Gear Announcements
Sony Announces Slew of New Firmware Updates
In the wake of Sony’s major announcements regarding the A7R II, RX100 M4 and RX10 II, they have also announced a crop of new firmware updates for many of their current products including the A6000, A7, A7S, and A7R.
The new firmware, version 2.0 for all the cameras mentioned above, improves startup times across the board. On the A6000, the new firmware also adds the coveted XAVC-S codec for improved video quality.
You can see an example of the improved XAVC-S codec for the A6000 in this demo footage below.
Startup times for some of these cameras has been pretty annoying, so the update, while it may seem mundane, surely has at least a few of you out there jumping in your living rooms like a little kid.
At any rate, if you are interested in updating the firmware on your camera, you can head on over to Sony’s website to get all the details and to download the file(s).
Ok did some research.. looks like i need an SDXC card vs SDHC. The option to shoot in the XAVCS codec requires you to have an SDXC SD card. The difference, SDHC regular Class 10 cards are formatted with a Fat32 file system. The SDXC cards are formated exFat which is 64bit. The codec requires 64bit to work and if you do not have a SDXC card you will not be able to record in XAVCs codec. It would be nice if sony would explain that better than just simply saying you need a Class 10 card in the firmware change log.
Anybody know what sd card exactly i need to get xavcs to work.. I tried 4 different class 10 cards and my a6000 keeps telling that the card is not supported.. I tried my fastest Sandisk card Extreme Pro Plus 16 GB U3 C 10 95 MB/s and get the same message.. How much faster does it need to be,
Also, what the heck with not having XAVC-S on my A7? Is that not a higher tier, more advanced sensor? Boo.
As soon as I read the title, I immediately jumped over to download the update, only to find that my startup time is shortened? Meh, I guess I’ll take what I can get, but my dreams have been trampled upon just a little bit.
Well for me as a Nikon shooter, I wish that they really would add some features to the upgrades and not only bug fixes.
The improved video codec for the a6000 is kind of big since it was something most videographers felt the camera fell short on. It’s already a pretty good camera and most of the wish list upgrades involved hardware.
What a boring update.
Sometimes the simplest updates can makes things so much more pleasant. But, yeah, this is definately not a feature packed update. haha
When a company designs and tests their product well, an update should be a boring fix to minor problems. :)