a7r ii nothing but headaches.

[amsh89es335]

I just sold my A7rii today. After having it for a few months I had nothing but huge headaches. I did many test with a 4k video devices recorder. Besides the worst rolling shutter I've ever seen no one seems to be talking about the horrible judder when panning. At first I thought it was just I'm shooting in 24p and viewing on a computer monitor at 60hrz. But further test in every setting, shutter speed and frame rate seem to have far more than every other camera I've shot with. Another problem is in 60p and 24p 1080 the noise level is bad. I also kept getting bad moire and aliasing in full frame 4k and 1080p especially in the highlights.

Granted as a small compact photo camera it's frickin pretty awesome. But for video the image only looks good in crop mode 4k and as soon as it moves or things in it moves it falls apart. I barely took it on a shoot because of how much testing I had to figure out before I felt comfortable with all its down sides. And is not worth it.

I went back to my Nikon D750 with a external recorder for now until I decided what to get next, but even though the 1080p image is softer everything else is far better. Rolling shutter very little. Noise level very clean upto 6400. Slow motion just as good as the 24p and very smooth. Color science far better. Dynamic range little less. Post with it is super easy. It's a shame this camera has gotten no attention, but it such a reliable camera its what we wanted out of the 5D Mk iii but quickly forgot about with all the 4k cameras that just keep adding more new problems, headaches, time and money all for the sake to say its 4k.

[Axel]

Sad, but I know what you mean. And if you know, you see those things also in videos you'd consider amazing usually (at first):

... and it can make you sick.

[hmcindie]

We know. Problem is most sites focus only on the sharpness and feature specs. Usability and everything else kinda gets a pass. Probably because it's really made for consumers and they love dem specs. Just the placement of the record button and the build quality of these cams puts me off (my old a7s got the lcd scratched very easily). Things you think would be great are almost useless (slog2/3 - I'd rather use the cinegammas or no profile, the LUT viewing assist on the a7r - you need to overexpose the slog but you can't with the assist on as everything is burned out, useless). Same with the RX10 ii (oh look, there's a button and you can set the aperture without any stops! Except you can't, doesn't work that way, it still has electronic stops. What the hell? Why is that feature there except to check off a spec list?). The 50 or 100mbit/s mode that still is very blocky compared to even 24mbit/s AVCHD from other cams...etc etc. The 4k looks slightly better but it's so compressed that you don't want to watch it at 100% anyways.

[Andrew Reid]

The motion issues you guys are talking about seem to have more to do with the shutter speed than the camera.

The Mongolia video is lovely but a lot of it looks to be shot at a high shutter speed without NDs

Try 1/50 and see if things improve.

If not then we should investigate more what is going on.

MJPEG and RAW on Canon DSLRs are ALL-I codecs, but it's unlikely to be a LONG GOP issue because the D750 is that and apparently looks fine.

[Axel]

The cadence issue (if it's an issue at all, see shutter speeds) for me is not a big thing. It's the combination of all things characteristic for this camera, RS, moire, synthetic looking colors. No wonder the A7rii blends so easily with GoPro stuff. You can work around all those things in the Zacuto shootout fashion and come to the conclusion it's not the camera. 

[DPStewart]

Cadence, or motion quality is at least slightly different on each make of camera.
Some people don't really see it, others can't miss it. I'm one that can;t miss it.

The panasonic GH2 and GH3 (to a lesser extent the GH4) have a rough juddery edge quality that just never looks like smooth motion until you take the shutter angle all the way down to blur.

Canons are much smoother to watch. Blackmagic even better.

Again, many people just don't see it. I wish I was one of them...

[richg101]

2 hours ago, amsh89es335 said:

It's a shame this camera has gotten no attention, but it such a reliable camera its what we wanted out of the 5D Mk iii

A Nikon D750 could outperform an Alexa but it's still limited by the Nikon lens mount and focus direction.  A nikon dslr has about 1/10th of the optics selection that the 5dmk3 has at its disposal and around 1/100th of the selection that the a7rii has.

Go to a almost any video rental house and there aint no Nikons to be seen - all because of the lens mount!  

 

I'd take the ability to run any cinema or stills lenses (and I mean any lens) on the a7rii in exchange for the quirks and more often the learning curve faced by most who jumped on (and jumped off too quickly) the a7 bandwagon without taking the care to learn how to get the best from it.  

 

  

[amsh89es335]

4 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

The motion issues you guys are talking about seem to have more to do with the shutter speed than the camera.

The Mongolia video is lovely but a lot of it looks to be shot at a high shutter speed without NDs

Try 1/50 and see if things improve.

If not then we should investigate more what is going on.

MJPEG and RAW on Canon DSLRs are ALL-I codecs, but it's unlikely to be a LONG GOP issue because the D750 is that and apparently looks fine.

It's not just the 1/50. I ran every shutter speed at varouis panning speeds and situation in every mode. There is deffently something wrong with it. Trust me I spent days looking into it on the 24p judder problem. Even at 1/20 and the motion was weird and choppy flicker. Also that video looks good because it's in bright lights. Try 60p for slow motion beyond 800iso and it's awful. 

Also  i forgot to add is anyone else having the white balance issue were it just says error and turns all green. That drove me nuts. And it would randomly happy with varouis grey cards and lighting situations. 

5 hours ago, amsh89es335 said:

I just sold my A7rii today. After having it for a few months I had nothing but huge headaches. I did many test with a 4k video devices recorder. Besides the worst rolling shutter I've ever seen no one seems to be talking about the horrible judder when panning. At first I thought it was just I'm shooting in 24p and viewing on a computer monitor at 60hrz. But further test in every setting, shutter speed and frame rate seem to have far more than every other camera I've shot with. Another problem is in 60p and 24p 1080 the noise level is bad. I also kept getting bad moire and aliasing in full frame 4k and 1080p especially in the highlights.

Granted as a small compact photo camera it's frickin pretty awesome. But for video the image only looks good in crop mode 4k and as soon as it moves or things in it moves it falls apart. I barely took it on a shoot because of how much testing I had to figure out before I felt comfortable with all its down sides. And is not worth it.

I went back to my Nikon D750 with a external recorder for now until I decided what to get next, but even though the 1080p image is softer everything else is far better. Rolling shutter very little. Noise level very clean upto 6400. Slow motion just as good as the 24p and very smooth. Color science far better. Dynamic range little less. Post with it is super easy. It's a shame this camera has gotten no attention, but it such a reliable camera its what we wanted out of the 5D Mk iii but quickly forgot about with all the 4k cameras that just keep adding more new problems, headaches, time and money all for the sake to say its 4k.

Also forgot to add the weird white balance issue that says error and turn the whole image saturated green. It would happen in random lighting situations and was super frustrating. I used various grey charts.  

4 hours ago, hmcindie said:

We know. Problem is most sites focus only on the sharpness and feature specs. Usability and everything else kinda gets a pass. Probably because it's really made for consumers and they love dem specs. Just the placement of the record button and the build quality of these cams puts me off (my old a7s got the lcd scratched very easily). Things you think would be great are almost useless (slog2/3 - I'd rather use the cinegammas or no profile, the LUT viewing assist on the a7r - you need to overexpose the slog but you can't with the assist on as everything is burned out, useless). Same with the RX10 ii (oh look, there's a button and you can set the aperture without any stops! Except you can't, doesn't work that way, it still has electronic stops. What the hell? Why is that feature there except to check off a spec list?). The 50 or 100mbit/s mode that still is very blocky compared to even 24mbit/s AVCHD from other cams...etc etc. The 4k looks slightly better but it's so compressed that you don't want to watch it at 100% anyways.

My screen also scratch super easly. Never had that before on a camera. 

2 hours ago, richg101 said:

A Nikon D750 could outperform an Alexa but it's still limited by the Nikon lens mount and focus direction.  A nikon dslr has about 1/10th of the optics selection that the 5dmk3 has at its disposal and around 1/100th of the selection that the a7rii has.

Go to a almost any video rental house and there aint no Nikons to be seen - all because of the lens mount!  

 

I'd take the ability to run any cinema or stills lenses (and I mean any lens) on the a7rii in exchange for the quirks and more often the learning curve faced by most who jumped on (and jumped off too quickly) the a7 bandwagon without taking the care to learn how to get the best from it.  

 

 But its a waste of such nice lenses to use on a image that looks so consumer based. With server rolling shutter and awful motion and bad color science. 

[Nikkor]

Hmm Interesting, I've always thought the nikons had the worst motion judder. Maybe the external recorder fixes this, and so, maybe an external recorder would have fixed this for the A7 aswell.

[Oliver Daniel]

54 minutes ago, amsh89es335 said:

It's not just the 1/50. I ran every shutter speed at varouis panning speeds and situation in every mode. There is deffently something wrong with it. Trust me I spent days looking into it on the 24p judder problem. Even at 1/20 and the motion was weird and choppy flicker. Also that video looks good because it's in bright lights. Try 60p for slow motion beyond 800iso and it's awful. 

Also  i forgot to add is anyone else having the white balance issue were it just says error and turns all green. That drove me nuts. And it would randomly happy with varouis grey cards and lighting situations. 

Also forgot to add the weird white balance issue that says error and turn the whole image saturated green. It would happen in random lighting situations and was super frustrating. I used various grey charts.  

My screen also scratch super easly. Never had that before on a camera. 

I really enjoy using the A7SII. With the flexible lens mount and IBIS it's a lot of fun. Combined with my Ronin-M with the IBIS and Sony/Zeiss lens is tremendous. Super smooth. 

Things I don't like? Rolling shutter above 50mm in full frame, very poor battery life, placement of menu and record button, the menus GUI, noise in 120fps, Slog3 almost useless. (Slog2 is workable). 

The most pain in the arse thing about it is the white balance. It doesn't work properly and what I believe to be the majority cause of unpleasant colour science that many users report. 

Negatives aside, I've had a great time on the A7 series so far and I've got some videos ready for release soon! I don't love the camera but I do really like it. 

[Jimmy]

White balance is definitely faulty. Dreadful, in fact. How this gets past quality control, I will never know.

[DBounce]

It's flexible and good enough to get the job done.  Go shoot something!

[amsh89es335]

1 hour ago, araucaria said:

Hmm Interesting, I've always thought the nikons had the worst motion judder. Maybe the external recorder fixes this, and so, maybe an external recorder would have fixed this for the A7 aswell.

Yes. But with the D750 Nikon completely step up on maturing 1080p full frame. Before Andrew's review on it I would of never consider it back in early 2015.

[Axel]

1 hour ago, araucaria said:

Hmm Interesting, I've always thought the nikons had the worst motion judder. Maybe the external recorder fixes this, and so, maybe an external recorder would have fixed this for the A7 aswell.

 

25 minutes ago, amsh89es335 said:

Yes. But with the D750 Nikon completely step up on maturing 1080p full frame. Before Andrew's review on it I would of never consider it back in early 2015.

I have the D3300, body only threehundredsomething. Awful, almost no way to control video parameters. But quite nice colors. Don't know about motion. Because, as I confessed, I have no eye for that. Had been a projectionist too long and find 12fps more pleasing than 48 ....

[lafilm]

8 hours ago, amsh89es335 said:

I just sold my A7rii today. After having it for a few months I had nothing but huge headaches. I did many test with a 4k video devices recorder. Besides the worst rolling shutter I've ever seen no one seems to be talking about the horrible judder when panning. At first I thought it was just I'm shooting in 24p and viewing on a computer monitor at 60hrz. But further test in every setting, shutter speed and frame rate seem to have far more than every other camera I've shot with. Another problem is in 60p and 24p 1080 the noise level is bad. I also kept getting bad moire and aliasing in full frame 4k and 1080p especially in the highlights.

Granted as a small compact photo camera it's frickin pretty awesome. But for video the image only looks good in crop mode 4k and as soon as it moves or things in it moves it falls apart. I barely took it on a shoot because of how much testing I had to figure out before I felt comfortable with all its down sides. And is not worth it.

I went back to my Nikon D750 with a external recorder for now until I decided what to get next, but even though the 1080p image is softer everything else is far better. Rolling shutter very little. Noise level very clean upto 6400. Slow motion just as good as the 24p and very smooth. Color science far better. Dynamic range little less. Post with it is super easy. It's a shame this camera has gotten no attention, but it such a reliable camera its what we wanted out of the 5D Mk iii but quickly forgot about with all the 4k cameras that just keep adding more new problems, headaches, time and money all for the sake to say its 4k.

Couldn't you use a program in post? One that fixes the "Judder" (motion cadence) problem? Say in Premeire or FCP or Davinci? 

I believe it would help tremendously on those 24fps/50 shutter Panning shots.

[Oliver Daniel]

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

White balance is definitely faulty. Dreadful, in fact. How this gets past quality control, I will never know.

Definitely is. 

Thought about setting up something to test the white balance settings and send it to their engineers.

I did a quick one the other day on a shoot. Daylight 5600k in daylight rendered faces as pale green, same on cloudy and shade. My daylight lamps were green and tungsten was blue at 3200k. 

I've spent a lot of money on lighting and the A7SII makes them look weird. 

I don't understand why this hasn't been reported and fixed? (Like with the FS5 issues?)

[amsh89es335]

Also I am not saying the D750 is the best camera ever. But I am talking about in the low end under a few thousands for small productions or run n gun being super reliable with the least amount of headaches and clean slow motion (for low budget music videos on a 3 axis gimbal). And whish we would demand more of this instead of asking for higher resolution before giving a better overall image and camera first. 

Im aware you can't rent high end cinema lenses for it, but why would you rent $100,000k worth of lenses on a shoot that can't afford more than a $2000-3000 camera that has rolling shutter worst than a 5D mk ii and a long list of other issues. I also collect Nikon ais manual lenses and use them on all my low budget projects and adapt them to alot of cameras so I guess the level of work my Nikon D750 is for this isn't an issue for me. Beyond high-end cinema lenses, Zies cp2, Samyang, all third party DSLR lenses all sell Nikon versions. So besides Canon lenses and other old slr lenses what can a 5D have that a Nikon can't? Can't add a PL lens on either anyways. Granted rental house will only carry EF mount so there is that issue because of supply and demand. By like I said why bother with lenes 10 times the price of the camera. When that budget is already so small it should be put into lighting and production value. 

My experience as a DP and camera operator has been with all the REDs, Alexa, FS7 at my work (don't get me started on its quirks), C300, 7D, 5D Mk ii, 5D Mk iii ML RAW( which I miss having that image quailty but software kept crashing on shoots it's a shame Canon won't venture into that). 

Sorry I'm rambelling on because I am just getting fed up of wasting time and money with the hype on these new spec and ignore solving the problems with the last generation of cameras and we are not pushing back on camera manufactures enough and  just say oh well let's just deal with our footage is super janky. When photographers only need to get a 5D every 6 years and do lots of professional work while our world you buy any price camera and 2 months later it's so outdated and people in Los Angeles for example are asking for you to bring a cinema camera that isnt even out yet but herd the hype. Then when you use it and your producer ask why does it look like that? Why are there iusses with it? Why is there so much rolling shutter. Why is there so much judder. Why is the colors look so bad it's not the camera the DP sucks I here this some many time from various producers and directors about many DPs. And because of the hype they hear these cameras are 4k and awsome and will look like a red or Alexa for cheap and won't listen to the details of why these cameras have issues and keep blaming the DP. 

5 minutes ago, Oliver Daniel said:

Definitely is. 

Thought about setting up something to test the white balance settings and send it to their engineers.

I did a quick one the other day on a shoot. Daylight 5600k in daylight rendered faces as pale green, same on cloudy and shade. My daylight lamps were green and tungsten was blue at 3200k. 

I've spent a lot of money on lighting and the A7SII makes them look weird. 

I don't understand why this hasn't been reported and fixed? (Like with the FS5 issues?)

Are you talking slightly green. I'm talking the camera will give met a error message and go as far green as possible and refuse to white balance on anything. To fix it I just have to keep trying and hope it won't act up or just dial in the tempature as close as I can guess. 

10 minutes ago, lafilm said:

Couldn't you use a program in post? One that fixes the "Judder" (motion cadence) problem? Say in Premeire or FCP or Davinci? 

I believe it would help tremendously on those 24fps/50 shutter Panning shots.

They don't work that well on it. It's a weird sharp hard ghost and strobing effect. Looks very unnatural especially at 180 shutter angle. 

[lafilm]

17 minutes ago, amsh89es335 said:

Also I am not saying the D750 is the best camera ever. But I am talking about in the low end under a few thousands for small productions or run n gun being super reliable with the least amount of headaches and clean slow motion (for low budget music videos on a 3 axis gimbal). And whish we would demand more of this instead of asking for higher resolution before giving a better overall image and camera first. 

Im aware you can't rent high end cinema lenses for it, but why would you rent $100,000k worth of lenses on a shoot that can't afford more than a $2000-3000 camera that has rolling shutter worst than a 5D mk ii and a long list of other issues. I also collect Nikon ais manual lenses and use them on all my low budget projects and adapt them to alot of cameras so I guess the level of work my Nikon D750 is for this isn't an issue for me. Beyond high-end cinema lenses, Zies cp2, Samyang, all third party DSLR lenses all sell Nikon versions. So besides Canon lenses and other old slr lenses what can a 5D have that a Nikon can't? Can't add a PL lens on either anyways. Granted rental house will only carry EF mount so there is that issue because of supply and demand. By like I said why bother with lenes 10 times the price of the camera. When that budget is already so small it should be put into lighting and production value. 

My experience as a DP and camera operator has been with all the REDs, Alexa, FS7 at my work (don't get me started on its quirks), C300, 7D, 5D Mk ii, 5D Mk iii ML RAW( which I miss having that image quailty but software kept crashing on shoots it's a shame Canon won't venture into that). 

Sorry I'm rambelling on because I am just getting fed up of wasting time and money with the hype on these new spec and ignore solving the problems with the last generation of cameras and we are not pushing back on camera manufactures enough and  just say oh well let's just deal with our footage is super janky. When photographers only need to get a 5D every 6 years and do lots of professional work while our world you buy any price camera and 2 months later it's so outdated and people in Los Angeles for example are asking for you to bring a cinema camera that isnt even out yet but herd the hype. Then when you use it and your producer ask why does it look like that? Why are there iusses with it? Why is there so much rolling shutter. Why is there so much judder. Why is the colors look so bad it's not the camera the DP sucks I here this some many time from various producers and directors about many DPs. And because of the hype they hear these cameras are 4k and awsome and will look like a red or Alexa for cheap and won't listen to the details of why these cameras have issues and keep blaming the DP. 

Are you talking slightly green. I'm talking the camera will give met a error message and go as far green as possible and refuse to white balance on anything. To fix it I just have to keep trying and hope it won't act up or just dial in the tempature as close as I can guess. 

Forget about an Alexa or mini Alexa or the new high end cine camera from Panasonic.

You want a great cinema looking 4K camera that has amazing colors, great motion cadence, perfect white balance, small and unobtrusive, with awesome lens options (cheap or expensive).

A camera your producers or clients or buddies will watch the footage and be blown away.

And you can blow it up on a 65 foot screen and fool people it was shot on film.

Problems solved. For only $6,000 bucks (US) !!!

My friend, pick yourself up a Canon 1D C. 

[amsh89es335]

1 minute ago, lafilm said:

Forget about an Alexa or mini Alexa or the new high end cine camera from Panasonic.

You want a great cinema looking 4K camera that has amazing colors, great motion cadence, perfect white balance, small and unobtrusive, with awesome lens options (cheap or expensive).

A camera your producers or clients or buddies will watch the footage and be blown away.

And you can blow it up on a 65 foot screen and fool people it was shot in film.

Problems solved. For only $6,000 bucks (US) !!!

My friend, pick yourself up  Canon 1D C. 

Rolling shutter super high on it. I can't stand it and the dynamic range is low. Granted the images are nice and which  I wish canon would push further with these instead of walking away. but I also need slow motion of at least 60p. Clients keep asking for it, and my personal projects are mostly music videos which are a must have. And the A7rII 60p is a huge let down with so much noise. Sharp, but moire, aliasing and lots of noise at 800 iso and up. 

[lafilm]

14 minutes ago, amsh89es335 said:

Rolling shutter super high on it. I can't stand it and the dynamic range is low. Granted the images are nice and which  I wish canon would push further with these instead of walking away. but I also need slow motion of at least 60p. Clients keep asking for it, and my personal projects are mostly music videos which are a must have. And the A7rII 60p is a huge let down with so much noise. Sharp, but moire, aliasing and lots of noise at 800 iso and up. 

Please trust me on this. After viewing hours and hours of 1DC footage, and seeing how people view it, not ONE person has ever commented on any RS issues on the 1D C.

Even in the cinema.

It's better than the Sonys, and the cadence helps enormously.

As far as amazing 4K  60p goes?

Boom.

 

Yea, i cheated on the last video I posted

This is the Canon 1D X  (Part 2)

Goes on sell,  in six weeks (April, 2016)