Other camera models . Then I said “what the hey” and made a series in portrait orientation. The impact on the image quality is barely noticeable. The vertical axis is average, or mean, or mu of the MTF50 (the spatial frequency where the modulation transfer function is 50%) measures in cycles per picture height. Here’s an analysis of one of the horizontal edges in the target with the a7RIV shutter set to mechanical, electronic first curtain (EFCS) and fully electronic (what Sony calls Silent Shooting). The following camera models have an added electronic sound that is always on. I put the Leica 280mm f/4 Apo-Telyt-R on both the a7R and a7RII, mounted the lens collar to an Arca Swiss C1 head on a set of RRS TVC-43 legs, set the whole thing on a vinyl tile over 6 inch concrete floor, and made some slanted edge photographs at various shutter speeds. Even if a quantization error were introduced it would look like additional noise in the Edge Spread Function, which would show up as modulation of the results: but here the average is consistently lower. The dark blue line is for the mechanical shutter, and the blue dots are the measured points.The mechanical shutter curve behaves pretty much as expected. This tool will provide the number of shutter actuations that the camera has made up to the file in question. I actually thought the XH1 has sharper images than the XPro2/XT2 due to the damped shutter but it would be interesting to see if your advanced measurements support that hypothesis that cameras with spring balanced shutters are superior to the A7R3. Photography wins -- most of the time. Be among the first to get the latest Sony news in your inbox. By Louis Ferreira | Published: March 8, 2018. For A7R4, ECFS takes care of a lot of shutter stock but if you have a static object, a pure Electronic Shutter is sharper than ECFS. That EFCS line appears too good to be true, but I double-checked the data. A few days ago, I set out to measure the shutter shock of the a7RIII and a7RIV. When shooting still images using the [ Silent Shooting] function with low ISO sensitivity, if you point the camera at a very bright light source, high intensity areas on the monitor may be recorded in darker tones. I went over the data several times, and double checked the EXIF information to make sure the cameras were set up the way I thought they were, and reran Imatest on another horizontal edge, but I didn’t find anything untoward. Re EFCS vs Silent performance: I don’t think a 1 bit difference in the encoding at these contrast ratios should affect MTF results obtained through the slanted edge method. The a7RIII has a silent shutter mode. Photography wins -- most of the time. You should be able to find all the posts about that camera in the Category List on the right sidebar, below the Articles widget. That’s because the bulk of the motion imparted to a tripod mounted mirrorless camera with no added delay between winding the shutter and firing the first curtain comes from the winding action, not the motion of the first curtain. Silent Shooting mode uses an electronic rolling shutter, and yes, Sony a7S has Silent Shooting Mode but it’s 12mp sensor means much less data needs to steam from the electronic rolling shutter. So far everything is working as expected. Specifically, the silent shooting option is only available when shooting still images in the P, A, S, or M shooting modes. You can't turn off the shutter sound because these models are only equipped with a mechanical shutter. Photography meets digital computer technology. First, I’ll drag you through the protocol. The EFCS on the a7RII works great. The second was an unplanned side effect of a well-meaning decision. First off, I don’t test cameras and other equipment that I have no interest in using. How to Set Up Silent Shutter Mode on Your Sony a6500. Or do I need kryptonite machined weight screwed to the arse of the A7r to stop the shake? Not much to choose between the a7R and a7RII mechanical shutters, or between the EFCS and the silent shutter. When shooting with the mechanical shutter all previous Sony Cameras had a little lag in the EVF display, the A7RIII is the first Sony camera to offer a fully lag free shooting with the mechanical shutter . Leica M10 vs M10-D? Self timer set to 5 seconds on the a7RII and 10 seconds on the a7R. ? If you own the very laud Sony A7r than you may be really interested how much more silent the new A7rII shutter is. The effect on images may vary depending on the camera model and camera settings. In order to get 13 bits, I have to avoid bulb, and continuous drive, is there anything else I have to avoid? Your email address will not be published. Photography meets digital computer technology. Using a remote release and A exposure mode, I made 16 exposures about 1 second apart at each setting with the light adjusted to give me shutter speeds of. Or is it simply muffling the transmission of the shock to the photographer’s ears? With EFCS, there’s less vibration because the camera doesn’t have to wind and release the shutter just before the exposure. I focused once on the target and made all subsequent exposures (about 500 of them) with each camera without changing the focus. If you’ve been using Sony cameras for any length of time, you know how clunky it can get. The horizontal axis is the inverse of the shutter speed: if you see 160, it means 1/160 second. The grey curve is the a7RII with EFCS on, and the yellow curve is the a7Rii with silent shutter on. The lens: the Leica 280mm f/4 Apo-Telyt-R. Silent Shooting is a camera feature that allows you to shoot images without the sound created by the mechanical shutter. But Iwould prefer the stop the shake! Just like the Nikon Z6 and Z7 and Canon EOS R. But there are specific differences which might affect your decision about which camera best suits your needs. The cameras: the Sony a7RII and Sony a7R. Some lucky coincidence of adapter/lens/whatever having a suitable resonance frequency (on this particular implementation of the mount), so that all the energy of vibrations goes into a mode which does not affect the quality of the photo? The first series of images was made with the camera in landscape orientation. But there are unfortunately some limitations you should be aware of. That is especially true for a big lens which has a relatively low resonant frequency compared to a small one. In fact, it works so well that going all the way to silent shutter mode doesn’t bring any significant improvement on single shots, although it almost certainly would on a series of exposures made in a short period. The EFCS on the a7RII works great. You want the good news or the bad news first? Thought so. What’s wrong with conventional lens screening? That mostly affects lower shutter speeds. Fuji X-H1 vs. Fuji X-T3? Now let’s look at the vertical edge, first for the a7RIV: Now, except for the electronic shutter case, we see blurring at longer shutter speeds. The shock absorber also contributes to quietness of the shutter.”. Image processing for in-camera histograms, Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram, Leica 90/2 Apo-Summicron ASPH-M on GFX 50S. I exported crops of the slanted edge target as TIFFs, and computed MTF50, which is a good proxy for sharpness, using Imatest. IBIS stiffness when not engaged? There’s lots to love about the new Sony a7RII including upgrades to the original a7R of 5-Axis image stabilization found on a7II, Silent Shooting mode found on a7S and Electronic Front Curtain Shutter (EFS) found on every a7-series camera – except the original Sony a7R. Then I analyzed the statistics of the sets. Testing and demonstrating the Sony A7II shutter slap sound next to the Sony A7s, which was the quietest shutter in the A7 series, until now. The a7RIII takes about 1/15 second to do the scan, so we’re going backwards here, thanks to the higher pixel count of the a7RIV. Even if [Silent Shooting] is set to [On], it will not be completely silent. Back to square one, I tried again. Required fields are marked *. Jim – on the A7RIV, does silent shooting/silent shutter reduce bit depth in single shot mode or does it remain at 14 bits? SONY Alpha shutter/image counter. Here’s an analysis of one of the horizontal edges in the target with the a7RIV shutter set to mechanical, electronic first curtain (EFCS) and fully electronic (what Sony calls Silent Shooting). Image processing for in-camera histograms, Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram, Leica 90/2 Apo-Summicron ASPH-M on GFX 50S. All full frame E-mount cameras (except for the A7r) feature an electronic shutter in addition to the mechanical shutter. First, I’ll drag you through the protocol. 0" 921. It’s real close, but the EFCS actually appears to be a hair better than the silent shutter. So I took some pictures using RAW, uncompressed, silent shutter mode and no flash. There’s a drop-down menu there that you can use to get to all the posts in this series; just look for “A7RIV”. -In silent shooting it exposes, but it's a very black frame.-> I tried turning silent shooting off and taking a shot and got "camera error, cycle power please", which remained even after the camera had been switched off. I think the main reason is that I couldn’t get far enough away from the target. Unlike my previous camera the Canon 5D Mark III, which has a silent mode that is quiet, the Sony is actually silent. ECFS changes the appearance of bokeh so it is not a freebie, although the benefits generally outweigh the deficits. How fast is the Sony a7RIV silent shutter. What’s wrong with conventional lens screening? Maybe the sun and moon and stars aligned so that there was vibration cancellation. Looks like the a7RII mechanical shutter is a bit better than the a7R one. Although Sony said that they increased the damping of the a7RII shutter over that of the a7R (and I have no reason to disbelieve them) with a long lens like this it doesn’t make much difference. I have not tested the M10, but I had an M240 for several years, and it had a lot of shutter shock and no EFCS. And two readers from UK confirmed that they will get their A7rII preorder from Wex UK on July 30 already! IBIS and shutter shock usually don’t play well together. Here’s the mechanical shutter data for both cameras: The heavy lines are the means of the MTF50s. Second, on most MILC cameras these days, shutter shock is mostly academic, since EFCS is available. a7RIV vs a7RIII IBIS performance at 135 mm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuned_mass_damper. Does the additional of the battery grip fix the problem? So for underwater shooting in the 1/30th – 1/200th range, it seems like it would be better to use EFCS to keep 13 bits (since all the data is in narrow band of the blue) and the speed isn’t fast enough to cause shutter exposure unevenness. Amazing!!! With your infinite amount of time and desire to investigate cameras for the whims of the internet…. I lit my slanted edge target with an Aputure 120d II LED light with a 12-inch parabolic reflector mounted and the light set to 5500K. Bryn, Jim, Manual focusing wide open, then lens set to f/6.9 (halfway between f/5.6 and f/8). This lens doesn’t appear to be as sharp as the 180/3.4. Your email address will not be published. Unfortunately mounting a big, heavy lens like the 280/4 to the front of the camera unsupported is a recipe for damaging the lens mount. In the next picture, which is the same graph except the data is from the a7RIII exposures, you’ll see a situation where that isn’t true at all. Sadly I have an A7r and don’t feel inclined to fork out 3k for the Mk2 version at this point. Not much difference between silent shutter and EFCS. Le Sony A7R II est donc le premier COI Sony à enregistrer en 4K Télé (3 840 x 2 160 px) sur carte en XAVC-S. Il intègre également le format XAVC-S pour l'enregistrement HDTV 1080. An aside: I’m curious if you notice any measurable image degradation with the variable neutral density Heliopan 77mm filter. Lens collar mounted to head with RRS generic plate. The bad news? The A7Ii … Shutter shock was the band of the a7R because it had no EFCS. Required fields are marked *. Brace yourself. I can’t explain this. Since you do have a GFX100, it would be interesting to see how the data plots out. In this case it’s 1/125 second. -Yes, shutter is visible and appears fully 'closed', covering the entire sensor. With this, vibration is not transmitted to other devices inside the camera. This mostly affects higher shutter speeds. Granted it is used, but is that normal? Sony a7III: Mechanical Shutter vs Silent, Interview, Time-Lapse, Rolling Shutter and More. Unless the motor is suspended with the shutter, any spring system isn’t going to help with that. This is one in a series of posts on the Sony alpha 7 R Mark IV (aka a7RIV). Both the Sony A7iii and Sony A9 / A9ii offer a silent / electronic shutter. Fearing that initial errors in manual focusing could make comparisons between cameras difficult, I chose to use autofocus. This can obviously prove useful in sensitive situations, but it is not without issue. Measure MTF50 in Imatest . How fast is the Sony a7RIV silent shutter? Your email address will not be published. Excellent stuff, Jim. I don’t know why the a7RIII looks so good here. Just looking at this post though, it suggests: For A7R3, ECFS is great and has no issues. Develop in Lightroom 5.7.1 with standard settings. In between, there is a point where the resonant frequencies of the camera/lens/head/tripod assembly conspired to do damage to image sharpness. At low speeds, most of the vibrations have damped down during most of the time the shutter is open, so there’s not much blur. This is because the side-to-side vibrations take longer to die away, and all but the first shots are affected by the shots that came before, and mostly by the shot that came immediately before. But hey, there is no sun there so let them enjoy the camera as first :) ONLY ORIGINAL JPG or ARW files STRAIGHT from the camera will work. The filter: Heliopan 77mm variable neutral density. I suspect the same. Setting up silent shutter on your a6500 is very simple to do. Not until you get to very high attenuation. Above 1/160 second, you can throw a blanket over all the curves. Silent shooting with the Sony A7R III is impressively, well, silent. Point of clarification, does the bracketing mode (sort of continuous drive) drop to 12 bits? Sony a7RII EFCS & silent shutter sharpness, Sony a7RII EFCS & silent shutter sharpness | The Last Word. What ‘s the difference in terms of mechanical parts that move between the two modes? With electronic shutter, there’s the lease vibration of all because no part of the shutter assembly moves either before, durning, or after the shutter is released. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuned_mass_damper Exposure protocol: ND filter to minimum attenuation,, shutter to 1/500, make an exposures, ND filter down a third of a stop, shutter down a third of a stop, make another exposures… until you get to 1/10 second. The availability of EFCS has pushed shutter shock way down in my testing priority list. Making your Sony a7iii shoot silently isn’t available in every shooting mode, and not every feature is available when you turn the silent shooting on (more on that below). Damn lucky guys those brits! Second, the vibrations from the exposure one second before the current one may not have completely died away. Even if [ Silent Shooting] is set to [On] , the operating sound of the aperture and focus will sound. A7RII - Banding issues in silent shutter mode: We had some school activity this weekend. Testing and demonstrating the Sony A7II shutter sound next to the Sony A7s, which was the quietest shutter in the A7 series, until now. You’ll notice that there has been a gap in my nearly-daily postings, and it’s not for lack of trying. The lighter ones are the means plus the standard deviations (mu + sigma, in statistician-speak) and the means minus the standard deviations. And I don’t usually — with one exception that I can think of when I thought I had a bad copy of the CO 60/4 macro and rented another copy from Roger at LensRentals — rent or borrow equipment, because I don’t like to feel rushed when I’m testing gear. I did not use portrait orientation, which would accentuate the effects of the shutter motions on the a7x cameras, since I don’t yet have an L-bracket for the a7RIV. As a total aside, why can’t all lens collars have crisp detents every ninety degrees like this Leica lens? That’s easier on the mechanical shutter than portrait orientation, since tripods are stiffer in the up and down direction than they are from side to side. “ The shutter unit is suspended with five springs so they act as a shock absorber when the shutter is pressed. Somewhere, I thought I read that you have used CameraWest before and if so, that gets you access to the M10 cameras. 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