Today Sony had various press meetings to present the new Sony A7sII to journalists and reviewers. The camera will official after tomorrow (Source Amazon). And now the first reviews and image samples are being posted:
Marc Galer (Click here) posted the very first Sony A7sII review! The conclusion is:
For an average enthusiast and Pro Photographer who shoots predominantly stills, the lack of Phase Detection AF on the A7SII makes the A7RII a better option for stills shooters and single operators shooting video in reasonable levels of ambient illumination.
Another factor photographers (attracted by the prospect of being able to shoot 4K straight to the memory card) should take into account before making the jump to the A7SII (or the 4K recording of the A7RII) is to be aware of the computer processing power required to edit 4K footage, e.g. a Macbook Air is not really up to the task as you cannot easily review footage in real time in software such as Adobe Premiere Pro when using an i7 dual core processor and 8 GB or RAM). A photographer must also take into account the storage requirements of large amounts of 4K footage. If, however, you aim to make the A7S your primary camera for shooting pro-grade movie clips then you will never begrudge shelling out the dollars for this camera – you could in fact buy six of these cameras for the price of a Canon C300 MKII.
Tony Northup posted a video review.
Brian Smith also posted his A7sII review.
Image Gallery by Imaging Resource.
ThePhoBlographer posted a set of image samples.
Image samples at ePhotozine.
Sony A7sII preorders at Amazon, BHphoto, FocusCamera, Adorama and in Europe at WexUK. In Asia soon at Digitalrev.
49 Responses
What abous Yon a99II??
What is the “surprise” ???
They don’t have new cameras to announce.
Yes they’ve just announced the Sony RX1RII with world’s first variable low-pass filter.
Oh no…. that EVF again…
well good to see that they didn’t forget the RX1 line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKoWrkEj1qo
https://youtu.be/ZKoWrkEj1qo
Yes they’ve just announced the Sony RX1RII with world’s first variable low-pass filter.
The Review from Tony is good. The a7sII can record theoretical up to ISO 1,6 Mill. It’s a pity he not do this sample in more dark situation.
And why do the comparison SLog 2 to SLog 3 between a7rII vs. a7sII instead a7s SLog 2 to a7sII Slog 3?. The a7rII has more pixels than the a7sII this has effects of the details from the background. Or has Tony the video from the a7rII downscale?
indeed.
I was amazed how it compared to A7S at high ISO. 1 Stop better!! I didn’t expect that
Tony writes in his first review about a7sii weeks ago ca. 20% better. But when I see this video, I mean the a7sii is in lowlight more than 20% better!
I don’t know why Sony give the a7sII not the ISO 600000 value, it’s would be a good sales argument….
Sometimes Sony understates a little bit:
A7Rii has just 40% better AF than A7R.
I mean A7R AF was unusable and a7Rii has a quite good one. That is more than only 40% better.
For the importance that a PC have in this area is a bit silly to think that people doesn’t keep it updated for the job.
You don’t need to be shooting 4k to justify a better CPU, RAM or bigger storage.
And did Tony just forgot about the FS5?
Exactly. Where is our new a-mount camera?!?!???
a-what?
a-mount… what’s that? 🙂
Its coming and it will be the smallest A-mount ever since it will be a adapter.
Very instructive conclusion from Marc Galer. Too bad for event shooter that the AF-C can’t track quick subjects properly. But I will wait until ” quickly moving subject” is more defined.
a7rii AF is much better
Sony doesn’t listen.
Wrong.
Tell that to A-mount and APS-C E-mount users.
You still can use every lens available on APS-C, until they match the variaty of APS-C lens line-up they’ll keep it as is.
And A-mount? Seriously? Get over it, that thing didn’t sell for nothing, even being one of the best cameras around.
They do listen, to the market.
Five stages of grief:
1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Alpha-series
Why isn’t this getting more thumbs up!? ^^
Where’s the 8 FE lenses?
These “solid arguments” were answered million times already. Get over it, Sony doesn’t listen.
any more reviews coming in? I’m almost sold on this camera over the A7rii but i need a little more real world comparisons before i pull the trigger.
Don’t do it. Think about the price. You could buy two cameras- a7R and A7S- duck tape them together and have the best of both worlds. Then keep the extra 1k in your pocket. I’m just saying- economies here.
OK, right, economies – A7S and A7R for a total of 2k?
Ah, yeah- A7S still holding value. Hmm, I’d cut back on the duck tape then.
He’s a photographer. why would he review a full camcorder?
I think you didn’t watch the video?
Yes, at this point I’m more interested in new lenses than new cameras…
Get over it? Ha. You said that SO easily because you didn’t invest thousands of dollars on pro gear.
That thing was sinking their whole division.
And here I am, still waiting for a 10fps, 12Mpx, Max. ISO409600, FF camera. Why Sony doesn’t offer a D4S competitor?
With Phase Detect AF please!
With the DSLR business Sony will always be nr. 3 after Nikon and Canon, with the mirrorless business they are the company to beat. It’s pretty obvious Sony is putting their eggs in the E-mount basket. So my bet is there will be no A99ii, the A77ii will be the last A-mount camera. Instead Sony will be releasing a DSLR style camera with E-mount and suggest to use the A mount adapter.
I agree and if the focus speed is good I don’t see a problem. I would buy one just for the 135mm 1.8
The videos from Mark are looking worse than the original A7s…
Not including the camera’s settings in each scene and then grading (not correcting) the footage all combines to makes this video almost totally useless for determining what the camera is capable of.
Not useless, too much motion artifacts, i have seen many A7s videos on youtube in 4k none of the had so much macro blocking, The skin colors at least were better.
Macro blocking is absolutely a rendering error on Marc’s part if you’ve truely seen cleaner videos from the a7s on YouTube at the same data rates. A breakdown in the compression scheme of X-AVC S will always be impossible to see on YouTube (unless something is punched in at 1000%) because YouTube compression algorithms are so much worse than what’s coming out of the camera or editing suite (unless something’s butchered badly in the render)
Looking for macro blocking in a camera’s codec on YouTube is like trying to watch full resolution 4K on a 720P monitor.
Yeah i agree in part with you, but i really don’t remember to see so much without even searching for it.
Would you agree that Sony would want more control about whats is shown by their artisans?
Anyway, that can be an human error. But i was expecting to see better footage quality.
Now Dpreview, Tony and others have shown the images, i’m still not convinced about the overall quality the dynamic range now seems to have more highlight headroom and less shadow headroom. Kind of Canon approach i guess the new base iso seems to be 1600, 1 stop less then 3200, but you should expose for the shadows, more than highlights.
At least by tony northup review the ISO seem much improved.
Do you have an a7s you’re looking to replace or trying to decide between the old model and the new one?
I’d personally take two of the old models over one of the new one.
If you need IS, get a Sony or Canon lens with IS. There weren’t any complaints (the opposite actually) about the a7s’s video quality in 1080P or 4K.
Just because Sony improves a few things doesn’t mean the last model wasn’t 98% as good. If you expose the scene correctly– meaning you have fast enough lenses for low-light (not hard with the a7s) and an ND filter for bright outdoors work, then you don’t have to really expose for the highlights or shadows, unless you’re going for a particular style.
Nail the exposure and 8-bit in X-AVS S is perfectly workable for grading and correction.
Since they’ve chosen the location accordingly, I hope that the next one take place on race circuit or football field.
Not sure who Marc is or what his background consists of, but some of his comments seem a bit off. I’m a single camera operator and I manually focus every I own. With peaking and some experience using a camera, there are very few situations where I’d want to give up the control of focus to an AF system.
Also, who edits primarily on a MacBook Air? Or drops native 4K onto it? It’s screen isn’t even 1080P. So, if that’s your editing tool, you’re either chopping up cat videos for YouTube or you work with proxies– which make any footage shot on any camera editable on just about any computer. Don’t tell me Marc grades and renders on a MacBook Air.
The storage req.’s for 4K at 100 mb/s aren’t going to surprise or upset anyone who’s interested in this camera. And to compare its price to a C300 II is pretty silly, since that camera is incredibly overpriced compared to anything short of a true cinema production tool (and not even all of those- BMC’s cams and even the RED Raven come to mind).