A7RII initial thoughts and images

[MatthewCromer]

You might get much faster AF in AF-C:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6884391759/sony-alpha-7r-ii-can-match-or-beat-dslr-low-light-af-performance

[Ray]

The ifixit teardown is out.

nice images.

Edmund

I feel as though I've just been watching a pornographic movie. 

Instead of the lady's clothes being ripped off, the camera has been ripped apart. 

[eronald]

I feel as though I've just been watching a pornographic movie. 

Instead of the lady's clothes being ripped off, the camera has been ripped apart. 

One does feel sorry for the perfectly good camera which got destroyed.

When I was a student, we asked HP for a chip for a teardown, they refused, we located a paperweight sample at a tradefair, sawed through the resin and put the chip under a microscope.

Edmund

[Jack Hogan]

Turns out to be a color management issue in Lloyd's workflow:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/56349315

Interesting.  Didn't think a single, minor, posterized channel could make such a mess by itself.  Looks like a triple witching of events.

[John Hollenberg]

Diglloyd seems to be highly excitable.

I can't help feeling that he and his punters would be better served if he took a deep breath and investigated possible cause before publication.

I emailed Joseph Holmes--a great and very careful landscape shooter--about the posterization being blamed on the a7r2 by Lloyd.  His reply, "He's wrong."  Joe has been working with the a7r (and now the a7r2) for quite some time and has nothing but good things to say about the a7r2 when used for daytime landscape photography... which will be my use.

[Telecaster]

I actually had kind of an ulterior motive in processing my A7rii cloud pic (posted earlier here). The RAW data has a narrow tonal/dynamic range, so I taffy-pulled it with glee to create the posted version…which is a bit more extreme than I typically go for. There might be some JPEG compression artifacts if you look real close, but the TIF is butter smooth.

-Dave-

[Tony Jay]

I own the A7R and now the A7R mark II (although only a couple of days) and often shoot landscape-type shots after dark which often require dramatic pulling up of the shadows, and modifying the highlights, for that matter, and have never seen posterization as a result. I never shoot JPEG so cannot comment about that.
It is true that I have not, yet, done any noteworthy shooting with the A7R mark II but I don't expect anything much different to the post-processing characteristics of raw files from the mark I.

Tony Jay

[J-KNIGHT]

Manoli
I am one of those prostituted bloggers Diglloyd bloggers.   I was a New York City ad pro for 40 years.  The cover and 5 inside photos of the book "Brotherhood" about 911 firemen in NYC photo are mine. 
Who are you?

[Manoli]

I am one of those prostituted bloggers Diglloyd bloggers.   

If you say so. I'd like to believe you but on the evidence you present so far – I can't.

J,
I suspect you've misread my post. Those 'quotes' came from the Diglloyd blog. They are not my words but those of his 'alleged' readers who write to him in quasi instant indignation.

The blog has since been edited, the 'prostituted' part asterisked and a couple of highlighted * I'm innocent * caveats inserted:  '.. nor should readers confuse my views with commentary I post ..'

His latest storm in a teacup has since been discredited by Iliah Borg and, as a poster above points out, Joseph Holmes. I'm sure there are others. A few days later, a rather lame justification is posted under the title ' Sony A7R II: General Commentary'. A save-face backtrack if ever there was one.

There are favourable reviews on this site and others, none without measured criticism and observations. To quote, and by inference of editorial responsibility, sling aspersions doubting the integrity of other reviewers, in the manner that he did, is - I'll put it diplomatically – lamentable.

I'm personally not interested in either Chambers or his blog and, IMO, he'd be wiser to have his own 'forum' where his followers could both discuss their feelings and vent their anger. It would at least dispel any doubts as to authenticity.

The A7RII is an interesting camera, no doubt there will be hiccups, firmware upgrades and feature requests, but,  as I said above:
Time to call time on his self-serving style of sensationalism.
YMMV.

[J-KNIGHT]

Manoli
The first two quotes from the Diglloyd blog you listed are mine.
Get a copy of the book "Brotherhood" and check the credits.

[J-KNIGHT]

Brotherhood Book  Jim Knight  from a Google search.
"All elements of the book's creation have been handled by a large number of creative professional on a pro-bono basis, and the initial printing and distribution has been funded by American Express.  In addition, more than 60 professional photographers donated their services.  Leading photographers who have participated include Albert Watson, Mark Seliger, Mary Ellen Mark, Christen Within, and Jim Knight."

[eronald]

J,

  The pro Sony video cameras seem ok for real life conditions. I expect Sony will release a ruggedized A7IIR.

  As for all that other crap - XLR, HDMI, SDI, USB  etc someone is going to have to bite the bullet and create a single tough and fast digital bus, that chains externally  with an iron-clad weatherproofed shielded connector that cannot get pulled out. A new opto connector could handle any bandwidth.  It's impossible to always have the right cables and adapters for each device, and these cameras are now looking like intensive care patients with tubes coming out of their ...  

 For now, the presence of solid connectors is one big argument for buying an expensive model ... this is ridiculous.

Edmund

To begin with I will most likely buy the A7RII.   I believe mirrorless is here to stay and will only get better.

I don't hammer nails with a camera, but sometimes it feels like it.*



I shot this session with 1d series Canons and this image was the D700 Nikon, which is deadly on focus and the beauty of larger cameras is the batteries seem to last forever.

Will a RII do this?   That's the question for shooting moving subjects in harsh conditions.

Michael's review pretty much says it all, though once he uses it for a year, I wonder if the original thoughts will hold.

Honestly the Sony won't do anything I can't do now with the cameras I own today, but  it takes two cameras two do what this camera could potentially do with a little help on the video side.

Saying that, I think were just at the starting line of what mirrorless can offer.

I don't know if $3,200 is a magic number in the price of still cameras, or that's a real number, but I would pay a lot more for more robust and refined tech.

I'd love to see real full size HDMI (It fits on a Pana GH3), and lemo connectors for usb, with mini xlr's not a gizmo that goes on top of a hotshoe.  It will get in the way of a good cage.

I'd also love to see them put new mounts on their series 2.8 zoom a mount lenses, so you'd get exactly the same functionality as the FE lenses.  Maybe you do with the adapter, though the test's I've seen showed some hunting.

And when Sony makes new primes, take a look at their sibling Olympus.  Oly has some small 4/3 lenses that you pull the focus ring back to go manual it becomes a mechanical focusing lens, rather than fly by wire.

And now the real wish list.   Use that right angle grip for a video processor, or media, or added video processing to get to a hefty 10 bit ProRes file or xlr connectors or something other than just batteries.

For some reason the Japanese seem to loathe liscense other people's stuff like ProRes (though they do offer a card for the F5).

If Sony wants to rock it on moving imagery, make it a touch screen and put in a connector for a hard wired second lcd with touch screen and full use.

So I guess I want a pro RII and I think it can make a great motion camera with the 5 axis stabilization or

IMO

BC


P.S.  I don't know anything about digital lloyd, but there is something wrong with that photo.  Maybe the sensor stabilization was on and it was correcting one way as the water was moving another way, or as some say the processing.

I think it's a rare thing on any camera and looks like the perfect storm which is rare, but time will tell.

[billy]

Has anyone tried the canon 85mm 1.2 II lens on the a7rII yet? Wondering about AF.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I am with Ronald on this one, a real industry quality optical bus, instead of a lot of half baked solutions.

Best regards
Erik

J,

  The pro Sony video cameras seem ok for real life conditions. I expect Sony will release a ruggedized A7IIR.

  As for all that other crap - XLR, HDMI, SDI, USB  etc someone is going to have to bite the bullet and create a single tough and fast digital bus, that chains externally  with an iron-clad weatherproofed shielded connector that cannot get pulled out. A new opto connector could handle any bandwidth.  It's impossible to always have the right cables and adapters for each device, and these cameras are now looking like intensive care patients with tubes coming out of their ...  

 For now, the presence of solid connectors is one big argument for buying an expensive model ... this is ridiculous.

Edmund

[GLJ]

Thanks for the link - I'd trust Iliah Borg and his expertise far more than Chambers' fanaticism.
Looks as though he's just been 'hoisted by his own petard'.

Yes, thanks for the link. When it comes to looking at Raw data, Iliah does seem to know his stuff (even if its often pretty tough to work out exactly what he's thinking  )
And on that note, later on in that thread, someone says:
"Images from any camera can have out-of-gamut colors on colorspace compression"
To which Iliah replies:
"Right. But on the Lloid's example the problem exists even before that. Raw data is already posterized"

Can someone explain to me the relevance of that statement?

[eronald]

There's an A7R2 and 5DsR image quality and noise (second page) comparison that has just gone up..
It has some real world images.
The two cameras seem close.
Anyway, images are better than words.


http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Sony_Alpha_A7r_II/outdoor_resolution.shtml
http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Sony_Alpha_A7r_II/noise.shtml

Edmund

[hjulenissen]

The pro Sony video cameras seem ok for real life conditions. I expect Sony will release a ruggedized A7IIR.

Their cellphone division seems fixated on delivering water/dust-resistant models, while their (consumer) camera division is not. I am really hoping for an RX100-rugged.

As for all that other crap - XLR, HDMI, SDI, USB  etc someone is going to have to bite the bullet and create a single tough and fast digital bus, that chains externally  with an iron-clad weatherproofed shielded connector that cannot get pulled out.

I have got some replies to this.

#1:

#2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface) would seem to cover a lot of ground except the rugged part. Perhaps a rugged version of thunderbolt?

#3: The luxury of having XLR connectors have alway been at a significant price premium over having rca connectors or even having an integrated microphone (usually with AGC always on). The marketers simply figure what the consumer needs/wants, then price anything else at a large premium.

-h

[Manoli]

"Right. But on the Lloid's example the problem exists even before that. Raw data is already posterized"
Can someone explain to me the relevance of that statement?

From a quick read of the thread, and Iliah Borg's comments in particular, the problem was principally twofold.

1
It was underexposure of the red channel ( actually clipping of the red ch to zero). Using a polarizer deep blue waters can exceed the Adobe RGB gamut. In this shot, had he used a CC40M magenta filter, it would have helped to bring blue and red channel in balance with green channel - with a magenta filter nearly a two stop boost of the red channel would have been possible.

2
Exporting in Lr with relative colormetric instead of converting to sRGB in Ps using a perceptual transform (which compresses the out of gamut colours).

Lifted from the dpr thread …

3
It can be  seen in RawDigger is that he drove with semi-mechanical shutter which halves the bit resolution in the readout. Well documented, should be avoided at base ISO and ISO200. ISO400 and up it makes no difference, the noise is much higher than the lowest quantization level.

4
As to profiles resulting in posterisation; the profiles I use at the raw conversion stage can't cause posterisation as they are simple matrix transforms, and the software does not clip. Still, the problem is there, but of course not as dramatic as with uncontrolled transform to AdobeRGB.

-
Just my quick take.
Perhaps one of the colour gurus or Iliah could comment ?

[eronald]

No comment

E.

[mcbroomf]

From a quick read of the thread, and Iliah Borg's comments in particular, the problem was principally twofold.

1
It was underexposure of the red channel ( actually clipping of the red ch to zero). Using a polarizer deep blue waters can exceed the Adobe RGB gamut. In this shot, had he used a CC40M magenta filter, it would have helped to bring blue and red channel in balance with green channel - with a magenta filter nearly a two stop boost of the red channel would have been possible.

2
Exporting in Lr with relative colormetric instead of converting to sRGB in Ps using a perceptual transform (which compresses the out of gamut colours).

Lifted from the dpr thread …

3
It can be  seen in RawDigger is that he drove with semi-mechanical shutter which halves the bit resolution in the readout. Well documented, should be avoided at base ISO and ISO200. ISO400 and up it makes no difference, the noise is much higher than the lowest quantization level.

4
As to profiles resulting in posterisation; the profiles I use at the raw conversion stage can't cause posterisation as they are simple matrix transforms, and the software does not clip. Still, the problem is there, but of course not as dramatic as with uncontrolled transform to AdobeRGB.

-
Just my quick take.
Perhaps one of the colour gurus or Iliah could comment ?

The semi-mechanical shutter (assuming it means EFC) doesn't change the bit depth, that happens with silent shutter, LENR or 30+ second bulb exposures and a bracketing + continuous shooting mode.  I wonder if the poster indeed meant that Lloyd used silent mode, or if he misunderstood the limitation (ie EFC OK, silent mode = 12 bits).