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Sony A7R V Noise Tests.

There is a lot of ‘noise’ around the A7R V at the moment, with a lot of people saying that it’s low light capabilities are very good considering it’s 61MP sensor count. Of course most of the high ISO testing for noise so far hae been to do with fairly short shutter speeds, considerably less than one second. But is it going to be any good for exposures above 1 second?

So I have tested the camera and the results are below, but before I go into them there are a few things to consider, that even my testing is unable to determine. Firstly My tests do not involve any subject matter they only test pure sensor noise or a dark frame. How the sensor will be able to use the avaliable light and the results are not tested. Which leads to the second point:

Pixel size or light “Buckets”

In high Megapixel cameras the pixels or ‘buckets’ for collecting light are getting much smaller. So each bucket is getting less light. For example an A7S has individual pixels that are 8.4 micros wide, where as the new A7RV are 5.4 micros. This reduction of avaliable light to individual pixels means there is less signal or level for “light” recorded by the pixel to be read and as a result the signal to noise level is worse.

The testing that I perform only tests the pure noise when the sensor is not detecting light, and how much signal there is at a given light level or exposure is not tested, so Signal to Noise S/N is not tested.

The Results:

The A7R V is by far the best high MP count sensor I have tested. with results very close the Nikon Z7 with 47MP. It Also outperforms the S1. Keep in mind that both the S1 and Z7 are both previous generation cameras, and I have not tested newer models. None the less, these are very impressive results.

The A7R V unlike the A7R IV has a new feature, that was sorely missing from the previous model, and this is the ability to shoot smaller RAW files. Sony have introduced RAW Medium (26MP) and RAW Small (16MP). Both of these sizes are down-sampled images taken from the full sensor.

Because the Medium sized RAW is 26MP, still quite a large size, larger than even the A7III I decided to run the tests again from these files. It’s worth remembering at this point that downsampled images can only work with the avaliable data which will have the signal to noise related issues mentioned above.

The results were good and the reduction of noise from the 61MP image was significant, and place the final RAW file on par with the A7III and A7IV. When you consider there are 2 extra MP it’s an impressive result to be so close to the A7III, which is still considered to be one of the best low light cameras avaliable. Having said that it is worth noting that the longer the exposure the less benefit there is from downsampling, I suspect due to more noise being introduced into the image that the downsampling can’t deal with as the S/N gets worse.

So if you can afford an A7R V over the A7 V I guess you get the benefit of having a High MP camera as well as having the ability to downsample for much better results for some long exposure work.

If you would like to compare the A7R V to other models you can do so from the Sensor DB here.

Sony A7 III sensor testing.

There has been a lot chatter about the A7 mark 3. Both the previous models were excellent low light performers, although there was some discussion in the Astro community they were eating stars. With the introduction of a BSI sensor could this be the camera for you?

Having recently tested the Panasonic S1 I was very interested to see how the A7 III performs, as most people are saying it’s currently a 2 horse race between these two cameras.

Well I happy to say the A7 performs very well, It’s clear that the BSI sensor is much more uniform than previous models and it has significantly less noise.

When comparing it to it’s competition it stacks up very well. It performs very close to the S1, and surprisingly at 5 minutes there is almost nothing in it. The EOS R is the worst of the pack and the A7III is significantly better right across the exposures tested.

I am not sure if the Z6 and the A7III share the same sensor. Getting 100% confirmation on this is very hard, some articles are saying they are the same, while in others the number of raw pixels is slightly different, so maybe they are not. If they are then the 5 minute exposure time could show aggressive NR from Sony. However there have reports that the A7III is not suffering from the star eating problem that previous models had, well not completely it depends on what you read, but it’s better. So you can draw your own conclusions about the Z6 and the A7III sharing the same sensor.

It would be more consistent to conclude the S1 and A7III share the same sensor than the Z6. With many saying this is the case less with only the phase detection pixels removed in the S1. The difference in noise could easily come down to RAW images algorithms, and sensor production variation. It will be interesting to see how the A7RIII and S1R compare.

In my opinion if you currently own Sony gear the upgrade path is a no brainer, the A7III. if you don’t other factors such as cost, lens availability and other camera features are more likely to be a factor if you are leaning to the S1.

It’s also worth noting that ensuring testing temperature is very difficult and this or a future firmware upgrade could easily tip the scales to either the A7III or the S1 or even the Z6. What can be done with a firmware upgrade is amazing. Either way both the A7III and the S1 are excellent long exposure performers and should perform very well.

If you would like to find out more about the Sensor DBclick here.


Fuji X-T3. Third time lucky?

I’m always in two minds when it comes to the fuji sensors. and like Olympus they seem to be doing noise reduction and low level sensor data manipulation even when it’s disabled in camera. It could be the “grain effects” that make Fuji unique, but it does make it hard to compare their sensors to other bodies.

Having said that the new X-T3 performs much better than the X-T2, even with a few more MP. At 1 and 30 seconds the sensor is much better than it’s predecessor. Noise does build up quicker with longer exposures and at five minutes the results are worse (noise mean), but with less standard deviation.

X-T2 vs X-T3

Compared it to the Nikon Z6, currently the leader for long exposure noise the X-T3 appears to do very well. However as mentioned above this in my mind only shows one thing, that Fuji are seriously processing the RAW data. Keep in mind that the X-T3 is a crop body, where as the Z6 is not.

Thats some serious low noise?

When compared to a crop body like the Nikon D7500 you start to get an idea of what is going on:

Nikon D7500 vs X-T3, whats the story here?

Conclusion:
There is no doubt that the X-T3 is a big improvement on the previous model, the noise has been greatly reduced. However I am really not sure how this camera will perform in a real world low light situation. Either Fuji have a crop sensor that is performing better than any full frame sensor, or they are performing noise reduction. I think the latter is more likely, and how this impacts on some subject matter like stars I guess time will tell. Some real world astrophotography samples would be great to see.

If you would like to compare the X-T3 to more models, or learn more about the sensor database click here.

Again, a big thanks for Alex @Stallards in Hobart for access to the X-T3.

The Flagship, Canon 1DX Mark II, No. 50!

The Canon 1DX Mark II results are now in the Sensor DB, and it’s our 50th camera to be added. WOW 50. It’s taken a few years, but the list is now becoming quite substantial, giving the community some good insight into the level and treatment of noise.

The results are good and there is a significant improvement at 5 mins compared with the 1Dx, which, I think is reflective of the new ISO range, allowing up to 409600 ISO. There has obviously been a sensor change from 17.9MP in the old model compared to 20.2MP in the new model, with the original 1DX slightly better with noise at 1 and 30 seconds. However the 1DXm2 gives very respectable results, and the difference could easily be attributed to the additional megapixels.

Of course the 1D series of cameras is not intended for astrophotography, and it would be hardly the camera to recommend for that task. But it’s nice to see it’s a solid performer none the less.

Again, a big thank you to Walch Optics for providing access to many of the models we test.

Pushing to +5EV, Pentax K1 & PetaPixel

I have been working hard on the Sensor DB, add new features and models. As part of the process of adding newer and better models I have re-processed all of the samples to +2.5EV and +5EV. This allows the noise to be more visible in the samples for comparison. It was getting tougher to determine visually how samples were comparing. With this problem in mind I also added some statistical data to show the RGB noise characteristics and the mean, median and standard deviation are now shown.

New models added include bodies from Fuji, Nikon, Sony, and Pentax, including the new K1, along with the Fuji XPro2. I’m also hoping to add new search features soon to allow searching by sensor size. This will make it easer to compare common models.

I’d also like to thank Michael Zhang at PetaPixel for the great review of the Sensor Database on their site. Thanks for the write up, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback, and it certainly seems to have caused a lively debate.

 

70D and D7100 Sensor tests.

How well do crop sensor cameras work for long exposure work? I’ve just finished testing the 70D and D7100, you can review the results on the sensor test page. In regards to the Canon 7D mark 2, once Adobe supports the 7D mark 2 with the Camera RAW software I will be able to follow the same workflow and upload a comparison. So stay tuned, I expect it will perform better than the 70D.