The Sony A7R III has finally arrived in Singapore! If you’ve been following us, you’ll know we first got word of this camera towards the end of October, when news and official specifications were posted on Sony China’s website.
Unlike the Sony A9, there’s only two dials on the top of the camera. The dial to change drive modes is gone so you’ll have to go through to menus to set that.
The rest of the controls remain the same though, so you’ll again have a larger movie recording button and the handy focus selector lever at the rear of the camera.
Dual card slots are available on the A7R III, with Slot 1 capable of supporting the faster SDXC UHS-II format cards. That gives you a top write speed of 299MB/s and a top read speed of 300MB/s.
Of course, silent shooting is also an option, and this is found in the menus, on the fourth page of the Shutter/SteadyShot sub-menu.
In terms of looks and size, the A7R III is virtually identical to the A7R II, as it measures 126.9 x 95.6 x 73.7mm compared to the 126.9 x 95.7 x 60.3mm of the older model – a mere 13.4mm difference in depth. (The biggest giveaway though, is the movie recording button!)
Thanks to its new front-end LSI and BIONZ X processing engine, the A7R III produces image with great dynamic range, especially at the lower ISO values. This image was shot with only natural light and just one reflector, but you can see good detail in the crops that follow. (EXIF: 24mm at f/5.6, 1/80s, ISO 250)
Eyelashes, strands of loose hair, even details in her eyebrows can be made out, though we do suspect we would have got more detail if we used flash and a higher shutter speed. (100% crop)
Still, there’s plenty of detail in the dress, and you can see that the camera is doing a good job of holding detail in the highlights. (100% crop)
With cameras that sport sensors with so much resolution, everything is magnified including the depth of field effect. So what looks perfectly sharp here at f/5.6 isn’t that sharp after all when you look at the 100% crops. (EXIF: 62mm at f/5.6, 1/80s, ISO 250)
With the model on the right you can see that the eyes aren’t quite in perfect focus, though there is enough detail to capture skin texture and yet still make out her eyelashes. (100% crop)
Looking at the model on our left, it seems it isn’t much better as her face and hair are only just being kept in focus. A faster shutter speed would probably have given better results too. (100% crop)
This image clearly gave better results, as you can literally count the number of pores on her face in the 100% crop that follows. Perhaps the slightly faster shutter speed helped too? (EXIF: 105mm at f/5.6, 1/125s, ISO 200)
Almost too close for comfort, but it really shows how much detail the camera is able to resolve. (100% crop)
Looking down at her dress though, you realize that you probably need f/8 or f/11 to have enough depth of field to give good detail to both. (100% crop)