Sony A7R III announced with 4K HDR

[Emanuel]

What does reliable AF mean? No need for selective focus... no shooter? *cough cough* :X

[Don Kotlos]

1 minute ago, jonpais said:

@Don Kotlos That’s cool! However, why must reliable AF preclude 10 bit? Why can’t we have both?

Oh I wish we did. 

2 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

What does reliable AF mean? No need for selective focus... no shooter? *cough cough* :X

If you need to fight over the camera settings to find something that works sometimes, then you know you don't have reliable AF  

[mkabi]

1 hour ago, jonpais said:

If your argument is just about the cost, what will you say when Sony releases an A7S III next year with 10 bit for the same price as the A7R III? Not saying it'll happen...

I don't know if it will happen, but there are high chances that it can have 4K/60p and 10bit.... and have the same price. There are a few features in the a7s ii that are not in the a7r ii and the prices were the same. One example is the 1080/120fps thats not in the a7r ii.... I mean.... there is the lower resolution sensor of the a7s ii too...........but you give some to take some....

[Emanuel]

5 minutes ago, jonpais said:

@Don Kotlos That’s cool! However, why must reliable AF preclude 10 bit? Why can’t we have both?

You beat me by just a few seconds... LOL

[mkabi]

5 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

What does reliable AF mean?

I know what unreliable AF is.... its Focus hunting and being off focus even after selecting what to focus on.

So, I'm assuming its the opposite of that....

[Emanuel]

14 minutes ago, Don Kotlos said:

If you need to fight over the camera settings to find something that works sometimes, then you know you don't have reliable AF  

 

10 minutes ago, mkabi said:

Focus hunting and being off focus even after selecting what to focus on.

 

Well, certain shooters have found their way... : P

PS: This always reminds me that I don't need to sleep with Miss Universe to be a real happy male... LOL ;-)

[Shirozina]

Sony release a high end stills camera with some video capability but astonishingly it's not a video orientated camera with some stills capability added on......................

[mkabi]

9 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Well, certain shooters have found their way... : P

I guess I was trying to be funny... the keyword is *trying*.... cause I was just answering your question (I also editted the post so it made more sense).

But here is a question for you... why do you have to find your way to reliable AF?

I would assume that everyone would want reliable AF straight out of the box... 

What if you bought a camera.... with this, that and this.... and you take it out of the box and start taking pictures and video... and everything turns out to be in monochrome (black and white)....

I'm sure you will have to find your way to taking color pictures and video - but wouldn't it make more sense to be in color straight out of the box (in the first place).... in fact, I'm sure most people will return it thinking that something is wrong with it.

[Emanuel]

2 minutes ago, mkabi said:

I guess I was trying to be funny... the keyword is *trying*.... cause I was just answering your question (I also editted the post so it made more sense).

But here is a question for you... why do you have to find your way to reliable AF?

I would assume that everyone would want reliable AF straight out of the box... 

What if you bought a camera.... with this, that and this.... and you take it out of the box and start taking pictures and video... and everything turns out to be in monochrome (black and white)....

I'm sure you will have to find your way to taking color pictures and video - but wouldn't it make more sense to be in color straight out of the box (in the first place).... in fact, I'm sure most people will return it thinking that something is wrong with it.

Indeed. Actually the world is not perfect. We need to adapt to be happy. There's no free lunch, no automatic mode for taking reliable pictures : D

Craft is learning. Better easy than harder but hey, I didn't invent the rules! The system, they exist like math. We know the equation or not. There's no middle term.

Like life, takes time to live. Once we get it, we understand the business. No more jerks to rip off the girl's underwear when we know better than anyone the color of her yellow short pants.

:-)

[kidzrevil]

56 minutes ago, joema said:

It shows the difference when you shoot 8-bit log then push the the colors hard in post. Of course 8-bit will degrade faster if it was captured in a flat profile. The question is how would the comparison look if the 8-bit side was *not* captured flat, then both sides were graded as best possible. It would likely look different but the 8-bit side would not have artifacts and banding. The 10-bit side might have more dynamic range due to the flat acquisition. But in that case it would be two different "looks", not one side with significant artifacts and one without.

Yup. 10 bit is overrated unless you are doing heavy grading i.e. vfx work. 8bit is more than plenty especially since the way people generally grade is by slapping a curve on the image and adjusting the levels. That is not an extreme grade by a long shot LOL. People are getting caught up in the more is better thing  so much they forget 8bit is an imperceptible 16.7 million shades of color and not 64 colors in a crayola crayon box

[thefactory]

2 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

64 colors in a crayola crayon box

If Sony only had 64 couolrs would 58 of them be different shades of green/yellow? 

[Shirozina]

11 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

Yup. 10 bit is overrated unless you are doing heavy grading i.e. vfx work. 8bit is more than plenty especially since the way people generally grade is by slapping a curve on the image and adjusting the levels. That is not an extreme grade by a long shot LOL. People are getting caught up in the more is better thing  so much they forget 8bit is an imperceptible 16.7 million shades of color and not 64 colors in a crayola crayon box

Agree but only when combined with a codec that doesn't suck the life out of the image. Biggest gain with the GH5 is the 4.2.2 / 150mbps vs Sony's  4.2.0 / 100mbps

[kidzrevil]

1 hour ago, thefactory said:

If Sony only had 64 couolrs would 58 of them be different shades of green/yellow? 

Yup but don’t worry. Someone will develop a LUT for it to transform those 58 shades of green into “true Canon colors” ??

57 minutes ago, Shirozina said:

Agree but only when combined with a codec that doesn't suck the life out of the image. Biggest gain with the GH5 is the 4.2.2 / 150mbps vs Sony's  4.2.0 / 100mbps

Absolutely ! Panasonic already had an awesome codec since the GH4. Im still surprised with how far I can push my g80 so I can only imagine how thick those files are !! Don’t sleep on SONY though man XAVC is no slouch neither. These companies are tech giants working in the film & broadcast industry for years. Their compression tech is extremely efficient.

[Emanuel]

58 or 55? :-D

[kidzrevil]

1 hour ago, Shirozina said:

Sony release a high end stills camera with some video capability but astonishingly it's not a video orientated camera with some stills capability added on......................

Lmao SHOCKER !

[Emanuel]

...which makes the 10-bit jewel one of the first ones to accurately be called hybrid... fairly ever ;-)

[joema]

On 10/25/2017 at 5:57 AM, cojocaru27 said:

i get it, but some people were expecting an s update today. now it's up in the air again. And gh5 seams the only viable option for video now.

The *only* viable option? I have shot hundreds of hours of documentary video on the A7RII and even *it* works very well. We also use the GH5 and do two-camera interviews with it and the A7RII. The GH5 is excellent but in the real world each has pros and cons. Interestingly both A7RII and GH5 share a feature the A7SII (and probably A7SIII) don't have: ability to shoot in a crop mode that gives 1.5x on the A7R series and 1.4x on the GH5. That is really handy because it's like a flawless tele-converter without changing lenses.

From actual hands-on field documentary work, the biggest A7RII issues are not the 8-bit 100 mbps codec or lacking 4k/60. It is things like this:

- Inability to rapidly switch between Super35 and full frame mode

- Slow boot up to fully operational status

- Intermittently laggy control input

- Cumbersome menu system with limited customization

- Poor button ergonomics and poor tactile feedback

- Poor battery life (although the battery grip on the A7RII fixes much of that)

- No 1080p/120

- Focus peaking could be better

For stills the biggest issue is incredibly slow writing rate to the SD card and almost non-existent multi-tasking during those long periods.

Most or all of these are addressed in the A7RIII. So I don't see the GH5 as "the only viable option", even though my doc team uses one.

I would much rather have Eye AF in video mode than a 10-bit codec. These are the differences between real world use vs comparing specs.

If you want to see informed, experienced commentary about the A7RIII and video, check out Max Yuryev's latest commentary. This is the difference between someone who owns and uses both GH5 and A7RII vs someone who looks at specs: 

 

[Emanuel]

Yeah, a7RII is a fine camera indeed... It doesn't matter if only 8-bit. Most part of time you won't need beyond anyways. It just depends on you... Needs follow you and your solutions follow them.

[Kisaha]

What Max is saying is that A7rII is a very bad camera for video. For anyone care mainly for video it is a waste of money, to buy a photo orientated camera (and it should be very good at that) 4-6 months before the video orientated camera is out.

The "industry" (from TV sets, to media, to everything) moves to HDR, which is 10bit in most standards (Dolby Vision is 12 bit, by the way), it is not hypothetical between 8 and 10, it has to be at least 10bit. All companies trying to "steal" with someway, Samsung has some amazing gaming monitors advertised as HDR ready, which isn't even close to even great normal monitors, HDR is the word right now, but cheap technology (like a 650$ 32" gaming monitor) ain't there yet, so companies are trying to steal the term, without delivering.

It is not GH5's fault, that the whole industry moves to HDR, and people truly like it (unlike 3D, which was a complete failure), eventually we all are going to move there, right now, my older generation cameras (and workflow) do the job just fine, and I am not moving everything to 10 bit just instantly, but I wouldn't like to invest on last generation's stuff from now on.

[IronFilm]

12 hours ago, EthanAlexander said:

To get 10 bit you need to pay:

• $1000 - Black Magic

Only $500 back when it was on sale! Wish the Pocket or Micro would go on sale again....

12 hours ago, EthanAlexander said:

And to get full frame 4K:

Don't care! Better off to just talk about S35 instead. 

10 hours ago, jonpais said:

Anyhow, it’s got less to do with cost than protecting their higher end products. I thought most here found that practice abhorrent, but it seems now they’ve got their defenders. 

Sadly :-(