Re: Sony A7RII - FIRST video sample!!!

[Paul schefz]

If I could I spend $4700 on equipment and only have to gross $4700 to make that back then that would be a super easy way to live. Instead I have to factor in the cost of the gear either as a kit fee, or for something as insignificant as a DSLR, value added gear to a day rate. It is my labor and cost of living, hell even gas, that I have to account for, far more than any piece of gear. Buying gear on speculation of future earnings is always a dicey game, harder than ever to stay on top of. If one lands a corporate contract where you know this gear would be employed, than it's easy to go ahead and purchase gear knowing it's part of the cost and returns on that particular job. On the other hand, without a long term gig, the needs of different productions and producers varies so much, that a much of the time you won't be using the camera you spent so much on. Particularly DSLRs are often NOT appropriate gear for many types of work, either for workflow, quality or just professional appearance. Best thing for everybody is try not to buy anything at all, unless absolutely need to! And if you're at the top of the game (and very few of us here are let's admit it ), you can just rent want you want from the top camera houses because you're dealing with budgets and producers who just lease as part of their business model, or just don't care.

Of course rich hobbyists, dentists and IT guys who love the movies, can buy this stuff without batting an eye. Me - I have to justify everything.

sorry, but the idea that all the equipment you need to shoot, edit, grade and deliver a 4K feature incl computer is under 10K these days was completely crazy not too long ago....i had a friend you could not finish film school because he could not afford to process his film.....and i really don't think that a 3000$ body these days is in a lofty range reserved for pros and dentists.....if you are serious about any business, that is about as low an entry step for any self employed business....you probably need to spend more on gear if you want to be a gardner, pool boy or plumber....
that does not of course mean that making actual money is even half as easy as getting your lawnmower in your truck and picking up clients if you are priced reasonable, show up on time and do your work....
but no camera or lens will be a guarantee to make a penny....and until a couple of years ago most DPs would not even consider actually owning the camera they were shooting with on a job....and many still don't...
canon opened the door with the 5D (s) and it is pretty crazy how much more we are getting these days for the same money....
on the other hand there is a great movie on iTunes right now entirely shot on an iPhone (5 i believe)....
in terms of thinking about "clients" and "productions", these days it is not uncommon for the client of even talent to have a better camera or lens or gizmo then the DP or director......but you never know....a friend of mine was taking pictures on set of a huge commercial production and everybody was nuts about his (then new) sony A7s and the alexas were just being used for....work....
the same person also had a different experience with a client: after their introduction he was asked what he was shooting (the ad campaign) with only to be told "nice camera, i got one for my girlfriend last week!"....so quite a few still shooters have the hasselblad/digital back monster sitting there on the tripod and shoot everything with the 5D (II/III) and 24-105 combo.....

 

[dustylense]

A7s - $2500USD. Sony Zeiss 55mm F1.8 - $1000USD. Sony Zeiss 24-70mm F4 - $1200USD. Total = $4700.

If someone can't make $4700 in an entire year in photography/videography, I highly suggest picking another career. Actually, given that the lenses would be used on the new A7RII, they'd only really need to make $2500 to get their ROI. If they can't score enough work to make $2500...then the camera they're using is definitely not the problem, and an ROI should be the last of their concerns. In fact, upgrading shouldn't even been on the radar for people in that position...

Please don't be a business consultant or accountant.
If you think that running a studio only involves covering the cost of your camera and lenses I got a bridge to sell to you in Manhattan. How about this? If you can't make $4700 doing photography/video in a year using a used Canon 5DMK2 and some used glass that cost you $2400 total, then I suggest picking a new career. Hell, pick a new career even if you made the $4700 and had $2300 profit. At least you'll have some gas money to drive to the interviews. I know of two guys personally still shooting the Canon 5dMK2 that make well over $250,000. They have very little interest in buying any of these new cameras.

 

[Doctor Wu]

I'm well aware of how the cost of filmmaking has come down. I used to edit film on Flatbed steenbecks and had to rent them out at $400 / month in 1995 - a giant thing that took up a whole room. That was like a 2nd rent back then man! Now you can edit a whole movie on your $800 laptop and color it.

My point is that the amount you earn - the amount your client turn over to you - only a portion of that goes over to gear. If you're a professional, then what you earn is mostly for your time and labor and skills. DSLRs are notoriously difficult to get "Kit fees" for of any consequence. A Sony F55 ro RED Dragon - sure - you're dealing with people who understand that such equipment requires a separate rental fee or kit fee.

I'm not saying the A7RII is A BAD BUY! I want one. However, that impulse to just purchase on credit card has to be checked by a realistic calculation over how many days I have to work with that particular camera and how do I recoup that money. It's not impossible, but it's a complex assessment where you're basically trying to predict the future! The formulation of "earning the gear back" is far more complex than just 1:1 gear for funds earned during work.

sorry, but the idea that all the equipment you need to shoot, edit, grade and deliver a 4K feature incl computer is under 10K these days was completely crazy not too long ago....i had a friend you could not finish film school because he could not afford to process his film.....and i really don't think that a 3000$ body these days is in a lofty range reserved for pros and dentists.....if you are serious about any business, that is about as low an entry step for any self employed business....you probably need to spend more on gear if you want to be a gardner, pool boy or plumber....
that does not of course mean that making actual money is even half as easy as getting your lawnmower in your truck and picking up clients if you are priced reasonable, show up on time and do your work....
but no camera or lens will be a guarantee to make a penny....and until a couple of years ago most DPs would not even consider actually owning the camera they were shooting with on a job....and many still don't...
canon opened the door with the 5D (s) and it is pretty crazy how much more we are getting these days for the same ...

 

[ectobuilder]

FYI: I have grossed $5K per pay cheque doing sales outside of the film industry. Just an FYI.

Now we should stay on topic about the A7RII.

 

[Simon Shasha]

Please don't be a business consultant or accountant.
If you think that running a studio only involves covering the cost of your camera and lenses I got a bridge to sell to you in Manhattan. How about this? If you can't make $4700 doing photography/video in a year using a used Canon 5DMK2 and some used glass that cost you $2400 total, then I suggest picking a new career. Hell, pick a new career even if you made the $4700 and had $2300 profit. At least you'll have some gas money to drive to the interviews. I know of two guys personally still shooting the Canon 5dMK2 that make well over $250,000. They have very little interest in buying any of these new cameras.

Here we go. Typical condescending post. What ever you reckon, mate. Nobody said anything about "running a studio". He was specifically talking about the ROI of his Sony camera body. If you want to get all ultra analytical, why don't you start factoring the water you use to make your coffee in the morning, and the gas, and the electrical bill, and so on and so forth...

"Gas to drive to interviews". Dusty, please, don't ever try and be a comedian...

 

[Simon Shasha]

If I could I spend $4700 on equipment and only have to gross $4700 to make that back then that would be a super easy way to live. Instead I have to factor in the cost of the gear either as a kit fee, or for something as insignificant as a DSLR, value added gear to a day rate. It is my labor and cost of living, hell even gas, that I have to account for, far more than any piece of gear. Buying gear on speculation of future earnings is always a dicey game, harder than ever to stay on top of. If one lands a corporate contract where you know this gear would be employed, than it's easy to go ahead and purchase gear knowing it's part of the cost and returns on that particular job. On the other hand, without a long term gig, the needs of different productions and producers varies so much, that a much of the time you won't be using the camera you spent so much on. Particularly DSLRs are often NOT appropriate gear for many types of work, either for workflow, quality or just professional appearance. Best thing for everybody is try not to buy anything at all, unless absolutely need to! And if you're at the top of the game (and very few of us here are let's admit it ), you can just rent want you want from the top camera houses because you're dealing with budgets and producers who just lease as part of their business model, or just don't care.

Of course rich hobbyists, dentists and IT guys who love the movies, can buy this stuff without batting an eye. Me - I have to justify everything.

Look. I'm definitely not some "rich hobbyists" or anything like that. Not even close. I shoot live-events for a living. Usually concerts/festivals. I shoot enough to get by. Sometimes I'll throw in a wedding here and there. Not sure what it's like in the USA (or LA in particular), but out here in Oz, you can make a quick $5000 - $6000 with a single wedding. Whenever I buy new gear, I make sure I book at least one job that will pay it all off - usually in one hit.

I don't want to get ultra analytic here - discussing gas bills and whatnot. The original post I responded to was specifically regarding the ROI on his Sony camera body. Not on the cost of living. I was addressing his ROI regarding the cost of his gear alone.

 

[Samuel H]

rich hobbyists, dentists and IT guys

That's me. Hi.

 

[Emanuel]

Sony are a bunch of A holes.

Why do they keep releasing new models ever year ... people hardly get the chance to get a return on their investment before a new one is released.

Why? Do the cameras lose any ability to produce IQ with an updated model?

Funny, because my triple GH1 capture devices (still not MIA* nowadays, no way! ) or my 5DII should be useless at any rate since a few years ago and I've never gotten so far. Thanks for letting me know ;-)


* A picture is STILL worth a thousand words

 

[Emanuel]

(...) I know of two guys personally still shooting the Canon 5dMK2 that make well over $250,000. They have very little interest in buying any of these new cameras.

LOL Good one, Christopher! *thumbsup* Exactly my point over there above-posted

EDIT -- And Simon's BTW.

 

[harddrive]

ive read they pixel bin unless they say its downscaled. thats from sony themselves

Further to my previous reply, then one thing that's bothered me about the chart you showed is why it should be binning in s35 HD mode? At first sight, that doesn't make sense. If it can do "full-pixel readout without binning" for 4K in s35 mode, then why not HD - which must be an easier task? (The 4K mode implies it can read all the pixels in the s35 crop and deBayer them - so surely downscaling then to HD is as easy as to 4K?)

A friend may have thought up the answer, but it relies on you accepting that pixel binning is good - *as long as the numbers are right*.

He started off on a premise of what do various multiples of 1920 give? Multiply by 2 and you get 3840, and multiply by 3 and you get 5760. Which is interesting. Do the same vertically and you get 3240. Now we know that for the A7R II, the full width of the sensor is 35.9mm and 7952 pixels. It therefore follows that a 5760x3240 crop would be close to 26x14.6mm - roughly what we'd expect for s35.......?

So - is it deriving it's s35 HD output by binning 3x3 Bayer blocks from a 5760x3240 photosite crop.....? If so, it would be another way of binning giving a very high quality result, and answer the question that chart poses? And also help explain why Sony think 42MP is a "perfect" number - not 39 or 40, not 45 or 44, but 42.

 

[Samuel H]

IIRC they said they are reading 15 Mpix in the S35 mode, which means something like the following:
* The sensor is 7952x5304
* In FF mode they read four times HD, that is, 7680x4320, which is a 1.035x horizontal crop
* In S35 mode they read something like 5120x2880, which is 15 Mpix, a 1.55x crop of the sensor, and 1.33x times the horizontal and vertical resolution of QHD (so, difficult to debayer, but not horribly difficult)

From the second point you can see how nice the 42 Mpix number is: it's higher than 39.3, but the added crop is minimal. They could have gone for 47.6 Mpix with a 1.1x crop, but 50 Mpix means 1.13x crop which may sound a bit too high, as in "no longer FF".

About why they can take those 5120x2880 and pull a clean QHD image but not a clean 1080p, no idea, it must have something to do with the processor in the camera (probably the debayer units don't have enough memory for a big downsample: if you need 9 data points to go from the original resolution to QHD, you need 36 to go to FHD in one step, and the processor may not have that many registers per unit).


BTW these thoughts lead me to think that the a7S II could be 18 Mpix (just slightly bigger than 5120x3414).

 

[harddrive]

IIRC they said they are reading 15 Mpix in the S35 mode, .......

About why they can take those 5120x2880 and pull a clean QHD image but not a clean 1080p, no idea, it must have something to do with the processor in the camera (probably the debayer units don't have enough memory for a big downsample: if you need 9 data points to go from the original resolution to QHD, you need 36 to go to FHD in one step, and the processor may not have that many registers per unit).

Has it been definitively said that it reads 15Mp for s35 4K? Or is that simply someone's estimate based on a "typical" s35 frame size and the 42Mp figure?

I believe the standard s35 aperture is taken to be 24.89x14mm for 16:9, which would imply a count horizontally of 24.89/35.9 x 7952 for this sensor (about 5513) - just over 17Mp?

But go just that little bit more - 3x 1920x1080 on each axis - and it would simplify the read so, so much...... Would that extra mm needed for lens coverage angle cause that many problems?

 

[Samuel H]

This is what they said:

Super 35mm gives the best picture quality, from oversampling 15 megapixels down to the eight-megapixel 4K size

Here.


And yes, I believe it wouldn't work with many APS-C lenses. Their 1.52x spec requires an image circle of 28.47 mm, whereas 5760x3240 on the a7R II would need a 29.92 mm image circle. It's just 5% more but some lenses might show a hard vignette. Worth testing, though, since this would be much easier to debayer and would deliver a better image.

Also, how about a 22 Mpix a7S II with a 5760x3840 in FF mode and 3840x2160 in APS-C mode? Too close to the a7 II?

 

[harddrive]

This is what they said:

Curious. Some parts of that talk make me feel it's even more likely that in full-frame mode it's using 7680x4320 with 2x2 read for 4K (and 4x4 read for HD).

For s35 it's spelt out as 15Mp, deBayered and downscaled - but 15Mp pixel binned for HD doesn't seem to make sense.

Unless - the s35 15Mp only applies to 4K, and s35 HD uses a bit less crop so that can use 5760x3240?

What is needed when someone gets the chance, is to do calibrated angle of view tests. Lock the camera off and shoot the same scene first at ff stills max res, then in all four video modes, and compare the horizontal angles of view without touching the lens. I strongly suspect we'll see the 1.035 crop you mention in the FF video modes, but what will be interesting will be to see if it changes between the 4K and HD s35 modes.

Also, how about a 22 Mpix a7S II with a 5760x3840 in FF mode and 3840x2160 in APS-C mode? Too close to the a7 II?

Yes, an interesting thought! (If anyone wonders why Samuel is saying 3840 for the vertical figure, it's not a misprint for 3240 - it's the vertical figure needed for the basic 3:2 sensor, to derive the 16:9 crop from.)

Trouble might be that whilst it should be OK for FF HD (3x3 binning), 4K FF is going to mean quite a big matrix to deBayer etc. In s35 mode, then 4K will be a standard deBayer of 3840x2160 (so not oversampling and not getting full 4K res) and HD is easy with 2x2 read. But yes, interesting thought, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

[William_Robinette]

Sony are a bunch of A holes.

Why do they keep releasing new models ever year ... people hardly get the chance to get a return on their investment before a new one is released.

A camera is not an investment.

It never was, it isn't, and it never will be.

You can maybe make an argument it's a loss-leader. But stop thinking of it as an investment. It is not.

 

[caseywilsondp]

A camera is not an investment.

It never was, it isn't, and it never will be.

You can maybe make an argument it's a loss-leader. But stop thinking of it as an investment. It is not.

i think i see your point, but i disagree a bit. a camera is an investment if you are making money off of it. which many people do, including me. a camera can get you a job with x features. (x could mean 4k, or full frame, iso sensitivity, high speed, etc). a camera can also be a tax deduction, and spending money on your business is an investment in your business.
if a manufacturer releases a new model with x+y and you just have x, people will invariably start wanting y on their shoots, and just x will no longer cut it.

i think what i'd say is: a camera is not a wise investment, particularly in this price range (for video needs... stills photographers are a bit better off in this regard), and particularly from sony in this price range.
i'm maybe 75% on shoots where we're renting a camera i'd never own for practicality reasons (epic, alexa, f55, etc.) but i keep my a7s for smaller budget shoots where there isn't a budget for one of the previously mentioned candidates. it's starting to make more sense cost-wise to just rent for even those shoots... from borrow lenses you can get an a7s and shogun for like $50/day.
this will likely be the last sony i purchase to use professionally. i imagine ill get another decent year out of it, but after that it'll be fairly obsolete features-wise.

 

[Samuel H]

Trouble might be that whilst it should be OK for FF HD (3x3 binning), 4K FF is going to mean quite a big matrix to deBayer etc. In s35 mode, then 4K will be a standard deBayer of 3840x2160 (so not oversampling and not getting full 4K res) and HD is easy with 2x2 read. But yes, interesting thought, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Originally I would have thought this would be a bad idea for 4K, but since they are so happy with the 15MPix-to-4K of the a7R II...

 

[photochris]

This is what they said:

Also, how about a 22 Mpix a7S II with a 5760x3840 in FF mode and 3840x2160 in APS-C mode? Too close to the a7 II?

I wouldn't want a big MP bump if it costs some sensitivity or increases noise - two of the biggest selling points of the A7s. I'd prefer full readout in FF and APS-c mode like we currently have, but all recorded internally with IBIS and higher framerates (4k 60p, 1080/240p) since they're claiming a 3.5x increase in readout speed. A slight bump in DR from the new sensor and a massive reduction in RS from the faster readout would be welcome as well. Just my opinion.

Now where are all the A7RII videos?

 

[DLD]

I wouldn't want a big MP bump if it costs some sensitivity or increases noise - two of the biggest selling points of the A7s...

Presumably, by adding the Back Side Illumination, they can have both (in some combination) - better/oversampled 4K and the current low light performance.

One also has to think that the sensor and derivation thereof will make their way into other Sony models, including the camcorders.

And, ya, where are those A7RII reviews????????? Faymus Cory, where are you?

 

[Samuel H]

The light gathering advantage of BSI becomes very small when you have the very big pixels of the a7S. It does help find cleaner metal routes for a bit less noise and faster readout, but the total advantage is much smaller at 12 Mpìx than at 42 Mpix.

In any case, yes, greatly-reduced RS and 1080p180 would be very welcome (apart from IBIS and internal 4K, which right now sound like a safe bet).