Sony Alpha A7Riii Review For Landscape Photography
New York, USA - February 2021
For years, I’ve stuck with DSLRs as my ride or die. Back in 2020, I knew I was due for an upgrade, the only question was whether it was worth it to stick it out with another DSLR or was it time to jump ship and snag a mirrorless camera. I’d be lying if I said that I seriously considered a mirrorless camera at first. The mere idea of switching was nothing more than a fleeting thought, a ripple in my mind that disappeared as soon as it arrived.
At the outset of buying a new camera, I actually ordered the Canon 5DS R. Unfortunately (or thankfully, if I’m being honest), it was back-ordered and as I later found out, discontinued. I wasn’t about to wait around to see what was going to happen with the 5DS R since I’m as impatient as one can be. Just as this was all going down, another fleeting thought passed through my skull. Is a mirrorless camera actually worth taking a good look at?
Logistically, switching from Canon DSLRs to Sony Mirrorless is tricky. Not only is it an entirely new camera brand to become acquainted with, but each manufacturer has its own lens mount. Long story short, I found out that Sigma produces a lens adapter that converts Canon or Sigma EF mount lenses to Sony E Mount lenses (Sigma MC-11 Mount Converter). This adapter runs at about $200. For someone who is in love with their Canon lenses, it’s a great purchase. Without having to trade in all of my Canon lenses for Sony lenses, I went ahead and made the switch and bought a Sony Alpha A7riii.
New York, USA - February 2021
Winter is a tough test for most photographers and their cameras. Bitter cold, whipping winds, and falling snow make for some challenging shoots at times. The greatest downfall of my decision to go mirrorless was that I didn’t have time to learn the intricacies of the camera before heading out into the wilderness. While most cameras are generally similar in operation, there are differences when jumping from one manufacturer to another. The most notable operational dissimilarity I came across was the aperture wheel. On my old Canon cameras, I always selected aperture on the back menu panel. However, the A7Riii has a dedicated wheel on the front of the body. In retrospect, this feature is a nice touch for A7Riii, but in the moment, it was a challenge to get acquainted with these slight differences in a cold climate.
While it’s probably worth diving into the specs of each camera, there are enough comparison sites out there that it doesn’t warrant writing about. No need to beat a dead horse. Now for the real question. How does the A7Riii hold up for landscape photography? Is it really worth making the jump to mirrorless?
After one week of shooting, I would say excellent, but that’s only after one week of shooting. The body is a great size and it’s relatively light. The controls are moderately easy to use once all of the knobs and wheels have been committed to memory. Most importantly, the few images I snapped prior to the massive winter storm came out great.
It’s important to recognize that while great, the A7Riii wasn’t perfect. Two things immediately stood out to me. The first hindrance I came across is the touchscreen. I find that my old Canon 77D has a more user friendly touchscreen interface. I could easily zoom in to images to see how sharp they were, control the shutter and even adjust various settings from the touchscreen interface on the 77D. The A7Riii is touchscreen enabled, but it’s clumsy. Zooming into an image was particularly a struggle, possibly in part due to temperatures being below freezing. Truthfully, this is such a minor point. It’s nice to be able to easily zoom in to test image sharpness, but ultimately unnecessary most of the time.
The second point of contention is the process time of an image. Over the course of my week in the mountains, I found that long exposure shots took a significant amount of time to process in the camera/on the card. I didn’t get an opportunity to time these events, but the process time seemed to be similar to the shutter speed. Again, not a deal breaking flaw. However, there are scenarios where snapping off a number of images in a small time frame is crucial. I plan to test this theory a bit more over the next few months with different long exposure shots and some astrophotography.
At the end of the day, the camera doesn’t matter as much as the skill of the user. While I love this camera, there are always going to be other photographers who are ride or die with DSLRs or other models of mirrorless cameras. All in all, the Sony A7Riii is a great choice for a landscape photographer. With 45 megapixels, two SD card slots, and a lighter body than DSLRs of the same price range, I don’t know that there is a better option in the $2000-$3000 ballpark.