Sony A7 vs A7II vs A7III vs A7C: A Buying Guide

in this video i will be comparing four of sony's entry-level full-frame mirrorless cameras so if you are interested in possibly upgrading the sony full-frame mirrorless or you're just simply curious this video should help you out this video is sponsored by wirestock a simple way to make money with your content before i compare these cameras i thought it might be helpful to visualize where these cameras are in sony's lineup because it can get pretty confusing now while all sony full-frame mirrorless cameras can do both photo and video some are better at one or the other sony indicates photo geared cameras with the letter r which stands for resolution so in the photo category we have the a7r we have the r2 the r3 and the r4 now i'm writing the numbers but you can do that in roman numerals as well all of these cameras have very high megapixel count sensors so you can take a photo and print it on a billboard with great detail on the video side sony indicates video geared cameras with the letter s which stands for sensitivity so we have the a7s we have the a7s2 the s3 and that's it for now that is a three so these cameras all have lower megapixel sensors which allow them to let in more light so for low light these are certainly better then we also have what i'd consider as top of the line cameras for sony these are the sony a9 the a9 ii and now the a1 which is new these are pro cameras designed with speed in mind so sports shooters the paparazzi these are the cameras for you finally right in the middle we have the sony a7 we have the a7 ii we have the a7 3 and the a7c these are hybrid cameras so they do video and they do photo equally as well they're just not geared towards one over the other so this is what this video is going to be about these are in general a little bit cheaper than getting into some of these other full-frame cameras especially the top of the line ones so let's jump into this comparison here are all of the cameras in order of release we have the sony a7 the sony a7 ii the a7 iii and the newest a7c i'll start by going through some of the similarities between these cameras and then we'll dive into the differences all four of these cameras have 24.3 megapixel full-frame sensors although they are updated in subsequent models that i'll get into in a moment all four of these cameras have basically the same ports microphone jacks headphone jacks multiport and hdmi ports all four of these cameras have the exact same sony e-mount lens mount so you can use the exact same lens on the sony a7 as you can on the newest sony a7c let's start by talking about the first camera in this group and that is the original sony a7 this camera was announced in october of 2013 and at the time sony boasts it was the world's smallest full-frame interchangeable lens camera model again it had a 24.3 megapixel full frame sensor a bion zx processor and xga oled viewfinder which was pretty revolutionary at the time it had 2.4 million dots of resolution this camera recorded at 1080p at 60 frames per second in the great avc hd recording format its body was made out of a magnesium alloy that made it lightweight and also this camera was dust and moisture resistant it featured a fast hybrid autofocus system with 117 points of phase detection autofocus points and 25 contrast detection autofocus points you could shoot this camera at up to 5 frames per second the original sony a7 does look retro now as you compare it to newer camera bodies from sony the grip on this camera is definitely a lot more shallow than what you get with newer models and overall the camera body is slightly thinner than the newer models from sony this camera is the only one out of the four that does not have any sort of stabilization built into the camera body so there's no ibis here you do want to use stabilized lenses if you want some sort of stabilization ultimately this is a good camera body the problem with it is that it's a bit slow so it's slow to start up it's slow loaded take photos it's slow to process photos the autofocus is a bit slow it's also not the most reliable in the world there are not as many auto focus points on this camera as on newer models it is at this point an eight-year-old camera and you can kind of feel that it feels a little bit more vintagey there are plenty of people that use the original sony a7 in a professional setting and you can still do that but you either have to live with the compromises of the slower auto focusing system or get really good with focusing on manual lenses almost exactly a year later in november of 2014 sony announced the a7 mark ii the big selling point on the a7 ii was now this camera featured in body image stabilization or sony called it 5-axis sensor shift image stabilization which they said offered 4.5 stops of stabilization this camera had the exact same 117 phase detection and 25 contract detection autofocus points however sony claimed that it had a 30 improvement in auto focusing speed and a 1.5 x improvement in tracking this camera also offered a better codec for video recording still only at 1080p at 60 frames per second but now you have the xavcs format which was improved better detail and this camera also had s-log 2 so for video work it was a bit better you'll notice that the grip is significantly improved much larger this improvement alone made a huge difference especially when you're using heavier lenses for longer periods of time you'll also notice that the overall body on the a7 ii is just a little bit thicker than the original a7 there are a couple of extra custom buttons you'll see custom button one and two on the top and some of the dials and knobs have been relocated or they've changed the grip on some of them for example the scroll wheel on the back is a lot easier to grip and turn than it is on the original sony a7 the front panel on the a7 ii is also magnesium instead of plastic as it is on the original a7 and the lens mount is reinforced and you'll notice that especially with lenses here is the original a7 there's a bit of clicking and movement there on the a7 ii there is no clicking and no movement so the a7 ii is definitely a solid improvement over the original a7 it feels a lot more modern in the hand and it is definitely quicker and a lot of folks use this camera even to this day even though it's you know seven-year-old camera at this point in time the color the sharpness the overall optical quality of what you're getting with this camera was solid before i continue and talk about the amazing a7 3 let's talk about today's video sponsor wire stock now you may own one of these cameras or maybe you're looking at buying one of these full-frame cameras and you might be thinking they are quite expensive the nice thing about photography and videography is that there are plenty of ways to make money doing what you enjoy doing and so when wirestock reached out and wanted to partner up with me i thought this was genius why have i not heard of this before in simple terms wirestock is an easy way to make money selling photos and videos online instead of creating seven accounts on major marketplaces like shutterstock adobe stock 123rf alame dreams time deposit photos and pond5 with wirestock you have one account from which you can simultaneously upload to all of these websites plus other marketplaces platforms and agencies you upload once and it goes everywhere they also have easy submission which automatically keywords and captions each photo and video you upload for free wirestock offers higher royalty rates and discoverability because you are sending your content everywhere with no additional effort and because you can do this from a single account all of your payments are also sent to a single account meaning you can track your earnings from a single dashboard and with wirestock there are no monthly or flat fees they only charge 15 of royalties which means they only make money if you make money so if you have one of these cameras or if you're looking at getting one and you want to earn some extra passive income on the side quite easily i might add definitely check out the link down in the description below to wire stock special thanks to them for sponsoring this video now let's get back to this four-way comparison the a7 ii came out in 2014. a whopping four years later sony announces in february of 2018 the sony a7 iii and this camera was basically an affordable sony a9 which was at that point in time their top of the line full frame mirrorless camera this camera featured a bsi sensor or a backside illumination sensor which allows more light to be collected at the pixel level it results in less noise and up to one stop of better performance the a7 iii also introduced a brand new larger z battery into this lineup which offered 2.2 times improvement in overall images that you could take on a single charge which was massive when you compare it side by side with the older battery you can see just how much larger it is and it was a lot more convenient to carry one of these around that would last you almost a full day versus carrying three or four of these around the a7 iii also introduced a joystick controller on the back of the camera that wasn't there on the a7 ii so starting with the performance this camera offered iaf so i auto focus it tracked twice as fast as the a7 ii this camera featured 693 phase detection auto focus points and 425 contrast detection autofocus points that combined covered 93 percent of the frame it also had a new front-end lsi pre-processor which improved speeds on this camera by 1.8 times which meant that this camera now shot at 10 frames per second continuously with continuous shooting you also got a huge buffer of 177 jpegs in a row all with auto focus and exposure in between each shot which is very impressive this camera is also the first one out of the lineup to offer 4k video recording now the great thing about the 4k on the a7 iii is that it sampled it took a full frame readout so 6k image oversampled into a 4k video file at 24 frames per second it also did 4k video at 30 frames per second but from 5k oversampled which resulted in a 1.2 x crop this camera also offered s-log 2 s-log 3 and the newest hlg color profile so for video work this was a massive improvement it also offered a more comfortable grip it's not much of a difference over the a7 ii but it is slightly more comfortable for your smaller fingers the a7 iii also had better weather sealing it was dust and moisture resistant like the previous models but it was improved it had a revised menu system that was slightly easier to navigate and it featured a my menu which allowed you to customize the menus a little bit the screen on the back of the a7 3 is also touch screen which you can't use to navigate through the menu system but you can use the touchscreen for focusing and so that was a first in this lineup there also was a slight change to the viewfinder while the resolution remained the same from the a7 ii to the a7 iii the viewfinder on the a7 3 was at 0.78 x magnification versus 0.71 magnification on the previous model so you get a larger image when you are looking through this viewfinder the a7 iii also did feature ibis or in-body image stabilization and from what i read it is improved over the a7 ii sony claims you get five stops of shutter advantage with the ibis on the a7 iii in addition to that you got silent shooting which was introduced on this camera which is great if you are in a place like a museum in a church somewhere and you don't want that shutter noise the a7 3 is the first camera in the lineup to offer dual card slots and that's why so many professionals bought this camera and started using it prior to this on the a7 ii you only had one sd card slot the last thing that i'll mention on the a7 iii is that it offered vastly improved color science sony introduced this new color science obviously this is several years newer than the a7 ii and the a7 so the improved colors with the a7 iii were huge in the end the a7 iii proved to be a very capable very popular camera it was a best seller and to this day may be a bestseller for sony almost a full three years later in september of 2020 sony announced this which is the a7c now the c in the a7c stands for compact and what this camera is is essentially an a73 but packed into a smaller camera body with a couple of tweaks and adjustments sony claims that this is the world's smallest full-frame camera with image stabilization that's right this has inbody image stabilization just like what you get with the a7 iii however this camera body is significantly smaller than the a7 iii and it is 22 percent lighter now up to this point in this video each one of these cameras was an update over the predecessor and an upgrade over the predecessor the a7c is the first camera in the lineup that you can argue is not necessarily an upgrade but in many ways is worse than the a7 iii one of those ways is the viewfinder it's in the corner it's much much smaller than the viewfinder that you get on the a7 iii in fact the magnification on the a7c's viewfinder is .59 x versus the 0.78 x that you get on the a7 iii the magnification on this camera a full-frame sony mirrorless camera is actually worse than what you got with sony's aps-c line which is just bizarre this camera offers real-time iaf so i auto focus for both humans and animals i would say that the autofocus performance is on par with what you get with the a7 iii but it's slightly improved but you probably won't notice it in the real world i'd say in terms of autofocus performance there was a significant jump from the a7 to the a7 ii a huge jump from the a7 ii to the a7 3 and a small improvement from the a7 3 to the a7c the a7c has a new shutter unit which may be more reliable than the previous versions however it is slower than all three of the other cameras here at one over four thousandth of a second at its maximum versus one over eight thousandth of a second for all of the other cameras here another difference with the a7c is it offered a fully articulating screen many people were asking sony for this so now the screen flips out and it rotates like this and you can fold it back versus the older screen on the a7 3 and the previous models that simply flipped up and out there was no selfie mode possible with the older cameras now there are some improvements here the a7c has no video record limit so that means you can record for hours and hours without stopping the record limit on the previous models was 30 minutes so you had to stop and restart your recording after 30 minutes versus you can go on forever for as long as you have battery and space on an sd card in addition to that sony solved the overheating issues with the a7c the previous cameras did tend to overheat after about 45 minutes or so of 4k video recording specifically the a7 iii because that processor did heat up the a7c has much better port flaps i know it's a minut detail versus the sort of mess that you get with the a7 3 kind of just dangle around and move around and yeah they break off i've seen a lot of these broken off the a7c also has sony's latest color science so the colors are slightly improved over the a7 iii this camera also has gyro data so you can stabilize your video footage in post versus just having to rely on your ibis although it does have ibis as well if you look at the body of the a7c you'll see that it is very simple the scroll wheel on the front is missing that you get on the a7 iii and you're missing a whole bunch of custom buttons sony relocated the record button to the top of the camera thereby making it easier to press record when you are using it in selfie mode but they removed a ton of functionality buttons on the top you'll see that it's very simplified and in some ways it's a good thing but in some ways it's also not a good thing because you are missing the convenience of having extra scroll wheels and buttons to quickly access your settings the last thing that i'll mention about the sony a7c is that it only has one sd card slot so you're moving from two back down to one and it's interesting that sony made that decision so for professional work if you're shooting weddings this is probably not the best camera in the world to have because if that sd card does corrupt then you will be missing all of your footage which is not a fun time at all the prices i'm seeing right now for these cameras you can get the a7 for around 500 still the a7 ii is up to about 800 or so the a7 iii right now is around fifteen hundred dollars on the used market the a7c is new for eighteen hundred dollars but you can find it used like i did for fourteen hundred dollars so there are some bargains out on the a7c as well so there's a big price difference between the a7 ii and the a7 3 but that's because this is a big jump in performance features autofocus etc between those two cameras if you can swing it i would highly recommend trying to get your hands on either one of these two cameras for photography and for professional work the a7 iii is by far the best camera here however if you are okay with the smaller viewfinder you're okay with having a single card slot and you want some of these smaller improvements in a smaller body the a7c is an excellent option and i think right now for the money especially because you can find it for a little bit less on the market this is the best deal in full-frame sony mirrorless cameras so that is it for my four-way comparison of these full-frame sony cameras i hope you guys enjoyed it and you learned something from it as usual i'll post some links down in the description below so if you are shopping for one of these camera bodies or if you just want to check pricing please check out the links below and let me know down in the comments what you guys think is the best bang for buck what is the value play here with sony full frame curious what your thoughts are if you like this video please hit that like button it helps me out a little bit anyway i will see you guys in the next video thanks so much for all of your support have a nice day bye

Channel: Arthur R

Views: 813,511

Keywords: sony a7 vs a7ii vs a7iii vs a7c, a7 vs a7ii, a7ii vs a7iii, a7iii vs a7c, sony full frame mirrorless, sony comparison, best full frame camera, best sony full frame, best budget full frame camera, arthur r, arthurr, arthur, technologymafia, a7 vs a72 vs a73 vs a7c

Id: SHyTWKJVKiM

Length: 20min 23sec (1223 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021