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Thank you Eric Video was very helpful.

I like your Rivera in the thumbnail. I was really hoping to see it more prominently in the video

Good information, seems to confirm charts I've seen on DxO etc in the past, thanks , but I dont understand how you can assess DR on a dark frame.

Hey Erik, I'm speaking at an event in Princeton this summer and want to hire a local photographer to take some good photos of me speaking. Is there an email where I can contact you? Thanks!

I compared the A7IV and A7III read noise data on the famous site photonstophotos. Above ISO 500, the A7IV has 50% more read noise that the A7IV in DN units (power). This is not a big effect, as the noise is small. But it is easily observable. This represents a 0,5 shift in log2(DN) that are used on this graph. I have no explanation for this. The read noise should not depend on the pixel sizes. But the reading electronics might be slightly different. On the other hand, the size of the pixels for A7IV is roughly 28% smaller that for A7III . (33 Mpixels versus 24 Mpixels) Therefore, the "shot noise" for the A7IV should be 14% higher than for A7III. This is because the shot noise is proportional to the square root of the number of photons detected. This is important because in fair illumination, shot noise always dominates over read noise. I think I will try to measure this shot noise. I just realized this should not be too difficult. But I would need a reasonnably uniform illumination of the sensor. This uniformity would allow an easy estimation of the standard deviation (stdev) of the signal over all the pixels. This is a way to measure the noise. I already measured the read noise for my A7III for 37 different ISO numbers. Retrieving these 37 "full dark" pictures and calculating the stdev, I could reproduce exactly the same results as on the site photonstophotos. By myself. Boy! The comparison is really almost perfect. But my first attempt had shown a slight difference at low ISO. I just discovered that evaluatiog the stdev over all the 24Mpixels was not a good idea. Because there are slight variation of the average dark signal. To get this perfect agreement, I simply had to calculate the stdev over a smaller area of 200x200 pixels. And this is what I will also do with a fair uniform illumination to measure the shot noise.

Thank you, this has really made this subject so much clearer. I have A99ii and A7iv and am a bit disappointed with the amount of noise, but this has helped enormously, thank you.

Awesome! Short and sweet. I'm trying to find the native ISO(s) for my ZV-E10 but can't. Any ideas sir? Thank you.

Sounds like Auto ISO is not a good idea on any Sony

But whats the difference of shooting with iso100 and iso400 on a A7iv? Is it not always better to shoot 400 to get faster shutter speeds?

??? So what are you telling me?? That with this new camera I shouldn't choose anything higher than 400 iso because that's the dual native iso??? I was shooting using a7iii before and using iso's between 800-1600 depending on situation but now with this a7iv I shouldn't go that high because noise will be worse????? Makes no damn sense??? but for video they can utilize those high 3200 iso's with no problem??? What am I missing here??? This dual iso thing makes me not wanna use my a7iv.... I thought you were gonna be able to shoot things things at higher iso's without worrying about noise, but from what I'm hearing here I shouldn't even think about using anything above 400????? WTF?

Great video, followed you instantly!

great information which I shall use in the future. Thanks.

For a laugh can you do this for some Canon cameras. 😂

Excellent video. Many thanks

What if I want it to focus on the product I'm presenting?

Having the Alpha 1 - good WARNING NOT TO ASSUME THE SAME ISO RANGE AT 400 for the A7IV - 400 is the worst and you need to start at 500 for the A1 Whew!

Thanks for doing this. I just had a photoshoot with a large group yesterday and had my A74 at ISO 320 😩and was wondering why it was so grainy! Good to know to just skip to ISO 400. Denoise is helping and a bunch of lightroom work.

Great video! Do you know the dual gain ISO for the A7siii?

Could you tell me where to find the reliable source of info about dual-gain ISO of each SONY camera please?

I really like the way you look at / analyze things !

THIS is absolutely helpful!!! Never knew that. Thank you so much. Going to skip the ISOs 200 to 500 on my A7III.

Thanks!

7:22 - this is not really accurate I think, not if you mean "restoring all of the dynamic range". The point of the low gain stage is to have the maximum dynamic range, but that means that low-light areas collect less accurate information. When you enter the high gain stage, you get less noise, but in turn, give up some dynamic range. You can think of this as having buckets for collecting the light. A big bucket can collect more light (high dynamic range), but measuring small amounts of light off of them is not as accurate (more noise). At the high gain stage threshold, you switch over to use small buckets, where you have less noise but also lower dynamic range. But increasing the amplification also reduces the dynamic range, and switching to the high gain circuit reduces the amplification, so you will restore *some* of the dynamic range, but not to the level the lowest ISO on the lower base ISO has. Dan Fox did a great job in explaining how the dual base ISO works in his video "ISO on Sony cameras is often INCREDIBLY misunderstood". If you meant that switching to the high gain circuitry restores *some* of the dynamic range, then I was going on rambling about something you already knew - but anyway, perhaps this was not clear to all viewers...

A question, is the second gain stage where the "star eater" problem began? Is this still a problem, or are stars in the night sky exempt from the clean-up process? My old Sony a6000 drove me nuts until someone figured out that at a certain point, Sony was doing some sort of image cleanup--even in raw files, that removed many stars from night photos.

for A7RIV second gain starts at 320!

thank you so mush. keep doing this type of technical related video

I think you got it backwards. ISO400 is NOT when the higher gain stage kicks in; it is when the camera switches back to LOW GAIN while tapping the smaller charge capacitor on each pixel. At 100 ISO it uses the big cap optimized for ample light also at low gain. At 320 is when it uses the big cap at high gain which is why the noise is high.

such a good video appreciate your invest in these infos thanks a lot

Having the used the A9II and then the A1, it blew my mind how the A1's images can be just as clean as the A9II even with just over double the megapixel size. Normally I shoot at around 800iso or less so I can get high shutter speeds since I shoot a lot of birds in flight and other moving wildlife. It wasn't until my first and currently only trip to the Masai Mara in Africa where I was able to push the A1 to it's limit in it's ISO. Dealt with a lot of rain and low lit moments where I pushed the ISO beyond my comfort zone but was still able to get amazing photos out of them. One my best photos was of Lion walking in front of the Sunset. In that photo I pushed the ISO to 5000 and there was surprisingly minimal Noise and was able to clean the rest out easy. If you want to see the Photo and other Photos I got on that trip, you can find them on my Instagram @dustin_blaise. The A1 may be Expensive, but worth every penny in my opinion.

Very helpful test! Thanks man!

Consider tagging this as an OLED demo this looks *fantastic* on my OLED display and I'm sure other owners would appreciate being able to find this video when they look for suitable demo content.

nice tuto. I see you have set AF w/shutter ON meaning that you half press shutter to focus and take picture in af-c. you don't use "back button focus with AFON set to AFO. correct ? You are using single point : ok; I know very well eye af : ok ; So now, what is AFON button set to "tracking+AFON" ? How to you stop AF to switch to a kind of af-s to focus on a subject, recompose image as we do easily in back button focus ? Personnally i am using AF w/shutter ON and set AFON to "AF/MF toggle" as i do in video (like jason vong video settings). I have the feeling af/mf toggle is similar to quickly switching to af-s to recompose by stopping pressing afon button. Mark Galler advises to use that AF/MF toggle (but he puts that on lens focus hold button).

nice tuto. For me, face and eye priority would mean that wherever is my spot, it jumps on the eye. But, as you explain, spot must enter the square on face to make it work. This is not priority at all !!! Eye AF is amazing, even in BBF AFON, blur EVF, pressing eye af (i put on focus hold button of my 24-70gm2) jumps on the eye wherever is my spot. Why did sony made two different "eye priority" ? the face/eye priorit is just to draw a box around a face so i am confident that if i press eye af, it will jump on an eye. Without face priority i would have a doubt pressing eye af.

Whatever be the noise, my A 7 iii delivers smooth images after i got Topaz AI 👌🏻😍

Hi Erik, for A1, do we multiply by 4 or 2 1/3 stops increment to go beyond ISO 500? e.g. the next gain is 500X4= iso2000, i.e. other channels propose this formula for videos.

Thx great video. I think I will jump 100 to 400 on my a7.4 in future. BUT what is the situation with large compressed raw which I shoot and probably many others please

Great video. It would be nice if you put your findings in the description of your video. Use ISO 100-125 or a7iv 400, a7iii 640 a1 500, for the most dynamic range and the least amount of noise in your image.

Great informative video Erik, just what I was looking for. Also, fantastic portfolio of work on your website👌

Wow! This is very helpful. Glad someone shared this link on FB. I'm a 7iii user, so shooting with ISO 640 is just the same with ISO 100 regarding on clean image. If my screen will see it as overexposed, I can still shot with ISO 640 and just adjusting the shutter speed right?

Hi Erik, thanks for this very helpful video and the time you put into doing all the comparisons. I recently purchased the A7IV and also own the A7III. I have been noticing some noise on the A7IV as soon as I was shooting above 160. Started to wonder if I was just seeing things or what but I never seemed to have had this with the A7III. So I did the test and compared both cameras. The noise on the A7IV is noticeably worse at every ISO level. So I guess I was not seeing things. I suppose that means that there is factory issue with my sensor and I should contact Sony about it, would you agree?

Am I missing something here... I mean you showed the A7IV subject shift sensitivity at locked on (setting position 1) and it locks on BUT you test it against the A1 at setting 3 and expect it to remain locked on? Why wouldn't you test them both at 1 (or 2) and test them equally?

Great and informative video! Does this apply to video on the a7iik as well? Meaning, what are the best ISOs to shoot (video) on the a7iii ? Thanks in advance

Wow, this was so educational to learn more about the photography tools we all use.

Is it some better with firmware update? a7r3

Great info!! Thank you!!

What would be the next gain stage for all the cameras... Is there anything like that..? Or 400,500,640 just those..

Great info! I have an a7iii, and will be using this data going forward. Thank you again!!!

AWESOME VIDEO! I've wondered about this. I am a Nikon shooter; however, I ventured into mirrorless with Sony. I have a 6300, A7 II and an A7 IV. I also have a 1.8 85mm Sony lens. I could see all of the noise. I have a really good noise suppression plug in; however, I lose a lot of detail. I want to use my Sonys more for professional shoots, but there is just too much noise. I'm going to take your advice and try and use ISO 100 and/or 400. Thanks for this video!

How about In the older A7 II that are still In stores, I have It, I'm guessing that It doesn't have this sweet spot In the higher ISO at all. I will have to try It out?