A Look At The Sony A7R IIII As A Video Camera

We have already looked at the Sony A7R III when it was first announced and had a pretty in-depth look at its features with the help of Our friends and colleagues Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake from the Camera Store, but now Carl from ProAV TV in the U.K. highlights some of the key video aspects of the new camera and how they stand in the overall Sony A7 line.

So what is new in terms of video and video related features on the A7RIII and how it stack against the existing A7R II and A7S II? Apart from the dual SD card slots and the much larger capacity battery (both great), the AF system is improved (both for stills and apparently for video as well) and the new joystick also helps in video.

The touchscreen is new but also improved compared to what Sony has done on the A6500 for example (which is pretty annoying based on our almost year of using it). There is also an improved magnifying option and the screen does not dim in 4K (both really important features – thanks, Sony). There is also an option to double tap the screen to get a magnified view of that area when focus manually – nice. We are still looking for a flip screen in this camera and Sony seems to stick to its existing design so you will need an external monitor if you want to watch the screen from the camera side.

What is still missing is 4K 60p which we suspect Sony is leaving to the A7S III which we still don’t know when we shall see. And another small but annoying thing – there is no Playmemories feature in this camera.

Jason Wang on the monitor of the A7RIII

Here is a reminder about the specs of the new A7R III:

Sensor: 42MP Full-Frame Exmor BSI CMOS sensor – the sensor isn’t new but Sony did include several technologies that should make the image quality coming from this sensor better than its predecessor.
BIONZ X Image Processor with front-end LSIe – the processor is new and much improved helping the image quality, shooting speed and some of the new features of the camera.
399-Point AF System – the same number of points but Sony improved many aspects of the original AF system of the A7R II and the new system is now closer to the A9 in its performance (although the A9 is probably still better).
Shooting speed- 10 fps(up from 5fps on the previous model), buffer isn’t huge though –
Video UHD 4K 30p video (and up to 120p in 1080p) with HLG & S-Log3 Gammas.
3.69m-Dot Tru-Finder OLED EVF
3.0″ 1.44m-Dot Tilting Touchscreen – including touch to focus when your eye is looking through the viewfinder.
5.5 stops image stabilization on the sensor – up from 5 stops in the older model.
Improved dynamic range – Sony claims 15 stops (from some first impressions online it seems that Sony might indeed pushed the dynamic range quite a bit with this camera).
Pixel Shift Multi Shooting – this feature (which a few other manufacturers including Pentax and Olympus have used before in their cameras) takes several images and combines them to get a higher quality image (not higher res image mind you). The downside is that you will have to do this yourself in post using a Sony software – we can hope that Adobe will add automatic integration to Photoshop/Lightroom as well to save us the trouble.
Built-In Wi-Fi/Bluetooth.
Dual SD Slots – one is UHS-II and one UHS-I.
USB 3.0 Type-C Port & micro USB – this is the first camera with dual USB ports for sync/control and charging at the same time.
PC Sync Terminal – for ultra-fast flash work (if your flash can support 10fps).
New menus (similar to the A9 system).
New battery – similar to that of the A9 with over 2x times the power of the previous model.
Price: $3200.

You can find many more previews and reviews on our Photography review section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.