[philbaum]

Although there may well be an A7000 someday there is, in fact, no very reliable indication that it will ever exist. It is nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor. An upgraded A6000 with all of the features fantasized for the A7000 would probably lose much of the A6000's advantage in size and weight. Many people on the Sony boards are concerned that Sony may not continue to develop APS-C cameras. We should concentrate on what we have and only worry about changing cameras when there is actually something in existence to switch to. The A6000 is a very fine APS-C camera already.

Agree. Considering the ongoing contraction of the marketplace, the mfr have few choices but to reduce the the number of model lines, and or reduce the timing. There's no free lunch, everything manufactured must have a reasonable chance of returning the investment with some profit.

[Winder]

#392. Sony A7r vs Sony A7rII. What Evolution? | DearSusan

[rawr]

#392. Sony A7r vs Sony A7rII. What Evolution? | DearSusan

I immediately closed that web page once I came upon this paragraph:

"We’ve heard about copper wiring being used to speed up the data transfer on the sensor. It turns out this probably has more beneficial effects than a simple speed boost. In HiFi, copper has a “low res” highly natural sound. If sounds organic, fluid and analog where other metals can sound shrill & brittle. The A7rII feels exactly like this. More airy, more atmospheric, more natural. As if 12 bits had been upped to 16 …"

[philbaum]

Today i just had a little time to mess with the A7R2. I attached the Pentax DA55-300 lens to the Sony. Got the following 2 shots via manual focus. There's this mythology out there that if you don't use the finest lens with this camera, than lightning will deal with the photographer, or something like that. But its like every other camera i bought with more mp, the older lenses look better along with the newer ones, if any. (whoops - forgot about the touch of vignetting i'm getting from the non-FF lens)

So i've bought this used kit lens, 28-75 from BH for $290. So far i haven't got anything but sharp shots from it. No decentering or anything. I'm finding it real hard not to like this camera, everything i've stuck on it comes out looking sharp, manual or AF.



[IMG][/IMG]

[Winder]

https://fstoppers.com/editorial/fstoppers-reviews-sony-alpha-a7rii-422mp-ful...e-camera-80386

[JohnBee]

Today i just had a little time to mess with the A7R2. I attached the Pentax DA55-300 lens to the Sony. Got the following 2 shots via manual focus. There's this mythology out there that if you don't use the finest lens with this camera, than lightning will deal with the photographer, or something like that. But its like every other camera i bought with more mp, the older lenses look better along with the newer ones, if any. (whoops - forgot about the touch of vignetting i'm getting from the non-FF lens)

I really like what Sony did with this new 42mp Sensor, though their own implementation of it in the A7R II just doesn't seem to do it justice imo(battery life, cRAW limitations, etc).

That said, I can't wait to see what other manufacturers can do with it once it arrives in other bodies. ie, Pentax has a reputation for squeezing more IQ out of Sony sensors than the competition. And so the notion that a FF body is in the works may prove to be very lucrative for Pentax this year.

[Winder]

I really like what Sony did with this new 42mp Sensor, though their own implementation of it in the A7R II just doesn't seem to do it justice imo(battery life, cRAW limitations, etc).

That said, I can't wait to see what other manufacturers can do with it once it arrives in other bodies. ie, Pentax has a reputation for squeezing more IQ out of Sony sensors than the competition. And so the notion that a FF body is in the works may prove to be very lucrative for Pentax this year.

I think (hope) Sony is holding back features like lossless RAW and bigger battery. The larger body will allow for better control layout, better heat control, and the bigger battery will allow for more processing power for faster AF.

[osv]

That said, I can't wait to see what other manufacturers can do with it once it arrives in other bodies. ie, Pentax has a reputation for squeezing more IQ out of Sony sensors than the competition.

see the dr vs. iso graph at this link, it's 5dsr vs. a7rii, and the canon gets spanked by ~1.6stops... remember that dr is not latitude, and the canon is really weak there as well:
Re: The Sony requires a lot of sharpening...: Sony Alpha Full Frame E-mount Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

notice how the a7rii plot isn't a smooth curve like the 5dsr... i think that sony has applied the same dual gain technology to the sensor that they used on the a7s.

afaik, the only other camera company with a history of that capability is nikon, on one camera?? i doubt that any company will pull more out of that same sensor than sony did, they are on the ragged edge, and i wonder if the tradeoff might have been the a7rii weakness for things like shooting star fields.

[philbaum]

I really like what Sony did with this new 42mp Sensor, though their own implementation of it in the A7R II just doesn't seem to do it justice imo(battery life, cRAW limitations, etc).

That said, I can't wait to see what other manufacturers can do with it once it arrives in other bodies. ie, Pentax has a reputation for squeezing more IQ out of Sony sensors than the competition. And so the notion that a FF body is in the works may prove to be very lucrative for Pentax this year.

If you look at where sony's been with the SLT series of DSLR-like cameras, i think you'll find the answers of why they doing what we see today.

The SLT series, imo, never took off. They never got the market traction they wanted.

I they they decided early on in the e-mount decision to go where no other major manufacturer had been, really small e-mount cameras, the Nexes, and now really small FF cameras. And now they have market traction like never before.

D4 weighs 1350gms, the D750, one of the lighter weight FF weighs 750gms, the Pentax k3 weight 800 gms.
The Sony A7s weighs 500 gms, the A7II weighs 600gms and the A7r2 weight 625 gms. These are remarkable weight reductions by Sony.

So how do you save weight in the modern digital camera. Well, cut battery size for example. And when you cut battery size, you need to use less power and the answer to that is CRAW. Less data = less power usage = less battery size.

The A7RII is like a little Mazda Miata sports car. Fast and fun to drive. But people criticize it for not being able to carry 30 cubic yards of gravel. Posters say weird things like: I would buy it if it would just carry 30 yards of gravel.

I have no doubt that Pentax will do splendid things with this sensor. It will weigh about 800 gms and on performance spec, it will beat the Sony in DR. It will also not have lossy RAW.

And yet i like my new small camera, the A7RII, that is fun to carry and shoot, and yet still has competent IQ. so if one chooses the sports car, don't complain to me that it can't carry gravel like a dump truck - thats not what you bought

[rawr]

so if one chooses the sports car, don't complain to me that it can't carry gravel like a dump truck

Hence the popularity of SUV's

[Mikesul]

I like Phil's comparison to a dump truck. I have and very much enjoy an A7RII but every time I pick up my K-3 I remember and love that rock solid "dump truck" feel. Very hard choice. i am hoping the FF will make it easy to go back to just one system.

[philbaum]

see the dr vs. iso graph at this link, it's 5dsr vs. a7rii, and the canon gets spanked by ~1.6stops... remember that dr is not latitude, and the canon is really weak there as well:
Re: The Sony requires a lot of sharpening...: Sony Alpha Full Frame E-mount Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

notice how the a7rii plot isn't a smooth curve like the 5dsr... i think that sony has applied the same dual gain technology to the sensor that they used on the a7s.

afaik, the only other camera company with a history of that capability is nikon, on one camera?? i doubt that any company will pull more out of that same sensor than sony did, they are on the ragged edge, and i wonder if the tradeoff might have been the a7rii weakness for things like shooting star fields.

I'm ignorant in this area so pls excuse. I assume that the data for these graphs comes out of cRAW data. So wouldn't these graphs also reflect the lossy compression algorithms that Sony applies? In which case, Sony data will always suffer "poor performance" when the data is effectively filtered by CRAW algorithms. Or am i out to lunch?

[osv]

I'm ignorant in this area so pls excuse. I assume that the data for these graphs comes out of cRAW data. So wouldn't these graphs also reflect the lossy compression algorithms that Sony applies? In which case, Sony data will always suffer "poor performance" when the data is effectively filtered by CRAW algorithms. Or am i out to lunch?

the artifacting examples that i've seen posted are generally limited to extreme differences of light vs. dark, things like that digiloyd star trail shot(very rare), or posterization, that's driven to visibility by severe overprocessing: Sony A7R teams up with Canon glass

there is also some even more rare horizontal block artifacting, at extreme light/dark areas: Images to train free ARW2 repair program: Sony Alpha Full Frame E-mount Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

in that thread, profhankd talks about a program he wrote that cleans up artifacting, but after multiple calls on dpr for examples that he could test the program with, he posted this: "To date, only 15 sets of training images have been submitted (7 of which are from A7RII) and, among the training images, there are virtually no highly-visible artifacts. In short, not a sufficient training set. It is noteworthy that some of the images have very lossy encodings, but visiblity of artifacts is not directly related to the quantity of data loss; it depends a lot on the scene content."

i'm not sure exactly which artifacts the program repairs, but since it's very difficult to find any actual examples of sony raw compression artifacting, i doubt that it's going to be significant enough to affect the chart data.

bill claff uses two sources for his charts: 1)"Data is measured from raw files taken to my specifications and contributed by people from around the world", 2)"Data is derived from data available at DxOMark.
In general these results are less reliable than those actually measured and presented in the previous section" Photons to Photos

more info on the dual-gain technology used in the a7rii: http://www.photonstophotos.net/Aptina/DR-Pix_WhitePaper.pdf

[philbaum]

Just to keep this thread going, Sony has announced that the A7SII will have compressed and uncompressed 14 bit RAW. I don't think anyone knows exactly whether these data files will have lossy compressed or non-lossy compressed or just uncompressed RAW. They also announced that this firmware change will be backfit starting with A7RII. They also announced that they are going to increase the existing 13 FE lenses with 7 more FE lenses to be released in 2016.

https://alphauniverse.com/stories/sony-announces-addition-of-uncompressed-14...new---cameras/

Frankly, its very nice to see this kind of responsiveness on Sony's part. Perhaps Sony considers that at some point they are going to release this sensor to Nikon and Pentax, and they'd better have their cameras as competitive as they can be.

The other recent development out there is that a new firmware for the Canon-FE Metabones IV adapter has been released and reports are that it enhances compatibility with more Canon lenses.

[Winder]

Hopefully they add this to the A7II.