couple points,
and I think there was one point where I was actually
just outside of the box. But within that, I think I was
still able to get some decent conclusions drawn.
Here’s what I noticed: they focus differently,
and there’s a small benefit to that on the GH5,
and quite a few benefits, I think, to that on the Sony.
The Sony is more responsive, and something you need to know
is that the GH5 is at its, like, very responsive settings,
where the Sony is at, like, its “balanced” settings.
So even with the Sony only on “balanced,”
it’s more responsive than the GH5. And its responsiveness
is better. It’s a better type of responsiveness
for the most part. And by that, I mean
when the GH5 focuses on something, once it does
respond, then it achieves focus, and then it kind of
doesn’t stop. It still kinda jitters, and it pulses
a little bit, and I don’t like that.
I don’t like seeing lights behind me,
you know, pulse in and out. I don’t like that look at all.
Whereas the Sony, it responds quickly,
but then once it has focus, it’s like, “OK, I’m done,”
and then it stops monkeying around.
It doesn’t pulse at all. Now, with that,
there’s a small advantage of the GH5 which is that
if you’re trying to make a more cinematic look--
I noticed it a couple times when I kind of came in slowly--
the GH5 just kind of crawled in on the focus,
and it seemed a little bit more, you know, like,
cinematic zoom-like, and I kind of liked that.
But then once I stopped, then the pulsing.
Where the Sony, when I kind of crept in,
it kind of did it more in stages. It was like, “focused!
I focused! I focused! I focused!”
And in that, it’s kind of a little bit more
jumpy in the focus steps, but once it gets focused,
it’s done, and there’s no pulsing.
So in a fixed position like this, if I was like,
“let’s go take a look at the back,” and then I walked
to the back, the Sony would be a bit better
because it would focus on the back,
and then that would be that.
Whereas the GH5 would focus on the back
and then...kinda pulse a little bit.
So I think I would rather have the Sony situation
in most-- most settings. As far as image quality goes,
both of these images look great. I do like the colours
a little bit better on the GH5, and I was trying to match
the Sony to it, which I thought I was actually
able to do pretty well. But the Sony handles its blacks
a little bit differently, and it has a different
dynamic range. I think it has a better dynamic range
than the GH5 did, but the GH5 has 10-bit,
and the Sony only has 8-bit, so there’s some advances there
of what you can do with the colours, and I kind of
personally-- this is just taste, but I kind of like
the Panasonic’s colours a little bit better, so matching
the Sony to the Panasonic, obviously, the Panasonic’s
gonna do its own colours better than the Sony will.
And both of these are WAY sharper
than you need them to be. [chuckles] Like,
you have the 6K down, so you’re not gonna worry
about that. You’re gonna get nice, crispy images
out of both, but you will get better low-light out of
the Sony without question, that’s just--
that’s easy and obvious. The low-light in some of these
Sony cameras is outstanding. One thing I will complain about
with the Sony, I noticed, is that when it recorded
the video files, it nested them strangely in folders.
You had to go into the SD card and then into “Private”
and then, like, “M4 Route,” and then it was there
with XML files. It was really strange.
With the GH5, it just put them in the sort
of parent folder on the card. And the GH5 recorded
the whole video all in one file,
all on one MP4, no time limits, no breaking up, where the Sony
broke them up into, like, 4-gig files or something like that,
and there’s, like, time restrictions,
so it’s definitely easier to record footage longer
in-body on the GH5. The video features
are better on the GH5. You know, you can do 10-bit
internal recording, ALL-I, no time limits, etc.
But the Sony’s got its benefits as well,
so-- you know, both cameras are great,
and it really just comes down to what’s important to you.
But if you’re watching this video, you’re probably
watching it for autofocus, and if autofocus is important
to you, you want to know who the winner is...
it’s Sony. I gotta say the Sony a7 III has a better,
more reliable autofocus. For the functions that I could
see a person wanting to use autofocus for, I think the Sony
does it better, and I think that even though people
will always complain about the way autofocus works
in different modes and stuff like that, I don’t think
that anybody’s ever made an autofocus where people
are like, “this is exactly what I wanted!” Maybe some of
the Dual Pixel stuff that Canon’s done, people thought,
“OK, that’s perfect.” But I will say this:
I can’t see you having too reasonable of
a complaint about the a7 III’s autofocus for most usages.
In my opinion, it works exceptionally well.
I think anybody looking to get the a7 III for autofocus
performance should be very, very happy.
So the win goes to the Sony for autofocus in this video.
Anyway, that’s gonna be it for me. I hope you found this
video helpful, or at least entertaining.
And if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
And let me know in the comments what you took from the video.
Like, what your analysis is from watching the footage,
what-- you know, who you give the win to,
or what you like better or don’t like better, you know.
Leave those in the comment so that other people can
watch it and sort of get a consensus view on it.
Alright! I’m done.
♪