Updated Sony FS5 Firmware V1.11 Fixes Tearing and Blocking Image Issues

The issues was noted by Paul Antico and Andrew Reed and although it can be avoided it certainly isn’t acceptable. Sony jumped on it and stated they are going to fix it and they did it record time. So what the heck is going on? Sony says it’s a two fold problem but both have to do with the way the camera is implementing Noise Reduction. By tuning the grain to be finer it fixed the mico-blocking. This issue is mostly seen in the sky where you have a very high amount of gradients of color, and the other is tearing in higher ISO levels. When shooting in higher ISO and performing a slow vertical pan the edges of objects look like they tear. Sony tweaked the codec to fix the issue.

Sony FS5 Firmware 1.11 Test – Proof of Improved Picture Quality from cinema5D on Vimeo.

The firmware will be available Friday Feb. 25th or Monday on Sony Support Website.

I have been testing the FS5 for a couple of weeks to do a review and personally haven’t had any issues but I do see the mico-blocking in the sky. Unfortunately we get this with lower bit rate codecs too when they are pushed hard in post.

The good news is Sony jumped on the issue and started to work on how to fix it. Thankfully it was not a hardware issue and firmware was able to remove the problems but the fact that Sony was very assertive is really a good sign.

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Filed in: Featured Post • FS5
Tagged with: codec • Firmware 1.11 • FS5 • noise reduction