Being a slightly technical person (aka a geek) I wanted to do my own testing of the Sony A7 cameras that I now own compared to the Canon 5dmk3 that I’ve been using for the last few years. One thing that is different on every single camera is colour…. This starts to become a bit of an issue when you are using multiple different cameras in your day to day work but you want the end result to have a consistent look !
So, this afternoon I setup a colour chart in the kitchen (with lovely daylight) and photographed it with all three cameras. I took a light meter reading rather than relying on any of the cameras in-built light meters and set them all to ISO1600 1/100 sec f4.
I then imported the images in to Lightroom and corrected the white balance on each. The first thing that I noticed is that the image from the Canon was about 1/3rd of a stop brighter than the Sony A7s and 2/3rds of a stop brighter than the A7II. Colour wise the two Sony cameras are very similar but both give a much flatter image than the Canon 5dmk3.
Canon 5dmk3
Sony A7s
Sony A7II
Conclusions
The Canon 5dmk3 seems to be spot on where the exposure is concerned. The white on the left hand side of the “cube” on the top of the colour grid should read 96% across the RGB channels and it is very close. Both of the Sony cameras are under-exposing the image; the A7s by 1/3rd stop and the A7II by 2/3rds…. This is something that I will need to watch when I’m working, it is something I “thought” I’d noticed in that all my images were coming out very slightly darker than I’d expected so I will have to make sure I adjust for this when I’m shooting.
The Canon also has more saturated looking colours than either of the Sony cameras. This comes down to a matter of taste and sometimes it is far easier to add saturation when needed rather than trying to compensate for over saturated skin tones, especially on babies.
One thing I am pleasantly surprised by is how similar the colour coming out of both the Sony cameras is. I had real “issues” with the amount of colour difference between the Canon 5dmk2 and 5dmk3 when I was working with both cameras side by side.
Over the next few weeks I will be doing some more tests between these cameras because I am genuinely curious to see how the new full frame mirrorless cameras compare to the digital SLR’s that I have been working with.