Sony A7RIV, A7RS and A9II

I came across this article. Link. Sony isn't making it easy for the other camera manufacturers to catch up. I think by raising the bar this high they are going to entice even more photographers to switch camps and upgrade and recreate the success of the A7RIII.

At last! A bit-depth in full-frame to compete with so-called medium format cameras. Or so it's rumoured.

 

I really don't know why it's taken this long. 16 bit A/D converters have been common currency in mainstream electronics for decades.

8K video? I'm not ready for 4Kp60 except for demonstration purposes. You get only 2.5 hours of 4K, 4,2,2 8-bit, DNxHD 220 video on a 1 TB drive. RAW video is something else indeed, at least twice the data rate you can handle on an HDMI interface, with special connectors and cables. Actually there are quite a few cameras with cinematic RAW video output, including Canon C300 (and up), Black Magic, and (naturally) Red. Still, it seems over the top for what one should expect from a part-time video camera.

 

Things will change, old challenges will vanish and new ones emerge. I remember paying over $1K for a 2G hard drive for editing and burning CDs about 20 years ago.

8K video? I'm not ready for 4Kp60 ... Still, it seems over the top for what one should expect from a part-time video camera.

 

I hear you. Hard to keep up. Storage is still a challenge for me. Perhaps YouTube will be doing 8K some time. Hopefully the price of very large SSD drives will drop and we can get a 100 TB SSD in our laptops sometime in the next decade. lol. But I am still seeing 250 GB and 500 GB and a couple 1 TB SSD being sold under $200. It has been like this for a number of years now. Something has to give soon.

 

Maybe overkill video for the average hobbyist , but it might be nice to know is there if you want to use it, :). I sure will appreciate 60 megapixel resolution for photography, but I have to say 42 megapixel is pretty good.

YouTube apparently peaks at a bandwidth of about 16 Mb/s. All the pixels will be displayed, 4K, possibly 8K (no examples yet), but the video is compressed to stay within that bandwidth. I format my deliverables for 720p, 1080p and 4K (3840) at 6, 8, and 32 Mb/s respectively. At midwestern data rates, it can take the better part of a day to upload a couple hours of 4K. Needless to say, I don't do that often.

 

I just ordered a couple more Samsung 1 TB SSD's for under $130 each. That's commodity level pricing. I get the internal versions, and put them in $5 enclosures styled for use in an Atomos Ninja video recorder/monitor, with the bare connector accessible. I have a USB C reader, or simply use a USB cable with a SATA III connector at one end.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Ed_Ingold

Cab they take out the (useless - nothing to view it on) 8K video and do a model a bit cheaper for me please?