Battery life of the Sony A7M3

My experience after three weeks with the camera

Battery for the A7M3, which lasts seemingly forever!

I'll get right down to one of the biggest improvements in the newest Sony cameras: the battery life has more than doubled. The NP-FZ100, as you may assume from its predecessor's name (NP-FW50), is larger and much stronger than what we had in the earlier models. The Alpha series before the A7 had the big, strong NP-FM500H, which lasted a couple of days in the A700 and nearly a day in the A77, Live View draining the battery more than on the A700.

Battery for the first A7 cameras, which lasts a couple of hours.

Battery for the A100-A77, which lasts a couple of days.

I have three of the smaller batteries for my A7 and usually had to change them after an hour of shooting when the thing went down to around 17%. I never bought the external charger, figuring it was easier to just have a few spares in my pockets.

The relative sizes of the Sony batteries tell you a lot about how long they last.

Last night I started shooting a theater production at 95% on my A7M3. After three hours and nearly 500 shots it was still at over 40%.
When I bought the camera on March 12, I had been fretting that I'd be powerless until replacement batteries become available at the end of April. But so far, so good.

I must add one caveat, though. It takes a long time to fully charge the battery, so plan on recharging over night. If you have to shoot in the afternoon and then again in the evening, a two-hour charge will put you back up into the safe zone so you should get through the evening ok!