The Sony A7R III Has Been Announced

Sony has just announced their new mirrorless camera, the Sony A7R III, and being a Sony A7 series camera user, this news to me was very exciting. Sony have been making waves in the photography market with their A7 series of cameras, notably the A7S II and A7RII.

So what are some of the new features we’re going be expecting to come out on the new A7R III? Sony in a press release they sent me mentioned:

• 35mm Full-Frame 42.4 MP Back-Illuminated Exmor R™ CMOS Image Sensor with Evolved Image Processing
• Continuous Shooting at up to 10 fps with either Silent Shooting or Mechanical Shutter and full Auto Focus/Auto Exposure tracking
• 399 phase-detection AF points covering 68% of image area, 425 contrast AF points and approximately 2 times more effective Eye AF
• 5-axis optical in-body image stabilization with a 5.5 step shutter speed advantage
• High Resolution 4K[vi] Movie Shooting with full pixel readout and no pixel binning
• Completely redesigned for professionals, including upgraded Auto Focus, Dual SD Card Slots, Extended Battery Life, SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.1 Gen 1) USB Type-C™ Terminal and more
• Compact, Lightweight body at only 23 oz

Sony seem to be the choice for content creators at the moment, thanks to their low light level performance and the amount of detail they can capture when paired with a decent lens. The performance is mainly down to their very well controlled ISO level, which ranges from 50 – 1024o0 on this camera. Why anyone would shoot that high remains a mystery, but still, it’s good news for those night time photographers and videographers.

There’s also a new front end LSI that doubles the readout speed. That’s been paired with an updates BIONZ X chipset giving this camera processing speeds 1.8x faster than the older Mk II version. You will also find a five-axis optical stabilisation setting, which will result in a 5.5 step-shutter speed advantage. The anti-vibration will make it even easier to shoot, minimising things like image blurring, even while using continuous shooting at 10fps.

There is now an upgrades focusing system, with Sony implementing 399 focal-plane phase detection AD points which cover around 68% of the total image area both horizontally and vertically. Comparing this to the A7R II, there has been a 400 point increase with the contrast AF points. This in a nutshell gives the A7R III a much better focusing time, especially in low-light conditions.

One thing you video content creators will be pleased about is 4K video. Although this isn’t new to the Sony range of cameras, the A7R III does something interesting to increase it’s image quality here. The camera will collect 5K pixels worth of information, and then reduce that to 4K, which essentially creates a much better looking image. The 4K Log-Gamma hybrid setting will give you some truly marvellous 4K HDR quality, which can be played back on a 4K HDR  compatible TV. You can record at 120fps in Full HD too to give you some buttery smooth 5x slow motion images.

Now the thing is, this wonderfully sounding camera isn’t cheap. Boo! You can expect the new Sony A7R III to retail around £3,200 in the UK once it has launched to market. I am very excited about this, and you should be too. Sony make some wonderful cameras, and are very quickly becoming a fan favourite brand to use, especially on the online market.