caseywilsondp

​i certainly see your point. however I think where I'm at is that the a7s (and every camera really) fills a need, it also has obvious flaws. For the s that would be no internal 4k, serious rolling shutter... And other issues. If Sony releases a replacement camera yearly, especially one priced at the 2500 mark (that's about the going rate for a 5D3) with significant improvements that drastically reduce the resale value of the previous model, you might start alienating early adopters. Obviously I don't know that of a surety, however prosumers and pros used to the way canon and Nikon (or red or arri in the cinema world) schedule their releases it's certainly an unnerving paradigm shift. But maybe I just need to get used to that.

​i see this everywhere. is sony really in the business of releasing entirely new bodies on 'flagship' cameras every year? seems really impractical and like it would alienate consumers. people like the confidence of having a 'top of the line' version of a camera for longer than a year.... thus why canon and nikon release major updates to bodies years apart... not just months. obviously sony did this with the a7 and a7II, but those weren't the same pricing point as a mark3... i guess time will tell. honestly if they do replace the a7s that would probably be the last sony camera I'll buy... and stick with bodies like the nx1 that are significantly cheaper to stay ahead with and still offer huge features.

My 60i version is supposed to be NTSC, but it's switchable. It's also annoying as it reminds me it's NTSC after every boot or wake up.

Can you post before/after and what you did?

​I can't speak for Andrew, but I feel like something about this sensor just requires more fiddling (which again, for me, it's a challenge and not a problem). the amount of correcting needed to get even a moderately acceptable image was a bit more than what i typically grade (mostly r3d files... even starting with redlogfilm as a base). and though i only uploaded one image, i shot a variety of wide, medium, cu, ecu and each was almost like a different lighting setup. the cu and ecu takes were much closer (as would be expected) but still more different than I would have initially thought. (this opinion might change in the next couple weeks... my first 'test' was admittedly a crappy way to begin to understand how an image grades.) however for people that are used to matching and grading each shot like those that work in the commercial and music video worlds, this really isn't that much of a paradigm shift compared to how things are done with other cameras.

​ it's honestly one of the best lenses you can buy for the money if you're on a budget. it is at least on par optically with the 1.4 (minus the ability to be that open) and significantly less expensive. to reference andrews post about fiddling with the color on every shot: i can see already that will be common place with this camera... which for me is OK (though i can see for many people purchasing it will be very disappointing). most of my shoots are controlled lighting which I think will significantly help... but I'll be able to report back on that in a couple weeks. it's looking more and more like the 1DC is the right camera for you in this price bracket. Canon certainly have been slowly dolling out technological updates compared to others like samsung and sony, but you can't argue with the image from their sensors... they're great and they've been doing it for a long time and it shows. for me, the a7s is still currently seeming like a good choice as I'm out maybe $5K total with the camera, shogun, 2 nikkor lenses, and misc items like memory cards, batteries, tripod/head etc (when I sold my last camera a few years ago I got rid of virtually everything, and didn't think I'd be owning again for a long time). hopefully we'll see some updates from sony in regards to the sensor/color as well as from shogun (did a super brief test last night and the image seems much less malleable than the internal codec, which seems off... but i was also trying some online 'suggested' tweaks to the picture profile.) anyways thanks everyone for posting your shots (befores/afters are quite helpful), it's really starting to help me understand this sensor.

This is a great shot, and maybe a key to how we should be lighting with this camera. Warm backlight with a cooler fill and key... Almost the opposite of how I'd light with film or Alexa.

Ebrahim, totally forgot about the shogun allowing luts, so that'll be great! Also thanks for your mini tutorial, I'll try your recommendations when exposing when I try the camera out again.

thanks I appreciate that. I've heard the other PPs are quite a bit easier, but I'm going to keep trying out slog2 for a while to see if I can get used to it (the extra dr is the main reason). the shogun arrives today, and I hear that's another level of difficulty when trying to keep all the info the camera is trying to spit out. the main problem i foresee is that when shooting say on the epic i'll put in a look that the director and i choose for the shoot, and i'll expose and light for that, but i always know that all the raw info is there so we can tweak it in post. i guess i'll have to pick a PP and light/expose for those, then switch over to slog before shooting? anyone have tips for that?

hey guys just wanted to post some screen shots of the a7s filming in slog2. just got the camera and waiting for all the gear to arrive before i really put it through its paces, but I wanted to see how it's footage in slog2 handled compared to say r3d files or arri raw. first, slog2 is really really flat. this is the first dslr i've owned since my 5Dm2 many years ago, and i thought cinestyle was flat for dslrs... this appears much flatter. i grade r3d files a lot and it makes redlogfilm look a bit crunchy by comparison. here are some pics of my wife hanging out in the living room. as tests go, it wasn't very fair to the a7s. under-exposed, mixed light, non IS lens... (first time i used the camera essentially, just attached a lens and shot what as around me. the first image is right out the camera. the next has an off-the-shelf kodak 2383 film print LUT applied: the last two are my attempt at grading a 'natural' look and finally an aggressive 'cinematic' grade: slog2 is not one of the more easy logs to grade in my opinion. the 'natural' look took me quite a while, and I'm still not 100% with it (but I think it's close enough to know it could get there). that being said, the log takes a film print LUT really nicely. I'd probably shift the color temp a little bluer, but I wanted to show how it looked pretty much with no work done to it. the 'cinematic' grade i really just wanted to push contrast and see how crushed and inky the blacks could look, and how high i could push the mids and highs while keeping information. had I exposed a bit better, I probably could have gotten more out the mids and highs, that being said though, i feel the footage, for not being raw, handled pushing and pulling OK. slog2 at least lets you push it pretty far, but once you've gone too far it let's you know pretty quickly and it's pretty ugly (raw files from red and arri are a bit more composed at you push them beyond what they'd like). while in my professional career have been starting to shoot more on the F series of sony cameras (fs7, f5) and less with red and arri, i've never actually gotten a chance to grade sony footage, and while I know this isn't the same as grading footage from the F5, it's still I think a good idea of what the image will look like, which is one of the reasons I decided to pick up the a7s. anyways let me know what you guys think, and if you have any tips or tricks when it comes to slog2 in post. (btw, nikon 28-70 at a 2.8, graded in speedgrade).

I'm not an expert but from what I've gathered canon shoots with 4.2.0 rgb (adobe or s) with a 2.2 gamma when in h264 (raw negates that obviously).

This is a cool comparison, but I'm interested in how you felt they both held up in post? Did you notice any significant or noteworthy differences?

At $5500 for just the body, that's like saying the fs7 or scsarlet dragon is a c100 mk2 killer. Oh really your camera that costs twice as much as a standard DSLR is better? Amazing. It does look cool though.