The new Sony 50 Megapixel CMOS sensor is not going to be used by Hasselblad only. Also Phase One launched the new IQ250 Digital Back featuring exactly the same sensor. And Luminous Landscape (Click here) is the first website showing first image samples taken with the new Sony medium format sensor! They had no time to make a full Image Quality test but so far they say:
While this is in no way conclusive at this point, we must say that for ISO 6400 we are seeing some very impressive results compared to what is seen with older backs.
UPDATE: Some more image smaples at Pdnonline.
This is the interview with Phase One that talks about the sensor:
PhaseOne-IQ250-SkypeInterview from The Luminous Landscape on Vimeo.
This is juts me dreaming, but I want a $6,000 mirrorless camera with that sensor! A sort of digital [shoplink 24155 ebay]Mamiya 7[/shoplink]!
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“This is juts me dreaming, but I want a $6,000 mirrorless camera with that sensor! A sort of digital Mamiya 7!”
Pentax will bring one out, pretty close to your figure/price tag. 😉
Only problem being that Mamiya 7 wasn’t mirrorless – it was a rangefinder.
Besides – why break compatibility with existing systems and build a new one (YET ANOTHER ONE) when they could just talk with Hasselblad and use their H-mount? For the sake of Sony and both: A and E-mounts – you don’t want them to release mirrorless with that sensor.
” it was a rangefinder.” – still IS, you can still buy it as new 😉
I meant a Pentax 645D upgrade with this sensor and a price tag close to Andrea’s wish. Will not be a rangefinder like Mamiya 7. This sensor will have issues with very short back focus lenses- even Phase have already said that about the use of “tech” cameras/lenses with this back.
Read the last paragraph:
“We can also expect at least two other medium format back and camera makers to adopt this same sensor”
While Pentax 645D is not a digital back, I guess Pentax will be the next user of this sensor. The sensor size is similar.
This is actually a 1.3x crop sensor medium format sensor. This sensor can easily use the A-Mount with a deeper light box.
I’m not an engineer, but it sounds like your imagination is running away with you. you can’t change flange distance in order to increase size of the image circle. it doesn’t work like that.
That sucks.
You simply can’t increase the lens registration distance and retain A mount be deepening the light box. You will lose the ability to focus at a distance as lenses are designed to focus onto a plane at a specific distance. Putting in a deeper light box is optically the equivalent of using extension tubes. Good for close focus, but impossible for distance.
If you are actually talking about widening the light box, rather than making it deeper, then most likely you will get severe vignetting as A mount lenses will not, in general, be designed to provide a wide enough image circle (and it’s likely the lens throat will get in the way with at least some optical designs).
Impressive. Let’s see if the price would be too.
from the original article: The price will be USD $33,990, or 24990 EUR.
$34K is for the Back only! No camera, no lens nothing else!
Stop dreaming. I know everybody wants a Ferrari or Bentley but….
ESwede3. Never stop dreaming 🙂
Somehow missed that. The usual then.
shame they couldn’t quite pull it off in full frame format only 1.3 crop – still nice to see this development
What a complete rip off, for what really. I think Sony could easily produce a medium format camera for a quarter of the price, and then drive these idiots (Phase One, Hasselblad) out of business.
I really hope a Sony M-Mount Camera appears on the horizon in the near future.
Maybe create another site for this? http://www.sonymediumformatrumors.com ?
For the one person who would read it. 🙂
Exactly 🙂
And for the love of god, a separate website for all the E-Mount news
Well since E-mount cameras are now called Alpha, another site wouldn’t make much sense! It is sonyalpharumors.com after all 😉
Sony now calls all the cams ‘alpha’ to make a better fit for SAR 🙂 .
?!?! Chill, bro. This isn’t e-mount news!
Where else could this 44x33mm sensor be used? Something Leica S-like?
there have been sensors with this crop factor around for some time…
link just for info (P+ backs)
ahhh – no edit button 🙂 – link just for info (P+ backs) http://www.phaseone.com/en/Camera-Systems/P-Series/P-Specifications.aspx
Hopefully the process is scalable enough to get back to the format Hasselblad used to have 56mm x 56mm.
Medium format is more or less at a point that full-frame was a decade ago: still very expensive and a niche market share.
Now you can have an educated guess where medium format will be a decode from now.
Cleaning floor after collapsing m4/3?
You are doing a great job, Andrea No other sites needed… I skip the post that don’t interest me. Works great!
+1
+2 🙂
Why can’t we get these in consumer grade cameras. Not medium format, but FF and crop. Give people the chance to keep their cameras and upgrade the sensor. I have no idea how these work so maybe I’m missing something here.
You are missing the manufacturing cost of larger sensors.
It will come down – the cost of FF has already come down – but not quickly.
If you mean “why can’t we have camera backs on smaller cameras”, a camera such as a NEX 5N is already a camera back. Notice that the Phase 4 back shown includes an LCD, and of course the processing chip, memory and card slot. All it lacks compared to the NEX is a tripod socket and hot shoe.
Put a bellows and an enlarger lens or sunk-mount macro lens (Leitz 65mm Elmar for instance) on a 5N or A5000 and you have a miniature studio camera.
The problem then arises that very high precision would be needed to make a bellows with tilts and shifts for such a small camera. The old Spiratone model attempted it but is not nearly well enough designed or made. Novoflex have a model with limited movements.
Who would earn money on it? Only companies making sensors. If You keep body and change Digital Back only then Your camera body is going to serve You to the death. Sony is not going to make FF camera with Digital Backs because producing “new” bodies is easy and makes them profits.
68% larger sensor is nothing to write home about
I loved my Mamiya 6 with reducible lens mount… a perfect camera to me, nice handling, very good prime lenses & silent. A Sony square FF sensor would be cool! -> http://www.kenrockwell.com/mamiya/6.htm
I still use mine, mostly with 50mm lens 😉
Since Sony already has a partnership with Zeiss, they could conceivably build their own MF camera line and undercut Hasselblad and PhaseOne/Leaf. It’s a shame Sony doesn’t believe in itself enough to keep it’s sensors in-brand and say F Nikon and Hasselblad… you want a 50MP CMOS sensor with Zeiss glass? Buy our MF camera.
Sony could keep the best sensors exclusively for their own cameras but the current strategy allows for economies of scale, which frees up more money for research and development budgets. So far the strategy is working, allowing Sony to dominate the sensor market.
If Pentax/Ricoh ever decides to offer a replacement for the 645D I would most certainly be very, very interested. While I’m still content with my A900 it’s growing long in the tooth. Everything else on the market today is so inundated with video, on board effects, and a slew of other features I would never want to use, I remain stuck-in-a-rut. I hate the idea of layered menus complicated with firmware issues, etc.
Nikon df?
Nikon Df got even more sophisticated filters than an average NEX, such as fisheye…
Get a modern camera and put a piece of black tape over the video record button, problem solved. You will never notice the difference, ignorance is bliss.
The samples posted in the update look pretty good up to ISO 1600, but at 3200 and 6200, they look good, but really not as outstanding as you would hope for this price point and format. In my opinion, it’s only marginally better than 35mm full format.
Yes, and there’s the rub. We are told Sony are working on a 54mp full frame sensor coming, maybe, next year. Would the difference in the performance of that new FF sensor and the current medium format sensor be so different as to justify the step up in formats? Probably not.
It’s unlikely Sony would ever do it, but I actually think this 44x33mm sensor would be a perfect candidate fitted into a mirrorless A-Mount body.
Used with full frame lenses, this sensor would allow full aspect ratio control. With the 44mm sensor width exceeding the 43mm diagonal coverage of full frame lenses, you would literally be able to shoot any ratio you want within a 43mm diagonal measure. The 33mm sensor height would even accommodate square format using full frame glass (31.6mm x 31.6mm).
Then of course, with adapted medium format lenses (or newly produced A-mount lenses with medium format coverage), you would be able to use the full sensor real estate.
It’s really not that far fetched 🙂
To add to my original comment, using full frame lenses with this sensor would yield about 30.6MP regardless of aspect ratio.
Nope, since the FF lenses would be limited to the 43mm image circle of the lens the following resolutions would be available, unless the lens had more than 43mm image circle, which some might, just like some APS-C will do more than 28mm.
16:9, 28.32 MP
3:2, 30.59 MP Traditional FF format
4:3, 31.81 MP
1:1, 33.14 MP
Sensor could be smaller for this to work, instead of 44 x 33 mm, 38 x 31 would be fine.
Liked the look of the live view & touch screen.
so now Sony is gonna dominate medium format sensors! like i heard once, Sony is going to became the Intel of photography!
all cameras one day will have a sticker ‘Sony Inside’ ahah
All the really good ones already do.
Well, I just purchased my second ZA lens for the 900 so I’m good for now. My reasons to consider a 645 is the welcomed absence of video, superior IQ, ergonomics, and simple interface. You know, kinda like’ a 900 but newer. Heck, if Sony would produce a successor to the A99 that’s designed primarily for ‘photography’ then I would be all over it.
Dan, how does the optional ability to save the live view stream as a video clip in any way hinder still photography functions or quality?
It doesn’t, he’s just being a jackarse.
I have been suggesting this for a long time–A900 w/LV, tilt/pivot screen, newest AF and processing engines, and sensor resolution options, something like that.
Nobody else seems to want it.
I’d love to have one, but I don’t believe in the concept commercially. you and me will be the only buyers, and I’ll get mine used off of eBay – once you’ve dumped it there in a few years time. 😉
Sony is kicking arse!!…..2014 will be Sony’s year for sure….They have realised the customers what significant advancements in quality and technology and so are giving them what they want…meanwhile Canon and Nikon are sitting on their market share trying to string out technology developments as slowly as possible to maximise their profits….as a consequence Sony are getting a good jump on them and undermining their ability to bring ‘New’ things to the market…
The IQ potential of MF excites me as much as the next guy but reading all the limitations the photographer kept pointing out in the dancer shoot it’s clear MF remains special purpose. Still, I have to hand it to Sony. It is another game changer they can take credit for.
It’s cool that they have this technology, but I’ll be honest… I noticed quite a lot of grain in some pictures (granted, at full magnification) and each photo by itself looks like it could as easily have come from a 16 megapixel APS-C camera. I’m not knocking it. I only mean to say that the jump does not appear to be revolutionary, and considering bang for the buck, I’d go for something that is 5% the price yet looks 90% as good.
Put down the crack pipe and step back two paces.
Please don’t call it medium format, it’s significantly smaller than medium format! (nor like Sony APS-C and Canon APS-C)
It is larger than 35mm sensor, so it is a medium format.
This is the current medium format, it’s now 2014 try to get past your old way of thinking. Everyone knows medium format films were larger than current MF image sensors but that was then and this is now. Move on, don’t be a dope.
New DXO mark king. Probably the first camera to scores 100+.
There are some nice test photos linked from the Photorumors site. They do some outdoor images in low light at low and high iso – really worth the visit. They make the case that the IQ 250’s high iso images are much nicer looking than the D800’s.
Also, there is some discussion that, because the sensor is highly microlensed (if that’s a word), it won’t be good at wide angles and with lenses that have movements. We’ll have to wait and see on that.
What is apparent is that this will be a game changer for MF event photographers. If you want the best for your high end event, you gotta have this.
The PhaseOne CEO says at 14:50 in this video clip:
“We will have a full frame CMOS within a few … …”
On my old (and not to impressive) laptop I cannot hear the two last words he is saying. Can someone else interpret these? Would be interesting to know what time frame he is expecting for this…
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