Sony's just-announced a7R II mirrorless camera is looking to carve out a serious niche in the market, utilizing a brand-new 42-megapixel (7952×5304) full-frame back-illuminated CMOS sensor and offering on-board 4K UHD video recording.
The a7R II's 4K implementation uses XAVC S encoding at a bit rate of up to 100 Mbps, and filmmaker-friendly features include Picture Profile, S-Log2 Gamma and S-Gamut, timecode, and clean HDMI out. Sony said it had improved the amount of light collected by the new sensor through a "gapless on-chip lens design" and an "anti-reflective coating on the surface of the sensor's glass seal," allowing it to offer an expanded ISO range that peaks at 102400. The a7s, also a lust object for filmmakers, beats that with a high ISO of 409600, owing to larger photosites on a lower-resolution sensor—but the a7s does not record UHD video internally.
The a7R will shoot in two modes: in Super 35mm crop mode, the camera oversamples its 4K image from a region of the sensor with about 15 megapixels (5168×2912), or 1.8x as many pixels as UHD (3840×2160), to reduce moiré and aliasing without pixel-binning; in full-frame mode, the full width of the 35mm sensor is used to create the 4K image. Many users are expecting that the full-frame 4K mode will seriously reduce the visibility of rolling-shutter artifacts. We'll see.
Sony released this sample of 4K video from the a7R II.
The camera body is built from magnesium alloy for sturdiness and has a new XGA OLED viewfinder with a double-sided aspherical lens for a 0.78x magnification factor. For monitoring, Sony introduced the CLM-FHD5, a five-inch LCD monitor with peaking, false-color and S-Log display assist options. The a7R II also has a five-way image-stabilization system that will help address rotational shake, or roll, in video recording.
What's missing? Well, the a7R II will never be the low-light king. That honor remains with the a7s, which trades resolution (its sensor is only 12 megapixels) for big gains in sensitivity. It'll never be your slow-motion camera, and it won't do 60p UHD, either—the UHD recording is limited, unfortunately, to 24p, 25p, and 30p.
In related news, Sony said its expanding line of alpha-mount glass now includes 12 full-frame lenses, with the number expected to climb to 20 by early 2016.
Sony says the a7R II will ship in August for a price of about $3,200.
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Wow… I can’t wait and see what they do with A7s update. I would get this to match with my A7s. However, I going to wait for A7s 2 update.
I’m starting to think that there isn’t going to be an a7s II (which is not necessarily a bad thing)
The a7R II seems like a combination of the a7R high resolution and the a7S video capabilities. It’s the evolution of both cameras.
It looks like Sony are not cutting any corners with this one.. If the a7R II is what everyone’s hoping it would be, I can tell they’re going to make a big dent in Canon / Nikon’s DSLR sales.
Canon and Nikon’s lack of innovation is to blame (ie. still no 4K, no decent codecs, no high frame rates, no focus peaking, low dynamic range…). Don’t they know the tale of Blackberry?! 😉
Let´s get this out of the way first: I strongly prefer Sony digital cinema cameras, over any other video manufacturer. But the fact is, no manufacturer attempts, or even wants, to make the perfect camera, simply because it would be the last camera they ever sold.
Regarding this outstanding piece of craftsmanship, I have but a single objection: For such an amazing sensor, (and a very pleasing gamma curve and color matrix indeed), to be matched with a bitrate of 100Mb/s is truly
cringe-inducing.
So, as I see it, internal recording means either the camera records a rather meager All-I footage, or (as in this case) a highly-compressed IPB codec suffering from the naturally arising drawbacks of temporal compression schemes. No word about chroma subsampling on XAVC S, either, but I´d wager it´s 4:2:0.
Then, external recording becomes more a need than an option, considering the professional requirements of a customer paying over 3000usd for a camera. Yet, this option pushes the operator against the OTHER major shortcoming this camera has: An 8bit HDMI output, which is barely acceptable for HD, and a nightmare for 4K post-production.
Now,recording a 600Mb/s 4:2:2 XAVC-i is a much preferrable solution. So is
externally recording 4K 10-bit 422 from an uncompressed HDMI source, or
getting 12-bit RAW 4k output. But the point is, Sony ALREADY has a camera that can do just that: It is called the FS7, and retails for 8 grand (which is amazingly cheap considering what it does).
What you really are getting with the A7R II, is a professional still
photography camera, that lets you get an amazing-looking 4k footage,
provided you don´t mess too much with it in post. If you want more than
that, you will have to buy a dedicated digital cinema camera.
Even so, I still believe that spending over 3000usd for the body and at
least another 2000usd for an external recorder should get you something more than an 8-bit video file, much more so in a 4k pipeline.
For instance, I´d much rather be purchasing the A7II, which is an HD-only camera, if a 10 or 12 bit output were available for it. Pixels aren´t everything. Good pixels are!
You’re correct, which means for 3000 bucks you can have a Ursa Mini 4K, that, if you don’t want the headache of raw, will shoot Prores 4: 4:4 at a much higher bitrate, Color grading will be much much better than with that sony. If you are into narratives, since both cam, the sony and the Ursa are the same price, it’ s a no brainer. You’ll have to buy lenses for both. The sony will be better in low light, but by definition narratives are controlled environment, so it’s not an issue. The sony will be for sports, documentaries but not for film.
PHILIPPE;
In paper, it should be as you say… but the jury is still out on that. In my experience, Blackmagic products are great… ON PAPER. I´ve worked with several different Blackmagic products (both cameras and recorders), and I´ve always regretted it.
The two major objections to their cameras are the low quality of their sensors (Bad S/N ratio, marked amount of color noise) and their almost nonexistent Quality Control and/or Tech Support. The new 4,6k is a new roll of the dice, since it´s a new sensor, and at least they´ve had the common sense to offer a viewfinder this time.
If the point would be getting a video-only camera, I´d much rather fork over an extra 2000usd to get the FS7, than getting stuck with the Ursa.
It´s telling, however, that a third-rate company is actually offering functions you still can´t get in Pro Video manufacturer´s DSLRs, at a fraction of the price.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on one thing, though: Sony simply isn´t being generous enough.
Yet the comparison between a 5000usd Ursa and a 5000usd DSLR+External Recorder while financially sound, is not entirely fair. From my viewpoint (videographer AND photographer) the most obvious drawback would be that I´d still need to purchase a separate still camera for photo work, and carry both to a shoot. Also, being able to shot video in both Super 35mm and FullFrame is a greatly appreciated feature.
I am painfully aware that nobody wants their cheap cameras cannibalizing the expensive ones, but it should be clear enough that 3000usd DSLRs and 7000usd Video Cameras cater to a very different (and many times, mutually exclusive) public.
How did you end up regretting using the Black Magic cams?