Sony A7Riii vs Nikon D850 Epic Shootout | Camera Comparison Review | Which Camera to buy?

Let's jump into the specs. For $3200 or $3300 at the time of this recording, either of these cameras can be yours depending on where you get them. On the Nikon, we have a 45.7 backside illuminated sensor. We see it as 42 megapixels in the Sony. For sport shooting, we're seeing 7 frames per second in the Nikon. A grip, we'll put that up to 9 frames per second, and we're seeing 10 frames per second on the Sony. Both cameras have excellent focusing systems. The Nikon's focusing system is straight out of the D5. It was the best focusing camera I've ever used, and we're seeing an amazing 399 phase detection points with 68% coverage on the Sony. Both cameras have dual card slots with an XQD memory card slot on the Nikon, and we also see 4K full frame video as well as a crop mode coming out of both cameras. They both have peaking zebras, Wi-Fi, tilty touch screen monitors, and they have varying degrees of interactivity with the menu systems. I'll talk about that a little bit later. Many of you have asked about the lenses that I use in these tests. For the sports in the portrait shooting, I'm using the 70-200mm f2.8 G Master on the Sony and the 70-200mm f2.8 FL-ED on the Nikon, which is an amazing lens. For most of the other tests, I'm using the respective 24-70mm f2.8s, the G Master again on the side of the Sony, and the non-image stabilized on the side of the Nikon. Differences, and this is important to note on the Nikon side, is we're seeing a far larger number of telephoto lenses. Very important factor if you're shooting sports, something to keep in mind. In fact, if you are coming from a previous Nikon full frame camera, whether it's the D600, D610, the D750, the D810, and you're wondering about the D850, this camera is straight up spectacular. This is my number one full frame DSLR shooter. I don't even have any cannons anymore, that should tell you something. I'm very impressed with the D850, and for those of you who are interested in the Sony and think that it's worth it, this epic shootout is going to take you through many of the differences. It's an outstanding camera, and we see a number of features in here that aren't on the D850, including 5-axis IBIS, internal body image stabilization. We have a number of other video features, including S-Log. We have an electronic viewfinder, which is going to give you an exposure preview as you're shooting. We have eye autofocus. Tons of great features in both cameras. Now, one problem with spec sheet reading is that no matter how good they say they are on paper, I've always noticed there's a very different performance factor when the rubber meets the road, and that is the heart of these epic shootouts, is to do real world testing of the cameras and to figure out where the strengths as well as the weaknesses are. I'm not here to tell you how great your camera is. The reason I do these and the reason why I'm willing to upset so many people to talk about the weaknesses is because I know what it's like to save two or three thousand dollars for years and buy my first really nice DSLR camera. I've been there, and I want to be the guy in your back pocket that you know you can count on and think Michael is going to tell me the it is. It's cost me subscribers and I've upset a lot of people because I find things with cameras that nobody's willing to talk about. I have no affiliation with Sony or Nikon or any camera manufacturer, and I do not attend pre-release press events. It's a very important thing to me. If there's any question about the methodologies that I use, I am completely transparent. In the past, many of you have made suggestions that have improved the testing, and what I'm going for is creating the world's greatest camera reviews. In a world where YouTube videos are three to five minutes long, I'm still one of the few people doing 30 or 40 minute camera reviews. As amazing as both of these cameras are, something I have to emphasize is that the skills of the photographer are always more important than the camera they're using. I think my tutorials are the best in the world. Maybe that's arrogant, but I'm willing to stand by it with a 100% money back guarantee. I'll put those links in the description. So as part of the testing, I really like to talk about focusing first. Let's go down to the park and give these cameras a spin. In my sports servo tests with mirrorless cameras, the first thing right off the bat I do is to test whether or not it can achieve focusing during a burst while zooming. I've seen this problem on many Sony mirrorless cameras in the past, including the a9, and unfortunately the a7R III also has this limitation, specifically while zooming in. Second important note is that Nikon makes a battery grip that will increase your frames per second from seven to nine. It's expensive, but might be worth it to sports shooters who need those extra two frames per second. I'm personally testing it without the grip. Third important note, on the a7R III, there are brackets that you can turn on that will help you see where the phase detection points are. I tested the contrast areas only as well, and I can tell you they did not do very good. If you're a sports shooter with the a7R III, turn those brackets on and stay within them when using a single square, which is what I did for these results. For side-to-side motion of a moving subject, the Nikon D850 scored a 98% and the a7R III scored a perfect 100%. For a subject moving forward into good front light, the D850 scored a 98% with the a7R III scoring an 82% while zooming out and a 90% with no zooming. For a subject moving away into strong backlight, the D850 scored a 96% with the a7R III scoring an 85% with no zooming and a 25% while zooming in. This continues to be something that I've seen time and again on Sony cameras. However, if you just don't zoom in during a burst, you should be okay. While both of these scores are very, very good, in terms of overall accuracy, the D850 is almost perfect. I saw similar scores with the D5 and the D500, and I truly believe Nikon currently has the best sport-focusing cameras in its upper and middle lineup. Sony has made great strides improving their sports focusing in the a7 series cameras. They used to be absolutely terrible, and now you can confidently shoot a sporting event even with higher frames per second. Something that's super important to sports shooters is how many frames they can take before the camera starts to slow down, and this is the buffer performance test. There are some sports shooters who swear by RAW and many sports shooters who swear by JPEG, so what we want to do now is, in a pretty controlled environment, see how many images either of these cameras take both for RAW and JPEG before the buffer capacity tops out. Now, I have a timing device here so we can actually measure how many seconds it takes. I have some very high performance cards in both of the cameras, and I'll show you which ones those are, and we're going to start these at about the same time. One, two, three. There it goes. About 10 seconds. So we'll be able to go in. You can see that we have this buffer meter here. It's telling us as it's writing to the memory card. There is also on the side a little bar that got shorter and shorter, so you can visually see as you're shooting how many shots you have left, but it looked like it was about maybe 70 or 80, something like that. Something that's cool is that we can't access the menu. This was a problem on the Sony a9, was that it actually locked us out. It doesn't do that now, and you see it's still writing, still writing, and there it is. About 45 seconds. The question you probably have is that when the buffer is writing to the memory card, can you reshoot? I'll show you that real quick. Here's the bar on the side. There goes the buffer. It's writing. Yes, you can re-engage even if it's not completely empty, which is really nice. Let's take a look at this again with JPEG. I was shooting on raw compressed, very important quality. We'll go fine. Fine is a little bit smaller file size, and some people will freak out that I'm doing this test this way. This is just one test. I just want to see what the max capacity of JPEGs we can get in a burst. We'll do the same tests now with JPEGs. Count of three. One, two. Interesting. About nine seconds again. Very interesting. Much smaller file size. Didn't seem to have much of an impact on the number of frames that we could shoot. Raw files are gigantic. Fine JPEG are tiny, and it didn't really seem to make that much of a difference. Let's see if writing makes a difference. We'll go in and post, and we'll actually give you the exact measurement from the time that I stopped with my finger. It looks to be pretty close. It's going to be about the same. Shot a little bit longer on that one. Very interesting. Looking at about 70 to 80 shots on both raw and JPEG. Let's try the D850. So something I wanted to show you guys about the D850 is the inconsistency in the number of raw files you're getting. This is something that's pretty easy to verify. I have a Sony XQD memory card. It is Sony tech. Strange the A7 series cameras don't have an XQD card. I really think they can benefit from them. We're going to have a buffer indicator light here just below the directional pad. It's green. You'll watch and see how fast it can clear the buffer out. But I wanted to show you guys that I am on raw, and I am using lossless compressed for the raw setting. It's raw. Come in here. Compression's on. 14-bit. Setup ready to go. I've formatted the memory card, so there's literally nothing in there. Count of three. One, two. Okay, so maybe one over there. Check this out. 40 shots. Okay, so the literature says 51. Let's stop this. Reset it. Here we go. Count of three. One, two. One or two over that. 92. So there is, even with the same card, even with the same camera settings, there is this inconsistency with the raw buffer. Definitely the A7R3 is a better raw shooter. If you do a lot of high frames per second in raw, I think that's going to be your camera. However, if you're doing JPEG, let's take a look. We're going to come down to JPEG fine and leave all the camera settings the same. Count of three. One, two. Peaks out at around 200 shots. 7 frames per second. Just under 30 seconds. Yeah, about 200. So in summary, the D850 is going to be better if you need to do multiple JPEGs over, you know, the 70 or 80 that we saw on the A7R2. Definite advantage for the D850. If you're a raw shooter, I would pick the A7R3. And that's the test on buffers. So if I was to declare an overall sports winner, this is really tough because we have better frames per second in raw buffer depth on the Sony A7R3. We have better accuracy in JPEG buffer depth on the D850. On performance alone, it's going to come down to the individual needs of the photographer. There are some compelling arguments for a tiebreaker, specifically the huge number of telephoto lenses available for Nikon. And something else I have to note is that the raw files on the A7R3 drop to 12 bit when you're shooting in a high frame rate mode. It's not noticeable in terms of quality, but it's something that buyers should know. And I also felt the polish and ergonomics were better on the D850. It just feels really nice in the hands. If I absolutely had to choose one of these for sports shooting, I would probably choose the D850. But in all honesty, I'm also very confident shooting with the A7R3 for sports. In my low light focusing test, I had two high contrast targets, one at 6 EV and the other at negative 2 EV. And I focused back and forth for 30 repetitions using the center focusing square on both cameras. And I repeated this test several times. The Nikon D850 scored an average of 56.8 seconds with the Sony A7R3 scoring an average of 54 seconds. For low light shooting, the Sony has a slight edge, but on a shot to shot basis, most shooters will not notice a difference. Here is the tiebreaker though. The IBIS in the Sony. If you are shooting in low light, that internal image stabilization is going to give you an advantage. So for focusing, it's very similar. For actual low light shooting, there's an advantage for the A7R3. In the past, Sony cameras have been spectacular at face tracking for video, and that's the same with the A7R3. It's very smooth and easy to track a moving person. For the D850, Nikon has made huge improvements over other Nikon models. In its face tracking, it's getting so much better. It's almost there, but it still struggles a little bit. For face tracking in video mode, the win here goes to the A7R3. For my dynamic range test, I fire a strobe through a Stouffer wedge, which is essentially 41 little ND filters at 1 third stop increments, or about 13.7 stops of total dynamic range. I overexpose the first part of the strip to calibrate and analyze using Adobe Camera Raw. I'm basically looking for the last interval that has a distinct and complete border. The full methodology is outlined on my blog. Let's take a look at the test results. At an ISO of 100, both cameras seem to peak out between steps 37 and 38. They are very comparable. Even raising the ISO to 1600, again, very comparable results. So close to a tie. However, if I were to choose a winner, by means of a tiebreaker, I'm going to give the win to Nikon, and the reason is something called posterization that we continue to see at ISO 100 in Sony mirrorless cameras. Most shooters are not going to notice this. However, I've seen it too many times in Sony cameras, and it's something that I'm always looking for. Nikon does not have that problem, so very slight win here for the Nikon. One easy way to test the high ISO JPEG performance, because cameras clean up in-camera, is to look at a color chart and also take some high ISO portraits. When we look at a color chart at lower ISOs, they're very comparable, all the way up until about 12,000, 25,000, and we start to see an advantage for the Nikon. If you take a look at the green swatch on these color charts, it's very noticeable. Obviously, there's going to be some compression on YouTube, and then in a high ISO side-by-side portrait, 12,800, you can see that the color is also far better for the Nikon if you use auto white balance. It seemed like the Sony was struggling in low light if you use auto white balance. Sometimes those situations can be very tricky. This is a nice comparison in terms of how they perform side-by-side, but I think for JPEG noise, I think the Nikon has the advantage. Both cameras are capable of shooting full-frame 4k video without a crop. They can also do 120 frames per second at 1080p, and there's also Super 35 mode on both the cameras. In the case of the Sony, it oversamples at 5k down to a 4k video, and it looks really good. The D850, for a full-frame video DSLR, it's among the best I've ever seen, and it has acceptable bit rate files for the video, unlike what we saw on the 5D Mark IV. I do feel in terms of overall quality, the Super 35 mode looks a little bit better on the a7R III. Take a look at these side-by-side moiré tests. We have a full frame here on the left, Super 35 on the right. In terms of moiré, it seems like there's some significant improvement for crop mode, but more importantly, look at the hairs on my neck. There's a lot more detail, and it's cleaner and sharper, so if that's important to you, you might want to shoot on the crop mode with the Sony. On the D850, we do not see moiré as much in either one. However, if I was to declare an overall moiré winner, it would be to the D850. On the other hand, full-frame 4k video may have certain advantages when you are shooting in something like a low light condition. For the low light video test, something I wanted you guys to do is take a look at these two candle samples and choose which one you like the most. Now, what if I told you that the one on the right is at an ISO of 25,600, and the one on the left is at 12,800? Surprisingly, the Sony is about a stop better. I see it in the mid-tones in the candle. I also see it in the flame a little bit, but very impressive. If you bring in the 25,600 for the D850, you can see that it's at least a stop better in low light. That's just one man's opinion, but very impressive for low light ISO on both cameras. The a7R III has the advantage. If we record video for the color swatch, I'm going to be honest, I'm just astonished at how good both of these cameras are in video at higher ISOs. It's just crazy. 6400, very comparable. It isn't really until we get up to 25,600 we start to see differences in the charts. Again, the a7R III is very clean. I still think it has at least a stop advantage in this test. It really confirms to me that for low light video, Sony has an ISO noise advantage. For high ISOs in JPEGs, I think the Nikon has the edge, but in all reality, it's really close and you're not going to notice it until you get to very high ISOs. Rolling shutter is another video artifact that bends and sways vertical subjects when panning and it makes it look like jello. Both cameras show rolling shutter in full frame as well as crop modes. There's no huge advantage that I'm seeing from one to the other. However, if you get stuck in a situation like this, try 1080. You might be able to reduce some of it. In the past, some of Sony's cameras get so hot that they overheat and shut down. And in this case, we can see that the D850 is registering a very cool 93 degrees Fahrenheit. The Sony a7R III peaks out around 97 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. And interestingly, the hottest part on the Sony was the left side of the monitor. These were very reasonable temperatures for shooting 4K and while I'm testing in a controlled cool environment, I have not seen overheating on either camera. Grab a pen and a piece of paper for this next test and list it from 1 to 12. Pause the video if you need some extra time. I'm going to show you a dozen side-by-side portrait images and just write down whether you like the left image or the right image more. And at the end of this little quiz, I'll show you the answers and you can see which image quality you prefer out of which camera. This is your personal opinion, so there's no right or no wrong answers here. It's just which one you like more. Now, I intentionally mix up and not label these as to remove any bias you might have towards one brand or the other. And this is also what I refer to as the image quality test, which is essentially what type of images each camera produces. If you score in much more favor one over the other, you're probably going to be more happy with that camera. If the scores are even, then it's probably not going to matter as much. Some important notes about this test. Each set that you see was shot with the same exact exposure settings and I didn't photoshop or adjust any of these images. This is straight out of the camera. We were a little bit pressed for time, but in the two hours we had, I tried to get as many different types of lighting shots possible. From harsh sunlight, to backlight, to shade, to wide aperture, golden hour light, high ISO, post sunset, you name it. Even when I personally take this test, I tend to have a preference towards one of the cameras, despite some minor strange things that might be going on with color sampling in white balance. Most of the time that can be corrected. So are you ready for the answers? Here they are. Score which camera you liked more, and that will give you a really good indication of which image quality you prefer for portraits. So, in conclusion, which camera would I recommend to what kind of photographer, and if I could only choose one, which camera would I keep? This is very difficult because I think both cameras excel very well at slightly different things. If we're talking about portrait photography, I think you really have to take a look at the portrait test when you're looking at side-by-side samples of the color science. Sony is making huge improvements, I believe, in the flesh tones. I think the a7R II is more orange, and what I'm seeing now is more flesh tone-like. I like what I'm seeing. It's not quite as good as Canon's. It is definitely improving, and in the color science test, the portrait test, I prefer Sony images a little bit more. If you are a paid professional doing weddings or portraits, I would probably lean you more towards the a7R III for two reasons. The electronic viewfinder is going to give you a prediction of the exposure before you even take it, so it's not as necessary to chimp and make sure you're on track. The second reason is the eye autofocus detection. It means you can just hit that. It locks in. It's very accurate. I've always believed this was a game changer, and so in the workflow of shooting, I think the a7R III has an advantage if you are a paid professional. When we're talking about landscape photography, again, I also believe they're really close to each other with a very slight advantage towards the Nikon in the dynamic range files. A lot of people may not like that. I thought they were very, very close for the most part. The a7R III has an advantage, however, in the dual pixel feature, so again, another toss-up. When we're talking about street photography, low-light shooting, I believe the a7R III definitely has an advantage. At the end of my shoot with Krista the other night, we were leaving. It was dark, and I asked her to stand underneath a lamp, and looking through the viewfinder, again, I could bump up the ISO and see exactly where I was focusing, whereas with the D850, looking through the lens, I couldn't even see her, so huge advantages for shooting low-light with the a7R III. I think in terms of their ability to focus in low-light, it's very similar, but again, we get exposure preview, and the IBIS comes into play for low-light photography, so I do think the a7R III for street shooting low-light photography has an advantage. When we're talking about sports shooting, for me, it's no contest. The D850 was amazing. You know, there's the thing with the lenses. Obviously, there's a huge lineup of telephoto lenses for the Nikon that we don't have for the Sony. That's got to come into play, but beyond that, the focusing accuracy, the ability to zoom in and out, the speed at which the buffer cleared, we're talking in a completely different league. Now, the a7R III has made huge improvements over previous models, but I just feel the Nikon, if I were shooting a sporting event, I wouldn't even hesitate to grab it simply because of the accuracy, the ergonomics, the lens selection, the buffer clearing. This isn't to say that you can't shoot with the a7R III. We get more frames per second. We get more raw shots. The buffer takes a little bit longer to clear. The focusing systems are beyond adequate. It just has some limitations in terms of if you can zoom in, maybe it struggles a little bit more in backlight, things of that nature. Again, I really feel the D850 is the way to go if you had to choose between the two. When we're taking a look at a video shooting camera, I have to give Nikon huge credit. It looks like their face detection and tracking is improving. It's definitely better than any other Nikon that I've seen. I just think that the face tracking is better on the a7R III. You can use it for tracking shots, pulling focus, everything's smoother. It's very good. It's on, I believe, the same level as the Canon dual pixel autofocus. A number of other things, the IBIS. So if you need to do a handheld shot, it's going to be a little bit smoother. We have things like S-Log. Both of them have problems with rolling shutter in moiré. I was disappointed in the moiré on the a7R III. You don't hear a lot of people talking about it. It's there. All the other things that it brings to the table, I definitely feel the a7R III has the advantage for video shooting. So if my very best friend came to me and said, Michael, which of these cameras would you choose if you could only have one? That is a very difficult question to answer because as a portrait photographer, I look at the lens system with the camera body together, and I'm very happy with that 70 to 200 FLED lens paired with the D850. The resolution, the sharpness, the detail I'm getting out of that pair is astonishingly good, even though I prefer the color science a little bit more on the Sony. So for portrait photography, I want to use the Nikon. I just feel like I want to grab it and go shooting. The problem with this is I'm a video shooter 60 to 70 percent of the time. More of the time I'm shooting video. And even though we see wonderful features added, the full frame and the crop view, they both look really good. I still feel like I would gravitate more towards the a7R III because we get things like S-Log and we get things like IBIS and the tracking is a little bit better. So I use those tools when I'm shooting videos. I'm shooting for a CrossFit box, and it's a pleasure to shoot the video with the Sony system. So that's the answer I would give my very best friend. Not cut and dry. I think they're both great cameras. They're both very capable of many kinds of shooting, and we're really splitting hairs in terms of which one is a better tool for the job. And that's what I want you guys to take from this is I'm not ripping on your cameras. It's my responsibility to tell you in advance if I see a weakness or if I see an advantage so you can make an informed buying decision. So that is my epic shootout on the D850 versus the a7R III. Thank you guys so much for your patience. I know this is a little late coming out. I was in Puerto Rico. Thank you guys for supporting the filter program with Tony and Chelsea Northrup. That experience in Puerto Rico was one of the best of my life, and I'm deeply grateful to you guys in supporting me and letting me do that. In any event, if you decide to buy either one of these cameras and you're struggling to learn them, I am a great photography mentor, and I have a crash course video on either camera. It's the fastest, easiest, most effective way to learn photography with your specific camera, and I stand by that with a 100% money-back guarantee. Thank you guys for watching, and I will see you next time. If you found this video helpful, you might be interested in one of my many camera or photography specialty courses. They're available by DVD and download, come with a 100% money-back guarantee. They can be ordered from the following link.