this video is not a review it is a history lesson about one of the most revolutionary camera models to come out in the history of video cameras this is the story of the sony a7s series [Music] the sony a7s has been one of the most revolutionary cameras in the film industry over the last seven years it essentially single-handedly brought sony into the game when it came to video hybrid cameras eventually leading to stealing the crown from canon who had it so strongly at the time of the 5d series now we have the final evolution of the original a7s with the a7s3 giving us basically everything we have ever wanted but how did we get here let's go back in time to 2013. the a7s from sony was the third alpha mirrorless camera released from sony and it was a great surprise to many the a7 and original a7r were already out but nobody really gave them much thought except for of course philip bloom the a7s was a bit of a shocker as it only had 12 megapixels and nobody really saw it coming at the time the 5d mark ii from canon was still one of the top budget cameras out there and it was really only capable of going to 1600 or 3200 iso comfortably which honestly was plenty for many people and it still is to this day but once we saw what the a7s was capable of people started losing their pants having a camera capable of going to 10 000 iso with a clean image meant that you could use a lens with an f4 aperture even in dimly lit circumstances now of course as you started to ramp up the iso you would lose some dynamic range and color information but as a filmmaking tool this thing was truly revolutionary you could basically see in the dark not only was this camera powerful in low light it also was able to shoot 4k and in 2013 that was a big deal however you could only unlock its 4k potential by using the tiny hdmi micro port and using the atomos shogun recorder without the shogun you were limited to 1080p internal recording and at the time the shogun was the best recorder for the a7s but it looked hilariously too big to fit on it as the camera was smaller than the monitor itself now we have the ninja v which is better suited but at the time this was all we got 4k looked great on this thing and recording in slog2 was really nice for a dynamic range giving you roughly 12 stops of dynamic range however the output was only an 8-bit 422 signal going into the recorder no 10-bit but there were some issues here with the original a7s color science for me personally when i was a freelance shooter back in 2014 i was used to the canon 5d mark ii and the 70 which had fantastic color but they were a little bit lower in the spec category so i was stoked to try out the a7s in 4k mode and even the 1080 but little did i know that you couldn't just switch on slog2 and get a perfect image the color science was weird and required a lot of work to get it to look right it seemed as though the a7s just had bad color and that is where sony's bad color meme kind of started to take the forefront in the industry it really wasn't that the color was awful it was just different than canon and it wasn't as good as cinema cameras from sony they also required a ton of customizing to get the look right eoshd.com made a custom profile called pro color that really helped make the skin tones and color science look much better and that is what i personally used when i was shooting on the original a7s the color science wasn't the only issue with the original a7s however no no no the battery life was another massive gripe about this camera i don't know what it was but for some reason this camera had awful battery life you were lucky to get 40 minutes of battery on this camera you could charge it over usb but not while you're using it the camera itself was also super tiny and that could be something that you like but for most it just seemed too plasticky cheap and way too tiny for large sized hands to hold there's also no form of autofocus for video on this camera but they did include focus peaking which was nice at the time then in october of 2015 the a7s2 was announced giving what most users wanted internal 4k and ibis ibis stands for in body image stabe and this was a big deal at the time the gh5 was yet to be announced and so ibis was still a relatively new concept i remember thinking this would replace all lenses with is and i could use any lens i wanted and it'd have stabilization however the stabilization really wasn't all that great it did help in getting some of those micro jitters out of the image however the body was also a bit chunkier and much easier to grip but they chose to stick with the same crappy battery as before they also left the camera with one sd card but again the main draw to this camera was the fact that it was capable of shooting 4k internal no more massive atomos shogun needed this time in 8bit 420 and if you wanted 422 you did have to go external like the original the color science seemed to be roughly the same as sony opted to use the same sensor from the original a7s camera and this camera was really more of an incremental upgrade but the original was so good they didn't need to change too much to make us happy they let us map the record button to something else which was great because the little tiny button on the side was dumb the menu system still was confusing but it was a little bit better and the evf got significantly better this was also the first a7s that brought us continuous autofocus though it was contrast based only it worked pretty good and many youtubers started using it even though there wasn't a flip out screen however my friend joshio from make art now broke his screen to make it flip down so he could see himself upside down but other than that you were screwed if you wanted to view what you were recording from the front without a monitor like i said the color science didn't improve much but they did add s-log 3 and people were certainly able to figure out how to get great looking footage on this camera the 1080p 120 fps slow motion was decent and this camera was really a serious beast in the market for several years but then in 2017 the alpha 7 r3 or the a7r iii came out with a new battery system that tripled the battery life added dual card slots made the camera even more comfortable to hold gave us way better autofocus with face tracking better ibis and better color science so naturally we all hoped for the a7s iii to be coming out soon instead we got a bunch of great lenses from sony and the a7 iii and a bunch of aps-c cameras waited and waited and waited rumors would pop up cinegear a7s3 then nothing nab 2019 nothing ibc will see an a7s3 i promise nothing it seemed as though the a7s3 was a myth and then when all hope was lost rumors of a camera capable of 4k at 120 frames per second a flip screen venice color science started popping up was it true is this actually possible is it possible that sony would give us what we actually wanted it was the a7s3 finally arrived in the summer of 2020. the worst time in the history of sony alpha series cameras to be released a 4 000 camera released to win one of the worst pandemics to hit the globe is happening at a time where filmmakers weren't working sony released the camera we were all waiting for the youtuber reviews were almost painful to watch we all wanted this camera but did it make financial sense for someone to buy at a time where video professionals were completely in limbo where your next job was really a question mark also was the canon r5 going to beat the a7s3 thankfully the r5's overheating failures made the a7s 3 seem like the perfect camera and eventually people figured out how to have coveted safety on sets in certain locations started opening up again and the a7s iii was flying off shelves we compared it to the aria alexa lf and the sony venice on this channel and my findings were pretty incredible with some basic color grading i was able to very closely match the a7s iii footage with the r alexa and almost perfectly match it to the 70 000 sony venice camera the a7s iii lived up to the hype and it's honestly pretty close to perfect giving us dual card slots that can use cf express type a memory cards as well as traditional sd it can record 4k up to 120 frames per second has the ability to output raw over the full-sized hdmi port has a nice big record button on top the evf is best in class the color science has greatly improved the ibis has gotten even better the battery life is incredible the autofocus is close to perfect for video with eye tracking autofocus and they finally added the flip screen finally the sony a7s iii is truly the closest thing to a perfect hybrid camera for someone like me who's more interested in video than photo a youtuber's dream camera without a doubt they kept the 12 megapixels but upgraded it to be a dual native iso sensor and the images you can take on it look incredible the sony e-mount has matured quite a bit to have a whole slew of incredible glass that you can pair on it but even though we waited forever for this camera to come out that doesn't mean you should wait forever to update your website using our sponsor today squarespace.com let's say you designed a website in 1995 for your video cassette business well shocker alert cassettes are out of style and so are you that's where squarespace comes in if you use our link down below squarespace.com indie mogul you can save 10 off your first purchase of a brand new website they've got tons of modern and beautiful looking templates that can get you started but in addition to those great templates you also get the customized ability to really hone in at the perfect website for your brand it's beautiful so if you don't have a website yet or your website was built in the 90s go over to squarespace.com indy mogul and save 10 off your first purchase using our link down below we like to thank squarespace for sponsoring this video thank you guys for watching again my name is dave mays follow me on twitter at davemaze or instagram dave mays underscore hopefully i'll get rid of that underscore eventually reach out tell me you enjoyed this video shoot me a dm hope you enjoyed it once again this is indy mogul i'm dave mays and we'll see you next time