Bart from Leica-Boss.com (Click here) sent me the following text:
“There has been some negative feedback about the Sony A7 / A7r RAW files posted on review sites. Reality is that there is serious in-camera processing going on. This post/video shows how the files actually have loads of detail even at ISO 12800. This is pretty long and boring. I like the files coming from these cameras – even at high ISO.”
On the video on top Bart shows you how to work on the Sony A7r RAW files ot get out the most!
P.S.: Iridient digital has released a new version with RAW processing for Sony a7 series!
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Support SonyAlphaRumors: After months of FF mirrorless rumor work I would be glad if you can support my work by making your A7-A7r purchase by using these links below. I will earn a small commission and you don’t pay one single penny more! Thanks!
Specs and Preorders in US and Canada (Click on store name to see direct preorder page):
Dedicated Sony announcement page at Amazon US (Click here).
Sony A7r body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony A7 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony A7 with 28-70mm kit lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony RX10 at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 24-70mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 35mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 55mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
70-200mm A-mount at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Sony A-Mount to E-Mount Lens Adapter at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto.
Sony A to E adapter with mirror at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto.
A7/A7r leather case at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
A7/A7r vertical grip at Amazon, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Sony W Series Battery Charger at Amazon, BHphoto.
Sony FA-CS1M Off-Camera Shoe at BHphoto.
Semi-Hard LCD Screen Protector for A7-A7r at Amazon, BHphoto.
Specs and Preorders in Europe:
Sony A7r body at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE.
Sony A7 body at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR.
Sony A7 with 28-70mm kit Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR.
Sony RX10 at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE.
Zeiss 35mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT,
Zeiss 55mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT
Asia:
A7r at Digitalrev
A7 at Digitalrev.
A7 with 28-70mm lens at Digitalrev.
63 Responses
I’d rather my raws were raw.
Agree: why a RAW is not a RAW?!
The only way you’ll get truly raw images from a camera these days is if you use a camera designed for scientific use. And those usually cost about 3-10x more than the same sensor in a consumer camera. Plus, they’re usually just a sensor in a housing with a threaded mount, USB cable and power cable. Not exactly your carry around camera.
Discussed before, again, ad nauseam, that Sony RAW cooking is very clever, allowing for easier storage management without noticeable image quality degradation. This is how Sony can keep a 24mp file to 24mb give or take some kb.
Same happens for the 36mp A7r if I’m not mistaken (36mb) as it does for 16mp cameras lie the 5n/T 16mb file sizes.
I would challenge anyone here to show me how is the Sony RAW file any less RAW than any other manufacturer (because they all do some cooking on their RAWs too)
That’s certainly interesting challenge because this video doesn’t show any evidence of cooked raw files in the first place.
I wish people, I mean everyone, learned a bit more about the subject before they started running around with their arms up in the air talking about stuff they have no clue about.
Many believe a RAW is a neutral read out from the sensor – that is 100% wrong. The processing and its code is as important (at least for image quality as the physical sensor. This applies to ALL digital cameras ever.
What is discussed here are the Sony standard in camera settings. What you need to do is to set noise reduction to 0 as well as sharpening. Then you get an output that is not over processed. Work with noise and sharpening in post process: No more noise reduction than the image needs, sharpness where you want it and adapted to which output (on screen, small print, large print requires different level of sharpness).
This is what RAW brings: You, not the camera manufacturer, decide the image look.
True – A digital sensor is a grey scale analog device. Conversion and interpolation has to occur to output a digital color file.
They are RAW, this is an application level issue.
Its just that Adobe haven’t released their CameraRAW converters, so everyone is using the standalone Sony Application, which is rubbish. This has happened with every camera ever… well, maybe not film cameras 😀
+1 You may end up spending more time sitting in front of a PC than shooting photos.
They are RAW, but with camera settings applied. Pretty easy to understand. While most third party RAW editors process RAW files in a neutral way, Sony’s own Image Data Converter applies all camera settings like creative style, WB, NR and so on. Summary of the video: to obtain best results, process RAWs to taste.
That aside, I find the IQ pretty good, although I haven’t reviewed many samples yet. I’m leaning more and more to the A7.
The RAW wasn’t cooked. It was the default processing setting that was presumably a combination of conversion software combined with any instructions the camera passed over with the RAW that was the issue (which, presumably, reflects what the in-camera JPEG engine would produce). Have a think about it for a moment. If the RAW was “cooked” then it wouldn’t have been possible to produced this video would it?
Of course it doesn’t help he calls it “out of camera” processing, as that gives the impression it was applied to the raw file. It wasn’t.
+1
Yeah, that seems like a lot of work just to get the Raw file where u want it.
Finallly somebody made a video like this one. I hope this is gonna stop a lot of “high ISO” whiners…
It’s actually much better than high ISO with my A99, even with a fast lens.
That said, seeing an image in 100 or even 50 percent make me miss film. It just looks so digital.
That said, it’s still not as good as the Canon 5D MkIII. Let’s hope the A99 successor is even better.
I’m afraid you’re on the wrong track if you think the 5d3 is a benchmark for high ISO performance..
On the other hand, the A7 / A7R sensor humiliates and laughs at the 5D3 when it comes to low ISO shooting. The dynamic range and shadow banding from the Canon sensors is quite terrible.
I have the 5D3, and I will happily give it up for the A7R. 🙂
99% of my shooting is below ISO 2000 anyway.
Thanks for all the comments and discussion. Basically, with Sony NR off, and a little gentle TLC, it looks like the A7 is a very top-tier camera for noise and image quality. I’m pretty shocked with how well the files behave at such wild ISOs.
You can check out the JPGs here: http://www.leica-boss.com/2013/10/sony-alpha-a7-example-raw-files-in-depth/
Bart,
This is nothing new. Anyone who has owned a Nex and used Sony’s IDC knows that it leaves out a lot of detail. And here’s a bit of detail that you haven’t captured… even more detail is possible when using a different raw converter than what you can get with IDC even when all smearing operations turned off.
It’s quite wrong in your video when you say that the files are “cooked”. I’m not disputing all raw “cookery” but what you’re referring to in the video as things that reduce the quality are things that Sony is doing in their raw software. I know your intention is to shed some light but what you’re doing is more like moving the light around… creating shadows in new places 😉
Have you investigated the RAW results now that Lightroom 5 supports these files? I’m curious whether the A7r is passing the RAW images with these same data settings baked-in to LR or if LR is able to give you a ground up approach to the image processing?
LEICA BOSS ? nop , LEICA-BOSS
But thank you Andrea, you make a great fucking job, Thks a lot .
I am also owning a Canon 5D Mark III with two L prime lenses. It is just a matter of time until I ditch my DSLR kit. I owned a Leica M9 until someone stole the M9 and 2 Leica lenses 🙁 The Mark III is just a temporary investment for me. I did not want to buy another Leica because it is a lot of money you have to spend there. But I must say I do not like the Canon or the lenses. And in terms of High ISO the Mark III is good but not fantastic. I am pretty sure the Sony A7/r cameras will deliver amazing quality files with lots of fine details and wonderful pleasing colors. I wonder how Zeiss lenses with M mount are performing with this camera. And I can’t wait to test it with the Voigtländer lenses. Overall I am very pleased what Sony has unveiled here…
Best regards
Michel
I’ve noticed the same with the nex cameras – not a fan of how sony cooks the files. I’m hoping the jpeg processing is better with these cameras so that I don’t need to go through a cumbersome workflow until Lightroom supports the raw. Also hoping that the LR update comes quickly (it would be in Sony’s best interest)
Cooking raws is an extremely bad idea. I mean EXTREMELY, VERY VERY BAD idea:
1) sharpening at raw level will lead to noise boost. And in much cases I prefer to have slightly blurry results because I will see it downsized to 1024px on the longest side, so pixel level sharpness would not matter but I rather have less noisier images
2) In camera NR will never match efficiency of, for example, DxO Prime NR.
3) etc
So, I will wait for DxO estimations of sensor performance and any sign of such cooking will make it no buy for me. I need full control and ability to use state of art processing algorithms instead of time compromised OOC ones. Period.
it’s not like those settings are applied to the raw file, they are just default in Sony’s own raw-converter. just de-activate and there you go. our wait for Adobe to get their act together.
Good if so. We well see 🙂
well, to tell the truth, as far as I understand it, all manufacturers cook their raw files a little bit (such as leicas vignetting compensation or the nearly lossless mini compression of Sony files, or Pentax noise reduction magic) but the kind of bad processing shown in the video is just the effect of default settings in Sony’s raw converter.
This is ridiculous. A lot of good info but he is harping on an image that is shoot at iso 12800… Speak up if you regularly
shoot at that iso
In fact with good NR you can get quite good IQ even on such a high ISO.
Some examples:
D800E at ISO3200 with Prime NR from DxO Optics Pro 9 applied
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12196364/gallery/different/D800EhSLI03200.jpg
D800E at ISO12800 with Prime NR from DxO Optics Pro applied and downsampled to 16Mp
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12196364/gallery/different/D800EhSLI12800.jpg
I believe it is good enough IQ for absolutely most purposes )
The A7r should not be worse
wow that is not bad at all,I like.
6400 is as high as I go on ff, tough I prefer to keep at 3200 or less.
Try Prime NR from DxO Optics 9: it raises acceptable IQ level up to ISO12800 for my purposes with NEX-5n. Your expectations seem to be higher than mine, but I guess it will be ISO12800 with FF (without SLT, of course) for you.
I’ll definitely check that out – thanks!
Dam I won’t ven go past 800 on my 5N, do you have any examples?
This one, for example: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12196364/gallery/2013.08.16/DSC06163.jpg
Taken at ISO3200 and then pulled two stops up.
+1 would love to see some examples too.
The thing about high ISO is that it can save you in times of need. If your flashes break down or lose battery at exactly the time you need them, it’s good to know that you can fallback to high ISO.
As far as i read, even leica cooks raws in camera for vignetting correction
Still no definitive firmware, so this all seems a little premature?!
For negative comments there is no need for final firmware. Even camera may exist only in rumors, you still get them. And from people that didnt even hold any camera from that manufacturer, or any camera at all.
That`s right “BRB”. I think that major part of this comments are from people who never had a Sony camera. And from people who do not make money from photo or video work.
I use my camera for work, i am very intersted in quality but i almost never look at pixels of the image or video that i produce. And my clients too. They don’t have photoshop or lightroom or premiere on their computers, they just want to have a great commercial photo or video for their products or work. They don`t want, and don`t need to know anything else. That said, you cant go to do a serious work with your cell phone (usualy), but you can do a great job even with a basic slr\slt or mirrorles camera if you know your job.
@Hendrick I’m sorry for your nausea, but I have never read any of those discussions about Sony RAW files. I use Lightroom and sometimes NikSoftware when working on Olympus RAW files: perhaps it’s apples & oranges, but the noise reduction applied to that photo looks exagerated.
Again, I have not a big experience with Sony files, having simply played with a friend’s Nex5 and Nex7.
My 2 cents: I hope we won’t need all this tweaking, jumping from software to software, to software to software again, just to save a photo!)
When Adobe starts supporting the A7/r files, you’ll tell me then what you think of the files.
When I bought the NEX 7 and adobe had no support for the files, I used Sony’s own converter for them. They were very different when opened in ACR or LR when they were supported. Same goes if I open them in DxO or C1. Every converter has its own way of looking at the files, tweaking them, and even (in the case of Lr/ACR with the RX100 files) forcing certain corrections not up to the user.
It is so early to draw any conclusion on any file out of these cameras without one’s workflow being represented and shown in relevance to one’s own standards. I’ve been skipping most of the recent posts here because everything shown by this cameras still has an uneven level playing field against anything fully supported these days (like RX1 files for example to compare with the A7 on the same converter)
People have to learn to be patient. For those who ordered early, good for you. You’ll know soon enough if the files are up to your standard with a converter you probably don’t use (Sony’s own) anyway.
@Hendrick I’m not one of those who preordered faithfully the cameras: I usually think twice before buying new (expensive to me) gear, and I already agreed with a good local store that I will try both cameras as soon as they’ll arrive, and play with the pictures to see if it’s really worth the buy.
At that point I think we’ll have enough experience reports from early adopters though.
Will the a7r files be compatible with LR5 soon? or never? LR5 is very important to me.
Th a3000 was support less than I week after release, I would except that it will be similar
correction will the a7r “RAW” files be compatible with LR5…
They would be unless Adobe launches LR6 before Adobe supports the files.
Just wait for Adobe to update their RAW Converter
Your final comment about ZEISS lenses being overpriced is priceless. It really detracts from any objectivity you might have wanted!
The idea of this video is funny. I’m completely expecting Sony to come out with their own video saying “Have faith, our camera is good, we promise” MAKE(dot)BELIEVE
I like discussions on products that aren’t available as production products yet, where the firmware isn’t finalized, and the software support for raw files is not even available in beta release from the majority of companies who produce raw file editors.
This video helps explain why I shoot RAW. Shooting JPEG means a person is relying on Sony Engineers to apply some catchall pre-settings to images when a little fine tuning on a RAW image can cater each shot closer to the potential possible.
You can also open Sony a7/a7R RAW files in Capture One =)
What about using Adobe’s DNG converter to batch convert all .arw files, to allow editing/prep in CameraRaw before support for the A7 or RX10 becomes available? Isn’t a .dng virtually the same as a raw file, and if so, wouldn’t this process work for the A7r files? If so, it’s a quick one-step added stop to the workflow while we all wait for ACR and LR5 updates.
A7 Raws look pretty good to me – downloaded from the SLRClub review. Plenty of detail still at 12800, noise is fine grained probably would work fine at quite a large print size people make too much of a deal of 100% on their high contrast LCD screens.
Processed perfectly happily in RAWTherapee which is free and open source – http://www.rawtherapee.com/ if anyone wants to take a look themselves. Worked last time with the (then) newly released A77, rather than crashing as lightroom did…
So can you imagine what you CAN do with NEX 3N, kit lens and all this software ? 🙂
It will be awhile before we really know what we can get out of the .ARWs. I am not worried the least as long as Adobe does their recent usual good job at converting them. Does anyone else remember how bad Adobe RC used to be on Sony raw files? It was frustrating to see a700 era cameras panned for poor IQ when it was really the poor job Adobe’s converter was doing. Certain sites refused to acknowledge that and we had wars over who died and made Adobe king. Once Adobe got it right, it easily outclassed Sony’s own converter and no surprise to me, Sony cameras started being reviewed a bit more favorably. There is a lot riding on how Adobe will handle these files. Like it or not, they are the standard. Long live the king!
I never use Sony IDC… it really disappoints me.. for so many years, it doesn’t improve much… I’d rather using Camera Raw and DxO..
This is the very reason I sold my Sony NEX 7 and bought a Fuji X E1, I’d rather have a good time shooting photos and enjoy my SOOC JPEGs rather than spend hours and hours in front of my computer manipulating files…
Shooting jpegs only is point and shootery.
Or maybe it is what photography is really all about.
This is hilarious. There are more experts talking about what they ‘absolutely need’ from their RAW files than you could find on all the pro shoots conducted in 2013!
Ladies and gents, take a reality check on your images and what you REALLY need. Slightly cooked RAWs that mean you do not start at zero regarding noise and sharpening, oh, dear how will you survive?
Go look at what the best photographers in the world produce and it is usually with cameras many decry as having insufficient resolution, poor dynamic range, tweaked RAWs and (insert long list of grumbles).
I have an A7R and the RAWs are fantastic. Masses of resolution, nice neutral starting point for further noise or sharpening adjustments etc etc. Only issue is how compression might affect bit depth and B&W processing, but I have not been there too heavily yet. We’ll see.