Discussion of Sony A&RIII and the new Sony Sensor

[Michael Erlewine]

There is a fascinating discussion at Luminous Landscape:

Thread: A7rIII 70-80 MPx

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=109694.0

Scroll down to a post by BartvanderWolf

Here are some details on Nikon sensors, but they also have Canon, Sony, etc.

Nikon:
D3: saturation level = 50626 e-, with 8.4 micron pitch = 717 e- per square micron.
D3s: saturation level = 84203 e-, with 8.4 micron pitch = 1193 e- per square micron.
D3X: saturation level = 47765 e-, with 5.9 micron pitch = 1372 e- per square micron.
D4: saturation level = 118339 e-, with 7.2 micron pitch = 2282 e- per square micron.
D4s: saturation level = 128489 e-, with 7.3 micron pitch = 2411 e- per square micron.
D800: saturation level = 48818 e-, with 4.7 micron pitch = 2210 e- per square micron.
D800E: saturation level = 54924 e-, with 4.7 micron pitch = 2486 e- per square micron.
D810: saturation level = 78083 e-, with 4.9 micron pitch = 3252 e- per square micron.
D5: 

[Andrea B.]

Holy moly!! Wouldn't that be something sweet for those of us who like to capture detail? (Well, who doesn't?)
And if a 70-80MP sensor shows up in a Sony a7 body, can its appearance be far behind in a Nikon body?

I've read that even if one does not really need so many pixels, oversampling at X megapixels and downsizing to Y megapixels produces a better photo than simply shooting at Y megapixels in the first place. I suppose that is one of those experiments we should all perform to prove it to ourselves.

I've not before seen the data expressing number of electrons gathered per square micron. Very interesting. And given what I've seen with my D810, not surprising that it leads the pack on that particular measurement. That D810 has more headroom in the highlights than I have ever seen in any Nikon body yet. And I'm sure some Sony bodys can show similar high measurements.

[Michael Erlewine]

I would buy a Sony A7rII if it stored images in a lossless format. But best for me to wait for the next D810 successor, which is by far the best camera I have ever used, especially LiveView and particularly ISO 64.

[Andrea B.]

I thought Sony provided a lossless format update?

Interesting thing about the LCD on my D810 and a7R (first version) is that while both have the same resolution, Live View on the D810 seems better to me than on the a7R. There are a lot of factors that go into that like backlighting, refresh rate and so forth. So I do not know what particular factor seems lacking on the a7R monitor. But the a7R in Live View has a "swimmy, swarmy" appearance like gazillions of little tiny dots are rambling over the view - especially noticeable in dark areas. So in spite of focus peaking (which is a mixed bag), it is somewhat harder to focus in Live View on the a7R than on the D810. Live View on the D810 seems exceptionally clear and the swimmy-swarms are barely noticeable on it.

Added:  Michael I don't recall if you have ever used digital medium format? Have you ever rented a Phase One to experiment with?

[Jan Anne]

I would buy a Sony A7rII if it stored images in a lossless format.

It does, 14 bits lossless compressed RAW files.

[Andrea B.]

Thanks, JA. Did they offer that on any of the older models?

[simsurace]

Live View on the D810 seems exceptionally clear and the swimmy-swarms are barely noticeable on it.

But it sure took a long time for them to figure it out. It doesn't seem to be an easy thing to juggle all this data and stream it in a form that looks good.

Diffraction, after all, follows well-known laws of physics, so it can be done.

This is a common fallacy --- there are many physical laws that don't conserve information.

[Michael Erlewine]

It does, 14 bits lossless compressed RAW files.

Since when is this true? My understanding from Lloyd Chambers that it does NOT save in lossless?

[Michael Erlewine]

Added:  Michael I don't recall if you have ever used digital medium format? Have you ever rented a Phase One to experiment with?

I had a Mamiya RZ67 with a 33 MPx digital back and ultimately did not like it.

[Michael Erlewine]

Kimio Maki of Sony says:

KM: Sony RAW is compressed, not uncompressed. But if we're getting a lot of requests for it, we should make such a kind of no-compression raw. Of course we recognize that. But I cannot give you a guarantee when we're going to fix or not fix.

[Frank Fremerey]

What a camera system can do about diffraction is to offer very fine pitched focus series (bracketing) & stacking inside the camera software. I remember the first camera who did focus series for that purpose was the "Contax N" an early digital I am sure no one remembers( http://www.lonestardigital.com/n_digital.htm ), but there have been later cameras who could do in camera like the "Olympus OMD EM1" starting with Firmware 4.0: http://cameras.olympus.com/stack/en/


For the non physicists: This IS a measure against diffraction because it allows users to take photos at wider apertures (less diffraction) with the same DOF

[Michael Erlewine]

I did some checking and they now do have a lossless uncompressed format for the A7RII, that takes something like 86 MB a file, due the fact that they did not pack carefully. What they don't have is a lossless compressed file like Nikon.

[bjornthun]

I did some checking and they now do have a lossless uncompressed format for the A7RII, that takes something like 86 MB a file, due the fact that they did not pack carefully. What they don't have is a lossless compressed file like Nikon.

Also the 24mp A7II offers 14 bit lossless uncompressed raw.

Memory cards are big and hard drives cheap these days, so the file size is not a show stopper.

[Jan Anne]

Also the 24mp A7II offers 14 bit lossless uncompressed raw.

Memory cards are big and hard drives cheap these days, so the file size is not a show stopper.

Correct, would be nice though if Sony improved the write times of their camera in line with the increased file sizes.

Bought the Sandisk 280MB/s SD card for a7RII but didn't see any improvement over the 95MB/s, so it still takes ages for the 42MP 14 bits files to be written to card 

[bjornthun]

Correct, would be nice though if Sony improved the write times of their camera in line with the increased file sizes.

Bought the Sandisk 280MB/s SD card for a7RII but didn't see any improvement over the 95MB/s, so it still takes ages for the 42MP 14 bits files to be written to card 

With 24mp files I fortunately have no issues.