When we reviewed Sony’s a7R II, even though there were some flaws, we found it to be a big leap forward for Sony. Now, two years later, Sony has announced the follow-up to the a7R II, naturally calling it the a7R III, and it looks like it builds upon the foundation of the a7R II while also incorporating elements found in the a9.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6YBnjNOi1U

The Sony a7R III is a full-frame mirrorless camera that uses a 42.4 megapixel Emor R CMOS image sensor reportedly able to output 15 stops of dynamic range in lower ISO levels than the a7R II, which outputs 14 stops.

The a7R III ISO range is 100-32,000, expandable to 50-102,400 for still images. Also, Sony promises that in-body image stabilization has been improved with the a7R III, which includes 5-axis in-body image stabilization.

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Sony takes from the a9 with the 4D Focus system in the a7R III, which reportedly operates at double the speed of the a7R II in areas of autofocus speed, Eye AF and subject tracking. It features 399 phase-detection AF points that cover 68% of the image area. While not as high as the A9’s 93% coverage, it is more than the a7R II’s 45% coverage.

Sony’s a7R III is capable of shooting 4K HDR across the full width of the full-frame image sensor and features HLG, Hybrid log gamma along with S-Log3. The autofocus features previously listed also apply to video, and if you shoot in the camera’s Super 35mm mode, it will oversample and collect 5K worth of image information without pixel binning. This should produce high quality 4K footage with great detail and depth, according to Sony. The camera also has the ability to shoot 120 fps in Full HD.

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Making its debut on the a7R III is the Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode, which Sony says takes full advantage of the camera’s 5-axis optical in-body stabilization to create “beautiful true-to-life, super-high resolution composite images."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-811lVi0Qc

For its body design, Sony says that they’ve included two card slots on the a7R III, the first being UHS-II capable and the second being USH-I only. The camera said to use NP-FZ100 batteries, that were used in the a9, and also feature an upgraded Quad-VGA OLED Tru-Finder with 3,686k dots.

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Along with the a7R III, Sony announced a new Sony E-mount lens, the FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS Standard Zoom. Sony says that it’s a pretty versatile lens, being good for landscapes, portraits and weddings. They also say that it features fast, precise and quiet autofocus for both still and video shooting.

The lens uses a DDSSM (Direct Drive SSM) system designed to keep up with fast-moving subjects. Also, it also has a constant f/4 aperture at all focal lengths and promises corner-to-corner sharpness through the entire zoom range. The lens is built with four aspherical lens elements, two of them being high precision AA lenses.

Sony says that both the a7R III and the  FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS Standard Zoom lens will be coming this November, with the camera being priced at about $3,200 US ($4,000 CA) and the lens being priced at about $1,300 US ($1,700 CA). For more information, go to Sony.com.

Sean Berry is Videomaker's Managing Editor.