You see that weird black spot on the image on top? Well, according to the new Sony A7sII that’s the Sun 🙁
Yes the As7II has major Black Spot issue we hope can be fixed via firmware upgrade soon. The issue has been reported by many testers:
The full-frame mirrorless monsters – Sony A7r II vs A7s II (Mirrorlessons).
Sony A7S II Review Part 1 – Major Sunspot Defect (EosHD).
sony a7sII FAIL black spot? (Nezzes on Youtube).
And here are some more A7sII tests:
The Ultimate Sony a7S II vs. a7S Test – What’s the Difference? (Cinema5D).
Sony A7S II Review After Real World Use – Tom Antos (Vimeo)
The New King of Lowlight — Sony a7SII Full-Stop Review Pt. 1 (Digital Hype on Youtube).
Sony A7Rii vs Sony A7Sii / 5 Things To Know – MichaelTheMentor (Youtube).
Deux vidéos à 409 600 ISO avec le Sony A7S II pour le prix d’une (Lesnumeriques).
Sony A7S II: primeras muestras (Quesabesde).
70 Responses
Look at it from a positive side: the black spot is sharp…
it has purple finging
hahaha
Must be an overflow error. Should be an easy fix in fw.
The OST.. lolol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg
Sting:
“there’s a little black spot on the sun today,
it’s the same old Sony story as yesterday,
they never test a darn thing before they send it away”
I guess it’s Sony’s destiny to be the king of pain…
Or… There is major black spot action going on on the sun and the picture is accurate.
Death Star transition… that’s no moon!
it’s obviously a black hole.
But how low is the noise in that black spot?
That’s annoying. This does not inspire much confidence with Sony testing as it shows that some tests were missed… Anyway this saturation issue should be addressed by a firmware update.
Black hole sun…
… won’t you come…
Sure.
-Peter North
And wash away the rain? …
And wash away the rain…
It will be fairly embarrassing for the Sony guys but given that they will be able to correct it, it should not be the end of the world. We ought not to forget that these products are made by humans who at times are less than perfect…
This is certainly another one of those things that leaves a user scratching their head as to how it was ever missed!
There seems to be no end of products, from cameras to cars, that, within ten seconds of trying it out, you find a really obvious fault and can’t understand why the design team didn’t reject the prototype as being unfit for purpose. Millions are spent developing things and, as a customer, you begin to doubt your own senses when you come across such oddities.
What often makes it worse is when you contact the manufacturer they react as though you are the first and only person in the entire world to suffer the issue. Only after months do you see a growing picture and a grudging acceptance that it wasn’t your imagination in the first place!
To give an idea of the range of just my experience, I’ve had it with Sony (HVL-F60M overheating mainly), Kia cars, Tissot watches, Wacom tablets, Stewart golf trolleys, Alpine radio, etc.
I wish I had an answer as to why, or knew how to get companies just to hold up their hands straight away.
Out of all your aggressive posts towards Sony I have seen to date, this is the first one ever made sense. Bravo.
Please do, to satisfy my curiosity, provide links to all my ‘aggressive posts towards Sony’.
Not that I need your approval, but I find such an accusation just a little odd as I am a long-term and very happy user. I don’t for a moment think that everything Sony does is perfect, far from it, but to suggest I am some kind of ‘anti-Sony troll’ is misleading and grossly unfair.
This is a feature, thats all
just not to burn your screen when showing the pictures 😉
Only appears when shooting 4K all fine in all other shooting modes still a pain though as my A7Rii does not have this problem
Hmmmm. Admin, I thought only Nixon and Canon has issues with their cameras. Your headline doesn’t reflect the same bashing of Sony as the other two i mentioned. Yup, I said it. SONY sucks. And you won’t publish this comment cause it’s not kissing songs a$$
While I agree with you on the way Admin posts as a fanboy, I do not agree that Sony sucks! Sony is leading innovation these days, and in a few generations, the Sony A7 series will be at the top of their game. having said that, Admin does need put more effort into not making fun or starting fanboy wars with his headlines he posts sometimes.
Chris Cornell is a modern day Nostradamus.
At least report that it appears to be related to PAL mode only based on reports.
Mine has no such issue no matter how hard I tried to replicate.
It’s funny, it only happens in 25p. Shooting in the US with 24p and 30p doen’t cause it.
I tried as hard as i could for over 1 hour to recreate this on my A7s-II and could not get the black hole sun.
It looks like in the image that a lot of exposure compensation was used to keep the rest of the image bright, normally everything but the sun and the sky near it would be dark. Does this only happen if the sun is in the image and a lot of exposure compensation is dialed in? Or does it happen in auto exposed shots? Either way a defect, but much less likely to show up in images if it is the first case.
The camera is out now for 2-3 weeks and now some pictures are showing this?
Sounds like a non-issue like the lossless raw that can be solved with an firmware update.
I post this 2 weeks ago in discus and give a additional information about this phenomenon to SAR and Mirrorlessrumors, too. None of then post this in a article and information the buyer!
Curiously, my RX100, RX100m3 and now even my RX1 all have a similar issue, but the “spot” is gray not black.it is most evident when shooting outdoor pix that include the blue sky. I’ve noticed it more frequently when sun is behind me and shooting in a northly direction. I have sent both the RX100 & RX100m3 several times each but the problem reoocurs after a few months shooting. Sadly, I just noticed it with the RX1. No feedback from the camera repair as to what causes the gray spots. Sometimes e there are more than one in the same picture. Frustrating to say the least, and if I have a great shot then time consuming to photo edit the spots out. I am getting ready to return the RX1 &RX100m3 to Sony authorized repair again.
It’s called content-aware fill and it takes like a nano second to fix
Could you elaborate? How is it fixed?
Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Select the Healing Brush, with content aware set. Brush the problem and it will go away. If you’re getting more than one in the image, it could also be a dust spot. Take note if it’s only happening at high f-stops like f22. If that’s when you’re getting it it’s most likely a dust problem. Could be as simple as wiping off the lens 🙂
yeah, sure, only there’s people who shoot video too.
I would be happy to send the moderator of this site some examples of my spotted pix. Let me know.
Put them into the forum, so all can see and discuss on them.
Will do on Sunday.
Sony is in good company as the Famous Large Format Photographer Ansel Adams used this to his advantage (see link below, or google ANSEL ADAMS BLACK SUN to see his image): http://zevlevirogan.deviantart.com/art/Ansel-Adams-Study-THE-BLACK-SUN-339270766
Oh come on people… we all know those are sun spots!!! The DR on this sensor is just that amazing!
Looks very similar to the “black orb” issue that once plagued Blackmagic cameras. It was fixed with a new firmware. And I am sure Sony will address this pretty soon.
SUN TURNED INTO THE BLACK HOLE RUN
Looks like Sony didn’t expect people to use it in daytime. This camera was designed for nighttime ONLY :))
LOL. Can see in the dark, can’t see in the light… 😉
sounds like one of those leica special edition cameras
.
I see other videos with the a7sii towards the sun and this black hole isn’t show. I mean it’s not a firmware problem, because isn’t a phenomenon with all a7sii.
I wonder the a7sII isn’t shipping in Germany and only in few shops in Europe. Why Sony to restrain the shipping from the a7sii…..
Wow, thanks goodness I didn’t buy one of these.
Also relieved the A7R II doesn’t suffer from same issue. (phew)
Wad’ll they think of next?
Point it at your ass and get sunshine?
Is the ADC having some mod operator built in, to turn super highlight into darkness?
ADC may be over-ranged…
World first camera that allow easy removal of spot by auto converting feature!?
One big dead pixel that has to be removed!
This is a design feature to prevent retina damage when viewing images of the Sun.
🙂 Right, only they forgot that it doesn’t have OVF 🙂
YES!!!!!!! It’s coming!!!!!! A6100 and A7000!!!!!!! http://www.dpreview.com/forums…
Yeah baby!
Wonder if it has to do with how the sensor deals with UV rays… I’ve had similar massive over exposures of UV sources when I was photographing things that had black lights illuminating them.
No its solarization. All camera do this but most fix it in camera. Film would do it as well if left to expose the sun long enough. Just weird they didn’t fix this since most camera have for the past 20 years. Red one did this until they updated the firmware long ago. when if first came out
CREBAIN FROM DUNLAND!! Spies of Saruman!
It’s actually a solar eclipse. It’s a lot darker than it appears.
Is this the Sony “Surprise”?
Can you still get lens flare when shooting into the sun?
black holes don’t allow lens flares 😀
Has Sony replied yet regarding this issue ? I imagine that they’ll try to replicate it and understand what may be causing it prior to engineer a solution.
Nothing a FW update can’t fix, I would expect an update before the new year.
Admin…it’s and issue that afffects PAL versions only. Not NTSC versions of this camera. You should note that.
Europe is prohibited from seeing the sun as the image is not approved by EU regulations.
Probably doesn’t relate but do you remember analog photography?: From Ansel Adam’s Black Sun:One of the most famous intentional black-sun photos was made by Ansel Adams. Writing in his 1983 behind-the-scenes book Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, Adams recalls his 1939 photo “The Black Sun” as a “striking surrealistic image.”
“It was proof,” Adams writes, “that the subject may prompt ideas, ideas crave visualizations, and craft makes their realization possible.”
The craft in question is a technique called overexposure solarization. With typical black-and-white film or gelatin silver paper, exposure to light creates a chemical reaction that turns some of the silver-halide crystals in the film grains to metallic silver. In development, the metallic silver areas appear dark on a film negative, rendering them white in the print. The greater the exposure to light, the more metallic silver is formed in the negative, creating a greater density of black.
However, all photographic films and papers have a maximum density point. When they pass this point—typically in response to extreme overexposure to light—changes within the crystals cause the latent image to be destroyed and reduce the area back toward zero density on the developed negative. Those areas become translucent (on film) or white (on most photo papers, although some papers will flip from black to white multiple times as they are overexposed). At the enlarger, these areas on the negative print black. In landscape photography, the brightest part of any scene is almost always the sun, so that’s generally the first thing to flip back over to black.
maybe the sensor is just so sensitive it is showing us what is really there… “blackhole sun…” – a black hole inside the sun?