jcs

​Thanks Andrew, and all the other members who took the effort to give me advice..I decided to buy the Sony A7S and will start with my old (FD, 28, 35, 55) lenses.
I have a good feeling that I made the right choice, maybe someday I will film in 4K, but for now I will use the 1080. Happy!
 
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JCS I shot and edited the 2nd Sony FS7 video you posted above. Sorry the 1:17 stutter was a user error on my end. The footage played fine on my timeline it wasn't until I exported the video had stutter issues. I reexported to fix the problem and I still need to go back and figure out what was wrong with my export that created thew stutter problems. I've updated and there the video plays smoothly now. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel had so much excellent camera work that I purchased it to study. Great story, acting, pacing, art direction, music too! Haven't seen Birdman- heard it was great, will watch it soon.

Haven't seen Birdman yet, watched the video above here, reading about it now. Awesome cinematography. Love the wide angle combined with the shallow focus. Have to see this!
It's shot on Alexa with a Leica 16mm T1.4 and Master Prime 12mm T1.3 mostly. That's some crazy stuff, if they shot wide open, that's even less dof than you'd get on fullframe usually - or you would have to be shooting with a 18mm f/2.0.
http://www.cinematographydb.com/2014/11/cinematography-birdman-emmanuel-lubezki-asc/
I also loved the cinematography of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Crazy combination of anamorphic wide shots and 4:3. Really suits the film.

The Grand Budapest Hotel had so much excellent camera work that I purchased it to study. Great story, acting, pacing, art direction, music too! Haven't seen Birdman- heard it was great, will watch it soon.

Can't find any specs for SLR Magic in terms of F-stop, only T (transmission number), guessing it's F2.0? In 4K and 2.3 crop, a 10mm F2.0 lens is equivalent to a 23mm F4.6 on full frame. Not too shabby, and not particularly shallow DOF. The Voigtlander 10mm F.95 is 23mm and F2.2 equivalent- much tastier for shallow DOF. I have the Voigtlander 25mm F.95 and love the look on the GH4. The fact that the lens isn't super sharp wide open really helps the GH4 look more filmic (without needing to add a filter (which will affect highlights, etc., something that blurring in post can't match. Also, noise grain on soft image looks different than blurred noise grain in post)).
The specs for the SLR Magic F.95 25mm CINE II look very similar to the Voigtlander. Is SLR Magic using the same lenses/internals as Voigtlander for that lens?

jcs your fashion example about certainly shows off all very well and auto everything it is impressive.  That is the A7s?
Yes I have read the Commlite is good.

You realize that was only regarding Media Encoder, not Premiere itself, right? Also, this was put out shortly after. http://noamkroll.com/adobe-premiere-pro-vs-final-cut-pro-x-round-2-h264-compression-update/

http://www.artslaw.com.au/info-sheets/info-sheet/using-brands-and-products-in-film/
 

Yeah, the performance on the right is pretty shady!

Rodney Charters, highly regarded director and cinematographer, talks about using the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera side-by-side with an Alexa, what 4K acquisition means in "his" world as a high-end cinematographer, and his love for the Alexa, and what it makes this camera special.

Intresting
 

The Director of Winter Sleep (Winner of the Palme d'Or in 2014) talks about his choice of using the Sony F65 :
 

I've searched for official docs and specs for correctly processing the A7S's custom Slog2+SGamut implementation (not the same as the Sony Pro versions). While the Pro LUTs get close, colors aren't quite right, especially skin tones. Slog2+SGamut with the LUTs found so far can provide very cool looks. If one is looking for something accurate for skin tones, I haven't found LUTs which can do this. It's puzzling that Sony hasn't released tech specs for the A7S's custom Slog2+SGamut or official LUTs (as they do with the Pro cameras).
I found the best all-around stock PP is PP6. Example here (stock PP6, auto ISO, auto WB, auto AF- event style shoot with many different skin tones and multiple colored lights): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq8m2FaVL1U . You can bump saturation a little in-camera and along with carefully set WB, get good out-of-camera footage. Indoors, PP4 isn't too shabby after dialing down saturation. I'm putting together a tutorial for matching A7S to 5D3 RAW with an emphasis on accurate skin tones. Currently testing the results on models/actors- so far so good. Will publish the results when done.

I've searched for official docs and specs for correctly processing the A7S's custom Slog2+SGamut implementation (not the same as the Sony Pro versions). While the Pro LUTs get close, colors aren't quite right, especially skin tones. Slog2+SGamut with the LUTs found so far can provide very cool looks. If one is looking for something accurate for skin tones, I haven't found LUTs which can do this. It's puzzling that Sony hasn't released tech specs for the A7S's custom Slog2+SGamut or official LUTs (as they do with the Pro cameras).
I found the best all-around stock PP is PP6. Example here (stock PP6, auto ISO, auto WB, auto AF- event style shoot with many different skin tones and multiple colored lights): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq8m2FaVL1U . You can bump saturation a little in-camera and along with carefully set WB, get good out-of-camera footage. Indoors, PP4 isn't too shabby after dialing down saturation. I'm putting together a tutorial for matching A7S to 5D3 RAW with an emphasis on accurate skin tones. Currently testing the results on models/actors- so far so good. Will publish the results when done.

Shallow DOF and ENG haven't really gone together as accurate focus is much more challenging on large sensor cameras (either autofocus or manual focus). In live shots on the viewfinder of the FS700 and A7S, shots can look in focus (viewfinder + peaking), however in post they're not quite in focus. When autofocus works, it works really well (both cameras). So far autofocus hasn't worked nearly as well as with small sensor cameras. For ENG work for now it's best to stick with an ENG camera (so no FS700/FS100).
I have found that I can make A7S and even 5D3 footage look like video straight from the camera. Trying to get a film look in camera tends to run into issues with various scene colors and lighting conditions.  I have also found it's best to get accurate color from the camera, even if it looks like video (though it's important to prevent highlight clipping when possible). The best way to get the film look is in post. You can find or create a LUT that has the film look you want, which you can apply to all of your properly colored/exposed 'video look' footage which will then look filmic with one simple step in post. If you want the least work, Canon provides the best skin tones out of camera, though Sony is catching up (see FS7 compared to C300 footage online). Panasonic can also have a nice straight-from-camera look (for example GH4 with Natural profile). If you liked the look of the DVX100, check out their current cameras too.

The FS700 buttons+UI are also over complicated and inefficient to use. However, the UI itself is not slow. While I'm sure the FS7 is improved over the FS700 (IMO the A7S looks better than the FS700 in some ways), it would be helpful to see the FS7 compared to the FS700 shooting the same scene to understand exactly what has improved. I haven't used my FS700 in a while- have been waiting to see how the FS7 looks and if it's worth $4+k to sell the FS700 and upgrade. In one test comparing skintones, the FS7 did really well against the C300 and A7S (though IMO in a few shots the A7S had the nicest looking skintones).
 
 
Here's a humorous test I found which also shows decent skintones with the FS7. Regarding your motion cadence comment: guessing you are referring to timing regularity between frames? For example, always 1/23.976 seconds between frames, with no variance or appearance of dropped frames / stutter? Toward the and of this test video (1:17), there's significant stutter, guessing they did this in post (24fps played back at around 12fps). Could you explain more by what you mean by 'video cadence'?
 
 

Whilst I think that ignoring the loud and pedantic online critics is a feasible idea, can't help but wondering if you see any contradiction above? At least to an outside observer it would seem so.
 
Or maybe it's just me, but in case those incandescent lights were just ordinary household/office fluorescent lights or LED lights, using "incandescent lights," "AWB" and "biased colour science" in the same sentence wouldn't sound too logical to me. 
 
Suffice to say photos/frame grabs taken under such circumstances may look nice and could be used to highlight, compare or even judge a number of things, but surely not reliable 'colour science?' Or even accuracy of skin tones, for that matter. 
Just sayin.'
 
 
I'm sure you will, and the results will look nice, especially in better lights. Carry on posting your findings, despite the grumpy critics.
Don't let your inner 'Canon bias' slow you down, either.  :P

No camera in this price range is as cinematic as the Kinemini, not even the 1D C

There is also Catalyst Browse form sony, you can try it,  it works well and have some unique features (transcoding to Prores , WB correction, etc).
You can also make your own LUT with this program and export as .cube file.
It will work with any program, such resolve, speed grade, Premiere,  FCPX and LUT utility etc
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/catalystbrowse
 
 

An H.264 option would make a lot of sense (with a bitrate high enough to match H.265 (about 2x)).

Leon is his best film.

​Oh yeah, I really liked 5th Element.  Campy B-Movie enjoyment.  Lucy should have been the same, but it tried to get serious.  Luc can't really get serious.  He doesn't have the chops for it.  Still, fun director.

Lucy touched a topic that has actually a lot more to show, so I think it was a bit superficial compared to what it could have been, but I still enjoyed it very much and it was refreshing to see something new and unusual.

if you take it for what it is and shut off your brain during the science talk, i found Lucy to be quite an entertaining movie that took a lot of risks that you won't find often in Hollywood.  I very much enjoyed it.