Mirrorless Camera Sony Alpha A7 III review

And at the end of this review, I also want to give you my honest opinion on the Sony A7 III. I’m going to talk about that and I’m also going to talk about the pros and cons of the Sony Alpha A7 III review.

Is it still worth it or not in comparison to the Sony A7 II is it worth upgrading to the A7 III or should you stick to the A7 II and save your money. In some cases, you can stick to the A7 II because it is still a great camera but what about if you want to buy a new camera today does the Sony Alpha A7 III still make sense whether or not Sony A7 III is the right camera for you in 2021.

And finally the Sony A7, the Sony A7 ii, the Sony A7 iii, and the Sony A7C these are hybrid cameras so they divide and they do photos equally as well.

Sony A7 III was really the first camera to just blow away the DSLR Cameras and it did that because of autofocus, face tracking, eye tracking some of the best autofocus performances you would have seen in any camera.

Sony A7 III was a legendary camera that just completely redefined the marketplace has been released in April 2019 and is one of the most popular Sony full-frame cinema cameras on the market but is it still worth it in 2021.

Disclosure: Some of the links on this site are affiliate links, meaning that if you click on one of the links and purchase an item, I may receive a commission. All opinions however are my own.

If you are into photography and videography this camera can give you the best of and I don’t think that one of the best mirrorless camera full-frame is available in the market at the price point that this camera is.

It is really good at photos and video. But if I compare with its competitors it is not the best at photo and video. Obviously, you have the Sony A7S III that’s incredible under low light and really good. I suppose bitrate it’s got the 10-bit codec it’s got 4k 120 this one is 4k 30 1080 at 120 8bit codecs and is still powerful.

It is still really good but I cannot wait to see what Sony brings out with the Sony Alpha A7 IV but by all means, this thing really compares to some of the cameras today and is still really worth it.

this camera system is just a tool there is no perfect camera system out there and it’s up to the shooter. Sony Alpha A7 III mirrorless digital camera is also not a perfect camera but it has got lots of features which you can use to get stunning-looking images.

Sony calls it the basic model in its A7 full-frame lineup because it sits below the high-resolution Sony Alpha A7R III and the video-centric Sony Alpha A7S II.

So, after I test it this camera is good at everything from 4k video autofocus, high-speed, shooting, and of course the most important thing image quality. I’ve had the camera for a few days, and I could use it instinctively and take really great images with it.

So, I’m going to give you a bunch of different reasons why this might be the camera to choose in 2021.

so for photography, the Sony Alpha A7 III review makes a really great photography camera. It still holds up very well against the other competitors at 24 megapixels.

This is pretty much all you really need when it comes to photos you can still, create really good billboards with the 20-megapixel camera.

1. Sony A7 III Autofocus

Sony A7 III has the best autofocus performance compared to a lot of other cameras on the market in fact in the last three years there are a couple of things that have changed. This camera actually got better it is better eye auto-tracking and it also had the ability to autofocus on a lot of pets, dogs, and cats so a lot of other cameras have started to catch up to this technology but I still think that the A7 III holds its own in every area.

the Sony A7 III has great autofocus capability with up to 693 points of phase detection. It’s covering about 93% of the sensor. So the Sony A7 III is a 24-megapixel camera and it has 693 autofocus points. When I was shooting with the Sony A7 III for the first time I was amazed by the autofocus. It’s incredibly good and especially the eye autofocus is just overwhelming.

so the autofocus in this camera doesn’t have Sony’s newest autofocus that is 8i base and actively tracks eyes and faces and subjects, unfortunately, you can only get that in the Sony A9 and the Sony A6400 and this camera is the only camera that comes close to the Sony A7S II.

but you always have to ask yourself what do I do for kind of work I mean are you just a beginner where you photo shooting your puppy or with friends. If you’re just doing that you definitely would be fine with the aps-c lineup like with the Sony A6000, Sony A6100, Sony A6400 these are also amazing cameras with great autofocus.

if you’re looking for a camera just for vlogging, I’d recommend a different camera maybe the Sony Alpha A7C may suit you better but that is priced a little higher. But if you’re looking for just a vlogging camera I think there are better options out there in the market like the fuji xt4 a GoPro or the DJI pocket and if you’re looking to do just video work I recommend the Sony A7S III.

I love to shoot with this camera because each photo I take is just sharp. In comparison with the previous version, Sony A7 II has a huge struggle when it comes to video out of focus. So this is the first point and it’s definitely a game-changer, the second point is this lens which is insane and I never had a wide-angle lens.

Sony cameras have the hybrid autofocus system and basically. It uses two different ways of getting autofocus which number one is phase detection which has phase-detection points almost across the entire frame also uses contrast detection.

phase detection instantly tells the camera which direction it needs to focus to get there. And it gets it more than 90 percent of the way there and then contrast-detection kicks in to fine-tune. And it does this really seamlessly and makes a really nice autofocus system.

the most consequential adjustments that you can make to the autofocus on a sony camera are two things the AF track sensor speed and the AF Drive speed.

2. Sony A7 III Body

it has dual memory card slots, a mic jack, a headphone jack, a mini HDMI, USB-C, and a regular USB cable slot weather-sealed body, super-fast hybrid autofocus with 693 focus points.

3. Sony A7 iii Battery

the A7 iii uses the Sony NP-FZ 100 battery and you’ll be able to get about 710 shots and about 2.5 hours of record time, which is still one of the best on the market for mirrorless cameras.

So with its z-type batteries has a significant improvement from its previous version A7 II and for a good reason lasts forever you could probably go a day with just two of these batteries. But depending on how much work you’re doing these batteries are so much better than the old Sony batteries.

and also the battery life is a huge difference between the Sony A7 II and the Sony A7 III. And one thing I love about the Sony Alpha A7 III review is that you also have better batteries with the Sony A7 III. And these ones are actually a bit bigger than the Sony A6000 batteries.

Sony has greatly improved the battery life by putting the batteries from the A9 in the A7 III. Honestly, the newsy battery is the biggest improvement on this camera all the new makes a huge difference and really gets past a major weakness on the part of the Sony cameras. in fact the A7 III gives the best battery life one of the new cameras that use this type of battery.

so I want to compare the Sony A7 III with cameras of a similar price range compared to the competition as well the battery life on the Sony A7 III can take up to 710 shots on a single charge.

4. EVF

it has a 2.63 million dot EVF which unfortunately today is quite poor especially when the A7 SIII has a 9.4 million dots EVF which is just incredibly bright I absolutely love it but the EVF is still perfectly fine.

• When it comes to the EVF it’s two-point three-six million dots it’s basically the same EVF you would have in the A7R ii.

5. Sony A7 III Face Detection external monitor

when I first started in the videography business I was always wondering why can’t ever get my face detection to have the faces in focus it would go in and out a focus.

If you want to use face detect autofocus on Sony A7 III you need to disable internal recording and you only record to an external device–an external recorder, that then you can use face detection AF in 4K.

Any time that you record internally, you won’t be able to use it. So, if you’re just using an external monitor and just monitoring it, you want to record inside the Sony.

You have to have an external recorder actually capturing it, and not be recorded to the Sony.

This operation can’t be used when XAVC S 4K is used, which is why most people thought you can’t use it in 4K, but you can use it in 1080.

And one last thing you need to know about face detects autofocus is that you’re gonna wanna use–don’t use things like “Expandable Flexible Spot”, or any flexible spots. But you’re gonna wanna use some of the bigger things like “wide”.

And the reason why this is is that flexible spot outranks the face detect autofocus, where the face detects outranks wide.

6. Sony A7 III LCD Monitor Touchscreen

A7 III has a touchscreen which is nice except that it can only be used to select focus and not do menu operations. it’s not as bright or sharp as the one on the A7R III or even on its predecessor.

the rear screen isn’t exactly great quality Sony is just saving money by doing the same screens each time it’s not really that useful as well. It’s just it’s got a touch to focus which is a perfectly fine touch the focus has worked very handily for me especially if you are photographing, it can actually be quite handy and it only does just flip up as well.

You can’t use the screen on the A7 III to navigate through the menu system but you can use the touchscreen for focusing. This is a first in this lineup there also was a slight change to the viewfinder while the resolution remained the same from the A7 II to the A7 III.

The viewfinder on the A7 III was at 0.78 x magnification versus 0.71 magnification on the previous model so you get a larger image when you are looking through this viewfinder.

7. Sony Alpha A7 iii Performance

The Sony A7 iii is 4K 30 frames per second and 4K 24 frames per second which you can not shoot 4K slow-moon, but you can shoot up to full HD 1080p up to 120 frames per second which again for slow-mo once you upscale it to a 4K.

it’s capable of shooting up to 10 frames per second in burst mode and it can record to that dual sd card one of those sd cards is s2 which can do obviously the faster recording. And one of them is just the regular s1 which is still perfectly fine you can do a redundant recording.

this camera offered S-log 2s-log 3 and the newest high color profile, this is a massive improvement if you do video work. It also offered a more comfortable grip not much of a difference over the Sony A7 II but it is slightly more comfortable if you have smaller fingers.

If I compare Sony A7 III vs Sony A7 II can only shoot up to five photos per second and another great thing about the Sony A7 III is that I was able to shoot 4k and also this camera has in-body stabilization.

one of the features that I love in the FX6 it doesn’t have ibis this has in-body image stabilization which is absolutely fantastic when it comes to photography.

8. Rolling Shutter

so the rolling shutter on this thing is it’s relatively acceptable it is nowhere near the A7 SIII or fx6 the A7S III and FX6 are pretty much non-existent. When it comes to rolling shutter it’s a massive difference and I mean it’s not like the A6400 that thing is horrendous.

It’s bearable it’s not great but you know you can still, work with it if you don’t have too much-moving objects fast-moving objects on your screen you won’t really notice too much of a difference.

if you look at a lot of other cameras that are competing in ca-7 3 like the Nikon d750 or canon 6d mark 2 you’ll notice a distinct lack of focus and joystick on those cameras so one of the key things about Sony cameras are you got to get them set up the way you like.

9. Low Light Performance

It has amazing low light performance at usable iso levels up to 12 000 five-axis in-body stabilization extremely accurate eye tracking autofocus for when you’re shooting portraits 10 frames per second continuous shooting for high-action photography.

10. Image Quality

the image quality from this is insane they are so sharp it’s a 24-megapixel sensor that is big enough to do a lot of stuff with certainly big enough to do almost anything online. But also be able to print things out at a pretty large size and the files are fairly easy to work with because they’re not gigantic files. And the thing that I like about the 24-megapixel sensor is it performs really well on bright days.

I’ve never had a complaint about the photo quality coming from this camera, I was able to crop in if I need to but it also gives me plenty of space and plenty of detail to work with. When was working with the photos in the post, in the photo, mode is that it has a built-in intervalometer.

Sony A7 iii has feature ibis in-body image stabilization and as I realized it is improved over the A7 III. According to sony, you get five stops of shutter advantage with the ibis on the A7 III and silent shooting.

11. Dynamic range

Dynamic range is decent it claims to have 15 stops of dynamic range but I think it’s somewhere around 12 or 13 8-bit color depth which is for the most part perfectly fine for creating content.

12. Sony A7 III SPECS

• Shot at ISO 6400
• 5-axis image stabilization
• 5-axis OSS:
• Telephoto lens OFF/ON　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
• 5-axis OSS: Close-up shooting OFF/ON　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
• 5-axis OSS: Long exposure OFF/ON 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
• Wide 693-point AF coverage
• Steadfast tracking Simulated movie
• Up to 10fps bursts with AF/AE
• Up to 10fps silent shooting
• Eye AF revolutionizes portraiture Simulated movie Turning around
• Full-frame 4K HDR 1/2 high resolution
• HLG3/BT.2020 Color graded for SDR screen
• High battery performance Up to 710 shots per charge
• Broad connectivity USB 3.1 Gen1 compatible type-C port
• Easy viewing and control Touch control and tilting LCD monitor
• Easy viewing and control XGA OLED Tru-Finder
• Fast operation AF-ON button / Multi-selector / My Menu

13. Weight

Sony a7 III has gained a bit of weight over its predecessor but for a full-frame camera, it’s still pretty light at 650 grams.

If I compare with others competitors like Nikon D750 weighs more at 750 grams and those extra grams. The most for any mirrorless camera, unfortunately, Sony borrowed the electronic viewfinder from the last model.

just increasing the magnification slightly it’s not as sharp as the one on Panasonic’s GH 5s or the Fujifilm XH 1.

14. Sony A7 III Sensor

Sony A7 III has a 24.2 megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor it can take 14-bit raw files uncompressed raw 10 fps continuous shooting. It can record 4k up to 30 frames per second uncropped 180p up to 120 frames per second.

15. Sony A7 III Specs

• Advanced image processing
• Tilting touch LCD
• Back Iluminated Full Frame Sensor
• 5 Axis Image Stabilization
• Focus joystick
• audio jack
• headphone jack
• Natural skin tones
• Fast AF response
• Looking down

16. Sony A7 III Price

There’s a big price difference between the A7 II and the A7 III but that’s because this is a big jump in performance features autofocus between those two cameras. I highly recommend trying to get your hands on either one of these two cameras for photography.

there are a lot of cameras that offer a lot I just think the Sony A7 III in this day and age is still one of the best value for money.

So, how much does this thing cost right now?

If you are interested in buying this camera the A7 III came at an affordable price point that a lot of people got excited about it for the time. It cost $2000 but if you don’t really want to spend over $2 000 this is a great option.

So, for $2,000 you could put in an extra $500 and get a Canon 5D Mark IV which has a 30-megapixel sensor, does 20 frames per second, and also does video really well.

But I really recommend looking into the Blackmagic pocket cameras because they’re in the same price range. And the Blackmagic pocket 4K has a micro 4/3 sensor and the Blackmagic Pocket 6K is a lot more than this camera so staying under 2,000 definitely your best choice.

the A7 to the A7 III has a great complement of ports with USB type-c HDMI and thankfully both headphone and microphone ports it comes with Wi-Fi Bluetooth and NFC.

but the required smartphone app Klay memories occasionally fails to connect and is a bit laggy. You won’t get by reading the specs because Sony has improved handling and ergonomics on the a7.

I tested and found that I can shoot for several hours and I still have 60 to 70 percent of the battery left so that’s another big improvement over the last model A7.

If you are excited about all these features you need to know that this camera lets you fire 10 frames per second for up to 9 seconds.

Fast shooting is useless if the autofocus isn’t equally fast and accurate however luckily the A7 III has an AF system that’s up to the task.

I must say that Sony’s algorithm-powered eye detection is particularly good ensuring that your subjects’ faces are always in focus when it comes to video that Sony Alpha A7 III review might be Sony’s best full-frame camera.

I want to mention one more time autofocus because it’s good but not great.

the center lock-on AF lets you isolate a specific subject but it doesn’t work as well as the tap to track dual pixel.

its class images are sharp and colors accurate especially skin tones that have been a problem for Sony in the past but for JPEG images the A7 III yields more natural skin tones and colors than the last model.

sharpening and noise reduction handle better than on any other camera video is pin-sharp with accurate colors and shallow depth-of-field.

I was lucky to shoot 1080p at up to 120 frames per second using the full sensor and slow it down in-camera to 30 P or 24 P.

the A7 has several log profiles to maximize dynamic range but it doesn’t output 10-bit video like Panasonic’s G85. So there are fewer options in post-production Sony’s A7 III isn’t perfect as the EVF and rear display fall short of rivals.

Video quality is limited compared to the Panasonic GH5s.

it’s not as rugged as the A7 RII or Sony A9 and with all a series of mirrorless cameras, the lenses are expensive for $2000.

Why You Should Buy Sony A7 III?

• What I also like about the Sony A7 III is that this camera has an audio jack on the right side and a headphone jack so when you’re for example into filmmaking you can use that and put it for a microphone on top and then like travel and vlog and you have better audio.

• Another thing I like and one of the best things about the Sony A7 III is that it has two sd card slots, you can shoot up to 10 photos per second. So, when you’re for example sports photography or white light photography this camera is good because you can do so many photos at the same time.

• The A7 III is the first camera in the lineup to offer dual card slots instead of the A7 II it has one SD card slot. The last thing is that it offered vastly improved color science which is newer than the A7 II.

• A reason why I like the Sony A7 III is because of its similar style to the Sony A6000 not as small as the A6000 not too heavy but smaller than most DSLR cameras.

• and the last advantage I love about the A7 III is that you also have better batteries with the Sony A7 III and these are actually a bit bigger than the Sony A6000 batteries.

Advantages

• uses a xavc codec and works with premiere pro
• amazing for churning out fast content
• Connecting your camera to a portable power bank and continue shooting
• beast in low light
• raw file sizes at 47.3 megabytes for uncompressed files.
• 23.8 megabytes for a compressed raw.
• weather sealing
• dust and moisture-resistant

Disadvantages

there are still some things I dislike about the Sony A7 III and the first thing is that there’s no flip-up screen. Because I don’t do a lot of vlogging for me it’s not a big problem but it would be handy with the Sony A7 III if you have an articulating screen so you can see yourself in the mirror.

one of the biggest limitations that I found with this camera system is that actually if you connect this camera system with an external monitor and hit record on the camera, you lose the video feed on the rear monitor on the electronic viewfinder which is not the desired outcome that.

• the s-log 3 does start to fall apart because it does shoot in 8-bit shooting in hyper log gamma.
• the mini HDMI port is not strong enough to hold a HDMI
• Doesn’t have a flip-out screen

if you want better full-frame 4k video quality the A7S II is also a good choice but frankly, the A7 III now offers the best-rounded feature set you can get.

if you want 4k Panasonic GH5 has excellent 10-bit video and higher DCI 4k resolution but you’ll have to settle for a much smaller Micro Four Thirds sensor Fuji films xh1 has much-improved video but again a smaller sensor.

How does A7 III Compares Again its Competitors?

where the A7 III is showing its age it only allows you to record 4k at 30 frames per second whereas the A7 S III and Sony FX6 do 4k at 120 frames per second this does 1080 at 120 frames per second so, in my opinion, 1080 is still pretty decent but between 4k and 1080 there’s a fairly big the difference.

However, A7S III and the FX6 do 240 frames per second in 1080 which has actually come in handy for me but the A7IV will actually have those features so the A7 III only has a micro HDMI port.

obviously, here is the A7C which is just a recycled from A7 III with a flipped screen no EVF so or smaller EVF anyway but other than that this is my review of my experience of the A7 III and I certainly think it’s still worth it especially if you are looking to get into the full-frame, I recommend A7 III or the A7C.

the Sony A7 IV will probably improve with that fully articulating screen maybe shooting up to 4k 60 which I think would be a great device.

Wrapping Up

another thing that’s great about the A7 III although it’s not the best is it does have in-body image stabilization it helps you out when you’re trying to shoot in lower light with photos quite a bit. It helps you out to a certain extent with video, even the ibis in the camera the in-body image stabilization.

it’s not the best but on wider angle lenses it definitely helps. It’s just it’s definitely not comparable to what else is out there in other cameras on the market. But in a pinch, you can hold it sort of steady it does work. If you put it on a gimbal and use it as a gimbal camera which the A7 III works great as a gimbal camera.

Is the Sony A7 III Good for Photography?

If you’re a handled shooter you’ll be pleased to note that the A7 III has excellent 5 axis Sensor ship image in-body stabilization that works as well in the field as the specs claim it makes shooting at night hand-held a doable undertaking and allows you to take advantage of lower ISO than you’d normally to use still photos video studio landscapes action photography.

Is Sony A7 III still a Good Buy?

the Sony A7 III is the best full-frame mirrorless camera on the market its speed autofocus dynamic range
and image and video quality are simply fantastic. the A7 III is 24 megapixel sensor.

It has a full 15 stops of dynamic range and an ISO range of 100 to 50 1200 expandable to 50 to 200 4,800 this makes it one of the best low-light cameras available with 693 phase detection points and 425 contrast detection areas.

the Sony A7 III lightning-fast hybrid autofocus system rockets pass all of the top DSLRs the autofocus also excels during continuous shooting mode keeping the subject and focused even at 10fps you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to get great images with this camera.

Is the Sony A7 III Good in low light?

the A7 III 4k video footage comes out impressively detailed even with the frame rates up to 30 fps at 24 fps the Sony a7 III uses oversampled 6k video to downsize to 4k with no prop add to that the low-light performance and ISO range and you get beautiful footage every time.

there are also plenty of video capture features including HLG and log footage slow motion capture and zipper warnings for exposure and focus peaking the headphone and mic jacks are a nice touch as well.

Conclusion

As I said before I still believe when you compare it to other like cameras on the market I mean there are cameras which are $4000 or $6000 so it’s still kind of a bargain if you do it to the right choice.