rob_ww wrote:
I suspect it will still scan the whole sensor when in APS-C mode, as usually the whole image is still captured and the crop can be undone in post.
No. That's what some Canon's did. It's rather pointless to use a crop if the whole file is still there since crop would only be some info the file indicating user intention, but not speeding up the workflow and saving space.
evanhanded wrote:
The information that was "leaked" was "fully stacked sensor". That information was correct. My contention is that Sony used that terminology without explaining that it meant something out of the ordinary in this case. All the Youtubers "promoting" the camera used that terminology supplied by Sony...but again, with no explanation of what was different this time. Maybe if the leaker had seen a better explanation of the sensor stack from Sony, they could have leaked better. All that said, I highly doubt that you want to understand as YOU keep attempting to mischaracterize everything I write.
. Sony's fault because the leaker didn't leak better.
"But as great as the a7R VI is, and it’s really spectacular, it’s not a death knell for the a1 II, at least not for some photographers. For them, the a7R VI isn’t even close to besting the a1 II. The a1 II isn’t obsolete, even if many high-level specs seem to favor the a7R VI across the board.
The Sony a7R VI is not an a1 II killer after all. In fairness, Sony never said it was, and certainly isn’t marketing it like one. What the a7R VI is instead is the best R Series camera Sony has ever made by a country mile and a genuine class-leader in the broader photography industry."
I think this is a very fair assessment. A lot of us reflexively associated fully stacked sensor and 30FPS with a fast action camera, the "A1II killer" hype of SAR and the comment "It will make the recent A1II purchasers mad" by someone here who had access to the A7RVI prior to release further fanned flame. By all accounts, the A7RVI is a great camera and better than the A1II in some areas, but not in the area of speed and focus.
I thought I would get one to replace one of my A1IIs but it's not happening. I may get one down the road to play around when big discount is available. Then I will have to ask myself, if I don't intend to use the A7RVI to shoot the type of fast action stuff I use the A1II for, what benefits does A7RVI bring to the table FOR ME? For landscape stuff? I may as well pick up a used A7RV for a song for that type of stuff.
I am strictly looking at this from my personal perspective, what I have and what type of stuff I shoot purely as an hobbyist. I am sure the A7RVI has a lot of appeals to folks who don't need a fast scanning sensor often.
Douglas L wrote:
By all accounts, the A7RVI is a great camera and better than the A1II in some areas, but not in the area of speed and focus.
It's not just for action shots. The A1 series has the capability of shooting with flash sync in e-shutter at 1/200s. This is huge in some types of shoots like macro stacking (see Micael Widell on Youtube, he selected the Sony A1 just for that, he usually shoots with m43, which is often more suited for macro).
The A1 can also flash sync up to 1/400s with the mechanical shutter. The A1 can also reach 1/32,000s (not 1/3,200s) shutter speeds. That speedy mechanical shutter is also probably what increases the A1 price.
Most importantly for me, with the A1 you can shoot 99% of your pictures using the e-shutter. That's why Nikon did not even bother with a mechanical shutter in their Z8/Z9, which have similar sensor readout performance.
That being said, the A7R VI is a well-rounded powerhouse. It has a few things over the A1: higher resolution, a better EVF (but no 240hz), the back-illuminated buttons, a better battery (also a cons anyway), and it's of course much cheaper (although the original A1 is still available for less if bought used).
Manu-K1 wrote:
It's not just for action shots. The A1 series has the capability of shooting with flash sync in e-shutter at 1/200s. This is huge in some types of shoots like macro stacking (see Micael Widell on Youtube, he selected the Sony A1 just for that, he usually shoots with m43, which is often more suited for macro).
The A1 can also flash sync up to 1/400s with the mechanical shutter. The A1 can also reach 1/32,000s (not 1/3,200s) shutter speeds. That speedy mechanical shutter is also probably what increases the A1 price.
Most importantly for me, with the A1 you can shoot 99% of your pictures using the e-shutter. That's why Nikon did not even bother with a mechanical shutter in their Z8/Z9, which have similar sensor readout performance.
That being said, the A7R VI is a well-rounded powerhouse. It has a few things over the A1: higher resolution, a better EVF (but no 240hz), the back-illuminated buttons, a better battery (also a cons anyway), and it's of course much cheaper (although the original A1 is still available for less if bought used)....Show more →
Even when my A7RVI arrives (just sold my A7RV), I expect that 80% of my shooting will continue to be on my A1 II. Quite frankly, after shooting ES for everything, including strobes, the mechanical shutter just feels uncivilized and obsolete.
For me, the A1 II's custom button next to the lens mount, programmed to FPS acceleration, is a complete game changer when shooting action. I can keep the FPS lower and then quickly depress the button when I need a higher FPS burst. This feature seriously reduces my image culling time.
I originally started with two A1 II's, then replaced one of them with the A7RV. I'm seriously considering cancelling my A7RVI pre-order and going back to shooting two A1 II's. It's great to have so many viable options. I often shoot 50mp and 61mp cameras side-by-side. When viewing the images on a large high-resolution monitor, it is almost impossible to differentiate the images, which makes sense when you consider the small linear dimensional delta. I don't think another 6mp will make enough of a difference, for my use, although some of the new features on the A7RVI would certainly be welcome.
BigBabyMoses06 wrote:
Wonder if the RVI has framing reference guides, like my A1 has? Annoyed that my RV doesn't have that, and use it continually with my A1 now.
In Mads Peter Iversen’s video (at 10:39) he mentioned the A7RVI now allows user downloadable custom grid lines. But I am unable to find any other mention of it elsewhere. I know Sony offered a $149 license for doing this on some other cameras but this sounds like something the user can do themselves with no charge.
Ross Martin wrote:
In Mads Peter Iversen’s video he mentioned the A7RVI now allows user downloadable custom grid lines. But I am unable to find any other mention of it elsewhere. I know Sony offered a $149 license for doing this on some other cameras but this sounds like something the user can do themselves with no charge.
In case there are those straddling between Nikon and Sony systems and custom grids are important to them, I recently released an open-source package that lets Nikon owners create and use custom grids:
InFocus2014 wrote:
Even when my A7RVI arrives (just sold my A7RV), I expect that 80% of my shooting will continue to be on my A1 II. Quite frankly, after shooting ES for everything, including strobes, the mechanical shutter just feels uncivilized and obsolete.
I agree with you and Manu-K1 about ES. I was ambivalent about that feature before acquiring my A1 but now regard it as the central attraction. I haven't fired up the studio strobes but am heavily using OEM flashes which perfectly hit 1/200s at all power levels. I still own the A7ii but that entire series is dead to me. The only Sony progression of interest to me is global shutter, and I look forward to price drops, either with new models or a price drop on the A9iii.
rico wrote:
I agree with you and Manu-K1 about ES. I was ambivalent about that feature before acquiring my A1 but now regard it as the central attraction. I haven't fired up the studio strobes but am heavily using OEM flashes which perfectly hit 1/200s at all power levels. I still own the A7ii but that entire series is dead to me. The only Sony progression of interest to me is global shutter, and I look forward to price drops, either with new models or a price drop on the A9iii.
I share this opinion about electronic shutters on cameras. It's an interesting and curious phenomena and independent of the technical differences vs mechanical shutters, which have actually been negative for ES's on most of the cameras I've used with slower readouts. I haven't quite put my finger on it. The sound of a mechanical shutter always seemed grating to me and interrupted the creative mood when shooting. I guess on some level it also felt like each MS actuation "used up" a portion of the camera's life, which is true on some level since shutter life is finite but not exactly a reasonable thought considering how relatively inexpensive shutter replacements are.
Oddly enough I've had a similar positive experience when using AC-attached dummy batteries for my static studio setup at home. The liberation of not worrying about the battery ever running out really added to my enjoyment of shooting, to a surprising and frankly unreasonable extent. Mostly from being able to slow down and not rush I guess.
It's always strange the things you didn't know were bothering you, esp. seemingly immutable things that you thought couldn't ever be changed like the sound of a shutter or limited battery life.
snapsy wrote:
I share this opinion about electronic shutters on cameras. It's an interesting and curious phenomena and independent of the technical differences vs mechanical shutters, which have actually been negative for ES's on most of the cameras I've used with slower readouts. I haven't quite put my finger on it. The sound of a mechanical shutter always seemed grating to me and interrupted the creative mood when shooting. I guess on some level it also felt like each MS actuation "used up" a portion of the camera's life, which is true on some level since shutter life is finite but not exactly a reasonable thought considering how relatively inexpensive shutter replacements are.
Oddly enough I've had a similar positive experience when using AC-attached dummy batteries for my static studio setup at home. The liberation of not worrying about the battery ever running out really added to my enjoyment of shooting, to a surprising and frankly unreasonable extent. Mostly from being able to slow down and not rush I guess.
It's always strange the things you didn't know were bothering you, esp. seemingly immutable things that you thought couldn't ever be changed like the sound of a shutter or limited battery life....Show more →
Perfect candidate for a fully mechanical “M” body. I would like to add the new Hasselblad system, but some of the lenses have rather noisy leaf shutters, but for silence, I mostly used my A1 on ES. Global, once sorted, looks promising.
Steve Spencer wrote:
There was also a leak that the sensor scan speed was 16ms (it turns out to be just a bit slower at 19.6ms at least with 14-bit output), and for people who were paying attention that was and I would say should have been a red flag this was a different sort of stacked sensor camera. The camera was obviously in a lot of people's hands, so the leaks could have been from someone violating an NDA, but they could have been orchestrated by Sony as well. Perhaps both sources. With leaks it is often, if not always, difficult to know from where they came. So, is Sony to blame? Perhaps, but even if they were responsbile for the leaks, in this case I think there was enough information out there to give anyone pause that this was going to be an A1 II replacement. Those who made that interpretation weren't even thinking about the leaked specs carefully enough, IMO....Show more →
I didn't see the 16ms readout speed leak. I was not reading anything here before the A7RVI release event, just looking at SAR. Don't get the idea that I'm inconvenienced by this. I'm in the market for a high pixel camera and it was going to be either the A1ii or this A7RVI. Even if the rumor about the sensor being fully stacked had not come out....I was still going to wait to see the specs and what the new model could do...now I know.
Without knowing precisely what statements from rumor sites and early reviewers was word-for-word the technical information Sony shared, "controlled leaked", etc. versus what was speculation or presumption, y'all aren't going to definitely resolve this back-and-forth debate about whether they misled about using that "stacked sensor" terminology.
The more interesting thing about the readout speed of this sensor architecture is that if Sony got the readout time down this much vs the A7r5 without even adding on-die RAM, how much more is it capable of with a more robust (if expensive) processing pipeline? Image if this thing could be used to make a ~114mp GFX camera that does enough AF calculations per second for the face/eye detect to not be trash.
Lee Saxon wrote:
Without knowing precisely what statements from rumor sites and early reviewers was word-for-word the technical information Sony shared, "controlled leaked", etc. versus what was speculation or presumption, y'all aren't going to definitely resolve this back-and-forth debate about whether they misled about using that "stacked sensor" terminology.
The more interesting thing about the readout speed of this sensor architecture is that if Sony got the readout time down this much vs the A7r5 without even adding on-die RAM, how much more is it capable of with a more robust (if expensive) processing pipeline? Image if this thing could be used to make a ~114mp GFX camera that does enough AF calculations per second for the face/eye detect to not be trash....Show more →
Lee Saxon wrote:
The more interesting thing about the readout speed of this sensor architecture is that if Sony got the readout time down this much vs the A7r5 without even adding on-die RAM, how much more is it capable of with a more robust (if expensive) processing pipeline? Image if this thing could be used to make a ~114mp GFX camera that does enough AF calculations per second for the face/eye detect to not be trash.
This can be calculated today. The A7RVI has readout rate of 2,944 ns/row (19.6ms or 1/51 for full sensor at full bit-depth), compared to the A1/Z9 rate of 678ns/row (3.9ms or 1/255 for full sensor at full bit-depth), which puts the A1/Z9's readout at 4.3x faster, which means stacked DRAM is increasing the readout rate at 4.33x based on these measurements, which matches Sony's claims about stacked DRAM when they first introduced the technology in smartphone sensors:
"As a result, the product is capable of reading one still image of 19.3 million pixels in only 1/120 of a second (approximately 4x faster than conventional products), thereby supporting high-speed image capture." (source).
The GFX100S has a readout rate of 18,747 ns/row (163ms or 1/6 for full sensor at full bit-depth), which is in the ballpark of the A7RV at 15,860 ns/row (10ms or 1/10 for full sensor). Presuming Sony can match the readout rate of their current FF sensors in their next medium-format sensor, that puts the next GFX100 at around 3,000 ns/row (26.0ms for full sensor, or 1/38) for non-stacked and 750 ns/row (6.5ms for full sensor, or 1/153) for stacked.
I think I would like to see an engineering slide deck by sony that outlines the technology and tradeoffs between the a1ii, a7v, and a7rvi sensors. I suspect most of the issue comes from people not knowing what partial stack vs full stack means. Sony says it without an explanation and the interpretation lands different with the audience. I think for Sony it is about what fraction of the sensor has a second chip stacked on the back. To the audience it means partial good stuff or full good stuff.
The camera landed about where I expected based on the a7v. It all makes sense if you think the a7v at 33mp requires 1/2 stacked. the a7Rvi at 66mp requires a full stack of the same tech. It would not be unreasonable to think the next a1 will get 50mp, the dual range tech on 3/4 (50/66) of the stack and memory for fast read on 1/4 of the stack. Choose 1: cheap, resolution, fast = a7v, a7Rvi, a1iii.
I still love my a7Rv. I waited a couple years after release to upgrade from the a7Riv. I imagine I will do the same for this.
tschopp wrote:
I think I would like to see an engineering slide deck by sony that outlines the technology and tradeoffs between the a1ii, a7v, and a7rvi sensors. I suspect most of the issue comes from people not knowing what partial stack vs full stack means. Sony says it without an explanation and the interpretation lands different with the audience. I think for Sony it is about what fraction of the sensor has a second chip stacked on the back. To the audience it means partial good stuff or full good stuff.
Agreed. It would be nice to see this explained but I doubt we will. Perhaps a Sony exec in an interview will touch on this more in depth.
For Sony, as you note, the definition of stacked sensor comes down to an integration of other elements on the image sensor chip. Those elements can change. Before, everyone assumed that fully stacked sensor meant the highest possible readout speeds due to DRAM integration.
Here it does mean some speed gains but not at the level of an A1 series and instead of DRAM integration there is something that Sony calls a processing layer.
RoamingScott wrote:
It's funny that this sensor is being scrutinized so hard simply because it's stacked and thusly compared to the A1 II (a stupid game to play).
If this was a run of the mill non-stacked BSI sensor that was a simple iteration of the formula and had all of the same specs, it would be universally lauded. If it was marketed accurately as the landscape camera that can do a bunch more, it would be better understood.
You'd be hard pressed to find a Nikon shooter that wouldn't want this in a Z7 III, too.
Yes, I do think that Nikon users would be lining up to preorder this if it were the Z7III.
