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A7*2 Resolution Drop with >3.2s Exposure

V

Vivek

Guest
How did you do that? I thought rolling back would brick a camera?
 
thrice

thrice

Active member
Despite rolling back the firmware I can confirm spatial filtering still occurs at 4.0s.
Probably a microcode block that the 3.20 firmware didn't write whereas the 3.30 firmware does.

Back to waiting for Sony.
 
T

tcdeveau

Well-known member
Vivek said:
Dan, The new FW, 4.0, has it fixed the "star eater" issue?
Click to expand...
According to sonyalpharumors.com the new firmware is supposed to fix the issue, or at least improve image quality with LENR off. I'll try to update this weekend and take it out for a spin.
-Todd
 
thrice

thrice

Active member
Ok so I have already tried FW4.00 and no good in my opinion.

I'm off to Tasmania on Monday so I will shoot some test pics with plenty of fine details but I know I'll be trying to keep it below 3.2s for the majority and slightly defocusing my stars to try and avoid them being gobbled.

FW4.00.jpg
200%
FW4.00.JPG

Rawdigger lenscap tests (this gif is not playing for me on getdpi, here's a link)
Rawdigger.jpg
 
V

Vivek

Guest
Sony could easily do this: when someone tries to set the exposure time above 3.2s, a warning flashes

YOU ARE ACTIVATING THE STAR EATER PROTOCOL!

SHOOT AT YOUR OWN PERIL!

MAKE. BELIEVE?
 
A

astrobuoy

New member
Please sign the petition to get Sony to fix this http://www.change.org/p/sony-remove-the-star-eater-on-sony-a7s-r-mk-i-ii-and-a9-cameras

jdphoto said:
When I owned the Sony A7rii, I upgraded the firmware to mitigate the ODS delay when using the Elinchrom ELB 400/HS head. I decided to sell it when the talk of of a new model with two SD cards was rumored. I wanted a jump on the flood of second hand Sony's before the price drop, so didn't experience long exposure issues as I hadn't used it in that regard yet. The loss of micro contrast in anything longer then 3.2 seconds is absurd. The A9 however, has not piqued my interest and the launch price confirmed that. So for now i'll wait on Sony. This is something Sony needs to fix. I like long exposure photography and won't consider their cameras until this is fixed with firmware. Thanks for the article.
Click to expand...
 
ggibson

ggibson

Well-known member
In the meantime, you could also try using the Smooth Reflection app to automatically blend shorter exposures into a longer one. I'm not sure if this can be used for astrophotography, since you might be light-limited in those cases. But Smooth Reflection should give cleaner shadows than even one long exposure would and hopefully not apply the noise reduction as shown here for >3.2s exposures. Haven't tested it myself, but it's worth a look.
 
thrice

thrice

Active member
ggibson said:
In the meantime, you could also try using the Smooth Reflection app to automatically blend shorter exposures into a longer one. I'm not sure if this can be used for astrophotography, since you might be light-limited in those cases. But Smooth Reflection should give cleaner shadows than even one long exposure would and hopefully not apply the noise reduction as shown here for >3.2s exposures. Haven't tested it myself, but it's worth a look.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately that isn't how smooth reflection nor stacking works.
You still need a reasonable luminance in all your subs, lots of dark images don't magically make a bright image.

If you want to expose the galactic core for example, you need a long enough exposure for every sub that the brighter gas areas rise appreciably above the noise floor. If you stack a jillion 3.2s subs you will have really low noise but not a lot of SNR to give you the contrast required for a pleasing image.
 
ggibson

ggibson

Well-known member
thrice said:
Unfortunately that isn't how smooth reflection nor stacking works.
You still need a reasonable luminance in all your subs, lots of dark images don't magically make a bright image.

If you want to expose the galactic core for example, you need a long enough exposure for every sub that the brighter gas areas rise appreciably above the noise floor. If you stack a jillion 3.2s subs you will have really low noise but not a lot of SNR to give you the contrast required for a pleasing image.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's why I said I didn't think it could be used for astro (or other light-limited cases). I was suggesting it for examples like the forest stream above where one might be shooting with ND filters or stopping down quite a bit and have some flexibility to adjust f-stop+filters to get exposure time under 3.2s.
 
thrice

thrice

Active member
ggibson said:
Yeah, that's why I said I didn't think it could be used for astro (or other light-limited cases). I was suggesting it for examples like the forest stream above where one might be shooting with ND filters or stopping down quite a bit and have some flexibility to adjust f-stop+filters to get exposure time under 3.2s.
Click to expand...
Oh I understand what you're saying now.
No ND used in the above shot.
Shot at a standard working aperture (f/11) with a polariser.
 
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