Considering the purchase of a Sony A7 III

[Quincy Vagell]

Has anyone shot with the Sony a7 III? I'm long overdue for a proper camera upgrade and since this will be a substantial investment, I'm weighing my options before pulling the trigger. I'm biased toward Sony in general, always have been, and am leaning toward the a7 III.

The only thing I'm less than thrilled about is having to go with all new lenses. I have several A-mount lenses, but I'm also wondering if anyone has used an adapter to fit A-mount lenses on an E-mount camera, like the a7s. Image cropping is a concern, but also the fact that my lenses are a few years old, focusing and picture quality with an adapter are somewhat of an unknown.

Any thoughts?

 

[Dan Robinson]

My only hesitation with all of the a7 series cameras is that the rolling shutter on all of them is still quite bad. Of course, this is only a concern if you plan on shooting lightning video with it (a capability I would personally want in a camera of that price).

 

[Quincy Vagell]

I appreciate the feedback.

From what I’ve seen demonstrated, the rolling shutter issue is improved on the a7iii vs the a7sii. It’s still not perfect, but since my primary use for the camera will be still shots, I decided to preorder one today. A local camera store had a trade in bonus event and I got a great deal (saved over $500 just for trading in some old equipment that wasn’t worth a lot. With the amount saved, I’ve ordered an adapter so I can use some of my existing A-mount lenses as well. (Buying new lenses would cost considerably more)

I will definitely test the camera with lightning video and see how it performs. Considering what I’ve used up until now, this camera will be a huge upgrade, regardless.

 

[Quincy Vagell]

As an update, I am extremely happy with the purchase of this camera. The quality of my photos has dramatically increased and that's after only using the camera for a few months. My best photos have come from the kit lens as well, as I did not have to dish out a lot of extra money for lenses. I did buy an adapter to use my old A-mount lenses. They work flawlessly with the adapter.

The only thing I am less than excited about is the quality of the video camera with capturing lightning. Granted, I have only done a few tests, but I have not had great success with capturing lightning. I've tried standard HD and 4K video and the results so far are not particularly impressive. They're still much better than a standard video camera and maybe I need to play around more with slow motion video for better lightning captures. I also wonder if focusing and adjusting ISO/F-stops could be a factor as well, especially since this camera is still relatively new to me.

The battery life is better than I would have expected. I recall hearing that some of the Sony A7s had poor battery life, but it appears to have been improved with the A7iii. I've consistently gone three or more storm chases in a row without having the charge the battery. Note that this is based on mainly shooting photos, as I've only done a few relatively short video clips (less than one minute long) during most of my chases. I had a 200+ image photoshoot with this camera and I still had more than enough battery life after the shoot to transfer a large number (at least 50) of those photos to my phone, via WiFi with the camera.

Overall, I would highly recommend this camera for photography, regardless of your skill set. Video quality is good, especially 4K, but as @Dan Robinson mentioned, it is not particularly great at handling high quality lightning videography, given the cost. Compared to standard or lower priced cameras, it does a fine job. For the record, I have not used the camera much in terms of shooting lightning stills.