dishe Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 So, this came up in another thread I was just in, and I see it mentioned here and there on the forum, but I think it deserves its own topic so I'm starting one.I recently became very interested in recording externally to an Atomos or similar from my Sony bodies in an attempt to break the 30min limit. Seemed like a no brainer, especially with the current ridiculous falling price of Ninja units. But before I jump in, I wanted to read up on the workflow so I'd know what to prepare for. Until now, I was unaware of what the Skin Smoothing setting in the camera did (honestly, what self respecting photog or videog would have that enabled in the first place anyway), but now I'm suddenly VERY aware of it. Apparently (and I'm just going by what I see online in my research), there is some sort of bug in the firmware of many of the BIONZ X based cameras, that turns this blasted smoothing feature on when recording video even if you disabled it in the menu. If you aren't aware of this bug, this guy's video pretty much nails it in demonstration:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6GVm1Ke2dQSince I didn't hear many people being scared off by this, I figured you can't go by one guy on the internet's opinion of a perceived problem. But then I found it again mentioned in Phillip Bloom's blog regarding using the A7S with a Shogun here:http://philipbloom.net/blog/dad/ (about half way down the page)And here it is again by Dave Dugdale:http://www.learningvideo.com/atomos-shogun-review/ (third paragraph)Then some guy in a forum shared this video to demonstrate how well the atomos was working with his A5100:https://youtu.be/-DmrpLji6gkHe apparently wasn't even aware of the waxy skin thing going on with her face, but I see it right away now that i'm aware of it!It seems that this issue is a legit one. While I've read that a firmware update to the RX series has solved it on that camera, the rest of us trying to record off our A6000, A5100, A7S, etc have this blasted thing show up whenever a face can be recognized. The "solution" has been to turn off face recognition and press record in camera. Without recording in camera, the hdmi out defaults to smoothing on again. I'm wondering, how many people do this and just haven't noticed it happens? Now that I've seen it and will be looking for it, I'm afraid it will drive me bonkers. OR do people just hit record in the camera to disable it?My real question is, what about those of us who want to do this simply because we want to record longer durations than the internal recording allows? What happens when my A7S reaches 30 min and stops recording internally? Does everyone's face suddenly go all waxy? And what about trying to use external recording to prevent overheating on the smaller A5100? Hitting record on the camera isn't an option because it will build up heat too fast to even make it to 30 minutes most of the time. Is there another solution I'm not aware of? Axel and kaylee 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mercer Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 I recently heard about this waxy skin problem as well. I have the a5100, but am selling it, not for that reason though. I'm not sure if this solution will work, to reduce the heat, on such an extended record time, but lifting the LCD screen is an easy fix for regular record times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted November 26, 2015 Author Share Posted November 26, 2015 I did that right away. Still could hardly make it to 29 minutes, usually cut off around 20. I tried putting an external power supply fed through a dummy battery hoping that would help the heat, and it did about double my recording time. But that means I can record to 29 min, then hit record again and only make it another 10-12min before it has to stop again. It just gets more frequent after that unless I give it time to cool off in between. That means 1hour long performances or lectures won't be able to be captured, which does not work for me. There must be a way to do this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hmcindie Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 That is a HUGE fuckup. It took this long for it to be noticed??! I wonder how many have face-detection on (for stills) and are getting way smooth skins because of that 'bug'? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inazuma Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 This would explain why the a6000 seemed to lack any detail when I tested it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted November 26, 2015 Author Share Posted November 26, 2015 I think Sony users have to collectively make some more noise about this. They might not even know about it because people haven't noticed and/or dismissed it as low res footage! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted November 26, 2015 Author Share Posted November 26, 2015 Reached out to Sony support on a whim- of course they say they aren't familiar with the bug (what else would a customer support rep say?), but a fix WAS released for the RX100 in a firmware. So, I think if enough people bring it to their attention, maybe something will happen? Shouldn't be a hard fix for them at all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ntblowz Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 No wonder brides love the Sony shot, no wrinkles lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inazuma Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 There is a similar problem with their phones actually. The soft skin is applied by default in all apps. You can only disable it in the native app. However if you quick launch the camera (via the shutter button) it wont remember this setting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axel Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 Awesome thread. This explains a lot. I suspect this may even not be limited to the cameras mentioned. When in the first video he says 'you also lose face detection AF', a coin dropped. I was wondering, always, why in so many Sony videos the skin looks so poor, and I blamed it on a bad 'sony color science' compared to, say, the Canon C series. We further found AF shots with our FS7 often (but not always) to look irritatingly like SD. I will follow this. Thank you for posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted November 29, 2015 Author Share Posted November 29, 2015 Awesome thread. This explains a lot. I suspect this may even not be limited to the cameras mentioned. When in the first video he says 'you also lose face detection AF', a coin dropped. I was wondering, always, why in so many Sony videos the skin looks so poor, and I blamed it on a bad 'sony color science' compared to, say, the Canon C series. We further found AF shots with our FS7 often (but not always) to look irritatingly like SD. I will follow this. Thank you for posting.Interesting- were you using an external recorder in those those shots? And Face-detection AF? Have you ever shot something without it that looked better? I'd think the bug was specific to the Alpha camera series because they have that skin smoothing option for portraits (I'm guessing, I have no idea why it exists in the first place to be honest), but then again Inazuma says their cell phones do it too! So maybe they keep the same code not realizing it had the same bug across all their products? I also wasn't aware of it until recently. It seems like this is a problem that keeps getting swept under the rug. I wish I had known about this before I started buying all this equipment. I think its time we all reached out to Sony and made some noise! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted November 30, 2015 Author Share Posted November 30, 2015 UPDATE:Excuse me while I remove my foot from my mouth. I just tested this again with an A7S that ships with a different firmware than the one I originally saw the problem on. And it doesn't do it anymore. It appears that firmware v.1.10 no longer has the waxy skin bug. This is incredible news and something I really wish Sony would have just said something about instead of denying that they even knew about a problem. If all I had to do was update the firmware, I wouldn't be here. Going to see if there's an update to the A5100 as well and report back soon. Just wanted to share this info as soon as I became aware of it. Axel 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted December 1, 2015 Author Share Posted December 1, 2015 Sony A5100 still suffers from this problem, even with latest V1.10 update. Glad they at least addressed it in the A7S update. Don't know anything about the A6000 or others unless someone here who has one can confirm? Would really love to see Sony address this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted December 1, 2015 Author Share Posted December 1, 2015 Actually, anyone in this group have an A6000 they can just plug into an HDMI monitor and see if the waxy skin thing still happens? I'm wondering if that recent update that granted them XAVCS also quietly fixed the bug the same way the A7s update did without much fanfare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 Current firmware 2.0 for the A6000 seems to still do it too. Confirmed A5100 and A6000 still have this problem. Only way to avoid the Waxy skin bug is to press record in the camera. At least the new firmware seems to avoid the A6000 overheating. Since the bug takes around 5 seconds to show up, maybe someone can press rec every 30 minutes to keep it off. Its a silly workaround. I emailed and called Sony about this problem. The email rep wasn't very helpful, but the phone rep recommended I record a video of the problem and post it to the Sony Community pages as the engineers actually look there to help troubleshoot. Both seems to be unaware of the existence of this problem (of course they would say that, though). Feeling very frustrated at Sony right now. What a silly but major problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EyeSoul Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 So pushing record on the camera kind of defeats the purpose of having a external recorder right?would the camera be recording internally and externally using the work around?I assume the camera would still be subject to overheating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dishe Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 So pushing record on the camera kind of defeats the purpose of having a external recorder right?would the camera be recording internally and externally using the work around?I assume the camera would still be subject to overheating.Yes, unless the purpose is to get one continuous clip on the external recorder (such as when recording an interview or concert or sports event), or if live streaming to a screen, projector or internet streamer. There are many reasons I'd want to keep a constant clean HDMI out. But yes, on the A5100 that means it will overheat. The A6000 supposedly isn't as prone to overheating with firmware 2.0. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axel Posted December 5, 2015 Share Posted December 5, 2015 UPDATE:Excuse me while I remove my foot from my mouth. I just tested this again with an A7S that ships with a different firmware than the one I originally saw the problem on. And it doesn't do it anymore. It appears that firmware v.1.10 no longer has the waxy skin bug. Yes, good news. However, waxy skin still is a general characteristic of most Sony cameras. I'd even go so far as to say crayon colors: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Andrew Reid Posted December 5, 2015 Administrators Share Posted December 5, 2015 Axel with LOG footage the grade has much more impact on colour than the camera does.Most grades are weird looking and prioritise dynamic range. It takes real artistic skill to do a good one.So judge the grade not the camera.The skin bug is interesting... does it only affect HDMI? dishe and Axel 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axel Posted December 5, 2015 Share Posted December 5, 2015 Axel with LOG footage the grade has much more impact on colour than the camera does.Most grades are weird looking and prioritise dynamic range. It takes real artistic skill to do a good one.So judge the grade not the camera.You are right. Grading LOG that was recorded in an 8-bit codec does seem to be a challenge though, given that there are so few convincing clips (valid also for V-LOG and to some extend C-LOG) ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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