{"id":12038,"date":"2026-10-30T04:03:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brokenmount.com\/bm\/2026\/10\/30\/sony-fully-unveils-its-massive-80000-rialto-65-cinema-sensor\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T04:03:46","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:03:46","slug":"sony-fully-unveils-its-massive-80000-rialto-65-cinema-sensor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brokenmount.com\/bm\/2026\/10\/30\/sony-fully-unveils-its-massive-80000-rialto-65-cinema-sensor\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony fully unveils its massive, $80,000 Rialto 65 cinema sensor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tThe things I\u2019d do for a chance to shoot with this\u2026<\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, Sony announced<\/a> it was working on the Rialto 65, a module for the Venice 2 cinema camera that replaces the camera\u2019s standard full-frame (840mm\u00b2) sensor with a massive 53.75 \u00d7 35.83mm (1926mm\u00b2) one that offers around 2.2 times the imaging area. Now, the company has fully revealed its specifications<\/a> and price: a cool $80,000 (which, mind you, doesn\u2019t include the camera body or a way to actually mount a lens onto the sensor).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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When paired with a Venice 2, the Rialto 65 will be able to record 9.6K 3:2\/1.5:1 open gate footage at up to 30p and 9.6K\u200b 2.20:1 footage at up to 50p, though the fastest framerates aren\u2019t available in the highest-end Raw X-OCN XT format. Sony says it\u2019s working on a few other readout modes: 9.6K 17:9 at up to 40p, 6.4K\u200b 3:2 at up to 60p from a full-frame-sized crop of the sensor, and 4.3K\u200b 17:9 at up to 100p from an APS-C crop, which will be added via software update.<\/p>\n

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Of course, if you\u2019re buying a sensor this big you probably want to use all of it. While its diagonal is just<\/em> short of actually measuring 65mm, this class of format has a rich history in filmmaking, which we go into in our article covering the original announcement.<\/a> While it\u2019s still quite a bit smaller than the full 70mm IMAX film that auteurs like Christopher Nolan use, Sony says it\u2019s the \u201cindustry\u2019s largest image sensor\u201d in the digital realm.<\/p>\n

Cinematographers will have to contend with finding lenses with large enough image circles to cover the sensor, and those are likely to be so varied and relatively esoteric that Sony hasn\u2019t even bothered to include a lens mount with the Rialto 65 sensor block. Instead, you\u2019ll have to get a third-party one that matches the lenses you want to use.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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One interesting trick of the Rialto 65 is that it can be used directly attached to the camera, or extended away from the body, letting cinematographers fit it in smaller spaces. It comes with a 4.5m (14.8\u2032) cable for this purpose, though Sony is selling a longer 12m (39.4\u2032) one if you really need to get the imaging package far away from the body. That, however, won\u2019t come cheap either, coming in at $9000.<\/p>\n

Sony is also making a set of drop-in ND filters for the system, which have electronic contacts to automatically tell the camera body what filter is being used.<\/p>\n

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