Respected Tech Blog The Last Word and DPReview Confirm Sony a7RIII Still Eats Stars

Charts Courtesy of The Last Word

Today The Last Word confirmed that the Sony a7RIII uses spatial filtering, which is called the “Star Eater” algorithm, with some dark field photos that DPReview sent him for testing. This is disappointing news for those of us that enjoy astrophotography or do it professionally. I have shot cameras with the “Star Eater” algorithm in the past during astrophotography season and gotten satisfactory results, but losing a few hundred or so stars to this algorithm is disappointing. When you take a photo of the night’s sky you always want to capture every last bit of information available.

I was leery about the first report of “Star Eater” being solved because it was not a technical analysis. Even DPReview had to send files to someone technical to get the truth behind the problem, which I commend them for because there are lots of blogs just looking for clicks on this issue and sales based on it being resolved. Let’s hope that the community continues to come down hard on Sony about “Star Eater” so that they truly resolve it in a future firmware update. Spatial filtering simply isn’t needed for the vast majority of photos and we should be able to turn it off in camera. Until this is fixed I will continue relying on my Fujifilm GFX and X-T2 for shooting astrophotography.

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Sony a7RIII: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
Sony 24-105mm: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama