A7Rii and A7Sii Profiles

[Don Kotlos]

I would appreciate it if people that have nothing to contribute to this thread take their negative attitude somewhere else. 

This channel is for people that want to exchange knowledge about a tool.

The ability to change any aspect of the image before capture when dealing with an 8bit compressed codec is an advantage for me. 

[richg101]

4 hours ago, austinchimp said:

I have no doubt that with the millions of possible permutations if you dig into the Sony picture profile settings you can come up with any look you want, but the reality is that nobody has the time or knowledge to really understand how to do that.

Basically I feel like Sony should do a better job on their default profiles instead of abdicating responsibility and expecting people to go through all those esoteric menus and settings.

That's like going into an art shop, claiming to the owner and fellow customers that you're an expert and need top quality art supplies, then looking at the top grade canvasses and complaining that they're all white and none of them have been started already.  then going over to the tubes of artist quality oil paints and complaining that the paints don;t automatically mix into your favourite shade of blue and make a photorealistic image at the touch of button.

If you want everything done for you, buy a canon and make pictures just like everyone else.  if you want unparalleled ability to tune your image, get a sony a7rii/a7sii

 

So far I've seen lots of talk, lots of moaning, and only one person who has shared anything visual!.  Less talk, more action.  without something visible your points are less than useless.

 

[austinchimp]

Ok then to make my contribution constructive, does anyone have any opinions on the difference between cine1 vs cine4? I've used both on my A7rii.

I first started using cine2 with Kholi's profile but noticed it was clipping my highlights.

Cine4, I found, protected the highlights far better, although they needed taking down in post.

I've since read that Cine1 is even forget flatter than cine4, and certainly it is in the shadows. I found it retained the highlights just as well as cine4, and kept more detail in the shadows.

Strangely, cine1 also handled the saturation being pushed in post more, while cine4 went weird. I have a feeling that cine1 captures more natural colour than cine4, although I don't know why that would be the case.

Anyone else encountered that?

[DBounce]

Can we have a few screen grabs from these profiles? It's really hard to get a feel for what they look like from reading a bunch of settings.

[Gregormannschaft]

I know SLOG3 is supposed to be a complete waste with 8 bit, but I like the aesthetic. You don't ALWAYS get banding, although you always get some sort of macro blocking, although that doesn't bother me so much if the image itself is, you know, nicely framed + generally a decent image.

I have tinkered with other PP settings though, and while Cine 4 always works...it never really manages to blow me away like SLOG does.
 

[Don Kotlos]

45 minutes ago, austinchimp said:

Ok then to make my contribution constructive, does anyone have any opinions on the difference between cine1 vs cine4? I've used both on my A7rii.

I first started using cine2 with Kholi's profile but noticed it was clipping my highlights.

Cine4, I found, protected the highlights far better, although they needed taking down in post.

I've since read that Cine1 is even forget flatter than cine4, and certainly it is in the shadows. I found it retained the highlights just as well as cine4, and kept more detail in the shadows.

Strangely, cine1 also handled the saturation being pushed in post more, while cine4 went weird. I have a feeling that cine1 captures more natural colour than cine4, although I don't know why that would be the case.

Cine1 is just Cine2  with 0-255 range. 

Cine2 has lower contrast in the shadows and higher contrast in the highlights

Cine4 has higher contrast in the shadows but lower in the highlights giving better roll off and protection (also slightly better dynamic range). 

To create the best roll off you have to change the knee parameters (not in auto mode).

There shouldn't be too many differences in color other than their relative intensity that changes because of the different contrast in these modes (for example colors in the shadows will look more saturated with Cine2 than Cine4, but that should be mainly due to their luminance differences). 

There was a long discussion about Cine modes here:

Slog modes should be avoided and I believe it is the only place where Sony intentionally crippled these cameras by allowing only the broadcast safe range to be used (16-235) for a gamma that is clearly targeted to heavy editing. 

I made this point while back:

 

[Oliver Daniel]

The issues I have with the other Cine profiles is the highlight rolloff. It's much better in Slog2. I guess it depends what situation you are shooting in. 

Other than that, I experimented with the dodgy white balance and Cine, Slog2 profiles on a shoot.

I've found that the white balance reading is at least 600k off each Kelvin. Also, there seems to be this green look floating around each setting. So you have to go into the manual grid to correct it, however the highlights get an ever so slight magenta tint. You can't win and must correct it in post. 

[Don Kotlos]

3 hours ago, Oliver Daniel said:

The issues I have with the other Cine profiles is the highlight rolloff. It's much better in Slog2. I guess it depends what situation you are shooting in. 

Oliver, the knee parameter allows you to customize the highlight roll-off as you wish. For Cine4 I have found that setting the Knee to Manual 97.5% -1 works very well. Make sure anything you do, set the knee to manual cause Auto in Cine and s-log modes disables knee altogether. 

Quote

Other than that, I experimented with the dodgy white balance and Cine, Slog2 profiles on a shoot.

I've found that the white balance reading is at least 600k off each Kelvin. Also, there seems to be this green look floating around each setting. So you have to go into the manual grid to correct it, however the highlights get an ever so slight magenta tint. You can't win and must correct it in post. 

The G-M axis on the 2D grid should allow you to fix that. If not, try reducing the color depth in the settings. I set the R+2 and maybe that balances the magenta a bit. 

For all my cameras I always have a manual WB with both fine-temp and tint adjustments for best results. Even Nikon required that...