Sony a7 III discussion

[jonpais]

Lenses don’t have to cost a fortune. I’m picking a few full frame Sigma lenses.

[Jacek]

There are E-mount versions of fantastic, cheap Samyang primes (also in cine-like versions).

[Django]

3 hours ago, Robert Collins said:

Sensible stuff I guess. But, personally, I dont think a lot will change.

Yes the Sony bodies (especially the A7iii) look great value when compared to their nearest competitors. But you still get bitten by the lenses one way or another - either expensive native lenses or adapters/reduced performance.

I suspect the 6Dii and 5D mkiv prices will come down but that is because noone will buy them if they dont rather than they will switch to Sony.

Plenty of reasons to pick a 5D4 over a A73 : native Canon lens support, superior colors/ skintones , 30MP sensor, DCI 4K, 422 intra high bitrate codec, dual pixel autofocus, better weather sealing, built-in timelapse , excellent ergonomics, touchscreen menus & gestures etc..

Highly doubt Canon sales/prices will be affected much by this. The 5D3 hardly saw a price drop when the A7 could be bought for $900. They address different markets.

To be honest i don't understand the hype over this camera.. we have one at the office (boss is a sony fan) and i can hardly notice any IQ difference with the previous A7R/S II series.

A lot of the same issues though (and some new ones too!). I guess the pricing is what makes it so tempting, flagship Sonys costing almost double. 

 

edit: i can confirm we have the bottom pixel blinking issue on our unit!

 

 

[Don Kotlos]

3 hours ago, jonpais said:

Lenses don’t have to cost a fortune. I’m picking a few full frame Sigma lenses.

Yeah sigmas sound good. With the a7riii I am using AF even more so the native lenses are great, but I also have a bunch of Nikon manual lenses. That is the beauty of the FE mount, you can adapt any full frame lens. For video, you can find excellent MF glass very cheap. 

Another good choice for video are the slrmagic cine lenses. I consider the 35mm f/1.2 FE @ $300 a bargain. 

Also, the S35 mode basically doubles your lenses. For example, the tiny loxia 35mm coupled with the clear zoom of A7rii gave me a 35-100mm range at f/2. That is crazy. With A7riii the clear zoom was reduced from 2x to 1.5x but I am not sure about the A7iii. 

[BTM_Pix]

Its the TechArt Pro adapter that intrigues me for the Sony mount cameras.

AF for any manual lens you can get a Leica M adapter for (i.e. all of them!) is pretty amazing.

It even works with modern AF Nikon G lenses if you have an M adapter with aperture control.

 

[Don Kotlos]

8 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Its the TechArt Pro adapter that intrigues me for the Sony mount cameras.

AF for any manual lens you can get a Leica M adapter for (i.e. all of them!) is pretty amazing.

It even works with modern AF Nikon G lenses if you have an M adapter with aperture control.

 

I am amazed of how fast it appears to be. It feels like it is fake!

[BTM_Pix]

1 minute ago, Don Kotlos said:

I am amazed of how fast it appears to be. It feels like it is fake!

I know.

Here it is on the the new camera doing AF-C eye tracking (albeit of a picture but it gets the point across!) on one of these

 

 

[jonpais]

3 hours ago, Django said:

Plenty of reasons to pick a 5D4 over a A73 : native Canon lens support, superior colors/ skintones , 30MP sensor, DCI 4K, 422 intra high bitrate codec, dual pixel autofocus, better weather sealing, built-in timelapse , excellent ergonomics, touchscreen menus & gestures etc..

Highly doubt Canon sales/prices will be affected much by this. The 5D3 hardly saw a price drop when the A7 could be bought for $900. They address different markets.

To be honest i don't understand the hype over this camera.. we have one at the office (boss is a sony fan) and i can hardly notice any IQ difference with the previous A7R/S II series.

A lot of the same issues though (and some new ones too!). I guess the pricing is what makes it so tempting, flagship Sonys costing almost double. 

 

edit: i can confirm we have the bottom pixel blinking issue on our unit!

 

 

On the video side, the Canon 5D Mk IV sounds a trifle lackluster. The touch screen doesn’t even tilt out at all, making it quite awkward to shoot. The 4K crop is a bummer. The HDMI out won’t put out 4K. Ancient codec that takes up lots of storage and is inefficient for editing. The files are very CPU intensive. Rolling shutter is not impressive. 60% more expensive than the Sony. Canon is just crippling their cameras to protect their high end. I don’t understand the hype around their cameras. Unlike Canon, Sony actually exceeded most expectations: dual card slots, headphone jack, 693 AF points, triple the battery life of its predecessor, great low light performance and on and on. No withholding of features to protect their top flagship models. They are out to dominate.

[Robert Collins]

3 hours ago, Django said:

Plenty of reasons to pick a 5D4 over a A73 : native Canon lens support, superior colors/ skintones , 30MP sensor, DCI 4K, 422 intra high bitrate codec, dual pixel autofocus, better weather sealing, built-in timelapse , excellent ergonomics, touchscreen menus & gestures etc..

Highly doubt Canon sales/prices will be affected much by this. The 5D3 hardly saw a price drop when the A7 could be bought for $900. They address different markets.

To be honest i don't understand the hype over this camera.. we have one at the office (boss is a sony fan) and i can hardly notice any IQ difference with the previous A7R/S II series.

A lot of the same issues though (and some new ones too!). I guess the pricing is what makes it so tempting, flagship Sonys costing almost double. 

 

edit: i can confirm we have the bottom pixel blinking issue on our unit!

 

 

Yes, I agree.

And very few people mention that the 5D4 also has a mirror which protects you from dust when you change lenses...

[jonpais]

No proof it’s any better than mirrorless when it comes to dust.

[Robert Collins]

7 minutes ago, jonpais said:

No proof it’s any better than mirrorless when it comes to dust.

I am 100% confident that putting 'something' in front of a sensor to prevent dust is better than not having 'anything' in front of a sensor to prevent dust.

I do however agree, that if you consider the major advantage of having a 'mirror' is that it prevents 'dust' you are really stretching the argument for having a mirror in the first place...

[jonpais]

We are often mistaken too. What makes sense doesn’t always turn out to be so. In any case, no reason to choose one camera over another.

[Django]

it's not just the lack of mirror.. sony e-mount has such short flange, it easily exposes the sensor to exterior elements. 

our A7iii hasn't been in for a week and it's already been sent for sensor cleaning lol..

[BasiliskFilm]

4 hours ago, Django said:

Plenty of reasons to pick a 5D4 over a A73 : native Canon lens support, superior colors/ skintones , 30MP sensor, DCI 4K, 422 intra high bitrate codec, dual pixel autofocus, better weather sealing, built-in timelapse , excellent ergonomics, touchscreen menus & gestures etc..

Highly doubt Canon sales/prices will be affected much by this. The 5D3 hardly saw a price drop when the A7 could be bought for $900. They address different markets.

To be honest i don't understand the hype over this camera.. we have one at the office (boss is a sony fan) and i can hardly notice any IQ difference with the previous A7R/S II series.

A lot of the same issues though (and some new ones too!). I guess the pricing is what makes it so tempting, flagship Sonys costing almost double. 

 

edit: i can confirm we have the bottom pixel blinking issue on our unit!

 

 

If you want heavily cropped video, surely the Panasonic route would make a lot more sense? You can't even use a focal reducer on the 5D mkIV 

[Robert Collins]

8 minutes ago, Django said:

it's not just the lack of mirror.. sony e-mount has such short flange, it easily exposes the sensor to exterior elements. 

our A7iii hasn't been in for a week and it's already been sent for sensor cleaning lol..

No I 100% agree. 

At the point that noone can think of a sensible reason to have a mirror in front of a sensor, they will simply state the unassailable fact that a mirror in front of a sensor is incredibly useful because it will prevent 'dust'.

 

[Django]

47 minutes ago, BasiliskFilm said:

If you want heavily cropped video, surely the Panasonic route would make a lot more sense? You can't even use a focal reducer on the 5D mkIV 

The 5DIV crop factor is closer to APS-C then it is to M43. Also some of us still shoot in 1080p and the 5DIV does FF FHD. Furthermore as a hybrid camera, the 5DIV destroys any Panny camera for stills. Finally dual pixel AF works for 4K and is a valuable asset. 

I realize I'm the only person in the community 'defending' this camera but i honestly think it's a bit under-rated despite it's exuberant pricing and shortcomings..

[Don Kotlos]

2 hours ago, jonpais said:

No proof it’s any better than mirrorless when it comes to dust.

Actually I have much worse experience with dust & DSLRs than I had with mirrorless. Most people don't realize that dust enters the space between the mount and the sensor no matter whether there is a mirror or not. These dust particles will then go on the sensor and in the case of DSLRs can also go to the mirror, the ground glass &  the AF sensor. Cleaning the DSLR is NO FUN and very hard to do when not on top of a clean desk. The flange distance has nothing to do with the dust or any harm to the sensor, if anything it makes cleaning it much easier. You can easily spot the dust particles and remove them with the tip of a cleaning cloth in a matter of seconds while hand holding the camera. No way you can do that with the DSLR. This whole argument sounds like it is coming from people with very little experience with both systems. If people actually searched around they would find that this is a myth and actual users report the opposite.

Here is an example: https://photographylife.com/mirrorless-vs-dslr

"Movement of Air: as the mirror flips up and down, it moves plenty of air inside the camera chamber. And with air, it also moves dust and other debris around, which eventually ends up on the camera sensor. Some people argue that their DSLR cameras are better suited for changing lenses than mirrorless cameras, because there is a mirror between the sensor and the mount. There might be some truth to that. However, what happens with that dust after the mirror moves inside the chamber? All that dust will obviously circulate inside the chamber. In my experience shooting with a number of different mirrorless cameras, I found them to be actually less prone to dust than any of my DSLRs."

That is my experience as well and I have been using these systems for years. 

[webrunner5]

10 hours ago, Robert Collins said:

. But you still get bitten by the lenses one way or another - either expensive native lenses or adapters/reduced performance.

.

I know of No camera line that has Cheap Native lenses. The main reason a lot of the Sony lenses are damn expensive is that they are new and few used ones around. But brand new they Ain't giving Canon and Nikon lenses away either. And Fuji is not giving their lenses away either, and they are APSC. I don't know how Anyone but a Dentist can afford a sack of new lenses LoL.

And a fair amount of Canon EF lenses work as good or in some cases better on a Sony A7r mk II, Mk III than on a Canon. I would bet the new Sony A7 mk III might even be better than all but the A9, They both have a ton of focus points. I am using a Canon APSC 10-22mm in crop mode on my A7s adapted and it is doing surprisingly well focus wise on it. I am sure not as well as on a Canon, but the original A7s is not known for super good focus as the later ones.

I am using this adapter, works out great when I use Slog 2. But I had to sand down, file down a bit of the rear plastic "Protrusions" on the EFS lenses to make them work!   No problem with the normal EF lenses. They hit the glass that protects the ND filters in the back of the unit. Sort of the "No Balls, No Blue Chips" thing on expensive lenses. An old Poker card game saying.

I am sure this adapter is probably not as good as a Metabones, never owned one, but they don't have the ND filters in one that I Need in Slog 2. 3200 ISO min is a ball buster without them in daytime.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019D5P7EQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[eoslover]

Rave review by TCSTV from both Chris and Jordan

well done Sony

[BasiliskFilm]

20 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I know of No camera line that has Cheap Native lenses. The main reason a lot of the Sony lenses are damn expensive is that they are new and few used ones around. But brand new they Ain't giving Canon and Nikon lenses away either. And Fuji is not giving their lenses away either, and they are APSC. I don't know how Anyone but a Dentist can afford a sack of new lenses LoL.

And a fair amount of Canon EF lenses work as good or in some cases better on a Sony A7r mk II, Mk III than on a Canon. I would bet the new Sony A7 mk III might even be better than all but the A9, They both have a ton of focus points. I am using a Canon APSC 10-22mm in crop mode on my A7s adapted and it is doing surprisingly well focus wise on it. I am sure not as well as on a Canon, but the original A7s is not known for super good focus as the later ones.

I am using this adapter, works out great when I use Slog 2. But I had to sand down, file down a bit of the rear plastic "Protrusions" on the EFS lenses to make them work!   No problem with the normal EF lenses. They hit the glass that protects the ND filters in the back of the unit. Sort of the "No Balls, No Blue Chips" thing on expensive lenses. An old Poker card game saying.

I am sure this adapter is probably not as good as a Metabones, never owned one, but they don't have the ND filters in one that I Need in Slog 2. 3200 ISO min is a ball buster without them in daytime.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019D5P7EQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Now that third party lens support is coming through from Sigma and Tamron, a budget conscious purchaser can just concentrate on the quality of the body, and not worry about being stung on the glass. OK it is a shame that fast compact lenses optimised for mirrorless are taking their time, as the Sigmas are bag fillers. But now it is not just about size - mirrorless is the value, quality and usability option for full frame video.