A7S project (Not wedding)

[Clive McLaughlin]

Available to download and mess about with! Show me how it 'should' look if you have time!

Vimeo

[Noa Put]

Ah, fun! :) I have absolutely no idea what I"m doing but some very quick and dirty cc in edius gave me this: (I probably overdid it but, hej, I"m in a colorful mood today.)

password: test

Private Video on Vimeo

[Clive McLaughlin]

Yea Noa, I would have to say you overdid it. Its very unnatural looking IMO. But then I guess its down to taste.

Here is my third tweak, and truth be told, I Like this one and might just save it as a preset regardless of what you all think. But I'd like to hear your thoughts either way. It is going to come down to a taste thing in the end!

Password: SLog

Private Video on Vimeo

[Dave Blackhurst]

I guess I'm with Pete (thanks for saying "I like the video look first...!). It very much looked "vintage", including a nice grain, but also looked like how "old stock" fades, and has a low contrast/saturation look. If that's what you're after, it was quite good (I sometimes like to try to emulate "vintage" looks - it's good practice to try to replicate different old "film" looks!).

Not sure if you've got a calibrated system or not, but there are fairly inexpensive devices that can help with that, or at least get you close to calibrated... I'm not 100% convinced, as sometimes my "calibrated" results look different between monitors, and I'm fighting with this Seiki 4K monitor to get a calibration that isn't too bright for "normal" use but too dark for video, BUT you can definitely get much closer by using one of these devices!

Since I already "know" my monitor is a bit dark, I'd say some of those scenes (elephants particularly) were tending towards overexposed and washed out. Noa's "mix" was a bit over-saturated, but didn't look too bad.

The odd feeling I get is that the vintage "look" you got suits the footage quite well, and therefore "works", where a punchier "video" look might not have, even though it might have looked more modern with more "pop" in the colors and contrast.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Clive McLaughlin

Its very unnatural looking IMO.

I know it all comes down to taste but do you find your last attempt natural looking? The highlights are still very compressed and the colors also look weird, like the grass doesn't look naturally green to me, it all looks quite lifeless and from the Sony promo videos I have seen the camera is capable of producing some eye popping colors. I did push the saturation in my try out on purpose as I wanted to see how far you could pull color back from a apparent colorless s-log image. But I"m no colorist in any way, I wouldn't use a s-log image as I would find it too difficult to expose and colorcorrect right.

Does the a7s not have any standard profiles? If that would be the case would it not be better to get it right from the start?

[Chris Harding]

I agree with Noa sadly so it's all to do with personal taste I guess. For weddings of course, you have to supply what the brides want so if all your web samples are de-saturated then that's how the wedding film should look.

I like deep saturated colours that are natural and vivid but not overdone. Clive's grading to me brings back memories when instead of full colour stills people went crazy for the antique sepia look prints of yester year and loved it.

Chris

[Dave Baker]

Since I offrered advice, I thought I should "put up or shut up", so here's the clip done my way. It's only 720, I'm not a plus member!

The password is CliveM.

Private Video on Vimeo

Dave

[Chris Harding]

Hey David

Yep I could go for that as it does look pretty normal to me. As said before whether we like it or not, we have to produce video clips that brides will like not what we like.

I learnt that many years ago when I was still in my early twenties and played in a band and we started off playing what WE liked not what the people at the gig wanted and nearly failed in the attempt...we switched to playing what the crowd wanted and hey presto ..they loved us even though the songs were mostly not ones we would have chosen!

Wedding videos are the same, and brides are weird creatures too...we look at shallow depth of field as creative and some brides simply say "Why is part of the picture all fuzzy" I think with saturation we need to try and create something so if the bridesmaids dresses are bright red we need to make sure that they look bright red like on the day and not a washed out pink .... and of course on the other side of the coin we mustn't over saturate that delicate peach coloured dress so it looks orange.

With our own projects of course (including Clive's one here) the grading can be exactly what he wants as it's his video.

Chris

[Arthur Gannis]

A little off topic, but how is the low light performance of it at iso 12,800 ? I am mostly concerned about the grain at that point. Has anyone shot with it at a low light venue at those iso with 60 or 30fps at 2.8 ?

[Dave Baker]

Hi Chris,

Glad you like my version.

Yes of course, I realise what you say is true Chris, but in this instance I am simply proving that what I said will work, does. If it helps Clive, great! If not, well I tried.

Dave

[Chris Harding]

Hey Arthur

There is a video hanging around somewhere with an ISO comparison between this and a 5D and they ramp the A7S up to over ISO 400,000 ..that's a bit noisy but the image even around the 25,000 mark still looks amazingly clean so I would suspect that 12,000 is very clean. In sLog mode the base ISO is 3200 ..shucks that's about as far as I take my Sony NEX when I'm really struggling!!

Chris

[Peter Rush]

Originally Posted by Clive McLaughlin

One thing that bothered be on such a bright day was the evf. I would prefer to use it because among many things, the focus peaking is a lot more noticeable on it. Problem is, I'm a glasses wearer and I found that because i couldn't get my eye right in, the bright sun was interfering with my view of it.

Clive why can't you simply adjust the diopter?

Pete

[Peter Rush]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Does the a7s not have any standard profiles? If that would be the case would it not be better to get it right from the start?

Noa I received my A7s yesterday and it seems to (upon a quick glance) have the same profiles as the EA50

Pete

[Clive McLaughlin]

Chris,
I shot fireworks on Friday night (SLog) with the A7S and a wedding yesterday (Standard), and hopefully I'll get some samples up of High ISO stuff.

[Peter Rush]

Clive what lenses are you using with it? I've just ordered the metabones smart adapter IV so I can use my EF glass :) I've been testing it so far with my Speedbooster but can only do that in APS-C mode