PROS and CONS of USING SONY Cameras After 5 Intense Years

good morning everyone for the past five years plus I've been using Sony and it's been quite an adventure and today I kind of wanted to have a sit-down discussion with you following a discussion I had with many where we talk about the pros and cons of using Sony's Manny made a similar video and it really triggered a lot of thoughts about my usage as a Travel Photographer as someone who's a lot on the fields in multiple difficult circumstances and who is also taking both photos and videos and I wanted to give you an overview of the pros and the cons what I found that was great what I found that was not great what can be improved what would be a deal breaker almost for getting Sony and I wanted to be a discussion so please let me know in the comments what you're using how you're using it and if you agree with me or not on what I'm saying or if you've had the same experience I'm absolutely dying to hear from you guys it's gonna be super important let's take a deep breath and let's get started let's start at the beginning my name is Purity Lambert I'm a travel Adventure photographer and the creator of the 30-day adventure to create photos a step-by-step method for taking your photography to the next level no matter what kind of gear you're using it has helped thousands of students around the world some of them said it changed the understanding of Photography and some became Pro so I'll leave a link in the description if you want to learn more about that Sony was never on my radar because they had terrible battery life when there was the A7 II and I was like no I'm not never gonna switch to Sony because I used to shoot Canon 5D Mark II when I started to get seriously into photography then I switched to a Nikon d750 before buying expensive lenses for doing weddings and portraits as a professional then when I started doing some video I acquired a Panasonic gh5 the autofocus was absolutely horrendous but it was an interesting camera that was small in compact the problem is I had two systems with me all the time when the a7r3 came out I was like this can do both photo and video great I'm getting one so I got one around Christmas 2017 and I dove in for Sony and for the past five years I bought my year and I've been evolving from that ASM 3 to R3 to A7 S3 to a A1 I still have those two and I also tried the a74 the A7 R5 I've tried most of their most recent models thanks to this YouTube channel I've shared actually my experience with you and there's a lot of great things about using Sony and there's a lot of terrible things so the pros for me let's start with the good part Sony has a crazy autofocus and that struck me from the beginning that A7 3 changed my life for the video for the photography it literally changed to how I was shooting I was able to shoot better faster have a consistent autofocus that would lock on my face and not let me go unlike my Panasonic from before the gh5 and unlike my Nikon d750 which was never made for video click clearly and when Sony said they were doing both photo and video great I was like nah I don't know but when I started using it I was always impressed look you're able nowadays with those modern cameras in 2023 and Beyond you are able to do 4K 4 to 10 bits in camera while shooting High megapixel photos with one of the best autofocus on the market and that is just mind-blowing to be able to go from that awesome video mode to that awesome photo mode all in one camera body without having to change which means you keeping the same lenses right you don't have to buy new lenses you don't have to get anything different because you will have it all inside your backpack and you can just like flip a button and go from photo to video and I always loved that about Sony and this is one of the biggest reason I went and stayed in that ecosystem now there's been downsides we'll we'll talk about them like I mentioned but this was great and image quality has always been on top whether it was my A7 III which was crazy good low light and all the photos that you see have been edited through presets that I created in Lightroom over the years they are also available for you if you want to save time on your editing and you want to try a new style you can get them but those presets have been applied to all those different camera models even different brands and what I found is that the image quality was consistent across those images I would have seen it very quickly if something that I created for a previous generation completely changed for the new generation but no there was some consistency in the image quality which really I appreciate it and my experience with Sony has always been that they have been leading in terms of low light capabilities for cameras I mean this A7 S3 I was like literally filming the Milky Way which was mind-boggling at the time when it came out you know it's a completely groundbreaking knowing that you can shoot at ISO 32 000 is awesome you know it allows you to shoot differently and maybe not have to buy that super expensive glass that shoots at one form maybe you can keep the one that you have F4 F 2.8 and that is always a good point speaking of glass wow okay Sony really nailed one thing it is their glass what do I mean by that they have a great range of lenses available like it's one over 66 lenses or something for for the system but they also open it up to third-party lenses and that changed everything so you can get an awesome camera body and then get those third-party lenses or even like putting some fun lenses on it you know with adapters and stuff that allows you to play a little bit now I will say I love my buttons on the Sony lenses it's something that I've always appreciated because the autofocus on Sony is amazing and it's been ever since I got A7 R3 I've never felt limited by the auto focus this little button changes everything because you can be like let's end in spot Focus mode where you like super precise and where you're shooting and with my back button Focus but suddenly I'm gonna press on that button and it's going to detect an eye anywhere in the frame or face and focus right on that and it's like an instant switch that allowed me to take so many photos so much faster over the years and I even did that on the water also when I was trying to take photos of people where you can't really see the face I was just like grabbing that button it's like hard to see so there's been so many instances where I really appreciated how this was built and to me that's a great selling point also considering that this autofocus capabilities is across all their models whether it's a zve E1 or A7 R4 or A1 you have one of the best autofocus on the market and who wouldn't want that now I will say look at this this battery is one of the reason why Sony is awesome sometimes not always but sometimes they haven't changed their battery since the A7 III which means that since 2017 you have the same batteries that's like six years of consistency in batteries that you don't have to change you don't have to throw them away you're limiting the waste the E-Waste that you're creating I mean maybe not if you're buying new cameras but the batteries you can reuse them I'm still using my 703 batteries as backups it is something that I appreciate and when you're with other people on the field and you're like oh no I lost battery I don't have it a friend can give it to you or you can just plug in your USBC right there and that was since a7r3 guys it's been five years so anyone who's like you can do that now yeah I know but we've been able to do that for five years that allows you to charge even while you're shooting and I've I've had instances where I had the cable run from my backpack to the camera and no matter what kind of USBC cable you're using because I don't know there's a lot of quirks with USBC cables uh the Canon ones would not take all my USBC cables they had to be specific one sometimes so this takes everything everywhere all at once pun intended one thing I haven't mentioned yet is the size so I love that they try to keep the lenses very compact and over the years they've made them smaller and smaller if you compare the 7200 V1 versus V2 and the weight there's a huge drastic difference I have full video talking about that and the changes but this is something I appreciate like the body always felt good in the hand I never had problems so much with the grip and and how it felt I will say I do have a little preference nowadays for a Canon grip but that's gonna be um very personal some people hate it I actually like it I'll talk about something that's really controversial with the camera bodies in the second part but for now size weight handling has been great it definitely increased a little bit we can feel the camera in hand I can hold it nicely I never felt like I needed camera straps which happens for example with like us worm like I feel like I'm gonna lose my camera every two seconds but with this it stays in hand and that's awesome having Compact and small form and one camera system one cap of battery allows me to travel with less stuff which is important I don't want to break my back with like giant lenses and gear honestly awesome to be able to travel the world with easy simple system when you're traveling I don't know if I should mention it but share your experience with me if you have a Sony this has been extremely weather resistant those cameras have been well built my A1 my SM and S3 have been through hell even though it's an R5 I was testing I was shooting like for hours in the rain in Tokyo I've shot in the water in the more cases I got splashed on I had to rinse it with water also once it never failed me it was really good all the time I would try to wipe it as soon as possible the one thing I will tell you you need to put a little thing on top of your camera because it will allow the contacts that are in that hot shoe Mount not to get connected together and not to give you a narrow on the camera it's not a big deal but it's gonna say the accessory is not supported when there's nothing it's just water humidity that is stuck in there just put something if you know you're gonna be in an environment where there's gonna be be a lot of water dripping on your camera it doesn't mean it's weather weatherproof and you can like go crazier with it I would still be cautious but over the years I've let myself be a little more careless because those bodies could handle anything so that's a pretty good point so these are my Pros now let's talk about the elephant in the room the cons what is debilitating what have I found frustrating over the years but before that if you hear every single photo that you've seen has been edited with my presets I use them as a base on all my photos and they've been helping me for years The Versatile non-destructive you can get them check them out with the link in the description get them for yourself and edit differently maybe your photos try a new style or just save time when you editing and before I forget there is something I shared twice a month which is an awesome top 5 newsletter with my top inspiration exclusive photos and things I've discovered that I love and I invite you to join it's completely free and you'll receive the next edition of it and hopefully it will inspire in your life and in your next shoot so just go to tl.fm forward slash top 5 or hit the link in the description for that okay or cons let's start with the biggest one because ah it is so frustrating let's start with the firmware updates where are the firmware Updates this is something that I've been struggling with over the years is that I would invest in the E1 which is like close to 7K when it came out then a year later or less there was a Sony a74 that had functionalities that could be built in this A1 we're talking about Focus breathing compensations menus a bunch of things like that and Sony will benefit from us having more updated cameras because we'll have more trust in the longevity of the system also the menus keep changing almost on every iteration which is cool I'm super excited to see those changes but I want to be able to have that in every single camera why because it's consistent when I'm gonna grab a zve1 and then I'll go back to my A1 I don't want to be lost every time I'm looking at the menu and be like oh man where was that thing you know this is not cool so Sony really is a firmware update let us all have a menu system that is consistent across all cameras it would be awesome in my opinion if you want that too please write it in the comments Sony please give us firmware updates hopefully it will happen another thing that can be fixed with a simple firmware update is a name convention for photos it's so frustrating because after 999 photos it resets to zero I'm into one which means that let's say you're taking more than 10 000 photos on the same shoot or over a few days and you put them in the same folder they're gonna auto erase each other and it has happened to me once ever since I'm so careful that it's a real frustration and it used to be the same with the videos before but somehow they fixed the video part but not the photo part so for the video now you can put different date in front of your photo so you can have a sequence but with the data in front of when you shot it which is awesome now we want the same photo photo or simply a lot us to go to 99 999 instead of nine thousand that way you reset that hundred thousand and not ten thousand and it's unlikely you're gonna take a hundred thousand photos on the same shoot on the same day and that is so much easier now another huge thing that I still don't understand landscape versus vertical shooting the colors change when you're flipping and I thought it was just a white balance thing it is so drastic that it doesn't make sense the white balance shouldn't change from like warm to cool just because you're shooting for portrait to landscape it happens on my A1 it happens on my A7 S3 and it throws me off every single time I'm shooting yes I will edit the photo after and I can change my white balance so this is a little bit confusing again firmware update can probably fix that let me know what you guys think do you also have that experience with that landscape versus vertical shooting like change in color let's talk about camera bodies what's happening with all camera bodies why do they look like they're 10 years old after just a year and a half yes I do use my gear intensive manner but honestly I do pay attention to my gear I put in a nice bag I I clean it Etc but somehow all my cameras lose paint at some point and I think it has to do with the build which is I think magnesium alloy body and then it's being painted on top versus a Canon camera I feel like it's it's like a top plastic top thing that is like black and so the plastic is black so it's not gonna change color you don't want a seven thousand dollar camera or six thousand dollar camera to look like it's 10 years old after just a year this camera that is like dozens of years old looks a lot better than my A1 if you have to resell your gear then it also you're losing a lot of market value because people think your gear is super old but it's not and when it comes to ergonomics I think the grip is kind of good but it could be a little softer like a little more adhesive to the fingers sometimes not always honestly it's just a little hard and so I felt like the grip is not as strong as with certain materials that you can have now a change on the zve1 so I don't know if they'll change it in the future but let me know what you guys think also about the grip and they're gonna make flip screen I don't have a flip screen on my A1 this is I knew getting into it but now when I see the a7r5 flip screen I'm like oh man you know maybe I'll make a video about why I'm not switching to our a7r5 also because I think it's not a discussion but there's something that I wish was improved was the back screen right those monitors they look good the photos are okay but I'm always disappointed when I look at the back of my camera I have to look inside here to get like some interesting like exciting review of a photo when I look at the back of the screen it doesn't look as good as when I import it and start playing with it in camera but on my Canon wow in two seconds I was like oh wow why does this look so good at the back of the screen so I don't know exactly what it is about maybe the screen technology maybe it's how it's being used but Sony has like Xperia with the top the best possible screens ever over so I want to see that technology come in here that is kind of my experience with Sony it's very personal I want to hear from you let me know in the comments again at the end of the day a camera system will not change how you shoot it will help you shoot maybe different way but what happens in your brain is more important than what happens with your camera so practice practice practice whether you practice with me through the 30 day to grade photos or you practice on your own or you just watch the Youtube videos and then go shoot keep on practicing and tweak and improve those skills that are in your brain that allow you to take the photos that you love because this is how you take photos that you want to print and then that you are proud of so until you feel that you're there in terms of your skills don't even consider changing camera but with that being said get out there go shoot try something different try something new I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Pierre T. Lambert

Views: 59,792

Keywords: photography, learn photography, sony a7iv, sony a7iii, sony alpha, sony a7iv review, sony vs canon, sony vs fuji, sony vs nikon, sony camera review, sony a7rv, sony a1, sony a7riv, sony for photography, sony for videography, sony long term review, sony alpha 7 iv

Id: usXg_rU5gTw

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023