Thank you, Sony Singapore for the media invite.
I was at Resorts World Sentosa Conventional Centre on 15-Mar-18, for the Sony A7III Preview Launch

The Sony A7III had attracted a lot of media’s attention, Sony scheduled xavierlum.com in one of the earlier time slots. After the short reception, Sony invited us to a room with three rows of seats to listen to the presentation.

The room was small and conducive; I was memorised by the 58” inch Sony TV, every image cast on the screen was beautiful.

Let the show begin

First presentation made by Sony Product Manager where she shared the market trend, the differences between each Sony Alpha series, and lastly the specs and details. You can read the specs from the Sony website, and I don’t have to elaborate more.

And lastly the slides we all been waiting, the launch date and the price tag.

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Big Bryan Speaks

Next Bryan stomped to the podium and shared his one week experience with the Sony A7III. The picture he shared looks good but somewhat grainy, perhaps it was a pre-production camera, and we certainly hope that Sony will come out with firmware to improve this.

Bryan also touched on the megapixels between the new Sony A7III (24.2 megapixels) and the A7RIII (42.4 megapixels), reducing the file size to 50 percent. The Sony A7III megapixels is good enough for wedding and events; where else the A7RIII is more for advertisement, fashion shoots.

The Nah nah nah … talking ended just within 0.5 hours, and we were lead to another area to get our hands on the camera!

 

Show me the Camera

One of the ladies drew the curtain, revealing the gallery displaying all the cameras and camera lenses as if like a game show model exposing the grand prize for the night. (I want THEM ALL!) The gallery felted like walking thru Tony Starks workshop with all his Ironman suits.

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Shortly, Sony divided us into two groups to test out the Eye AF and test out the ISO capability under low lighting.

 

Eye AF

A pretty lady was posing at the illuminating light garden booth as I tried out the Sony A7III Eye AF capability. The Eye AF can achieve simply by switching to the AF-Continuous mode and pressing the centre jog-dial button. I must say that the Auto Focus (AF) was very sharp and accurate even under low lighting. And also because of FF sensor size, the DOF was creamier compared to APS-C ones.

 

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The Eye AF is spot on accurate

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Low Lighting ISO

A combination of new-generation image processing system and a new sensor achieves an up to 1.5-stop improvement in image quality.
A wide ISO sensitivity range of up to ISO 51200 is standard, and approx. up to 15-stop dynamic range at low sensitivity settings is realised; that’s what Sony claimed. I have tried capturing the model in various ISO setting.

 

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On paper the camera can perform up to ISO 204800, the picture is not usable.

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First Impression – We only just met

It is a pity that I didn’t spend enough time with the Sony A7III, but here are some of the aesthetic features that impressed me.

 

Multi-selector
Aka Joystick or Nipple, I can adjust the Auto-Focus with the nipple and go thru the menu with ease.

Dual slots with UHS-II compatibility
Yes! Sony added additional SD card slot, and I am only comfortable to shoot events with cameras with dual slots, it assures me that if SD card fails, I can put hope on another SD card. But why only one slot is UHS-II compatible?

Long battery life
On paper, Sony claims that NP-FZ100 battery can shoot approximately 710 photos with one full charge. And that’s a very good battery life.

USB-Type C port
A USB Type-C port supporting fast USB 3.1 Gen 1 facilitates high-speed PC Remote transfer of sizeable RAW data files, so you can quickly review images on a PC and continue shooting without delay. Also, a setting to transfer only JPEG files to PC lets you check pictures via PC even more quickly after the continuous shooting because the camera doesn’t have to send high volumes of RAW data. (copied). I see Sony adding the new port type for the camera finally.

Touchscreen LCD
I love that the touchscreen LCD, as I usually use the screen to focus while I am doing street photography or doing creative shots. I hope Sony can allow us to adjust all camera setting as well.

What could be better
The LCD Screen feels fragile, and manoeuvring the screen panel is be a bit challenging.

The body is short like most camera models, without the battery grip, my little pinky has no place to rest on the camera body

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My thoughts

The “Basic” Camera – it is an understatement, I feel that the Sony A7III camera is more than meets the eye.

Sony was the first and only Company that comes out with the Full Frame sensor mirrorless camera. A couple of years ago, I was sceptical and felt that the camera technology wasn’t ready and the price tag is steep. But now, I think otherwise.

In all my digital photography livelihood, I have never owned a Full Frame camera before. With the reasonable price tag, it makes economic sense to move on from an APS-C sized sensor camera to Full Frame today. What about you?

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