Sony’s A7 III is a $2,000 full-frame mirrorless camera

they sell sensors or manufacture them for some of these other companies - I think the Fuji X-trans is manufactured on a Sony fab?

While Sony's sensor technology has been great, until last year there were significant issues with the full frame camera line up that prevented many people from switching: poor battery life, difficult controls (no joystick for moving focus point), slightly worse colors, complex menu system, not great autofocus using adapted lenses, small range of native E-mount lenses.

This changed with the A9, then A7R III and now the A7 III, and the Sony lens range has really improved. While the configuration is still a bother e.g. setting up eye autofocus (eye-AF), the other issues have been addressed. Weather sealing is below the competitors.

The A7 III represents tremendous value compared to the competition, I think it will shift people to Sony — I switched to Sony after 12 years of shooting Canon DSLRs and quite an investment in Canon 'L' glass.

At the same retail price the Canon 6D Mark II is an embarrassment compared to the A7 III. The A7 III is probably better than the Canon 5D Mark IV, retailing at 1/2 the price.

Now, the camera itself doesn't make you a great photographer, but if you are parting with that kind of money you want a tool that helps you, and the Sony is very impressive. Eye-AF speed and accuracy alone has breathed new life into my Canon lenses and allowed me to get shots that I would have missed with my Canon bodies.

Anecdata from my end is that when I last changed cameras, I really wanted an A7 but got an m43 kit instead, because quality lenses for the Sony were extremely limited and expensive compared to the Canon DSLR equivalents I'm used to.

The body seems killer but lenses are the other half of the equation. I am an early mirrorless believer (bought a Panasonic G1 new) and I've been excited about mirrorless full framers from Sony since they first came up.

The fact that despite having wanted that camera for so long I still failed to justify the purchase is bad news for Sony in my book.

You can with the modern $400 Metabones adapter. It's cheaper than selling all the lenses and buying new ones.

As an aside, what do you mean by "does crew"? Do you mean crews racing yachts?

Noise at high ISO has gotten dramatically better pretty much across the board. There was a bit of a megapixel race for a while but today manufacturers seem to generally be ramping up quality/capabilities in a more balaced way.

As someone why used to do a lot of available light photography with film. I find setting the iso dial to 3200 and just shoot with very little compromise almost magical.

What happened on the woman's face here - https://2.img-dpreview.com/files/p/TS4000x6000~sample_galler...

Zoom in

Depth of field changes by the equivalent of one stop from full frame to aps-c, another from aps-c to micro four thirds. Thus, a f/2.8 zoom on mft shoots like a f/5.6 zoom on full frame.

Now if there only were fast full frame lenses for Sony E ...

The viewfinder in a mirrorless is a full-on digital display, meaning it can be overlaid with all sorts of useful information that simply isn't possible on a DSLR's optical viewfinder. You also see exactly what the sensor is actually capturing. A lot of people (me included) consider mirrorless to be the future, whereas the writing is on the wall for DSLRs. DSLRs exist because sensors and displays didn't use to be good enough, necessitating the optical path, but they are now.

Also, mirrorless is significantly smaller than DSLRs for the same sensor size. Smaller and lighter is always welcome.

Sony also has more compact offerings such as the alpha 6500 and the excellent RX100 in its fifth iteration. They also have a partnership with Carl Zeiss.

Medium format is quite another league, you're looking at an order of magnitude more expensive gear, mainly studio oriented.

I'm also a m43 owner.

One benefit of the larger sensor is higher dynamic range. If you want to photograph images with great contrast and details at the same time (e.g. for product photography or landscapes), you need a camera that offers you great color sensitivity. Of course, it is all depends on how maximalist you (or your clients) are. I recently switched to full-frame from APC-C, the first thing I noticed was it is much easier to make pictures with “wow” factor than with my APC-C one, but that is something I expect after spending 4-times prince on the gear. (Sony NEX-6 -> Sony A7 II, almost the same years they came out, so I don't expect much difference on camera IQ.)

It's about depth of field, i.e. getting that beautiful out of focus effect for backgrounds (bokeh) to isolate your subject. And also about megapixels.

Shooting with a portrait lens on full frame e.g. 85mm at f1/4 at 2m from a subject I have about 4cm depth of field, with everything outside of that increasingly blurred. On a micro 4/3 the closest equivalent zoom would be using a 42mm lens, say at f1.4 which would have 9cm depth of field, equivalent to a full frame 85mm at f2.8.

The advantage of mirrorless camera size then goes away because lenses with wide aperture are bigger and heavier, because of physics.

I don't know what the advantage of medium format is at this point. I have the A7R III which has 42mp and a wide range of Sony and Canon lenses available. The quality is amazing, it's a relatively light, and relatively 'affordable' compared to medium format when you take into account body and high quality lenses.

Full frame sensor has almost 4x the area of a m4/3 sensor. It seems a little hyperbolic to describe the difference as merely sacrificing low-light sensitivity; noise is also a big difference with the smaller sensor "pixels", surely?

Sigma just dropped a whole line of FE primes along with the announcement of the a7iii.

The lens line up is pretty good now.

Or even raw. I'm surprised so few cameras offer raw video support, but they all have it for the photos.

That's a G (master) lens with OSS. The equivalent would be the 24-105 f/4L IS, which is $200 less.

> Also, you can't cheat physics and have big sensor complemented by lightweight tiny lens and expect good result.

Noob here, how does it work with traditional 35mm film cameras, or the Leica digital full frame bodies that have small lenses then?

You don’t have to cheat physics to get a much smaller lens with mirrorless. Without the room for the reflex mirror, the rear element of the lens can be much closer to the image plane. This makes it MUCH easier to build a really high quality 50mm or shorter fast lens in a small package. Yes, if they’re Leica, they can be very expensive, but Cosina makes some beautiful lenses under the Voigtlander label that will knock your socks off for less than $500. If you really want to blow your mind, check out the Voigtlander 12mm and 10mm full-frame lenses - try that with your SLR!

DSLR’s are at a major disadvantage for focal lengths of 50mm and shorter.

I used to think pretty much the same but now that I own one of Sony’s high end models I realize that’s quite naive.

There’s no comparison in quality, photo noise or pretty much anything in terms of possible results between my Sony A99 II and say, an iPhone X. The only place where iPhone X comes out ahead the ridiculous easiness in achieving decent (but not stunning) results due to its impressive camera software. In anything but a simple photo in perfect light the Sony can produce a photo that’s easily a magnitude better than the iPhone X.

I’m not an expert in optics/physics but I think the reason for this difference is simply how much light aka photons enter the tiny camera of an iPhone compared to a big lens. The difference there’s probably 1-2 orders of magnitude in terms of surface area of the lens.

I'm not sure about that. Smart phones still can't match APSC sized sensors in low light (and probably not even M43 either). They also can't change lenses if you need a different perspective. Also, for studio work, they need a way to trigger the lights. Right now, it's using hotshoe trigger. You also need a way to save to SD cards, not just to the internal HD, and a way to import the raws to a computer. And no, snapseed isn't usable for a professional that shoots 1000's of photos per session. If you add all that up, it basically becomes a bulky, mirrorless camera.

For P&S cameras you're right. They are already done. People who use their DSLRs as a P&S also may be better served by the phones of the world.

As someone who is trying not carry my D7100 + lenses all over, I am constantly looking for ways to move to something lighter/smaller. While my iPhoneX does a good job in snapshot situations, it still doesn't compare to my D7100 + 35mm. And, if we get into 'bulky' lenses like my 70-300mm I don't see how a phone lens + software can ever be a stand in because of physics.

I'm not a phone camera hater, and in fact I'm routinely amazed how great many shots come off the phone with little effort. I just don't see how the physics problems can be solved with software anytime soon though.

As an aside, when will one of these camera manufactures partner with an Apple or Google and take their amazing image processing software and put it on a high quality body/lens?

I'm guessing you're not a wedding or news photographer...

You can't get around physics. Nobody is going to prefer fake bokeh to a real lens.

So far nothing in a cellphone that I've seen has been comparable to anything from a DSLR with a real lens, and that's also ignoring all the extra usability features found on a DSLR as well.