A7Rii Long Exposure Settings / Problem?

[hankpop]

Hello,

 

New to the forum and hoping to purchase a Sony A7Rii camera to replace my D810 (smaller form factor for large hikes I go on, and ability to use on Cambo Actus with wider lenses).

 

I often do quite long exposures (over 1min up to 3 mins) and never had a problem with my D810, but have seen some poor results from Sony and heard some limitations. But most of the posts I found were going back to 2015, so wondering if fixed now, or if there are good workarounds?

 

- What are recommended settings to avoid the noise?

 

- Is the issue now resolved? Or should I wait for the next Sony before switching?

 

- People seem to say capture 1 processing has a slider, but poor in lightroom. Is this still the case?

 

 

[adwb]

Please can you quantify "poor results"? AFIK noise is not a issue and is depend and of course on the settings you use. If you wants on compare then with the body cap fitted and eye piece blanked off , shoot a image on both bodies for the same time and on the same ISO and compare

[Ben]

Hi hankpop,

 

At the release of the A7RII there were some tests that had a lot of electronic noise and speckle in it. This was caused by a hiccup in Sony's way to subtract dark frames. May be I need to go into detail on this. There are 2 ways that the A7rII can subtract dark frames. One option is accessible via the menu and is called long exposure noise reduction. When activated it takes a second exposure with closed curtain of the same length the actual exposure and subtracts it from the original. The second one is always applied automatically. In regular intervals the camera takes a rather short exposure with closed curtain and saves it for general use. This usually happens when the user turns the camera off. The problem with the initial reviews was that the camera did not yet take it's initial general purpose dark frame. As a work around people suggested altering the in camera date and time to a point in the future in order to trigger the firmware's chron-job to take a general purpose dark frame. 

 

So far for the blatant long exposure issues that some reviews pointed out. There are however some more subtle things that have been tested. Since overheating is a bigger issue in the A7II line due to the small body and heat isolating effect of the IBIS, there is an increase in crosstalk noise if you take very long or many exposures in succession. Jim Kasson has lots of material on this effect but I cannot find the specific post. His output is relentless ^^ May be you have enough time and patience : http://blog.kasson.com/?paged=1&s=a7r+II

 

I do a lot of timelapses and stacking with the A7RII and all these effects never showed to a degree that I was able to notice it. So yes there are some issues with LE noise but you really have to look hard to find them.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Ben