SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las Vegas

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pakodominguez
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by pakodominguez »

David Kilpatrick wrote:In order to achieve 4K they way they want to, they may need to restrict the sensor to 12MP.
My friend Sony guy explained to me last January that the main problem was to reduce the amount of date without loosing quality and avoiding moire, etc. because many technical restrictions (size of the body is one of them, price is other) so he told me that we won't see 4K on a A7(R) -but I guess 4K is hot at Sony headquarters, so they decided to develop this 12 MP Sensor that allow them to send all the data as is, avoiding binning.

This sensor seams to sport different tech than the ones fitting the A7(R) -just one more sign that manufacturers are improving sensors for video, but not much for stills...
David Kilpatrick wrote:I'm not really interested. There are too many lenses and accessories missing from the A7 system and the whole overall mess of different formats and cameras is leaving me a) with too many cameras to test or write about b) never knowing which way to go.
This is a camera for a) ppl that want affordable 4K on a big sensor and b)let me see.... probably ppl that want a killer camera on low light photography? nah; this camera is for video.
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pakodominguez
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by pakodominguez »

peterottaway wrote:It seems that every 2 - 3 years there is a new fad for the TV industry to try out. Some work out , others don't. 3D certainly didn't. I may be a bit of a mug punter for things shiny and new photographically, but I picked up a decent digital TV two years ago and a high end universal player about a year ago and that's it for me.
Every 4 years is the Fifa world cup (this year in Brazil) that coincidentally matches the high sales on TV sets all over the world...
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Dusty
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by Dusty »

Looking at the apparently noiseless results at ISO 12800, it looks like they may have developed the Holy Grail for sports shooters.

Of course, judging by the exposure - 1/3200 sec., F5.6, ISO 12800, - it would have been is very bright light, so not a realistic testing of sensor noise. Try it again where you have 1/8 of the light and you're doing 1/400 sec at the same F-stop and ISO. That's still a lot more light that inside your typical indoor venue.

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bfitzgerald
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

It's all part of Sony's grand master plan to have people pull stills from high res video footage.
Looking at the SAR posted video this is quite clear, that's their ambition.

I couldn't help but laugh when they said "you'll make a lot of money by being able to shoot video and pull stills from that later"
Considering how over-saturated the stills and video market is, that's a pretty silly statement to make.

Now I'm sure some shooters will embrace it, but I think it's a lazy man's way to results.
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by alphaomega »

An opinion from Barry Fitzgerald
I couldn't help but laugh when they said "you'll make a lot of money by being able to shoot video and pull stills from that later"
Considering how over-saturated the stills and video market is, that's a pretty silly statement to make.
Now I'm sure some shooters will embrace it, but I think it's a lazy man's way to results.
I don't have Barry's expertise in photography, but as an old military man I would love the fighter that is faster and can fire more accurate missiles from a longer distance than my adversary or a gun that can fire more bullets accurately & faster than my adversaries in close combat etc. I am a sports/events/other photographer and my customers/managers demand more photos both video and still at a faster rate to beat competition in all weather and lighting conditions. The A7s can do this better than any other camera and it is lighter, has higher ISO etc. I will have one or two regardless of cost. Sony might sell quite a few before competition catches up. What do I know as it is just a simple person's opinion???
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by Heidfirst »

Dusty wrote:Looking at the apparently noiseless results at ISO 12800, it looks like they may have developed the Holy Grail for sports shooters.
apart from AF ...
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

There are a few problems. The Sony take is limited because 4k whilst it's good..is nothing more than a stop gap, until 8k turns up (and that's not a joke it's out already)

8mp is obviously though acceptable for stills where as normal full HD isn't really cutting it. But why have 8mp when you can have so many more with 8k? ( :mrgreen: )
The other angle Sony are working on (as the video shows) is trying to push the "open" nature of the mount. Oh you can use your Canikon glass on the bodies you don't have to re-buy an entire system. But there are problems, limitations for non native or non A Mount lenses (AF being one, aperture control another depending on the adaptor)

Even with A mount lenses you have to get the more expensive SLT style adaptor to have AF across all the lenses (even screw drive ones)

It's not quite the wonderful solution that Sony are making it out to be. I know the game they are playing, they would surely love heavily invested Canikon users to hit them in droves, but I think users will be very naive to think Canikon will "sit back and do nothing"
You could argue Sony are being aggressive and disruptive and maybe even clever. But it remains to be seen how that pans out (I'm not convinced they are capable of looking after their customers long term and that bothers many)

There are plenty of worried A mount users on DPR forums to think Sony have done some serious damage to their own native mount

Onto the grab stills from video. The idea sounds great, but do you really want to have "fire and forget photography"?
I'm pretty sure I don't, how much do you need before you don't have to do anything at all? How many hours looking through video footage to find that perfect frame, watching tiny minor differences, maybe the light change ever so slightly. All those clips you'd need to keep just in case you find a better image in them?

It is not my idea of fun, nor the future of photography.
4k, 8k is a mass market consumer mad ploy to get even more sales out of tired industries (cameras, tv's, video devices, streaming media, more cinema customers, more beefy computers to deal with the high res video)

Good enough folks..that's what counts. I look at some people spending a fortune on new phones every six months, we live in a consumer mad society where what you have doesn't matter, it's what you could have that counts. You have to hand it to companies they're really done a great job of selling us the same thing over and over again, in a slightly improved form year after year :wink:
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by bakubo »

I agree with Barry about pulling stills from video. What a royal pain in the butt job of tedium and drudgery. Just put a bullet in the back of my head and put me out of my misery. :lol: For those who want it though then soon you will have it. It just seems that so much of the right brain creativity of still photography is removed and that is one of the main things for me. Sitting endlessly at a computer trying to find just the right stills in the video stream sounds like for people who do still photography to make money, but could just as happily be accountants, washing machine salesmen, or whatever. Still photography that is just a means to putting food on the table and nothing more. Absolutely nothing wrong with that since we all need to eat and still photography can do that for some people. Fewer and fewer these days it seem though. Being able to pull the stills can be useful for some people. Have fun doing it. :)
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bfitzgerald
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

Yup tedious..sitting at a pc picking the best frame from a huge number of frames.

After watching the Sony interview on SAR, I couldn't help but think of the Wedding show I attended recently (I didn't have a stand I was just in the area and browsing)

I did spend some time talking to people though esp video shooters. These are working people who are earning a living (or trying to) in this industry. Every single one of them told me their medium for delivery was "DVD", not Blu Ray, simply I was told because it never took off (I have a player and a pc drive but only a handful of Blu ray films)

If "full HD" can't even get it's legs off the ground in that industry, there isn't a lot of hope for 4k
And in addition most of the people I spoke too had very little interest in stills shooting (one had some interest but not that much)

Granted there might be some pull for very serious film makers or broadcast type work, but not for on the ground video work, not from what I'm seeing

So much for Sony's "make more money doing weddings - stills and videos"
The Wedding industry is shot to bits, hugely over subscribed and cut throat. Every other "mom" down the road has a Canon and takes photos (there go your communions and other smaller jobs) You have a huge number of photographers fighting for every single job..

The Sony A7s might be a great camera for some who might need that capability, it's far from a game changer for the rest of us (even if the low light is awesome)
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by peterottaway »

Barry almost all the local photographers would be in the same situation be they wedding photographers or not and rely on other sources of income. Just like all those actors working in bars and bottle shops or kitchen hands etc. There is even plenty of commercial writers who the public assume are earning a reasonable living because they have been published for 15 -20 years barely would get the equivalent of unemployment benefit in royalties. It really is happy days when they can get a movie or TV script in a year.

I'm sure that I don't have any more interest in buying an A7s than you do. But I admire Sony on this occasion for being prepared to put themselves out there and offer a range of potential solutions in the marketplace.
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by pakodominguez »

bfitzgerald wrote:
If "full HD" can't even get it's legs off the ground in that industry, there isn't a lot of hope for 4k
Yeah!
VHS is more than enough...
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by Vidgamer »

The (limited amount of specialty) video work I've seen in recent years has included Bluray along with DVD. Sometimes BR was at a higher cost, sometimes not. The problem is that most average people are OK with DVD. I think if pricing were the same, particularly for popular movies, BR would have faster uptake.

The real problem is that most people are OK with taking their own home movies and their own snapshots... only it's really not a problem. They're perfectly fine with it. You can complain that they will have crappy framing and should use a real photographer, but many people just don't care so much about the asthetics, and entry-level DSLRs will give fine IQ. What are you going to do?

The last wedding I went to, the photographer was a bit of a flake and apparently didn't do such a great job. My photos of the cake cutting turned out better because I was prepared and planted myself in a good location, while the photographer was goofing off or whatever. A good photographer should have done a better job than I did, but I managed to salvage something out of the deal. And there were apparently other issues. Anyway, I mostly just stick to random casual photos at such events, not attempting to replace the main photographer! I do think a wedding photographer should be a requirement, but that simply isn't a universal thought. Meanwhile, there are casual photos the wedding photog might miss.

Anyways, I guess my point is that you can't just assume that everyone is willing to pay top dollar for professional photos or video, and amateur work may simply be good enough. If this puts photographers out of a job, then perhaps we don't need so many pro photographers; it seems to me that the availibility of good, cheap cameras encourages too many to try to be pro photographers. Maybe in the past, there were fewer pro photographers and more demand for them in that regard? I guess I'm wondering if there are multiple reasons, but, sure, inferior ameteur work is surely replacing pro work for some situations.

Few people are really intersted in buying new TVs just for 4k, so 4k seems unnecessary. Most people are simply OK with DVD. But there might be value for pros to use it now and archive at 4k, and downsample for now.

A lot of what Sony is doing now seems to me to be a real niche market. I can't imagine that many people are going to be interested in the A7s.

As for snapping a still photo out of video, I would think that a true videographer would think that framing and lighting is just as important for video as for photography, and it is not a "spray and pray" operation as implied here.

But if you did want to do "spray and pray" photography, it seems to me that you have already had that opportunity with the Nikon 1 -- it has a huge burst rate with AF on moving targets. Whether or not it is a valid technique, it is here. I occasionally will use continuous mode and thus have a couple of choices; this can help with people when expressions keep changing, eyes blinking, movement, etc., but I don't find any interest in a larger burst.
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

pakodominguez wrote:
bfitzgerald wrote:
If "full HD" can't even get it's legs off the ground in that industry, there isn't a lot of hope for 4k
Yeah!
VHS is more than enough...

No..
Most people were glad to move from VHS to DVD, no more chewed tapes, no more cleaning heads or searching though a film slowly, smaller more compact storage
Just about everyone was more than happy to go to DVD (the only downer was not being able to record stuff with DVD at the time)

Fast forward many years and DVD is the standard and I didn't update my movie collection to blu ray (the DVD's up-scaled look pretty good to me, not as good a Blu ray but good enough) If I walk into a rental shop (the few that remain) it's mostly DVD media.

DVD= Universal

This A7s is fine for serious film makers (and might be a bargain for them) I can't see on the ground video shooters rushing to it though, why take 4k footage when nobody can view it!

Pako it's that horrible phrase again that companies don't want to hear (it's a sales killer) "good enough"
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by alphaomega »

In my humble opinion, generalities are totally out of place here. We are putting views forward on a dedicated niche product. The World is heading towards 7 billion and Sony (I would think) have eyed a niche within that which will purchase this A7s to make it worth while for them. There is no real competition at this moment and the marginal manufacturing cost is probably small as most parts are common between 7/r/s i.e three distinct models for different markets.
Could be a clever marketing ploy. No point in BF going on about his preferences and trying to predict the future. Sony have tried to compete with CAN/NIK head-on and failed.
I don't have HD on my HD TV. Won't pay the extra subscription. My sister has HD. I can't see the difference and despite this lots of people pay for HD. My views are worthless. My cameras can do AVCHD and I just do MP4 as it is good enough and yet the higher quality sells. So I am not in a position to judge. Give Sony a chance to widen the availability of different cameras with wider capabilities than currently available. Will not make people happy who are just looking for a good DSLR with a magnificent OVF. Time will show if Sony gain from dropping some DSLR adherents for the new customers they may gain. Business is Business. Just sold my A550 after buying an A58. The A58 is fine for my purposes, but still hanging on to my A580 as well as NEX-6/5N. Might sell 5N at some stage for A6000 or a successor, but not in a hurry.
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Re: SAR SR5 Rumour about Sony A7s with 4K on Sunday in Las V

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

What makes you think Sony will succeed in what is a niche market? (does it matter to the world of photography the A7s?)
Sony have now released 3 E mount FF bodies, and done next to nothing for A Mount for over a year (the A58 has been out over 12 months)

It smacks of desperation if you ask me...simply firing products out on E mount hoping something will stick, yet they don't have the system to back it up, and some of the recent E Mount glass isn't as good as some expected

It's not about what I like, but if anyone thinks E mount is going to wipe out Canikon, they're dreaming..
I'm sure Sony overestimate the impact of their efforts, I distinctly remember them saying they would be no. 2 in DSLR's years ago :mrgreen:

They just don't have the expertise or the talent to make it stick, they're not tuned into photographers, and probably never will be
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