SONY MEDIUM FORMAT CAMERA LEAKED!

Chelsea & Tony Northrup discuss the rumors of the new Sony Alpha medium format mirrorless camera, with a BIGGER sensor than the Fujifilm GFX cameras. MORE megapixels, too, with up to 200 megapixels... and it has one more trick: A CURVED SENSOR!

We discuss the rumors, whether making a medium format camera in 2022 makes any sense, and what we think Sony might actually release.

[MadsPeterIversen]

The best way Sony can stand out with a medium format camera is to make it practical and light!

[alanpoelman]

I think you forgot to mention probably the most important part of a curved sensor: reducing the elements in a lens not to necessarily implement sharpness (as we have already reached a fairly good limit on that), but to reduce the size of these lenses and potentially the R&D cost filtering down to the retail cost as a result.

Also interestingly... If these sensors are large enough and flat within the 35mm range, they could theoretically use an adapter for Sony's already established line up.

[Blizzrd]

Sony could make a medium format camera, that finally has decent AF.

[SsoUuLl]

6:35 Elephant in the room is that photographers can't be bothered to explain what exactly is the advantage of larger sensor, like lowered noise to signal ratios, narrower DOF without wider aperture and softer results, wider dynamic range, higher resolution to work with, etc. Nah, shutterbugs just WANT things, never explaining why. The automobile analogy is just simply offensive, like "why does it matter what's inside, sensor, engine, 17 stones chronograph, it's expensive and I WANT it". The luxury culture is beyond despicable for me because people who can buy these things can't appreciate them, and people who can appreciate them can't buy them. So yeah poor choice of words.

[gaborszeleczki]

Fun fact: in astronomy the Schmidt telescope produces strongly curved fields (but with a huge FOV), and back in the film days astronomers solved this problem by putting the film on a curved surface. Nowadays when they want to use them with a (n obviously flat) digital sensor they put a corrector before the sensor.

[NeilMendham]

Very good guys, great report out just in time for 1st April

[joshmcdzz]

A good camera to sit in your bedroom, shoot a landscape photo with a wide angle lens through your window and crop in and still be at 50mpx. No need hiking but be a landscape shooter from your bedroom

[pharezaouad]

Sony makes MF sensors for Hasselblad, Phaseone and Fuji. This wouldn't be too much of a surprise. As long as we get fast and accurate AF.

[robertbirnbach]

I have had several phase one cameras, it made sense at the time for my commercial studio. I really think the market for this is not dentists or enthusiasts I think it will really be aimed at high end commercial studios. I think it make sense for Sony to get into this game I would expect that it would really be about brand perception. s and not about making much of a profit on this line.I have always wondered why Phase did not think about actually making a better camera, many photographers use a phase back on a view camera to get the movements etc. Phase One bodies themselves are based on old Mamiya technology and really operate the same way an old medium format camera operated in the 90's. they make incredible capture devices but really bad cameras. .

[ninehundreddollarluxuryyac]

People that dragged an 8X10 around because the image quality was stunning, would pay for a portable digital camera that can make images that are remotely comparable.

[asparagoosagus]

There is something about the camera market that I think a lot of professionals like yourselves might overlook, the perspective of a hobbyist with money. Almost everyone these days has a smartphone with a great camera in it, right? So if someone is trying to justify to themselves spending money on another seperate camera, then that camera NEEDS to be better enough than the smartphone camera to justify buying it at all. Like its not really even about is it worth it for the price, but rather is this camera better enough to justify wanting to buy it at all.

This is why I think it makes a ton of sense for the camera market to go higher and higher end, because the cameras have to be good enough for a non-professional to justify needing instead of just using their iphone. So therefore the higher-end the better.

Tbh this was similar to the logic I used when i got my first interchangable lens camera. When I started looking into modern cameras i quickly realized that for most cameras under like $700 either my iphone camera already takes better shots or takes about as good of shots. so completely useless, why would I get a camera that wouldnt even be a good replacement for the smaller camera i carry everywhere? But then I realized that most cameras under $1000 only produce photos that can look a little bit better than my iphone, and I ended up spending more like $2000 because that was about the point where I felt like "ok this is so much better than what I could do with my iphone". But if it turned out that that point started at $3000 or $4000 then thats where I would have gone.

But smartphone cameras are just going to keep getting better. Better sensors, better algorithms for the computational aspect, faster processors, etc. Eventually I'd guess that to a new hobbyist that any camera under $1500 wont take as good of shots as their iphone 17 or whatever phone...

I think from this kind of perspective developing medium format cameras makes all the sense in the world for them, especially if they have the money to become the best at it

[FourLF]

Large (or medium) format cameras are great for shooting large groups of people -like an audience or class pictures where you need high detail in case you want to zoom in and check out that small area and yet maintain the detail to recognize people.

[brianlovelace]

It absolutely NEEDS CF Express Type B. I'm sick of them using Type A which is expensive and slow... Although compact.

[ibp]

Doesn’t Hasselblad already do this. They also have a huge system.

[mikmop]

The most important thing to consider here is that Sony actually manufactures the sensors that go into other company's medium-frame cameras.

The Hasselblad X1D-50c and the Fuji GFX 50S a few years ago had their Sony 50 megapixel sensors upgraded with a 100 megapixel sensor. The Hasselblad IMX461, is a 100MP upgrade to their prevoius 50MP IMX161 sensor which resided inside the Hasselblad and Fuji cameras. Phase One also use Sony's sensors.

All of their current sensors are now due for a 200 megapixel upgrade, so rather than Sony giving their highest spec sensors to other camera makers, I guess they now want use them themselves.

The real elephant in the room here is Hasselblad, Fuji and Phase One, given that they also rely on Sony's sensors. Will they be given access to this 200 megapixel sensor?

What puts Sony apart from other camera manufacturers, is that they also have a semiconductor research division. So the interesting question here is, will Sony monopolize this advantage and keep the highest resolution sensor only for their own cameras, now they've entered the medium format market.

[alexmiller]

Happy April Fool’s Day to you too. I read Andreas’ post and you’ve managed to turn a short speculative blog post into a 22 minutes video that I watched from end to end. You are both great entertainers. Some thoughts a bit different that most of the responses here. First, I’m a Sony A7R4 shooter with an A7RIII backup and have had all the A7Rs since the first one. At the time I was a Canon 5D Mark II shooter but had bought the NEX7 for travel and got the A7R to shoot landscapes with the Zeiss 55F1.8 and 35F2. I now have a full range of primes and zoom lenses and shoot portraits, landscapes, wildlife, still life, etc - not sports. I love the small size and huge resolution but wish that Sony had the handling of the Canon. I’ve also owned a Pentax 67 for decades with five prime lenses and rented Hasselblads and Mamiya RZ67s at Vistek in Toronto for many years. I love the look of 6x7 transparencies but the Sony A7R4 blows everything less than 8x10 away, is handholdable, light, unlimited image storage (compared to 8x10 film), far greater range of lenses, etc. Long before Sony blows mind boggling money on Medium Format I’d like them to give me stuff that’s already in my iPhone - GPS location, computational photography, instant upload to the cloud, panoramic shooting (give me back what my A7R2 had), object detection, AI driven processing of the image, etc. Oh, maybe I’ll just wait for the periscope iPhone 15 with 48mp sensors, 8K 120fps video, computational photography that will create far superior images to a mere 200mp Sony curved sensor shooting one frame at a time with one lens at a time…

[chrisogrady]

FYI, the Z mount is big enough for a GFX size sensor, and the S lenses project a big enough image circle. So Nikon could release a 100MP medium format camera (Z8?) That uses existing lenses. Now that would be amazing.

[AbsurdTV]

i doubt sony will make medium format. i think Fuji has that covered. They should make a FULL FORMAT 3x5" sensor.

[andreasbrand]

sorry Tony, having a flat image plane is NOT the main reason for vignetting, it actually has a miniscule effect on that. think about it.
The major reason is that your entrance aperture is a 2d circle ... apply your angled light ray explanation to that and you see that while the flux stays the same, the 2d projected entrance area for angled light entering the lens is smaller --> thus less light from angles makes it in.
Then internally, the actual aperture continues to crop this angled light beam ;-)

Another good way to almost accurately measure your vignetting via not measuring brightness ... "area of bokeh balls". Defocus your lens at given aperture and dark background on some small lights --> bokeh balls or squeezed ones on the outside of the frame.
The area ratio of the peripheral bokeh balls are a pretty good indication as to how much darker the brightness at that "spot" (center of bokeh ball approx) is. As you close down the aperture, the angles the light strikes the sensor corners don't change all that much, but the bokeh balls become more equal in area, the center ones shrink faster (from all sides), the peripheral ones that are not circles shrink slower in area, only on the long half-axis. As soon as they're just as round or better same area as the center ones, you can go and focus and you'll know that the vignette is just as small as the difference in bokeh balls was ;-)

if you google it, you'll find a good ray optics sketch explaining it best within 30s

regards, optics/laser physicist

[JoeElementz]

I think the price will be like the Hasselblad 907x very reachable for most. It is their first medium format camera they will need to make it accessible so possibly between 5 - 9k