The Sony A7s is making a lot of buzz on the internet right now for its insane ability to push ISO high and basically see in the dark! Sony released a demo video on the Youtube channel SonyHowTo for us all to watch. To be honest, the results are impressive.
The video starts off at 1600 ISO then, it works it way to an impressive 409,600 ISO. When the video first starts up, you can barely make out what is going on in the scene because it is so dark. Shortly into it, you start recognizing a fire is going. Then, just a little after that, you start seeing an ocean view in the background. By the end of the video, it is almost as if you just fast forwarded from 1am darkness into 6am sunrise (minus the beautiful red and orange sun). If you watch everything in 1080p at full screen, you can really see the detail and noise start to show.
We can see quite clearly there is a LOT of noise at the end. This would never be acceptable for most projects that people work with. But, considering the ISO is set all the way at 409,600, it is quite impressive.
The price for this new camera still hasn't been released yet but rumors are going around that it will be a pretty penny. B&H does have the Sony A7s listed currently. We are able to view the specs of what is to come and get an even better idea of the camera.
"Expand your still and movie capabilities with the ultra-high sensitivity range from ISO 50 to 409,600 for still images and ISO 200 to 409600 for movies."
What do you think about the Sony A7s? Will it be added to your bag or are you going to stay away from it?
[via SonyHowTo]
![[Gear] Sony Reveals NEX-FS700, '4K Ready' and 240fps Camera Body](https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/small-16-9/s3/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/fs700-featured.jpg)
Its coming along but who wants their video to look like an 8bit show? too many pixels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlxCSrdhyW8&feature=player_embedded
Well that is really disappointing....
But not entirely surprising.
How come?
Common issue with cameras like this. I say "like this" loosely because it's kind of a new design, but SLR-style cameras have had problems with rolling shutter in the past.
What's the big deal with incorporating a global shutter? Seems like market driven rather than technology limited to me.
Now we know why all the shots in the original Sony introduction video were locked down, with no camera movement. :-)
The noise performance at 409600 iso is very impressive. I'd like to see what it can do with a 50mm f/1.2. I also wonder what the moonlight conditions were for this video. I've gotten some good results in the past just using my C100 with a 50mm 1.4, but I had to drop the shutter to 1/20th in order to get enough light at 40,000 iso.
That'll be totally unusable in real life edits. It'll be grainy and noisy!
I don't know what you're talking about. That is perfectly usable when needed. Not your first choice, obviously, but for as little light as there is, that does just fine. In fact, in a situation as dark as this, you're not going to be shooting that high anyway, because you lose all sense of how dark it is. If you were actually using this in a real life edit, you'd be picking ISO 51200 or perhaps even ISO 25600 to convey the lighting and feel of this setting/time.
Are you trying to film a Planet Earth-type documentary in HD with the crispest of scenes? No. For what this camera will typically be used for, the viewers of such videos will not even notice the slight addition of grain.
ISO 1600 would be totally unusable *LOL*
Very impressive. If you dont mind a fair bit of grain you can make night look like day right there!
HILARIOUS !!!
That is truly and by all means the most deceptive and insidious "low-light touting" video I've ever seen. It starts out at deliberately underexposing the scene and then by cranking up the ISO comes into reasonable territory. This is NOT a depiction of practical low-light capability since the scene in real life was in no way as dark as depicted in the first place.
If you consider that the scene is "properly exposed" (highly subjective concept with this kind of scene) at ISO 204800, then its light value is approximately -2, which really is pretty dark. It might be too dark to autofocus, and your eyes won't see much more than the ISO 25600 example.
I agree completely. I find it very interesting that the flames themselves never change exposure as the ISO level is changed dramatically. The fire pit should have blown out at some point easily and the flames should have had a much stronger influence on the surroundings as the gain went up. As the gain goes from 6400 on the flames would have illuminated the man's back considerably, I know this because I have shot this same type of scene using my FS700 at 3200 ISO and while its may be a tad noise it works great when you want a candle flame or lantern, or fire to illuminate a scene and characters. And the flame dances on their faces and body clearly. In this scene at ISO 102400 the man enters the frame and turns his back to the fire and yet the light of the fire barely registers on his back if at all. This would just not be the case. If this were truly how the camera treated the scene then it would actually be useless to me as the high ISO, 3200 in my case on the FS700 is how I allow a candle of other small flame to become a key light in a scene.
OBVIOUSLY this demo is biased ... it was produced by the company that produces the product but it still gives us interesting info.
The way I took this "demo" is that they showed us the ISO many DSLRs are stuck using. I know that on my 5DMkII 6400 is the top I would ever use as the expanded ISO range (capped at a measly 25600) is just a noisy mess and even then, I don;t like shooting at 6400.
It's kind of like a "Here's what you camera can do ... now see what we can do!" type of message.
I'd like to see some pixel peeping comparison shots at these ISO settings to see how clean the images are at the higher end of the ISO range but if ISO 102400 is comparable to 3200 on my 5DMkII in terms of noise then I'd be very impressed ... that would be 5 more stops of light!
Why does the fire not blow out at higher ISOs? It should look like a white blast furnace at the upper settings. Something funky there...
They probably applied some custom curves.
Not the most PC friendly demo. ;-)