- Hey guys, my name is Matt
Johnson with whoismatt.com and this is the Sony a7S III, a camera that many
filmmakers myself included, were starting to believe
may never be released. Today, I'm going to be
reviewing this camera from the perspective
of a wedding filmmaker, and tell you why I believe, the a7S III has the least compromises and is the most well-rounded camera, available for wedding filmmakers today and before we get started
for the sake of ethics, I want you to know that
this video isn't paid or sponsored by Sony in any way. They did loan me an earlier
version of the a7S III to try out but I had to return it to them
and this camera right here, I paid for with my own money and these thoughts and
opinions are all my own. Let's start this review by
talking about the build quality of this camera because I believe, that this is one of the
best built Sony cameras, I have ever owned. Sony's Alpha series of cameras
have always prioritized, being light and compact,
which as a wedding filmmaker, that has to carry around a
camera all day, I appreciate because it's easier on my arms and back but that said, Sony's
quest for a small camera has resulted in many of
the A series cameras, being harder to hold and less ergonomic than their competition. To be clear this grip
on my older Sony a7S II has been usable, I filmed with the camera for five years but there were some hot Texas summer days, where I started to get a little sweaty and I began to worry that
I might drop the camera, in contrast, when I first
used the Panasonic GH5, I was like, "Oh! That's what a mirror-less
camera, should feel like." It kept the camera size
small and manageable, while still giving me a grip, that I could hold all day at a wedding, it's all a balance though, throw the Canon R5 into the mix and it feels like cannon
didn't even get the memo, that mirror-less cameras are
able to be smaller than DSLRs, that camera almost feels
like holding a 5D to me, it's thick. Back to Sony now, I do have good news, as it feels like every
generation of Alpha cameras, have improved in ergonomics, to make them more usable for
filming on long wedding days. The a7 II grip was slightly
bigger than the original a7, the third generation a7
III was larger still, finally, we come to the a7S
III, which is the thickest and heaviest a7 series of camera to date. On the surface that sounds bad, right? A camera getting heavier with
more to carry, who wants that? Remember though, we're
coming from the original A7, which was arguably too small. So, with the a7S III, we're finally growing to the right size. This is the Goldilocks principle at work. Remember that story? The three bears and the porridge, I'm the bearded Goldilocks,
that's what I'm saying and this camera is the
perfect size for me, with a grip that's deeper than ever before and an overall weight that
feels slightly heavier but well-balanced overall, I'm not worried about dropping it anymore, when my hands are sweaty on a wedding day. Now the grip isn't the only thing about this camera has been improved, there are new updates
and changes all over. But, the biggest one by far, is probably the flippy screen. Yes! This is easily the first thing
you notice about the a7S III and I think this screen
is a welcome improvement for most filmmakers. Notice I said most because, I don't think this is
necessarily a game changer for wedding filmmakers. Because let's be honest, the only time that you use a flippy screen is whenever you're filming yourself. And on a wedding day,
you're not filming yourself unless you're filming a behind the scenes like I do at my weddings. Personally, I was very happy filming weddings with my
angled screen on the a7S II. And I liked that it gave me the ability to film high or low with my camera without dramatically
increasing the camera size, or requiring me to have a
screen hanging off the side. With all that said though,
I can think of one way that I think wedding
filmmakers will be happy about the flip out screen, and that is if you film
weddings with a gimbal. Some gimbals like my ZHIYUN Crane-2 and 2S can block a camera's screen. So having a flip out screen, makes it much more visible. Enough about the flippiness now. How is the actual screen quality? Sony has been known for
having middling screen quality in the past. My a7S II's screen dimmed
when recording in 4K, which makes it quite difficult
to see when filming outdoors and while the more recent a7
III fixed that dimming issue, it did suffer from
inconsistent screen colors. The good news is, I've had
the opportunity to look at four different a7S III screens so far, and across all of them, the colors have looked
consistent and accurate. No weird color shift or tint to be found. In other good news, the a7S III's screen is noticeably brighter than my a7S II. And while I don't have an a7 III on hand to directly compare the a7S III too, the a7S III's screen looks brighter to me than I remember the a7 III's screen being. I filmed a wedding with
the a7S III outdoors in the bright Texas sunlight, and I could still easily see the screen. So, if you are one of those
people that had to buy a monitor to see your Sony camera screen, you may not need to use one anymore. Hey, monitors are still great though. I'm literally using one to
record this video right now but, on a wedding day, I prefer
to not use a monitor with my camera because I want to keep what I'm carrying around all
day as light as possible. Related to the screen of the a7S III now, let's talk about the EVF,
the tiny screen inside it. There has been a lot of
hype about the a7S III EVF because it is the highest
resolution and largest EVF of any mirrorless camera. But of course, we are talking about
filming weddings here, so I don't use the EVF very often. With past Sony cameras, I've really only ever used
it to double check my focus if it's really bright outside. And now that the screen is brighter, I really don't have any
need to use an EVF at all. Oh, well, it's there if you need it and it looks really pretty. Moving on, there are two final things that I wanna talk about
the build of this camera and they're both located on the top. First, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this camera
now has a mode dial with three custom presets on it, up from two presets on
the a7 III and a7S II. If you've watched my camera set up video for the a7S II from a few years back, you'll know that I prefer
to have my mode dial set up as presets for the frame
rates that I shoot at. Namely, 24 and 60 frames per second. With the a7S III, I'm planning
on having my presets set to 24, 60 and now 120 frames per second, so I can nearly instantly
change between them. I will be creating a video soon all about how I have my a7S
III set up for fast shooting. So please subscribe if
you want to see that. Aside from the expanded mode dial, the other thing you'll
see on top of the camera is that Sony has yet again, moved the placement of
the video record button. On the a7S I and II, it was
an awful afterthought button on the side of the camera that
I immediately reprogrammed to a custom button. The a7 III moved it to
a much more comfortable thumb-friendly position,
and now that everyone who has ever shot with a Sony camera has their muscle memory set to
press this button to record, they moved the record button
to the top of the camera. Good news is, that you
can still reprogram C1 if you want it to be the record button or you can do like I've done, and set the shutter button to record because I ain't taking
photos with this thing. Who takes photos with the a7S III? Let's record video with this button that works perfectly for your finger here. That's it for the build of the camera. Let's go inward now and talk menus. For many years now, one
of the biggest complaints Sony has received about their cameras is the convoluted menu system. It took me quite a while to
learn the menus on my a7S II. And even today, if you
ask me where a setting is, it's easier for me to get
there by muscle memory than to tell you which page it's on. That said, just like the build quality, every generation Sony has
made slow improvements to the usability of their cameras. Even on the a7S II, the
camera's custom buttons and function menu really
kept me from needing to dive deep into the
menu on a wedding day. With the a7 III, Sony
introduced a new custom menu, which you could program with
settings that you can't access with the function menu or custom buttons. But while this works well,
once you get it all set up, it can be quite daunting to
go through the setup process. This leaves many filmmakers with a camera that is very powerful but
intimidating to set up so they can film with it properly. Thankfully, someone at
Sony realized they need to completely revamp their camera's menus with usability in mind. And the a7S III is the first
Sony camera with that new menu. Now, if I was to hand you the camera and ask you what the
biggest menu change was, you may think it's the colors. Red, green, purple, blue. We can all the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles in here. We almost have all of the
original Power Rangers, but hold on a second
because these new colors are actually not the
biggest change to the menu. The biggest change is
that Sony has taken a page from Panasonic and the a7S III is now only showing you the
camera settings available for the mode your camera is in. If you don't see why this
is huge, let me explain. One of the biggest issues most
people have with Sony menus, is there are just so many options and there's no way to tell at a glance if those options even apply to video, or if they're only for photo. Fellow Sony camera users, tell me how many times
that you're trying to find your frame rate settings
but you get caught up with flash settings or something
like that and you're like, I know it's one of these over here under the toolbox I think. It's crazy. This won't happen any longer. If you switch the camera to video mode, all the photo mode settings
are no longer visible. You only see the settings
that you need, and this makes setting up the camera for
filmmaking much easier. And going back to the new menu colors now, when you combine that with
the simplified menus overall, at least for me and my bearded brain here, this menu is much easier to navigate and remember where settings are. Are there still a ton of settings, even with the photo ones gone? Of course there are, but all of the customization
from previous Sony cameras like custom buttons, the
function menu and custom menu are all still available, which makes everything easier overall. I am planning on creating a
full walkthrough of the menu of this camera for filmmakers so please consider subscribing
if you wanna see that. Now, what else is new? In addition to the colors
and specialized settings for different modes, Sony has also included a
helpful explainer feature, where if you hit the trashcan
button on most menu settings, it will pop up a window
explaining what the setting does. Some of these are more clear than others, but regardless it makes
learning the camera easier, so that's a win. Digging deeper, you
may notice this feature Emph disp dur REC. No that's not an alien language.
What does this setting do? Tell me if this has ever happened to you. I was filming a wedding reception, everyone was dancing and
I brought the camera up, hit record, filmed a great shot, and then brought the camera
down and stopped recording. Or at least I thought I did. In reality, I hadn't
pressed stopped record so I was now filming the ground. That's not the bad news though. The bad news is that when
I brought my camera up to film another shot and pressed record, I was actually stopping the recording. I've missed moments because I thought the camera was recording when it wasn't. This new Emph disp dur REC, or emphasize display during recording, can help prevent this from happening. Press record and the
entire screen now has a nice red border around it so you can tell at a glance
that you are recording. You don't have to pay attention
to some tiny recording icon. The camera's now screaming
at you, I'm recording! I love that. Now, there is something
that I don't love about the a7S III though. What? Matt doesn't love every single
thing about this camera? I'm sorry, it doesn't make tacos. If it made tacos, it'd
be the perfect camera, but there's no tortilla
press here that I'm seeing. I'm sorry. Aside from not making tacos though, the a7S III is also not capable
of using an APS-C crop mode when recording in 4K. See, while the a7S III
is a full frame camera, it is only a 12-megapixel camera, meaning it essentially
has just enough pixels to record 4K video, at
3840 by 2160 in full frame. This means the image quality is great, because the camera isn't pixel binning, or throwing away any pixels, but it also means that
the camera cannot crop in on the sensor and still record in 4K. There isn't enough pixels Captain. I'm sorry, that was a "Star Trek" joke with a very bad accent, probably before your time. Comment below though if
you've got that reference. What this lack of crop mode means for you, is that if you want to
use lenses for APS-C sized camera sensors on the a7S III, like say the Sigma 18 to 35 millimeter that people love, you are going
to get a ton of vignetting on the sides of the image. You may have noticed though, that there is an option for an APS-C crop in the camera settings. Spoiler, this crop only works
when recording in 1080P, which is a bummer because you're
probably buying this camera to record in 4K. Now you should know that,
Sony does include a feature called Clear Image Zoom, that lets you zoom in
your video by 1.5 times, which also happens to be just
enough to remove that vignette when using an APS-C lens. But please be aware that this is more of a
band-aid than a true fix. The camera won't remember the zoom level when you turn it off and back on, so you'll have to zoom in again. It's a pain, I would only
use this as a workaround if you absolutely have to. Here's the key takeaway for you, if you buy the A7S III I would
highly recommend investing in full frame lenses for it as well. Don't skimp and think that
you can save some money by buying budget APS-C lenses, and hoping they'll work
well with the camera. You're not gonna have a good
time in 4K if you do that. Moving on, back to good things now, there are two other
features of the a7S III, that I absolutely love. I actually made a video going in depth on these two features, I linked you up in the corner, and down the description
if you wanna watch it. Up first, you can finally
change your white balance while you're recording. Panasonic users are preparing to comment, "We've had this forever!" Well, it's new to us Sony users, okay! You can change the preset or Kelvin, and as an added bonus, the A7S III also has a
Shockless White Balance feature. So instead of an instant
change from orange to blue, you can set it to be a much
more gradual transition. This could be very useful if you're filming a wedding ceremony in a church for example, where the lights at the front
are a different white balance than the lights where someone
is walking down the aisle. You can now adjust your
white balance smoothly as you pan the camera, without
needing to stop recording. The other addition I love is the a7S III is now significantly more sharp when you magnify your
image to check focus. On previous Sony cameras,
magnification was usable, but it a bit blurry. Now it's crystal clear, which
makes manual focusing a dream. Speaking of focusing though, we need to talk about auto
focus with the A7S III because, as a staunch
supporter of manual focus, it's starting to tempt me to auto-focus. In my over decade of filming weddings now, I have never had a camera
capable of good video auto-focus. The first video camera I ever owned that supported auto-focus
was the Sony FS100, but it would hunt constantly
and was unreliable. Likewise, my Sony a7S II only used a contrast based auto-focus system. Meaning that while it
would work sometimes, I often found it focusing
on the wrong thing. I even shot a wedding with
the Panasonic GH5 but, we're not gonna talk about
that camera's auto-focus, that just seems mean. I tell you all this because when I shot my
first wedding with a7S III, my contact at Sony that
loaned me the camera, also loaned me a 24-105 and
24 millimeter Sony lens. Both of these lenses supported auto-focus and having heard good things
about Sony's improvements to auto-focus with the a7S III, I was interested in trying it out. Skeptical, but interested. Let's talk auto-focus improvements now. While Sony has supported
Face Detect auto-focus for many years, even back to my a7S II. The a7S III is only the
second Sony camera ever to support Eye Detect
auto-focus while recording video and this is a very impressive improvement. The auto-focus on a7S III the is so good, it's almost like the
camera's reading your mind. There are shots that
I got with this camera that I never would have been
able to get with manual focus. Here are two examples. First, I was filming a group of groomsmen walking toward the camera with
the 24-105 millimeter lens. This is always an
incredibly challenging shot to get in manual focus, and even challenging for many cameras that support auto-focus as well. There's a moving subject that's
heading toward the camera while the camera itself
is panning sideways. There is a group of
seven faces with 14 eyes, the camera can choose to focus on. Somehow though, the a7S III nailed it and
focus perfectly on the groom without me telling it. I don't know how, I really don't. In the second shot, I was filming the bride and groom as they were walking toward
me at 120 frames per second. This shot was great,
but there came a point where I realized that I wanted
to actually shift the angle that I was filming. Instead of filming the
couple walking toward me, I wanted to get a shot of
them walking from the side. So I stopped recording,
ran around to the side, pressed record as I began
to lift the camera up. And within a second, the camera
had found the bride's eye, focused on her and enabled me to get the shot. Stunning! I know for a fact, that
if I had been filming with my a7S II, I would
have whipped that camera up, tried to find focus and missed that moment because it happened so quickly. Moving on, let's talk about IBIS. Not irritable bowel syndrome, that's IBS. IBIS, In-Body Image Stabilization. At first glance, IBIS is an
area that it doesn't look like Sony has improved with the a7S III. When I first used the camera with my usual non-native manual focus lenses, the In-Body Image Stabilization
performed very similarly to my a7S II. Sony has done two really
cool new things though, when it comes to image
stabilization with the a7S III. The first is called active
image stabilization. And whenever I first heard about this, I was worried it was gonna be some sort of gross
electronic stabilization that warps and bins your video footage. Thankfully, I was wrong. Active image stabilization
is actually a 1.1 times crop of the sensor. That way the sensor itself
has a bit more room to move and stabilize the footage. This is not some huge jump in stability, but it does
bring the a7S III closer to the level of stabilization that you would see from the competition. So if you are say someone coming from Panasonic and
you've not been impressed by Sony cameras' image
stabilization before, give active image stabilization a try. You may be surprised. There is one con of active
image stabilization though and that is the camera will
not use it when recording at 120 frames per second. My theory is that the camera already has to crop in the image by 1.1 times to record
at 120 frames per second. So by turning on active
image stabilization, you are causing the
camera to crop even more. And at that point, you're probably losing
too much resolution. The good news is that if you're shooting
at 120 frames per second and you slow it down, it should
look pretty stable anyways because I don't 20 frames
per second is pretty slow. Other than active image stabilization, the second improvement to the a7S III's IBIS is
something called gyroscopic data. Every movement, shake, turn and wiggle of the camera is recorded. This data can then be used to
stabilize the video footage in post using Sony's Catalyst software and make for some really cool effects. The main con of this form of gyroscopic image stabilization though is that it actually competes with the in-body image stabilization
of the camera's sensor. So if you apply this
gyroscopic image stabilization to footage that was recorded within body image stabilization turned on, the footage can look worse. So to get good results
with gyroscopic data, you need to turn off the camera's IBIS. But if the gyroscopic data fails you, you're kind of in trouble
with a bunch of shaky footage. So if you are filming a wedding, a one-take event where
you don't get any do-overs I would just shoot with IBIS and use active image
stabilization as necessary. Let's talk more improvements now. Whenever I use words like battery life, filmmakers that used
earlier Sony cameras cringe a little bit, but filmmakers
that use newer Sony cameras smile and say, it's great. See, all Sony cameras from the A6400 back took the
rather small NP-FW50 battery. With my a7S II, I could expect at best about
one hour of battery life when recording in 4K. This was a big sticking point for a lot of filmmakers that were
considering switching to Sony. All of Sony's competition were selling cameras that would enable you to film an entire wedding
day on just a few batteries. While Sony requires you to
almost buy them in bulk. And they weren't cheap either. Thankfully, Sony listened to the cries of their customers for
better battery life. And with the a7R III, they
introduced the NP-FZ100 battery and this Z battery improved battery life by over 2.5 times. The a7S III is using this new Z battery, which sounds great for
battery life, right? Well, I was actually
a little apprehensive. See, up until the a7S III, Sony cameras have all been recording video at a maximum of 4K at
30 frames per second, which while that's been good quality, Sony has had five years
to make recording 4K at 30 frames per second
as efficient as possible when it comes to battery life. With the a7S III, you are
suddenly looking at recording 4K at up to 120 frames per second
at much higher bit rates, which is gonna require more power. I was nervous that the Z
battery might not be up to it. The battery life could
suck with this camera. Thankfully, I'm pleased to tell
you my fears were unfounded and the a7S III has
fantastic battery life. Even if you're spending a lot of time recording in high
resolution at higher frame rates. For comparison with my a7S II, I could expect to go through
four to five batteries on a wedding day. Alternatively, with the a7S III, when I filmed an entire
wedding day, all in 4K at a mix of resolutions, I used two batteries, two. Now caveat, this wedding didn't have a ton of dancing because pandemic, but if I had filmed more dancing, even at higher frame rates, I would have expected to use
25 to 50% of a third battery. That's really good and way better than my a7S II. In short, you do not need to go out and buy a ton of batteries
to shoot a wedding with the a7S III. I think you'll be fine with three. Up next, low light performance. Over the years, I've filmed
many weddings with the a7S II and pushed its low light
capabilities to the extreme in moonlight, torchlight, and various other dark conditions. And through it all, it
has been phenomenal. My go-to ISO on that camera has been
16,000 for filming dancing but I have filmed comfortably
at up to ISO 32,000. Any ISO higher than that has
required de-noising in post. But I filmed in moonlight at ISO 64,000 when I absolutely needed to. This capability of filming at higher ISOs has been invaluable to me as a filmmaker and has enabled me to get shots that I never would have been able to get with other cameras. In fact, this low-light
performance has been so important to me that it kept me from switching to filming weddings with
the GH5 back in 2017. I enjoyed so many aspects of that camera, but it's inability to go above ISO 1,600 or so
without introducing a lot of noise made me not want
to film a wedding with it. I can already hear GH5
filmmakers right now furiously typing lights, Matt, use lights. I love lights. I bring lights to every wedding but there will be weddings where
you don't have full control of the lighting. Having a camera that can still work in those uncontrollable conditions
is incredibly important. So I didn't switch to the GH5 and I stuck with the a7S II. Incidentally, if you want
to hear more of my thoughts about the GH5, I have a
50-minute long review. I'll link to the corner
and down in the description if you wanna watch it. Now the S in a7S has always stood for sensitivity, an indicator
of how good the camera is in low light. With the a7S III though, Sony has said that the
S now stands for Supreme and not the fashion company either. The definition you're looking for is supreme, as in a rich cream sauce. Wait, that's not it either? Does it really stand for that? The definition I'm looking
for is superior to all others. Sony wants this camera
to be considered the best but what does that mean for sensitivity? Does the a7S III still
have a sensitive side? Is it still good in low light? I'm happy to tell you that this camera's still quite sensitive and you will see it crying every
time a Hallmark movie is on or you watch one of
those video compilations of dogs being reunited with
their owners on YouTube. Those get me every time. Jokes aside, the a7S II
held the low-light crown for mirrorless cameras for five years. But I'm happy to tell you, the a7S III is the new low-light king. Hearing me say that though, you may be a bit confused. The a7S III has the same
maximum ISO of 409,600 as the a7S II. Aren't you saying this
camera's better in low light? How is it possible for it to be better if the a7S III has the same max ISO and doesn't got up to one
million or something like that? Well, there are two main
improvements for low light that the a7S III has made over the a7S II. And one weird quirk as well. First improvement, while the a7S III may have the same maximum
ISO as the a7S II, the a7S III has less noise at higher ISOs. For example, going up to ISO 32,000, the a7S II and a7S III are quite similar but once you break 32,000, the a7S III still stays quite usable, all the way up to 102,400. Let's be real though. Are you actually ever
gonna use ISO 102,000? Well, like I said, I went up
to ISO 64,000 on the a7S II and if I could have that ISO but have it be cleaner, I'll take it. Moving on to the second
low-light improvement now, this is something that has
me significantly more excited than extreme ISO performance because this improvement is something that I'm betting that you
are going to appreciate every time you film a wedding. In my experience with
the a7S II and a7 III, both cameras performed their best in regards to noise at high ISOs when recording in 4K at up
to 30 frames per second. 1080p at 60 frames per
second has also been good even at high ISOs as well. But once you switch to these cameras to record in 1080p at
120 frames per second, low-light performance and
noise got significantly worse. This combination of high frame rate at high ISO was a recipe
for noise with both cameras, which led to me avoiding
filming essentially anything in 120 frames per second in low light and instead, sticking
to 60 frames per second. Surprisingly though, the a7S
III does not have this issue. And it is more than capable of filming at high frame rates at high ISOs without
introducing a ton of noise. Here are two examples for you. I filmed a bride and groom
cutting their wedding cake in a dimly lit reception hall with the a7S III. For this shot, I was using a Sony 24-105 millimeter lens
with a maximum aperture of only f/4, and I was filming
at 60 frames per second, at 125 shutter speed. Oh, and I was filming an SLOG3 which requires you to overexpose some if you don't want noise in your shadows. This is arguably not the best
lens or frame rate choice or picture profile for this
situation. But to compensate, I cranked the camera to ISO 40,000 and wouldn't you know it, no noise. The image is still looked fantastic, easily usable, mind blown. Second example, at this wedding, I was
filming the couple exit. There were sparklers and overhead lighting so it was definitely brighter
than the dim reception hall, but it was still hours
after the sun had gone down. I made a better lens choice this time and used a Sony 24 millimeter at f/2. I then chose to push the
camera harder though, and went for recording 4K
at 120 frames per second, with 1/250th shutter speed, which required me to crank
the camera's ISO to 10,000 to properly expose in SLOG3. This is a shot that
would have looked gross from all the noise on my a7S II, but the a7S III handled it so well. This camera is so much better
when recording high ISOs and high frame rates than
previous Sony cameras. Now, I have a confession for you, check out this shot ungraded, see the noise up here in the shadows, what happened there? Matt, you said the a7S III
wasn't noisy. You're a liar. Well, here's where I actually
screwed up while filming and this also happens to
be the last weird quirk we need to talk about in
regards to low-light performance with the a7S III. In
case you weren't aware, and don't worry if you weren't because Sony hasn't
publicized this at all really. The a7S III's sensor is what is known as a Dual Gain ISO sensor. To
explain in simple terms, most cameras that don't have
dual ISO, say my Sony a7S II or Panasonic GH5 for example, give you a very clean image
when they're set to low ISO. But once you start to raise the ISO, they get noisier and noisier until the image basically
becomes unusable. With a dual ISO camera, on the
other hand like the a7S III, the camera is still clean at low ISOs, but as you start to raise it, you'll see it gets
noisier much more quickly. As you can see here with the
camera filming at ISO 3,200 now 6,400, 8,000, the noise is increasing. 10,000 is quite noisy here
on the a7S III but wait, switch to ISO 12,800 and
bang! It's super clean and the noise disappears. This is the camera's dual ISO at work and on the a7S III, that dual
ISO switch, is at ISO 12,800 when you're recording in SLOG3. Now that you know all this,
let's bring it all back to that wedding exit that I
filmed with the a7S III. Note that I filmed it at ISO 10,000, which we have just established is the noisiest ISO you can shoot at before the camera switches
over to the much cleaner 12,800 ISO. Why did I do that? I could tell you that it
was a cinematic choice and I wanted to add some
natural looking film grain with the noise to the image,
but in reality, I just forgot. Brand new camera, I'm
thinking about white balance, I got it on a gimbal, auto-focus, there's so many things
running through my mind, I completely forgot that I
was shooting at a noisy ISO. Here's the funny part, at the very end of the exit as the couple was saying bye
to their family and leaving, I realized I was shooting at ISO 10,000 and it would be noisy. So I switched the A7S III
to ISO 12,800 right here, and viola, the ISO is higher,
but the image is much cleaner. So what have we learned from all this? I would generally try to
avoid shooting at ISO 6,400 through 10,000 in SLOG3, and skip directly to
12,800 if you want to have the least noisy image while filming. But as a counter-argument to that, as long as you properly
expose SLOG3 like I did, and you have a lot of room
to bring down your shadows to hide that noise, add some YouTube compression over that and you may start seeing
comments from people saying things like, "That
exit footage looks so clean!" When in reality you know, you know you shot at the wrong ISO, but nobody else does. So maybe not worry about it. Regardless, the A7S III
offers a cleaner image at higher ISOs than the A7S II, and enables you to film
at higher frame rates at high ISOs without noise, better than any previous Sony camera. So it's a winner in my book. All right, it's time to get into what you really want to know about this camera, image quality. Let's start by talking color
bit depth, getting nerdy here. The first thing that you need to know is that all Sony mirrorless cameras, the A7S II, a7 III, a7R IV,
A6400, A6600, et cetera, literally all of them, like 20 cameras record
video in eight bit color. One of the biggest new
features of the A7S III, and also one of the most
begged for by filmmakers, is this is the first
Sony mirrorless camera, able to finally record in 10 bit color. What is 10 bit? In summary it is how many
colors your camera can record. Cameras record video by recording
in red, green, and blue, and mixing those colors together. Older Sony cameras that
record in eight bit, record up to 256 colors for
red, 256 colors for green and 256 colors for blue. This gives you 16.7 million
color combinations to work with. Doesn't sound bad, right? Well, on the other hand, the
A7S III recording in 10 bit, records 1024 colors for
red, 1024 colors for green and 1024 colors for blue. This means you now have 1.7
billion colors to work with. Not a bad jump there. What does this mean for you though? This means that your camera's colors are going to look better
because the camera is literally recording more information. Subtle changes in color, and finer color gradients will be visible, and your colors are going
to look much better. This also importantly means
you have more flexibility to adjust colors and
color grade your video before it starts to break down. And for wedding filmmakers especially, this is a big deal. Unlike a commercial or film shoot where you have full
control over your lighting and can make tweaks to every little thing so it looks good, you are filming a wedding where you have very little control and have to work with what you are given. Gross orange lighting
shining in from everywhere, figure out how to make it look good. DJ's lights looking a little too green? Tough, make it work. I've made great-looking films with the a7S II filming in 8-bit but there are still many times where I've been color correcting and grading my footage where I width I had just
a bit more flexibility, more room to push the colors harder and make them look even better. With the a7S III and 10-bit color, that is finally possible. Now that you know what 10 bit is and why is it awesome for the a7S III, we need to shift gears here a little bit and talk about something related. Dynamic range. Sony has made claims that the new sensor in the a7S III has much more dynamic range than their previous mirrorless cameras, specifically up to 15 stops of range, which is very good. But let's talk about real-world use. What are these supposedly 15
stops of dynamic range mean for you as a wedding filmmaker? Are you going to see
any crazy improvements to the dynamic range of your footage? Can you film in a dark room but still expose for that it
outside a brightly lit window? Spoiler, yes. And that leads me to what I
really want to talk to you in regards to dynamic range. But to do that properly,
we need to go back to something we were just
talking about, bit dept. Remember, this is the first
Sony mirrorless camera to support recording 10-bit video and without mincing words, this is a huge deal. As I said earlier, you are getting a lot
more color information whenever you're filming in 10 bit but that is not actually the main thing that excites me about 10 bit color. The really exciting thing about 10 bit is that it enables you to finally be able to record properly in the S log picture
profiles on the a7S III. See, Sony has always been
good about getting us a lot of picture profiles to
use with their cameras. You have Cine 4, movie, S log, you have a ton of options for how you want your colors, highlights and shadows to look
coming out of the camera. The issue is that all of
these previous Sony cameras were only recording video in eight bit. So if you choose to shoot in one of the very flat picture profiles, like S log to maximize your dynamic range, the camera would not
record enough color data for certain parts of the image. You will get a phenomenon
known as color banding. You can see literal bands of color on anything that has a
subtle gradient in color, like a blue sky, a colorful wall, or even skin tones because the camera's eight-bit footage does not have shades of color to make a smooth gradient. Because of this color banding, I never recommended filming
in S log on the a7S II or a7 III because it was too compromised of a picture profile. Bringing things back to the a7S III now, not only has Sony included
within this camera a new sensor that offers even more
dynamic range than before, but more importantly, the camera is also
recording in 10-bit color. Meaning that it is finally
feasible to record in SLOG without color banding. Which also means you can finally
maximize the dynamic range you're recording with it. I do not want you to underestimate
how big of a deal this is 10-bit recording unlocks SLOG, which unlocks more dynamic range which gives you a more cinematic image. And when you pair that
dynamic range from SLOG with the easier to color
grade 10-bit footage that has so much more color data, and then throw in that the A7S III, can now record SLOG three in ISOs all the way down to 160, it makes for an amazing combination. Are you starting to grasp
why I love this camera? Are you starting to
understand why I pre-ordered more than one? I digress. The last thing you need
to know about 10-bit color and dynamic range is that
the A7S III gives you the ability to record in 10-bit in every single frame rate and resolution the camera is capable of filming with. Contrast this to the Panasonic GH5 or S-I, for example,
which are only capable of filming 10-bit in 4K at up
to 30 frames per second. Once you switch to 4K,
60 frames per second, the camera switches to 8-bit. With the A7S III, you don't have to decide between high color bit
depth and high frame rate. This camera gives you both. So, let's talk about
those high frame rates now and what the A7S III is really capable of. I feel like I'm repeating
myself a bit here but just like how all previous
Sony mirrorless cameras to the A7S III were only
capable of recording in 8-bit color, in addition to that, they were all only
capable of recording in 4K at up to 30 frames per second. My A7S II was one of
the first Sony cameras capable of doing this. And then year after year,
Sony kept releasing cameras with the same maximum frame rate of 30 frames per second in 4K. We saw many other improvements
like better auto-focus and dramatically better battery life but it's like all development
in terms of frame rates and resolution stalled for five years. Now, I'm not saying Sony
wasn't working on this. They clearly have been. But my theory is that they
were waiting on the development of one thing before they
could roll out a huge change to frame rates and resolution. That one thing is, I think, overheating. Many Sony cameras
struggled with overheating, even recording in 4K at
30 frames per second. Sony A6300 and A6500
owners, comment down below if it's true that if you even
looked at your camera weird while it was recording in 4K,
it would probably overheat. Sony clearly pushed their
mirrorless cameras to the limit of what they could do
in such a small body. And it has taken five
years of improvements to their sensor design
processor and heat sinks to get them to a point
where they were ready to push past 4K at 30 frames per second. If they did this earlier, the camera may just burst into flames as soon as you started recording. And then you'd have something like the R5. Is that too soon to make that joke? Okay, anyways, I don't think Sony has necessarily been
lazy or lost their edge when it comes to camera development, like some people have said. All you have to do is
look at the competition. I've been saying for several years now that filmmakers want three simple things. A mirrorless camera
that records video in 4K at 60 frames per second in full frame. Panasonic released the GH5 in 2017. And it records video in
4K at 60 frames per second but it's a micro 4/3 sensor that's two times smaller than full frame. Canon released the EOS R in 2018. And it's a full-frame camera but it only records up to
4K at 30 frames per second with a 1.8 times crop. Around the same time, Nikon released the full-frame Z6, which records 4K but only
up to 30 frames per second. Finally, Panasonic in
2019 released the S1, which was their first
entry into full frame. It was so close, 4K, 60 frames per second, 1.5 times crop. Surely the S1H that
costs significantly more than the S1 and is more video focused would get that trifecta. No, 4K, 60 fps, 1.5 times crops. It's almost like these
three things are hard to do in a compact camera body or something. History lesson over. It's 2020. I think we can all agree that
this year has been pretty much an unmitigated disaster but could this be the year we finally see a camera recording 4K, 60 frames per second in full frame? Yes, actually. We got three. Canon fires the first shot, coming out of nowhere with the R5, touting 8K raw recording, 4K
at up to 120 frames per second. No compromises. One compromise, it overheats. Badly. I bought one and tested it and my conclusion was that
the camera is too unreliable for professional filmmakers to use. At the same time, Canon announced the R6, a camera that from reports I've seen actually overheats worse than the R5. I would not trust either of these cameras to film a wedding in 4K. Last chance. After five long years of waiting, Sony officially announces the a7S III, a camera that not only records 4K at 60 frames per second in full frame but goes above and beyond to give you 4K at up to 120 frames per second, albeit with a 1.1 times crop. And in a move that is much less like Canon and more like Panasonic, the a7S III does not overheat, at least in any typical
wedding filmmaking scenario. I made a whole video testing the a7S III in a variety of wedding conditions, filming B-roll and a wedding ceremony and my conclusion is that as long as you don't film your
wedding ceremonies in 4K at 120 frames per second, you should never have to deal with overheating on a wedding day. I'll link to that video up in the corner and down in the description
if you wanna check it out. Now there is one last
thing we need to talk about in regards to frame rates. Aside from the a7S III being
capable of recording 4K at up to 120 frames per second, it is also capable of
recording 1080P at up to 240 frames per second. For context, I have filmed
weddings in the past with the Sony FS700, a
camera that cost $8,000 when it came out and
whose main claim to fame is being capable of
recording, you guessed it, 1080P at 240 frames per second. Now, with the a7S III, Sony
is giving us that same 1080P 240 FPS in a $3,500 camera. That is awesome and I am
so excited to film more at this frame rate. With the frame rate talk out of the way we now need to talk bit rates. Didn't we just talk about that? No, we talked about bit depth
that has to do with color. We need to talk about bit rates, which has to do with how
much data is being recorded to your memory card. Just like how all previous Sony
cameras only recorded in 4K at up to 30 frames per second, all previous Sony cameras
also only recorded 4K with a maximum bit rate of a
hundred megabits per second. Does the a7S III buck the
trend and give you some higher bit rates to go with
those higher frame rates? Hold onto your beard. Sony has given you three video formats that record in a wide variety
of bit rates with this camera. First up, you have the
same XAVC S H.264 codec that was in previous Sony cameras, and when filming in 4K at
up to 24 frames per second, it is still a hundred megabits per second. What's really surprising though, is that this footage is also in 10-bit. So Sony has decided that a
hundred megabits per second is still enough, even with
all that extra color data. Of course, if you switch to
4K at 60 frames per second, this bit rate is gonna go up
to 200 megabits per second, and 4K at 120 frames per second is even higher at 280 megabits per second. Regardless if you have experienced filming with previous Sony
cameras, this XAVC S codec is gonna feel very familiar to edit with. Your second codec option is XAVC HS, which is using H.265
compression instead of the H.264 compression that you saw in XAVC S. Now H.265 is a big deal because
it means that you can get similar video quality than
you did with H.264 XAVC S, but in half the file size. Yes, 10bit 4K at 24 frames
per second can be recorded at only 50 megabits per second in XAVC HS. This codec is incredibly compressed, which is gonna give you
a very small file size, especially considering
the quality and resolution of the video that it is recording. Keep in mind though, that because this file is so compressed, it is not going to play back
smoothly on most computers. So if you want to save memory
card space and film in it, I would highly recommend creating proxies. I have a video tutorial showing
you how to create proxies in Adobe Premiere. I'll link to that up in the corner, and down in the video description. Lastly, the a7S III also allows you to record in the XAVC-SI Kodak, which is a much higher bit
rate and much larger file size but results in the maximum quality that this camera is capable
of recording internally. To explain in the simplest way possible why this bit rate is so much higher than the other forms of compression, video is really just a sequence of images or frames that are played
back at a very fast rate before our eyes so our brains
think something is moving. Scientists that are way
smarter than me figured out that if they want a
camera to compress a video and make it smaller, the camera doesn't need to
record every single frame. Instead, the camera can
just record any movement that happens from frame to frame. This can save a ton of space because imagine that you're filming, say a wedding ceremony, for example, and everyone is standing still and the only person moving
is the wedding officiant. So the camera only needs to
record the officiant's movement. By only recording what is moving, the footage is more compressed and it offers a great balance
between quality to file size. Now, remember how I just said that the camera doesn't need
to record every single frame, just movements in between those frames? Well, whenever you tell the
camera to record in XAVC-SI, the camera says forget that, I'm recording every
single frame regardless of how big the file sizes are. This footage is gonna look awesome. So whereas recording 24 fps in XAVC-HS is 50 megabits per second, in XAVC-S, it's 100 megabits per second, that same frame rate in XAVC-SI
is 240 megabits per second. Crank up the frame rates and 4K 60 is 600 megabits per second. And 4K 120 is 1,200. Your hard drives are going
to be begging for mercy. Unless you film with black magic cameras or the Canon 1D X Mark II, at which point, your hard drives are used to that sort of abuse. So what do all these bit
rates and compression mean for you as a wedding filmmaker? Should you go all out and
film an entire wedding in XAVC-SI or can you get by with XAVC-S or even XAVC- HS? I have another video about this that goes into a lot more detail that I will link to up in the corner and down in the description. But to summarize that video, I would recommend filming
in XAVC-S in 10 bit 4:2:2 because that is gonna
give you a great balance between video quality and file size. Now, all this footage needs
to be saved somewhere, so we need to talk about
memory cards for the a7S III. The first thing you may have noticed is this camera has dual memory card slots that pull double duty, allowing you to use either SD cards or CFexpress-type A cards. And as a filmmaker coming from the a7S II that has only one SD card slot, this is a very welcome upgrade. With these two card slots, you can either set the
camera to Auto Switch Media, meaning that it records video to one card and then once that card is full, it will then automatically switch to the second card and continue recording without stopping or you can set the camera recording mode to Simultaneous record, which will record the same video to both cards simultaneously, so in case one of the cards
fail, you have a backup. Which one should you choose? Well, if you're filming a wedding, which is a one-take event and you don't get any
do-overs if a card fails, I would highly recommend
using simultaneous recording. For me, I'm planning on
using that with every wedding that I film and I would highly recommend
that you spend the extra money on memory cards so you can do the same. Now, if you wanna know
whether to buy SD cards, or CFexpress Cards, what
speed of cards to buy and what brands, I've already created a
memory card buyers guide for the a7S III that I will
link to up in the corner and down in the video description. I will now summarize that video though if you don't want to watch it. The first thing that you need to know is that it is possible to film with every single frame rate, bit rate and resolution of the a7S III, using V90 SD cards, except for just two bit rates. These bit rates that you will
need a CFexpress Card for are 4K at 120 frames
per second in XAVC S-I and 1080p at 240 frames per
second, also in XAVC S-I. Everything else works with SD cards. So you need to take a very
hard look at those bit rates. And if you don't see yourself
filming in them often, you will probably be much
better off saving your money and just buying SD cards, not CFexpress. Now, how big of a card should you buy? Personally, I'm planning on
buying 256-gigabyte SD cards. And I'll make sure to link
down in the description to those 256-gigabyte cards, as well as some 128-gigabyte SD cards that I know will work with the a7S III. Lastly, in regards to video
recording capabilities. This camera is also capable of externally recording in pro res raw using an external recorder
like the Atomos Ninja 5. Now, I do not own that
particular external recorder and I have no way of testing that but I am planning on
getting a recorder like that in the future to try out. But to remind you what I said earlier, I personally do not prefer filming with an external monitor or a recorder because that's gonna add significantly to the bulk of camera gear that I need to carry around all day. I personally think that for a wedding, the video quality of
the a7S III internally is quite good. And really, all that you
feasibly need to film a wedding. But if you happen to
film more than weddings, such as corporate or
commercial or narrative work, I could definitely see
pro res raw recording with an external recorder
being very useful to you with this camera. Wow, we have covered a lot of stuff. Time to wrap this review up. In conclusion, considering all the specs and features and capabilities that I've shared with
you about this camera, it has been a long wait, much longer than me or
arguably many filmmakers have wanted to wait. But I think it is has been worth it. I believe the a7S III is
the least compromised, most capable camera that you can buy for wedding filmmaking today. Every single major critique and alteration that I've ever hoped that Sony would make to
this camera has been made and say for very few minor quibbles, it is as close to
perfection as you can get for wedding filmmaking. Am I saying other cameras suck? Are the Panasonic S5,
Canon C70, Fuji X-T4, Blackmagic Pocket 6K, et
cetera, all terrible now? No, not at all. We have so many good cameras
available in 2020 but, if we are talking wedding
filmmaking specifically and you want a camera that
covers every single need that you could have for
that specific scenario, the a7S III has it. Do you want 4K at 60 frames per second? It will do that and more. Do you need good auto-focus? This camera's Eye Detect auto-focus will read your mind and
enable you to get shots that you'd never thought possible. Do you want a camera
that will never overheat for you on a wedding day? This is it. Do you need great battery life? The a7S III has phenomenal battery life even recording at high frame rates. Do you need In-Body Image Stabilization? Well, this is still an area
that could use some improvement, but Sony is clearly at least trying with active image stabilization
and gyroscopic data. Do you need excellent dynamic
range and 10-bit color, so you can film in challenging,
mixed lighting scenarios? It's finally here. Do you need the world's best
low-light performance in a mirrorless camera for even
the darkest wedding reception? This camera will see
better than your eyes can, and that's at 120 frames per second. Looking at the competition,
the a7S III stands alone as the camera with the most
amount of usable features and the least amount of compromises. Even compared to Sony's
other mirrorless cameras, the a7S III stands as
a comprehensive upgrade of nearly every single feature. For me, as a wedding
filmmaker, it's no contest. My a7S II gave me five years of joy filming with that camera. And while I hope that the a7S IV doesn't take five more years to get here, I know that I'm gonna be very happy with the a7S III in the meantime. Look, 2020 has been hard, but the cameras that we've
seen released this year have been a bright spot. With all the bad that
has happened this year, I didn't know if my heart could take it if Sony didn't get this camera right. Thankfully, they knocked
it out of the park. With that, thank you so much for watching. I have many more videos
planned about this camera, including settings that I use, how to get the best footage from it, tips and tricks and
tweaks, so many videos. It would be a huge help to me if you would consider liking this video and subscribing if you wanna
see those future videos. Also, this entire video has
been about filming weddings with the a7S III. If you happen to film weddings, you probably want to book more couples and film more of them. To help you out with that
I've created a free guide that's gonna walk you
through some practical steps that you can take right
now in your business to book more couples
and film more weddings. It's a completely free gift
to you, you can download it at the link down in the video description. Thanks so much for watching
and have a great day.
