DPReview TV: Could the Sony a1's fast sensor bring us better picture quality as well as speed?

Yes, and also the power budget, battery life is already a big issue in mirrorless cameras, if you had to perform a whole bunch of computation at every frame captured, the power issue would be even bigger :P

Sony had a mode that combined images for a improved night scene in camera. I don't know if it is still on newer cameras.
Olympus has their hand held HR mode that produces high resolution RAW files with improved IQ. They and others also have 'focus stacking' in camera for macros with greater DoF.
I would say these appear to fit that definition.

Another disadvantage of doing it in-camera: Typically, product cycles for cameras are FAR longer than for computing devices.

Designing the camera to integrate well with a computing device is a superior solution, because that computing device can be upgraded separately.

Because of the size of the sensor, the way sensors are read out when using an electronic shutter for super fast bursts is line by line top to bottom, and that's simply quicker (and/or easier) to do on a smaller sensor that's putting out far less data.

It's the same reason M4/3 & APS-C sensors have faster readout speeds (1/40-1/60) than most FF sensors (1/10-1/30) outside of the pricier stacked sensors Sony has in the A1/A9. So larger sensors are catching up, but it's a costly endeavor.

@impulses - also as sensors get larger, advanced manufacturing techniques such as stacked BSI (key to the A9/A9II, VENICE, and A1 performance) become much more expensive - and it's a nonlinear function of silicon area.

Which is why stacked BSI (Exmor RS in Sony terminology) has been standard for smartphone sensors for years, while until the A1, only one or two (It's still not quite determinate whether A9/A9II share a sensor with VENICE) RS sensors larger than 1" were in production in the world, and now only 2 or 3.

The readout speed of the A9 was insane by mirrorless/DSLR standards but it was "yawn" by smartphone standards. A1 closes the gap, but there's still a significant gap between that and "can continuously readout multiple frames with reset immediately following readout, eliminating almost any gap between frames" like we see in Pixels.

Smartphones are doing some amazing stuff. Among other things, I am still impressed by what night mode does on my iPhone.

And of course the majority smartphone players, like Apple and Google, have far more resources to throw at the problem than any camera company and far more financial incentives to do so.

So we can expect these companies to gallop ahead and advance far more rapidly than any dedicated camera company. Apple esp has an advantage in designing their own custom silicon chips which are class leading.

Just curious how do you know Rishi is Indian?

Hey Handsome, why didn't you ask how he knows Richard is a Brit? Or that Jordan is Canadian? It's possible to have a Brittish accent and not be Brittish, and im pretty sure Chris is Canadian too. So why ask about Rishi and not the others?

@KAAMBIC, Because I’m already familiar with them. All I know is Rishi did a PhD and then joined DPR. I don’t know where he was born, what accent he has etc etc.

Jordan's "competing with" is very different from your "surpassing" micro
4/3s cameras...

How is this news to you? This isn't the first video to feature any of the fine folks at DPR, and you've been around a good while... :P This isn't the first article where they've suggested smartphone IQ is encroaching on formats like M4/3 & APS-C either... This one's from 2018:

https://m.dpreview.com/articles/7921074499/five-ways-google-pixel-3-pushes-the-boundaries-of-computational-photography

" Such 'merged' Raw files represent a major threat to traditional cameras. The math alone suggests that, solely based on sensor size, 15 averaged frames from the Pixel 3 sensor should compete with APS-C sized sensors in terms of noise levels. " -Rishi

https://m.dpreview.com/articles/4621813150/the-pixel-4-isn-t-better-than-a-compact-camera-but-that-doesn-t-matter

https://m.dpreview.com/articles/1102485836/these-are-the-most-important-google-pixel-4-camera-updates

More to the point:

https://bit.ly/3jbpokF

And:

https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/8836209383/FullSNR_vs_aps-c_mFT.png

That last link is from the last footnote here:

https://m.dpreview.com/news/8836209383/google-computational-photography-marc-levoy-joins-adobe-to-build-new-imaging-experiences

Which reads:

" 2 Our own signal:noise ratio analyses of Raw files from the Pixel 4 and representative APS-C and four-thirds cameras show the Pixel 4, in Night Sight mode, to be competitive against both classes of cameras, even slightly out-performing four-thirds cameras (for static scene elements). See our full signal:noise analysis here. " -Rishi

That last bit is pretty key tho, for static scenes, smartphones tend to struggle more with lots of motion, or say, if you happen to wanna shoot at any focal length but that of the main camera module (which tends to be the brightest and best optimized for the computational tricks). If you care about things like compression or simply prefer much longer/wider FLs, phone output and options start falling apart...

Nothing new, if you stack enough pinhole shots it will outperform medium format SNR. The question is, how wide is the use envelope? For most phone users it's fine, which is why it's on phones.

@handsome, how do you know what the OP meant by Indian, did he mean nationality or ethnicity? Which were you in question of? Given Rishi's physical appearance, it's not odd to assume perhaps he's of Indian heritage. Is that somehow wrong to assume?

@KAAMBIC: Why don't you bottle the race issue up and move on? You are showing pathologic obsession about this...talk photography for once.

I don't think the processing power is as much of a roadblock as your second point... Apple has some impressive hardware but it may well be overkill for some of these things.

Google dropped their so called Neural Core from it's latest phones and even with some decidedly midrange SoCs (no faster than what was found on the 2 year old Pixel 3) they're still able to accomplish all the same computational tricks they've always had in their cameras, processing might take half a second longer when you go to playaback images but that's about it.

The software and the massive R&D behind those algorithms, well, that's another story...

"The software has to be created and that is not trivial. Companies like Apple and Google have some of the best machine learning software teams in the world."

Google actually publishes fairly decent descriptions of their algorithm (although their MFSR paper seems to deliberately leave certain definitions very vague), which is why implementations of the older HDR+ algorithm exist. https://www.timothybrooks.com/tech/hdr-plus/ - attempts to implement Google's MFSR algo seem to have so far stalled.

There's also the fact that this sort of thing should not be done in camera. A camera is a data collection tool. Get the sensor data, feed it to a computer for postprocessing. Although as has been discussed elsewhere, the readout rate of larger sensor cameras leads to differences from smartphones that can strain some algorithms. The A1 starts to close that gap though, with full resolution RAW capture at 20 FPS.

Sure, I wasn't debating that, I don't think the processing power is the biggest roadblock either way tho (as I said in my earlier comment)... Google's low end $350 smartphone manages to get by just fine without a "Neural Core" and a midrange SoC that's slower than some high end SoC from 3+ years ago.

Developing the software/algorithms to do all this *and* convincing people (specially some old school enthusiasts) is probably more of a hurdle than the processing power, the next biggest hurdle is the readout rate which is what the article starts with... There's some M4/3 bodies/sensors that already have a readout rate (1/60) that just might be fast enough.

It's gonna take a lot of iniciative and some software R&D to leverage that, I think Oly was more inclined in that direction than Pana but I don't see OMDS throwing money at features like that. Pana has shown to be pretty nimble in the past tho (copying features from Oly and implementing them better, iterating quickly on IBIS, etc.).

"Developing the software/algorithms to do all this *and* convincing people (specially some old school enthusiasts) is probably more of a hurdle than the processing power"

There's a lot of unlocked potential for computational optics to make it in dedicated cameras. The target demographic would be the smartphone users who wanted to go beyond the limits of their own phones (larger sensor, responsive auto focus, lens selection) without having to take a course on photography and still expecting good results. It would also make taking pictures enjoyable and experimental for the non-technical crowd. Camera and lens makers can benefit from expanding their market to this demographic or category of camera users.

No thanks, we already had an ***hole president.

A lot of RX cameras have that... RX10IV anyone?

Where is the mini-a9 aka a6999!?

Sony A9 has been reduced to $2999.
Full frame and stacked...

Jekabs: I didn't say I expect it to be as cheap as an A7C. Right now, I'd not be surprised if the sensor costs more than the A1 is selling for... but fab yield improvements usually come quickly and change everything.

There are some real savings in leaving-out stuff like the mechanical shutter and other "pro" frills from an A7C form. In any case, I'd expect a 2-year design cycle, so if it isn't already in the pipe, it's probably a while off. I don't really know how the costs scale for stacking with larger sensors, but it ought not be that bad (as compared to BSI, which I understand was terrible to scale to bigger sensors). I'd actually expect more cost to be associated with buffer memory size than with stacking tech, and there were (are?) pandemic-caused supply shortages.

Anyway, I've been expecting somebody to show the right way to drop the mechanical shutter from a FF body. The Sigma FP isn't, the A7C is pretty right with half a shutter... so what's next, Sony? :-)

Some gossips that sensor of A1 costs $2500

Agreed there was a lot of untapped potential in PlayMemories and if they'd open it up to developers even more so. That would also benefit Sony by further locking people into their alpha ecosystem- if your camera can run all these cool apps you can't get on competitors, you're less likely to switch brands.

I agree that the trolling is really obnoxious, but to be fair it's no worse than the one that accompanied the Canon R5 release, or practically every m4/3 article.