Sony's new A7R III is a direct shot at Canon's full-frame throne

Sony's new A7R III 

Sony surprised the camera world this morning when it finally announced the new Sony A7R III, the long-rumored third iteration of one of the company's best digital mirrorless cameras. It ships in November, and will retail for $ 3,200, according to Sony.

The A7R III uses a full-frame, 42.4-megapixel sensor, and borrows heavily from the A9, Sony's ludicrously fast professional flag that was announced earlier this year. It shoots 10 frames per second (RAW or JPEG) with autofocus tracking, and it does this without any shutter blackout, just like the A9. That's wonderful news, since the A7R III also has the same massive 3.69 million-dot EVF that impressed me so much on the A9 back in the spring.

The A7R III has fast, robust autofocus to keep up with those speeds, too. There are 399 phase detection autofocus points, and 425 contrast AF points, which Sony says makes the A7R III twice as fast as the A7R II in low light situations. The rest of the experience should be faster than the A7R II as well, thanks to an updated BIONZ X processor that is 1.8 times quicker, according to Sony.

Photographers should be able to shoot for longer with the A7R III, too, as it uses the A9's higher-capacity battery. It even has the A9's AF joystick. For anyone who was lovesick over the A9 and its $ 4,500 price tag, the A7R III looks like one hell of a compromise.

In the press release and at the announcement event, Sony touted the A7R III's ability to shoot in challenging and low light. It uses 5-axis image stabilization to cancel out camera shake, has an ISO range of 100-32000 that's expandable to ISO 50-102,400, and the sensor provides up to 15 stops of dynamic range.

Sony split the A7 series into three back in 2014, with the A7S line becoming the go-to for video, especially thanks its low light capabilities. But the A7R III sounds like it will still be a formidable tool for capturing moving images. It shoots 4K footage at 24 or 30 frames per second, and 1080p video at 120 frames per second. And to help transfer all these high-resolution stills and movies, Sony's added a USB Type-C connector to the camera.

And that, more than anything, is a sign of why a camera like the A7R III should be making Canon and Nikon sweat. In the same amount of time (four years) that it took Canon to make a new version of its most popular full-frame camera, the 5D, Sony announced the A7, released a follow-up, and then also forked that camera into two discrete camera lineups - the A7R and A7S - that have each seen multiple updates. (Canon's only iteration on the 5D in that time was the higher-resolution 5DS and 5DSR, two cameras that were practically the same as each other.)