So I wasn't planning on shooting a video today
but there's this rumor going around
that the Sony a7 IV can shoot 4K60 non-cropped full frame
if you do a little hack with a Ninja V.
And I've been getting tagged on Twitter
and sent emails and everything multiple times
since this came out,
I don't know, like two days ago or something.
So I wanted to address it it in a quick little video,
but I don't have the a7 IV,
I only had it for the review
and I haven't purchased one myself,
but I have a friend who does have one, iPhonedo.
So I got him on the phone here right now.
You're already posing,
how do you know I'm gonna cut to you?
You don't know I'm cutting you.
Anyway, I got iPhonedo on the phone.
- Just in case.
- And he was gracious enough to do all the tests for us.
By the way, if you're not subscribed
or watch his channel regularly,
you gotta go watch this guy.
One, we're gonna talk about his tests in a minute,
they're excellent.
And two, he is probably one of my favorite YouTube channels.
So why aren't you watching him?
Like no other channel
could I just like send a message at,
well, for me it was like midnight,
he's in the Pacific coast,
it was only 9:00 p.m.
But where I was like, "Hey, can you do some tests?"
And he was like, "Yeah, what tests are we doing?"
So I appreciate you, iPhonedo,
thanks for doing the test and thanks for.
- Was my pleasure.
- The video in question says that
if you take your a7 IV
and you set it to 1080p
then you can go to 60 frames per second
and there is no crop.
That is true, that's like if you record internally 1080p.
But then they were finding
that if you go to the HDMI output
you can still set the HDMI output to 2160p Ultra HD.
And when you do this
the Ninja V will display UHD60
in the top corner of it,
which led this person to believe
that he was getting 4K60 recording on his Ninja V.
And that's true and not true.
- It is true.
So everything in that statement is true.
You can set the camera to 1080p60
and it's filming without the crop.
And then you can set the HDMI out to 4K
and then feed that into the Atomos Ninja.
And then Atomos Ninja says, it's 4K
and you start recording
and all of that is true.
- In his video, he showed that his file
was 3840x2160 at 60 frames?
The file integrity is 4K60.
Everything was fine.
The issue though is, is it scaling just up from 1080p?
It's not really 4K.
So that's what I wanted iPhonedo to test because,
well, first of all
this is a compliment to iPhonedo,
is that you never know when you ask somebody like,
"Hey, can you do a test for me?"
You never know what you're gonna get.
Sometimes it's like somebody sends you two clips
with their dog and they're running around or whatever.
You're like, "Well, this is nice footage
but I don't know how I'm supposed to compare this."
Anyway, you had a great shot,
you threw a color checker in there.
You got a little focus chart
and you manually focused them all,
everything was locked off.
It was beautiful.
You did a great job.
- So nice to hear because this is how we roll.
This is how we do stuff in our channels.
And it's really great to find someone
who appreciates that
who does work in the same discipline.
So it was a lot of fun for me to prepare it properly
and send it properly for you.
- So we did sort of two batches of tests.
The first one was just repeating
what the video showed you.
You set it to 1080p60, you record out to 4K.
The only issue with that is that
that can't really be recreated
because the camera doesn't have a true 4K60 uncropped
to compare it against.
So all we could do is really look at the image
and compare it to the other 4K stuff
that the camera can do.
And to me that first test looked like upscaled 1080p,
it did not look like 4K.
Do you agree?
- I completely agree.
It absolutely looks upscaled and nothing else.
- So we did the second batch of tests
which I think is probably a bit smarter
based on the test situation.
What we can do is we can force the crop in 1080p,
we can turn that on or off.
So we enabled APS-C mode in 1080p
which now we have a similar frame to the regular 4K60.
So we've got 1080p60 with the crop turned on
and 4K60 which always has the crop.
And we were able to compare a true 4K60 recording
to a 1080p60 with a crop recording
where the output is set to 1080p over HDMI
and where the output is set to 4K over HDMI.
The true 4K60 crop recording looked like 4K.
I could tell in the color checker
there was like just detail,
the sort of textured pattern
of the color checker was there, all the detail was there.
And this is looking on it added on a 4K timeline.
Whether you had it HDMI output set to 1080p,
or you had the HDMI output set to 2160p,
both of them had sort of a blurrier texture
on the color checker.
And overall, they looked like the other 1080p footage.
So what I ended up seeing from you
was like three shots that all looked like slightly blurrier,
and then only one that looked extra sharp,
and that was the true 4K60 crop.
- That is correct.
Actually I was going back and forward
between the upscaled and then the regular 1080p.
And I was just diving in, zooming out,
diving in, zooming out, to see any difference
because the frames, you see tiny movements.
But then when actual 4K comes into the shot
then you're like, okay, this is actual 4K,
the others are just upscaled.
- It looks a little bit different.
It doesn't look like,
I'm getting all this extra resolution.
It just looks different.
And I think that's probably because the file is actually 4K.
What I think it's most similar to
is probably just like you do
sometimes when you make a YouTube video
or you're ready to deliver something.
You take your 1080p footage,
you put it in a 4K timeline,
you export 4K,
you upload that to YouTube.
You get a better looking image
than if you just went HD all the way through.
The 4K upconverted one looks a little bit better.
Does it look like a 4K recording?
No, but it looks a little bit sharper.
But you could do this in post.
We're not unveiling some secret aspect of the camera,
we're basically just saying you're upscaling it
over HDMI rather than in Premiere or Resolve
or whatever you use, Final Cut.
I think that's what I saw basically.
- It's not worth the trouble.
I would never do this
- Because you'd get all confused.
Then you'd record some in 1080,
you didn't want to record at 1080.
You'd get all confused.
I also wanna, so the user by the way,
I don't think I mentioned yet.
His YouTube channel, I think is chphotovideo.com.
But I think in other forums he goes by CY,
'cause I think his name is like Chris Young or something.
First off, don't go giving this guy a lot of hate.
I think it's great that he was poking around with this
and then found this and then made a video about it.
He didn't say anything inflammatory.
He didn't be like, Sony exposed.
Nothing like that.
He just was like, "Hey, this is something I noticed."
And he even tagged me to be like,
"Do you wanna test this or validate it?"
So this stuff is great
because sometimes you do find something that's good.
And I did the same thing with the a1's
where I found that if you set the camera to 8K
but you record it out to 4K,
you get like an over sampled 4K.
But I only found the a1 thing
by doing the same kind of stuff that this guy did.
So I'm not criticizing at all.
It's kudos.
- No, it's really good, really good.
And this is how we go forward too.
It's really good when people dive into stuff like this.
- What if it would've worked?
- I got really excited last time.
I was like, "Oh, can it be?"
- So, basically a lot of
the recent Sony cameras have had this thing
where they can output different HDMI resolutions
than what's being recorded internally.
But it's the internal one that matters
when it comes to the quality of the image,
unless you're using that HDMI output only option
in which case the internal recording is disabled
and then you only go by the HDMI output.
But if ever we're trying to upsample,
downsample, whatever,
usually we have that turned off
and we use both an internal and external combination.
And in that case, it's the internal that matters
not the external number,
because if it did matter
then on something like the a1
you could set it to 4K60
and then you could actually set
the HDMI output resolution to 4320p.
So that'd be like saying
the a1 has a secret 8K60 mode
that they never told anybody about it.
It doesn't have an 8K60 mode.
Theoretically, you could upscale your 4K60 to 8K
but it's just gonna look like 4K,
just like the a7 IV's upscaled 1080p
kind of just looks like 1080p,
maybe just a few percent better.
- I wish it worked honestly.
- That's a better video.
That's a better video to make than this one
where we just like validate it and be like,
"Yeah, now you got 4K60 full frame."
But again, thanks to the original user.
I think again, it's Chris Young or chphotovideo.com.
Thanks the original user for doing this test,
gave us something to investigate.
And thank you to iPhonedo
for providing the a7 IV tests, such good tests.
- Thank you so much.
- And end of video, I guess.
You got anything to say?
- All right, I'm done.