p.18 #2 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
davewolfs wrote:
I’m curious Charles. Why did you leave Sony and what feature here has you wanting to come back. I know you are enjoying your D850.
Hi Dave. I have always loved FF images. With Sony A7r/A7s and A7rII there was a question of ergonomics, lens size/weight, pricing and availability. At the time I was looking for the GM series lenses, as I have always opted where possible for f/1.4 lenses for people, portraits and low light street photography. The price in Australia was about 25 to 30% higher and there were no used options available and I did not like the size/weight of the fast lenses on the A7rII. It was a very pragmatic decision and I moved to Fuji XT2 and now the D750/D850.
My reason for opting for the A7rIII with small/light lenses is that I have the D850/D750 now. It may sound strange, but certain cameras are better suited. With the D850 my lenses of choice are 20/1.8G, 20, 24, 35, 50 Art, 24-35 Art, 58G, 105E and 70-200E FL. These lenses are superb in IQ, AF speed/accuracy/face/eye recognition. The grip, feel and balance of the Art lenses with the fast Nikon lenses is just superb on both the D750 and D850.
That all said, I will opt for the A7rIII for the improved AF/speed and this time carefully selecting the lenses that truly suit the smaller/lighter footprint of the A7rIII. I have no interest again in opting for the fast/large/heavy lenses with the A7rIII. The specs look great but let's see and the improved DR will be excellent.
p.18 #3 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
It doesn’t sound strange at all. Large lenses mate superbly with the Nikon cameras. The Sony’s don’t have enough grip area to comfortably hold anything with reasonable weight (maybe extended grip could help - never tried). I also appreciate Nikons abundance of settings which can easily be changed via external controls.
What are you looking at in terms of lenses for the Sony this time around?
It would be nice to see Zeiss bring us more high quality and lightweight Batis style lenses. The Eye AF looks great.
charles.K wrote:
Hi Dave. I have always loved FF images. With Sony A7r/A7s and A7rII there was a question of ergonomics, lens size/weight, pricing and availability. At the time I was looking for the GM series lenses, as I have always opted where possible for f/1.4 lenses for people, portraits and low light street photography. The price in Australia was about 25 to 30% higher and there were no used options available and I did not like the size/weight of the fast lenses on the A7rII. It was a very pragmatic decision and I moved to Fuji XT2 and now the D750/D850.
My reason for opting for the A7rIII with small/light lenses is that I have the D850/D750 now. It may sound strange, but certain cameras are better suited. With the D850 my lenses of choice are 20/1.8G, 20, 24, 35, 50 Art, 24-35 Art, 58G, 105E and 70-200E FL. These lenses are superb in IQ, AF speed/accuracy/face/eye recognition. The grip, feel and balance of the Art lenses with the fast Nikon lenses is just superb on both the D750 and D850.
That all said, I will opt for the A7rIII for the improved AF/speed and this time carefully selecting the lenses that truly suit the smaller/lighter footprint of the A7rIII. I have no interest again in opting for the fast/large/heavy lenses with the A7rIII. The specs look great but let's see and the improved DR will be excellent for subtlety lit photography....Show more →
Oct 25, 2017 at 08:51 PM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.18 #4 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
Anybody know any specifics about how the 1-stop increase in dynamic range is supposed to be achieved. I haven't seen anything concrete about that. It still seems 100 is the base ISO. I actually don't see any reference on the Sony specifications and features page to a 1-stop increase in dynamic range. The only thing I can find is actually a very vague statement that says, "Enhanced image processing realizes lower noise and further extended dynamic range across a wide sensitivity range of up to ISO 32000 (standard ISO, expandable to ISO 50-102400 for stills)." So, although some of the early reports were saying 15 stops of dynamic range and a 1 stop improvement in dynamic range, I don't see Sony making that claim. It seems to be the same sensor as the A7r II and I will be surprised if there is anything more than a modest quarter of a stop improvement in dynamic range.
p.18 #5 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
Stoffer wrote:
Come to think of it: It is very interesting that Sony decided to add so many contrast AF points to the A7r3. Both A9 and A7r2 have 25 points. Maybe they were added to help with getting better focus accuracy on the high res sensor?
Anybody have an idea to why
The 425 contrast points helps the AF firmware to easily identify the desire object faster which will help to track eye-af or face-af better than A7Rii. This requires AF algorithm update to decom those new CDAF. It might get higher precision in lower light but it might not be as fast as A9 in general.
p.18 #6 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
Steve Spencer wrote:
Anybody know any specifics about how the 1-stop increase in dynamic range is supposed to be achieved. I haven't seen anything concrete about that. It still seems 100 is the base ISO. I actually don't see any reference on the Sony specifications and features page to a 1-stop increase in dynamic range. The only thing I can find is actually a very vague statement that says, "Enhanced image processing realizes lower noise and further extended dynamic range across a wide sensitivity range of up to ISO 32000 (standard ISO, expandable to ISO 50-102400 for stills)." So, although some of the early reports were saying 15 stops of dynamic range and a 1 stop improvement in dynamic range, I don't see Sony making that claim. It seems to be the same sensor as the A7r II and I will be surprised if there is anything more than a modest quarter of a stop improvement in dynamic range. ...Show more →
All the so called YouTube reporters have mentioned 15 stops of DR per Sony presentation (which was not allowed to be photographed). How they plan to achieve this I don’t really care but I’m happy that they did. The video looks fantastic as well.
p.18 #7 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
Fred Miranda wrote:
It would be great if a third party software could build the pixel shifted image for better color output and at the same time, average the four images using a median stack for better signal to noise ratio. Two birds, one stone.
That's already what all pixel shift algorithms do - in camera or out. Though technically they would be mean and not median. No special third party software needed.
p.18 #8 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
A7R3 looks good, just what I need, yet not too good for me to dump the A7R2 right now.
I hoped the sensor readout speed is improved but looks like it is the same sensor. A faster readout would sometimes make time-lapse a bit better (cityscape with large outdoor display for example)...
Same long exposure noise, same 12 bit raw in various modes, same silent shutter, same resolution, DR... I think my money can go for some interesting lens (Likely some Zeiss or Voigtlander).
I really wish they would introduce lossless compressed raw.
I literally just got a 24-70/2.8 GM, still love my Contax 35-70/3.4, but I'm heading to Italy with gf soon and I'm sure she don't like waiting for me to change lens, set FL for IBIS... I would prefer 24-105/4 as a travel lens, but 2.8 should be better for portrait (this is how I comfort myself....).
Oct 25, 2017 at 09:03 PM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.18 #9 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
davewolfs wrote:
All the so called YouTube reporters have mentioned 15 stops of DR per Sony presentation (which was not allowed to be photographed).
I am curious about that though as Sony says nothing of the sort on the product page. Did someone misspeak? Was something misinterpreted and parroted over and over again. Measuring stops of DR is a pretty subjective thing, so saying 15 stops is easy enough to do, but is the DR any different than the A7r Ii? DXO measures the DR at 13.9 stops, but that is just one way to measure it. Others measure it very differently. William Claff's website measures it as having 11.4 stops of what he calls photographic dynamic range, which sounds worse, but his measurements actually put the A7rII much closer to the Nikon D810 (and D850) which he measure as having 11.6 and 11.63 stops of photographic dynamic range. So, by his measurements the Nikon camera only have a pretty small fifth of stop advantage, whereas DXO has the Nikon cameras having a much larger advantage. Anyway the point is it seems to me that a 1 stop increase is a lot for a camera that is using the same sensor and I am skeptical that it will really be that much, and the claim of 15 stops can easily be made, but can just as easily be meaningless as it could easily be made for the A7rII as well.
p.18 #11 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
Theres nothing I see which is a must have for this for me.
Increased DR well ~ 1 top if it happens would be ok but I am very sceptical without resorting to nikon like base iso 64.
Dual cards - meh
bigger battery - downside
better viewfinder - good
af/fps - couldnt give a stuff. Looks like the sensor/pdaf points are the same just tweaked software.
Loss of apps - incredulous. Ok never really pushed these and its a pain to do but there are some good ones.
Sony give me a decent firmware for the a7r mk2 fix the star eater bugs and give me a compressed lossless raw ffs.
p.18 #12 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
On the DR thing more than one camera manufacturer in the past has claimed to have increased DR when they introduced a new camera using the same sensor as an older one. In the end when pressed the claim was actually for JPEG output and was down to NR processing!
And yeah there is no standard definition for DR for cameras so I think we will have to wait for testing to find out if DR is any different from the A7RII. Would be great if it improved of course but given it seems everything about the sensor and read out is the same one wonders...
EDIT: After reading some more press I see in this case they specifically are claiming improved read out circuit and thus lower read noise. So while same read out speed as II it is in fact claimed to be different circuitry with lower noise. So likely this DR improvement is real and in RAW.
There is a video by Steve Huff where he interviews a Sony Artisan who was not aware of the specs when testing the Camera but she was explicit in stating that the specs corroborated her experiences with the camera (superior noise + DR). So without being entirely scientific I think we can assume that there will be a measurable difference. Unfortunately we will have to wait for the release to get those actual numbers and/or comparisons.
Steve Spencer wrote:
I am curious about that though as Sony says nothing of the sort on the product page. Did someone misspeak? Was something misinterpreted and parroted over and over again. Measuring stops of DR is a pretty subjective thing, so saying 15 stops is easy enough to do, but is the DR any different than the A7r Ii? DXO measures the DR at 13.9 stops, but that is just one way to measure it. Others measure it very differently. William Claff's website measures it as having 11.4 stops of what he calls photographic dynamic range, which sounds worse, but his measurements actually put the A7rII much closer to the Nikon D810 (and D850) which he measure as having 11.6 and 11.63 stops of photographic dynamic range. So, by his measurements the Nikon camera only have a pretty small fifth of stop advantage, whereas DXO has the Nikon cameras having a much larger advantage. Anyway the point is it seems to me that a 1 stop increase is a lot for a camera that is using the same sensor and I am skeptical that it will really be that much, and the claim of 15 stops can easily be made, but can just as easily be meaningless as it could easily be made for the A7rII as well....Show more →
p.18 #18 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
Steve Spencer wrote:
Anybody know any specifics about how the 1-stop increase in dynamic range is supposed to be achieved. I haven't seen anything concrete about that. It still seems 100 is the base ISO. I actually don't see any reference on the Sony specifications and features page to a 1-stop increase in dynamic range. The only thing I can find is actually a very vague statement that says, "Enhanced image processing realizes lower noise and further extended dynamic range across a wide sensitivity range of up to ISO 32000 (standard ISO, expandable to ISO 50-102400 for stills)." So, although some of the early reports were saying 15 stops of dynamic range and a 1 stop improvement in dynamic range, I don't see Sony making that claim. It seems to be the same sensor as the A7r II and I will be surprised if there is anything more than a modest quarter of a stop improvement in dynamic range. ...Show more →
Sony have redesigned the circuitry around the sensor to lower the noise floor. If the read noise is lower then DR can be improved. Only the sensor is the same, not the rest of the circuitry and imaging pipeline. Of course measurements will verify this, but it would be a silly thing to claim when it can be easily checked.
p.18 #20 · Pre-orders open! Sony A7R III and FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS lens!
Well, I wouldn't have bought it if it was any larger, so I guess there's really no satisfying everyone. And I couldn't disagree more with your position on that, but of course it's a personal preference more than anything.
Pixel Perfect wrote:
Sony did not need to make the A9 so small, it did not have to be the same size as A7RII. Pro cameras aren’t large just for the fun of it. A9 II needs to be larger and have larger buttons. It would only take a 3-4mm in height and width to make it much nicer, and the weight would barely change.
