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SONY A7III TURNING INTO CINEMA CAMERA


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I didn't watch Gerald's entire video, just the part linked to, but what I didn't see was a test of color across the exposure range. Most cameras have excellent color at middle grey exposure. In my experience, "bad color" is almost entirely due to color shifts across the exposure range. The same object won't be same exact same hue depending on how you expose it.

What I do with new cameras is shoot a color chart at every exposure (using shutter speed or iris to adjust, NOT gain), and then create a LUT that makes the color chart maintain hue across different exposures, without touching any of the adjustments for the middle grey exposure. I've found such a LUT to make 95% of shots immediately look better.

The other part of bad color is white balance. Auto WB aside, even balancing from a grey card won't be identical between cameras. The only way to do it properly is to transform the footage to linear gamma, perform white balance corrections, and then transform it into a your gamma of choice for other corrections/grading. If your software isn't color managed, this is all but impossible.

Older Sony cameras had both issues, and with the amount of correction needed to simply even out hues across the exposure range, and correct for the atrocious WB, the 8 bit footage fell apart. It gets pasty and loses vibrance, especially in the shadows. It loses its "thickness," to use a popular term. And the compressions starts to show blocky hue variance that absolutely ruins skin tones--I imagine this last part can be mitigated with an external recorder to some degree, but no amount of pseudo-10 bit ProRes can account for WB issues and hue shifts on any camera.

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13 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

I didn't watch Gerald's entire video, just the part linked to, but what I didn't see was a test of color across the exposure range. Most cameras have excellent color at middle grey exposure. In my experience, "bad color" is almost entirely due to color shifts across the exposure range. The same object won't be same exact same hue depending on how you expose it.

What I do with new cameras is shoot a color chart at every exposure (using shutter speed or iris to adjust, NOT gain), and then create a LUT that makes the color chart maintain hue across different exposures, without touching any of the adjustments for the middle grey exposure. I've found such a LUT to make 95% of shots immediately look better.

The other part of bad color is white balance. Auto WB aside, even balancing from a grey card won't be identical between cameras. The only way to do it properly is to transform the footage to linear gamma, perform white balance corrections, and then transform it into a your gamma of choice for other corrections/grading. If your software isn't color managed, this is all but impossible.

Older Sony cameras had both issues, and with the amount of correction needed to simply even out hues across the exposure range, and correct for the atrocious WB, the 8 bit footage fell apart. It gets pasty and loses vibrance, especially in the shadows. It loses its "thickness," to use a popular term. And the compressions starts to show blocky hue variance that absolutely ruins skin tones--I imagine this last part can be mitigated with an external recorder to some degree, but no amount of pseudo-10 bit ProRes can account for WB issues and hue shifts on any camera.

At the end of the day the final product is what matters. I was referencing Kraig Adams because myself and thousands of others love the images in his videos which are predominantly a73 without any picture profile and little to no grading. The AF and image looks excellent. 

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7 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Well... if it is objective, then:

 

It's not subjective.

How can Tony talk about people liking Sony color when his video has horrible un-natural color?

Knightsfan - "Older Sony cameras had both issues, and with the amount of correction needed to simply even out hues across the exposure range, and correct for the atrocious WB, the 8 bit footage fell apart. It gets pasty and loses vibrance, especially in the shadows. It loses its "thickness," to use a popular term. And the compressions starts to show blocky hue variance that absolutely ruins skin tones--I imagine this last part can be mitigated with an external recorder to some degree, but no amount of pseudo-10 bit ProRes can account for WB issues and hue shifts on any camera."

Thanks for going into detail better then I could ever do.

 

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6 hours ago, IronFilm said:

People are often biased towards what they own

Isn’t that what tony found in his survey of 1500 people? Bias? Plus if you read comments - after awhile that creates a certain confirmation bias. When I first saw Kraig Adams travel videos I was blown away. Then when I saw it was Sony I was like “but the colors looks good and it’s not green - how?” 

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11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

People are often biased towards what they own

Sure, but the main part of the test was "blind" in that subjects didn't know which brand of camera took the photos when they were choosing from a group of photos. They just saw a number 1,2,3, or 4 without knowing which was taken by which brand. 

He DID  test for bias as well and found that Sony bias was pretty high. 

And besides, the "joke" of my post was that this was a totally "subjective" test which I only brought up because the objective test I mentioned (i.e., the vector scopes showing that the a7 III color accuracy) was labeled as subjective.

Oh, and in case anyone is going to say, "But those are jpgs and we are talking about video." Yes, but VLOG plus the Sony SLOG 2 to REC 709 Gamut is meant to replicate the Standard picture profile, which is the color science in Sony JPGs.

And again, don't get me wrong. I'm not a super big fan of Sony cameras (despite owning four of them). I liked the colors out of my D750 a lot better. Just I don't think it is right to say the colors aren't accurate.

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Call me cynical but due to their lack of any response to any of the posts trying to help him/her, I've got a feeling this thread is going to end with the OP posting a reply along the lines of "Thanks that fixed my problem" and a mysterious link then appearing in their original post.....

On the basis that the original post not being a prelude to it being another tedious pork luncheon meat purveyor though, this is a guide to how one person has transformed an A7 series camera in the way that you want for (depending on how much he paid for his A7s) a mere $5-6K of additional equipment....

 

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15 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Isn’t that what tony found in his survey of 1500 people? Bias? Plus if you read comments - after awhile that creates a certain confirmation bias. When I first saw Kraig Adams travel videos I was blown away. Then when I saw it was Sony I was like “but the colors looks good and it’s not green - how?” 

I didn't want to say anything but in Kraig Adams videos the color is all over the place.  You keep calling out his video and they're not that good.   Sony cameras can produce good color but Knightsfan pointed out the flaws better then anyone. 

9 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Sure, but the main part of the test was "blind" in that subjects didn't know which brand of camera took the photos when they were choosing from a group of photos. They just saw a number 1,2,3, or 4 without knowing which was taken by which brand. 

He DID  test for bias as well and found that Sony bias was pretty high. 

And besides, the "joke" of my post was that this was a totally "subjective" test which I only brought up because the objective test I mentioned (i.e., the vector scopes showing that the a7 III color accuracy) was labeled as subjective.

Oh, and in case anyone is going to say, "But those are jpgs and we are talking about video." Yes, but VLOG plus the Sony SLOG 2 to REC 709 Gamut is meant to replicate the Standard picture profile, which is the color science in Sony JPGs.

And again, don't get me wrong. I'm not a super big fan of Sony cameras (despite owning four of them). I liked the colors out of my D750 a lot better. Just I don't think it is right to say the colors aren't accurate.

Tony's test is flawed. He posted random shots but how many Sony pictures did he take and how did he select which one would be in the test?  The only way to do that test is to take the same number of photo's with each camera and post all pictures taken, no corrections and post all good and all bad shots.

The color in Tony's videos are way off and he used his Sony to film them.  I can't believe we are debating Sony color.

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I use the A7iii everyday for lot of different kind of videos, and as much I love the image it produces, here’s what annoys me the most with this camera :

1) When you use a simple monitor, you lose the face detection.
You have to use a recorder/monitor, and record externally to get it back.

2) When you use a monitor and push record, the camera LCD becomes black.
So you can not anymore use the touch screen to select a point to focus.

3) When you use the usb-c remote (if you want to control the camera from a gimbal for instance), it disable the internal steadyshot, and the HDMI output.

4) when you use the official app to control from your smartphone, you lose the AF detection, and you can not control the focus.

5) Ok Ok, AF is not what we use in cine camera, but forget about manual focus with Sony native lens. They’re all by wire, and unlike the Fuji Xt3, there is no setting to change their behavior to linear.

I hope all of this will be fixed in the A7IV.

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On 1/7/2020 at 6:32 AM, Mark Romero 2 said:

Sure, but the main part of the test was "blind" in that subjects didn't know which brand of camera took the photos when they were choosing from a group of photos. They just saw a number 1,2,3, or 4 without knowing which was taken by which brand. 


That is not at all what I meant. 

What I mean is if you shoot with Canon all the freaking time, as you're a Canon shooter who has owned Canon cameras for years, then you're naturally have grown to prefer "the Canon look". Because it is what you've grown accustomed to, and anything else can seem "weird and foreign" at some level. 

 

On 1/7/2020 at 6:56 AM, BTM_Pix said:

On the basis that the original post not being a prelude to it being another tedious pork luncheon meat purveyor though, this is a guide to how one person has transformed an A7 series camera in the way that you want for (depending on how much he paid for his A7s) a mere $5-6K of additional equipment....

Personally seems madness to me when you can pick up a secondhand Sony FS7 kit for sub US$4K
 

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The external monitor does help a little bit, IMO. Less compression artifacts due to better codec. Sometimes shooting SLog2 or Slog3 will have weird banding which disappears when using an external recorder. However, this is very minor improvement. Ultimately, it still exports 8 bit signal only. If you really wish to do heavy color grading, just remember this is still a 8 bit camera even with an external monitor. 

Smallrig makes some of the best cages for cameras, including the A7M3. The company also offers many accessories. Pretty much anything you need to make a good camera rig. 

As for power, any V-mount plate is fine but you have to watch out and make sure it does have the correct power outputs for your camera and monitor. 

Hope this helps?

 

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