Continuing from the last post on first lenses.
The Sony sure seems to be having a windfall with the Sony A7 Mark III. Sony Alpha Rumors reports that several large stores in the US have sold out their April 10 shipment with more only coming in May, and the A73 is now the best selling camera in Japan for the month of March.
Over on our little tropical island, the main stock for Sony A73 to fulfill early preorders was initially supposed to arrive on the 17 April. But as luck would have it, the local stores here got it earlier on the 12 April – just two days after orders in the US also started shipping. The freebie additional battery FZ100 was out of stock at the Sony Store @ Nex where I’d placed my pre-order, but the store will give a call once it arrived – probably late April.
The increased image resolution with 6000 x 4000 pixels is a real boon, compared to the 4608 x 3456 and 4592 x 3448 pixels on the E-M1 and GX85 respectively. Quite a lot more headroom now to crop, though I’ve also had to slightly run up the sharpening levels when I resize the image to a standard 3500 horizontal pixels for display on mobile devices.
The battery life is CIPA rated to 710 shots – which is roughly twice as long as the E-M1. With minimal chimping, I found that a single battery was able to run the E-M1 for a single day of sightseeing during our last two vacations – so the increased battery life on the A73 should provide plenty of additional buffer now. There are even reports of wedding photographers using the A73 for an entire day shoot of 2,200+ pictures – with still some battery life to spare at the end of it. That’s crazy good for a mirrorless camera.
I was initially a little leery though that there’s no way to turn off the battery percentage indicator on the top right corner – I normally prefer my camera battery indicators to be in generalized into levels (e.g. every 20%), but the Sony A73 displays right down to 1%s. Granular enough to drive those of us with OCD complexes nuts haha.
As much as I appreciate the longer battery life, the USB charging is the feature that’s the really consequential benefit for me. It specifically means one less battery charger to bring along when I’m traveling! The battery takes about 4.5 hrs to completely charge using the USB-C charging port. The camera as delivered had an almost flat battery – but as the A73 can be independently powered through the USB cable, I was able to setup and try out the camera immediately at home. Still, it would had been nice if Sony had thrown in an external charger – though third party dual FZ100 battery chargers can be had for cheaper on eBay. Moreover, it’s not possible to both simultaneously charge the power the camera through USB-C though.
Unlike the E-M1, there’s no mode dial lock. The A73’s mode dial isn’t very stiff though not quite like the very loose dial on the E-PL6. Still, there’s now that small chance that I’ll fish out the A73 out of the bag in a hurry and find myself in M mode!
Image stabilization works, but it’s also noticeably less effective than the E-M1. I can easily pull off 1/2s exposures on the E-M1, but not on the A73 now. I guess the 5-axis sensor stabilization has to work that much harder on the A73, what with so many more pixels squeezed onto it compared to the E-M1.
I found the Power On lever placement ideal on the E-M5. A quick flick of the thumb and by the time I bring the camera viewfinder up to eye-level, the E-M5 was ready for the first shot. Switching on the E-M1 was a lot more involved, since the same lever was now on the top left corner dial – necessitating use of a separate hand just to switch it on. The A73 places its power lever on the shutter dial – like Nikon. As convenient as the E-M5, but it’ll take some getting used to again. Annoyingly too, the A73 starts up leisurely for a 2018 camera.
Eye AF is absolutely sick! I’ll do a separate post of it later.
The A73 also supports silent-shooting. The early Sony A7 cameras had shutters loud enough to wake the dead, and things only improved significantly with Sony’s top of the line A9 camera. The E-M1/5/GX85 had far more pleasant sounding if not quieter shutters. The A73 mechanical shutter is somewhat softer but still audible. But there’s silent-shooting now too. Finally! On the other hand, the AF audio confirmation beep can only be turned on and off without changing the volume of the beep.
And early annoyances of the A73 too:
Enthusiasts will routinely complain about the non-intuitive or disorganized menus on their cameras, with some of the loudest complaints typically heard about the Olympus m4/3 bodies. Having used Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Fujifilm and Panasonic cameras now, I’ve never actually found the menus on the Olympus E-M1/E-M5/EPLx cameras bad. Yes, they take a while to get used to – but Olympus at least offers two levels of logical menu directories to organize its items into. The color scheme and choice of fonts are awful though. Nikon still sits at the top of my heat in their menu design. Panasonic and Fujifilm are somewhere about the middle for me, if below Olympus. Sony on the other hand is at the bottom – it truly is awful. Items seem to be haphazardly organized. At least there’s a custom menu for me to add my most commonly used items there.
The A73 is noticeably heavier. It’s much lighter than the monstrous Nikon D300, somewhat lighter and less bulkier than the D7000, but heavier than the E-M1 or GX85. Size-wise, I’m OK with the A73, but less thrilled with the increased body weight.
Expensive battery at SGD149 apiece – ouch! And I thought the E-M1 batteries at SGD80 were bad. At least there’s an additional battery in the pre-order – when it finally comes!
More in the next post!
The series of Sony A7 III posts:
Sony A7 III – Part 1 – Journey to Alpha-verse
Sony A7 III – Part 2 – Lens Sense Making
Sony A7 III – Part 3 – Early Impressions
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