Selling my a7s for a 5D mk3 (???)

[SigurdW]

Excuse me for being a hopeless pixel-romantic. 

This dilemma has kept me awake for a quite some time now and I am hoping your subjective experience, reflection, input, opinions and/or advice potentially could give me some guidance (or potentially more confusion, which I will take full responsibility for).

My interest for Raw started when I played with the thought of replacing my a7s for a Digital Bolex D16. While I am usually very trigger happy, I managed to hold my horses when the chance to have a go on it complicated my relationship with it. I realized that, without a second camera (for budget reasons), the 20 minute boot-up and the sacrifice of photography would not make me happy in the long run. While I still want to be a Bolex-owner as I am a sucker for the CCD and its awesome audio features, it is not my time just yet. Nevertheless, the Raw fanboy is still in me and I think the 5D is the (next) best thing (?) and might be a good investment. 

Maybe I just answered myself, haha. However I specify that I am asking for your subjective experience/opinions. Maybe some of you have been in the same boat or the other way around.

I did quick and shamelessly dirty test today, if you find it interesting. The exposure is all over the place (unfair), more info on that in the videos description.
 

Thank you!
 

[Justin Bacle]

I would say keep you 7s as it is a very good camera, and get a cheap 5dmk2 for raw ? Is the 5dmk2 enough for your raw needs ?

[SigurdW]

1 hour ago, Justin Bacle said:

I would say keep you 7s as it is a very good camera, and get a cheap 5dmk2 for raw ? Is the 5dmk2 enough for your raw needs ?

Definitely something I will look further into if the budget allows me to. On the other hand, I see the potential of the mk3 to become a full time production horse, with the  1920x1280 (anamorphic), 3200 ISO and slow motion functions that I (am still struggling with this) can live with

[webrunner5]

Do you have the processing power and storage capacity to edit Raw?? And to give up doing 4K to boot. Not counting a softer 1080p output. Hmmm, interesting.

Not knocking the Canon, I am looking at a C100 soon to buy myself speaking of 1080p output. I agree with maybe doing the MKII and keeping the A7s. Easy to spend your money though. 

[SigurdW]

I have a few megabytes free on my desktop  Don't really use it for 4k much, but it gives me some peace of mind having the option! I appreciate your input guys!

[Geoff CB]

 

On ‎1‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 7:51 AM, SigurdW said:

I have a few megabytes free on my desktop  Don't really use it for 4k much, but it gives me some peace of mind having the option! I appreciate your input guys!

Not just space on your Desktop, the cards that you have to buy to record a full shoot day. You will need a lot!

Also look into the monitoring of the RAW signal. I don't think you can use and external monitor with the 5D Mark 2 and last I saw there was some issues with the Mark 3.

[SigurdW]

3 hours ago, Geoff CB said:

 

Not just space on your Desktop, the cards that you have to buy to record a full shoot day. You will need a lot!

Also look into the monitoring of the RAW signal. I don't think you can use and external monitor with the 5D Mark 2 and last I saw there was some issues with the Mark 3.

Yeah, thats actually more of a concern than storage space. Why I am thinking of switching in the first place, is that I see myself shooting more fictional content in the nearer future than slow-mo required stuff. Therefore, the raw VistaVision is very tempting. But if a day of shooting requires 700 GB worth of card space - then transcoding - backing up twice, etc. I might be stressing my wallet more than necessary as the days add up...

Well, just bought a DP4 for anamorphic monitoring, which I have kind of become dependent on! So that definitely needs further investigation! 

[tweak]

5D2 is a waste of money, 5D3 is a lot better and worth the extra from what I've experienced and read.

The shots weren't so different until you shot the anamorphic stuff, then the 5D3 looked noticeably a lot better.

I'm also trying to get the cash for my own 5D3 at the moment, like you I think it could be a great all round performer. I'm shooting 7Draw all the time at the moment, but I can see how the 5D3 is a lot nicer (also for pictures, especially the DR).

[SigurdW]

1 hour ago, tweak said:

5D2 is a waste of money, 5D3 is a lot better and worth the extra from what I've experienced and read.

The shots weren't so different until you shot the anamorphic stuff, then the 5D3 looked noticeably a lot better.

I'm also trying to get the cash for my own 5D3 at the moment, like you I think it could be a great all round performer. I'm shooting 7Draw all the time at the moment, but I can see how the 5D3 is a lot nicer (also for pictures, especially the DR).

I actually said goodbye to my a7s yesterday to make space for the 5D3  Looking forward to explore the magic!

[webrunner5]

11 minutes ago, SigurdW said:

I actually said goodbye to my a7s yesterday to make space for the 5D3  Looking forward to explore the magic!

I think I would have gone the other way LoL. Giving up low light, 4k and a better Codec well hmm.. Now going to a C100, well yeah to that.

[SigurdW]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

I think I would have gone the other way LoL. Giving up low light, 4k and a better Codec well hmm.. Now going to a C100, well yeah to that.

Yeah, I will definitely miss the ease of the a7s. The 4k and low light don't concern me much, as I have always found the awkward rigging of the shogun well.. awkward haha! For lowlight, the 5D holds up very well to ISO 3200, maybe even 6400 - which is plenty for my use. There is also an NAB-factor here. Will be interesting to see whats gonna happen to the older generations of the a7-line cameras, if Sony keep outperforming their products  Price wise
 

[hmcindie]

I sold my A7s and use the 5dmarkIII with it's RAW video feature. It is a considerably better camera than the original A7s in almost all aspects. In RAW the lowlight of the 5d III I think beats the A7s unless you go to 25,600 and upwards but then the A7s is pretty noisy there too. 5D raw cleans up easier because there is no compression but that does mean you have to do the noise reduction yourself which the A7s does automatically.

[tweak]

Compressed 8-bit is no match for the power of Raw!  

[webrunner5]

How much data does Raw generate comped to the A7s compressed files? Is it crazy like a BMPCC can be? Only camera I have ever had that I used raw with to compare.

[SigurdW]

3 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

How much data does Raw generate comped to the A7s compressed files? Is it crazy like a BMPCC can be? Only camera I have ever had that I used raw with to compare.

Its 3.5MB/frame (14-bit 1920x1080), gets you around 6 minutes on a 32 gig card! Yes, they are huge!

[webrunner5]

9 hours ago, SigurdW said:

Its 3.5MB/frame (14-bit 1920x1080), gets you around 6 minutes on a 32 gig card! Yes, they are huge!

Yikes!    Pocket Cinema Camera (1080p25)   64 GB card, recording RAW = approximately 15 minutes and I thought that was bad!! I think BMPCC Raw is 12bit??

[SigurdW]

18 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Yikes!    Pocket Cinema Camera (1080p25)   64 GB card, recording RAW = approximately 15 minutes and I thought that was bad!! I think BMPCC Raw is 12bit??

Yup, 12-bit on BMPCC. Actually it is now possible to record both 12- and 10-bit raw on the 5D3. However, its still at an experimental stage, but will potentially be two really nice features!

[SigurdW]

Took my new "Alexa Micro" for a quick spin when my Rectilux HardCore DNA arrived.

Some soft focus, forgot to remove vertical lines and low h.264 compression, but can't say I hate the colors!

This is probably something I can figure out on ML forums, but did not achieve more than 26 seconds on a SanDisk 128 160 mb/s card... Wrong formatting? Global draw on?

Cheers,
 

 

[Justin Bacle]

What resolution are you using ?
According to http://rawcalculator.bitballoon.com/calculator_desktop, you can get continuous recording on the 5d3 at 1776x1184 (3:2) in 14 bit. (1696x1130 3:2 for the 5d2)

Are sandisk cards recommended ? I thought only the lexar and komputerbay are able to deal with the bit rate. Anyway, do a write speed test and see the resolution you can achieve according to that

[SigurdW]

31 minutes ago, Justin Bacle said:

What resolution are you using ?
According to http://rawcalculator.bitballoon.com/calculator_desktop, you can get continuous recording on the 5d3 at 1776x1184 (3:2) in 14 bit. (1696x1130 3:2 for the 5d2)

Are sandisk cards recommended ? I thought only the lexar and komputerbay are able to deal with the bit rate. Anyway, do a write speed test and see the resolution you can achieve according to that

Thanks Justin! Will do it right away