Hangs4Fun

Got my email from B&H this morning and saw FedEx pick it up before lunch, I will have my A7S Mark III Friday 🙂 (of course, Friday is already taken with kids stuff, as is a good bit of this weekend, but I should be able to do something Friday and Sat just by cutting out sleep, ha; that camera can shoot in the dark anyway right, lol)... Also, have version 10.54 firmware locked and loaded on my Ninja V. ready to go. I'm most interested to see the 16bit RAW linear to 12bit ProRes RAW results compared to the best internal codec. I'm REALLY hoping that magenta cast is gone in the RAW. I am terrible at removing magenta without affecting skin tones, so I usually can't touch it much. Also curious to see if the SSD's I've got will handle the sustained write speed. From my calculations it will, but we shall see. Can't wait to see how that reduced rolling shutter looks on my motion controllers (I have Edelkrone's JibONE, SliderONE, Dual HeadONE, and SliderPLUS v5 Long).

Hey Dave, so that today and was curious if you could redo the test recording RAW to the Ninja V. Was really curious if the magenta still shows up in 16bit RAW or if that is artifacts from the internal codecs (they are "S" level after all). But nevermind now, just got my email from B&H this morning that mine shipped this morning and will be in hand Friday, so I will check myself, already have version 10.54 firmware loaded on my Ninja V ready to go..

Sorry Oliver, have been swamped prepping for a big shoot, had to avoid "suck holes" as much as possible, lol. Here's a page from the PRO Support guide that not only shows the minimum memory speeds, but also the max bitrates too. Sorry for the delay. Got an email this morning, that my A7SIII shipped before lunch, will be in hand Friday 🙂

Same here. I have a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-2000 printer, a 12 catridge (1,100 mL each) 24" wide printer and will absolutely be printing full 24" prints from my a7SIII as well as posting them. I too had a D3 back in the wedding photography days and many times printed A3 and A2 size prints (I still have a nervous twitch from weddings, lol). Just to prove a point, I will be doing some 3 to 5 shot panorama's in portrait mode and guarantee you I will get beautiful 24" x 48" pano prints. I have a small color lab, where I have 2 BenQ SW320's that I keep calibrated weekly (with XRite i1 Studio) and I use Color Byte's ImagePrint Blank RIP software to manage print jobs to the PRO-2000 and currently stock 10 different paper types that are all calibrated with my paper supplier and RIP software. Even ImagePrint Black allows me to upscale. Most of the time I print 300dpi, but TBH the sweet spot is 240dpi, with little gained after that. The most important thing is High Quality image with excellent colors, proper focus and exposure, and high dynamic range helps create realism in the prints. I print out a lot of my photo's, making calendar's, selling prints for walls, etc. And have a lot of experience printing 8 to 12 MP camera's. Unless you are going 36" or greater, or need to crop in, 12MP is more than enough. Most people don't even print out their work, and when they do, they do like 11x17 or A2, max. There are a very few number that can actually justify it for printing at least. So that leaves the other place they consume their work, which is online. Like LightShooter said, most places don't take above 2,048 pixels (~2MP), so that's no argument. One place that make a little sense is for cropping. But again, majority of people who get prints done are usually professionals, who usually frame the shot properly and don't crop much. Most cropping is just for fun. The small amount that is actually done at a pro level is wildlife photography and maybe landscape photography and some astro. Those fields are the most likely ones that can actually justify the extra MP. I would rather have a 12MP image to print from an old D3 or the new A7SIII any day over a 104MP smart phone camera any day. I am just making my point here, that MP size isn't everything. Image Quality is. And the way that 99% + of photo's are used today, a good quality 12MP image is more than is used AND you use less disk space, the images load faster, they process faster, etc.. I guess I don't get it either, lmao!!

sure, probably tomorrow, I want to finish adding the costs calculations first

For anyone about to start do more external recording, especially external RAW, I compiled a list ProRes Disk Rates, Consumption, and Usage Times. This time I added a section that has the number of minutes you would get out of 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB drives for your project estimations. Also adding in costs soon, so that you can estimate your costs/TB and costs/Minute for the different combinations. The spreadsheet I have will take in the size of the drive and the cost, and then calculate your costs per minute for each of the different codecs and fps settings.

I have used this in my Sony RX0 Mark II. It was impressingly FAST compared to what I usually use for stabilization in post (NewBlue FX Stabilizer). What I did not like with the RX0 Mark II stabilization correction in post, was I could only use the mobile app that Sony was pushing with it. And unlike Catalyst Browse where you can change the amount of crop and stabilization, I could either stabilize or not. I still found it to be too inconsistent to use regularly (plus dji osmo action and gopro were killing it with stabilization). On full frame and aps-c camera's I never really figured we would have anything usable tbh. But what I remember about that RX 0 Mark II, was how fast you could stabilize in post. Was very clear that there was something to imbedded gyro information was, especially if they provided us with a tool that could customize how much stabilization to apply. We are probably a couple of Mark versions away from really good stabilization, but this is a step in the right direction, and pretty clever way to do it (versus the in camera software)

In the a7SIII you can take the S-Log3 all the way down to 160 ISO 😮 though the minimum ISO when shooting S-Log3/S-Log2 is now native 640 but in extended can go from 160-500 So looking forward to no more minimum of 1,600 ISO. You should seriously consider shooting the A7SIII in S-Log3. Between this new min ISO and finally having the color range to support it, S-Log3 will finally be usable in a mirrorless.

yeah, Josh and I were commenting back and forth in the comments on that video. The consensus right now is, we don't care what they call it, we'll take it 😉 Proof will be in the 16bit RAW output what the heck is going on there. Can't wait to test that out. as info, my YT Channel is named the same as my user account here 😉 Hangs4Fun is my trail name, as I've been an avid hammocker for decades

Hey Adl, The XLR-K3M is the new digital version of the XLR-K2M. The A7SIII will be the first camera that can actually record 4 separate channels of audio digital straight into camera at 24bit/48khz. Here is how I will be using mine. I have 2 pairs of Rode Wireless Go mic's and a Rode SC11 Y cable (that will take the output from 1 wireless go receiver and make it the left channel and the other wireless go receiver and make it the right channel > both now being in one stereo mic jack cable that goes into the 3.5mm input on the XLR-K3M https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1582563-REG/rode_sc11_3_5mm_trs_y_splitter.html (this is nothing new though, I have done this for many years using a similar Y breakout cable from hosa, that is around $5 and it doesn't have to be Rode Wireless Go, it could be a Rode Video Mic Pro on the left and a lav on the right). Any way back to the explanation of 4 channels. So if you are still with me, we now have 2 wireless lav mic's going into the 3.5mm stereo jack on the XLR-K3M. Next, for the 3rd mic, I will have my Sennheiser MKH-416 in the #1 XLR port with phantom power this mic will be boomed. Lastly, my 4th mic, will be the Sony ECM-XM1 that comes with the XLR-K3M which is supercardioid shotgun mic, and it will be oncamera as backup audio. All 4 of these mic's will have no cables going into the camera itself, instead they plug into the XLR-K3M. And yes, the A7SIII supports using all 4 of them and injects that stream as LPCM 4ch (48khz 24bit). See below which is straight from the production release docs. Now the XLR-K3M on the A7RIV or A9II, is only a 2 channel option, you have to choose XLR or the 3.5mm, you can't do both, but on the A7SIII you absolutely can do 4 channel. And now with digital audio recording at 24bit going straight into your media file, no more sync'ing in post, yet I can control all 4 channels separately. I did a Zoom session with Sony PRO Support and watched him do it, to verify it wasn't a typo 🙂

easier editing in an NLE for sure. But also, better reproduction of each frame. Same thing happens when you go from All-I to ProRes RAW and then from ProRes RAW to linear uncompressed RAW. Each time you gain slight improvements, and as anyone in an industry where you create something, as you want more and more control over the final product, you add more and more $$$ exponentially for less and less actual improvements.

Man, those are some serious bitrates for 1080P, holy crap (course that is S&Q). I have never had the pleasure of recording an All-Intra based codec (and 4:2:2 10bit) in 1080P S&Q Mode Normal Mode

IKR, that is going to be some very nice looking 1080p for sure. I wonder how well it will upres to 4K? If you have a good quality 1080p, you can upres it to 4K and most people can't tell it was upres'ed. So many options.... I love it

CRAP TYPO!!! Just noticed I read the wrong value on the most important movie power consumption for A7SIII Here is the correction: A7S Mark III - consumes 3.3W for stills and 7.3W for movies (and 7.6W thru EVF) A7R Mark IV - consumes 2.9W for stills and 5.8W for movies A7 Mark III - consumes 2.8W for stills and 4.7W for movies A9 Mark II - consumes 2.9W for stills and 4.9W for movies A6600 - consumes 2.4W for stills and 3.9W for movies Well, dang. I was getting the 4.3W from the second group, because that was how all the other spec pages were, they had still first and movies second, but didn't have 2 groups of numbers (one for evf and one for LCD). I won't be using the EVF much, and even the EVF will be infrequent (will be using my Ninja V a lot). Man 7.3 Watts and 7.6 Watts with EVF is getting up there in consumption.

Not yet, some day hopefully. That process takes time, just gotta stick with it. Power Consumption is rated at 3.3W for stills and 4.3W for Movies: but depending on the video mode you shoot on, and also considering the CFExpress cards and also if powering 4 mics via the XLR-K3M, which I plan to do for Docs/Talking head/Corp work) In comparison to some of the other FF Sony cameras (and 1 APSC): A7S Mark III - consumes 3.3W for stills and 4.3W for movies A7R Mark IV - consumes 2.9W for stills and 5.8W for movies A7 Mark III - consumes 2.8W for stills and 4.7W for movies A9 Mark II - consumes 2.9W for stills and 4.9W for movies A6600 - consumes 2.4W for stills and 3.9W for movies Interesting that the A7SIII consumes the most for stills, but consumes the least for movies and almost as little power as the A6600. I'll be honest, I did not expect to see this, thanks for the question. They have really worked some magic into the video on this camera 🙂 Now, as to noise reduction. Early reports from Phillip Bloom, who has spent the most time with the A7SIII from any other NDA'ed tester and was the only one with early access to the Ninja V with RAW, there some noise reduction that you can't turn off when using the internal codecs. For most people that will be fine, but I would prefer to turn it off personally and manage noise myself in post. Baking in noise reduction into your media file is just not a good idea IMHO. However, the good news is that we are getting 16bit RAW with the A7SIII (into Ninja V at 12bit ProRes RAW log) and that should be straight from the sensor without any noise reduction. Taking that discussion a tad further though and you have that very interesting "dual gain" or sensitivity boost or something going on at 16,000 ISO. Not only do you see a noticeable drop in noise at 16,000 from 12,800, but the exposure slightly improves, as does the dynamic range slightly (it seems). Question is, is this some noise reduction and exposure trick that is now baked into the image, or is it more like a "dual gain" design (yes, I know its not true dual gain to your ARRI snobs, lol... We won't know until we get the production models and start testing. VERY exciting though

SMDH... Well, I just read the part that I copy/pasted from the doc and it clearly does say that those Creative Look settings are for BOTH stills and movies: A selection of new Creative Looks makes it easy to create interesting moods for stills and movies right in the camera. 10 Creative Looks are provided as presets that can be used without modification or customized by the user, based on the currently selected camera mode. So most likely, this is where Brandon set the highlights to -9 and the shadows to +9 and it was in the standard creative style. In my a9 I only see Contrast, Saturation, and Sharpness in my standard creative style (would guess the same for the a7III), so the highlights and shadows setting must be some new options only in the A7SII.

The Sony PRO Support person I have been working with, replied back that he had to ship back his A7SIII. He is getting his production model in the next week'ish before the bulk starts shipping. He is going to do another zoom with me once he gets it. Currently all of Sony PRO Support is working from home, so they are not driving into a common place where all the gear they normally have access to. So they request specific hardware based on the customers they work on. There's no data set yet on when they return, so for now, until he gets his unit, he has not way to verify where those settings are and if they are in there. I did however, find a small blurb listing in the final production document he shared about a shadow setting (I assume the highlight would be there next to it). I'm beginning to wonder if Brandon confused a photography setting with video? He is the first to tell you that he is not technical, like the opposite of Gerald Undone, lol (he's modest though, he knows some technical, just not deep) "Use Creative Look to create moods in camera" A selection of new Creative Looks makes it easy to create interesting moods for stills and movies right in the camera. 10 Creative Looks are provided as presets that can be used without modification or customized by the user, based on the currently selected camera mode. The [FL] preset, for example, has clear contrast and an interesting blend of subdued but impressive colors. The [IN] preset has a soft, matte look. The presets provide a wide range of variations with different combinations of color, color depth, brightness, contrast, sharpness, and more. Eight customizable parameters including contrast, saturation, shadow and others can be adjusted while viewing the resulting image via the monitor or viewfinder. Customized Creative Looks can be stored as Custom Looks for later recall and use. So, maybe Brandon customized this Custom Look with those shadow and highlights adjustments. My understanding is that these creative looks are only for stills and don't apply to movies, but I could be mistaken. The other part of your question to do with firmware update to the A7III to add this, will depend. If my above guess is right, that wouldn't help you if you want those adjustments for picture profiles (video). Will update this once I hear back from support (may be 7 to 10 more days).

nice, yeah me too. I was on B&H at 9am, hitting refresh every 5 mins or so, just in case they had an oopsie early opening (kind of like their "oopsie" release of that A7SIII video in the early AM). Then when it was about 10minutes till 10am, I started hitting refresh every couple of seconds. They were spot on though, and exactly at 10am, I saw the page, added to card, checked out, and had my conf email all in the first 10 secs, lol (sad, really if you think about it, I mean, it's a dang camera; hahaha). Any way, HIGHLY recommend PRO Support, I've been a member since they started it and just the 3 cleanings per year alone is worth it (they pay shipping both directions), plus I have gotten "loaners" during, as well as you can request 2 week test usage of any camera or lens as long as they have it, and again they pay shipping in both directions. You also get to work directly with support staff that I can't say enough good things about (night and day compared to normal support). And those guys know their stuff, yet when they don't, they don't pretend they do and I really appreciate that. Plus they have brought Engineering in on some discussions and become your champion on enhancement requests. One area I haven't used of PRO Support is the professional events support, things like the Olympics, major events, they (Canon and Nikon) have a setup to support the pro's working the event to make sure their gear is working tip top and if not quickly get you a loaner to get back at it while they figure out a solution. Some day, hopefully 😉 I will get to use that.

Not by those of us that appreciate their content. Josh has had a tough year personally, feel for him. But man, between him and Gerald, I feel I'm tapped into the deep technical aspects of using mirrorless for filming as well as the creative side (you know which is from which channel, 😉

Did you by any chance jump on the "prioritized shipping" that Sony PRO Support offered? First time I have seen them do that, and can't find much on what it means. But when I filled out the form (seconds after they sent out the email, lol), I had to provide where I pre-ordered mine from, my order number, etc. I'm wondering if they are working with each of their vendors to drop ship directly to us? Which would cut out the need for Sony to ship it to B&H, then have B&H receive it, box it back up and ship it to me.

I've added it to my shot list. Let me know if there is any interest for a live stream. Almost like being able to remote control the A7SIII and then have the resulting files uploaded to see the results. Could be an interesting experiment. But at the very least, send me any kind of shots you are interested in and I will add to my list.

yes, it should. But now that you mention it, let me think about it. I may need to call up my ole college professor and run it by him. Great point!

BeBob is really good, expensive but you have a workhorse that will give you every bit of what the sticker says. I'm building out my A7SIII rig, and went with the FxLion NANO TWO. One it is small AF, and two it has USB-C with PD. My plan is to actually run my A7SIII on it's Z100 battery, and at the same time charging it through it's USB-C PD port (the A7SIII supports charging the battery while also using it). And for the first time, thanks to PD, you can charge the battery faster than it can use the battery. This allows for me to swap Z Mount batteries without disruption to recording. I also plan on recording out to my Ninja V sometimes 16bit RAW out (to 12bit ProRes RAW) others good ole 10bit 4:2:2 ProRes HQ. What about battery swaps with that? Well, thanks to Atomos buying TCS (makers of UltraSync line of timecode devices), they have a new AtomX module I just picked up this week called the AtomX Sync. It provides Genlock timecode as master or slave with an RF and Bluetooth wireless network. Best part is the timecode is baked into the media files, so none of the BS post work of converting LTC footage. OK so what the heck does timecode have to do with batteries?? Well, the Sync module ALSO includes a small capacitor (aka battery), so that you have a good 5mins you can continue using your Ninja V monitor and recorder while you swap batteries. So no disruption of recording locally and/or externally, because both the camera and the Ninja V will keep going while I swap V Mount batteries 🙂 I'm pretty proud of this setup, haven't heard anyone else doing it, as all of the pieces needed to do it are so new. Hope to produce a few videos on it as soon as my A7SIII is in my hands. I'm also doing some other cool stuff with my rig setup for quick change outs to go between cage/top handle only B Roll to Gimball to shoulder mount to tripod and back and forth.

exactly the same here on electronics and IT equipment (almost 30 years now paying the mortgage with that stuff). As they push more voltage out the SDI and HDMI ports, there is a growing chance of voltage going an unintended path. But seriously with good quality cables, components, and process, you are fine. You have $20k in your C200 setup, so I'm sure you take operating it seriously. I think those that are going to see a problem don't put much thought into plugging and unplugging, and use the cheapest parts that can "do the job". It's a little harder for this to happen with HDMI, but easier with SDI 6G and 12G. In high speed SDI 12G, I saw my first Galvanic video and ground path isolator. This little device is around $400 (supposedly you can still get 12G speed, but not so sure though), thing was so small, was easy to leave attached to the cable. I just saw an article describing a Lentequip Safetap, but at around $150 and some DIY work, seems a bit much, but probably smart if you rent your gear out (which are the folks I have been trying to help with this issue). For those of us that own and operate our own gear, we are going to take care of that investment. I think the reason you and I didn't see this with electronics and IT equipment, is because that equipment has true grounded wiring (on a camera rig it's self contained), is AC based, and better circuit isolation. This potential issue is different. You have 2 pieces of gear tapping into the same capacity source AND enter in a 3rd piece that connects between them, that is using more and more electricity lately (as SGI and HDMI get faster), yet still no where near the current levels of the 2 main pieces. It would be like having a pc sized UPS powering 2 servers (with all of them only connected to each other with no true earth bound ground). Now connect them together with 10Gbps or higher ethernet cable. You now have a similar scenario. Though, it is possible that circuitry in servers does a better job at isolating.

yep, same here. Good quality shielded cables and components. I think the problem comes out with poorer quality cables.