SONY a7 IV vs SONY a7 III: Which Camera SHOULD You BUY?

right before we jump into this video if you'd like to take better photos in low-light situations just look for this orange box over on the website put your name email address in it hit send it and i'll send you that guide for free [Music] jared polin froknowsphoto.com and this is a comparison between the sony a74 and the a73 now the reason i'm making this is a lot of people who own an a7 iii want to know should they upgrade to an a74 or if they're new in the game should they go with a less expensive a7 3 or spend a little bit more money which will get to the price at the end of this video and get the newer a74 so this video is to help you decide which direction you'd like to go now i have a real world review of the a7 iii that was a great one we did out that's las vegas right oh that was a lot of fun out in las vegas and then the a74 being that we are on well not lockdown but they haven't done an event for this but i did do a review of this as well so i have hands-on experience with both of these now let's get into the specs and help you decide which direction you want to go jumping right in let's look at the differences between the two bodies the a7 iii always had that sony feel where you're like i would like to see a deeper grip it didn't feel as refined in the hands but the a74 does feel much more refined they've taken a lot of the suggestions that i've had and other photographers have had and they've implemented it into this version of the a74 so i love the feel of the a74 the buttons the layout everything just feels much better than with the a7 3. will you notice a huge difference well the answer is kind of yeah because it's much deeper of a grip when you grab onto it you'll also notice that the a74 is thicker with two cs than the a7 iii so it's slightly thicker they're gonna weigh about the same thing i'll get to the weight near the end of this video if i had to choose i would take the a74 because of the feel of the body so if you're interested in which feels better the a74 absolutely feels better and it's getting two c's so now let's get into the specs the a74 has a 33 megapixel bsi cmos sensor that is powered by the bionz xr processor which is the same processing engine that you find in the 60 500 sony a1 the a7 iii has a 24.2 megapixel full frame bsi cmos sensor that's powered by the bionz x processor now of course it's slightly older i love the results that i got out of this a7 iii so i understand if you have an a7 iii you might be scratching your head going yeah i may not need this and the truth of the matter is the 24.2 megapixels is fantastic that is a great amount of megapixels being honest the 33 is really nice as well and of course you're getting a newer processor newer engine and if you're getting something very similar to what's in the sony a1 then that is absolutely better so for a lot of this video you're gonna see that of course the a74 is going to be better but that is to be expected when it's a step up from the a7 iii it's not revolutionary it's an evolutionary step it's a lot different than back in the day where i used to say i don't want to see you take a step sideways if you're growing to be a professional a step sideways was say you would buy a d3000 and then go buy a d3100 when that came out and not take a step up that ladder towards a more professional body but in this day and age these cameras are used by professionals and amateurs alike you're going to get great results either way you go in terms of native iso the a74 will go from 100 to 51 200 expandable up to 204 800 and it's exactly the same in the a7 iii i think you will see a minor difference between these two now the 24 megapixels is lower so you may have cleaner higher iso than with the 33 megapixel but i don't think you're gonna see much of a difference i think they're going to give you very similar results and 100 iso at base is going to be great when you're shooting portraits or have a ton of light and you're never going to push it up to 51 200 in my opinion i've never shot at that iso the reason is if there's no light and you need to push it up that high it's probably not worth taking because it's just gonna look like swiss cheese anyway but if you're shooting at eight or ten thousand or twelve thousand eight hundred iso you're gonna get fantastic results with either of these cameras moving on both of these cameras utilize the sony e-mount they're exactly the same which means any lens that you have on this camera is going to work on this camera but what's great about the e-mount is that you have third-party lens options you've got tamron you've got sigma and of course you've got lenses from sony so there's a ton of different options you can pick up and you can save a lot of money by going third party or buying some of the older used e-mount lenses that are still quick but good so for anybody that's new i'm a big proponent of glass glass glass glass glass what i mean by that is i rather see you invest in glass than spend more money on a body and end up with not as good of a lens so the two eights the one eights the one fours the one twos that's what i'm talking about those lenses are going to help you get better results because you can let more light in they tend to be made better they tend to give you better clarity they tend to give you better colors and tones so that's why i always say glass glass glass glass glass let me jump in here real quick because i want to show you fro pack 3 in action on this photo taken with the a74 starting with fifth element fifth element looks great just with one click then you've got capone gives it a very interesting look then we have king contrast king contrast looks nice and boomy mentos pulls back just a little bit then we've got november rain no vignette that gives it a nice look and then we have prestige worldwide which also looks good but i want to go up to fro pack too because check this out matte black high contrast looks pretty cool and then we've got double stuffed oreos with no vin yet so if you're looking to speed up your raw workflow or give yourself a great starting point we created 15 custom lightroom presets that you can check out right now at froknowsphoto.com while you're over there you can play with the sliders to see the befores and the afters and if you decide to pick them up right now they are on sale or if you want to get fro pack one two and three as the fro pack bundle you can save even more now let's get back to the video moving on to focusing points the a74 has 759 phase detect af points that cover 94 of the frame it has advanced ai based af real-time tracking iaf lock-on tracking animal af touch pad focusing and touch to focus whereas the a7 iii has a little less with 693 phase detect af points which was a lot back in the day when this thing came out and we're like wow you've got 693 points that was a revelation all i know is when we used this in las vegas this was the camera when it came out i sat there and said i don't know that there's a better more well-rounded camera offered by anyone ever in the history of cameras what this camera did when it came out with its speed with its photos with its video it still holds up today many years later after it came out but when it did come out this was that camera that changed my mind with a lot of the mirrorless technologies because this was a culmination of years of work from sony and they succeeded tremendously so i just wanted to get that in there and tell you that now the af points cover only 93 of the frame there's iaf but it's slightly the older iaf back when this camera came out you had to press a button to get iaf to come on then they upgraded that through firmware so that's pretty cool so you have that as well you've got lock-on tracking animal af as well as touch pad focusing now both of these slightly feel a little more laggy when it comes to the auto focus tracking but then again i'm spoiled because i've used the a92 i've used the a7 r4 and i've also used the a1 so i know what the speed is like when i say laggy it's like it just feels like it's slightly a little behind when i'm shooting a hockey player but it's a hell of a lot better than what it used to be and what we used to work with so the lock-on tracking the iaf is one of the most fantastic technologies ever in camera systems it's going to allow you to get things that you otherwise would have missed in the past if i had to choose of course i'm going to go with the newer one if it has the a1 engine in there it's going to be slightly better but they both are going to be really good how many frames in a row can you get in a burst well the a74 is going to give you 828 raw files if you're using the cf express type a card because it has two card slots one is a cf express a which is a newer smaller card that is pretty fast very fast actually and it also has an sd card slot as well the a7 iii will do 40 raw files in a row and b before you basically outrun the buffer now this has two card slots you've got an sd card which is uh s1 and then you have another sd card which is uh s2 now if you're shooting redundant which i always recommend if you have two card slots you put two cards in there you shoot raw to both just in case something ever happens but the camera is going to slow down the write speed it's going to dumb it down to the slower card slot so even though you have uh s2 for one you have a one in the other it's going to dumb it down to the speed of the slower card so keep that in mind it's actually going to happen in the a7 4 as well because you have the cf express type a slot and an sd card slot so it's going to slow it down to match the sd card is it going to be an issue when you're shooting only if you hold your finger on the button for like eight seconds and out running the buffer then yes you might outrun it but if you're just doing bursts here bursts there you're not going to outrun it at all but we haven't done a lot of check marks today usually i like to give check marks on this we're going to give a check mark to the a74 because you can squeeze out a lot more files in a row because of the faster card slot being that we just talked about the burst rate how many frames a second do you get with the a74 it's 10 frames a second with both the electronic and the mechanical shutter when you are shooting compressed raw now when you go into uncompressed or lossless raw it actually slows down to six frames per second i noticed this when i was out in the real world shooting i'm like this just feels slower than 10 frames a second and when i got it back to the factory and shot the uh the the timer the the stopwatch on the phone i was like i only got six frames a second i like to shoot uncompressed raw i want the best file possible so if you do want to get to 10 frames a second or if you shoot jpeg you will you will get 10 frames a second in jpeg and you'll get 10 frames a second in compressed raw that's actually something i didn't like about this camera now the a7 3 you're getting 10 frames a second with both electronic and the mechanical shutter and when we tested it out shooting the stopwatch we still got 10 frames a second the one thing i'm not sure about which we may need to check with sony about and they may not even tell us is if when you shoot it to 10 frames a second is it actually making it a compressed raw file automatically we're not sure um but is it a big deal in this camera the answer is no not really i'm going to end up giving a check mark to the a7 3 here because you truly are getting those 10 frames a second well maybe let's put that check mark on hold until we check with sony and no officially like i said both of these cameras have electronic shutters as well as mechanical shutters but where would you use the electronic shutter well if you're going to be shooting silent or you don't want to be heard you're going to switch into the electronic shutter mode but it has a much slower readout when you are shooting with the electronic shutter basically what's happening is the mechanical shutter is not coming down the electronic shutter happens and it's reading the entire sensor but when it has a slow readout you kind of get this jelloing effect and you'll notice that and it might interfere with your images case in point you have a golfer who's swinging and the club is going to bend or a baseball bat or a ball you're going to see it warp just a little bit in your images so in this camera being that there's really not much of an advantage other than getting the silent shooting i would probably just stick with the mechanical shutter now with other cameras you get more frames per second with the electronic so that might come in handy but in this case just remember you might see some issues with some of those electronic shuttered images let me jump in here real quick and let you know that this video is brought to you by squarespace if you're looking to build your very own online portfolio use what i've been using for over 10 years and get a squarespace website it's simple easy affordable and within 30 minutes you can have a bunch of galleries up and running on the internet and you don't even need to know coding so to get your 14 day free trial head on over to squarespace.com froknowsphoto if you decide that it's for you use the code froknowsphoto at checkout to get 10 off your first order now let's get back to the video now let's get to the video feature starting with the a74 you've got full frame 4k uhd video recording up to 30 frames per second 10 bit 422 you've got 4k oversampled from 7k with no pixel binning if recording in 30 frames per second or below you could do 4k 60p in super 35 1080p at 120 frames per second s-log full hdmi port which is nice unlimited record time real-time tracking autofocus focus breathing compensation focus map red record box around the screen that is nice that they added all those features now let's talk about the a7 3 you've got full frame 4k uhd video recording up to 30 frames per second at 8-bit 4k oversampled from 6k not 7k with no pixel binning if recording at 24p 1080p at 120 frames per second s-log micro hdmi port and there is a record limit of 2959 with this camera the truth of the matter is both of these cameras do a fantastic job when this a7 iii came out i told you the video in it was spectacular the fact that you could do what you could do and it's oversampled from 6k is nice oversampled from 7k is also nice you're not going to see too much of a difference between these but you do have that eye tracking and the lock on tracking you do have a ton of firmware upgrades that they put into this that have made it better over the years but they are pretty fairly matched across the board so it's a slight step up if you're an a7 3 person and you shoot video with this you're probably not wanting to invest in this just to get very similar video features if that's the case you may want to step up to like an a7 s3 if you're a video shooter so just keep that in mind if you have an only fans account and you want to stream live or you want to do web camming i mean why not the a74 lets you do plug and play streaming 4k up to 15 frames per second or 1080 up to 60 frames per second and you can record internally at the same time the a7 3 doesn't offer that at all but that also didn't come out when a pandemic was going on and every camera manufacturer has built in the webcaming capability so it is nice to have that option so we're going to give a check mark to the only fan's camera right here moving on to stabilization the a74 has five axis steady shot up to five and a half stops of stabilization there's also an optical active mode stabilization which is going to give you a slight crop but a really smooth stabilization so if you're gonna walk and talk or follow someone that's going to do it but you may get a slight crop it's super steady when you do that the a7 iii has five axis steady shot up to five stops of stabilization so they didn't change very much with the stabilizations yes you get the five and a half stop and you get the other one with the crop mode which is nice but that's not a main selling point if you were looking to upgrade or jump into the new system either of them are gonna do a pretty good job now moving on to the electronic viewfinder which is super important with mirrorless cameras because it's how you see the world it's what's presented right in front of your eye we have a really good video that's optical versus electronic viewfinder where we explain it and prove it and show it so let's talk about the a7 fords it has a 3.68 million dot evf with a 120 frames per second refresh rate uh that's 1.6 times more resolution than the a7 3. the a7 3 has a 2.4 million dot evf with 60 frames per second refresh rate you are going to see a difference between these evfs this one i mean it's nice to be able to have an evf because when i first switched over to testing this out i was coming from a dslr world so it's not as clear of course as optical and you would see more lines like if you were looking at a tree it would kind of you know fuzz out a little bit because it would just look like static a little bit but you get used to it but when you start to graduate to something that's much newer you're like ah that's much cleaner and the 120 frames per second refresh rate it's going to be a little better now if you're someone who has never used an electronic viewfinder these aren't your grandmother's electronic viewfinders they don't flicker anymore they don't cause you to feel like you're gonna throw up or get a seizure you really won't know much of a difference between an optical viewfinder and electronic viewfinder it's just that i like the electronic viewfinder because everything's right in front of my face i know my exposure it's all right there i have all the information and when you're shooting video you can put your eye right up to the viewfinder so we're going with a check mark on the a74 as expected for a better newer electronic viewfinder moving on to the screens on the back of the cameras the a74 has a three inch 1.03 million dot vary angle touch screen you do have full touch screen functionality which is very nice because in the older menu system you didn't have the ability to go through and touch the menu you had to scroll through or hit the arrows the a7 3 has a three inch 922 000 dot tilting touch screen the touch screen capabilities are limited to just touch focusing the screen on this is not very good it's it's functional it works it's not the greatest it's also attached to the back of the camera the screen on this one not much better in resolution if there's one part one place that sony falls short for whatever reason they make a lot of panels they make tvs for god's sake but they don't put great screens on this the difference is this has a tilting rotatable very angled touchscreen which is good if you want to put it off to the side it's going to be better for video shooting it's going to be better for holding above your head or holding it down low so we're gonna give a slight check mark just for the fact that it gives you that extra option of tilting out and rotating there are a couple of differences between these bodies as i talked about earlier one of the things that stands out is that you have a digital hot shoe option here with the a7 4. you do not have the digital hot shoe on the a7 3. what that means is that the a74 will take some of sony's new accessories like a microphone that doesn't need to be plugged into the side because it's talking digitally through the hot shoe and on this one you would have to go ahead and plug it in to the side when you're recording video now you also have better heat dissipation when you are shooting video with the a74 but we've never really run into overheating issues with the a7 iii a couple of other differences you'll find inside of the camera is that you have the newer menu system for the a7 4 and you have the older menu system with the a7 iii a lot of people complained about the menu systems i don't really care you learn the menu systems and you figure out the quirks and features and then you know where things are it's actually a little harder for me going from using the old menu system to discovering the new one because i don't even like the new one to be honest with you i'm not a fan of the menu system because you have to learn something new but the more you use it the easier it gets so that is not a big deal another feature that this camera has that the a1 has is a variable shutter option so let's say that you are shooting a a concert and there's a lot of flickering light and you want to dial in something that's like 1 852.3 of a second instead of 1 800th of a second you can actually do these tweener areas which corresponds better with the lights the led lights that are flickering you may be able to match it so that you do not get the flickering for example if you were shooting a tv screen back in the day those cathode ray tubes or whatever the hell they're called you would see a lot of flickering well you could actually time your shutter with the variable shutter speed option to only shoot when that flickering isn't happening so it will it will line up so that's a nice feature that it has let me jump in here real quick and say if you'd like to purchase the a74 new or the a7 3 used or maybe new check out allenscamera.com because they have sony canon nikon anything you can think of they are a mom and pop store that's been around since 1977. that's where i shop for all of my gear and if you go there let them know that the fro sent you so head on over to allenscamer.com fro to use my affiliate link if weight is a concern to you it really shouldn't be because these cameras are pretty light this one the a74 weighs in at 1.45 pounds or 658 grams and the a7 3 weighs in at 1.43 pounds or 650 grams so not much of a difference there now both of these cameras do have the option to add a vertical grip which will which will then give you the ability to have two batteries inside now it's not the same grip for the a7 iii so what i mean by that is the a7 3's grip will not work on the a7 4 and the a7 4 grip will not work on the a7 3. but the a7 4 grip will work on the a92 the a7 r4 the a1 it's pretty cool that the grip works across the board that's in the 350 range if you want to get those grips i personally recommend shooting with a grip it's going to come in handy when shooting vertical it's going to put all the dials right where you need it to be but it is an extra expense speaking of expense let's talk about the price of the camera the a74 comes in at 20 498 when the a7 3 came out it came out at 1998 and it's still priced there today this camera was an amazingly priced camera at under 2 000 it's still priced well today this one you see the differences so is it worth the 2400 the 500 extra dollars that's for you to decide if i was starting new today and picking between these two cameras i'm absolutely going with the a74 because i may be able to spend the extra 500 or if you're gonna be looking to be a more professional end of it and make money you're going to make that extra 500 back but i'm not sure that i would buy an a7 3 new and drop 2 000 now if you're trying to save money find this bad boy used for under a thousand but well maybe around a thousand bucks there's going to be a lot of these for sale if you can find a good one used then take the extra money that you save and invest in glass glass glass glass glass glass glass is still super important throughout photography so if you if you can't justify spending that extra 500 bucks then find this used i just have a hard time buying yesterday's technology new for full price but if you do buy it for two grand you could take that 500 bucks put it into some tamron or sigma lenses buy those used get a good clean version of them and you'd be good to go which would you go with if you were starting out today let me know down below if you already own the a7 iii do you need the a74 i mean that's a lot of money to spend especially if you don't already have good glass if you haven't invested in good glass keep your a73 it's awesome get good glass for it or find someone who wants to buy it and then roll the money into this if you already have good glass so it is a nice step up it's not revolutionary like i said it's evolutionary they both are fantastic cameras so either way you go you can't go wrong but get good glass thank you very much for watching jared polin froknowsphoto.com see ya [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Jared Polin

Views: 122,762

Keywords: FroKnowsPhoto, Jared Polin, I SHOOT RAW, comparison, sony a7 III, sony a7 IV, sony a7 iv vs sony a7 III, sony a7R IV, Sony a7R III, sony a1, sony camera, sony rumor, best sony camera, mirrorless camera, how to, photography, best beginner camera, nikon, canon, nikon vs sony, canon vs sony, sony a7C, nature photography, wedding photography

Id: NC0qFZPfeOQ

Length: 25min 8sec (1508 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 14 2022