pilsburypie

Genius!

I got my crane yesterday - I've only messed around with it at home, but am finding it fairly intuitive to use. I have a Sony A7sii with the 24-70 coming in at 1050g, balances easily and seems to offer no strain to the gimbal whatsoever. However, my small Sony 35 f2.8 lens is causing me a headache. I just can't seem to balance this thing. It appears the lens is too small and light making the camera back heavy no matter how far forward I move the camera on the mounting plate. Anyone else tried a Sony A7 camera with the Sony FE35 2.8?

I too was in this conundrum a couple of months ago A7sii vs A7rii. Went for the A7sii as I'm 80:20 video:stills. For me, there were 2 main points with going for the A7sii. 1. High iso ability. Not that I shoot in the dark, but to use a small aperture inside requires high iso. 2. The ability to use full frame in video with decent results - Similar to you I want a light setup. I don't want a bag of lenses to carry round. For me a 24-70 is a great focal range. If I got the rii, I'd be using the super 35 mode to avoid noise which then blows my wide angle. Sure I could use FF, but then the noise suffers. I would need a 15mm lens to keep the wide angle in addition to my more conventional zoom. I currently only own the small Sony 2.8 35mm. I'm awaiting the new 24-70 to see how big it is and how much it costs. The current f4 24-70 receives mixed reviews. I'm sure the new one's announcement is imminent. Both are amazing cameras. The A7rii wins hands down on stills, but the A7sii has that incredible low light ability and at FF.

I've been interested in a gimbal for a while. The pilotfly H1+ is a similar price but holds less weight. Approx 1.3kg if I recall. The Pilotfly is also much lighter and a little more compact. However, balancing adjustments are made with an allen key rather than the finger tightners with the Beholder and the pilotfly also looks like it needs a fair bit more setting up and fiddling on the computer to get the settings right...... Tests on the pilotfly also show a bit of funny behaviour now and again, a few jitters and loss of level horizon. All have a place if you can live with their peculiarities.

I'm the other way - I find 24p like a strobe as soon as movement or a pan kicks in. So much so at the cinema I feel bordering on a fit. Some of the new films out offer a couple of showings in HFR - I'm on that like a shot. My new sony A7sii does 4k at 25/30p, besides the fact I have no UHD TV to watch it on, I'm afraid to shoot with it to downscale as I'm so used to silky smooth 1080 50p. I suppose it's down to how an individual's eyes and brain works - If I look slightly away from my TV I can see the flicker of the refresh........

Thanks both for the replies - Firstly I'm using just the Sony 35 f2.8. Got this as a stop gap until the new Sony 24-70 f2.8 is released. I'm so used to that zoom focal length I'm having withdrawal symptoms already. Yes, I suppose I am shooting in auto, I kind of see aperture priority as semi auto, however I do see that the camera is automatically doing the exposure for me. ETTR is not new to me - I have known it for a while under another guise HAMSTTR (histogram and meter settings to the right) - either way same thing, bright as possible just before clipping occurs. I'm a big fan of it as my previous camera, a Canon 1Dsii, although an incredible image machine, suffered from poor iso performance so I had to squeeze as much out of it as possible. The 100+ zebra is great. I was previously relying on the histogram - getting it right over to the right before clipping. However, looking back at some shots, they are indeed a bit too overexposed and do have some burned out areas. I suspect that the histogram is not totally accurate. I have had much better success with the 100+ zebra method and knocking exposure comp back a 1/3stop after stripes appear. I have also used the manual exposure with good success. However, this works best for me when I have a few seconds "thinking time" for shots. Very often with my subject (family/kids) I'm very run and gun, switching from stills to video in a flash. The metering (set to multi) seems to be different from stills to video, about a stop. I can be shooting stills, change to video and have the shutter speed leap up from 1/100 to 1/200 when I hit record. The auto mode i.e. aperture priority works for me in this run and gun situation. Given the time I do agree fully manual wins. Same as auto focus - it has it's place, but you can come unstuck. This tends to be why I have exposure comp at +0.3 for stills and +1.3 for video. That seems to be a safe middle ground. Just annoying I can't have that automatically set. It's an extra step to dial it in every time when I chop and change between modes. Very often I do use files straight out of camera. I have graded (Resolve) when I have had time, but found for the time and effort I put in, getting it right in camera can be nearly as good. I'm no pro so this often does for me. Do you have a suggestion for a picture profile? I'm using PP6 - cine2 which has what I feel to be a more natural look but does lack a bit of punch. Not had time to mess with that profile's settings yet, but I would like to add a bit of contrast to it so it is as good as there SOOC. Thanks for taking the time to post your info, much appreciated.

Hi - Just sold all my Canon gear and video camera to get a small 1 camera setup. Got the A7sii a couple of days ago after plenty of research and have been using and testing a fair bit. I have an issue that can be worked around, but it is a real inconvenience - underexposure..... For stills the camera underexposes by 0.7 stop. Easy to bump up the exposure compensation dial and get a well exposed photo. Histogram is nicely right of middle with no white clipping For video the camera underexposes by about 1.7 stops in all picture profiles. The histogram is way over to the left and it needs a real exposure compensation boost, sometimes up to 2 stops to get a bright well expose shot with a healthy looking histogram. This makes it a real faff to have to keep changing exposure compensation when switching from stills to video. I tend to use cine1 or cine2 as my grading experience is in its infancy and at the moment I'm content with just tweaking. Either way, this underexposure is across the board. Who else feels their A7sii underexposes? The underexposed shot is noisy, but correctly exposed is much better. Mine at least is consistent, I just wish I could assign the correct exposure compensation to stills and movie modes permanently and be done with it. Thoughts and advice appreciated.