Andrew Reid

I turn it off because essentially it's a crude version of what you can do in post. I'll try some in post and try to match them, in terms of both the LOG output and final graded image. A7S offers a lot of bang for buck. Need that internal 4K though!

Have you considered the Panasonic LX100? Seems a good fit. The stills are better on the A7 though. You will struggle to get a full frame camera in your budget that shoots great video. Nikon D750 is too much, A7S is too much. APS-C then Nikon D5300 would be a good choice. Great stills and good 1080p. You can put a loupe on it and you have your EVF shooting style back. You might be able to stretch to a used GH4 if you find a bargain body but it won't leave much over for the requisite lenses it needs to make it look good.

​Yes unfortunately. Not severe but I keep seeing it.

Here's a quick detail test. 1:1 crops first... 1D C (Canon LOG) 4K 1D C (Canon LOG) 4K with digital sharpening on (in post) Sony A7S (SLOG 2) 4K to Shogun And the full 4K frames for your downloading... click to enlarge then drag to desktop... 1D C (Canon LOG) A7S (S-LOG 2) Both straight out of the camera and ungraded. You can see where the Sony's SLOG get's it yellow tint from that you have to fix in post very carefully to get colour working right. If you have an A7S and Shogun it remains an amazing image for the price. It's just that I think the 1D C if it drops to the same price or even a bit more it's a no brainer, it's more cinematic and easier to work with.

​The 4K from the 1D C with sharpness on 0 in Canon LOG is softer than the A7S S-LOG on default settings but the detail is there and it's more solid and more organic in the rendering. The A7S is sharp but it looks more video-ish and has moire & aliasing. Quite surprising considering how clean the internal 1080p was. 1D C clearly has a stronger anti-aliasing filter. That's a good thing. The detail is still there and you can bring it out with sharpening but sharpening 4K is bloody pointless! It only makes your full frame less cinematic when projected, the sharpness kinda crawls around and looks more digital, more 'GH2'. The extra detail through sharpening is only really visible at 1:1. It's a bit like the difference between the Epic and GH4. Yes one is sharper but is it really more detailed? More cinematic? No.

1D C A7S Same exposure

How much is a used 5D Mark II where you live? With Magic Lantern raw that gives the best image for the price and as a stills camera it does the basics right like AF. No EVF though.

​What reviews? For stills or video?

Would be interesting to see if this is a problem only with the Samsung lenses. Better to get a Nikon adapter and use AI stuff.

If it does that during an important shot, you can't just take the battery out and say "it's fine"

Next test. This one is a bit clearer I think. Click to enlarge them. The shot contains a GH4 to represents the blacks / lows and out of the window at the top I've cropped out the tree line / sky for the highs. The shot of the GH4 on the 1D C shot is usable, the A7S isn't, or at least needs cleaning up. There's also moire and aliasing on the lens rings. You get these noisy blacks at ISO 3200 at the bottom of the S-LOG file. What I do is to of course apply a curve to the file to get contrast back, crush the noisy blacks away, get colour looking right and tonality spot on. I have always crushed these parts of the image away by 1-2 stops because that's what you're supposed to do with LOG. Those blacks look awful if you keep them as-is. The blacks are so cinematic and milky clean on the 1D C I can keep them if I want to. If you clean up the noise in the A7S blacks with noise reduction software, the image overall will still look bad. So they need to go. Nobody can say looking at the shot above that the A7S looks better than the 1D C. I am not bringing bias into it, it's science pure and simple. The tree line out of the window represents the highlights. Here the A7S is doing a hard clip to white above the tree branches and the 1D C goes beyond the trees to maintain some of the bright clouds. Well, as bright as the sky gets in January in England anyway!! Subtle difference. To find out how many stops DR each give I need a chart and I am not a chart tester. I am certain the 1D C is giving me more usable dynamic range though.

​Kindly gaze at my sample images, which are graded from the original files. Kind of matters that! Now look at the size of the highlight. How much of it is white on the top shot and how much on the bottom? The area which is burnt to white is larger on the A7S. Now look at the shadows. Pretty similar but the A7S has more noise in them, therefore they require a pull down to hide the noise. Noise reduction will just make them look muddy and kill the detail. It's not about that purple splat of paint, it is not a highlight and it isn't burnt in either! Need to do a proper test to make it clearer to people without eyes.

​I have yet to tell the difference between 10bit and 8bit on any camera. The Blackmagic cameras are good mainly due to lack of compression. 10bit has very little to do with it. I think 10bit could be the most overrated attribute of video acquisition ever. I literally can grade 10bit GH4 4K and 8bit together on the same timeline the same way and pixel for pixel they're identical! And it doesn't sort out banding either.

Happy new year to you too, and to all EOSHD forum users

Yes you can change aperture whilst recording on the Mark III and IV but you shouldn't use the III with the A7S it's not fully compatible.

​Yes the FS7 was on my radar, was about £2k more than the used 1D C though. I wanted the stealth and small size of a DSLR. Stick a loupe on the back, put an IS lens on, attach gorilla pod, make a great movie Kendy Ty style. The FS7's slow-mo I want though! Badly! Hopefully the 1D C will come down to under £3500 soon and more people will see the sense in that. At £12,000 it was ridiculous - sort of - but the image was always going to be a £12,000 cinema picture, otherwise they'd have never have priced it for Hollywood in the first place. It's one of the most cinematic looks I've ever seen. It isn't digital-sharp in Canon LOG either. It's detailed and organic.

​Indeed this is what I see as well. No bias! When you all pick up your 1D Cs for cheap in 2015 you will thank me for recommending it

Well that's weird. I'm sure I said I shot in S-LOG2. Oh wait. I did Not Cine1. Not Cine2. We are talking about S-LOG here. Nope that's incorrect, I'm sorry to break it to you. Just imagine I have a friendly face and a smile whilst I give you the bad news and we won't get into an Internet Debate. The very deepest blacks start to break up on the A7S with noise because you reach the end of the usable dynamic range, it's not an ISO issue. You can see the same in a raw still shot at ISO 200, just bring the shadows up very high. What do you see? Yes noise. That's why we talk about dynamic range and USABLE dynamic range. Loss of detail? It's a dynamic range test shot. I didn't even focus it properly. When I do the resolution test shot I'll make sure the focus is nailed on both cameras. Didn't need to on this shot. Post fact rationalisation more like. Haha. Yes. We agree on that. Maybe the Internet Argument can be averted after all. New years resolution. Avoid internet arguments

​With my eyes! You can't see it? Crushed blacks and a highlight that burns sooner on the A7S S-LOG? C'mon dude. Black is black you can't bring it back, same as white.

Unfortunately good light isn't to be found in Berlin at the moment. I think I'll take it somewhere sunnier

Finding the stabilisation with the 35mm F2.0 IS very solid. Did I mention I love the image!?

The GH4 has more dynamic range than people give it credit for.

I'm not sure how you've graded that, it doesn't look like what I get. Might not be your fault, you are grading a heavily web compressed JPEG after all. I get a stop more detail in the highlight and at least 1-2 stops cleaner shadows... Top A7S 4K S-LOG and bottom 1D C MJPEG. (Click to enlarge to see the noise grain in the shadows and on table surface) That's what I mean by 'usable'. You have to crush the blacks on the A7S to get rid of the noise in the shadows. On the 1D C you can leave the shadows 'as-is'. They both have a 0% curve in Film Convert on to try and exceed the maximum dynamic range that's usable... to show as an example. No artistic merit I know it looks awful on both! S-LOG 2 needs fixing for 4K it isn't working right. And how is purple chromatic aberration the fault of the camera? It's a lens thing anyway.

I'm not seeing that. Very fine noise grain on the 1D C files and NR is off in the menus. The A7S shadows just look worse. Muddy unfortunately. Like Doug said earlier. He was right.

And dynamic range / smart range + is definitely off?