It has a Full Frame mode and a Super 35 Mode for shooting video.
In full frame at 24fps, you can get a full field-of-view readout of your lenses, with no pixel binning. At 30fps, you get 1.2x crop. Using Super 35mm Mode, you get 1.5x crop.
Ok, you are correct. I had the Super 35 setting in the menu to auto and apparently it defaulted to crop when I have my Tamron 28-75mm lens. Just switched it to manual and everything checks out. Thanks
It was frustrating shooting 4k and not able to get a wide shot
Hope this info from Digitaltrends helps. Compared with A7r IV, the crop to avoid pixel binning or line skipping of a high-resolution sensor is less severe:
“The biggest difference between the two comes in how the cameras crop the sensor in Super 35 mode. This shooting mode uses a smaller area of the sensor, roughly equivalent to Super 35 film or an APS-C sensor, which bypasses the pixel binning required to turn the 42 or 61 megapixels into the 8.3 required for 4K and thus produces sharper results. However, where this mode used a 1.5X crop on the A7R III, it uses a tighter 1.6X or 1.8X crop on the A7R IV, depending on if you’re shooting 24 or 30 frames per second. This reduction in field of view can make it difficult to get a wide-angle shot.“
engel001 wrote:
Hope this info from Digitaltrends helps. Compared with A7r IV, the crop to avoid pixel binning or line skipping of a high-resolution sensor is less severe:
“The biggest difference between the two comes in how the cameras crop the sensor in Super 35 mode. This shooting mode uses a smaller area of the sensor, roughly equivalent to Super 35 film or an APS-C sensor, which bypasses the pixel binning required to turn the 42 or 61 megapixels into the 8.3 required for 4K and thus produces sharper results. However, where this mode used a 1.5X crop on the A7R III, it uses a tighter 1.6X or 1.8X crop on the A7R IV, depending on if you’re shooting 24 or 30 frames per second. This reduction in field of view can make it difficult to get a wide-angle shot.“
How can that be Super 35 or APS-C sized if the crop is tighter on the A7R IV? This would have to be a smaller and therefore less than APS-C sized portion on the sensor on the A7R IV.
I wonder if the smaller crop is related to having a nice round number of megapixels that are easier to oversample down to 4K. Maybe to get the exact same number of megapixels that were used on the A7R III for oversampled 4K, they had to use a smaller portion of the sensor on the A7R IV.
engel001 wrote:
Hope this info from Digitaltrends helps. Compared with A7r IV, the crop to avoid pixel binning or line skipping of a high-resolution sensor is less severe:
“The biggest difference between the two comes in how the cameras crop the sensor in Super 35 mode. This shooting mode uses a smaller area of the sensor, roughly equivalent to Super 35 film or an APS-C sensor, which bypasses the pixel binning required to turn the 42 or 61 megapixels into the 8.3 required for 4K and thus produces sharper results. However, where this mode used a 1.5X crop on the A7R III, it uses a tighter 1.6X or 1.8X crop on the A7R IV, depending on if you’re shooting 24 or 30 frames per second. This reduction in field of view can make it difficult to get a wide-angle shot.“
I know this is an old thread but I just got an a7R3 and tested it out in 1080p and 4K 30p. When I have used other cameras with a crop in 4K, you can physically see it punch in and crop as soon as you hit the record button. I didnt see that on this when I hit record. Also looking at the videos side by side, I see no evidence of a crop, they look identical. Am I missing something?
RobAmy wrote:
It has a Full Frame mode and a Super 35 Mode for shooting video.
In full frame at 24fps, you can get a full field-of-view readout of your lenses, with no pixel binning. At 30fps, you get 1.2x crop. Using Super 35mm Mode, you get 1.5x crop.
There is either pixel binding or line-skipping going on in FF mode, also, there's a small insignificant crop.
I don't know what Sony are doing, but the FF mode is lower quality than S35, so something is going on in FF mode.
If Sony have stated it's neither PB or LS in FF, then it's something else, which is why we use S35 when possible (which is 95% of the time) if using the R's (any of them) for video.
The A1 & 7S3 are the only cameras that have better quality in FF mode than S35. The A1's FF8K is better than any other mode and the S3's FF4K is it's best output.
My job now is mainly to record video, mainly using Sony ILC's and usually with the A1 & S3, occasionally if a third, fourth and/or fifth angle is needed, a 7R4,7R3 and/or 7R2 is added.
So I've tested the cameras all (especially the R's) significantly for output quality and my findings are as above. I'm mentioned this here a few times before and the conclusions I've drawn were shared by others as well as a few youtubers etc.
How can you possibly turn a 42MP or whatever the 16:9 crop is, to 8.2MP without pixel binning or line skipping. You have to reduce the resolution somehow and it has to be one of those two methods other than cropping for FF readout. As per the dpreview review of the A7RIII I quote:
The a7R III is a very well-equipped video camera, able to shoot UHD 4K video either from the full width of its sensor or from a Super 35 (essentially APS-C sized) region of its sensor. The 'full frame' 4K is pixel binned, taking groups of pixels and combining them. The Super 35 footage is oversampled (it captures 5K footage, then downsizes it), which means better detail capture: ideal if you're shooting with dedicated Cine lenses that cover the Super 35 format.
There you go. Whatever it's doing is a good job, but you can tell it's not the best 4K available, the S35 crop is a lot better and the 7S3's 4K better again.
There's 4K and then there's 4K.
Reminds me of the '1080p' from Canon 5D2 which was absolutely 720p upscaled to beat Nikon's true 720p from the D90 release earlier.
At least Sony aren't lying like Canon did, a few times.
