One of the cool parts of big trade shows is seeing the technology behind the products we love. All of the major manufacturers have parts and pieces of their best tech on display to show how they work.
One of Sony’s biggest pieces of tech lately is the 5-axis image stabilization in the full frame A7II that was released a few months back. Sony has the assembly on display with the full frame sensor attached and powered unit was under glass that showed off just how the sensor moves inside the camera when image stabilization is activated.
This is all very cool, but you have to wonder how precise the actual image plane remains. While the image stabilization is high desirable, there is practically no tolerance for image plane misalignment in a shallow DoF full frame sensor. Stabilization is great, but only if perfect focus is retained.
I agree – the vertical and horizontal movements make sense as they keep the imaging cup in the same plane, but pitch, yaw and roll would all seem to position the chip out of perpendicular orientation to the optical axis, at least towards the edges.
Given there are those who micro-adjust their DSLR focus with tools like LensAlign or SpyderLensCal it seems to me that moving the imaging chip away from its perpendicular alignment would be counterproductive.
I don’t see how they can pitch the sensor in a way that might impact backfocus of the lens, or if they do how that must be some kind of ultrasonic mechanism that would have to be tied to an autofocus system so incredibly fast as to defy belief. My concern lies in the mechanical nature of the compensation, the tolerances of which must be many orders of magnitude less than the precision required for rays of focused light. Don’t get me wrong — I hope this thing works fabulously, but I’m skeptical and looking forward to detailed and critical reviews that take into consideration 3 things: 1) auto focus using Sony recommended lenses, 2) autofocus using Canon EOS glass on Metabones adapter, 3) manual focus of non-Sony lenses, which is what grabbed most of our attention to the mirrorless platform to begin with. And two final things: 1) When will the A7s Mk II with this feature be available, 2) How does this stabilization scheme work for video acquisition?
I strongly suspect this is some sort of witchcraft. There will be burnings at the stake!
Side note: Eric… love your splash intro and the walking Joby (?) at the end.
Thanks. I had a lot of fun making it. Yeah, that’s a small Joby Gorillapod at the end.