All-Round Brilliance

The Sony Alpha 7 III marks a whole new level of refinement over its predecessor. K Madhavan Pillai comes away impressed.

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Essentially, the third iteration of Sony’s budget model in their full frame mirrorless line-up, the Alpha7 III is no longer a choice based merely on the weight of your wallet, but on the kind of photographer you are. Sony certainly decided not to hold back on features, a few of which are from the flagship Alpha A9. In some ways, it not just rivals, but beats the more expensive A7R III. In this, Sony has an eye on outdoing any entry-to mid-level full frame camera in the market, including DSLRs by the big guns... possibly at the cost of cannibalising on the A7R III. Indeed, a few buyers of the A9 and the A7R III, released just six months prior to the A7 III, expressed as much on online forums.

Features

In every sense, the spec sheet of the Alpha 7 III resembles those of flagship cameras from just a few years ago. It uses a newly developed back-illuminated 24.2MP Exmor R CMOS sensor, coupled with a Bionz X processor, allowing much faster readout, processing and transfer speeds, and continuous burst speeds of up to 10fps with AF/AE tracking. Approximately 160 JPEG (extra fine) images, 89 compressed RAW images, or 40 uncompressed RAW images can be captured on the buffer in one burst. There are two SD card slots now. The first supports UHS II. Yet, pro users who wish to backup their images might find the second UHS 1 slot limiting. It would need more time to write.