After providing the suggested ISO lists for Nikon and Canon, it is time to look at the best ISO values for Sony cameras.
If you want to know more about the reason why these ISO values are suggested to use for astrophotography, please read the article on the details of what ISO actually is and how it works here.
Sony A7S
When talking about Sony cameras for astrophotography, the A7s comes to mind immediately of course as it is a very popular camera for astrophotography. It’s high ISO performance is praised a lot, even though that might not all that important for astrophotography and more applicable for video. If we look at the suggested ISO of 3200 for the A7s, we notice the dynamic range is 10.4 which is ok, but nothing great. You might want to test ISO 2000, as the drop in read noise seems to happen between ISO 1600 and ISO 2000. However, I’m not familiar with the way Sony handles the partial stop ISO values so I’m not sure if ISO 2000 is better than 3200. If you know more about this or even tested it out, please let me know in the comments.
Suggested ISO values for Sony cameras
Here are the graphs and ISO values to use for astrophotography for the Sony cameras. If you disagree with certain values, please let me know in the comments below.
| DSLR model | Suggested ISO | Dynamic range | Graph |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sony A3000 | 400 (try 800 as well) | 11.2 |  |
| Sony A5000 | 200 | 11.8 |  |
| Sony A5100 | 400 | 11.2 |  |
| Sony A6000 | 400 | 11.4 |  |
| Sony A7 | Unclear. 2 linear trends present so ISO 200 and ISO 1600 both seem plausible |  |
|
| Sony A7R | 100 | 13.5 |  |
| Sony A7S | Unclear, two linear trends present. There seem to be a significant drop in read noise at ISO 2000 so ISO3200 is a good possibility | 10.4 @ ISO 3200 |  |
Very intesting article. I think I can say that iso400 on Sony a6000 is indeed the sweetspot. I took some 5min exposures on iso100 but that didn’t work out well. 400 seems good….don’t know about higher iso yet.
Thanks Rutger for confirming, always good to hear the practical test results match the theory 😉
Rutger;
Thanks for the confirmation on Iso setting for Sony a6000. Second a question, with what equipment you coupled the Sony a6000? Sorry if it is answered elsewhere.
Rgrds
HI, What about newest A7III? It has two scales of ISO-invariances at100 and 640
None of the summary tables are showing up ! I have tried Explorer, Chrome and Safari browsers… can I get a copy of all three
Thx
Thanks for bringing this to my attention! There was a problem with one of the plugins, should all be working again now!
Would you be able to add a7rIII and a7III values here? it would be really useful!
Sony A6500 Best Iso? I´m looking and searching for it, but can´t find anything about.
Did someone test the old Sony Nex 5?
Any idea for a suggested iso?
Anyone have updates for current models? This is a bit out of date at this point.
It would be great if you could add Sony RX10M4 and Sony RX100M6/M7.
Does anyone have an iso graph for the a7 II?
The best ISO is okay too but I wanna see the lovely graph if it’s possible.
Thanks in advance (: