Global vs stacked sensors

[Discombobulated]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

 

[ghostfox_1]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.

Why? Global shutters also have drawbacks. There's no free lunch.

. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors.

Do you work for nikon? Or is this a guess? Because I don't see stacked sensors going to low end bodies for 2 generations.

 

[mosswings]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

It's common to impose a single measure of performance evaluation on technology - CPU processing speed or sensor megapixels. It makes for great headlines and scratches the itch for a simple way of comprehending the changes. But it's misleading.
The better way of evaluating technology is its practical performance to purpose. Does it improve the ability to do a task in a meaningful way? Does it lower the cost of performing a task? Does it enable you to do important new tasks heretofore impossible or impractical? Does it degrade performance in some dimension to improve it in another?
When you evaluate in this manner you get a much more nuanced and realistic analysis of whether a technology is obsolete. Most of the time that technology isn't. Global shutter is no different. For most photogs, non-stacked technology is perfectly adequate. For rapidly moving subjects fast readout stacked technology is perfectly competent. For videographers, with slow frame rates and moving subjects, global shutter offers cleaner images.
There is no one absolute best among all these technologies, just ones more or less optimal for your needs. So the Z9 and other "rolling shutter" architectures will still be delivering the goods for years to come. What HAS happened, however, is that Sony has stirred up a good deal of FUD with a very early announcement of a technology much talked about in the geeky press. Fine, let them do that, and let early uncritical adopters pay through the nose. Seasoned purchasers are about selecting the right tool for the purpose, not something that's the newest or coolest or most loudly trumpeted.

From today: I Don't Need Global Shutter (Doesn't Mean I Can't Want It) | Thom Hogan (zsystemuser.com)
Note that the features of the A9III he could see useful can mostly be added to existing camera architectures by firmware.

 

[Dennis]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

Well, before the A9III, Nikon released the Z9 and Z8 sensors fast enough to eliminate the mechanical shutter. That seems every bit as likely to become the standard for midrange cameras as a global shutter, but Nikon didn't trickle that down to the Zf, either.

Maybe the future just isn't here yet

 

[Tailslol]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

Nothing is obsoleted though. Sony A1 is still a better camera than A9III with its rolling shutter sensor.

--
https://www.instagram.com/dodobilge/

 

[MoreorLess]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

The difference to me seems to be that at the moment stacked sensors can be used without having a significant negative effect on image quality and usability which is probably why Nikon went for them in its high end bodies.

The global sensor in the A9III on the other hand seems like it comes with a significant compromise of a base ISO of 250 which I do not think Nikon would consider acceptable for the Z8 or Z9. Its possible they could put out a specialist body version of those cameras I spose with such a sensor but I think technology will need to advance enough to remove such compromises for it to be their mainline sensor in their top cameras.

 

[ghostfox_1]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

Nothing is obsoleted though. Sony A1 is still a better camera than A9III with its rolling shutter sensor.

 

[Jean Daniel Villiers]

I saw someone asking about how would the legs of athletes in one of the preview online be. I mean, how dumb some people are drinking marketing coolaid. What he meant is if their legs would have been bent if it was another sensor, as if even before the Nikon D3, we had athletes with bent foot, knee in sport photos.

 

[Jean Daniel Villiers]

The 120 fps is very nice, but it is only for one second, it then drops. Second disadvantage is that when the buffer is full, it takes like 40 second to clear.

 

[ghostfox_1]

The 120 fps is very nice, but it is only for one second, it then drops. Second disadvantage is that when the buffer is full, it takes like 40 second to clear.

Right, which is why I'm not excited about it (even for Sony shooters). I think the tech advancing is good, but using slow SD and cfe type a cards are going to make shooting at 120fps miserable.

Now, when nikon/Canon do it with cfe type b at many times the write speed (I think 4x with the newest generation of cfe type b on the camera and card side), much better.

 

[PLShutterbug]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

Quad-stacked solar-system sensors.

 

[PLShutterbug]

The 120 fps is very nice, but it is only for one second, it then drops. Second disadvantage is that when the buffer is full, it takes like 40 second to clear.

Right, which is why I'm not excited about it (even for Sony shooters). I think the tech advancing is good, but using slow SD and cfe type a cards are going to make shooting at 120fps miserable.

That's just a matter of throwing more buffer RAM in the camera. Has nothing to do with the sensor.

 

[Suntan]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii..

You and I have a different understanding of the word obsolete.

I won't deny that the A9iii looks to be great for action shots with a mix of strobes and ambient, if I had a camera with a global sensor, I would likely enjoy doing more of that.

However, that is a rather specific circumstance, and not something I would buy a new, $6K camera for.

For regular action shots, I do not feel the a9iii would be giving me anything beneficial compared to the z9 (or z8.) I know it is a luddite thing to say, but I really do think there's a point where more fps is diminishing returns. I shot a couple of sports events with the 120fps jpg setting, just to see if I was normally missing any action between the frames... all I really got was A LOT of repetitive frames as hurtlers slowly inched over the hurtles, frame by frame. Honestly, 30 fps would be the max I need. Not to mention that the idea of bursting off one and a half seconds of 120fps, then waiting 10 seconds for them to flush to my CFeA card is not conducive to my workflow.

Now that all the Youtubers have had their posting orgy, I will be really interested to see just how many people actually splash out for the A9iii next spring. It is great tech, and it does allow for some really meaningful capabilities in some very specific, flash related fields; but I just don't see it being a meaningful differentiator for the majority of how people use cameras today.

 

[Suntan]

The 120 fps is very nice, but it is only for one second, it then drops. Second disadvantage is that when the buffer is full, it takes like 40 second to clear.

Right, which is why I'm not excited about it (even for Sony shooters). I think the tech advancing is good, but using slow SD and cfe type a cards are going to make shooting at 120fps miserable.

That's just a matter of throwing more buffer RAM in the camera. Has nothing to do with the sensor.

While that is true, this does explain why some of us are not losing our s over this announcement. A guy can get excited for the tech, or a guy can get excited for the product announced. The product announced has some serious limitations in being able to keep up with its sensor, and as such is not that attractive.

Now if the big C announces the R1 (a few weeks before the Sony starts shipping) to be available before the summer games, with the ability to gobble up many seconds of frames at a time, things might get more interesting.

 

[raunak]

They are two different things. A stacked sensor provides capabilities for faster offloading of data off the sensor and to the data pipelines & storage. It serves as a enabler for a global shutter. Isn't the A9 III using a stacked CMOS sensor after all.

 

[MCLV]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

Stacking and global shutter are not exclusive betweem themselves. A sensor can have either of them or both.

We still need to see what compromises in IQ will global shutter bring. My impression so far is that Nikon would return back to having a body specialized for action/sport (like D6) instead of general purpose one if they would use global shutter in Z9 successor. Whether this would an advantage for you or not depends on what you shoot.

 

[Tailslol]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

Stacking and global shutter are not exclusive betweem themselves. A sensor can have either of them or both.

We still need to see what compromises in IQ will global shutter bring. My impression so far is that Nikon would return back to having a body specialized for action/sport (like D6) instead of general purpose one if they would use global shutter in Z9 successor. Whether this would an advantage for you or not depends on what you shoot.

As long as global shutter cannot give the exact same dynamic range as rolling shutters, I don't think it will become the norm. There will global shutter cameras for flash photography and LED issues, there will be rolling shutter cameras for dynamic range.

We know this because global shutter has existed basically forever. If you check the high end cinema cameras like Arri or Red, they choose rolling shutter deliberately due to increased dynamic range. People say rolling shutter distortion is important, well apparently not so much for Hollywood.

 

[Discombobulated]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii.. It appears to me that stacked sensors will soon become standard for mid range cameras like next z5,6&7 when next z8&9 will equipped with global sensors. By the time it happens do you think sony will launch a super stacked global sensors?

Quad-stacked solar-system sensors.

lol

 

[Discombobulated]

The belated stacked sensors in Z flagship seems like an immediate obsolete after the debut of global sensors in A9iii..

You and I have a different understanding of the word obsolete.

I won't deny that the A9iii looks to be great for action shots with a mix of strobes and ambient, if I had a camera with a global sensor, I would likely enjoy doing more of that.

However, that is a rather specific circumstance, and not something I would buy a new, $6K camera for.

For regular action shots, I do not feel the a9iii would be giving me anything beneficial compared to the z9 (or z8.) I know it is a luddite thing to say, but I really do think there's a point where more fps is diminishing returns. I shot a couple of sports events with the 120fps jpg setting, just to see if I was normally missing any action between the frames... all I really got was A LOT of repetitive frames as hurtlers slowly inched over the hurtles, frame by frame. Honestly, 30 fps would be the max I need. Not to mention that the idea of bursting off one and a half seconds of 120fps, then waiting 10 seconds for them to flush to my CFeA card is not conducive to my workflow.

Now that all the Youtubers have had their posting orgy, I will be really interested to see just how many people actually splash out for the A9iii next spring. It is great tech, and it does allow for some really meaningful capabilities in some very specific, flash related fields; but I just don't see it being a meaningful differentiator for the majority of how people use cameras today.

Obsolete from flagship level

 

[Discombobulated]

They are two different things. A stacked sensor provides capabilities for faster offloading of data off the sensor and to the data pipelines & storage. It serves as a enabler for a global shutter. Isn't the A9 III using a stacked CMOS sensor after all.

Idk, you tell me.