Sony making another DR leap? Some 21 stops in a 1.5" sensor?

[jrista]

http://www.eoshd.com/2014/11/new-sony-sensor-21-stops-dynamic-range-5120-native-iso-destined-high-speed-cinema-camera-smartphone/


It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO 655,360!?!?

Frickin nuts man...when the hell is Canon going to get into the sensor game?!!?!?!?!?! AAARRRRG!!

Bummer they are using a 16bit ADC...I guess with S-LOG they are basically shifting the shadow tones up in-camera, so in some ways they could be benefiting from that 21 stops...which is fine for video. For stills, they should really be using a 20-bit ADC. I guess we'll see if they stick this sensor in a stills body or not, but if they do...I certainly hope it would use 20-bit ADC.

 

[Marsu42]

It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO

Can someone please explain simple /me how it has more dr at higher iso?

Frickin nuts man...when the hell is Canon going to get into the sensor game?!!?!?!?!?! AAARRRRG!!

Fortunately, it has been established by popular opinion that you don't need to go beyond what Canon offers and don't feel limited, if you know your equipment, that is :->

Ok, but sarcasm aside - from shooting with ML's dual_iso I have a vague idea how much dynamic range daylight high-contrast shots have. I'd say with 15-16 stops you should be really covered for most natural scenes, 14 is fine for most purposes unless the sun is in the frame. So what's 21ev for?

 

[preppyak]

Ok, but sarcasm aside - from shooting with ML's dual_iso I have a vague idea how much dynamic range daylight high-contrast shots have. I'd say with 15-16 stops you should be really covered for most natural scenes, 14 is fine for most purposes unless the sun is in the frame. So what's 21ev for?

Flexibility. I can always add contrast and crush the ends of my levels to turn it back into 15-16 stops, but its much harder to turn 15 stops into 21. Could be especially useful if, for shutter speed reasons, you need to under or over-expose signficantly. I dont mind clipping highlights if I wasnt gonna use the top 3 stops anyway, if that's what I need to shoot at the right shutter angle.

It's mostly a question of "why not?". Do I really need to be able to shoot cleanly at ISO6400? No, but, I might be able to save a lot of money on my production using an A7s cause I need less light.

edit: Other thing that occurred to me...it could, combo'd with the Movi system, etc...completely change moving from indoor to outdoor for filming. If leaving a bright outdoor scene and moving indoors I change 7EV, with a 21 stop sensor, I might not even have to pull exposure as I change between those scenes. I can just adjust my color grade in post.

Of course, as Red Dragon showed, "21 stops" is never actually 21 stops...it'll be 17 or 18, which will be about perfect.

 

[preppyak]

Can someone please explain simple /me how it has more dr at higher iso?

The simple explanation is basically the same explanation for how actual film had ISOs (100, 400, 800, etc). Each was designed to have maximum performance at that base ISO. Digitally, sensors have a sort of "native" ISO where they perform best. Many stills cameras work best in the 100-200ISO range, while many cameras designed for video tend to be in the 400-2000 range as "native".

Red talks a bit about it midway into this post: http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/iso-speed-revisited

 

[Mitch.Conner]

http://www.eoshd.com/2014/11/new-sony-sensor-21-stops-dynamic-range-5120-native-iso-destined-high-speed-cinema-camera-smartphone/


It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO 655,360!?!?

Frickin nuts man...when the hell is Canon going to get into the sensor game?!!?!?!?!?! AAARRRRG!!

Bummer they are using a 16bit ADC...I guess with S-LOG they are basically shifting the shadow tones up in-camera, so in some ways they could be benefiting from that 21 stops...which is fine for video. For stills, they should really be using a 20-bit ADC. I guess we'll see if they stick this sensor in a stills body or not, but if they do...I certainly hope it would use 20-bit ADC.

Canon sees impossible though. Can you say the same about Sony? I didn't think so.

 

[jrista]

It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO

Can someone please explain simple /me how it has more dr at higher iso?

Frickin nuts man...when the hell is Canon going to get into the sensor game?!!?!?!?!?! AAARRRRG!!

Fortunately, it has been established by popular opinion that you don't need to go beyond what Canon offers and don't feel limited, if you know your equipment, that is :->

Ok, but sarcasm aside - from shooting with ML's dual_iso I have a vague idea how much dynamic range daylight high-contrast shots have. I'd say with 15-16 stops you should be really covered for most natural scenes, 14 is fine for most purposes unless the sun is in the frame. So what's 21ev for?

I could easily use 21 stops for astro. And at ISO 5120, that would make for one HELL of a SENSITIVE astro camera. There is always a way to use more (of anything...DR, SNR, megapixels, color depth, whatever.)

 

[jrista]

http://www.eoshd.com/2014/11/new-sony-sensor-21-stops-dynamic-range-5120-native-iso-destined-high-speed-cinema-camera-smartphone/


It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO 655,360!?!?

Frickin nuts man...when the hell is Canon going to get into the sensor game?!!?!?!?!?! AAARRRRG!!

Bummer they are using a 16bit ADC...I guess with S-LOG they are basically shifting the shadow tones up in-camera, so in some ways they could be benefiting from that 21 stops...which is fine for video. For stills, they should really be using a 20-bit ADC. I guess we'll see if they stick this sensor in a stills body or not, but if they do...I certainly hope it would use 20-bit ADC.

Canon sees impossible though. Can you say the same about Sony? I didn't think so.

Apparently, Sony only sees the possible. And they keep making more and more possible. I kind of like Sony's approach better.

 

[jrista]

It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO

Can someone please explain simple /me how it has more dr at higher iso?

I suspect that ISO 5120 is the true native "base" ISO of the camera. Anything above or below that is being shifted and otherwise tonemapped, hence the reason DR falls off as you move lower or higher. Basically, ISO 5120 would be like ISO 100 on most DSLRs, where you usually lose a bit of DR (or don't gain any) when moving down to expanded ISO 50 (since you don't really have ISO 50, you muck with the exposure after the fact...basically a post-process push or pull.)

 

[lo lite]

It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO

Can someone please explain simple /me how it has more dr at higher iso?

this could easily be a typo and mean 12 instead of 21. 21 stops seems very impossible to me, too big leap from the previous performance.

 

[jrista]

It seems it's primarily intended for cinema...but still...14 stops at ISO 100, 21 stops at ISO 5120, and the thing doesn't drop below 10 stops until an insane ISO

Can someone please explain simple /me how it has more dr at higher iso?

this could easily be a typo and mean 12 instead of 21. 21 stops seems very impossible to me, to big leap from the previous performance.

Given the kind of madhouse progress being made in the sensor world right now, I totally believe it. Especially since Red already produced a 21 stop sensor some time back, which in practical use gives up to around 18 stops or so of real-world DR.

 

[Don Haines]

Given the kind of madhouse progress being made in the sensor world right now, I totally believe it. Especially since Red already produced a 21 stop sensor some time back, which in practical use gives up to around 18 stops or so of real-world DR.

to get 21 stops, you would need 2^21 or 2,097,152 electrons in the well and A/D circuitry good enough to count each electron.... and that means more than that number of photons.... unless we are talking LARGE pixels, it seems a bit unlikely to me...

 

[jrista]

Given the kind of madhouse progress being made in the sensor world right now, I totally believe it. Especially since Red already produced a 21 stop sensor some time back, which in practical use gives up to around 18 stops or so of real-world DR.

to get 21 stops, you would need 2^21 or 2,097,152 electrons in the well and A/D circuitry good enough to count each electron.... and that means more than that number of photons.... unless we are talking LARGE pixels, it seems a bit unlikely to me...

Or multibucket technology in each pixel. Stuff a bunch of CCDs for overflow capacity in some largish pixels, and I could see it happening. I suspect there is some king of fudging going on though, like Red Dragon (they claim 21 stops as well, but in reality it seems to be "18+", which is around a 300ke- FWC, which is certainly more doable.)


BTW, there is EMCCD technology, which effectively IS a photon-counting CCD sensor. They use electron multiplication to super-overwhelm read noise, effectively negating it entirely. Now, EMCCD has to be cooled to insane temperatures (I think a minimum of -70°C, since any stray electron caused by dark current will be multiplied and counted like any photon), so that certainly limits it's applicability.

 

[jrista]

Given the kind of madhouse progress being made in the sensor world right now, I totally believe it. Especially since Red already produced a 21 stop sensor some time back, which in practical use gives up to around 18 stops or so of real-world DR.

to get 21 stops, you would need 2^21 or 2,097,152 electrons in the well and A/D circuitry good enough to count each electron.... and that means more than that number of photons.... unless we are talking LARGE pixels, it seems a bit unlikely to me...

The problem with traditional sensors and measuring DR is that is based around powers of 2. This means we have a lot of values made for highlights that are traditionally wasted.

I'd love to see someone come up with a different design that allocated sensor values evenly across the DR space or at least made it possible to have as much value space for shadows as for highlights.

This is a common fallacy. Sensors are linear, in that they accumulate electrons in a primarily linear fashion until you ride up to the clipping point (where you MIGHT experience some slight non-linearity). There is no "wasting" values for highlights. Pixels simply accumulate light over time, there is no curve.


The notion that the dynamic range of a sensor is wasted on highlights is a mistaken one derived from the fact that RAW editors apply tone curves when rendering the bayered data to make it SEEM like that is the case. It's an illusion, though. The tone curve is applied after the data is captured off the sensor...the sensor is still and always will behave linearly.

 

[dgatwood]

Bummer they are using a 16bit ADC...I guess with S-LOG they are basically shifting the shadow tones up in-camera, so in some ways they could be benefiting from that 21 stops...which is fine for video. For stills, they should really be using a 20-bit ADC. I guess we'll see if they stick this sensor in a stills body or not, but if they do...I certainly hope it would use 20-bit ADC.

Ideally, a 21-bit ADC, to be pedantic.

 

[jrista]

Bummer they are using a 16bit ADC...I guess with S-LOG they are basically shifting the shadow tones up in-camera, so in some ways they could be benefiting from that 21 stops...which is fine for video. For stills, they should really be using a 20-bit ADC. I guess we'll see if they stick this sensor in a stills body or not, but if they do...I certainly hope it would use 20-bit ADC.

Ideally, a 21-bit ADC, to be pedantic.

Indeed.