New A900 noise?

[bossel]

Well, honestly, I have been looking at high ISO pics all yesterday evening before/after installing V4, so I am used to seeing green and pink dots now

Today I see the A900 pics and say, wow, that's really good for a 24mpix camera (before I read any other comments)! I approached this with a positive attitude.

Now since IR put up their comment that basically you can just shoot post cards with everything ISO 400 and above, people start complaining about an absolutely unacceptable performance.

I am not a professional reviewer but is it that bad? We haven't even seen raw-conversions and the different levels of NR as selectable in the camera.

[Greg Beetham]

There's some stunning shots at dpr bridge, building, castle etc. that look like medium format too me, their that good, but their using the ZA 135 f1.8 so that could be part of it.

Looks like David can ditch the ? mark out of the 100-700-? forum now, and put in the A900... now it's name is set in stone, so too speak.

6048x4032 WOW! .....AF micro adjust...user replacable focus screens...100% VF with eyepiece shutter...hmmm ...$3000US, that might slow things up a bit.
Greg

[Greg Beetham]

The I R link? I wouldn't be too tempted to use the camera (A900) above ISO800 myself, I wonder if it's any better if the resolution is dropped as the ISO rises?
Greg

[Jonathan K]

Hi bossel,

David has commented shortly (comments to his article "The Alpha 900 arrives" and states that there will be a firmware upgrade for the A900. It would be nice to hear from David whether this was stated publicly or not...

I actually believed so, since the samples we saw on the different sites are A700 v.3-ish, with blotches and all.
After having performed the upgrade to v4 I just don't recognize my camera. It is a different world (and it was good before). So I am sure we will see a similar upgrade for the Alpha 900 and then...

What's more:
have a look at this:

http://www.lamiso.com/download/AA900hMU ... onvert.jpg

I suppose it is not really representative, since the Raw converter used messed up colours badly and no other Raw converters are available so far, but as far as I can judge, it looks promising.

You know what the worst thing is? Having an A700 with v.4 and not being able to use it Have to go work now.

Cheers

Jonathan

[destrian]

people... i love what i'm seeing so far from the A900. I do lots of studio work now and i'm shooting fashion imagery outdoors where I will rarely have to go to ISO 800 (mostly up to ISO 200). I appreciate the sony noise look for MOST purposes. I'm sure that one firmware upgrade will knock down noise a lot for ISO 400-800. ISO 1600 will be the magic spot however. Since no production camera is in anyones hands as of yet to test it in some real low light like what was done with the D3's famous ISO 1250 racer bike shot theres no real reviews of its noise performance yet. However I can truely say that the noise is better overall than the A700 so far to me. I'm getting one in february. If I dont, then I'll get another A700 and an ultra wideangle lens. I just wonder if any magazine will reject my images from a 12megapixel (images that will surely be cropped to a lower MP size mind you) dslr.

[bossel]

Don, can't see the pics in your previous post.

Or in your own language: If you don't know how to post a pic get the hell out of here and don't waste my time

[David Kilpatrick]

Sorry, the limit was supposed to be three attachments (uploads you can add to your post for hosting on photoclubalpha) but I had set links to 3 as well as attachments to 3, and increased the maximum file size to 1000 x 1000, thinking this wuld tidy up the forums and prevent massive multiple large pic posts which can slow down loading and reading. I have removed the limit on links (entirely), but left the attachment limit as 3 pictures per post. This is to limit the amount of storage needed, although we have a huge space allocation I'm thinking ahead. I am a bit wary of allowing unlimited links to a maximum image size of 1000 pixels either way as it can create some huge posts.

All I can ask is that if you post many external link images, reduce them to a sensible size for reading on laptops, like 480 or 600 pixels wide (I use 600 pixels for the main site, and when a vertical picture arrives, I normally use 400 wide to avoid verticals being oversized relative to horizontals). Single pictures for careful examination, panoramas, etc - OK to use the full 1000 pixels.

I would prefer it if posts can be kept compact, and quoted posts should try not to re-quote picture links and repeat the images. On dPreview, the situation with multiple pictures in posts got so bad that people often post a warning post first, then put their pictures in the second post. At least here you get to see the whole picture with most links.

If posting from pBase, use Medium or Large - http://www.pbase.com/fredbloggs/10000200/large.jpg - not /100000200.jpg - dPreview can use that, we can't, you will get a message saying the size of the image can not be determined - you must enter an actual size in the format shown.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

Don, the links are not working - I just tried changing your last to IMG instead, and that does not work either. The links just bring up a text line. imaging-resource must be preventing direct linking to the images, so they can not appear on other sites, and you can't view them on their own. You may have to post the page URL for the pix.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

I didn't shoot anything over 800 - partly because we were told clearly enough that the performance would not be correct. Even at 800, the JPEGs show the same sort of processing which applies to the A700 with NR, and I know that does not mean anything - until I can see the raw files properly, with a converter not copying the in-camera JPEG method (like IDC may do), I'm not drawing any conclusions.

First: the twin BIONZ is identical to the A700. Second: the on-chip process is identica, and the 24 megapixel sensor shares the architecture of the IMX021 according to Sony. Third: the pixels are physically larger.

They insist that in the final release, the noise at high ISOs will be better than the A700. It's clear to me that the firmware in the A900 I tried is not the same as V4 in the A700. Therefore, I suspect that v4 for the A700 is effectively later than the firmware in the pre-production A900s. They may even be trying it out on the A700 first.

I think all this discussion is meaningless since no-one has had a final version A900. I assume the body given to Duncan McEwan was the best they could possibly find and had the latest upgrades. I have seen his pictures and he is sending me both JPEGs and raw conversions on DVD soon. He had to leave to run a photo imaging workshop at Inversnaid and said he might not get the files to me before next week, but they are the shots shown off by Sony, and whether or not any other magazine or website has requested them, we get them. When I have a chance to examine Duncan's meticulous shooting first hand (not on a projection screen) I'll know a bit more. But it looks as if the bottom line is sometime in October, final production cameras hit the market, people start using them on real subjects hopefully with a choice of raw converters, and the image quality including real world noise levels will be seen.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

Duncan was shooting FOR Sony - I'm sure he got the pick of the crop. The review sites probably pestered Sony offices for an advance sample and got allowed to try whatever they had, on the condition they did not post high ISO etc noise samples.

They then went and did exactly that. Of course!

The Bionz is identical by the way - only a single Bionz is used at a time. The process pipeline is duplicated, and the CPU picks whichever 'side' has got furthest to queue the next image to. We were told there is no difference at all in the processing. You'll see this when Shirley eventually unravels the workshop session where the technical staff answered questions.

David

[Octupi]

I actually believe DK is correct in that the firmware was not set on the pre-production models that most received. It takes quite a bit of time to develop these firmware upgrades and test on the various country models and confirm they are correct. The disc of images that DK is waiting on most likely has the last phase of the firmware in place, just prior to release of the firmware.

The firmware we have for the a700 (v4) is what the production firmware for the a900 will be. This I believe to be true and am not shaking my head. So much judging is going on here and at Dyxum about the quality of the images, yet we have not seen any images from a RAW converter that supports a900 RAW yet. I know it is human nature and self control is not...but I think we all need to expand our horizons and practice a little.

Two things could happen.

1. Production models of the a900 show up and yield the results we expect and we say, told you they would be better.

2. Production models of the a900 show up and those that flamed the original images find the nearest hole to crawl in because they cried of unspilt mile.

In time, in time...we will have the actual results. Until then all we are doing is beating a dead horse.

[PhotoTraveler]

Ok, can we calm down on the mass of links.

So far, I'm impressed with the output. I went through the DPR JPEGs and thought they looked pretty good. The A900 is not a D3, don't know why people try to compare it. Further, it's not a camera for sport shooting, it's clearly a camera where the core users will put it on the lowest ISO all the time anyways.

For pre-production, non super tuned camera, it looks good to me, oh yeah and it's a 24MP FF camera for 3K with SSS and a huge view finder. It is what it is, and that's pretty darn nice. It's not the first camera to have some rough outputs at this point.

The big potential I see is that while some things could be noisy, it's very fine noise. I think some of these shots could look great in B&W. Now if Sony were to ever go for broke on luring people in, make a A900M (mono), rip that bayer pattern off. This thing would be insane.

I don't mind some noise when going to black and white. I have purposefully shot my 7D at high ISO just to "noise it up" for the shot to make a nice B&W later.

Anyrate, we need to wait till early october for a new ACR to come out (adobe will launch one after the Photokina camera wave has happened). Then we can get some much more solid understanding of what we have here.

[marktuma]

Don,

I thought all we'd seen so far were previews, not reviews? Has anyone done an actual review with the final version, or is that not possible yet?

Mark

[Dr. Harout]

It cannot be the final because the tested cameras were pre-production models. So let us wait a while.
As I said previously have patience.

[Octupi]

LOL...fanboy I am not. But to each his own.

Personally, don't care if you've had 300 sony/minolta cameras. The fact is, as Dr. puts it, we need patience. No sense continuing an argument on assumptions, we will see when RAW processors have the code in place and the camera has released firmware.