Sony has announced the new A7S II, the successor to last year’s excellent A7S, which redefined low light photography with its incredible high ISO performance. The A7S II improved upon several key aspects while maintaining what made the original so great.
Building off the stellar quality of the a7S, the a7S II has better internal processing to handle shooting 4K up to 30fps straight to the SD cards. Another first for this series, the a7S II is capable of shooting 120fps at 1080p. While the other internal 4K Sony camera, the a7R II, has fantastic image quality, it’s not nearly as good in low-light as the a7S, and that’s really where the a7S II is going to stand out, especially now that you no longer need a 4K recorder. The a7S II is going to come in at $3,000, and should be available this fall.
Internal 4K30 recording in XAVC S format with full-sensor readout without pixel binning.
120fps 1080p recording at 100Mbps with full-sensor readout without pixel binning for 4x/5x slow motion footage. Also, internal 4x/5x slow motion recording.
S-Gamut3.Cine/S-Log3 and S-Gamut3/S-Log3, two new video profiles for a wider dynamic range for those who like to capture as much information as possible with a flat profile and then grade the video later in post processing.
5-axis internal image stabilization, first seen on the A7 II and A7R II, which means you can now have image stabilization even if the lens does not support it.
169 point fast autofocus system with improved speed and accuracy.
New XGA OLED Tru-Finder with the world’s highest 0.78x viewfinder magnification offering roughly 38.5 degrees of diagonal field of view.
Improved grip and design for better handling (although the recording button is still in the same ridiculous location).
5fps silent shooting mode.
Reinforced lens mount.
USB charging while the camera is in operation.
Sony A7S II is priced at €3,400, and will be available in Europe starting November 2015.