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You are here: Home / The Last Word / Sony a7S read noise in continuous mode

Sony a7S read noise in continuous mode

July 4, 2014 By JimK Leave a Comment

With the Sony a7 and a7R, I found that the bit-depth of the raw images was different when the camera was set in single-shot mode from when it was set in continuous (you hold down the shutter release and the camera takes pictures until you let go) mode.

Would the a7S continue the pattern? You bet.

ISO 400K (see the previous post for exposure details):

iso 400K histo c

Well, that’s interesting! Now the camera has a 12-bit bit depth. That’s what happened with the a7 and the a7R.

ISO 25K:

iso 25K histo c

Yep, still 12-bits. Nice Gaussian read noise distribution. A few odd buckets not quite as full as you’d expect.

There’s the same funny business between ISO 3200 and ISO 1600 that we saw in the previous post with the shutter mode set to single shot.

ISO 400:

iso 400 histo c

Even at the low ISO’s we don’t get the 13th bit back.

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