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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 Mark 4 Sensor Results.

Better late than never they say. It has been some time since I uploaded some sensor results to the Sensor Database. Results for the A7 Mark 4 are good, not as good as the Mark 3, but that is to be expected with more Megapixels.

Results at 1 second places the camera in the top rankings, but performance drops off with longer exposures compared to some other models. Still overall very impressive.

Check out the results for yourself in the Sensor DB.

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.