Sony's New a7RII Camera Delivers World's First Back-Illuminated FF Sensor

[LetTheRightLensIn]

By then Sony will be moving the next improvements through to the consumer while Canon continues to struggle to catch up to the previous generation of technology.

All those people who love to take pictures with bare silicon sensors will be thrilled...just thrilled.

Well it's easier to take a photo with a piece of silicon than with a sales number....

 

[privatebydesign]

If the A7rII autofocus is good enough then you might expect Canon to go on full assault on Internet forums to keep people loyal to the brand.

Forgive me, I don't have a deep seeded history in internet forums, but is there precedent upon which to expect that Canon would start officially posting? Seems unlikely.

Of course they wouldn't post officially! Nor would I expect it to be blatant.

They'd just have more people on forums like this talking up doubts about Sony, saying that Sony AF w/ metabones adapter isn't as good, talking about how the new rumored 5d4 will be really cool and they will wait for that, etc.

Hey Dilbert, don't forget your tinfoil hat ;D

I understand where you're coming from here but I wouldn't confine it to this website.

Social media advertising and engagement is now a serious item for companies to consider in how they launch and advertise products.

Then you've got the recently revealed "house" of Internet trolls in Russia:
http://www.rferl.org/content/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0


If you were a huge corporation like Sony or Canon, wouldn't you also want to use social media and Internet forums to control how your new product(s) were seen and perceived?

Social media, yes, blowhard forums like this where any valuable advice is drowned in tidal waves of irrelevant tantrums and bickering by unimaginative, anonymous, misguided, over opinionated and under experienced wannabe experts, no.

Just watch the webinar from B&H on the 5DS/R release with a true master, Gregory Heisler, to understand how much DR, or the lack of it, is an issue to actual master photographers and it makes almost any participation here as pointless as King Canute commanding the tide to stop, actually Canute made a very good point, maybe somebody did here once.

 

[sdsr]

At this point in the thread, the best thing to add may be this:

http://www.theonion.com/article/us-consumers-announce-plan-get-one-those-50681

 

[fragilesi]

Social media, yes, blowhard forums like this where any valuable advice is drowned in tidal waves of irrelevant tantrums and bickering by unimaginative, anonymous, misguided, over opinionated and under experienced wannabe experts, no.

Just watch the webinar from B&H on the 5DS/R release with a true master, Gregory Heisler, to understand how much DR, or the lack of it, is an issue to actual master photographers and it makes almost any participation here as pointless as King Canute commanding the tide to stop, actually Canute made a very good point, maybe somebody did here once.

Hard to believe otherwise though at times. Lots of low post count people turning up whose sole interest seems to be bigging up Sony etc. In one case claiming to be cancelling a previously unmentioned 5ds order in favour of this model . . . there must be some kind of element of that going on.

 

[canonvoir]

I just purchased an a7ii and quite a few native lenses. I am really impressed with the image quality of the Sony. So much so, I have not used my 5Diii since making the purchase. It also helps I like to hike and the weight reduction was a nice bonus.

This sports season I will still be using my 1DX but I will carry a Sony with a 55mm as well to see how it does for end zone and after game photos.

I will be picking up the a7rii and may even sell off my 5Diii. I hate to say it, but I believe I have purchased my last Canon body. Image quality is too impressive for me to look over. The biggest drawback is battery life. If they could double the battery life (not a big deal until you decide to do a really long time lapse and admittedly a battery grip for time lapse would solve this), it would be a no brainier for all of those minus sports pros.

This is a reasonable personal statement. Thank you for not crossing the Swedish Line to imply that those who have not reached the same conclusion are ______.

Question: are you seeing any drawbacks with the mirrorless design? Focus speed/accuracy? Since you have a 1DX I presume you'll use the Sony mostly for slow-/non-moving subjects, right?

Sorry you feel I crossed some line. I was simply stating my experience.

At the moment, I am photographing anything but sports. I have been testing the a6000 out at softball games and I am not sure why Sony claims the worlds fastest AF because it is not. The low light ISO performance on the a6000 is on par with the 7D. AF in low light is not that good at all.

As far as the a7ii goes. I have been photographing slower subjects but that is what I do anytime I am not on a field or court. I feel that that a7ii is good enough to use in an end zone but I understand that I am going to have a lot of throw a lot away due to AF. I believe the a7rii will solve this problem. I'll post back this season and let you know.

I really have not run into anything I would call a drawback. I call them compromises since nothing is perfect. Compared to my 1DX and 5Diii AF is good on the Sony but it is not in the 1DX class. In fact, let's just not compare the 1DX and Sony because the 1DX is the worlds best sports camera.

Compared to the 5Diii in good light, I would consider the AF "ok" to the 5Diii. The AF acquires great but it is not going to keep up when a player is running right at me full speed during a 5 fps burst. Also, 5 fps is a compromise. I could nitpick the Sony with how you update the firmware, no custom menu, you have to carry at least one extra battery if you are going to use this camera all day and take 400 shots. I am seeing 400 shots or so per battery.

I find the Sony lenses to be of better quality minus the 70-200 f/4 which is an under performer IMHO (exclude the newer update Canon glass which I have not had a chance to use, i.e. 16-35 f/4 and 24-70ii 2.8). I find the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 to be a FANTASTIC lens. Much better than my 16-35 f/2.8.

I have no faith in the weather resistance of the Sony camera. Build quality is good and after using the Sony for a month, the 5Diii feels like a boulder in my hands. The EVF could use some improvement (though I am not complaining and have come to enjoy it) and the a7rii looks to improve the EVF. Really, there are very few compromises with the a7ii. I expected to be sorely disappointed since I also own the Canon EOS M and have met disappoint with mirrorless before.

When I shot my first long exposure I just about fainted. The quality of the image you get from the Sony is significantly better than the 5Diii. I do sell images that are printed beyond a 60" diagonal so I feel I can speak to this with a lot of confidence. Image quality at low ISO's, 800 and below, are leaps and bounds ahead of my 5Diii.

I will have the a7rii with the 55mm 1.8 around my neck this football season for end zone work when my 300 2.8 becomes useless. I am optimistic I will see some success with this setup. End zones tend to be a bit slower than normal play. I only carry my 5Diii as a second body to College/Pro sports because of weight and lets face it, it is high school sports. The light weight a7 series is going to enable me to have a tag along.

 

[LOALTD]

I think I'm logging out and clearing caches and stuff, something's acting funny on my browser. ???

If you have a Sony computer, it could be a hardware problem. Hope you can fix it yourself.

If you have a Canon computer it is probably still using one of the original Pentiums

Hey, now, I'm a working professional and I use a 486 for all my coding. Real coders talk about coding, not the machine they code on. Only rank amateurs would care about having a Mac Pro. Real coders can code with any machine! ;D

 

[Sporgon]

When I was discussing the Exmor 'IQ' compared with the Canon a few pages back I showed the two raw sections from the centre of the picture and later the whole pano as a reference, but made up from OOC jpegs. ( I shoot raw + v small jpeg to do 'quick stitched' on location).

This picture has pretty extreme EV range from direct sunlight off water to deep shadow within shadow in the bottom of the gorge. It was shot at mid day.

I've been enjoying using the exmor, but this picture really sums up my issues with its so called '14 stops of DR'.

Neither camera could cope with the direct specular highlights off the water. If I tried to under expose enough to hold most of them on the exmor the shadow data was lost anyway.

This is shot on the 6D with 40mm pancake, 100 ISO, f11 @ 1/15. I've used one two stop lower bracket to patch the highlights; I'd have had to do this with the exmor too. The shadow in the foreground has been lifted about 0.5 to 1 stop and the 6D has eaten this up, resulting in perfect data.

In this situation the Canon produced the better data, IMO. True I am not that experienced in the exmor, but I am persevering with it. Also with the camera I am using the raw data is being cooked, probably more so than with the D800 I tried. Do you like those blacks in the exmor ? That's over processing that we as the user are not being given control of. To me it looks unnatural.

 

[raptor3x]

You CAN preserve the highlights, and still have better shadow tonality, than with a Canon camera. I mean, we are talking about total tonality of around 2100-2400 tones on a Canon, and anywhere from 7300 to 8100 tones or more on Exmor-based cameras. The entire tonal range of a Canon camera can fit within the shadow quarter of the signal on an Exmor...I mean, think about it: 8000/2000...if you consider the bottom quarter of the signal to be "the shadows", you could fit an entire Canon exposure in the shadows of an Exmor, and have the same tonality. Earlier highlight clipping? Saturation falloff? That's a total misnomer. You have GOBS more tonality in an Exmor signal than a Canon has in it's entirety, and you have as much tonality just in the shadows as a Canon has in it's entirety. There is no such thing as early highlight clipping or blue saturation falloff with an Exmor...

That sounds so impressive.

You'll be able to see that 8000 / 2000 difference here then.

Just to reiterate, because you may not have caught it, jrista was confusing dynamic range with tonal range. You can't just take 2^(# stop DR) and say that's the number of tones the camera can represent. Dynamic range represents the ratio between the lowest and highest tone that can be represented, but the actual number of tones that can be represented within that range is dependent on the quantization of the signal into discrete levels, which is in turn dependent on the standard deviation of the signal as a function of intensity. Just as an example, no current 35mm camera is anywhere close to being able to represent 8000 levels of grey in a single shot. The D810 would be closest with up to 910 tonal levels at ISO 64. To compare that with the 1DX, the 1DX has up to 648 tonal level at ISO 100 (the D810 has 792 at ISO 100). Comparing the 1DX and A7S at ISO 12800, the 1DX has a potential of 77 tones while the A7S has up to 84 tones; certainly an improvement but not the revolution jrista implies (at least not in terms of tonality). The real strength of the A7S is how amazingly well it preserves color and detail at high ISO, much better than the 1DX once you get above ISO 25600.

Could you please clarify your calculations on numbers of possible tones values?
This does not seem correct to me.
Here some basic math from theory of signal detection:
In general possible number of detected tones has limit of number of quantization levels if signal noise is going to zero.
Each quantizatin level is a decision slot for assigning digital value to the received analog signal at the input of ADC. For 14 bits ADC there are 16384 possible representatin of input analog signal. In theoretically ideal situation (with zero input analog signal noise) there are 16384 possible tonal values that could be assigned to received input analog signal.
Now when we come to real systems with noise (regardless of the noise origin) we have fundamental thing which is called SNR which affects precision of the signal detection - in our case to which tonal slot signal will be assigned. More signal noise more probability that signal will be assigned wrong digital value. Roughly if 99% of the signal energy is within particular decision slot ( in the center of it) then there is possibility that there is 99 percent probability that signal will be assigned correct value and 1% that that will be assigned value from adjucent decision slot. For image sensor this will result in 1% variations in image tonality signal with given noise level and noise distribution pattern. If signal value is on boundary of decision slot with the same conditions as above than there will be 50/50 distribution for output value assignements. This is actually why possible tonal values are less than ADC quantization levels.
This is actual limitation of one dimention signal detector when only signal amplitude modulated with noise is taken into account.
So overall all depends on number of signal detector decision slots and intensity and distribution pattern of the signal noise and actual signal level at the input.
If majority of signal noise power spectrum width becomes wider than width of the decision slot than this is where we would see that number of the possible correct tonal numbers would be reduced.
Also errors in signal values assignmets would be more frequent for lower level signals - this is just signal detector SNR function for two input noise varàibles - read noise and photon noise in our case.
I do not think we need to go more deep into that. These are just basics.

So according to all said above Jrista calculations seem correct to me.
If you can actually prove that this is different and Jrista is not correct somewhere I àm really interested to see that.

Sorry for the delay, I was away all week. You're both missing that the width of the quantization for non-overlapping levels is limited by the STD of the signal as a function of signal level. You have to actually perform the integration, or more realistically the summation, over the entire signal range to get the number of tonal ranges. You don't need to take my word for it though, DxO does the exact same thing; that's actually where I took the numbers from.

 

[raptor3x]

...
I find the Sony lenses to be of better quality minus the 70-200 f/4 which is an under performer IMHO (exclude the newer update Canon glass which I have not had a chance to use, i.e. 16-35 f/4 and 24-70ii 2.8). I find the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 to be a FANTASTIC lens. Much better than my 16-35 f/2.8.
...

I would love to see someone like lensrentals test the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 out on the same A7RII body as a Canon's 16-35/f4 with Metabones.

That would be real interesting.

It would but that lens is incredibly sensitive to adapter tolerances so I doubt Roger would ever do it.

 

[raptor3x]

I found a formula last night while sitting out in the middle of nowhere imaging Lagoon and Trifid nebulas (yeah, after you get set up, it gets pretty boring.. At least my dark site has 4G access on my smartphone! ) that can be used to approximate the loss in bit depth in an actual signal, assuming you used the entire dynamic range:

TRbits = DRev - log(2 * (SQRT(RN^2 +fwc) - RN))

I seriously question this formula as it's not at all informed by the STD of the signal as a function of signal level. I'm not sure where you got it from but there has to be some assumption built in about how the STD varies and I think you'll find it's overly optimistic. The numbers I quoted are from DxO, which come from integrating over the entire signal to get the number of tones.

Also, in your example I wouldn't dispute at all that an image from a Sony sensor will have a much larger number of tones in the shadows than a Canon image; I agree with you 100% on that. But there really aren't that many tones available in the shadows to begin with and you won't see the same behavior in the midtones or highlights.

EDIT: Btw, the units of your equation aren't consistent, something's not right there.

 

[krisbell]

When I was discussing the Exmor 'IQ' compared with the Canon a few pages back I showed the two raw sections from the centre of the picture and later the whole pano as a reference, but made up from OOC jpegs. ( I shoot raw + v small jpeg to do 'quick stitched' on location).

This picture has pretty extreme EV range from direct sunlight off water to deep shadow within shadow in the bottom of the gorge. It was shot at mid day.

In this situation the Canon produced the better data, IMO. True I am not that experienced in the exmor, but I am persevering with it. Also with the camera I am using the raw data is being cooked, probably more so than with the D800 I tried. Do you like those blacks in the exmor ? That's over processing that we as the user are not being given control of. To me it looks unnatural.

Sporgon - you clearly know exactly what you are doing, which is why your take on the Exmor surprises me, as it is so different from my own. In your Fairy Glen example do you have an image shot at ISO100 from the Sony where you have exposed to preserve the highlights?

 

[Sporgon]

When I was discussing the Exmor 'IQ' compared with the Canon a few pages back I showed the two raw sections from the centre of the picture and later the whole pano as a reference, but made up from OOC jpegs. ( I shoot raw + v small jpeg to do 'quick stitched' on location).

This picture has pretty extreme EV range from direct sunlight off water to deep shadow within shadow in the bottom of the gorge. It was shot at mid day.

In this situation the Canon produced the better data, IMO. True I am not that experienced in the exmor, but I am persevering with it. Also with the camera I am using the raw data is being cooked, probably more so than with the D800 I tried. Do you like those blacks in the exmor ? That's over processing that we as the user are not being given control of. To me it looks unnatural.

Sporgon - you clearly know exactly what you are doing, which is why your take on the Exmor surprises me, as it is so different from my own. In your Fairy Glen example do you have an image shot at ISO100 from the Sony where you have exposed to preserve the highlights?

Unfortunately I don't because I deleted as I went along due to having just one small SD card for the camera. ( I end up shooting a massive amount of frames with not only the stitching but bracketing to. (One of the reasons the thought of a 5Ds makes me go pale). I only got it just before I set off on this trip. However I was getting blinking low lights on three stops under. In the actual picture I used two stops under because I needed some of the most intense water highlights blown or it looked wrong. I see where you are coming from in that if I was two stops under from the exposure I used I'd have been able to lift the low lights on the Exmor, and yes, at that I would have still had usable data. The first image is a one stop under ( from what I ended up using) on the exmor, and then the second is a three stop lift of that in raw.



However I can see how people might prefer it, but in no way can you say that at low ISO the exmor data is better than the Canon - unless you lift deep shadow by three stops or more.

Great portfolio of pictures by the way.

 

[3kramd5]

...
I find the Sony lenses to be of better quality minus the 70-200 f/4 which is an under performer IMHO (exclude the newer update Canon glass which I have not had a chance to use, i.e. 16-35 f/4 and 24-70ii 2.8). I find the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 to be a FANTASTIC lens. Much better than my 16-35 f/2.8.
...

I would love to see someone like lensrentals test the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 out on the same A7RII body as a Canon's 16-35/f4 with Metabones.

That would be real interesting.

It would but that lens is incredibly sensitive to adapter tolerances so I doubt Roger would ever do it.
[/quote
Can you elaborate or do you have a link?

 

[raptor3x]

...
I find the Sony lenses to be of better quality minus the 70-200 f/4 which is an under performer IMHO (exclude the newer update Canon glass which I have not had a chance to use, i.e. 16-35 f/4 and 24-70ii 2.8). I find the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 to be a FANTASTIC lens. Much better than my 16-35 f/2.8.
...

I would love to see someone like lensrentals test the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 out on the same A7RII body as a Canon's 16-35/f4 with Metabones.

That would be real interesting.

It would but that lens is incredibly sensitive to adapter tolerances so I doubt Roger would ever do it.

Can you elaborate or do you have a link?

Unfortunately no link, this is based on my own experience with using the 16-35 f/4 IS on an A7R. I went through a bunch of adapters and kept finding that the while the lens was extremely sharp in the corners on the 5D3, it was much much softer in the corners on the A7R. In the end, the issue ended up being that the adapters I was using were a bit too short (I suspect to avoid infinity focusing issue while allowing sloppy manufacturing tolerances) and this was causing trouble with the floating element design of the 16-35. I was able to significantly improve the quality by shimming the lens mount with pieces of foil, but in the end I realized I was using the lens almost exclusively on the A7R so ended up just swapping it out for the Sony FE 16-35.

 

[privatebydesign]

...
I find the Sony lenses to be of better quality minus the 70-200 f/4 which is an under performer IMHO (exclude the newer update Canon glass which I have not had a chance to use, i.e. 16-35 f/4 and 24-70ii 2.8). I find the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 to be a FANTASTIC lens. Much better than my 16-35 f/2.8.
...

I would love to see someone like lensrentals test the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 out on the same A7RII body as a Canon's 16-35/f4 with Metabones.

That would be real interesting.

It would but that lens is incredibly sensitive to adapter tolerances so I doubt Roger would ever do it.

Can you elaborate or do you have a link?

Unfortunately no link, this is based on my own experience with using the 16-35 f/4 IS on an A7R. I went through a bunch of adapters and kept finding that the while the lens was extremely sharp in the corners on the 5D3, it was much much softer in the corners on the A7R. In the end, the issue ended up being that the adapters I was using were a bit too short (I suspect to avoid infinity focusing issue while allowing sloppy manufacturing tolerances) and this was causing trouble with the floating element design of the 16-35. I was able to significantly improve the quality by shimming the lens mount with pieces of foil, but in the end I realized I was using the lens almost exclusively on the A7R so ended up just swapping it out for the Sony FE 16-35.

Roger at Lens Rentals has tested the use of glassless adapters, and his conclusions were exactly what yours were. For lenses that are being used on the same sized sensor as the conversion, ie FF-FF, the center didn't do too badly but the corners lost lots of resolution.

Basically the squareness of the lens mount is so critical nowadays that the 'simple' engineering used for adapters just isn't up to the task.

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/09/there-is-no-free-lunch-episode-763-lens-adapters

 

[3kramd5]

...
I find the Sony lenses to be of better quality minus the 70-200 f/4 which is an under performer IMHO (exclude the newer update Canon glass which I have not had a chance to use, i.e. 16-35 f/4 and 24-70ii 2.8). I find the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 to be a FANTASTIC lens. Much better than my 16-35 f/2.8.
...

I would love to see someone like lensrentals test the Sony FE 16-35 f/4 out on the same A7RII body as a Canon's 16-35/f4 with Metabones.

That would be real interesting.

It would but that lens is incredibly sensitive to adapter tolerances so I doubt Roger would ever do it.

Can you elaborate or do you have a link?

Unfortunately no link, this is based on my own experience with using the 16-35 f/4 IS on an A7R. I went through a bunch of adapters and kept finding that the while the lens was extremely sharp in the corners on the 5D3, it was much much softer in the corners on the A7R. In the end, the issue ended up being that the adapters I was using were a bit too short (I suspect to avoid infinity focusing issue while allowing sloppy manufacturing tolerances) and this was causing trouble with the floating element design of the 16-35. I was able to significantly improve the quality by shimming the lens mount with pieces of foil, but in the end I realized I was using the lens almost exclusively on the A7R so ended up just swapping it out for the Sony FE 16-35.

Thanks for your thoughts. I haven't noticed anything egregious with my a7r and 16-35/4L, but I haven't used them much. When the mkII gets here I'll have to pay more attention.

 

[raptor3x]

Thanks for your thoughts. I haven't noticed anything egregious with my a7r and 16-35/4L, but I haven't used them much. When the mkII gets here I'll have to pay more attention.

If don't know if you're using a Metabones adapter, but if so then you're probably less likely to run into issues. The Comm-Lite adapters I was playing with tended to be slightly shorter than necessary to get the right flange distance which isn't normally a problem but can apparently cause severe corner issues with certain types of floating element focusing groups. The only complaints I've heard about Metabones adapter have to do with slight tilt.

 

[3kramd5]

Thanks for your thoughts. I haven't noticed anything egregious with my a7r and 16-35/4L, but I haven't used them much. When the mkII gets here I'll have to pay more attention.

If don't know if you're using a Metabones adapter, but if so then you're probably less likely to run into issues. The Comm-Lite adapters I was playing with tended to be slightly shorter than necessary to get the right flange distance which isn't normally a problem but can apparently cause severe corner issues with certain types of floating element focusing groups. The only complaints I've heard about Metabones adapter have to do with slight tilt.

I use the mk4 metabones adapter.

 

[Aglet]

>However what I don't like is that the raw data is cooked: the whites are too white, the
>blacks too black. The blue was far to intense and is still inaccurate, the woman's jersey
>was a more powdery pastel blue, very different to the guy's blue coat that he has tied
>around his waist.

I'm not sure what body you've been shooting with (Sony?) but you could profile it for more accurate color response.
yes, those 2 blues are rendered quite similarly and not like how you've described.
There's good tonal info on the dog and the guy's vest tho flat overcast light like that means a low DR scene once again, except for the bright areas along horizon line where there may not have been much to keep. This looks like a totally Canon-able shot and the exmor would show little advantage other than a cleaner dog and black vest w-o color blotches or plaid FPN. A 6D, or even my old 60D, could have comfortably handled that scene.

>When you really force the issue and lift deep shadow where the Canon
>hasn't seen information, the exmor is actually adding to the information, and creating
>detail that isn't there. It is not 'honest' data like the Canon raw, it's giving unwanted
>interfering.

I'm really not sure what you're telling us here. Those of us familiar with with using exmor files aren't finding fake information, we just have an option to decide how much of the deep shadow reality we might want to render into the final result.

>However I can see how people might prefer it, but in no way can you say that at low ISO the
>exmor data is better than the Canon - unless you lift deep shadow by three stops or more.

You produce large prints so you realize that there's more tonal compression happening in the printing process to squeeze that electronic file DR into the smaller DR of printed media, there's not just the shadow lift you might do to create a certain on-screen look while editing. Having that clean info available down low means you can maintain more fidelity not only in the editing push but also in the final hardcopy output which applies some extra push too.
I'll always prefer having that optional range available and that's why I use ABC gear for challenging DR scenes where files may have to get tortured a bit in post to create what I want for final output. I'm not always a fan of crushed black used to cover up sensor shortcomings or to replicate a DR limitation some cameras are set to use as a default rendering. I want final output the way _I_ want it, not necessarily how an OEM tone-curve delivers it. Exmor/ABC provides that option for me better than anything else at the moment.

 

[neuroanatomist]

What Does It Mean in the Real World?

Like a lot of laboratory testing, probably not a lot. Adapters couldn't all stink or people wouldn't use them. Like a lot of tests, you can detect a very real difference in the lab that doesn't make much difference at all in the real world.

...a concept that applies to things other than adapters.