Sony Electronics, a worldwide leader in digital imaging and the world’s largest image sensor manufacturer, has today announced user selectable Compressed and Uncompressed 14-Bit RAW image capture will be featured in the new α7S II once it arrives in stores this October.
Additionally, they have announced plans to add user selectable compressed or uncompressed 14-Bit RAW still image capture via firmware update to additional cameras beginning with the recently introduced α7R II full-frame mirrorless model.
“The voice of our α community remains the most important guiding force of our product development plans,” said Neal Manowitz, Deputy Vice President for Digital Imaging at Sony Electronics. “The addition of Uncompressed 14-Bit RAW processing is a direct result of customer feedback. Widely requested by photo and video enthusiasts, we believe the choice of RAW processing types will further elevate the performance of these extraordinary cameras.”
The α7S II and α7R II are compatible with Sony’s growing lineup of α -mount lenses, which now totals 63 different models including 12 native ‘FE’ full frame lenses. By early 2016, Sony will add an additional 8 new lenses to its FE full frame lineup, bringing the FE total to 20 lenses and the overall α -mount assortment to over 70 different models.
I do think that they mean totally uncompressed raw as in not lossless compression, so those files are going to be absolutely huge, but I can live with that.
It's a little ambiguous whether "additional cameras beginning with the ... A7RII" means that only models released after the A7RII or that it is just the first one they'll release an update for.
Given that the A7II is still a latest generation model without the prospect of a replacement for at least a ...few months?... I'm hoping that would receive the update.
It would be excellent if the whole A7 series, and indeed other recent models (A77II, A6000, ...) were included too, of course.
I know you cannot compare directly as Sony uses another lossy compression algorithm and the resolution is higher on the a7rII, but around 85 MB for a non-compressed raw file seems about right.
WOW !! So nice !!!!
14bit lossless would have better but hey, it's amazing !
Last question before ordering A7RII, will 14bit uncompressed work for bulb mode, and will it change chroma noise ?? This is what prevent me from changing my A7R to II actually ...
Stoffer wrote:
I do think that they mean totally uncompressed raw as in not lossless compression, so those files are going to be absolutely huge, but I can live with that.
That's what you get when user requests have been for uncompressed raw. I've read article after article going on about the demand for uncompressed raw. I've always thought that what people probably really want is lossless vs lossy compression rather than uncompressed vs compressed, but they're just responding to what people have asked for, even if those people maybe didn't really understand what they were asking for.
stevei wrote:
That's what you get when user requests have been for uncompressed raw. I've read article after article going on about the demand for uncompressed raw. I've always thought that what people probably really want is lossless vs lossy compression rather than uncompressed vs compressed, but they're just responding to what people have asked for, even if those people maybe didn't really understand what they were asking for.
Maybe, but there has also been speculation that the Bionz image processor - or another part of the data pipeline - simply cant do lossless raw compression in hardware. It might need a new design.
It will also be interesting to see what kind of limitations it might bring with in, like lower fps. But I honestly doesn't care that much. I'm just happy that we will get the option.
stevei wrote:
That's what you get when user requests have been for uncompressed raw. I've read article after article going on about the demand for uncompressed raw. I've always thought that what people probably really want is lossless vs lossy compression rather than uncompressed vs compressed, but they're just responding to what people have asked for, even if those people maybe didn't really understand what they were asking for.
I suspect they've either
a) gone for uncompressed first as it's easier to implement than lossless compression or
b) they are offering both but wanted to put "uncompressed" prominently in the press release in order to avoid any confusion with people who don't understand lossy vs. lossless (or who won't believe the lossless is really lossless...)
It's nice to see them actually reacting to user requests. Better late than never, I guess.
However, I'm curious about two things: 1. How long will it take for the first guy to bitch that his computer can't handle those files. 2. Is going to satisfy the "I can't get no satisfaction (from any camera not called D810) crowd" (e.g. Ming Thein or Lloyd Chambers) .
There is a reason for not going with lossless compression: losslessly compressed TIFF files, so I've been told by people who work on these things, are more fragile: the smallest bit of corruption and they are irreparable....Both uncompressed files and Sony's 11+7 are better in this respect.
Chris_88 wrote:
It's nice to see them actually reacting to user requests. Better late than never, I guess.
However, I'm curious about two things: 1. How long will it take for the first guy to bitch that his computer can't handle those files. 2. Is going to satisfy the "I can't get no satisfaction (from any camera not called D810) crowd" (e.g. Ming Thein or Lloyd Chambers) .
A note on Lloyd and Ming.
The both went to the Zeiss gig and according to Chambers both took only the A7rII because carrying anything larger on such a long and difficult trip would be too much.
well, to be fair to Lloyd, he has actually been reluctantly singing the praises of the A7rII a bit recently. But not Ming. And yet faced with real travel (and not even very arduous travel) what do they take?
a) gone for uncompressed first as it's easier to implement than lossless compression or
b) they are offering both but wanted to put "uncompressed" prominently in the press release in order to avoid any confusion with people who don't understand lossy vs. lossless (or who won't believe the lossless is really lossless...)
I think as far as a firmware change given existing hardware limitations, they're probably just grabbing the data and dumping it. Someone schooled me a way back that a lossless algo was more involved than a lossy one (even though I was a comp sci major, I had that reversed in my memory).
The real question is how early in the pipeline are they dumping the data, because as Lloyd and others have recently speculated, some of the artifacts that are sometimes noticed may be the result of cooking raw files rather than the lossy algo itself.
Hopefully this means the next gen will have an upgraded BIONZX that can process/save uncooked lossless compressed raw.
I suspect that it is just a dump (and when they say uncompressed that's what they mean) and therefore other specs like frame rate should be mostly unaffected.
DavidBM wrote:
There is a reason for not going with lossless compression: losslessly compressed TIFF files, so I've been told by people who work on these things, are more fragile: the smallest bit of corruption and they are irreparable....Both uncompressed files and Sony's 11+7 are better in this respect.
It's not a particularly compelling reason, Canon have never offered an uncompressed RAW option, and in 8 years of shooting lossless compressed TIFF based RAW files, and probably half a million frames, I've not had a single one of them be corrupted in this way.
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