and most anticipated cameras of the year,

the Sony α7 III.

(adventurous pop music)

So you guys saw the vlog that I filmed on the Sony α7 III,

or hopefully you saw it, if you didn't, go watch it now

and you can have some back context to this video,

but now it's time to do a full-on review of the Sony α7 III,

and first off I just want to say a huge thanks

to Henry's and Sony, for giving me the camera

for a little bit to try out.

This camera was on loan, I did not buy it,

this video is not sponsored though,

I just got a camera to use for a little bit.

But thanks, guys, for hooking it up.

Now, this whole vlog and all the test footage,

they were all filmed on the Sony 16-35 F2.8,

so it is a native-mount lens, there's no adapters,

no canon lenses or any funny business going on.

So that's kind of the most optimal,

real world setting, I think.

Also the fact that I normally use a 16-35 F2.8

on my Canon cameras, full frame,

so it's almost the exact setup

so I can really compare the two,

and see what the differences are,

what are the positives, what are the negatives.

A little bit of backstory here,

the only Sony that I've owned is the α7R II,

and I used that for weddings, lowlight filming,

and then I even used it on some commercial shoots,

I used it on some stuff for Nike

and some other companies, kind of as a B camera,

A glidecam camera, just kind of sat on a glidecam,

ready to go whenever we needed it.

But there were a couple things

that I really hated about that camera,

one being the battery size. They just died so quickly.

And then the other thing was the LCD screen.

It was just so bad that if you're filming

in a log profile, you couldn't see anything.

You couldn't see what was in focus,

what was out of focus, it was really hard to use.

So I was always using the SmallHD 502 along with it

just so I could see what was going on.

And it was a really good pair, but it made the setup

about twice as big once I added the monitor.

Even though it's a really small monitor,

it still made it a lot bigger.

So, everything got more complicated at that point.

Backstory given, let's get on with the review.

I used it for a good couple of days and spent a full day

just vlogging on that camera. It was the first full day

that I've used the Sony α7 III so it was a good

real world test to just figure out,

what are the good sides, what are the bad sides,

what works, what doesn't work, and here are my findings.

I'm super happy to say the battery life is way better.

They changed the battery, it's a bigger battery now,

kind of the size of a Canon battery,

and it lasts really long.

I actually only used one battery

for the whole day of vlogging,

which is awesome. That's the way I like it to be.

I'd rather have bigger batteries and it just last longer,

like the 1D X II, massive battery but it lasts a long time.

I like it that way better.

Back in the days, I would go through like,

five batteries in one day, which is just crazy.

So many of these little tiny batteries,

and then having to charge them all. It was a big pain.

This is a huge upgrade. Like, massive,

big thumbs up for this one.

Also, my other big gripe, the LCD screen,

the LCD screen is so much better on the Sony α7 III

than the a7R II that I had back in the day.

I'm guessing the fixed it also on the a7R III,

but anyways, the LCD screen, so much better now,

I could see what I was doing,

I didn't have any issues with it at all

other than the fact that it's not a flip LCD screen.

Please, please, anybody who is listening,

if you're from Sony, if you're from Canon,

if you're from- well, Panasonic actually does it

on all their cameras, I think, now-

always have a flip LCD screen. Everybody wants it.

Photographers want it, videographers especially want it.

Have a flip LCD screen, it's a really big thing nowadays,

especially in this emerging market of self-filming,

vlogging style, YouTube, all that stuff.

Flip LCDs are so big. This LCD screen is good,

but please, just give me a flip LCD.

Next, let's talk about the colors.

The colors are really good. Some of the colors

that I was getting out of it, for example,

this pool shot, really nice colors.

But it does take a lot more work, I find, than with Canon.

I feel like, Canon, just, right out of the box,

right out of the camera, it looks decent, it looks good.

It doesn't take very much tweaking,

whereas the Sonys take a little bit more tweaking

to get it to where you want it.

Especially if you're filming in S-log,

and that's just kind of with log anytime,

you have to do a little bit more tweaking.

But I find the Sony color science

just still isn't quite as good as Canon's,

but it is really good.

Once you get it fixed and tweaked and graded,

the image looks really, really great.

Definitely way better than something like the 6D Mark II,

which is kind of what I'm comparing it to

because they're both very similar in price,

they're both full frame, but the specs are very different.

So I'm going to be comparing the two cameras

because I feel like the Sony α7 III

would be the replacement for my 6D Mark II.

So I'm going to be comparing them

and in the image department,

the Sony α7 III definitely wins by a long shot.

Now the big question that a lot of people

want to hear the answer to is,

"Does the 120p slow motion hold up?"

And yeah, I think it does.

I think it's really good actually.

It's not quite as good as the 1D X Mark II,

and that's a bit of an unfair comparison

because it's at around $2,000 camera versus $6,000.

They're totally, they're in different leagues.

But the 120 frames per second

is really nice on the Sony α7 III.

It's great that it's not cropped,

the auto-focus works pretty well in it.

Now, it does start falling apart a little bit,

especially if you're using a log profile.

I don't know if I would film

with the S-Log3 anymore in 120p,

I would at least go to S-Log2

because the bitrate is just being stretched

over all those frames, and it's just not quite holding up.

You can see once you start grading,

it just starts to fall apart pretty quickly.

With the 1D X Mark II you have about 350 megabits,

I think it is, for the 120 frames per second,

and with the Sony it's only 100 megabits.

So that's basically, almost kind of like

3.5 times better quality.

Not quite, but it's definitely a difference there,

it starts falling apart a lot quicker.

But the fact that you can have a log profile on 120p,

that already kind of makes it better in some ways

to the 1D X II, so that's really awesome.

I love having a log profile, even in 120 frames per second.

I also really like the fact that slow motion

is one of the dial settings, so you can just

quickly go to slow motion, then back to normal.

I really like that, it's super handy,

especially for my kind of filmmaking

where I need to be switching back and forth really quickly.

This makes it really nice.

Now, you can do the same thing on Canon cameras

but you have to actually manually go

and change the custom settings which isn't a big deal,

but I like the fact that Sony just came up with this,

that this is a good thing and it's there right away for you,

straight out of the box.

Oh, and I apologize that I don't have shots of the camera

because I don't have the camera anymore.

I only had it for about a week

and I didn't have time to film it,

I was vacationing in Maui, so... you know.

Please forgive me.

So the 120 is really great, but I wouldn't use S-Log3,

I'd probably use S-Log2 or one of the other color profiles

just so it doesn't start falling apart so quickly

in your color grading process,

or you just have to de-noise it a lot

before you start color grading,

but that's one more extra step

that you don't always wanna have to do.

Even though it is a good step,

but you don't wanna be forced to have to do that

every single time you do slow motion.

Side note, I realized how much I like editing

and using 1080p footage.

Putting together this vlog, it took forever

because it was 4K footage, a lot of it.

It's a lot harder on the computer and the editing software,

plus the export took like, at least four times longer

than my normal 1080p export.

Even though I just export it into a 1080p video

because of time restrictions, and half the footage,

like the 120p, was in 1080, so I did it in 1080-

Anyways, it takes a lot longer.

I don't know if I can vlog in 4K,

it just takes so much more time.

Now let's talk about the thing

that most of you noticed in my vlog,

and that's the auto-focus.

Now let's start off by saying the auto-focus is really good.

I would say it's comparable to Canon's auto-focus.

It's probably number two right now.

Canon is still king of auto-focus, I think.

Sony, with this camera at least, is just under.

It's definitely a lot better than the GH5

because it actually focuses.

If you're filming yourself, you can rely on it,

it's definitely focusing on your face

but it does the hunting thing.

It doesn't feel as confident with the auto-focus.

It doesn't just lock on and stick there.

Sometimes it's just going back and forth,

back and forth, changing a little bit.

Now, some of the vlog was filmed in responsive

instead of normal for the auto-focus,

so that's gonna do it a little bit more

but at least half of it was in normal.

I was just playing around with all the different settings.

And I also didn't use the face detection that much

because I wanted to use it

the way that I use the Canon cameras

which is just with the center frame focus thing.

So I did it the same way with the Sony

and it didn't quite work as well-

but again, it is really good auto-focus.

I think people are being a little bit critical on this part,

I would say it's just underneath Canon,

and maybe with the face detection on all the time

it would work even better

and it wouldn't do the hunting thing

when I'm filming myself.

But Canon is still king of auto-focus, I think.

Dual-pixel auto-focus just works super well.

So, some improvement could be made still

in the auto-focus department.

One of my favorite things about this camera

is the dynamic range.

It's really incredible, really nice.

Sony just does the dynamic range super well

and using Canon DSLRs for a little while

without log profile, without that nice dynamic range,