Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I upgrade cameras every 3-4 years, so every camera should be the best camera I've ever owned. I am primarily an enthusiast, but I do some professional work as well. The A7riii easily clears that standard. For perspective, I was a long-time Sony/Minolta shooter in the days of traditional SLR and dSLR. As Sony started to abandon the dSLR format, I transitioned to Nikon with the Nikon D750. At that time, 2014 -- I considered Sony mirrorless but decided the platform was just not prime-time ready. Focus systems were mediocre, the lens line up was poor. Then come late 2017 -- 3+ years into the D750 as my primary camera, I started to get the upgrade itch. I was all set to buy the Nikon D850... but I started to dread the potential extra weight. And I know that Sony has some great features that I really like, that are missing from Nikon. So after some hard thought, I started selling off my Nikon lenses.... and now I'm happily shooting with the A7riii. And the verdict -- I love it even more than I thought I would. I had high expectations and it blew away my expectations. If you are considering the A7riii versus the Nikon D850, here is my basic comparison review based on experience with Nikon and extensive research on the D850. Viewfinder: OVF (optical) vs EVF (electronic) - This becomes the big issue for most people. There are people who use EVF, who love the "What you see is what you get" aspect of it and claim they could never go back to using an OVF. There are OVF devotees who claim they would never want to look at an electric image in the viewfinder. I'm agnostic, I'm happy using either. But in general, the A7riii EVF is fantastic. It is large (larger than the D850), it is bright. It is fast and responsive. It is very easy to forget that you're not looking at an OVF. The only downside of the EVF in general is at camera start up. A camera like the Nikon D850 is already ready to instantaneously shoot. The A7riii and the EVF need a moment to turn on or to wake up if the camera has gone to sleep. It's very very quick, must faster than older models. I would say it is about 1 second, definitely less than 2 seconds. But it is there when you first turn on/wake up the camera. Image quality: Look at the many reviews out there, IQ differences will be trivial between the D850 and A7riii. The small resolution difference is meaningless. In general, the A7riii image quality is simply mind-blowing amazing. In terms of low light/high ISO capability, I'm getting top quality at ISO 6400-16000. Also compared my prior Sony cameras, JPEG rendering is much improved. I always hated the straight out of the camera Sony JPEGs.. no longer. And if you do shoot raw, you are rewarded with extremely malleable files. Body/Ergonomics -- This is the most cited aspect by dSLR lovers. Some will say that the Sony mirrorless cameras are "too small.. too uncomfortable to hold.. the buttons are too small." The A7riii grip is virtually identical to the Nikon D750 grip. Thus, for my medium sized hands, it is equally comfortable to hold. Button placement and size is improved. It really has become a comfortable body with good ergonomics. There is no top LCD plate -- so that's a small check in favor of the D850. The build quality is excellent, but probably not quite as rugged as the D850. I wouldn't hesitate to use the A7riii in a light rain, but I'd be more comfortable with the D850 in a downpour. Prior Sony cameras all had ridiculously bad battery life -- I've taken hundreds of images in a day and battery hasn't gone below 50%. I'd still buy 1 extra back up battery, but you're rarely going to need it with the A7riii. Most important to me --It weighs about a pound less than the Nikon D850. When paired with the right lenses, it is a relatively compact system. My back and neck already appreciate the improvement from the D750. Autofocus -- This is the big one. The D850 has a fantastic autofocus system taken from their flagship sports camera. Traditionally, mirrorless autofocus was inferior. No longer. Autofocus is evaluated by many different measures, but by most measures, the A7riii autofocus is superior to dSLRs. It is the best autofocus system I have ever used, better than the D750. For starters -- Nikon's great autofocus system only works with the viewfinder. If you resort to video or the LCD, you get very poor AF. Sony has a fantastic AF system that can seamlessly go between the viewfinder and the LCD. It is super fast and more importantly, super accurate. When set up correctly, you get "eye-AF" on the Sony cameras. This is an amazing feature -- even with very narrow depth of field (blurring background), you will get absolutely perfect focus on the eyeball in almost every portrait/person shot. dSLRs are affected by back and front focus issues -- the focus often being off by a centimeter or so. Not a big deal, but at high resolution you can notice it. On the A7riii... you get absolutely perfect focus more often. Meanwhile, the focus points cover a big portion of the frame. The thumbstick and the touch screen make it very easy to move the AF point around (this was VERY tedious on prior Sony cameras). So some other features and pros of the A7riii: -Pixel shift -- Create a composite of 4 images based on shifting the sensor by just 1 pixel at a time. It has very limited functionality. Must have completely still subjects. Must shoot on a tripod. And must combine the images using Sony software on a computer. But in those limited cases, it is a way to achieve noticeably more detail than you get with normal shooting. -IBIS and hybrid stabilization. I don't have the steadiest hands. I've always needed some degree of stabilization or high shutter speed for sharp images. While many dSLR lenses are stabilized these days, many ultrawide and prime lenses remain non-stabilized. With the A7riii, EVERY lens becomes stabilized. For some, it is a hybrid system between the lens and the camera. For those lenses, I am getting an unbelievable degree of stabilization. I was shooting easily at 105mm and 1/10th of a second. Shooting with the 12-24mm lens at 12mm (this lens doesn't have lens stabilization, so it is IBIS only), I was getting sharp images at 1/2 of a second. - Dual SD cards. Some have complained that only 1 card slot supports the super fast UHS-II cards, so you get slowed down by the other slot. I have the "slow" slot set to write JPEGS (smaller files), while RAW goes to the fast card. They both end up writing at about the same fast speed. - Camera mostly remains responsive even when writing images to card -- Prior Sony cameras would mostly lock up when writing to the card. The A7riii remains mostly accessible. - 10 fps, 8fps with live view. Shooting at 10 fps, you get a slide show effect -- the view finder shows the last image taken, putting you 1/10th of a second behind the action. But you can shoot 8fps with minimal black out while maintaining a live view. - Silent shooting -- Including at 8 to 10 fps. Want to discreetly take candid photos without people posing for the camera? Put on face detect, silent shooting, 8 fps... shoot bursts from the hip, and you'll get lots of great candids. (or street photography, etc). - GPS location tagging via bluetooth -- Simple set up with your phone and then works well. -Customization --- A camera like the D850 is better out of the box. The buttons and menus mostly make a lot of sense. Sony leave far more open for customization. Once you spend a couple hours fully customizing the buttons, the FN menu, and the new "myMenu"... it becomes a far far better camera. The default menus are messy and unwieldy.. But once customized, you can have a fantastic layout. A word on the Sony lens lineup -- The lineup does cost a little more than Canon and Nikon. The quality of most of the lenses is absolutely top notch. If you shoot between 10mm and 200mm, other than price, there is nothing to really complain about. For super telephoto shooters, Sony's lineup remains somewhat limited. So my review has been glowing... but that's not to say there aren't some negatives with the camera. Just most of the negatives are very very minor things. So the negatives, especially when compared to a camera like the D850: - Difficult to delete both memory cards. When you go into the delete function, it is only deleting from the chosen playback card. To make it delete from your second card, you need to go through more menu options and change the chosen card. - There is no built-in intervalometer. You can buy a cheap external intervalometer for time lapses, but it really should be built in. - No lossless compression option. Nikon gives you a wealth of options for RAW file handling. Sony only gives you compressed or uncompressed. Uncompressed files are too big for most uses. I stick to compressed -- in 99% of situations, you won't see any loss of image quality. But a lossless compression option would be good to have. -The "star eater" issue -- You will find this written about on the internet. Basically, when doing astro-photography... when you have stars that are very very small (1 pixel), the camera mistakes them for hot pixels and deletes them. So instead of seeing 1,000 stars, you may only see 950 in the photograph. For me, a non-issue. For a dedicated astro-photographer, it could be an issue. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other noteworthy negatives. The camera really is that good. Because of the fantastic eye-AF, I think this is the best portrait camera you can buy. Combining the fantastic eye-AF with the silent shooting and the live view -- it is the best event/wedding camera you can buy. The image quality, high resolution, pixel shift -- make it a stellar landscape camera. I can't say it is better than the D850 for landscapes, but it's up there. For anybody concerned about camera size, the A7riii still isn't tiny. But relatively speaking, it can save you a noticeable amount of bulk and weight. So for those who want a general use camera with the best possible image quality, it is very easy to recommend the A7riii.