Rumor: Sony a7000 to have 15.5 stops dynamic range thanks to on-sensor HDR
Does 15.5 stops of dynamic range sound good to you? Rumors are that the upcoming A7000 will feature on-sensor HDR, much like what is found in the Xperia Z smartphone. More after the jump.
Following the launch of the A7R II and the latest RX cameras, you could be forgiven for thinking there wouldn’t be any big shocks from Sony for a while to come. Well, if the rumors swirling around are true, then the upcoming A7000 could have an outstanding 15.5 stops of dynamic range for both stills and video capture, using a native on-sensor HDR feature.
On-sensor HDR is something that’s already present on the Xperia Z smartphone, and this post by Image Sensor World explains how the feature works:
How HDR video recording works
To achieve true HDR video recording, the advanced Exmor RS camera sensor in Xperia Z changes the exposure every two lines of pixels. This creates a spatially varying exposure (SVE) array image, which is then used to make an image that is perfectly exposed in both dark and light areas.
To simplify the concept, for each frame the camera shoots one picture with two different exposure levels at the same time, one light and one dark. Then, an intelligent software algorithm is used to combine (synthesize) the two shots into one picture, pixel by pixel. This allows you to see the details of both the dark and the bright parts of the picture.
HDR for still images
With HDR for still images, the camera quickly captures the image twice with different exposure levels and stitches the two shots together to create one optimized photo. This way, HDR lets you capture clear photos even against strong backlight. HDR is automatically activated when Superior Auto detects scenes with strong backlight.
As you probably know, HDR greatly increases the amount of information we can get from a photograph as it allows us to get more information at either extreme, so being able to get this natively off the image sensor during capture as opposed to trying to do this later in post (by combining images) will most definitely change the way we view images.
Source: SonyAlphaRumors, Image Sensors World, Sony Mobile
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