Sony’s A7S II is a 4K-shooting pro for your darkest moments

We already got a lovely, refreshed A7R II just a few months ago, and Sony’s eager to keep the upgrade train a-rollin’. The company unveiled the A7S II just a few days back, and despite a spec sheet that reads a lot like its predecessor’s, this thing seems poised to nab the low-light shooting crown. If you’ve seen the original A7S in action, you’ll know that’s no small feat — let’s explore together, shall we?Slideshow-320037

To give us a taste of how good this thing is in the dark, Sony set up a pair of A7S IIs in a poorly lit room festooned with flowers and a rotating tray of sushi. Despite the inky (and pungent) conditions, both cameras sucked up a pretty astonishing amount of light and the picture as portrayed on a wall-mounted television came without the snowstorm of noise some cameras produce at ISO 32,000. For the record, you can technically crank the A7S II up to 409,600, which isn’t a huge improvement on paper — the original A7S and Nikon’s D4S could shoot at the same extended range — but that’s no great sin if the results are anything like what we got out of last year’s model.

In fact, while we’re talking about similarities, there are plenty to see here. Both versions of the A7S have a full-frame 12-megapixel sensor (the better to suck up photons with, my dear) and run with the same BIONZ X image processor tucked away inside. Meanwhile, the classic boxy aesthetic of the A7 line remains mostly untouched, and you’ll feel right at home if you’ve played with the A7R II since they share a near-identical control cluster and weight. That also means they’re built like tanks (you know, in a good way), and weigh noticeably more than the RX100 II I used for these hands-on photos.

I’d argue last year’s A7R was a better video camera than it was a still shooter (seriously, look at this), so Sony went big with the video upgrades this time. The biggest addition? You won’t need an external recorder to shoot 4K video. It’s finally been built right into the A7R II, and Sony took this opportunity to ditch pixel binning — long story short, that means clearer video in low light situations. Sony also announced today that the updated A7S can shoot in 14-bit compressed or uncompressed RAW, the latter of which should help keep those super low-light shots even clearer. Alas, it cheekily (and understandably) taped up the SD card slot door so I couldn’t grab any worthwhile sample shots. Sensing a theme here? An updated 169-point autofocus and 5-axis optical image stabilization also did a fine job keeping things steady and crisp in the dark. All things considered, the A7S II is shaping up to be a terribly worthy buy, but only some hands-on time (and a few hours post-midnight) can confirm whether you should pick this up instead of the new A7R II. Stay tuned for a full verdict soon.

Comments

Tags: 4K, a7, a7s, a7sii, alpha, alphaa7sii, camera, handson, mirrorless, photography, preview, sony

Augmented reality expert explains how AR will help humanity

We’ve been hearing and seeing plenty about augmented reality these days — from Microsoft’s HoloLens to the mysterious Google-backed startup Magic Leap — but aside from the gee-whiz factor, its benefits can sometimes feel almost as illusory as virtual images. Gaia Dempsey, managing director of DAQRI, which makes an AR-enabled smart hard hat, offers up a strong case for why augmented reality is more than just hype. In a new video for the upcoming Future of Storytelling Summit (which also produced the stunning video of animation legend Glen Keane drawing in VR), Dempsey explains how AR could fundamentally change the way we learn and experience the world. For example, it’s one thing to be told how the mechanics of a clock works in text or video, it’s an entirely different experience to be able to manipulate a moving set of clock gears in three dimensions.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/138904916

Dempsey also makes an astute observation: Millions of kids are already building three-dimensional structures in Minecraft, which is giving them the building blocks of working in AR. That’s one major reason Microsoft ended snatched up Minecraft creator Mojang — it’s a game that compliments HoloLens perfectly.

“Many industries are seeing their number of experts dwindling while their number of products are increasing, so getting critical information to the right people in context is a big win,” Dempsey said in an email. “Suddenly, you don’t need to know everything, because you have an interactive knowledge base with you at all times that senses your surroundings, guides you through complicated operations, and connects you to your team. The adoption of AR makes sense in this context because it delivers value today.”

She also thinks AR and virtual reality have plenty of room to coexist. “VR totally immerses the user and puts them into a virtual world, which is great for gaming, and also training scenarios,” Dempsey said. “If you want to control the entire view, VR is best. AR on the other hand puts digital information into the real environment so you can see it in context of the world around you.”

As for DAQRI’s smart helmet, it’s currently in pilot testing with around a dozen Fortune 500 companies, Dempsey tells us. So far, it’s mainly interesting companies in areas like automation, oil, gas, transportation and aerospace. The company plans to launch an SDK for developers to build on its AR platform next year, with an eventual launch at some point later in 2016.

“In the future augmented reality will be everywhere around us,” Dempsey concludes in the video. “It’s something that in a few years we won’t be able to imagine our lives without it.”

Filed under:
Misc

Comments

Tags: AR, augmentedreality, FutureofStorytelling, GaiaDempsey