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Sony a73 vs Sony a7R3 - Part 4: Autofocus Performance | Photographer Dustin Abbott has demonstrated that the sensor performance from the new Sony a73 is excellent, but does the autofocus keep up? Find out in this new episode! Visit the Image Gallery: http://bit.ly/a73ig | Purchase the Sony a73 at B&H Photo:
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you a further update as I come towards
0:12
the conclusion of my review period with the new Sony a7 III or a7 Mark III
0:19
And as you've seen in previous episodes, we've talked about the differences in the build and
0:25
the design of these two most recent cameras from Sony, including the A7R Mark III, which
0:31
I own one of myself, and so I've had it here as a benchmark throughout this time
0:37
We've looked at some of the sensor performance when it comes to aspects like, you know, the
0:42
high ISO performance. We've looked at dynamic range, and certainly if you're interested in
0:49
the sensor aspects, I would encourage you to take a look at those videos. Today I'm here to break
0:54
down the autofocus performance of this camera and how it compares and contrast to that of the
1:01
Sony A7R Mark III. And so just before I do that, however, I do want to give you an update on just
1:09
another aspect of the camera performance, and that is that traditionally battery performance
1:15
with Sony cameras has been a bit of an issue. You know, for example, I'm filming right now on the
1:20
Sony A6500, which is an excellent camera in a lot of ways, but the battery life, particularly if
1:26
you're doing what I'm doing right now, which is shooting 4K video, is abysmal. And so it seems
1:32
like pretty much every second time that I turn on the camera, the battery is about dead and it needs
1:38
to be replaced. Sony has addressed that by beginning with the A7R III, or really actually
1:45
with the a9 and then filtering down to these cameras with a new much larger capacity battery
1:52
pack the np fz100 and while the the capacity you know it seems like it should only be a a certain
2:02
amount you know double at best in real world performance it seems to really exceed that and so
2:07
I just wanted to give you an update on that in that I received the a7 III on April 26, 2018
2:16
I have been shooting with it for nearly a month. I've shot 4K video. I've shot well more than a
2:23
thousand frames. And so far in this whole month period, I have recharged the battery once. And it
2:31
currently stands at 74% as of this moment. And so, you know, I charged it when I, the day that I got
2:38
the camera before using it. And since that point last week, because I was shooting an event this
2:43
last weekend, I recharged the battery and it wasn't yet at 0%. It was somewhere around 20%
2:49
And so I recharged it just so it would be fresh for this. And after a weekend shooting at this
2:54
event, it stands at 74%. And of course, with a new camera, that includes all the extra stuff that
3:01
you do, you know, like reviewing photos and changing settings and just familiarizing yourself
3:07
with the camera. And so, I mean, it's a pretty exceptional thing. So moving on to the autofocus
3:12
system. Autofocus system, first of all, when I first heard feedback from a few of you, actually
3:19
when you were saying that the autofocus system was going to be better in the a7 III than in the a7R Mark III my first response to that was there no way I mean there no way that Sony is going to put a better autofocus system in its camera that is 50 cheaper or more than the
3:36
a7R Mark III. But that turned out to, in fact, be the case. And while the a7R Mark III inherited
3:44
a good portion of the A9's excellent autofocus system, the A7 III has inherited most all of it
3:52
And so just to give you an idea of how that breaks down, it has 693 phase detect points
3:58
versus 399 in the A7R Mark III. And so, I mean, obviously that's a pretty huge difference
4:05
almost an additional 300 phase detect points. And how that breaks down is that in terms of
4:10
the coverage of the frame, you have a 93% coverage of the frame, which is just incredible
4:18
with the a7 III compared to 68% on the a7R Mark III, which by the way, that's still excellent
4:25
but of course, not nearly as good as what the a7 III offers. Both of them have 425 contrast
4:31
detection points, but really it's that phase detect points. In most situations, it is most
4:36
important and makes the biggest difference. So how does that play out in the real world
4:41
Can you actually tell a difference between these two cameras and the autofocus performance
4:46
Well, the short answer is yes, you definitely can. It's not necessarily night and day like the
4:52
a7R Mark III compared to the a7R Mark II was, but certainly in real world shooting, I can tell a
5:00
difference. And it could be something so simple as, you know, for example, I shot, I was testing
5:05
tracking and so shooting a burst. And so for example, on the a7 III with the Sony Zeiss
5:14
Planar 50mm f1.4 and yeah, after my review period, I like this lens so much that even though it's
5:20
expensive and it's big, I ended up buying one for myself. And it's actually my first autofocus
5:27
full frame FE autofocusing Sony lens that I have. And I probably need to pick up one or two more
5:33
just so I have a more complete kit and don't always have to use adapted lenses
5:37
Anyway, when shooting these side-by-side, same lighting conditions, just a few minutes apart
5:43
same conditions, same settings in the cameras, I found that using native glass
5:48
even though, I mean, many of you would say that's not the best autofocus lens out there for testing that
5:54
and I'm sure you're absolutely right. It's just the only one that I have
5:58
But I saw shooting this running sequence of my son who is in track
6:04
He's very fast, moving toward me at high speed. And so I was shooting in high plus, so 10 frames per second
6:12
And over the course of that burst period, which was a little over around 8 seconds
6:18
I had 82 frames in that burst. And as I went through them one by one, it almost became monotonous
6:23
because basically all of them were perfectly focused with the a7 III
6:28
And so that was pretty exceptional. When you consider that there probably is better autofocusing glass
6:34
to put on the camera for that kind of scenario, to get that kind of perfect result, I thought spoke very well
6:41
not only of the camera, but of the lens itself because I don think that I ever done that well with a 50mm prime lens before wide aperture 50mm prime And by the way just so you know I shot that series at f2 on both cameras
6:54
And so it was, you know, I was shooting with quite a wide aperture. I shot at f2 and so that I wouldn't be up against any kind of, you know, kind of lighting limits there
7:03
And so anyway, exceptional result there. When I switched over to the a7R Mark III and shot identical settings
7:11
I found that a couple of things happened. Number one, I noticed that my buffer filled sooner and
7:18
and so as a result while I ended up getting just a few less frames I actually wasn't able to follow
7:27
the sequence all the way through. I had some missed shots where there was space where I had
7:32
to kind of restart shooting again and so definitely deeper buffer was obvious with the A7 III
7:39
The other thing that I noted was that even in that kind of scenario, there were some front and back focuses with the A7R Mark III that I didn't see with the A7 III
7:50
And so I got really basically perfect results with the A7 III
7:55
With the A7R Mark III, however, I did get some intermittent misses
8:00
And so definitely better results with the A7 III. Now, when it comes to real-world shooting results, I've gotten excellent focus results with the a7 III
8:10
I mean, it is essentially, you know, it's pretty close to flawless in real-world shooting
8:15
I got just excellent, whatever I was throwing on there, whether it was adapted lenses, native lenses
8:21
Mostly adapted lenses, to be honest, like I said, I've got very few other than throwing some APS-C, Sony E-mount lenses on there
8:29
But results were excellent with that Now, when it comes to adapted results
8:35
I tried a variety of different adapters throughout the review period, including the Metabones, 5th Generation, the Sigma MC11
8:43
and then also a Velo adapter that I've previously reviewed and that I have on hand
8:49
All of them showed improved performance when compared to the A7R Mark III
8:54
And just a little bit more focus speed, a little bit more confidence in focusing
9:00
less hang-ups, less slowdowns. And so definitely some improvement there. IAF works just a little bit better with all these lenses when compared to the A7R Mark III
9:14
Now when it comes to tracking with adapted lenses, I got some mixed bag results
9:20
What I noted, one of the very first things that I did is I threw a combination of the Canon 100-400L Mark II
9:27
which I have not gotten amazing results on with the A7R Mark III. and the Sigma MC-11 and threw that on the A7 III. My results were encouraging in that for actually
9:37
going out and shooting, be it birds in flight or just wildlife, I got very, very accurate results
9:45
I mean, I was very impressed in that I got in many ways better results than what I typically get
9:50
even shooting on native cameras. And so in terms of the actual mechanism of tracking action
9:56
I thought that it was quite excellent. When I was tracking in a panning type pattern
10:01
I felt like I got good accuracy, good results there. However, when I switched to that scenario
10:07
that I just showed you using the native glass with a high speed runner coming towards me and that combination what i was able to see is that in that scenario continuous autofocus is not keeping up or i not even sure
10:20
that it's happening in high plus mode um my first few shots where it was within probably the uh you
10:27
know pre-focused range or the beginning focus range was pretty accurate but the closer that the
10:33
subject got you know moving out of that zone i could tell that the autofocus was just not keeping
10:37
up. It was lagging behind with an adapted lens. And when I switched over to the Velo adapter to
10:44
see if, you know, I got similar, better, worse results, I got similar focus results, certainly
10:51
no better, maybe a bit worse, but I also introduced some metering inconsistencies that I didn't see
10:56
with the Sigma MC-11. And so, I mean, you're certainly, if you're wanting to shoot very high
11:02
demanding action. Again, as I've said before in my adapter reviews, I think that you're best served
11:08
by using native glass. We are getting exceptional results. Of course, the very fact that we're having
11:13
this discussion is very unique to Sony. It's not like I am expecting other camera systems to perform
11:19
well, to autofocus well with non-native lenses. And so the very fact that the autofocus is usable
11:27
in the majority of situations is, to me, still a huge plus for Sony in that adapting Canon lenses
11:34
or EF mount lenses to Sony is a fairly successful endeavor. However, if you're wanting to shoot
11:41
sports or high demanding wildlife, I do think that you're still best served with native glass
11:49
Bottom line is that this is an incredible autofocus system in a $2,000 camera. When I think about how
11:56
it compares to something like the Canon 60 Mark II, for example. I mean, it's not even in the same
12:02
realm of discussion in terms of the coverage and the number of autofocus points, and above all
12:08
the real-world performance. I mean, this camera just delivers excellent, excellent autofocus
12:13
results, and I have to tell you, particularly as a lens reviewer, it's fairly refreshing to not
12:17
have to worry about lens calibration. With so many lenses that flow through my hands, that's just
12:23
kind of the one of the pains as a part of doing what I do and to not have to worry about that
12:28
on you know just to have a new lens take it out of the box like this this past weekend is when I
12:35
began I got my own copy of the you know the planar 50 millimeter f1.4 I took it out of the box I was
12:41
at an event I put it on the camera and was shooting within minutes and got beautifully focused results
12:46
throughout the weekend that's great particularly when you're talking about an f1.4 lens and so
12:52
I mean, this is a great AF system and it's a great camera. And I'll sum all of that up in my final
12:58
review and give you a few more observations from real-world performance, what I consider the
13:03
weaknesses to be, and to sum up the strengths, which are many for this camera. So stay tuned for
13:09
that. And of course, in the meantime, you can look in the description down below and you can look at
13:13
the image gallery that I've continued to add to along the way. You can also there find linkages
13:19
for purchasing one for yourself. Follow me on social media. And of course, if you haven't already
13:24
please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day
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