The new Sony A7S is a mirrorless full-frame camera which shoots 4K video and has a top ISO of 102,400, expandable to 409,600.
Remember back in 2006 when Palm CEO Ed Colligan said this, about Apple and the iPhone:
PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.
If you switched Apple for Sony (those gadget guys) or Fujifilm ("film guys), and Palm for Nikon and Canon, then the same thing is happening today.
There are a few big pieces of news here. One is that the camera is a tiny, full-frame mirrorless shooter with “only” 12.2 megapixels. It also uses the whole sensor to capture 4K, instead of sampling from a smaller crop. This gives you all the full-frame advantages when shooting video.
Then there’s the insane maximum ISO of 409,600. That’s a lot. Not as much as the number may suggest, as ISO is measured by doubling the number for each extra stop of light. This makes ISO 400,000 only two stops faster than ISO 100,000, but two stops is two stops.
After that. The camera specs get into the video world, where I’m not quite as well-schooled. As mentioned above, the video uses all the pixels of the sensor. And you can hook the camera up to an external video recorder, using the cameras as just a camera and not a camcorder. And it’ll do this in 4:2:2 (the method used to sample and store color detail).
And all this in a pocket camera which can hook up to Sony’s Alpha lenses and video accessories. Pricing and launch date TBA.
Source: Sony
