Sony a7 III Versus Fujifilm X-T4: Which One Should You Buy?

For hybrid shooters looking to stay compact and within a certain budget, choosing between the Fujifilm X-T4 and the notably older Sony a7 III can be a challenge. This short video puts the two head to head. Which one would be your choice?

Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake of DPReview sit down to argue the pros and cons of each, and for a camera that is now almost three years old, the Sony a7 III holds up surprisingly well. As I was pondering the purchase of my a7 III, the Fujifilm X-T3 was a compelling alternative, and if I were weighing my options today, the XT-4 would make that decision even tougher. The IBIS and improved autofocus give you a lot of camera in a very compact form and at an excellent price.

Personally, it comes down to usability and ecosystems, and I’m sure I’d have been equally happy whichever route I took. The X-T4 is a photographer’s camera, a tool that has been crafted by designers who love the image-making process. By contrast, the a7 III is a box with buttons that was bolted together with the sense that profit margins and market share were more of a priority. 

Which would be your choice? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

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12 Comments

The Fuji. Because with Sony you don't have weather sealing unless you buy at least an A7Riv, and if you do you're stuck with enormous files because Sony still hasn't figured out how to make a decent compressed raw.

But my real answer is a Z7 because I'm a landscape guy.

Obviously you dont have long term experience with multiple Sony bodies. I do have And weather sealing has never been issue. Rain, cold, still going fine.
Fuji bodies has big issues, especially if you use long glass. Almost no grip and the extender create issue that the shutter button remain in akward position with extender.
Plus small buffer on most Fuji bodies Is a other problem, not for shooting portraits or landscapes, but definately for sport.
I admit Fuji has really nice film jpeg simulations but thats it.

Sony considers two pieces of plastic against each other with no rubber gasket a weather seal. A7iii and A7Riii do the worst of the major brands in weather tests. This is the biggest reason I didn’t get an A7Riii when I was shopping for a new camera.

The A7iii and XT4 both have smaller grips. I wouldn’t consider either a great choice with large lenses.

A7iii buffer is 34 uncompressed raws. X-T4 is 35. It’s the same.

If you have to ask the question, it probably doesn’t matter which one you buy.

A little less than a year ago you posted pretty much the same article, summing up with

" the a7 III has been something of a game-changer, it is an expensive box full of buttons designed by those who stare at spreadsheets and eat their lunch at their desks. Fujis, by comparison, are designed by people who love the process as much as the results, and understand that taking a photograph is much more than pulling a trigger."

Today you sum up with

"The X-T4 is a photographer’s camera, a tool that has been crafted by designers who love the image-making process. By contrast, the a7 III is a box with buttons that was bolted together with the sense that profit margins and market share were more of a priority. "

It would be nice if Fstoppers stopped rehashing articles for clicks and showed some originality, or at least took the time to check back and see if the subject had been covered before and make some effort to try and say if it has, at least try to present it differently.
This is no longer journalism, if it could ever be called that, it's clutching at straws to try and get advertising clicks.

it's current practice for blogs to re-post articles and adjust hashtags or relevant text that can be more interesting for today's reality.

Fstoppers has so many visitors. Why are you so bothered with 1 article? If you don't find it coherent with a past opinion or simply not just interesting, you are aware you can skip this article and read another one, right ?

Because is this an actual article or a commercial that get remixed from time and time again and fuels fanboyism but another article will come out about how gear doesn't matter and how the readers are at fault for the harsh comments. It's the same thing over and over again, much worse on other sites yet here more and more links to videos with a write up ughhhh

It isn't one article, I used to come here for original interesting content and hope to do so again, but recently pretty much everything is a rehash, it's got to the point where you can put a quote or title of almost any of Andy's articles into the search box and you will get a list of similar results.
And as the latest commenter said a lot of the articles are re-posted videos with little in the way of thought going into writing the article.
This is drifting further and further into the realms of news aggregation rather than originality.
Pity.

i haven't done such extensive research. i respect your opinion.

‘The X-T4 is a photographer’s camera, a tool that has been crafted by designers who love the image-making process.’

I take it any other camera that doesn’t use shutter and iso dials is inferior to Fuji too because the PASM experience is pretty much the same with all cameras when compared to using dedicated dials.

Hi guys, you've probably heard this before but there's 3 key aspects to image making, composition, lighting and technique. The first two have nothing to do with the camera and even the third is only slightly influenced by the system you invest in.
The lenses you buy will make a much bigger impact on your images than the camera ever will.
IMHO to improve the quality of your images I would invest in training, lighting and then the camera system in that order.
So comparing cameras is a bit of fun but the camera you choose is a very minor part of the image making process.
So a great photographer with mastery of the above will take great photos with the kit from any manufacturer.