When you’re shopping for a camera, you have a million specs and features to consider. Size, weight, battery life, megapixels, zoom power. ... Can you guess which aspect consumers consider most important?
The color of the body. (“Ooh, I like the shiny red one!”)
The camera buyer for a national electronics chain told me that. We both slapped our foreheads.
Please. If you’re buying a camera, shouldn’t picture quality be the most important detail?
If so, what you should care most about is the flat, rectangular light sensor inside the “film.” In general, the bigger the sensor, the happier you’ll be with the results and the more you’ll pay.
At the low end, snapshot cameras with tiny sensors (0.4 inches diagonal) cost $150 but give you blurry, grainy low-light shots. At the high end, those professional, big, black S.L.R. cameras cost $2,000 to $6,000 but come with full-frame sensors. That is, these sensors are as big as an old piece of 35-millimeter film (1.7 inches). They deliver unparalleled low-light quality, richness of color, detail and soft-focused backgrounds.
(You can buy cameras with even bigger sensors — medium-format cameras that cost $20,000 and military cameras that cost millions — but let’s say you live in the real world.)
All of this explains why Sony’s 2013 camera/camcorder lineup is so startling. The company has put full-frame sensors into three new cameras, at prices and body sizes that nobody has ever attained.
For example, there’s the A99, which Sony says is the world’s smallest and lightest full-frame S.L.R. It’s meant to compete with professional cameras like the Canon 5D Mark III ($3,200) and Nikon D800 ($3,000) — for $2,800. (These prices are for the bodies only.)
The A99 is sort of homely, but it has a long list of distinguishing features: fast, continuous focusing, even while filming or shooting something running at you; two memory-card slots; built-in GPS function that stamps every photo with your location; 1080p, 60-frames-a-second high-definition video; microphone and headphone jacks; and an electronic viewfinder whose video shows you the results of your adjustments in real time.
Sony says the A99 is also the only full-frame camera with a screen that flips out and tilts.
Then there’s the VG900, Sony’s first full-frame camcorder. It costs $3,300 — about $10,000 less than any other full-frame camcorder, Sony says. And its sensor is about 45 times as big as a standard camcorder’s sensor.
Now, a huge sensor may not seem to make sense in a camcorder. One frame of hi-def video has only about two megapixels of resolution; what’s the point of stuffing a 24-megapixel sensor into the camcorder?
Answer: It’s about picture quality. A big sensor gives you amazing low-light video, gorgeous blurry backgrounds, greater dynamic range and better color.
Thousands of filmmakers use full-frame S.L.R. still cameras to shoot video, because of the superior quality and because they can use different lenses for different video effects. S.L.R-based camcorders like Sony’s VG900 offer the same features in a camcorder shape. They’re much more comfortable to hold, and their buttons are better placed for video operation.
The VG900 accepts Sony’s E-mount camera lenses, of which there are 13; they don’t quite exploit the full area of that jumbo sensor. But the camera comes with an adapter for the older, more plentiful A-mount lenses. Alas, those lenses don’t autofocus with that adapter.
The most astonishing new full-frame Sony, though, is the RX1. It’s the world’s first compact full-frame camera.
Now, you’re forgiven if you just spewed your coffee. “Compact” and “full-frame” have never gone together before. Everyone knows why: a big sensor requires a big lens, meaning a big camera. You can’t change the laws of physics, no matter how much photographers would love it.
State of the Art: Sony’s RX1 Camera: Compact, Full-Framed and Expensive, Too
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State of the Art: Sony’s RX1 Camera: Compact, Full-Framed and Expensive, Too
