Looking back on my older photography posts I discover that in April I will have had my Sony A7 III camera for three years.\u00a0 I think this is a good time to review what I think about the recent progress that Sony has made and where the A7 III and my photographic needs stand.<\/p>\n
First off, the A7 III is a wonderful camera.\u00a0 It produces images that I never could have imagined possible ten years ago when I started using the Sony mirrorless cameras.\u00a0 When I moved from my Sony A-850 DSLR to the NEX mirrorless cameras it was incredibly disappointing.\u00a0 The autofocus didn\u2019t deserve the name.\u00a0 It was manual focus or nothing.\u00a0 The battery life was laughable and the viewfinder was pretty sad.\u00a0 I could get some good results from it, even results indoors that I might not be able to get with my DSLR but frustration was a constant part of the Sony photographic experience.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If I knew then how long it would take Sony to reach the A7 III level of capability I probably would have bitten the bullet and moved on to Canon or Nikon.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t and now finally I am truly pleased with the system.\u00a0 Sure, there are still some quibbles, I wish the LAEA5 adapter would allow me to autofocus my mechanical autofocus A-mount lenses with the A7 III but that is just that, a quibble.\u00a0 If I wanted, I could buy an A7R IV or an A9 and get that functionality but that would be kind of crazy from my point of view.\u00a0 So here I am with a very good digital camera and a chance to compare it to the newer Sony models.\u00a0 After all, the A7 III is a generation before the IV series and a notch down from the professional A9\u2019s and two notches down from the flagship A1.\u00a0 So here are my thoughts.<\/p>\n
Back when the Sony A9 first came out I was curious to see what the advantages of such a camera would be.\u00a0 I rented it and gave it a tryout.\u00a0 What I found was that it was a sports camera and the A7 III was not.\u00a0 I know that was what it was touted as but it wasn\u2019t apparent until I had it in hand just how inadequate the A7 III was for things like tracking autofocus or just how inadequate the file buffer was.\u00a0 The A9 was light years ahead of my camera.\u00a0 And even the autofocus I typically used for macro shots of insects and birds was more precise and faster and had additional capability that my camera lacked.\u00a0 For instance, the A7 III can stay in magnified view when focusing repeatedly on a subject that I\u2019m getting ready to capture.\u00a0 But once the shot is taken it returns to unmagnified view.\u00a0 The A9 can stay in magnified view indefinitely for shot after shot.\u00a0 That is a great advantage.<\/p>\n
So, the A9 has capability that I do wish I had.\u00a0 But image-wise I think the A7 III files are at least as good as the A9 files.\u00a0 There has been an A9 II update a few years back. \u00a0I haven\u2019t tried it out.\u00a0 From what I\u2019ve read the improvements are part of the autofocus upgrades and allow for even better sports and wildlife action shooting.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it\u2019s very capable but once again the sensor hasn\u2019t progressed in terms of high ISO capability.\u00a0 In fact, based on the DXOMARK testing the A7 III still has the highest ISO rating of any full frame camera on the market.<\/p>\n
Recently Sony came out with a $6,500 flagship camera, the A-1.\u00a0 From what I understand it is an even more miraculous sports camera than the A9 series.\u00a0 It has a ridiculously large writing buffer and can take thirty shots per second or something obscene like that.\u00a0 But its sensor is not rated to a higher ISO rating.\u00a0 It does have a 50-megapixel sensor.\u00a0 But that also means you get 50+ megabyte file sizes which is starting to get cumbersome.\u00a0 Maybe someday I\u2019ll try it out just for laughs but that price tag is outrageous.<\/p>\n
So here I am.\u00a0 Other than my camera not being able to autofocus my two favorite a-mount lenses, the Sony 135mm f1.8 lens and the Minolta 200mm f4 Macro, I really don\u2019t need any of the new cameras.\u00a0 Even the new Sony A7S III really doesn\u2019t interest me.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a videographer and its high ISO numbers surprisingly still don\u2019t match the A7 III.\u00a0 This was a bit of a shocker for me.\u00a0 The A7S series is supposed to have the best low light sensitivity of all the A7 line.\u00a0 But apparently the video improvements are what drove the new model and high ISO was left as is.<\/p>\n
If I were a sports and wildlife photographer then the A1 or at least the A9 II would be the cameras I wanted.\u00a0 If I was a purely landscape guy then the A1 or the A7R IV would provide me with the resolution I crave.\u00a0 If I was a videographer and I didn\u2019t want a full-blown video camera I\u2019d be looking at the A7S III.\u00a0 But I\u2019m just a general-purpose photographer that does some landscape and some macro and a little bit of wildlife and no video.\u00a0 So, all of those other cameras are overkill and sometimes inferior for my needs.<\/p>\n
For yourself this review might help point you in the direction of which Sony full frame ILC is right for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looking back on my older photography posts I discover that in April I will have had my Sony A7 III camera for three years.\u00a0 I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[660,3,659],"tags":[461,2553,20,2917,32,330,34,2638,986],"class_list":["post-13590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camera-reviews","category-photography","category-photography-reviews","tag-photography","tag-photography-review","tag-sony","tag-sony-a1","tag-sony-a7-cameras","tag-sony-a7-iii","tag-sony-a9","tag-sony-la-ea5-adapter","tag-sony-mirrorless-cameras"],"yoast_head":"\n