caseywilsondp

Oh also a7s +shogun gets you xlr and 4k at $4000

You're right, but maybe the nx1 is more comparable as it also has a super 35 sensor, not awesome low light, and internal 4k. 

"Killer" certainly makes a more interesting thread title, but you can get an a7s body for half the price, so I'm not entirely sure they're in the same league (an epic body is twice as expensive as an fs7, and they're not).

That being said, for 4k that's quite an impressive list of capabilities, and certainly something to consider if it meets your production needs. 

Ebrahim has a great way of reducing the amount of replies needed, because all the information you need is right there in his post! It's full of great advice particularly for your camera. Count me as +1 of shooting RAW on the mark 3, it's still one of my favorite images produced by any camera (including the alexa, dragon, etc).

Yeah stock slog2/pp7.

​thanks!

yeah the 28-70 ED. it's a pretty decent lens, but i think the 80-200 is sharper. both ghost more than i'd prefer, but good for the price.

and yeah im not sure why, but youtube actually does look better in higher resolutions even on monitors that don't support them... must be the compression gets somewhat negated in the down-resing process.

couldn't edit the first post for some reason to embed the file. whoops.

doing some camera tests for an upcoming feature and thought i'd share the results (after some not as ideal results from my first shoot)

full write up here if you're interested (with before/afters), but the main points:

12800 iso
exposed skin around %60 ire on fill side
used alisters one stop over film lut
denoised %30 in neat video (may eventually remove denoising as the grain isn't that unappealing)
shot with nikon zooms. 

some snippets from the dailies in 4k:

that was cool man. enjoyed many of the shots, particularly striking was the eye-close-up. good work! did you do the camera work/cg work yourself?

so the other week i decided to finally shoot something with the a7s (after getting it I'd been too busy to use it) and shogun.

this is the result (30 seconds):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJutz_AWErs

and my write-up about where i think i went wrong, and what i plan on doing in the future:

http://caseywilsondp.com/2015/02/10/sony-a7s-and-atomos-shogun/

(if you don't want to read it, my biggest problem was that I under-exposed too much with slog2 and had to heavily de-noise the night shots)

Nx1?

​yeah but then monitor, v mount, v mount batteries, red ssd's (or hhd's if its older). Rails, cables, mag readers... lens mount depending on your glass... Price goes up quickly (lots of proprietary stuff like the mags). But I'd probably buy one over a few other sub 10k cameras if I had 8-12k to spend.

i dug your grade and the details that nx1 captured. it's a solid little camera.

1.​ you probably have auto slow shutter enabled. in menu go to the camera tab, then page 7. check to make sure it's turned off.

3. when you frame with the lcd instead of the viewfinder, does the same thing happen? try changing aps-c mode from auto to off.

Shot my first feature on the one, it was a beast, but it certainly had a presence on set, something my tiny a7s can't quite compete with. Great image too, despite it's detractors.

Anyways good work!

try rolling past your 100% and black a couple of stops while recording, then pull those into your coloring suite of choice and see what the results are. my guess is %100 is clipping a bit earlier than you're actually losing all detail. from what i've seen you should have no problem getting to at least 12 stops in slog2

​why? 

​while I agree, most (not all) of the professional dit guys I've worked with pack towers with them, so this little box is pretty portable in comparison.

If you're shooting flat then you're already doing color correction to your images, it's not very hard to pull the image magenta/green in your mids or all over or whatever. Just use your scopes when grading and you'll get a very nice image. This isn't Sony specific FYI, all cameras I've used need a bit of push and pull

I really enjoyed this, thanks! I was impressed with the details and sharpness in some of the shots. What lenses did you shoot on?

Cool thanks for the article JCS.

I need to give Cooke's another shot i think. After hearing so much positive about them I finally got a chance to use them over the summer and wasn't super impressed (same line as yours). Most couldn't get perfectly sharp (when focusing 1:1 on an epic) and many seemed not calibrated for focus marks (which happens to all lenses, so that was just a negative experience in general) I'm guessing the rental house maybe just didn't take care of them. Anyways thanks for the review/comparison.

​in this price range, yes.

They're great especially for the price, but imho they're sharpest from like 5.6-16, the exception maybe being the 50mm. So, just be mindful of that when shooting (if you're on the a7s this obviously won't be a problem, and maybe a benefit as that'll help keep things in focus anyways)

​

​it was harsh and much of his advice wasn't terribly helpful anyways (but he's right about media... it's dirt cheap especially if you're considering shooting on an f55, you can afford hard drives). do you need to master at 4k for distribution purposes? what type of shoot is it? int, ext, etc? lot's of factors could go into what I would choose. Jimmy probably had the closest advice to how I feel about shooting, so +1 for that.

as for the aspect ratio, i always feel that 2.35:1 is much more cinematic, and certainly adds a lot to a productions feel especially if you're already working on a limited budget.