Sony Introduces a7R IV

Scott Fairbairn wrote:Who is refuting their findings? I didn't say that, I only said that I haven't noticed it. It could be happening and I didn't notice, or I'm not using it in such a way as to cause it. Either way, I've not been bothered by it with the A9, but I have noticed it with other cameras.

OK then. I guess it's fair to say then that lag could happen, as Tony Northrup had found out.

DChan wrote:

Primus wrote: I have not watched the video and I do not wish to either because it will not change anything for me. ..

Then I wonder why you responded to the issue, i.e., lag could happen, I brought up (after DOglesby had). Just to tell the world that your camera works well for you?? OK.

OK I will bite again.....

It is to illustrate an issue that comes up so often in such discussions. 

You have no skin in the game because you do not own a Sony camera and by all indications you do not intend to buy one. I do because not only have I used these cameras but also intend to buy the latest offering. Hence my response to your post. 

An 'expert' did some testing under 'extreme' conditions and found a 'flaw' in the camera which somebody like me (an amateur, for sure) has not noted or been bothered by in extensive use for over two years. What are the chances then that the average person who buys it will be so severely handicapped by this deficiency as to render the camera either useless or otherwise significantly limited in performance? 

My point was that very often people who test these things under 'not average shooting conditions' will find something wrong with a camera or a lens that may not affect the use of the same by most people under normal conditions. Hence it does not matter what Northrup found because I have not and it is therefore irrelevant to me. I never refuted his findings or said no absolutely cannot happen, just that I have not seen it happen. It then seems to me that the 'lag' is really a very minor event that will not affect the images for most people and therefore should not prevent people from buying the camera if they like the rest of the package.

Regards,

Pradeep

Primus wrote:

DChan wrote:

Primus wrote: I have not watched the video and I do not wish to either because it will not change anything for me. ..

Then I wonder why you responded to the issue, i.e., lag could happen, I brought up (after DOglesby had). Just to tell the world that your camera works well for you?? OK.

OK I will bite again.....

It is to illustrate an issue that comes up so often in such discussions. 

You have no skin in the game because you do not own a Sony camera [snip]

Sounds like you have difficulty in comprehension.
If you have no interest in listening to other people's opinions, don't be surprised that other people do the same to yours.
Thank you for your time.

Jared polin has a little review up now with a link to raw files.
https://youtu.be/SVK99YoAL2E

DChan wrote:

Primus wrote:

DChan wrote:

Primus wrote: I have not watched the video and I do not wish to either because it will not change anything for me. ..

Then I wonder why you responded to the issue, i.e., lag could happen, I brought up (after DOglesby had). Just to tell the world that your camera works well for you?? OK.

OK I will bite again.....

It is to illustrate an issue that comes up so often in such discussions. 

You have no skin in the game because you do not own a Sony camera [snip]

Sounds like you have difficulty in comprehension.
If you have no interest in listening to other people's opinions, don't be surprised that other people do the same to yours.
Thank you for your time.

Let's keep it friendly folks, no need to for antagonistic language!

It has already been established that Tony Northrup's a7R4 was faulty as were several other reviewers cameras at the press event.  Let's wait until true production cameras are out in the field before we draw any real conclusions.

With that out of the way, the best case on an EVF is lag of 1/refresh rate.  So if an EVF has 120 frames per second, the lag can not be shorter than 1/120s.  If there is viewfinder blackout (as there is on most mirrorless cameras and ALL DSLRs), it is much harder to compensate for this.  In a camera like the a9 where there is no blackout it you actually compensate for it automatically just by properly tracking the subject and perheps leading it ever so slightly.  But if there is blackout this is much harder to do.  On a DSLR, there is blackout and often much longer blackout than on a mirrorless camera due to the mirror going up and down.  We have naturally adapted to this over the years.  But what an optical viewfinder on a DSLR does not have is image lag in the viewfinder.  That's the main difference and it is one that anyone can overcome with practice but if there is no blackout, you literally learn to overcome it in your first shooting session.

As interesting as the A7R4 appears to be, I can't see upgrading from the A7R3 unless the AF has taken a significant step up. I haven't seen any reviews using the camera for action yet?

Maybe it’s just me, but watching 15 minute videos to get information that I could read in a minute I find tedious. However, that seems to be the norm today.

Any comments about when enough is enough mega pixels for FF and when you need to move to medium format?

Wildflower-nut wrote:Any comments about when enough is enough mega pixels for FF and when you need to move to medium format?

Just as long as manufacturers can add more pixels to a new sensor without creating more noise or worse case the same amount of noise as the previous generation of sensors then they'll keep adding pixels. In my mind its cell phones which keeps the mega pixel race marching on. Cell phones have very small sensors where noise is a huge issue. Lots of cell phone photos are taken in poor to very low light where noise makes many of these photos unusable due to the noise.  So the research is being done for the cell phone sensor (which is a bigger money maker than camera sensors) and large sensors benefit ending up with high megapixel sensors that have lower noise. The rate of change/development in new cell phones continues at a very high rate because the stakes are very high in a very competitive market.

Wildflower-nut wrote:Any comments about when enough is enough mega pixels for FF and when you need to move to medium format?

I forget whose video I saw it, but apparently using the 16 image stack feature will eat up nearly 2 gigabytes of card space. Sony needs to do some serious work on developing a lossless compressed raw file if that is the case. 

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

Wildflower-nut wrote:Any comments about when enough is enough mega pixels for FF and when you need to move to medium format?

I forget whose video I saw it, but apparently using the 16 image stack feature will eat up nearly 2 gigabytes of card space. Sony needs to do some serious work on developing a lossless compressed raw file if that is the case. 

Yeah that's about right 16 shots at 125MB each = 2GB

Shooting in compressed (lossy) you would pretty much cut that in half.

The crazy thing is that the Fuji GFX 100 100 megapixel, 16 bit capture lossless compressed files are smaller than the 61megapixel Sony 14bit
uncompressed RAWs.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

Wildflower-nut wrote:Any comments about when enough is enough mega pixels for FF and when you need to move to medium format?

I forget whose video I saw it, but apparently using the 16 image stack feature will eat up nearly 2 gigabytes of card space. Sony needs to do some serious work on developing a lossless compressed raw file if that is the case. 

Yeah that's about right 16 shots at 125MB each = 2GB

Shooting in compressed (lossy) you would pretty much cut that in half.

The crazy thing is that the Fuji GFX 100 100 megapixel, 16 bit capture lossless compressed files are smaller than the 61megapixel Sony 14bit
uncompressed RAWs.

EJ, is there a logical reason why Sony wouldn't provide lossless compression? It seems idiotic and tone deaf.

DOglesby wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

Wildflower-nut wrote:Any comments about when enough is enough mega pixels for FF and when you need to move to medium format?

I forget whose video I saw it, but apparently using the 16 image stack feature will eat up nearly 2 gigabytes of card space. Sony needs to do some serious work on developing a lossless compressed raw file if that is the case. 

Yeah that's about right 16 shots at 125MB each = 2GB

Shooting in compressed (lossy) you would pretty much cut that in half.

The crazy thing is that the Fuji GFX 100 100 megapixel, 16 bit capture lossless compressed files are smaller than the 61megapixel Sony 14bit
uncompressed RAWs.

EJ, is there a logical reason why Sony wouldn't provide lossless compression? It seems idiotic and tone deaf.

My guess is that Sony wants high FPS and compression slows everything down.

Mike in O wrote:

DOglesby wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

Wildflower-nut wrote:Any comments about when enough is enough mega pixels for FF and when you need to move to medium format?

I forget whose video I saw it, but apparently using the 16 image stack feature will eat up nearly 2 gigabytes of card space. Sony needs to do some serious work on developing a lossless compressed raw file if that is the case. 

Yeah that's about right 16 shots at 125MB each = 2GB

Shooting in compressed (lossy) you would pretty much cut that in half.

The crazy thing is that the Fuji GFX 100 100 megapixel, 16 bit capture lossless compressed files are smaller than the 61megapixel Sony 14bit
uncompressed RAWs.

EJ, is there a logical reason why Sony wouldn't provide lossless compression? It seems idiotic and tone deaf.

My guess is that Sony wants high FPS and compression slows everything down.

That seems like a logical reason. Sony seems to do a lot of things right, but then miss the boat on others. 

Not sure it has anything to do with frame rate vs compression. Certainly every other manufacturer has figured out how to get high frame rates with lossless compression from often the same sensors that's in Sony cameras. I think tone deaf is a better description. They could at the very least give the user a choice...

E.J. Peiker wrote:Not sure it has anything to do with frame rate vs compression.  Certainly every other manufacturer has figured out how to get high frame rates with lossless compression from often the same sensors that's in Sony cameras.  I think tone deaf is a better description.  They could at the very least give the user a choice...

Perhaps it's an issue with licensing a compression algorithm? Though it's hard to imagine that Sony couldn't negotiate a favorable deal. Perhaps it's pride that stands in the way of licensing it. Remember Sony's memory stick that was the only type of memory card supported in Sony's products?

Anyway, not making excuses. It's way overdue that they introduce lossless compression but there could be many reasons for the situation...

Joerg

Joerg Rockenberger wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:Not sure it has anything to do with frame rate vs compression.  Certainly every other manufacturer has figured out how to get high frame rates with lossless compression from often the same sensors that's in Sony cameras.  I think tone deaf is a better description.  They could at the very least give the user a choice...

Perhaps it's an issue with licensing a compression algorithm? Though it's hard to imagine that Sony couldn't negotiate a favorable deal. Perhaps it's pride that stands in the way of licensing it. Remember Sony's memory stick that was the only type of memory card supported in Sony's products?

Anyway, not making excuses. It's way overdue that they introduce lossless compression but there could be many reasons for the situation...

Joerg

It's probably the same reason that they haven't really addressed what is one of the very worst menu structures among all camera manufacturers or they are now the only camera manufacturer that doesn't offer focus bracketing/stacking.  They simply do not prioritize programming tasks and seem to value primarily hardware innovation.

One thing I failed to mention earlier, gone is the gray AF point in the viewfinder that you can't see half the time!

And one that I just learned that I have been asking for since the original a7 cameras, we can finally save the entire state of the camera to an SD card, so when your camera gets serviced and even if major components are replaced, you can quickly get your customizations back.  This is one thing that only Sony cameras was missing.

Fairly thorough review.  Yes he's a Sony ambassador but he does mention some areas that aren't as good as hoped and the AF is not quite as good for tracking as the a9 but that does not mean it's bad.  The a9 is better than a D5 at this point so being a step behind the a9 isn't a bad thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekVVHKiBMiU

He also goes into all of the new menu items.