Sony A7III The Ultimate Wedding Camera?

Sony announced the A7III yesterday and several websites and photographers have already spent enough time to test it and give some initial reviews and from the looks of it – it seems that Sony didn’t hold back anything with this camera – updating almost every aspect of the camera compared to the A7II and letting users get quite a few of the powerful A9 features in a much more affordable body.

The A7III might seem like an evolutionary improvement compared to the previous generation (we still have a 24MP sensor with more or less the same external body) but when you look closer you see a whole host of changes – some of which will be very important to many potential users.

The sensor itself (while having the same resolution) is new and improved with 15 stops of claimed dynamic range, you now have dual card slots (UHS II and UHS I SDs) like the A9/A7RIII, an AF joystick, USB-C connection (as well as the normal micro USB) and the newer and much more powerful Z-battery (this camera has the most claimed shots per charge of any mirrorless camera – around 710).

But really the biggest difference is going to be the AF system which is a derivative of the super-capable one from the A9 with 693 phase-detection AF points covering 93% of the image area, 425 contrast AF points, and fast Eye AF.

There are other changes as well such as touch LCD with better visibility, improved viewfinder up to 10 fps with a mechanical shutter (with a very nice buffer of about 70~ RAW images) and improved low light performance (the native ISO is 100-51,200 but actual performance is always more important in this case).

Photographer Jason Lanier had this camera for quite some time and made the extensive video that you can see above and he seems to be very enthusiastic about the camera performance even compared to the A7RIII and considering the price of the camera ($2000 compared to $4500 of the A9) even the flagship Sony camera might lose a few potential buyers to this one.

Photographer Max Yuryev was on Sony’s press conference (not even knowing what camera will be announced at the time) and he had his own video after playing with the camera for a while

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A second video by Yuryev comparing the ISO performance of the A7 with the A7RIII/A6500 and GH5

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Here are the specs for the A7III:

  • Sensor: 24MP Full-Frame Exmor R BSI CMOS Sensor.
  • Processor: BIONZ X Image Processor & Front-End.
  • 693 phase-detection AF points covering 93% of the image area, 425 contrast AF points, and fast Eye AF.
  • Shooting speed- 10 fps (buffer – 89 Frames in Raw Format).
  • Video UHD 4K 30p video (and up to 120p in 1080p) with HLG & S-Log3 Gammas.
  • 2.36m-Dot Tru-Finder OLED EVF
  • 3.0″ 1.44m-Dot Tilting Touchscreen – including touch to focus when your eye is looking through the viewfinder.
  • Built-in image stabilization – 5 axis.
  • Built-In Wi-Fi/Bluetooth.
  • Dual SD Slots – one is UHS-II and one UHS-I.
  • USB 3.0 Type-C Port & micro USB.
  • New menus (similar to the A7RIII/A9 system).
  • New battery – similar to that of the A7RIII/A9 with over 2x times the power of the previous model.
  • Price: $2000.

We will be looking into several monitors in the near future so stay tuned for that. If you don’t want to miss any new photography product be sure to check out our product photography section.

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.

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