Industry News: Sony Alpha a7S III coming July 28, 2020

No overheating, no pixel binning/line skipping, better S/N ratio from larger pixels etc. High resolution sensors are good for stills work, not so great for video work. The R5 is primarily a stills camera, the R6 a hybrid and the a7SIII will be primarily a video camera. So, depending on what exactly you plan to do with the camera, you would choose between the three on that basis.
That’s debata cause the 4k on r5 is going to be much better is using 4K high quality and if you’re using an external recorder, should be no heat issues or limitations of videos specs from the A7Siii, plus the added 8k raw when you need it
 
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What kind of stills camera would be this in 2020 if the resolution rumors are true (12MP)?
I guess will wait and see the final specs but to me it looks like a 100% video camera, not photo camera.

If the rumour about 16bit raw is true, it'll be very good in low light.
 
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Aussie shooter

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It actually looks ok. Thankfully it seems they have fully come to their senses and learned that ergonomics really do matter. Body is supposed to be similar to the A7r4 which while nowhere near as good as the Canon bodies was a massive improvement on the older bodies.
 
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Off topic: Have you seen the review of the R6 from DPreview? They have loved the R6 and they record the episode with the R5 handheld and the video colors and stability are amazing! About over heating he only experienced overheating with 4k60fps but after 29 minutes continuous shooting. In 4k 25fps not a single problem.
This just ads a bit more anxiety to me to get this babies!

 
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Just curious is there a limitation holding you back that the A7S3 addresses? It seems the Canon will have very good 4K in regular and oversampled modes. The overheating doesn't appear to show up as much with the regular 4K modes, and who knows until we have them in the real world.
Well yeah I'm excited about the R6 because it looks to me more like a video camera than the R5. But the fact that even the R6 overheats with relatively regular video specs concerns me when I'd use it by the time i'm filming something for a client. Or imagine having a wedding and you get important unexpected parts you have to record but suddenly you can't because your camera is overheated and has to cooldown.

really, the R6 offers me everything I'd LOVE to have, but if it overheats, then I really might pass on it. If sony offers the same things or even better things with the A7s, and it doesn't overheat, then yeah I might take the sony instead. Although I completely agree with you that canon has better ergonomics and stabalization.
 
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Supposedly it has a quad beyer sensor, so it is actually a 48MP sensor, but without that mode enabled apparently.

But earlier you said

better S/N ratio from larger pixels etc. High resolution sensors are good for stills work, not so great for video work.

So which is it?

I'm generally out of my technical depth when it comes to video, but if one sensor is "really" 48MP and combining groups of 4 pixels together to act as 12MP, and another is 45MP, ad both are producing 4K video (say), how is there a noise advantage to one over the other? They're producing video of the same resolution from virtually the same starting point, aren't they?
 
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But earlier you said



So which is it?

I'm generally out of my technical depth when it comes to video, but if one sensor is "really" 48MP and combining groups of 4 pixels together to act as 12MP, and another is 45MP, ad both are producing 4K video (say), how is there a noise advantage to one over the other? They're producing video of the same resolution from virtually the same starting point, aren't they?


Not sure about noise but a traditional 45MP sensor should produce better results than a quad-bayer 48MP where 4 adjacent pixels have the same color.
 
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DBounce

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Well yeah I'm excited about the R6 because it looks to me more like a video camera than the R5. But the fact that even the R6 overheats with relatively regular video specs concerns me when I'd use it by the time i'm filming something for a client. Or imagine having a wedding and you get important unexpected parts you have to record but suddenly you can't because your camera is overheated and has to cooldown.

really, the R6 offers me everything I'd LOVE to have, but if it overheats, then I really might pass on it. If sony offers the same things or even better things with the A7s, and it doesn't overheat, then yeah I might take the sony instead. Although I completely agree with you that canon has better ergonomics and stabalization.

There is no, “Suddenly you can’t record” conditions on the R5. It restricts the modes that you can record in... that’s all. You can still record 4k@24p, pixel binned like a Sony A7RIV... But you do so in 10 Bit 422. And guess what? You can still take pictures.
As for IBIS on the A7S3... if you’re going by rumors, there is no IBIS listed for the A7S3. Unless we’re just adding our own specs now?
 
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Oh yeah for sure, I will say even if we were shooting everything in 8K, almost all of our video clips are about 10-30 seconds long at a time. Saves us a lot of editing time on deadline getting exactly the clips we need in camera, versus what we've done when I've worked on documentaries where the cameras are always rolling.

Even during interviews, most of the time I shoot a question and an answer at a time, recording each question in separate clips to keep myself more organized than having to cut a single 20 minute clip into 20 different questions. Normally a question might take 2-3 minutes at most for someone to answer, a little longer if there's some back and forth or follow up question in the middle of that.

When I do interviews, I like to let the flow happen, and keep a couple different angles running through the whole thing (maybe 90 minutes), rather than have people stop and start. I think this is important to the sort of content I do at times. But using some lower bitrate/lower processing format is fine for this. These sorts of talking head bits aren't very well served with massive resolution.

The genre where it's slightly more problematic is performances. The long-play 4k stuff is useful, especially when you have challenging lighting situations. Later downsampling helps a lot for me. I also will often employ one or two remote cameras during performances, and there's no one to ride the record button, as it would involve interrupting the show. For this reason, the 30 minute limit is also a significant downside. I think I'll need to adapt on that one with a set of remote trigger, which isn't the biggest deal, but I'm absolutely positive I'll screw that up multiple times.

None of this concerns me too too much, as I do 99 percent stills.
 
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IMO Canon can take some lessons from Sony in menu design. Canon menus are terrible and awkward to use, while Sony menus are second nature.

I could be wrong, but I'm assuming the above is sarcastic. No offense if it was not meant to be. To each their own. I figured I'd comment on some recent experiences...

I've had an abject lesson in menu system design over the past 18 months. I've been primarily using three different systems serially due to various circumstances. I came originally from Canon, so I had most familiarity (bias?) with that. The short version:
- Panasonic was slightly better than Canon. This was with the S1r, their more modern take on it. Took me 2 days to be as proficient with menus as with Canon. 3rd day, it was easier.
- Sony was disastrous. Spent more than a year with it and am still shooting it some. Periodic "treasure hunts" to not only find where a feature is hidden, but then also sometimes a debugging to figure out which feature needs to be set differently to allow another feature to do what you need. Panasonic was best at addressing this, as they'd have a pop-up tell you exactly why you couldn't do x with y feature at the moment, until you changed that other setting. It was the most disciplined. The Sony "My menu" feature helps for 70 percent of things, but the other 30 percent are maddening. It was a testament to Sony's superiority for my purposes (high res and tracking) that its menus were tolerated.
- Canon is quite reliably organized and deliberately simplified. It's hard to tell that this has been done unless you've done interface work yourself. It is a simpler menu system, but could use another layer of tabs once the screen resolution allows it.

I attribute Panasonic's superiority to the fact that they adapted the higher pixel EVFs and screens first, and when they developed that S1R menu system, they added a layer of tabs, so you have two meta layers of organization, versus one. They had the screen space, and the other manufacturers, like Canon, did not. Also, their helpful notes for each feature that is grayed out reduces much frustration.

Sony still hasn't hired someone with decision-making power to design menus around user functionality versus an organization of technical capacity. Here's the hint when you buy a new product: If the manual reads as an organized list of functions you see in the menus, the system was likely designed and documented by someone hired by the engineers to adequately describe the features. If the manual is organized by user objective, showing the little processes needed to accomplish the most important objectives a user might have, then that is lightly designed and documented by people hired for the purpose.

I'm back in the Canon R camp now, and the menus are one of the advantages.
 
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Sibir Lupus

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SAR is also reporting 240fps in 1080, the R5 can only do 60 fps

1080p at 60 FPS on the R5 looks to be a software limited feature, and not hardware. The camera hardware can do 4K at 120 FPS, and 4K (at 30 FPS for example) is 4 times the pixels/data then 1080p at 30 FPS. So theoretically, the R5's hardware should be able to handle 1080p at 480 FPS, but that will be at a pretty limited recording time due to heat buildup. Probably similar to the 4K at 120 FPS recording time on the R5. This is all in theory of course, and could only really be proven by unlocking 1080p at 480 FPS with something like Magic Lantern and running it through tests.
 
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What kind of stills camera would be this in 2020 if the resolution rumors are true (12MP)?
I guess will wait and see the final specs but to me it looks like a 100% video camera, not photo camera.

when canon announced 20MP camera on 2020, to Sony fan, it’s outdated hardware.

when Sony announces 12MP camera on 2020, Sony fans will tell you this is best video camera and King of the low light for stills.

sick....
 
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when canon announced 20MP camera on 2020, to Sony fan, it’s outdated hardware.

when Sony announces 12MP camera on 2020, Sony fans will tell you this is best video camera and King of the low light for stills.

sick....

I recon 12MP would be a show stopper for stills guys, barring a few *working/agency* news photographers. Unless there's some truly cutting edge tech within its going to become videography centric, rather than proper hybrid Camera for still photographers. You may find a lot of former Canon shooters coming back to the fold, if the 12MP rumor is correct and its merely a warmed over 12MP sensor, but they will pick up a lot a videographers.

Personally, I'd buy the A7Slll *in a heartbeat* if it came in with a 36(ish) MP sensor, why not just downsample it to 4K and keep the photogs happy too?

For stills I thought Sony's original 36MP sensor was right on the mark, great for cropping, but not too large for fast post work, unlike their new 61MP sensor.
 
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Keith_Reeder

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So which is it?

I'm generally out of my technical depth when it comes to video, but if one sensor is "really" 48MP and combining groups of 4 pixels together to act as 12MP, and another is 45MP, ad both are producing 4K video (say), how is there a noise advantage to one over the other? They're producing video of the same resolution from virtually the same starting point, aren't they?
Yep. this is why I'm asking - simply quoting some spec differences doesn't tell anyone why one is better than another, or why.
 
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Yep. this is why I'm asking - simply quoting some spec differences doesn't tell anyone why one is better than another, or why.

Processing anything from my archive, going back to the 5D2, all the way though to the 61MP Sony A7RlV, there really is little in it with standard subject matter. Never once have I thought, "crap, I wish this 5Dll file was an A7RlV file." If its a good portrait and the eyes are sharp etc, I'm more than happy with either.

The biggest advantage Sony have had over the 5D2 DSLR was the EyeAF, that made my job way easier. Now the Canon R5's have comparable EyeAF, it's a pretty level playing field.

Getting back to your 48MP *quality* question. It won't amount to a hill of beans IMO. As long as it's in the general ballpark quality wise of the 5D2, I'd buy it and not worry about it. I recently had a loaner of the A7RlV & 135/1.8GM from Sony Pro Services. That combination is phenomenal if you like viewing LARGE DETAILED files, the lens is basically flawless, the camera resolves to the nth degree, but being honest, the IBIS still rattled, the LCD didn't flip, and it still felt like an industrial tool, not an artistic tool, if you know what I mean.

If the A7Slll gives me a flippy screen, an IBIS that parks like Nikon's Z and offers an innovative (read upgraded) user experience I'll buy it, even if the resolution takes a slight ding over the A7Rlll I currently shoot. As I said previously, the 36MP A7R was great, the 5D2 I used alongside it was perfectly adequate.

FUJI get this concept. If you're interested in objective criticism, ask me how FUJI have gotten a few things *SPOT IN.*
 
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IMO Canon can take some lessons from Sony in menu design. Canon menus are terrible and awkward to use, while Sony menus are second nature.
Sony is acknowledged to have about the worst menus out there. Additionally, unlike Canon, every Sony camera line gas a completely different menu system. It’s as though they have different UI teams for every camera line, and even every camera, and they never get together.
 
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