The A7rII with Canon EF lens (image courtesy: Newsshooter).

Video expert Dan Chung from Newsshooter had the chance to test the preproduction Sony A7rII and writes:

1) The S35 4K image really is free of any obvious errors – fine detail was incredibly well resolved and there was virtually no evidence of aliasing and moire at base ISO. When I looked at the image on a monitor it was very clean. It had excellent detail and in S-Log2 there was certainly a lot of information in the shadows and highlights. There was some noise in the shadows but nothing excessive.

2) The second big surprise is that the full-frame 4K mode also looks remarkably good. I assume that pixel-binning is being used to reduce the output of the 42-megapixel sensor to achieve this. The 4K full-frame output of the a7R II is really excellent. There are some traces of aliasing visible on lines of high contrast, but you really have to look for them. 

3) Low light performance was the third big surprise. I wasn’t expecting great things from a camera with such a high pixel count – I was wrong. The camera acquits itself very well even at 6400 ISO. Noise is present but the image was still usable.

4) The fourth big surprise came when I panned the camera from side to side looking for evidence of rolling shutter.

5) A small bad news: Autofocus with adapter EOS lenses does not work as well in video as it does in stills mode. The only way to get the PDAF working continuously in video is to use Sony’s own E-mount lenses. It doens’t work with A-mount or Canon EF lenses.

You can see all his four A7rII test videos on Vimeo (Click here).

A7rII and RX camera preorder list:
In USA:
A7rII at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, SonyStore US, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
RX10m2 at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
RX100m4 at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
In Europe at:
A7rII at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
RX100m4 at DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
RX10m2 at DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
In Asia at:
A7rII at Digitalrev, CameraPro.
RX10m2 at Digitalrev, CameraPro.
RX100m4 at Digitalrev, CameraPro.

The new Canon 5DS 50 megapixel sensor got tested at DxOmark (Click here). And the big surprise is that it doesn’t even come close to the Sony 36 Megapixel sensor performance! DxO writes:

Thee EOS 5DS is far behind the best sensors we’ve tested. The Nikon D810 and the Sony A7R, for example, both offer around two-thirds of a stop better image quality, with overall scores of 97 and 95 points, respectively, compared to 87 for the 5DS.
For Color Sensitivity, the D810 and the A7R are also two-thirds of a stop better than the 5DS at base ISO.
For Dynamic Range, there’s a much bigger difference among the three sensors at base ISO, where the Nikon D810 and Sony A7R sensors are far ahead. Landscape scores of 14.8Ev for the D810, compared to 12.4Ev for the 5DS, put the Nikon over two stops ahead, and the A7R just under two stops ahead with 14.1Ev.

Now you can only imagine what score the new A7rII sensor will get. I bet it will break the 100 points barrier :)

Editor’s note: As usual some fanboy attacked me for using the term “far behind” in the title of this post. Please note that this what DxOmark said and not me…SonyAlphaRumors! As usual with those tests you have to take them with a bit of grain of salt. A good camera is not defined by the sensor quality only.

A7rII and RX camera preorder list:
In USA:
A7rII at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, SonyStore US, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
RX10m2 at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
RX100m4 at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
In Europe at:
A7rII at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
RX100m4 at DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
RX10m2 at DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
In Asia at:
A7rII at Digitalrev, CameraPro.
RX10m2 at Digitalrev, CameraPro.
RX100m4 at Digitalrev, CameraPro.