A7RIi vs A7SII - going crazy, cannot choose

Hi guys, it's been a while. Here are some examples of my latests works with the A7RII, i sold my a7s when the A7RII was announced, i missed the lowlight capabilities, but the color science of the A7RII is really good. And now i am finally delivering great photos to my clients. Amazing camera, and it's a joy to use with the ronin-m.

 
New to the A7Xii scene, a virgin if you will, unbiased towards either A7Rii or A7Sii, and a former F3 owner and current F55 owner I too have started to research and look into the A7Xii camera as a possibly B-cam for my F55 shoots.

This thread started by Paul http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?341179-Sony-A7sII-Initial-Impressions with plenty of input from Samuel and others was pretty handy.

I'm real glad Sony implemented their new color science on the mark ii's, that makes it an easy decision for me looking at a non-mark-ii.

As for A7sii vs A7rii my thinking is that the whopping pixel count of the sensor only means less light gathering, and hence more noise because Sony likes to fudge their native ISO rating anyways. I saw the FF test and think the noise is unacceptable, but I'm not keen on shooting FF anyways. So I think the A7Sii might just be the way to go.

But now here's where things get interesting and where I'm spinning my wheels - what about the FS5 as a contender? The same color science, 4K internal capability, no 30 minute record time limit, cool digital ND filter, and likely virtually the same look as the A7Xii? Downside is double the price of the A7Xii however.
 
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starcentral said:
But now here's where things get interesting and where I'm spinning my wheels - what about the FS5 as a contender? The same color science, 4K internal capability, no 30 minute record time limit, cool digital ND filter, and likely virtually the same look as the A7Xii? Downside is double the price of the A7Xii however.
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Hi Dennis,

That's a really fair point.

The A7sII is full frame, that's going to be the biggest difference really. Personally i love the full frame look. I guess ergonomics is another difference, you'd hold the A7sII to your eye, like a stills camera. The EVF is excellent and in bright situations being able to use a EVF like that is very useful (even if recording externally although you can't dual record in that case). It is a very different way of operating.

I don't believe the FS5 has IBIS and that is a godsend on the A7sII. The FS5 is probably quite lightweight to hand hold smoothly but then i assume the FS5 has much better rolling shutter read out so some of the issues that the IBIS fixes aren't on the FS5 to start with.

Of course low light being the potential deal breaker, as a B to the 55 then you'd be able to shoot in very different situations.

Slog3 is pointless but i don't know about the FS5. And the 4K of the FS5 is quite lightweight like the A7s isn't it? Not high bit rate - i'm not sure how they compare.

You know i would give up big cameras if the A7sII:

had the rumoured possible RAW codec
fixed the rolling shutter

That would cover the two remaining downsides IMHO

cheers
Paul
 
FilipeAbreu said:
Hi guys, it's been a while. Here are some examples of my latests works with the A7RII, i sold my a7s when the A7RII was announced, i missed the lowlight capabilities, but the color science of the A7RII is really good. And now i am finally delivering great photos to my clients. Amazing camera, and it's a joy to use with the ronin-m.

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Gabriel o Pensador e fooooda! That's really impressive and great talent you are working with! Keep up the good work!
 
Samuel H said:
IIRC:
both shoot 1080p at FF and APS-C
a7S II shoots 4K in FF, but not in APS-C
a7R II shoots 4K in both FF and APS-C

You can set APS-C mode manually, and if you do that you can use it with FF mode, no problem at all there.
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Can someone explain this in english?

I thought both camera's are full frame no?
 
starcentral said:
As for A7sii vs A7rii my thinking is that the whopping pixel count of the sensor only means less light gathering, and hence more noise because Sony likes to fudge their native ISO rating anyways.
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A7RII has a Back Side Illuminated sensor, so it's excellent in low light for a 42 MPX camera.

starcentral said:
Can someone explain this in english?

I thought both camera's are full frame no?
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A7RII has an option of recording a center-crop s35 that doesn't bin its pixels and gets its 4K from 15 MPX. It bins in FF. There's more jello in s35 but the colors, as shown by Filipe's videos, are outstanding (despite the same 8-bit codec as FS5)

PS. I know you didn't mean it that way but Samuel's English is el bueno (he is in Spain).
 
Great explanation, thanks. So can A7sii just shoot super35mm without sensor tricks, and good light response (noise-less) compared to A7Rii?

"in english" I mean to say "in layman terms" not so much to comment in his 1st or 2nd language. I hope he's not offended I didn't mean it that way.
 
paulcurtis said:
You know i would give up big cameras if the A7sII:

had the rumoured possible RAW codec
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Paul, could you please elaborate on this?
I am not aware of any rumoured RAW codec for the A7sII.
Would love to learn more -- or see links regarding this rumour.

Thanks.
 
FilipeAbreu said:
Hi guys, it's been a while. Here are some examples of my latests works with the A7RII, i sold my a7s when the A7RII was announced, i missed the lowlight capabilities, but the color science of the A7RII is really good. And now i am finally delivering great photos to my clients. Amazing camera, and it's a joy to use with the ronin-m.

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Impressive work!
Thanks for sharing and congrats!
 
starcentral said:
... "in english" I mean to say "in layman terms" not so much to comment in his 1st or 2nd language. I hope he's not offended I didn't mean it that way.
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I am not his official spokesman - I would be, if the pay was better - but it just caught my attention as an ESL speaker. It looks innocuous enough but, if someone is less than proficient with his idioms, then something like this can be taken literally.

PS. For some reasons, this reminds me of an episode of a "Newsradio" where Dave reveals himself being a Canadian by saying, "aboot, eh". Can't find the clip ... but it's probably somewhere on line.
 
starcentral said:
Great explanation, thanks. So can A7sii just shoot super35mm without sensor tricks, and good light response (noise-less) compared to A7Rii?

"in english" I mean to say "in layman terms" not so much to comment in his 1st or 2nd language. I hope he's not offended I didn't mean it that way.
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Don't worry, I got perfectly what you meant :)

Maybe if I expand a bit it will be clearer:

IIRC:

both shoot 1080p at FF and APS-C, without aliasing/moire issues at 24p

a7S II shoots 4K in FF (full sensor readout, 1:1 to output; RS is pretty bad), but not in APS-C (not enough pixels)

a7R II shoots 4K in both FF (I believe it skips half the rows, but the photosites are so small that it doesn't have big aliasing/moire issues, you'd need a super-sharp lens stopped down for aliasing/moire to appear; it does lose around a stop of light sensitivity in this mode, but it's sharp and RS is good) and APS-C (with full readout and proper downsampling from 15Mpix to 4K; compared to FF mode, you can push it to one stop higher ISO without increasing noise; RS is pretty bad)


You can set APS-C mode manually, and if you do that you can use it with FF glass*, no problem at all there.
* This was the problem, originally I said "mode" instead of "glass" here; closer to dyslexia than to not-my-native-language...



RE: FS5: It has A LOT better DR than the a7xII, it will probably match your F55, whereas the a7xII will be between one and two stops short. The FS5 is surprisingly light (it weights just a bit more than the a7xII) but the smaller body is easier to use, for example, on a gimbal. Then again, the controls will drive some people crazy (not me).
 
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Samuel H said:
RE: FS5: It has A LOT better DR than the a7xII, it will probably match your F55, whereas the a7xII will be between one and two stops short. The FS5 is surprisingly light (it weights just a bit more than the a7xII) but the smaller body is easier to use, for example, on a gimbal. Then again, the controls will drive some people crazy (not me).
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Does it? Has anyone actually seen a production version yet? Don't deny it at all but just wasn't aware it's been tested. The A7s is about the same as the FS700 which i didn't believe was that far off an FS7 which is pretty much what i'd expect the FS5 to be. Okay, a lot of tenuous links there!

A big difference between the A7s and A7sII is in crop mode. The original sent a 4K upscaled version to the HDMI, the Mk II only HD. So if you shoot APS-C then the original gave you better output (2.7K upscaled to 4K was still better than 1080p)

IMHO i don't think APS-C on the A7sII is worth it, if you shoot that size then there are plenty of alternatives...

cheers
Paul
 
^ FS5 DR: I'm assuming it's the same DR of the FS7. Maybe they screwed it somehow. No idea.

FS7 definitely has more DR than a7S, I believe. About how much, I was just using the slog2 vs slog3 theoretical numbers.
 
starcentral said:
Great explanation, thanks. So can A7sii just shoot super35mm without sensor tricks, and good light response (noise-less) compared to A7Rii?
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As an a7rII owner I can tell you the noise performance in low light is nothing short of amazing.. Maybe not as jaw dropping as the a7sII, but some of the material I've shot of my daughter in a near black room looks inexplicably clean in post. For video, feeding either of them to an external recorder is where they really shine.

If your looking for the best dual purpose camera for stills/video, the a7rii is a clear winner, the resolution in stills is extremely addictive. Shoot for NBC sports and took my a7rii along with my 1DX for the last gig and while the a7rii isn't as rugged or easy to use, the color, resolution and FEEL of the images are just beautiful. Actually found myself picking it up a lot more than I thought I would.
 
paulcurtis said:
It's just a rumour,

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sr3-...pressed-raw-set-of-codecs-for-the-fs-cameras/

And it doesn't even necessarily apply to the A7s range either although i've heard similar from other places too (although just to be sure, nothing concrete at all)

cheers
Paul
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Thanks. I had seen that.
I can't imagine A7x has the bus throughput to support RAW.
Also can't imagine Sony eroding their vertical product offerings.
However, thanks for responding.
 
blafarm said:
... I can't imagine A7x has the bus throughput to support RAW. Also can't imagine Sony eroding their vertical product offerings....
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A lot depends on a degree of compression. Conceivably, FS7 could offer lower compression - i.e., higher quality - with its XQD cards while FS5 will have to have a higher compression due to only having the SD cards.

PS. Given its flavors, the "compressed Raw" is as much of a nebulous concept as ProRes.
 
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I was referring only to the A7x family, which is known to only support slower SD card speed standards.

Its buffer already chokes on RAW stills -- I can't imagine it will be any better at 23.976, 29.97 or 59.94 (sorry for the US-centric frame rates).

And, then there's Sony's historical lack of firmware upgrades, which are really only issued in the form of new camera bodies.

All-in-all, I'd peg the chances of RAW video in the Mark 2 cameras at 0%. Maybe Mark 3 or Mark 4 -- but not Mark 2.

And even then, Sony has always 'protected' their professional line. I can't really see them deviating from that strategy.

Anyway, that's just my uninformed opinion, and nothing else.
 
Thanks for all the replies, what a tough decision honestly between A7sii, A7rii and FS5. But truth is for FS5 price FS7 makes WAY more sense.
 
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