Sony A7S III: One Of The Best 4K Shooters You Can Buy

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The A7S III retains Sony’s magnesium-alloy body that both dust + moisture resistant. More importantly, there is a graphite heatsink built into the image-stabilization unit that dissipates heat quickly. So you won’t run into any Canon EOS R5 overheating issues.

If you’re not familiar w/ the A7 line of shooters, you got wayyy more buttons & dials to give you more control over your content. You got control dials, control wheels, mode dial, exposure compensation dial, and a joystick. There’s even a dial on the grip as well. And you even got dual card slots for 2 SD cards or 2 CF express type A cards. All while weighing in at around 1.51lbs for the body and depending on the lens you put on it, it can go up from there.

It was easy to get used to for Manual shooting – even though coming from a Sony APS-C camera. It has a great bit of weight to it but not this mammoth of a camera to lug around and place on tripods & such. Thanks to the lovely addition to the 3inch flip-out LCD touchscreen, you can vlog w/ it if need be as well as see yourself for you solo shooters out there.

12.1MP Full-Frame Mirrorless Exmor R CMOS sensor
BIONZ XR image processor
4K video up to 120fps, 10-Bit 4:2:2 Internal
1080p video up to 240fps
16-Bit Raw Output, HLG & S-Log3 Gammas
15-stops of Dynamic Range
Up to 759-Point Fast Hybrid AF
3inch touchscreen
5-Axis SteadyShot Image Stabilization
ISO 40-409,600
10 fps Shooting
Dual CFexpress Type A/SD Card Slots
Mic/Headphone/USB-C/Full HDMI

Same hardware as the A7R IV but adds an entirely new menu that takes full advantage of the touchscreen.

Now Sony decided to not step into the 8K arena and double-down to perfect & add versatility to 4K. By doing so, A7S III lives up to the hype in regards to video quality. The 15 stops of dynamic range to achieve crispy & detailed footage. All w/o sacrificing shadows, highlights, & overall details. All while beefing up their color science so to get more natural skin tones + more accurate colors.

Since this is a Sony camera, you got their fast hybrid AF w/ 759 phase-detection AF points w/ AI-enhanced real-time Eye AF. This is one of the many features here that works as advertised – maybe even better. You can move from one subject to another and it homes in w/ ease + speed. Same goes for using the touchscreen for tap to focus as well. It even works in situations w/ damn-near-to-no-light at all. We’ll get to low-light performance shortly.

So along w/ that comes w/ many different formats from XAVC S-I HD all the way to XAVC HS 4K – all ranging w/ more quality + more MBs per second. You can also get beautiful & detail-rich 10-bit 4:2:2 4K that can go up to 60fps and as slow as @120fps in 4K. But it will eat up SD/Type A card space w/ data going up to 1200Mbps as well as make editing video on it a bit more tedious.

Although it's a dedicated video camera, you can still get some good photos out of it as well w/ its 12.1MP sensor. Just as long as you don't zoom in too much.

Inside you got Sony’s 5-axis image stabilization to keep your footage as steady as it can. They utilize both the in-body and electronic stabilization to pull this off although you get a small crop. You can pull off some panning and handheld shooting. Beyond that, you will definitely need a gimbal to get the super smooth shots while walking and such. The upside here is that you don’t get that rolling shutter (or wobbly image when moving from side-to-side) that Sony used to be notorious for.

Now being able to provide high-quality 4K video @120fps is quite the feat as Sony was able to pull that off w/o a hitch. This is something that only the Canon EOS R5 can pull off. This can also do 1080p @240 which is a welcome addition as well. The big treat here is the new S&Q (Slow & Quick) motion mode that records @60fp + 120fps w/ 24fps playback w/o audio. This will make speed ramping a lot easier. Something worth nothing is that the data rates can go up to 1200Mbps using this mode as those pricey Type A cards are the only way to use this feature.

Still the low-light king.

Now onto what the A7S-line is known for: getting amazing quality footage in little-to-no-light. The 3rd-generation shooter continues that legacy here as well. Its Dual Native ISO can go from 40 (80 for video) all the way up to 409,600. I found that I could usually go up to around 102,400 before the image gets completely unusable in low-light. The sweet spot is around 51,200 w/ the right amount of exposure. Which is way higher than you can go on normal shooters.

Sony uses its latest NP-FZ100 batteries inside to give you enough juice to shoot. I only took a handful of photos as I was focused on capturing good video footage. I would get anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half shooting continuous video. All w/o having to deal w/ overheating at all. So within 2 weeks of using the camera off/on, I had to charge it about 3 times. A huge jump in juice from the smaller NP-FW50 batteries from their APS-C & A7S II shooters.

With the A7S III, you got the best Sony has to offer in 4K, low-light, slow-motion, dynamic range, & more. The best does comes at a price though.

While we didn’t have a whole lot of time w/ the A7S III, it definitely left a lasting impression on me. It also made me want to throw my a6300 out of the window of a moving car just to upgrade. As well as my older MacBook for an M1 machine. Editing the XAVC S-I + XAVC S 4K footage taking this a bit tough on my older mid-2015 15inch Core i7 CPU 16GB of RAM MacBook Pro. Not just this one but also the Sony WH-1000XM4s review video as well. Lots of spinning wheels while scrubbing footage to edit.

If you want to shoot everything from high-quality YouTube videos, short films, or even a feature film in a great size? You want the option of 4K@120fps while shooting in super low-light & don’t have to worry about overheating? The A7S III is absolutely the way to go. Of course, you gotta have the funds to pick one up w/ the $3,500 price tag for the body only. Add the G Master lens I have to add an extra $2K and add another $400 the Type A card for a costly yet powerful & adaptable 4K camera. But if that’s too much for you, you can opt for the A7 III for under $2,000.