Sony A7SIII = $3500, 10-bit 4K120p internal, 16-bit 4K60p RAW out

[ahalpert]

The A7 fits the bill. Or any Fuji/Canon/etc for hobbyist.

The A7s3 is a low light demon, and is the very best camera for shooting moonlight video.

Additionally, it has insanely good DR and RS for the price range.

You are claiming that it is expensive for hobby photogs, yet you are claiming to be a video pro.

How many contradictions do you want?

There's a miscommunication here somewhere because I still dont see the contradiction.

I was trying to say that I wager hobbyist photographers would eschew the low pixel count. Just a guess. I also thought the price was expensive for a toy, although I've been astounded by how much money some hobbyists have available to spend on cameras. So clearly it's affordable for some.

If a hobbyist photog is interested in low-light, the A7S3 is a winner. Many photo reviewers have stated that, too. I'm not sure it actually has more DR than the A7R3 and a7r4 which are quite impressive.

Hobbyist videographers will surely be just as interested in the A7S3 as pro videographers are, if they can afford it.

What does saying it's expensive for hobbyist photogs have anything to do with me claiming to be a video pro? You were the one who said a 12MP camera was enough for hobbyist photographers.

I think the camera is a damn bargain. It's buying new lenses to take advantage of the autofocus that gives me heartburn.

In any case, I preordered the camera within 2 minutes of launch based on what I knew about it. Now I feel even better about it, knowing that it's not just a sound business investment but also capable of producing colors I can sink my teeth into. At this point, it would probably take a zombie apocalypse for me to cancel the order because otherwise I'm going to need it and I'm going to enjoy it

 

[DLD]

How can it be #1 in photography lol. I mean obviously just video people are buying it so that's a little ironic

Yeah, I know...it's probably a mistake. But nonetheless...

They assign the "category" on an arbitrary basis. But, if the ranking is "photography", it means A7SIII is the top dog of all digital cameras. And R5 is only #1 among the Canon Rumors members.

 

[NorBro]

I don't know if the system is sophisticated enough to see the difference as they are the same SKU in both categories. Although I could have sworn that the X-T3 was a #1 seller in cinema cameras in 2018 but it wasn't #1 in stills. IDR though. It was available in both sections. The R5/R6 isn't on the cinema list.

Either way, I really don't see more photographers purchasing the a7SIII over the R5. MPs are part of it but mostly because it's a Canon and you rarely see anyone shooting Sony stills in real life besides on YouTube, or by the occasional amba$$ador(s).

 

[ahalpert]

you rarely see anyone shooting Sony stills in real life besides on YouTube, or by the occasional amba$$ador(s).

I don't have a dog in this fight, but this is so not true. I've worked with numerous people shooting Sony stills. Sometimes for the high MPs of the a7r line. Sometimes for the general advantages of mirrorless cameras.

Some pro examples - doug mills for the NYT. And now a little outfit called the AP is exclusively shooting stills on Sonys

 

[NorBro]

lol. It's very true.

Obviously there are hundreds of thousands of photographers that shoot Sony. Like on Mom and Pop Abe productions. And some big ones here and there (as mentioned). Many who notoriously switch. For various reasons.

(And there is more to the AP choice - it's actually a deal - than just waking up one day and preferring Sony quality. lol. Plus that is recent, 2020.)

The best of the best have always been covered by Canon for the last 10, 20 years, always. With random exceptions. And you apparently have never experienced any of it by saying something like above. Canon has dominated the extremely high end professional photography sector.

This isn't my opinion; it's fact. I don't even do stills, and don't care either.

 

[ahalpert]

I dont think sony was competitive prior to mirrorless

And it depends on what type of photography you're talking about. A lot of "high-end" was using phase one

Photojournalists seem keen on sony, though in part just because they were the first mirrorless offering.

I read a landscape photographer who's gone a7r4 but wishes he could afford fuji gfx

Part of Canon's dominance in sports is lenses. Sony is finally coming out with big telephotos

Nikon has been right up there with canon (as far as I can tell) in past decades in "high-end" photography. Doesn't mean they will continue to be

 

[NorBro]

Yes, it does depend - but I am talking in general. About the people whom have purchased the 100+ million lenses they have sold in the world.

The original comment was about buying a Canon over a Sony, not about the preference of the .01% that uses the big print technology or other random obscure examples.

 

[DLD]

Sony wasn't even in the photo game until they purchased Minolta's business. Then promptly shut it down. When asked about that a few years back, the standard reply was, "No, of course, we'll be making more translucent mirror cameras". Famous last words.

And, yes, the vast majority of photo journalists use Canon - 1D line for sports, 5D for news. The high end portrait biz is mostly medium format though.

 

[ahalpert]

Yeah I think canon reigns in sports.

If we judge by the world press photo 2020 awards, it looks like nikon is a close second to canon. Which bears out with my experience - that veterans of photojournalism are Nikon users.
https://petapixel.com/2020/04/17/th... three spots,and the Fuji X100T, respectively.

Fuji comes in third with increasing share. Sony a bit of a distant fourth.

Doug mills of the NYT was interviewed a few years back about switching to the a9. A big part of it was silent shutter so he could shoot stealthily. Made it harder for other cameramen to pick up on when he was shooting and steal his shot. Also, apparently they're only given an arbitrary small amount of time to shoot supreme court justices. But with silent shutter he could shoot while they thought he was setting up.

So I'm not saying that sony displaced canon, just that serious people were starting to adopt them. But judging by shooters' continued adherence to Nikon, brand loyalty has a lot of momentum and shifts slowly.

As for the AP deal - I thought a lot of that had to do with hybrid shooting. Canon had not hitherto offered a proper 4K hybrid camera. R5 came out too late and too crippled

 

[NorBro]

Who cares, it's one deal. They could be out of business within the next 10 years (or purchased by Zuckerberg) when everyone has cameras in their eyes and the exchange of information at every second of the day is beyond commonplace.

 

[Run&Gun]

...I've been astounded by how much money some hobbyists have available to spend on cameras...

Just start really hanging out on some of the still photo forums. There are lots of amateurs and hobbyists who put a lot of professionals to shame when it comes to equipment. Lots of people with lots of money who can drop $10K’s on ”toys”and never miss it. Go hang out on some of the home theater type boards, as well. Same thing. Guys with $10k-$20K-$50K+ projectors and six-figures or more tied-up just in speakers. There is a guy on there who started a thread documenting the installation of a Samsung “The Wall” micro LED panels to replace his projection system in his home theater. I believe it was the first one in the country. I don’t remember the exact cost, but it was well north of six-figures.

 

[Peter C.]

I liked Nikon and still own some of their camera and glass. In fact I grew up on with them. Surprised they're still in business. When things turned from film to digital, the primary part became the sensor, giving video companies like Canon, Sony, and Panasonic a big advantage. But the world is always changing in ways big companies are unable to adapt. Now those companies that had an advantage over film based ones are under pressure by smart phones... They've been getting squeezed out of the lower end consumer market for years.

 

[puredrifting]

Just start really hanging out on some of the still photo forums. There are lots of amateurs and hobbyists who put a lot of professionals to shame when it comes to equipment. Lots of people with lots of money who can drop $10K’s on ”toys”and never miss it. Go hang out on some of the home theater type boards, as well. Same thing. Guys with $10k-$20K-$50K+ projectors and six-figures or more tied-up just in speakers. There is a guy on there who started a thread documenting the installation of a Samsung “The Wall” micro LED panels to replace his projection system in his home theater. I believe it was the first one in the country. I don’t remember the exact cost, but it was well north of six-figures.

We're all poors in the bush leagues. So many people out there (I live in California too where this is on permanent display) have more money than they know what to do with.
A lot of it is old money, inherited, but a lot of business owners in really boring, unexciting businesses (I have a friend whose wife owns a forensic accounting business that finds billing errors
for hospitals, her company gets a huge share of the error money that her company finds, she makes bank!) make boatloads of money and can play with expensive toys.
For those type people, dropping $250k on photo gear or a few new video cameras is literally the same as they spend yearly on getting oil changes on the Ferraris and Lambos in the courtyard.
Where I live, these people aren't rare either, I'm near Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Malibu, Montecito, Santa Barbara.

Did a hike in a new canyon above Montecito a couple of months ago and passed the house the main character lives in in that new Netflix show, "The Politician". The concentrated wealth in that area is just astounding.
Oprah, Costner, a ton of Silicon Valley money is up there. I think these are some of the people (or at least their kids) who you'll see posts from on the camera forums who post, "Yeah, I have 20 Canon bodies and 50-60 lenses,
I'm debating about if I should get the new EF 800mm f/4.0, I think it's $25k or something but I need it for birding. I've had the same setup with Nikon, but sold all of that, but now I'm thinking of selling all of my Canon gear and replacing it all with Sony gear."
they make up a significant, not huge, but surprisng portion of the population on those forums.

 

[Peter C.]

On the flip side, I see so many people on Tiktok or Youtube who are so talented and creative, making amazing content with only smartphone and a ring light. Money and expensive gear isn't everything. Experience, knowledge, talent, and creativity can't be bought.

 

[ahalpert]

Yes, and it was intentional. I was struggling to follow your logic the last few months. Felt like you would pose a question, someone would sincerely answer you, and then you would counter point until the whole goal of the conversation had shifted into something else.

I see. TBH, I'm deathly afraid of getting carried away and clouding my judgement. Not just with cameras, but with everything. Because I see it happen to people all the time. So I nurture my skepticism and doubt in an effort to make lucid evaluations.

Take Komodo - almost certainly a better tool for general narrative filmmaking than A7S3 due to its high bit-depth ADC and rich codec (internally recorded, to boot), not to mention GS and outputs. I don't want to lose sight of that fact just because the A7S3 is the better choice for me.

As for stills - a ton of hybrid shooters and photographers have expressed dismay about the low resolution of the A7S3. It has the low-light and DR advantages you mention, but I think those shooters will eschew it. Luckily, I'm not primarily a photographer or hybrid shooter

I don't remember saying the A7S3 wasn't cheap. If I could achieve the same goal and spend less money, I would always do that. but that's just business 101. If we talk about what hobbyists will buy, we're trying to predict other people's motives and behavior (and budgets)

 

[Guest]

I see. TBH, I'm deathly afraid of getting carried away and clouding my judgement. Not just with cameras, but with everything. Because I see it happen to people all the time. So I nurture my skepticism and doubt in an effort to make lucid evaluations.

You say that as if you didn't pull us into that decision making vortex with you. TBH, I enjoyed it.

 

[markoconnell]

No offense to her, but that sounds like the most boring job in the world.

Financial compensation is only loosely correlated to the societal value or the difficulty and achievement of your work.

Unchecked capitalism has a way of distorting the most basic values.

 

[Peter C.]

Unchecked capitalism has a way of distorting the most basic values.

This is true but it's also true we undervalue what we don't know or understand. From her standpoint catching errors in the medical field saves lives, while we run around filming stuff and arguing which new camera is better...

 

[joema]

...a ton of hybrid shooters and photographers have expressed dismay about the low resolution of the A7S3...

Yes. It's interesting the 12-megapixel Nikon D3S was released in October 2009, and professionals managed perfectly well with it. Even the D4 (released on Jan 2012) had "only" 16.2 megapixels.

The D3S was $5300 USD in 2009, which is about $6280 today.

If you're a non-professional hybrid shooter, I don't see a hard-core video-centric camera like the S1H or A7SIII as being the best choice. If those are the people with 60-megapixel envy, those cameras aren't designed for them. If you're a non-professional enthusiast *video* shooter, those cameras are great. If you're a professional hybrid or photo-oriented shooter, you'll own more than one camera, which means one can be a high-megapixel photo-oriented model.

IMO it's as if Sony released a new 60 megapixel photo-oriented camera and as a videographer I complained it had rolling shutter on video, and could not do full-frame non-pixel-binned 4k/120 at ISO 409,000. There are tradeoffs to fully optimize the design for a certain use.

There's a valid point whether the A7SIII video design goals could have been met with a higher-megapixel sensor. If so no ILC manufacturer has done it, so with current technology the answer seems to be no. There would be issues with sensor scan time, CPU, thermals and power consumption. You could argue the S1H does OK but only needs phase-detect AF to be perfect, so why couldn't Sony have made an S1H clone with PDAF. Maybe rolling shutter isn't that big a deal, and the solution to heat is a fan. I guess Sony could have done that, and I'd have liked having Super35 crop mode.

But as a videographer I feared the A7SIII would either be crippled or not sufficiently video centric. I was hoping it would be more like the S1H, and it is (while not a clone). Another example: up to the last day before release, the rumors said micro-HDMI, but it ended up with a full-size HDMI port. It will even have ProRes RAW capability to Atomos, just like the S1H. It is very close to the best possible ILC video-centric camera at that price point, given current technology.

 

[DLD]

... For those type people, dropping $250k on photo gear or a few new video cameras is literally the same as they spend yearly on getting oil changes on the Ferraris and Lambos in the courtyard...

A friend of mine takes his scooter from TO to Malibu quite often. A few months ago, he's sitting on a coffe house patio drinking coffee and sees some young dude drive up in a Ferrari. And park to another Ferrari. My friend was on his way out, so he was walking by.

Nice Ferrari. Yours?

Nah, my dad's. That one is his too.

Why do you need two Ferrari's?

Well, you know, you need one for the mechanic also.