Sony Star Eater Petition

[Carole]

I found this petition that's been started and have forwarded it to Mark but wondered whether any-one else wanted to sign it.  I have already done so.  Not that I am planning on buying this camera, but I had a feeling some were thinking about it. 

Plus supporting our fellow Astro-imagers etc etc.
It's been promoted by some fairly eminent imagers.

https://www.change.org/p/sony-remove-the-star-eater-on-sony-a7s-r-mk-i-ii-and-a9-cameras

Carole

[MarkS]

Thanks for this - I've signed.

There are some big names (in the astro-imaging world) behind this but unfortunately not the big movers and shakers in the world of photography as a whole.

Will Sony even care, I wonder?

Mark

[Carole]

Some-one said " It would only take a firmware update to have an off switch for this."

Mark, did you see at the bottom of the petition, there is an opportunity to add you own comments.

Carole

[MarkS]

Some-one said " It would only take a firmware update to have an off switch for this."

Carole

For terrestrial photographers the spatial filtering is there for a good reason: for long exposures (a few seconds and more) it removes the colour noise in shadow areas caused by warm/hot pixels.  But it should only be done for in-camera JPEGs.  The raw file ought to be left alone because there are much better algorithms that can be used in post processing.   Sony is depriving users from using these post-processing algorithms and any future algorithms that will appear.

The problem Sony faces is balancing the needs of the typical consumer user against the more sophisticated user.  An "off switch" risks complaints from their broad consumer base when these consumers switch it off by accident.

Nikon cameras also apply spatial filtering (to both JPEG and raw) but they use an algorithm that is much more sophisticated so it has only a minor effect on astrophotography.

Mark

[MarkS]

If Sony fixes the star eater problem it will make the A7x series of cameras better for general astrophotography.

BUT

For stacked exposure deep sky imaging there are deeper issues.  The main symptom of those issues is that the calibration frames we rely on (darks, bias and lights) do not work very well.  The main issues are revealed by the light frames:

1) Digital scaling of the data leads to concentric rings of coloured banding
2) The split full frame sensor leads to horizontal banding on the left half of the image
3) There are wide purple/green vertical swathes through the data

For a beginner, I would never recommend a Sony A7x camera for stacked exposure deep sky imaging, even if the star eater issue is fixed.

This reminds me, I need to create a webpage for all this stuff so it can all be easily found in one place.  The star eater issue that I identified is now widely known and talked about.  Those other issues also deserve to be more widely understood.

Mark

[Carole]

Maybe you need to start your own petition on the other issues.

Carole's

[Carole]

Wow, got this message this morning:

The petition just turned 1000 signatures a few hours ago, after being only 4 days online.