Andrew Reid

It is clear on the LCD - big black hole in the middle of the shot. I thought it was a bug with the View Assist at first! Nope. On all my footage. Junked a load of material from that shoot. If you're taking this camera to work with you... don't yet.

I have been shooting with the A7S II for 2 weeks now. Let's really get under the skin of the camera and see if it is worth your $3000. On my retail model (bought in Europe on day of release, firmware 1.0) sunspots and black holes render it almost unusable. It is a complete lottery whether your shot is going to be ruined or not. The next shot is not even in direct sunlight – the black hole is produced from a specular bounce of light off the floor. Read the review

Enjoyed the video and Alister really knows his stuff by the way. Just putting a different perspective out there and it's all up to our preferences what we like. I find S-LOG does allow me to focus on directing and composition, it's easier to expose than Rec 709 and allows for more leeway to correct exposure mistakes in post. I agree with you it has a sweet spot though! Optimal 2 stops to the right usually. Many shoot green screen with Blackmagic cameras... raw is great for that. It isn't so much LOG that causes issues, the compression does.

Indeed. Or Shane Meadows. Good 1080p doesn't look soft when it is thrown at an epic cinema screen to an audience of 200... It only looks soft on a laptop screen with your eye 1mm away! The D750 and BMPCC I rate as pretty good 1080p personally!!

The sensor has been tweaked and the JPEG engine has. It's more noticeable in the stills output. The video profiles - Cine1,2,3,4, etc. and SLOG don't seem to have been changed. The main addition is S-LOG 3. That is still just as difficult to grade colour-wise. S-Gamut 3.Cine is a tweaked S-Gamut though... and it shifts to an even wider colour gamut... but I find it also brings colour closer to clipping in 8bit. S-LOG 3 meanwhile is even flatter than S-LOG 2, it is designed to maximise dynamic range. However I find it increases banding in the highs and lows... so the question is, how much of that extra dynamic range packed in is usable?

Nah you're not understanding me. The benefits of LOG are there for green screen and low light, as much as they are for bright daylight scenes requiring a wider dynamic range. If S-LOG on the FS5 hurts keying performance BY A BIT... but gives you a CHUNK OF CREATIVITY... who is right. Chapman? Nope.

No, actually Sony shouldn't expect the A7 target audience to be director, writer, producer, cinematographer, professional colourist. These cameras are in a lot of single operators hands. Canon LOG is easier to handle for a reason! Sony made a mistake. S-LOG as an option, fine. No alternative to S-LOG = not fine. The cinema gamuts don't fix the colour difficulties in post. And the Cine gamma curves are not LOG. Would you rather have more time to edit and direct and shoot... or spend it all fucking with Resolve?

It took me a year to get the colours right in my LUT for S-LOG. Judging from much of the footage on Vimeo it seems everyone else had the same problem But now it is right... it's way better than Cine2. The LUT is gold-dust. I should sell it!! (It was a year's work after all!!!!) Once the LUT corrects for Sony's shitty colour science, Lumetri is great in Premiere for applying my own contrast and curves or shot by shot tweaks, white balance, etc. It responds really well. Sometimes you can get away with adjusting temperature from 3200 to 5600 and not have it look like crap. It's not raw but it is much closer than you'd reasonably expect.

Technical information is good... but ruling out LOG for lowlight and green screen is putting pixel peeping ahead of creativity.

Indeed! But hey, Sony didn't notice their reds were pink in S-LOG, so I don't expect them to listen to me on menu shortcuts

The 1D C has been very useful to calibrate my LUT for the A7S II and A7R II S-LOG I'd be lost without it as a guide really. Cine 2, etc. certainly easy to grade when dialled down flat but I still prefer to shoot S-LOG... more dynamic range and better LUT compatibility. I like James Miller's DELUTS and they don't work as well with the other picture profiles.

Sony seem to have reserved it for now as a selling point of the A7S II. Maybe 6 months later there will be a small chance. But enough people ask for it, it will happen... Like uncompressed raw stills did. There's a solid logic for Sony to add it in... On a shoot with FS7, A7S II both set to S-LOG 3... An A7R II on Super 35mm duties set to S-LOG 2 doesn't make much sense does it!?

Big reason I stick to mirrorless rather than the mega expensive stuff. What is the boot time like? No Long GOP codec for 4K like the FS7 or FS5... oh dear! ALL-I does have a nicer motion candace though... 1D C MJPEG is also ALL-I. ALL-I codecs need to be 500Mbit/s for 4K... 100Mbit/s would look much worse than Long GOP at same data rate (because every original frame is stored individually) Have you tried updating the pro video codecs from Apple with FCPX installed? Might help in Premiere too. Upload an original file from each would love to see that. And A7S II with Odyssey 7Q+ should get rid of the compression and get it neck and neck with C300 II. I am trying that combo this week but don't have the C300 II to compare it directly to. Canon slow-mo still shit I see

+1 for the LUT loader app. No excuse for Sony not to add View Assist in firmware update to A7R II by the way for our $3k it is a disgrace something as basic as that is missing!!

Got a new install going from Clover now and it is indeed more stable. Way fewer quirks to sort out post install. The actual install went well once I deleted the old hidden EFI partition from my USB installer stick, which had the wrong config info on it. You have to get the pre-install config spot on for your hardware, needs a lot of Googling.

Nice idea for the Surface Pro!!

So is Clover more reliable as well (assuming it is setup correctly of course)?

You're right, zero reason for the 5D IV not to have 4K. I have a feeling they still would prefer us to buy a Cinema EOS camera though. Question is... have the pros who Canon have asked what they want in the 5D IV called for 4K strongly enough? I imagine they might have.

If anyone is wondering where the 1D C comes in... It's advantage is still colour, and the higher bitrate codec. No mud on whip pans and fast moving scenes. Cleaner fine detail when pixel peeping too. The colour is much quicker to get to how you want it. I fight Sony's colour a lot even with S-LOG 3 / S Gamut 3. You can match them very close but bloody hell it's an effort, sometimes I think I might not have time. For those times, maybe 1D C would look much better. Here's a very closely graded pair of shots from the two cameras, showing what the typical difference is... Canon 1D C always seems to get the reds and blues just as I remember them, and with the Sony it always seems to give blues a green tint you have to skilfully dial out in post and the reds always seem way more purple or magenta than they were in actuality. It really is time a professional colourist banged some heads together at Sony HQ. 1D C - A7S II - Note the blue bottle is now turquoise and the red bottle is purple... That is despite correction already for the problem in my LUT (using Resolve 12). If you try to compensate with all the obvious things... tint or tone in camera, or basic colour correction in Premiere... it isn't the answer, because it messes with other aspects of the image. If you just adjust the hue of the greens and reds in Resolve 12, you can fix them but it still isn't a free lunch... for example if you want warm overall tone to the scene, with blues intact, 1D C is your friend.

Actually in APS-C mode the A7R II's 4K is slightly more detailed than the A7S II in full frame. Oversampling from 15MP to 8MP (4K) obviously helped a bit. But it isn't enough for anyone in the audience to notice, I don't think anyway. With Speed Booster I am finding them neck and neck in low light until ISO 12,800 where the A7S II starts to pull away. Not too bad considering the megapixel difference. Obviously to get the most out of the A7R II for video you do need that Speed Booster, because yeah - the full frame video mode has issues with moire. It does however have much less rolling shutter than the A7S II 4K full frame and A7R II S35 4K. Sony have created a very confusing choice for video users. Not least for me with some Cookes for the A7R II's 4K S35 mode which won't cover 4K full frame on the A7S II

The only benefit of such high megapixels = small sensor crop in post. Unless you are printing billboards? 15mm to 24mm is a 1.6x crop. So why not just sling it on an A6000?

It's funny everyone hates small sensors with a huge crop factor, like 3x or something But everyone loves high megapixels so they can get that beautiful 3x crop small sensor look from their full frame cameras in Photoshop

Actually I can see where the Camera Store coming from, the A7 II and A7R II are the all-rounders from a *stills* perspective. Only reason you would want the A7S for stills is the high ISOs. But as a video camera the A7S II owns the market, it isn't a niche product.

It isn't a niche camera, the sales are up there with the A7R and A7 anyway so I hear.

No but you could have kept your 1D C one more month surely Anyway I'm very interested to see how you get on with the FS700. Sounds like it will work out very well for you and if you don't need 4K and just got it for slow-mo, it is lovely for that at $3k. Nice deal with all those extras too. Speed Booster will help in low light and the ND filters will make you wonder how you did without them in the 1D C!! You can grade S-LOG 2 manually as well, without a LUT. Just adjust the RGB curves in Premiere and then tweak with the Lumetri settings for blacks, highlights, contrast and temperature.