Industry News: Sony announces their new flagship camera, the alpha a1

tron

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Nov 8, 2011
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Even the AF of the A9I is better then this one of the R5. So... the AF of the A1 will be insane I think.
Also NO blackouts! 240Hz EVF with ~80% more resolution!!
...
As you said: You think! You cannot know. As if R5 is not good enough.
Also EVFs do not take the picture. Their resolution is irrelevant.
NO blackouts are useful. But i didn't notice anything annoying with the R5 EVF at 120Hz.
 
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Besisika

How can you stand out, if you do like evrybdy else
Mar 25, 2014
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It is my opinion that R5 is close to A1 for about half the money!
That is an interesting statement. I took the time to really think about it and, it is hard for me to justify the price difference, given the way I use my camera. Would you really spend almost 3K more to get the difference?
There must be someone willing to spend the money, otherwise they wouldn't have came up with the figure.

With that said, there is a feature or two that, my opinion, given how I use my camera, worth mentioning.
These are: 1/400th sec mechanical and 1/200th electronic sync speed.
I hope Sony users will finally learn how to use a strobe, given that they now posess the best tool to get available light contribution high enough for natural looking strobe work. At 400th sec, you can freeze any unintended model movement, for natural light contribution to go high enough.
Besides, the electronic shutter with strobe would deliver great ability for dynamic posing, even for dancers. Your strobe will flash 30 times per sec. I am wondering for how long and at what power. Godox will have to come up with something stronger.
I wish Canon would go for these two innovations on their future cameras someday.
 
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H. Jones

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If the camera had a global shutter, what would be the point of a mechanical shutter?

Ha, great point. This is part of why I think global shutter is so important and industry changing, it totally removes the need for any moving parts in a camera. Even with my strong support of it, I'm stuck in an old frame of mind that it will make obsolete!

I do wonder if Canon would keep the shutter as a sort of electronic sensor cover when lenses are changed or power is turned off, I love that feature on my R5. Maybe they could easily design a sensor cover that's one big piece to seal the sensor without worrying about shutter blades breaking.
 
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I am wondering about the CFe A vs B cards. CFe A cards in the A7siii is fine as it doesn't have the high bandwidth that the R5 does.
CFe B cards are relatively available in the market compared to CFe A cards.
CFe B cards are cheaper - at least last time I checked
CFe B cards have a higher bandwidth as they have 2 PCIe lanes vs 1 on the CFe A cards
=> CFe B = top 2GB/s vs CFe A cards @ 1GB/S
Canon have always formally qualified the higher write speed CFe B cards/OEMs which have generally been the larger card capacities although my 128GB Sony Tough has 1440MB/s write speed

From testing by The Digital Picture, the R5 has buffer depth of shots and seconds of shooting as:
20 fps RAW > CFexpress1467.3
20 fps RAW > SD1105.5

8k/raw DCI and 4K120 can only write to the CFe B card without any cinema compression without using the buffer.

It will be interesting what the CFe A cards can achieve in the A1
 
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usern4cr

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--

Even IF it's a Bayer Array you STILL have to do each RGBG channel separately at each photosite for output and processing by the container file format CODEC. And Sony's OWN documentation says around 50 million active pixels which are part of a Bayer Array which means 4 channels must be processed per each pixel by the DSP/ADC/DAC. My math PROBABLY still stands unless someone else offers a better explanation based upon more or different documentation.

V
Why would you output 50MP at 16 x 3 = 48 bits per pixel after up-sizing from the Bayer pixel elements? And there is NO reason to output 16 x 4 = 64 bits per pixel as both G pixel elements are green and you just have one final G value per up-sized RGB pixel. Just output the friggin raw file @ 16 bits per pixel element to avoid bloating it up by a factor of 3x. Or output a lossless compressed raw at < 16 bits per pixel element. Also, who outputs the entire 3:2 screen for video (assuming you're talking about video)? They always chop it down to something wider, like 16:9 so a huge chunk of the pixels aren't stored (or even needing any processing at all) in the video stream anyway.
 
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mpeeps

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I love the speed of the CFE card, but I'm traveling, I'm bringing the laptop, which only has a SD slot. I shoot to both cards or copy from one to the other when I have down time, but it's nice to have something I can put into the laptop without lugging around another adapter/dongle.
I emailed Prograde to request a 3 way dongle; sd, cf, and cfe. I haven't heard back. Anyone aware of a 3 way??
 
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Aug 12, 2010
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It also means the Canon R5 is STILL THE SUPERIOR CAMERA, since I get Hollywood Cinema-specific DCI 8k (1.89:1 aspect ratio 8192 by 4320 pixels) recording AND up-to-45 minutes at 8K when I put in our CF-express slot to external 4TB SSD-drive system on it which removes the R5 card slot file save limits! The Sony only has UHDTV 16:9 aspect ratios for 8K and 4K video.

Nobody in Hollywood shoots a 30 minute take. Gravity had a long take and that was 17 minutes.

The kind of people that might do 45 minutes are amateurs, Youtubers, wedding photographers (maybe.)
 
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Jan 30, 2020
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I'm very likely to get an R1, but if it winds up having =<24mp, then I'm not going to bother. I am very impressed with the A1, but have too much glass in the RF system to consider it, so I'd just stick with the R5s if the R1 is lame.

Things I hope this pushes Canon to do with its R1:
- All the stuff the R5 has +...
- 45mp + (really this was my big complaint prior to the A1)
- Better heat management for longer internal high bitrate video
- Antiflicker in electronic shutter, without lowering frame rate significantly
- Faster flash sync
- Pixelshift hi-res with in-camera processing
- Double CFexpress Type B cards


Things I hope it doesn't push Canon to add:
- 30 fps stills. Give me variable rate up to 20 fps, and I'm happy.
- Type A cards


Sony has a long tradition of timing release announcements (at least ones that aren't themselves tied to an actual shipping date) to imminent releases of competitor's offerings. They very much like to steal others' thunder. This might portend that they think Canon is going to announce the R1. As this will be launched in March, there doesn't seem to be another reason to have this sudden announcement.
If the A1 is set to come out March 1st, I fully expect to see a Canon R1 development announcement sometime towards the end of February. They've got to steal some thunder!
 
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Ha, great point. This is part of why I think global shutter is so important and industry changing, it totally removes the need for any moving parts in a camera. Even with my strong support of it, I'm stuck in an old frame of mind that it will make obsolete!

I do wonder if Canon would keep the shutter as a sort of electronic sensor cover when lenses are changed or power is turned off, I love that feature on my R5. Maybe they could easily design a sensor cover that's one big piece to seal the sensor without worrying about shutter blades breaking.

Yeah, they could replace the shutter with a much beefier retractable cover and/or some kind of built in ND filter. You'll still have some moving parts in the camera though either way as I don't think IBIS is going away.
 
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H. Jones

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Yeah, they could replace the shutter with a much beefier retractable cover and/or some kind of built in ND filter. You'll still have some moving parts in the camera though either way as I don't think IBIS is going away.
Great point on the ND filters, they could totally replace the shutter mechanism in the R1 with ND filters, especially considering the extra space that the 1D series bodies give you. A quick look at the C70 shows that it's totally possible for them to include ND filters in the R1. Plus, the R1 pricepoint would give room to let that happen, since even $3000 cinema bodies like the C100 have NDs, the R1 is definitely up market enough to get them.

The ND filters could go over the shutter when powered off, to protect the sensor from dust. It would be easy to clean, too, since the ND filters are just glass.
 
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H. Jones

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Aug 1, 2014
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Nobody in Hollywood shoots a 30 minute take. Gravity had a long take and that was 17 minutes.

The kind of people that might do 45 minutes are amateurs, Youtubers, wedding photographers (maybe.)

I have plenty of examples of shooting two-hour takes when shooting multiple studio interviews on two C200s at work. Doing interviews in one take ensures we get everything, and audio sync is far easier between the two cameras with one long take versus multiple smaller ones.

Documentary work is another example of this. I've filmed on set of multiple feature length documentaries where we let the cameras roll non-stop for multiple hours at a time, limited only by the multi-hour battery life of the BP-A60 on the C200. There's a lot of scenarios for cinema vérité where things quite literally only happen once, where 30 minutes just doesn't cut it.

The end of the day, this is definitely something that makes cinema cameras far more conducive to my work than fumbling with cameras with far shorter battery life and far shorter record times. The end result may not be a 17 minute take, but I've been in countless situations where if we stop rolling we will miss the shot.
 
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Longest take in that film is about 15 mins, most were 10.

Anyway, seems like a great true flagship camera. Impressive package and happy that the bar is raised.

I’m quite sure the R1 will be a good rival when that comes out. Could have less mpix, which should not be that big of an issue for the target market, but integrated grip, quad pixel af and global shutter should make for a compelling proposition. For me personally these type of camera’s are above my needs, happy to rock a few R5’s the next few years and at some point might pick up a second hand R1. Mostly looking forward to the new long tele lenses that could be released alongside an R1
 
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KT

Feb 2, 2012
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Honestly not impressed. I expected to be. But this is more or less a somewhat upgraded A9. A9 with higher resolution and faster sensor (to allow 1/200s flash sync) and 8k that's not on the level of the R5. And the price... I mean, it's a great camera, it's just not that impressive given what the A9 and R5 already achieved. Seems like a pretty easy target for the R1 to hit?

Also, I don't understand why they did not make this the A9mkIII and instead decided to mess their naming conventions up. Why do it now, after so many years of 5-, 7- and 9-series in both A and E mount? especially since it's designed and priced as an A9mkII successor. It's like they just looked at Canon and said "let's be more like Canon. On the surface."
The name change was necessary in order to be mentioned in the same sentence with the upcoming Canon R1, A9 III just wouldn't have cut it.
 
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