I'm a software engineer and hobbyist cinematographer. This camera is meant for people like me.
The reason for a camera like this is to open the tool set up for active development, in a way that traditional camera-makers haven't opened their hardware up for access.
Here's an example: high-ISO shooting. What makes it possible for cameras like Sony's a7s series to shoot in nearly dark conditions? Is it the sensor or have the engineers leveraged the fast CPUs to do real-time noise reduction?
By giving engineers access to the hardware, we could start exploring high-ISO programming. Similarly, we might learn how to auto-calibrate lenses in new ways that could take the cheap 'nifty-fifty' lens, apply machine learning and have it perform like a $3k Zeiss lens.
Even a topic like color science, the holy grail of company's knowledge base like Canon or Alexa, could be explored by a wider audience of scientists and engineers. Until we can get our hands on the hardware thru code, most of this is nearly impossible, except projects like Magic Lantern.
OK, that makes a ton more sense. And I couldn't agree more that the camera companies are shooting themselves in the foot by not opening up their firmware. I'm a software guy too and there are changes I'd love to make to Canon's menu system (I really want to be able to map a button to any part of the menu system, in particular a button that got me to the in camera crop feature that the 5DIV and 1DX have).
I suppose they think they have secret sauce buried in there but by keeping it secret they aren't getting any patches from us hackers.
> What makes it possible for cameras like Sony's a7s series to shoot in nearly dark conditions?
Mostly because the A7S(2) has a 35mm sensor with "only" 12 MP - it's simple physics, the individual pixels are so huge compared to 50 MP+ cameras and thus much less susceptible to noise.
In addition the A7S line, during 4k recording, does not do binning or other quality degrading post processing (because its resolution is so "low" that 1:1 4k can be done). This reduces processing load as well.
The reason for a camera like this is to open the tool set up for active development, in a way that traditional camera-makers haven't opened their hardware up for access.
Here's an example: high-ISO shooting. What makes it possible for cameras like Sony's a7s series to shoot in nearly dark conditions? Is it the sensor or have the engineers leveraged the fast CPUs to do real-time noise reduction?
By giving engineers access to the hardware, we could start exploring high-ISO programming. Similarly, we might learn how to auto-calibrate lenses in new ways that could take the cheap 'nifty-fifty' lens, apply machine learning and have it perform like a $3k Zeiss lens.
Even a topic like color science, the holy grail of company's knowledge base like Canon or Alexa, could be explored by a wider audience of scientists and engineers. Until we can get our hands on the hardware thru code, most of this is nearly impossible, except projects like Magic Lantern.