Sony A9III with Global Shutter

[eatstoomuchjam]

GS is useful for more than whip pans.  I'm not sure why people always jump to that.

(And to avoid nitpicking, I am fully aware that for most of the stuff, really low RS (<5ms) is functionally as good as GS)

- Shooting handheld in general unless you're as steady as a tripod (with 20+ms of RS, the jello is almost always noticeable)
- Shooting fast-moving subjects, especially from the side (trains, cars, etc)
- Mounting the camera to a car (improved with gimbal for RS, but still noticeable)

Not how you shoot?  Cool, but that doesn't mean it's not how others shoot.

[Eric Calabros]

1 minute ago, kye said:

This photo and the story behind it comes to mind:

The shutter speed in that shot is very high. Lets say you need 1/8000s to freeze such a movement. Even at 120 fps, you get only 120/8000 of a second, or 1/60 of a second. For 59/60 of a second, your camera is blind. Still its YOU that should know when to press the shutter button.

[Eric Calabros]

3 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

- Shooting handheld in general unless you're as steady as a tripod (with 20+ms of RS, the jello is almost always noticeable)
- Shooting fast-moving subjects, especially from the side (trains, cars, etc)
- Mounting the camera to a car (improved with gimbal for RS, but still noticeable)

Please show a footage from any of these examples, shot by Venice 2 or even Z9/Z8 or even A1, that shows RS distortion. 

[kye]

2 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

The shutter speed in that shot is very high. Lets say you need 1/8000s to freeze such a movement. Even at 120 fps, you get only 120/8000 of a second, or 1/60 of a second. For 59/60 of a second, your camera is blind. Still its YOU that should know when to press the shutter button.

If you'd have read the article then you'd know that he triggered the camera manually and took around 720,000 exposures to eventually get the perfect shot, and that the subject moves so fast that even with a 10 fps burst sometimes the bird isn't even in any of the frames:

Quote

The birds, which tend to be small, with large heads and dagger-like beaks, can dive at speeds up to 25 mph, making McFadyen's photo a difficult shot. "The [kingfisher’s] speed is incredible and fascinating to watch," he says. "Even at 10 frames per second, sometimes you get nothing in the [photograph]. It’s that fast."

 

2 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

GS is useful for more than whip pans.  I'm not sure why people always jump to that.

(And to avoid nitpicking, I am fully aware that for most of the stuff, really low RS (<5ms) is functionally as good as GS)

- Shooting handheld in general unless you're as steady as a tripod (with 20+ms of RS, the jello is almost always noticeable)
- Shooting fast-moving subjects, especially from the side (trains, cars, etc)
- Mounting the camera to a car (improved with gimbal for RS, but still noticeable)

Not how you shoot?  Cool, but that doesn't mean it's not how others shoot.

Good examples.  I often shoot out of the window of moving vehicles while on holiday and typically shoot in high FPS video in order to be able to frame the scenery whizzing past.  If you're trying to capture any scene where there are things in the foreground/mid/background then they're all moving at different speeds across the frame and so the closer the objects are the more slanted they are.  

Having a low RS matters more if you're going really fast.

Interestingly, I shot a bunch of clips on my phone in vertical orientation to use for a slightly fancier edit (by showing multiples at a time, highlighting the differences of scenery throughout the trip) and there is zero RS because the RS was in the same orientation as the movement.  That's not something I expected, but it's definitely a welcome surprise!

[Eric Calabros]

36 minutes ago, kye said:

If you'd have read the article then you'd know that he triggered the camera manually and took around 720,000 exposures to eventually get the perfect shot,

I read the article when it was published. The whole story is a practical evidence for the fact that High Turbo Super Burst, is not a solution.

[eatstoomuchjam]

3 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

Please show a footage from any of these examples, shot by Venice 2 or even Z9/Z8 or even A1, that shows RS distortion. 

No.

I don't have any of those cameras to check it, but if their RS is <5ms, I already covered that in my first post.  If they're <10ms, it's probably not too objectionable or noticeable without looking for it.  However, if they have 20ms or more of RS, anybody who has one can easily show it by pointing the camera at a train from 3 meters away and nearly any viewer will notice the slant.

Another thing that Andrew alluded to in the post was lightning - I'd expand that to strobes and some flicker boxes (or flicker effects on modern LED fixtures).  In those cases, some tearing is visible with most RS - people are trained enough (from years of slow RS cameras) that they don't care a lot when half the screen is bright for a frame, but it does look better when the momentary light illuminates everything.

[John Matthews]

What's going on with YouTube? A9 iii has a global shutter and shoots 120fps! Somehow this is going to "revolutionize" and "change everything." Some people have been seriously spiking their cool-aid with whiskey.

[Al Dolega]

Seems like pretty typical new-camera-release hyperbole to me. Full-time YouTubers have to play that game to stay afloat, doesn't bother me and is pretty easily ignored.

I am excited for global shutter to reach the mid- and low-price markets. I hope for that to happen relatively quickly, maybe five years. Seems like the savings from deleting the shutter assembly will be a good motivator for the companies to get the sensor tech scaled and affordable.

I guess it depends on if Sony lets that happen though, they may want to milk this cow as long as they can.

[gt3rs]

2 hours ago, Al Dolega said:

Seems like pretty typical new-camera-release hyperbole to me. Full-time YouTubers have to play that game to stay afloat, doesn't bother me and is pretty easily ignored.

I am excited for global shutter to reach the mid- and low-price markets. I hope for that to happen relatively quickly, maybe five years. Seems like the savings from deleting the shutter assembly will be a good motivator for the companies to get the sensor tech scaled and affordable.

I guess it depends on if Sony lets that happen though, they may want to milk this cow as long as they can.

Nikon has ditched the mechanical shutter on Z9 and Z8 and they are not using GS….

[kye]

5 hours ago, John Matthews said:

What's going on with YouTube? A9 iii has a global shutter and shoots 120fps! Somehow this is going to "revolutionize" and "change everything." Some people have been seriously spiking their cool-aid with whiskey.

The thumbnails have to grab you and make you watch, so will say whatever does that.  I've seen it both ways - hype up an incremental improvement and on things that already have a lot of hype it can be the old 'done buy until you've watched this' gag...

In between those two there's the 'hidden feature' that will change the world, etc etc.. when all of those don't fit, there's always ye olde faithful...   product + shocked-face 🙂 

[newfoundmass]

Global shutter is cool and all, but not having it really hasn't impacted my work given how good RS has gotten. 

I see this as being a much bigger deal for photography than video. 

[ac6000cw]

23 hours ago, kye said:

I've heard people say that film has rolling-shutter-like behaviour from the rotating shutter and isn't a true global shutter, but it's just that the RS was very fast and so wasn't noticeable in almost all situations.

https://cinematography.com/index.php?/forums/topic/53119-why-no-rolling-shutter-on-film-cameras/&do=findComment&comment=357346

The animation below from a Wikpedia page about rotary disc shutters illustrates their operation (and film pull-down) nicely, showing that the sweep of the edge (the rolling shutter equivalent) is quite short in relation to the exposure time:

(Image By Joram van Hartingsveldt - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=924146)

Film projectors have basically the same mechanism, except that usually the shutter operates at twice the rate to create 48 Hz flicker which is much less noticeable/annoying to viewers than 24Hz.

[Andrew Reid]

17 hours ago, Al Dolega said:

Seems like pretty typical new-camera-release hyperbole to me. Full-time YouTubers have to play that game to stay afloat, doesn't bother me and is pretty easily ignored.

It bothers me to be honest, lowers the level of discourse. The standard of media and debate is already at an all-time low generally, which leads to a lot of odd behaviour and bad decision-making on behalf of the public. It's no different with cameras.

If we could raise the intelligence level of our entertainment, we'd all be better off for it.

[Andrew Reid]

Sports is the main target for the A9 III for Sony and the reason they went global shutter. Lots of pesky LED advertising signs which can cause banding, lots of fast action at the end of long lenses, fast pans, and also sometimes the need for complete discreetness and silence, no mechanical shutter or flash.

So for sports photography, they are getting ahead of the Canon EOS R3.

Also the very fast burst rates, small size of the body, smaller lenses (sort of) put it ahead of any mechanical shutter camera or 1D X Mark III.

They want to challenge Canon's dominance in football, F1, olympics and so on. Big money riding on it.

I think in this regard it is really well targeted and innovative, it's just a bonus that they eliminate rolling shutter for filmmakers as well, but not as big a deal for us as it is for sports shooters.

[FHDcrew]

20 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Somehow this is going to "revolutionize" and "change everything."

Hahaha. Blackmagic Production Camera 4k. Global shutter. 2012 baby. 

[FHDcrew]

In all seriousness though I do think this is a great step forward. Have been spending a lot less time on YouTube lately. Tired of the hype. 

[newfoundmass]

4 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Sports is the main target for the A9 III for Sony and the reason they went global shutter. Lots of pesky LED advertising signs which can cause banding, lots of fast action at the end of long lenses, fast pans, and also sometimes the need for complete discreetness and silence, no mechanical shutter or flash.

So for sports photography, they are getting ahead of the Canon EOS R3.

Also the very fast burst rates, small size of the body, smaller lenses (sort of) put it ahead of any mechanical shutter camera or 1D X Mark III.

They want to challenge Canon's dominance in football, F1, olympics and so on. Big money riding on it.

I think in this regard it is really well targeted and innovative, it's just a bonus that they eliminate rolling shutter for filmmakers as well, but not as big a deal for us as it is for sports shooters.

This. The ability to shoot at such high frame rates without any rolling shutter is a huge deal for sports photographers. It's a genuine game changer for them. Read out speeds have gotten very good, yes, but it's just no match. 120fps, even for a short burst, is just a killer feature and I suspect almost every sports organization and team will be buying several for their production and social media teams. I know that people in the combat sports bubble I am in sure will be.

[padam]

Looking at footage of one of the testers, it seems that Dynamic Active Stabilization has improved markedly, without rolling shutter there are way less motion artifacts than before.

Of course, if they release an A7SIV later with also a 24MP stacked sensor but with dial gain ISO without the glocal shutter with at least as good DR and ISO as before for less money, that would be more of an all-round hybrid camera.
They just need to improve cooling and processing, as it seems that 4k120p oversampled is possible, it just can't deal with heat.
(If they want to continue screwing customers, they can continue to leave out mechanical shutter for segmentation...)

[SRV1981]

20 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

It bothers me to be honest, lowers the level of discourse. The standard of media and debate is already at an all-time low generally, which leads to a lot of odd behaviour and bad decision-making on behalf of the public. It's no different with cameras.

If we could raise the intelligence level of our entertainment, we'd all be better off for it.

Sure - agree but that doesn’t come at the expense of me being realistic. People have to make money in any economy. There aren’t an abundance of easily had jobs to pay the bills. If some people do so with a little flash and hyperbole on YT to make income i am okay with it and understand the show. I can watch or not watch. There’s creators more worthy of watching due to good production value and information so I tend to favor them. Now if we’re talking actual news I’d fully agree 

[gt3rs]

18 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

This. The ability to shoot at such high frame rates without any rolling shutter is a huge deal for sports photographers. It's a genuine game changer for them. Read out speeds have gotten very good, yes, but it's just no match. 120fps, even for a short burst, is just a killer feature and I suspect almost every sports organization and team will be buying several for their production and social media teams. I know that people in the combat sports bubble I am in sure will be.

For some sports yes and for some others not especially if you lose light sensitivity.
Plus another issue is the base iso 250, for example for motorsport I may take a picture at ISO 50, 1/30, F18-F22 for panning and 5 sec later at 1/2000 for a frontal shot or an accident. No time for fiddling with NDs.... same for MTB, Cycling, Skiing etc...