Sony a6400 vs a6500 Sensor Comparison | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to take a look at how the sensor of the new A6400
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compares to that of the A6500 that I've been using for the last couple of years
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We saw in our first look episode a kind of overview of the A6400 and general comparison
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We saw that there is some give and take between these two models, but I know that along with the improvements to the autofocus in the a6400 that Sony has touted
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a little bit of tweaks when it comes to the actual sensor. Now both of them share a 24 megapixel APS-C
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sensor and so we're talking about the same basic sensor as we're going to see in this episode
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but today we're going to take a look at primarily the performance at different ISO settings also a
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little bit of dynamic range. And so we'll see if, you know, how similar they are and where they
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differ. So let's jump in. Let's take a look. All right. We're going to take a look at the a6400
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versus the a6500. And throughout this comparison, we have the exact same setup. We've got the exact
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same settings throughout. We use the same lens. And as you can see, the focal length is mildly
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different 38 millimeters versus 40 millimeters and with the power zoom it is really hard to get
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any more precise than that that being said I think that we've got as much of an apples to apples as
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possible and so we'll take a look at what we find here so base iso for both is iso is 100 and so as
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you can see at base iso we've got really super clean results you know obviously from both there
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They're pretty much the same sensors we're going to see with just some mild tweaks really in the way that the kind of the throughput is handled as well as a little bit of difference in the processor
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Now, we'll take a quick look at dynamic range here at base ISO
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This is more about just recovering here. And so in this case, I have pulled the slider for our shadows all the way up
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And I have also added a stop of exposure to it. So we're looking to see if we introduce any extra noise here in the shadows
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If we look back for a second at this, you can see that this was pretty dark and not a lot of information there
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And so you can see as we opened it up and opened up those shadows, we got a lot of recovered extra information
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And I wouldn't say that we introduced any real additional noise. And that's basically true in a similar amount for both of these
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If we look back at A6400 here, we can see we have opened up details nicely in there
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And as you can see, you know, with this kind of, this is what I would call more of a typical recovery
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I don't see any kind of damage to the image itself. So if we jump on up to ISO 800, taking a look at our, you know, one of our principal subjects here
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As you can see, still very, very clean. Looking into our kind of dark area behind
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you can see the background looks nice and clean. No real noise that's showing up there
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Looking at the books here, again, everything nice and clean. So if we go on up to ISO 1600
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which by the way, APS-C cameras like these, the Fuji X-T3, these most recent generation APS-C cameras
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at these kinds of ISO settings, there's really not much of a difference
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in performance between these and full frame. But looking once again here
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we can see that again, we still got nice and clean results here There might be a little bit more contrast that remains in the A6400 result here You know you can evaluate that for yourself but I would say if there
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any difference, that's the only difference that I can see. Okay, now at ISO 3200. Once again
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our, you know, result here still looks nice and clean. You know, what's interesting is that there
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is maybe a mild, mild amount more of contrast in the dark area than there is on the A6500
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I should say, than the A6400. You know, there's just a very, very minor difference, but I doubt
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you could detect it if side by side. Looking here in the texture in the foreground, I think that
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there may be a little bit more obvious magenta patching in there, you know, but it's on the
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and that's on the A6500 side, but not really a significant difference here
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Once again, in our textures, things look quite good. Looking down at this area again
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I would say that once again, I think that there's maybe a little bit more contrast in the purple to the gold
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They're around Roman on the A6400 side versus the A6500. Looking into the shadow area
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our results look pretty much the same. So let's take a look here at ISO 6400
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We're gonna do a few things here, And so first of all, just taking a quick look at the, you know, just our basic look as far as the ISO performance
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Once again, there is a mild advantage, I think, on the A6500 side when it comes to the contrast in this area here
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where it just looks a little bit cleaner. I think there's a slight bit of discoloration like we saw at ISO 3200
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I will say, however, that it's pretty amazing that we've got APS-C censored cameras that are delivering this kind of result at ISO 6400
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Really pretty impressive. Now, coming over to this side where we look at the Roman here
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I would say that the advantage that I previously saw in terms of contrast is not there any longer
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I don't know that one looks any better than the other. Looking up at the shadow area, it's, you know, once again
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there's not really a significant difference between the two. So what we have got here is obviously a dramatically overexposed image
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basically about three stops of overexposure. We're going to just take a quick look at how it
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works in terms of recovering our highlights here. As you can see, lots of highlights really blown out
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Let's see how cleanly we can recover in this situation. So these are those same images. I've
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now dialed back exposure by three stops on both of them here in Lightroom. As you can see, we've
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got a really clean recovery here. Looking at our highlights here, I mean, obviously we know from our
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previous examination that this is supposed to be kind of a deeper gold color. And so it's not as
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rich as a properly exposed image. At the same time, we haven't lost too much information here
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but most importantly is that I don't know that there is a significant difference between
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each one of these. And so in terms of recovering highlights, I see a more similar than different
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performance. Okay. So we'll do the same thing on the opposite end. This is an underexposure by
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about three stops. And so this is what the base images look like. So here is with three stops of
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exposure added back into the images. Now, my base observation, number one, is that there is more
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visible damage to the image itself in this recovery. You would need to do a little bit of work because
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you know, to clean this up, as you can see, white balance has been negatively impacted by the
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recovery. We've got a little bit of a green tinge to everything. But what you can also see is that
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But in many ways I would say that the recovered result looks cleaner on the A6400 side And so in terms of recovering those shadows we just kept a little bit more positive contrast here And so the little more shadow information has been retained
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And so I think that on the upper end of the spectrum, I don't see any advantage to the A6400
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However, here in recovering shadow information, I definitely give a win to the A6400. And in terms
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of just the general cleanness of the look, particularly on a global level, I think that I
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like the A6400 result better. Now moving on to ISO 12800, I would say that once again here
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it's kind of the same trend that I've seen. I slightly prefer this result here. And so if you're
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not having to tweak the image very much, I think that you can see there's just a little bit less of
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they bias towards the green. On the A6500, however, we saw just a moment ago
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that if you need to really recover shadow information, it's actually the A6400 that stays truer
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I guess the conclusion at this point is that there's some give and take
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I mean, they've tweaked the way that the sensor performs and at the same time
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I mean, there's some things that have improved and maybe a few things that haven't
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Now with the A6400, they felt confident enough to boost the base ISO range up by one third of a stop
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But here we're at the native limit of the A6500, which is ISO 25600
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What we can see is the same general observations are true in that I think that the A6500 is a little bit cleaner
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with a little bit less of a tent to it than what the a6400 is
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Now, at the same time, if you look into the, kind of the shadow area here
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there's a little bit more contrast that's been retained in the a6400 image
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Looking over at our books here, we can see that this is definitely looking
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like it's got a little bit more pop left to it than what the a6500 is
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So again, some give and take. Okay, so at what is the maximum ISO range
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of the native range of the A6400, you can go into expanded range even further
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In the case of the A6500, we are actually into that expanded range by one third stop
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So the question is, is this additional one third stop justified in the native range
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The answer is maybe. You know, as you can see, there's not really a huge similarity
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That same kind of tent observation is there. And you know, earlier on
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I noted a little bit of that magenta patching here in the foreground, but what we've seen is it hasn't really intensified any further
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Looking here, I mean, it's arguably a little bit more detailed and a little less washed out than what the A6500 is
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But again, if you didn't have these two things side by side, I honestly don't know that you would notice it
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Looking in the shadowed area, I think the noise pattern may be a little bit rougher on the A6500
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but maybe not enough to tell at a global level. So I'll let you draw your own conclusions
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So as you can see from these tests, performance really more similar than different, but I'll give
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you a little synopsis of some things that I've observed as a part of that process
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In terms of the actual performance, in terms of taking these images, I will note that there is
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one improvement to the A6400, and that is say in the case of taking a photo and then say going to
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that whereas with the A6500 there's a lag that seems to go on way too long
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where it writes even a single image to the card, you know, so you have that lag before
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you will become responsive again to do other things. A6400 that's really improved
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It basically I saw no observable lag I never really got that image where it said writing or that notification where it said writing to the card And so that certainly nice to see One other thing that a
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little bit weird, although I showed you images with identical settings and obviously I achieved
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those manually, the metering result from both of them was very different. So with the A6500 in
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those shots, I had a slight underexposure bias, you know, to kind of properly, you know, illuminate
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the seam. And so it showed a minus one. In the case of the A6400, it actually showed minus 1.7
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with the, so our 1.7 stops, one, you know, and two thirds stops basically, difference
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which seems a little bit weird to me. And I observed that on other situations as well, where
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I just, they didn't exactly reconcile in terms of the metering. So, you know, maybe a quirk of
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this particular model, I don't know, but you know, some definitely some different behavior
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What we saw also in these tests is that there was, as we moved up into the ISO range, we saw a
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slightly more green tint without tweaking the image at all in the A6400. We saw roughly equal
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highlight recovery between the two, but definitely when we recovered shadows at ISO 6400, we
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definitely saw a cleaner result with the a6400. So ironically, while it shows a slight bit more
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green tint at, you know, just normal and its normal results, it recovered shadows without
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adding additional tint to it. Whereas with the a6500, a lot more green tint became obvious when
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we recovered. So definitely a cleaner shadow recovery with the a6400. At high ISO settings
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it was kind of interesting you know they've bumped up the native iso range but as has been my
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observation with more recent generation cameras where i've seen them do that it's fairly rare that
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you can see a significant improvement um you know they expand the iso range but you know say like
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going back to a comparison of when i got the canon 5d mark 4 versus the canon 6d it went from
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you know, a upper ISO limit of 25,600 on the 6D to 32,000 on the 5D Mark IV. Was there much of a
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difference at that? Not really. Same has been true with the a7R III and the a7 III, and of course here
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with the a6500 versus the a6400. You know, there's some give and take, and you know, we're heading in
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the right direction, I think, overall, and the performance really is amazing in an absolute sense
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but don't expect a huge improvement. If you were basing it on that, that may be a little bit more
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marketing than it is reality. At the same time though, this is a great sensor in this camera
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and certainly there are some advantages that I have seen baked in but it's not a clear cut of
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saying a6400 sensor better than a6500. It's a little more complicated. I'm Dustin Abbott and
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stay tuned for my final verdict on the a6400. A lot of good things to report and of course I'll also
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you know peg out a few of the areas where it may be even lacking compared to the a6500
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but stay tuned for that and i'll wrap everything up in a nice neat package for you in the meantime
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you can look at the image gallery i've got a lot of great photos with the a6400 worth seeing take
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a look at that beyond that there's also buying links if you'd like to purchase one for yourself
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there's no arguing this is a great value beyond that too you can also find linkage to follow me
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on social media, including now on Instagram. You can become a patron and help to support this channel
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and get early sneak previews of upcoming content. And finally, of course, you have the option
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of following me right here on YouTube. Please do so. Thanks for watching
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Have a great day

Sony a6400 vs a6500 Sensor Comparison | 4K

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