After the α7 and the α7R, Sony has announced the newest member of its compact full frame cameras, the α7S. The ‘S’ in the name stands for ‘Sensitivity’, which means you can tell the camera all your life problems and it will totally get you. Actually, no. It means that the camera is really good in low-light conditions. And there is also a new 4K video recording mode, which is all the rage these days.
The α7S has a new 12.2 megapixel 35mm EXMOR CMOS sensor with a resolution of 4240 x 2832 (3:2). Sony is using a rather large sensor with a relatively low resolution, which means individual pixels are going to be pretty big. As mentioned before, the camera is also particularly sensitive to light, and boasts of an ISO range of 50 – 409,600. Sony also claims that the camera has an extremely wide dynamic range. All things combined, you can expect some really good results regardless of the lighting conditions you are shooting in.
The second cool feature is 4K video capture. The α7S can output 4K (3840 x 2160) video to an external recorder that you will have to get separately. If you want to record locally, you can choose one of the lower resolution options, such as 1080p60, 1080p30, 720p120 (5x slow motion), etc. The important thing with this camera is that it uses the output of the entire sensor to record videos, instead of just using a part of the sensor. The α7S also uses the XAVC S recording format at 50Mbps, found on Sony’s professional video cameras, along with AVCHD and MP4.
The α7S packs all this in a body that looks no different than the α7SR. On the back is a 1,230k dot, 3.0-inch tilting display, XGA OLED viewfinder, Wi-Fi, NFC, HDMI-out, microphone and headphone jacks.
Sony is yet to announce the pricing and availability of the α7S.