A7RII initial thoughts and images

[Telecaster]

As far as I am aware…

Clearly.

-Dave-

[Manoli]

And no mirrorless camera has a powerful-enough battery for such a processor (since they've all emphasised small size at the expense of functionality) ... Unless you want to tether the camera to a power socket and run off mains power like a live-broadcast video camera

Haven't seen it yet, but reports say that the A7Rii can be USB powered which means you can run it (and charge it) off a Mophie ..

[chez]

Face recognition is for snap shooters and egotistical selfies. I don't need it. What I want is a single, movable square in the viewfinder, and a button to press which autofocuses the lens on the subject covered by the single square.

Does the A7RII have such a feature for all lenses that fit, with or without an adapter? If not, then another 'thumbs down'. 

Does any camera out there have that feature...If not I guess you are not taking photos?

[eronald]

J,

 It's simpler to say that AF is nowadays a mass-market necessity.

 Sony is in a bind for lenses, because lenses take more time and preparation to design and bring to market than bodies.

 Sony CAN make the Canon and Nikon lenses work well. If a company the size of Sony really puts its will to reverse engineer the competition's products, and compatibility is part of the camera's design brief rather than an afterthought, then they will succeed. This is electronics, it's been done time and time again. Look at how Leica can AF Hassy and Contax lenses. So, only legal obstacles can stop them, and IP issues are not really viewed the same way in Japan.

 I too think they will rev. the A7IIR into something more solid for next Photokina, the equivalent of a Canon "5D", with better batteries, contacts, very necessary weatherproofing , less compression, higher bit depth video out, cut a deal with Sigma to get them to sell some E mount full-frame lenses, and do some work to make legacy Canon and Nikon AF lenses work really well. What that will do to pricing is ... to be seen.


Edmund

This is the best show and tell of sony RII focus I've seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_5Cr-eDZEc

I believe the A7 style cameras will become Sony's mainstay.  I think right now they're trying to clear stock of A mounts, but for professional use (at least in the brief we work) we will need more.

Maybe like a super A7 with faster lenses, more lenses, much larger batteries and less compression on stills, much higher bit depth for video, full hdmi and usb contacts that are more robust and clean 10 bit 422 4k uncompressed through hdmi.

For fun, or for photographers that shoot static objects, especially the ones Chris and Ranier use for their work, the RII is professional, but for many other genres they are lacking.

BTW:   Sony 2.8 A mount professional zooms are $500 to $1,000 more than Canon, so maybe they're not clearing stock.

IMO

BC

[shadowblade]

Clearly.

-Dave-

You still haven't named the camera.

[Ray]

Does any camera out there have that feature...If not I guess you are not taking photos?

Can you be more precise and 'spell it out'? I'm having difficulty in understanding your point.

[shadowblade]

Can you be more precise and 'spell it out'? I'm having difficulty in understanding your point.

CDAF will do that, whether on an A7, D810 or 5D3.

It will just take 5 seconds to do so while it shifts back and forth trying to find the point of greatest contrast. The darker it gets, the longer it takes.

And the 'single square' you are asking for may be larger than the feature you are trying to focus on, so it may end up out of focus anyway.

[eronald]

I don't know whether it helps, but rumor is that the A7R2 face/eye  tracking is very good, with their own lenses, I assume. I can believe that, it's one specific set of filters to program into the DSPs, not like the myriad of little details and special cases needed to get general follow-focus working decently.

Edmund

[sanjaynarayan]

Yes, real photographers don't autofocus.  At least that's what I heard and thought for a long time and that thought echos through the cinema community today.

Then project briefs moved to fast moving subjects and yes you could manually focus, though for high pressured commercial work, we jumped through hoops to do it.  Focusing on T-marks on the ground, using small supplemental lighting for more luminance until we shot.

I had the lubrication taken down drastically on all my medium format cameras, so I could snap focus the ring, but film cameras had different focusing screens than the digital slrs.  Digital slrs give the impression that F 2.8 looks like F4, (though is still f2.  so manually focusing (with reliability an Canon, or Nikon) can fool you.

I could make a list of the best autofocus cameras and Nikon F5, D3, d4, d700, that until the 1dx outperformed canon 2 to 1.





http://www.russellrutherford.com/james_cowboy_brown_man_boy.m4v

Now with on sensor focusing, even face tracking it can be good, sometimes almost amazing, but usually for stills not as good as the best dslrs.

For lifestyle video the gh3 with face detection is good, sometimes amazing in a crowd if you set it up properly.  

The gh4 good for stills, lousy for video, the omd em-1 snaps focus as fast as any camera made for static or slow moving subjects, but for tracking it' kind of shuts down once you shoot quickly.

Same with the Canon 70d, amazing for motion imagery, especially lifestyle,where people are moving in a non predicable scene, but for stills it also shuts down and will get the first image but that's about it.

Now I've tested all A7 series except the RII and they're lacking if the subject moves.  

The RII may be better with fe lenses, though for our use FE lenses are too limited with the higher end zooms at F4.

The A mount zooms are 2.8 and more usef with the Sony adapter but not a reliable with FE lenses.

This is the best show and tell of sony RII focus I've seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_5Cr-eDZEc

I believe the A7 style cameras will become Sony's mainstay.  I think right now they're trying to clear stock of A mounts, but for professional use (at least in the brief we work) we will need more.

Maybe like a super A7 with faster lenses, more lenses, much larger batteries and less compression on stills, much higher bit depth for video, full hdmi and usb contacts that are more robust and clean 10 bit 422 4k uncompressed through hdmi.

For fun, or for photographers that shoot static objects, especially the ones Chris and Ranier use for their work, the RII is professional, but for many other genres they are lacking.

BTW:   Sony 2.8 A mount professional zooms are $500 to $1,000 more than Canon, so maybe they're not clearing stock.

IMO

BC

our first foray with A7s/metabones III/canon lenses combo on a paid video job was a disaster...camera freezing randomly etc...metabones IV since then
is better but since we use A7s only for motion, not stills, its all manual focus...we briefly tested the A7r but with similar results...so, with
some interest, i put the new A7rII to a quick test  at its launch in new delhi...af and IS, with native lenses, is on par with current dslrs...the 2 batis lenses
(85/f1.8 and 25/f2) are razor sharp...resolution and dr is up there with the 5ds/r and d800e...but the e series lenses are limited,yes... zooms are slow,
and yes, priced higher than similar canon/nikon...the price gap is even wider here in india...some other issues that need to be checked is over heating,
softness in fullframe 4k video, battery life....strangely enough the center of attention was an unmarked chinese(?) canon EF to Sony E adaptor with a canon 70-200 f2.8 II
L lens, its outer finish is like canon white lenses (like a thinner 1.4 extender without glass element)...the af with, atleast this lens, was pretty good...i was
told that this was the NEW Commlite adaptor...as for now, we will pick up the little brother Rx10 II !!...should cut well with the A7s...check out the S-Log/ Slo-mo
stuff others have posted on vimeo

sanjaynarayan.com

[shadowblade]

I don't know whether it helps, but rumor is that the A7R2 face/eye  tracking is very good, with their own lenses, I assume. I can believe that, it's one specific set of filters to program into the DSPs, not like the myriad of little details and special cases needed to get general follow-focus working decently.

Edmund

The A7rII has a hybrid AF system that uses both PDAF and CDAF. But it's only fast over the central portion of the frame, where PDAF sensors are in effect - towards the periphery, where there are no PDAF sensors, it's slow. You can't just point to any part of the image and have it lock on instantly. Which is pretty much the same as any camera out there.

[hjulenissen]

That's because fast CDAF, just like lagfree EVFs, are very processor-intensive. It takes a lot of processor power to track a running animal or moving vehicle using CDAF.

I don't believe this to be likely (cpu power being the main bottle-neck). We really have got lots of available processing power. If even better performance vs price/size/battery is needed, companies like Sony can do a fixed-function ASIC.

The problem with CDAF rather might be that you have a feedback loop (detect image features, move the focus, repeat) affecting the speed vs accuracy trade-off. Unlike PDAF, you get no hint of direction, meaning that you potentially have to do many discrete adjustements before a satisfactory sharp image can be captured. This means that you have to read out sensor data at a rapid rate, and you need to have low-latency lens mechanics. High framerate sensor readout _is_ difficult. Precision fast mechanics is (I would guess) difficult in small low-cost consumer devices.

As these cameras are sweeping the focus point and (at least partially) processing images for each position anyways, it would seem sensible to store all that data (assuming that storage space is cheap and storage bandwidth is sufficient) for focus stacking/refocusing/2.5d. I am not sure why that is not done today.

-h

[Torbjörn Tapani]

The A7rII has a hybrid AF system that uses both PDAF and CDAF. But it's only fast over the central portion of the frame, where PDAF sensors are in effect - towards the periphery, where there are no PDAF sensors, it's slow. You can't just point to any part of the image and have it lock on instantly. Which is pretty much the same as any camera out there.

Pretty much the same might be true. But I'll just quote a line from dpreview:  "399 focal plane phase-detect pixels across an area of the frame larger than any other full-frame camera out there."-Under the hood: A closer look at the Sony a7R II. That is pretty good in my book.

[shadowblade]

I don't believe this to be likely (cpu power being the main bottle-neck). We really have got lots of available processing power. If even better performance vs price/size/battery is needed, companies like Sony can do a fixed-function ASIC.

We have fast, powerful processors. Trouble is, they take lots of power to run at full speed - a typical laptop computer has many times the battery capacity of a camera, but still can't run on battery power for very long. Less-powerful processors take much less power, but aren't fast enough to do the job.

CDAF requires sensor data to be not only be processed many times a second into an image, but also for the images to be analysed and compared for contrast at the relevant location. This is much more than is required for PDAF. It's theoretically a better, more accurate and more adaptable (e.g. face detection, ability to use AI to track pre-determined targets) but requires much more processing power, so, thus far, has been very slow on mobile, non-tethered devices.

The problem with CDAF rather might be that you have a feedback loop (detect image features, move the focus, repeat) affecting the speed vs accuracy trade-off. Unlike PDAF, you get no hint of direction, meaning that you potentially have to do many discrete adjustements before a satisfactory sharp image can be captured. This means that you have to read out sensor data at a rapid rate, and you need to have low-latency lens mechanics. High framerate sensor readout _is_ difficult. Precision fast mechanics is (I would guess) difficult in small low-cost consumer devices.

This is why the processing power requirements are so high - the image needs to be processed many times a second, and the images compared. The same thing is needed for lagfree EVFs, which is why full-capability mirrorless cameras will need to be the same size (not necessarily weight or thickness) as current SLRs, not miniature camers the same size as Leica rangefinders.

As these cameras are sweeping the focus point and (at least partially) processing images for each position anyways, it would seem sensible to store all that data (assuming that storage space is cheap and storage bandwidth is sufficient) for focus stacking/refocusing/2.5d. I am not sure why that is not done today.

-h

Or stored in a buffer (say, 2s long) allowing a shot to be taken even after the event has taken place - very useful for action photography. On pressing the shutter in that mode, it'd just save the buffer to the card instead of taking a new shot.

[Ray]

CDAF will do that, whether on an A7, D810 or 5D3.

It will just take 5 seconds to do so while it shifts back and forth trying to find the point of greatest contrast. The darker it gets, the longer it takes.

And the 'single square' you are asking for may be larger than the feature you are trying to focus on, so it may end up out of focus anyway.

My comment on autofocusing using a single square and a dedicated button was not related to LiveView and CDAF. The D800E allows one to move a single square to a number of different locations in the viewfinder, using the multi-selector dial. However, the choice of locations is limited and so is the area within which one can move the focusing square.

For example, if one wants to focus on something in the extreme corner of the frame, one wouldn't be able to move the square to the corner of the viewfinder. One could move it as close as possible to the corner, then swing the camera, lock focus with the AF-ON button, then recompose. However, recomposing could affect autofocus accuracy, especially if one is using a wide aperture.

I get the impression that the A7RII offers a greater number of positions one can move the focussing square to, but I'm not certain about this and what the procedure is. With the D800E one can disengage the autofocusing function from the shutter button, and use a half-depressed shutter button to assess exposure in any area covered by the single focusing square, without changing the focussing, which is locked through use of another button.

I wonder if the A7RII has a similar feature and if so, does such a feature work consistently with different lenses attached via an adapter. I bet not. 

[hjulenissen]

We have fast, powerful processors. Trouble is, they take lots of power to run at full speed - a typical laptop computer has many times the battery capacity of a camera, but still can't run on battery power for very long.

The current-gen iPhones can do 11/14 hours of HD video according to Apple. They are significantly smaller than my DSLR (and FF MIILF systems, I think)
http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/technology/

Less-powerful processors take much less power, but aren't fast enough to do the job.

I hear your claim, but I don't think that you are correct. Do you have any references?

CDAF requires sensor data to be not only be processed many times a second into an image, but also for the images to be analysed and compared for contrast at the relevant location.

And my gut-feeling is that the processing is not the bottle-neck. Compared to e.g. the complex operations carried out in the video encoder to track motion at 60 fps, analyzing frames for high-frequency content sounds like a walk in the park.

How many multiplications/second (for lack of a better cost metric) do you believe that single-point CDAF of a 60fps image stream would realistically cost?

We can debate this back and forth, but unless anyone can contribute solid references, I guess that we won't be able to resolve our difference of opinion.

-h

[eronald]

You have to be crazy or really want to waste your time to get a body and then test your existing lenses one by one with various adapters until you secure a solution that is viable for each lens, or maybe write that lens off. Are professional photographers really that desperate and badly served by Canon and Nikon? If yes, then C and N have a serious problem.

Edmund

[spidermike]

You have to be crazy or really want to waste your time to get a body and then test your existing lenses one by one with various adapters until you secure a solution that is viable for each lens, or maybe write that lens off. Are professional photographers really that desperate and badly served by Canon and Nikon? If yes, then C and N have a serious problem.

Edmund

Well given that even the much-lauded A7Rii seems to be sub-optimal with fast moving subjects and not much better with super telephotos on even stationary subjects, I would say "You have to be crazy or really want to waste your time getting a A7Rii to photograph birds of prey while claiming it does not need adjustment when taking a picture of a tree'

[NancyP]

A7Rii has most potential as a studio / architecture camera or a landscape camera. Also it is an off-tripod camera for those manual focus fans with legacy or other manual focus lenses - no question that focus peaking is easier than live view + magnification. I might get a high-MP camera one of these days, to supercede or supplement the very nice Canon 6D, which fits my hand nicely and is a no-fuss camera for landscape, macro, night photography.

 I sure wouldn't want to mess with lots of MP for action / wildlife photography, nor do I think that the viewer really is looking for the degree of detail that a landscape photographer would like to show. Landscape photographers want to have the viewer feel as if they are stepping into a scene, a psychological possibility when viewing a still subject. Stop-action photography by its nature does not simulate reality in the same way, we don't see in "stop-action". What really counts in stop-action is the pose of the subject and its interaction with other individuals or objects in the scene. 18-20 MP works for that. Of course more MP can give a better chance to crop, but higher frame rate is lost, and the high frame rate is more useful for keeper shots.

[eronald]

A7Rii has most potential

---snip--------

Realized potential?



Edmund

[rainer_v]

A7Rii has most potential as a studio / architecture camera or a landscape camera. Also it is an off-tripod camera for those manual focus fans with legacy or other manual focus lenses - no question that focus peaking is easier than live view + magnification. I might get a high-MP camera one of these days, to supercede or supplement the very nice Canon 6D, which fits my hand nicely and is a no-fuss camera for landscape, macro, night photography

I just took the 35/1,4 zeiss today out of calumet and will give it back tomorrow. It doesnt fit in any of my camera sets.In generall i dont use this 'non shiftable' lenses for my paid jobs, or very rarely. I stay usually with shift lenses, all this set is still on canon mount and very similar to chris' setup. 17/24/canon tse , 35pc contax ,50 on mirex and 80&120 zeiss hartbleis, in addition to a canon 100-400 and a 12-24.  Nice setup for architecture so far and quite some weight in the bag.. i could still easily go back to canon, even i was tempted after the 5dsr, but there is still  gap in image quality between the a7r(1&2) and canon. too much for my taste to think seriously about it.
In addition i use occasionally for artwork my artek with the afi10/2.
But the a7rii give me - i could say for free- a kind of modern leica-m set (with top notch af - as long i stay with their fe lenses ). the tempting thing are the small lenses, not the bumpers as the 35/1,4 independent how goold they are or not.
The attraction is to have a small camera in my hand with some breathtaking sharp and small lenses with af, esp . this eye tracking thing. Unfortunately Sony doesnt see the chance completely to take over the old leica or olympus style. so they have till now only threee lenses which are in this style and quality. The 50/1,8, the 35/2,8 and probably the new batis 25. Even the batis 85 will be too large for my taste ( it should have f2,8) and than i will continue with my contax 90 or 85. This larger lenses should be additions, but at first sony should make a line with very small lenses with best quality and 2,8/3,5 or 4 as aperture. This is sexy, not lenses as the 35/1,4 or their 16-35mm.