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Sony's A7s turns night into day with ISO 409,600 (demo)

Alex Maragos

Alex Maragos

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Sony's α7S features newly developed, 35mm Exmor CMOS sensor with awe-inspiring sensitivity
allowing it to shoot at a sensitivity range of ISO 50 – 4096002.

Sony made a pretty impressive demo video pushing the camera at 4096002.
Of course at (almost) half a million ISO, the footage is far from usable.


 
Something strikes me a little funny about this example. Please correct me if I am wrong. Don't you think if this was truly a very dark scene, the fire would be throwing much more light around to the surrounding objects. Being that it is the "key light" in this situation...if it were very dark...his leg, the boat...the surrounding grass area, the logs, and more of the bucket would show more illumination from from that light source at higher ISOs. I could be completely wrong. On the other hand...if it were not that dark outside...it naturally would have the throw as it does here.

Whats your take?
 
Michael Jarvis said:
Something strikes me a little funny about this example. Please correct me if I am wrong. Don't you think if this was truly a very dark scene, the fire would be throwing much more light around to the surrounding objects. Being that it is the "key light" in this situation...if it were very dark...his leg, the boat...the surrounding grass area, the logs, and more of the bucket would show more illumination from from that light source at higher ISOs. I could be completely wrong. On the other hand...if it were not that dark outside...it naturally would have the throw as it does here.

Whats your take?
Click to expand...

You can see in the picture that the fire is actually inside a fire pit so I'm not surprised it's not casting light onto the ground. Also, it looks pretty weak. You should check out Sonyalpharumors.com they have some more low light tests of the A7s on there. I've been following it and I'm fairly impressed. I can tell right now that max ISOs will be unusable for most work due to color noise alone but ISO 51200 doesn't really look that bad. We may not be far from being able to shoot "night for day". lol.
 
It works as advertised - my next recreational scuba diving camera. Nauticam already has a housing for it.
 
Zeb B said:
It works as advertised - my next recreational scuba diving camera. Nauticam already has a housing for it.
Click to expand...

It will be killer as a scuba cam except how will you record 4k? Would be awesome if they built an enclosure that could accommodate an Atomos Shogun as well. One nice thing about that enclosure though is that when you want to do stills you can just swap out the A7s for an A7R. Nice.
 
Zeb B said:
It works as advertised - my next recreational scuba diving camera. Nauticam already has a housing for it.
Click to expand...

Great! I wanna love this camera. Specs look good. Nice little compact camera. Be interested in more rolling shutter tests.
 
Michael Jarvis said:
Something strikes me a little funny about this example. Please correct me if I am wrong. Don't you think if this was truly a very dark scene, the fire would be throwing much more light around to the surrounding objects. Being that it is the "key light" in this situation...if it were very dark...his leg, the boat...the surrounding grass area, the logs, and more of the bucket would show more illumination from from that light source at higher ISOs. I could be completely wrong. On the other hand...if it were not that dark outside...it naturally would have the throw as it does here.

Whats your take?
Click to expand...

I believe you are overthinking this. btw- the fire looks like its in a pit.
Regardless, its just a simple demo of the camera at various ISO settings...nothing more.
 
Great snap shot camera as well - less need for flash on intimate events and interior family shots. Increases the shutter speed to eliminate motion blur for those informal occasion shots like in restaurants, concerts and parties. Getting the wife one for her birthday instead of the G4. Way more portable and high ISO noise is way easier to eliminate in post than motion blur
 
Michael Jarvis said:
Something strikes me a little funny about this example. Please correct me if I am wrong. Don't you think if this was truly a very dark scene, the fire would be throwing much more light around to the surrounding objects. Being that it is the "key light" in this situation...if it were very dark...his leg, the boat...the surrounding grass area, the logs, and more of the bucket would show more illumination from from that light source at higher ISOs. I could be completely wrong. On the other hand...if it were not that dark outside...it naturally would have the throw as it does here.

Whats your take?
Click to expand...

That did strike me a bit weird as well. The flame doesn't burn out at any time either. it could be from their claim of a 1300% increase in dynamic range with S-log 2. Don't quote me on these numbers but if it had 12 stops DR before thats something like 15 or 16 now. Pretty good if this is true.
 
Greg M said:
I believe you are overthinking this. btw- the fire looks like its in a pit.
Regardless, its just a simple demo of the camera at various ISO settings...nothing more.
Click to expand...


I suppose your right. I do believe I am overthinking this a bit. Just curious to get others opinions. I really do hope this little came turns out to be great. Would really like to see it in comparison to a C100 or a 5D3. I wish we could get a really compact little 4K recorder.
 
I don't understand why shoot this scene in so high iso if it could have benn shot at 800iso 15 minutes earlier... Because this is not shot at night (flames and sky tells it).
9 stops of overexposure on the flames and they don't get blownout? Strange thing.

Pat

ps: It's 409'600 not 4'096'002... ;-)
 
Isn't it only $1600? Does it do any 4k internally? What ISO does it really start to breakdown at? It looks like even ISO3200 starts to blitz out a little.

I wonder what 409,600 looks like when recorded externally, directly off the sensor.
 
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I was wondering if this sample was shot in raw and pushed to 409600 iso keeping the fire highlight and pumping up the low lights?
It looks like 4k is only trought HDMI for an external recorder.

Magic lantern?

Pat
 
Zeb B said:
Great snap shot camera as well - less need for flash on intimate events and interior family shots. Increases the shutter speed to eliminate motion blur for those informal occasion shots like in restaurants, concerts and parties. Getting the wife one for her birthday instead of the G4. Way more portable and high ISO noise is way easier to eliminate in post than motion blur
Click to expand...

I think I'm getting myself one instead of the GH4. And I think I'm done with micro 4/3 altogether, actually haven't blown the dust off my GH2 in months. Panasonic et. al. are taking the format/ concept in the wrong direction, IMO. This is way more interesting. Too bad we can't record 4K onboard, but then again, I'm not so interested in shooting video with it myself. I'm kinda over that whole compact camera, jell-o shutter nonsense.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I think I'm getting myself one instead of the GH4. And I think I'm done with micro 4/3 altogether, actually haven't blown the dust off my GH2 in months. Panasonic et. al. are taking the format/ concept in the wrong direction, IMO. This is way more interesting. Too bad we can't record 4K onboard, but then again, I'm not so interested in shooting video with it myself. I'm kinda over that whole compact camera, jell-o shutter nonsense.
Click to expand...

I played with it at NAB for 10 minutes or so. Feels good / solid and has clean controls. I likie the direction of FF with bigass pixels.

Missed you there this year Mate :-(
 
Mike P. said:
Isn't it only $1600? Does it do any 4k internally? What ISO does it really start to breakdown at? It looks like even ISO3200 starts to blitz out a little.

I wonder what 409,600 looks like when recorded externally, directly off the sensor.
Click to expand...

Its going to be around $3400.
no 4k internally
 
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