Leaderboard

IMHO So I own a NX1 and bought a A7RII. I wanted a FF camera that straddled Video and Still. One camera that was Good at both. Most will say "buy the A7RII cause it does both well". I disagree. I have now had a chance to try the A7SII, which I liked the specs on but was disappointed with the lack of Sony's new PD AF system which I really wanted for my stills. Luckily, I actually own some Minolta glass, a hang over from my days using a A900 which as a still camera I loved. So I bought a second hand LA-E4 adaptor and tried it on the A7SII, Now I remember why I loved those Minolta lenses, They are small , sharp and really perform and with the LA-E4 they work really well. The FF video output of the A7SII is ....Wow.....everthing the A7RII is not, and it is also betters the s35 output from the the A7RII. Plus as a one camera shooter having to shoot FF for stills and S35 for video? Not ideal for me. Sure if you go out to shoot video and only video, but a mix of still and video? and the A7RII is a big compromise. So how is the A7SII as a still camera? Amazing. I remember when I bought a D800E that after 6 months I realised I was just obsessing over my pixel peeping and to really impress anyone I would have had to have a small detail crop in a print to show the high res sensor, but in a normal print it was no advantage. My computer would grind opening ever 36MP file, I eventually sold it for a 5DMKIII. Canon and Nikons pro camera are around 16mp, So, is the A7SII such a "niche" camera? I think not. I would love them to put in the PD AF which obviously means a whole new sensor. But Legacy Glass and Minolta adapted lenses when I need (or want ) AF, is a perfectly fine compromise for me. Plus the Minolta glass is so good and so well priced. The 12 MP images off the A7SII are amazing, great latitude and great colour. Cropping is the real advantage of the A7RII. The quick video tests I have done with the A7SII are really impressive especially the dynamic range and "look" and thats just using PP6 which is the Cine 2 (from memory) setting rather than Slog. As a street shooter the PP6 setting really just seems to work. There is no perfect camera that does everything, but i think I have found the best compromise by far.

Look what this guy did with the imperfect colors of the original A7S:

Nikon already beats the A7s in dynamic range with its flat profile. Its imo pretty even with the Blackmagics at 13stops. For me LOG would be nice but not at all needed unless it also meant higher bitrate. What they are doing with their bitrate today is simply mind blowing to me. I cant believe the quality/mbit compared to other brands. Thats why I hope they dont go down the 100mbps 4K road. Imo its no good. For 4k it needs to be minimum 300mbps to become worth it for me. I rather shoot high quality HD than brittle 4k. So Nikon, if your reading, you have something good cooking here. Dont get cought up in the Panasony race. Play it cool. Focus on your great DR and implement things like peaking and false color. 4K can wait and 100mbit isnt worth it. Might as well upscale the HD and save the space. Your ace in the sleeve is your color.

First impressions of the C300 Mark II: The Good Autofocus and assisted manual focus so far is amazing. The best autofocus I've used. Even more amazing is it works on all Canon (camera-focus-controlled) EF lenses (tested on the 24-105 F4L and 24-70 F2.8 II, will test more soon). It makes a slight sound, similar to IS noise, but quieter. If using an on-camera mic for run & gun, the noise can be picked up (in a quiet room), however I think with a suspended mic mount the noise shouldn't be audible. No issue at all with a boom or lav. Assisted manual focus helps with 4K critical focus.Color is excellent, as expected. Favorite out-of-camera look so far with: Gamma: Canon Log, Color Space: DCI-P3 (or BT.709), Color Matrix: EOS Standard. Adobe CC doesn't have LUTs yet for the C300 II. One of the reasons for using a C300 II is to get excellent color out of camera with minimal work in post- no LUTs need with those settings (just curves, etc.).Audio is excellent with options for 24- as well as 16-bit.So far in the studio (and my desk) the image is very clean, with no visible recording artifacts (even at 50Mbps LGOP 422 10-bit (limited motion)).CFast 2.0 cards copy very fast to the computer over USB3: 300+MB/s to an SSD.Additional Observations Compared to DSLR-sized cameras, it's huge and heavy.The top handle, external monitor and mic assembly, and side handle can all be removed to make a smaller package, though it's still relatively heavy compared to DSLRs.4K is 410Mbps: the files are ALL-I and are huge (compared to the 50Mbps files we're used to with DSLRs, and 24Mbps files from the FS700). There is no long GOP option for smaller files. It appears Canon's processor(s) aren't powerful enough to handle long GOP for 4K.Premiere CC 2015 (latest) can't handle the new Canon XFAVC files very well (4K and 1080p). Playback is slow and choppy, even at 1/2 playback resolution (might also be a 24-bit 4-track audio issue, testing this). Adobe is offering 1 year of Creative Cloud for C300 II owners, perhaps they'll update Premiere soon to fully support C300 II XFAVC files. Note that I found similar issues when writing the Photon app for 10-bit H.264 support: Premiere ran slowly on those files (sometimes with errors decoding).The A7S II with my tweaked settings look pretty good next to the C300 II in 1080p. In 4K the A7S II has lots of macroblocks/artifacts, the C300 II is clean (with 4x larger files). The A7S II makes a nice B/super-low light camera to the C300 II.1080p60 slomo looks decent, likely as it's supersampled from 4K. 120p is clearly lower resolution being a center crop without the benefit of supersampling (which also helps reduce noise and aliasing). 120p on the A7S II looks better.

Started watching this, super good stuff. Saved the source with File2HD.com to watch when I have more down time. Thanks for sharing.

the samyang tilt shift lenses are really good and have native e mount.

Since the XC10 has 422 8-bit 4K I would expect the 5D4 to provide the same or more (perhaps 10-bit). So far Canon only appears to support MJPEG for 4K (ALL-I XF-AVC is effectively a form of MJPEG). This would appear to indicate that their processors aren't very powerful and/or thermally efficient enough to support long GOP 4K, which can produce much smaller files. Canon's workaround for only supporting ALL-I 4K is to require CFast cards, which are still very expensive. ALL-I 4K looks great, especially when's there is lots of motion, however for most interview/narrative shots long GOP (IPB) looks just as good and greatly saves disk space. The 5D4 with ALL-I 422 8/10-bit 4K and CFast 2.0 would make sense given Canon's current hardware capability. This might require a new chip- the DIGIC DV chips are more for video cameras (vs stills as with DIGIC). Given that Sony is catching up to Canon for skintones on the A7S II for example, Canon's biggest advantage is the amazing autofocus/MF assist with EF lenses (C300 II AF works very well so far). Adding that system to the 5D4 would be compelling.

A stills body primarily targeted at video is a niche product. Not hybrid--that's common now--but primarily meant for video, with decent stills as a side bonus. Great for guys like us, but it leaves most stills shooters scratching their heads. Not to mention Sony's lossy RAW, abysmal battery life, and lack of tilt/shift lenses (adapted lenses are an option, but suffer from planarity issues that kill sharpness on such a pixel-dense sensor).

Sounds like you would enjoy my video about my Lenovo pc that I use for editing. I discuss the price without feeling uncool. https://youtu.be/Mbev3cMnJk8

Went to see a soccer match and tested out the 1080p slow mo in the a7sII. All 100p. Really annoying that you can't pick 120p when in PAL mode. You can't even switch to NTSC mode on the fly. If you do, the camera erases your card! The whole idea of using the concept of PAL/NTSC is really stupid. Just let me pick the framerate I want In general, this is a great camera, slightly let down på crap menus, crappy button layout, crappy record button, stupid inability to use the shutter release for movie recording, etc. It's great engineering with a pretty rubbish UI. Really a shame that Sony doesn't seem capable of making a good, simple, quick user interface. Instead its over complicated, convoluted, slow, with loads of wading through illogically organised menus. Come on Sony, fix the UI!

12mpx is not enough for a landscape or architectural photographer any more. I've taken many nice photographs with my a7s, but more nice photographs with my a7r and now my a7r2. I'm not a resolution obsessive, but processing detailed images at 36 or 42mpx is a lot more enjoyable than 12mpx ones and almost certainly provides nicer end results even when viewed at 25%. Stick modern lenses on the front of both cameras, blow them up bigger than a4 at 300dpi and the difference is big. It's like the difference between a photographer shooting 35mm film and a photographer shooting medium format.

True, but it contains a wider Dynamic Range than 12stop C-Log and is equal in DR to BMCC so making it flater isn't really needed and would risk its quality since its only 8-bit and cant be graded as much. Glad Im not the only one

Nice shots you did there. I too have a Canon EOS-M, and had tried the ML 2 years ago, and I couldn't for the life of me wrap my head around the process of doing the raw. I still like the camera though, despite it's cumbersome (IMO) correcting on h.264

If anyone is wondering where the 1D C comes in... It's advantage is still colour, and the higher bitrate codec. No mud on whip pans and fast moving scenes. Cleaner fine detail when pixel peeping too. The colour is much quicker to get to how you want it. I fight Sony's colour a lot even with S-LOG 3 / S Gamut 3. You can match them very close but bloody hell it's an effort, sometimes I think I might not have time. For those times, maybe 1D C would look much better. Here's a very closely graded pair of shots from the two cameras, showing what the typical difference is... Canon 1D C always seems to get the reds and blues just as I remember them, and with the Sony it always seems to give blues a green tint you have to skilfully dial out in post and the reds always seem way more purple or magenta than they were in actuality. It really is time a professional colourist banged some heads together at Sony HQ. 1D C - A7S II - Note the blue bottle is now turquoise and the red bottle is purple... That is despite correction already for the problem in my LUT (using Resolve 12). If you try to compensate with all the obvious things... tint or tone in camera, or basic colour correction in Premiere... it isn't the answer, because it messes with other aspects of the image. If you just adjust the hue of the greens and reds in Resolve 12, you can fix them but it still isn't a free lunch... for example if you want warm overall tone to the scene, with blues intact, 1D C is your friend.

Just thought about something. CanonRumors says in his last article that 5D IV will not have for sure 4K video, but that 1DXII will. I mean, 1080p is 5DII old, so 2008 old for Canon 5D line. If 5DIV is released in 2016 (and it will), 5DIII lasted for 4 years. So let's say 5DIV is a 2016-2020 camera. Do you seriously imagine that in 2020, the Canon 5DIV has 1080p video, same technology as 12 years old 5DII? That seems so ridiculous and impossible for a flashgip product. Well.... I can't wait to see the answer on this one, and I can say one thing, if 5D4 has no 4K I won't ever buy a Canon product my whole life just as a respect to myself, not giving money to a company that shits on us as much as this. So let's see

The only benefit of such high megapixels = small sensor crop in post. Unless you are printing billboards? 15mm to 24mm is a 1.6x crop. So why not just sling it on an A6000?

It's funny everyone hates small sensors with a huge crop factor, like 3x or something But everyone loves high megapixels so they can get that beautiful 3x crop small sensor look from their full frame cameras in Photoshop

Anyway I am interested. Because I just ordered the A7R II. And my need is 50% video and 50% still... I have the feeling 12mpx is not very enough. Also 42mpx is amazing for exemple : use a voigtlander 15mm as a 15-24 for landscape just by croping... AF is good also.

Premiere Pro CC 2015 can handle 1080p C300 II files in a 1080p Sequence just fine, at full playback resolution. I was testing 4K and 1080p in a 4K Sequence previously. Hopefully Adobe can improve 4K sequence performance: with a GTX980ti and pulling files from a Samsung Pro 850 SSD, 4K editing should be butter smooth. If the compressed H.264 data gets copied across the bus into GPU memory, as long as everything stays in GPU memory everything should run very fast. If they are shuffling data back and forth across the bus, that would explain the low 4K performance (didn't benchmark it, but the latest version of CC seems slower than prior versions for 4K). Rolling shutter is very low on the C300 II- even without a shoulder rig, the unstablized 24-70 F2.8 II looks decent handheld (the camera mass helps too).

I'm interested in FS5 for those reason, but the FS700 offers a lot more than what you listed. The FS700/7Q does 120 burst at 4k and continuous 4k/60p straight to Pro Res… This is huge for a lot of applications. The FS5 still needs the 7Q to get the 4k Pro Res files, and even then it can only go up to 30p. The 7Q is huge, but is also a great client monitor. That being said, I probably wouldn't use the FS700 without the recorder. I have been using the recorder as a counter weight and it works pretty well. I shot a spot with this setup two weeks ago, i'll post it up when it drops if anyone is interested. I was quickly switching from 30p/60p/120p through out the whole day. The slow motion on the camera is lovely. Honestly, the size is a bit much, but it impresses clients if that's the situation you're in. The setup is also incredibly reliable.

I used to have one but it never felt 100% reliable. This week I decided to give it another go as I'd upgraded my PC rig. By chance the hardware was all on the recommended list at TonyMacx86 http://www.tonymacx86.com/building-customac-buyers-guide-october-2015.html The most temperamental bits are graphics, sound, bluetooth and wifi but 100 google searches later and a lot of late nights, eventually you will get it stable. Mine even sleeps!! I recommend a USB sound card, they tend to 'just work'. Also I recommend Unibeast to do the install, then Multibeast to do the drivers post-install bit... Clover was too advanced, I didn't get it as well. It is now stable, was having random freezes due to Intel integrated graphics being enabled and for whatever reason not working, so disabled that and now it is fine. However there are still the occasional bugs, like Resolve 12 saying it is out of GPU memory on a 4GB card after a few minutes... hmm. Verdict - if you are of technical knowledge with the time and can risk the occasional crash in the middle of work, go for it. If you just want a ultra stable system which will work immediately, avoid like the plague! My hardware: CM Storm Stryker case 4096MB MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G PCIe 3.0 x16 (Retail) MSI Z97 GAMING 5 Intel Z97 So.1150 Dual Channel DDR3 ATX Retail 16GB G.Skill TridentX DDR3-2400 DIMM CL10 Dual Kit 600 Watt Corsair CX Series Non-Modular 80+ Bronze Intel Core i7 4790K 4x 4.00GHz So.1150 BOX I went for OSX Yosemite. Although you can put El Capitan on there it might not be as stable, since it is so new. On my genuine Macbook Pro I have major issues with Premiere under El Capitan related to CUDA and GPU acceleration. Best to dual boot from separate SSD. They are so cheap now, just have two drives. By the way don't try and put a virtual Windows partition on your Mac RAID array like I once did!! The Windows installer damaged the RAID config and I had to spend hours in data recovery software, as well as buying 3 extra 4TB HDDs to backup to. Was an unpleasant experience to say the least, so keep Windows as far away from your Mac as possible

$3180 for all that FS700R kit... and I thought the consumer stuff lost value quick. Wow pros really are prepared to dump their old stuff for nothing aren't they!! The 1D C is also massively undervalued right now. Both superb deals! Well done on the FS700... you will need to spend another $2500 on the Odyssey though! Personally I would take the A7S II over the FS700... the 120fps slow mo is very good and Super 35mm when used with speed booster. The 4K is internal and of course you get the stabiliser, raw stills, EVF and much smaller form factor. The low light is much better too. The FS700 was a bit of a step back for low light over the FS100 due to the bump in megapixels to handle 4K. I am comparing the 1D C right now to the A7S II and it was tempting to sell, before the inevitable price gorging, however there's just something about that image... the colour is still out in front over the A7S II and it doesn't need so much fiddling in post to get it right.

Evidently, this guy made it work. Of course, you could also dual boot.

Just go to Vimeo and search "Samsung NX1" the first page is filled with impressive footage from the NX1. Heres a few screengrabs of my latest video (still on edit) http://imgur.com/a/rQHhx I think the camera is outstanding in every way, color/resolution/detail is amazing, you can make it as filmic as you want, or just not at all, its quite versatile. I too am eager to have native support H265 on premiere, it will make my job so much easier.

I've been tempted to use the NX1 ever since it's release. I'd like to rent it but I can't find a vendor in the UK. I think the colours are lovely and the resolution is absolutely ridiculous. What's the "better" type of skilled footage you have come across? Albert Fast does a good job with his little short films.

​Thanks Ben. I don't own a BM Pocket, however I have a couple 5D3's. For RAW stills, the 5D3 is far better than the A7S RAW stills (JPGs too for that matter). Interestingly, once WB is carefully set, and exposure is carefully set, the A7S's video color looks better than the RAW & JPG still color. That said, the 5D3 does indeed hold better color through over and under exposure, and the white balance isn't as tricky: set Incandescent WB and PP Neutral/Faithful etc., and you'll get a pretty good image. For RAW, only exposure is critical (final WB set in ACR). What makes the A7S worth shooting with over the 5D3, even in RAW (ignoring the extra post work), is Sony autofocus and IS. There's no autofocus on the 5D3 for video, and the IS is not as strong and is tuned for stills. The 50Mbps A7S files are tiny and still look great. Using the 5D3 to take reference RAW stills can really help with color grading the A7S in post: the Canon stills provide a good target reference for color. With or without 5D3 color refs, once figured out, the A7S provides really nice color, which grades well in post and can provide a very filmic look. When I first started using the A7S, I stuck with stock PP6, then later a tweaked PP7 (changed Color Mode: Sgamut to Pro) for one scene (shot at the Salton Sea): http://brightland.com/w/delta/ Stock PP6 (eyes are contacts + Premiere CC masked effects): Stock PP6, lit by tricky unknown parking lot light source (sodium?). Shot with Canon 50mm F1.4 at F2.0 and gen 1 MB SpeedBooster (crop mode to reduce RS, SB keeps noise similar to FF mode). All other A7S shots with Sony SELP18200 (FS700 kit lens): PP7 with Pro Color Mode: background video shot at the Salton Sea (Actor is GH4 4K, Natural PP, greenscreen in studio): GoPro Hero 3, ProTune color mode. Getting nice skintones underwater was tricky. Note that white isn't white anymore- now magenta tinted (dress; didn't do masked/tracked grading just for face, which would have allowed keeping the dress white): A7S RAW stills processed in ACR: http://brightland.com/w/delta-bts

​S-LOG mode standard settings Graded in Resolve and Tweaked in Final Cut 1) DaVinci Resolve first node adjust exposure (highlights / lows / contrast) 2) 2nd node applied LUT ( I believe it was Kodak or similar, I have a whole bunch) 3) Tweaked in Final Cut (contrast) + fine adjustments to color in Colorista. I noticed A7s image has more green than normal so you simply bring it down judging by your waveforms and level them out & I like to push the blue (for skies , water, etc) It's a pretty long process it seems, but I think the final image is worth it.... I'm used to working with RED LOG files all of the time (work) and the Sony A7s holds up incredibly well in comparison. The main advantage of RED files though is being able to adjust white balance / iso / etc. as the camera shoots RAW, something A7s to my understanding is not capable of. Thanks

​A7s produces beautiful log images which you can basically color/grade how you choose too. The first step is taking that log image and converting to REC 709, then you color to taste...... From my experience Sony A7s produces amazing colors and grades wonderfully, you just really have to spend some time with it and understand how it works. Here's a before/after picture of an unreleased Music Video (Artist: Gyptian) I worked on. Graded in RESOLVE and Tweaked in FINAL CUT