It’s official: Sony has just announced that the launch event for the long (long, long) awaited Sony a7S III will take place on Tuesday, July 28th at 10am Eastern time. In light of this confirmation, here’s everything we expect to see based on the latest rumors and reports.
The news wasn’t all that surprising to fans and industry watchers the company confirmed the camera’s existence and summer launch in an interview with DPReview at the end of June. At the time, Kenji Tanaka, Senior General Manager of Sony’s Digital Imaging Group, told the publication that the company had embarked on a “complete redesign of the whole system, including the image sensor.” Unfortunately, Tanaka’s conversation was a little light on the technical detail.
In addition to correctly predicting the July 28th announcement date, here’s what Sony Alpha Rumors has gathered about the upcoming camera so far. Keep a grain of salt in mind for now, as no other sources have corroborated these specs yet:
Redesigned 12MP image sensor with “fast readout” (likely a stacked CMOS sensor)
16bit RAW output
A claimed 15 stops of dynamic range (which should be possible with 16-bit RAW).
1080/240p slow motion
10-bit 4:2:2 4K/120p video, and 4K/120p RAW video over HDMI
600Mpbs bitrate
Base ISO of 160 for S-LOG3, but no Dual ISO
No record time limits
Fully-articulating screen
UHS-II SD card slots
There are a few specs there that deserve a pinch of salt. For instance, we’re not sure Atomos’ recorders are even capable of 4K/120p RAW video recording, and even a UHS-II SD card might struggle to record 10-bit 4:2:2 4K/120p video internally depending on the bitrate.
That said, with the launch coming up so soon we’re hoping to see some of these specs “confirmed” by other sources like Nokishita, in addition to the expected product photo leaks, ahead of release.
