Sony A7 III - Color and Lenses for “Beginner”

[SRV1981]

Most likely leaving the XT2 for the FF a7 III. 

 

Mostly shooting poorly lit indoor track and field as well as family portraits and street images.  Video - the same but also narrative cinematic looks with documentary interviews and b-roll. 
 

1.  what lenses would be good to start that cover much of the above needs?

2. any good suggestions to get great color with little post production? I don’t have much experience with NLE software. 
 

thanks!

[Mako Sports]

If your own a budget - 70 200 F4 or 70 300 FE 

If you have $$$ then 70 200 2.8 or 100 - 400 GM

Film convert pro is really easy to use, but I would take the time to learn how to color correct and grade by hand.

[Mark Romero 2]

11 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

Most likely leaving the XT2 for the FF a7 III. 

 

Mostly shooting poorly lit indoor track and field as well as family portraits and street images.  Video - the same but also narrative cinematic looks with documentary interviews and b-roll. 
 

1.  what lenses would be good to start that cover much of the above needs?

2. any good suggestions to get great color with little post production? I don’t have much experience with NLE software. 
 

thanks!

2: Resolve is free, and while it is not easy, there are a ton of tutorials out there. Black Magic Design has a very helpful user forum for resolve, as does lift gamma gain.

As for color, it gets pretty subjective. EOSHD pro color is one option, or there are tons of other custom picture profiles all over the web. 

For scenes that are darker and not too much dynamic range, Cine 2 is a nice picture profile. A lot of people like HLG 3 with BT2020 color space for scenes with more dynamic range, but SLOG 2 has more dynamic range. A couple of people who know what they are talking about on here have suggested using s-gamut3.cine color with SLOG 2 gamma. 

My experience is that getting white balance correct in camera at the time of shooting is crucial. 

1) There are a ton of REALLY good lenses out there at all sorts of price points. While you might want the 70-200 f/2.8 G Master for sports, you might want a 40-year-old manual lens for "cinematic looks," since for some people the words Cinematic mean things like, "lower contrast" or "swirly bokeh" or "soft flare." 

A lot of people like the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 lens and at $900 it is relatively affordable for a fast normal zoom, plus it is relatively light. A lot of other people like the 24-105 f/4 but then it is a stop slower. So you get more focal length (24mm vs 28mm, 105mm vs 75mm) but at the cost of a stop of light.

There are f/1.8 primes if you need big apertures, and then Sigma makes many f/1.4 lenses as well for Sony, although they are more expensive. They start at about $900 and go up to about $1,450 for the Sigma f/1.4 lenses.

And of course, there is the Simga MC-11 adapter which allows you to mount Canon lenses on to Sony cameras. In the past, the sony lens line up was kind of paltry, but there are a lot more lenses available today.

[SRV1981]

Thanks! 
 

what advice would you have to get the best SOOC color? Any in camera processing that can be done to get Nikon canon Fuji quality color?

 

and for post processing what’s the easiest NLE to learn/use for enthusiasts? I have a 2016 MBP. 

[kye]

10 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

My experience is that getting white balance correct in camera at the time of shooting is crucial. 

+1 for getting white balance right in camera.  

Sony is known to be harder to get good colour from but that just means that you have to be more particular with WB and processing in post.

Kraig Adams on YouTube is known for getting great results in camera and is currently using the A7iii.  He made a few videos about it that might include his colour profile and settings.

[kye]

2 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

and for post processing what’s the easiest NLE to learn/use for enthusiasts? I have a 2016 MBP. 

Not sure if it's the easiest, but I can recommend Davinci Resolve as an all-in-one NLE.

There's a free version that you'll be able to use for basically everything you will need. It's one of the premier colour grading packages used in Hollywood, so the restrictions on the free version aren't aimed at the enthusiasts.

FCPX has lots of devotees and PP also does although apparently it isn't that stable and people are starting to leave it to get better reliability.

[Deadcode]

58 minutes ago, kye said:

+1 for getting white balance right in camera.  

Sony is known to be harder to get good colour from but that just means that you have to be more particular with WB and processing in post.

Kraig Adams on YouTube is known for getting great results in camera and is currently using the A7iii.  He made a few videos about it that might include his colour profile and settings.

Kraig Adams is using factory default no picture profile, Standard 0.0.0 settings, and AWB.

[kye]

29 minutes ago, Deadcode said:

Kraig Adams is using factory default no picture profile, Standard 0.0.0 settings, and AWB.

Interesting. That's different to the A7Sii where IIRC he had customised one of the profiles.

Do you know if he's doing a lot of colouring in post? I'm not familiar with the look SOOC.

[Deadcode]

25 minutes ago, kye said:

Interesting. That's different to the A7Sii where IIRC he had customised one of the profiles.

Do you know if he's doing a lot of colouring in post? I'm not familiar with the look SOOC.

He's not doing any color correction. He said that years ago at the weddingfilmscool channel.

In the Panasonic S1H "review" he is referring to his go to settings which is Standard factory default with any camera, A7 III included.

So yeah... bad sony color science and stuff...

[scotchtape]

For talking heads I've been getting great results using color space transform to arri in resolve.  I just use cine4 and expose skin highlights around 60ire. Then you need to learn what nodes to adjust the exposure in... That takes time to learn to grade through the lut.

 

AWB is usually fine.

 

Also works in good light but not for low lighting or high dynamic range.

 

For "filmic" colors push blue to teal and yellow to orange in the hue panel.

 

You are going to get so many conflicting responses.  Find clips you like and find out how they colored it.

[SRV1981]

Does anybody here own a Sony a7 iii and live in NY?

[Mark Romero 2]

5 hours ago, scotchtape said:

For talking heads I've been getting great results using color space transform to arri in resolve. 

What input color space and input gamma do you use? Do you just set them to Rec 709 for input gamma / gamut when you shoot in Cine 4?

And what color gamut are you shooting in? Cinema? Pro? Something else?

[scotchtape]

"Use Timeline" works for me, I tried other settings and I don't think they're right, to be honest I don't know how to use that part, but "use timeline" works well.

On the camera I just have Pro for the color mode, and Cine4 for gamma.  The only other thing I changed was the knee to 80%.  After a bunch of shooting I found that messing with any of the other settings wasn't helpful.

Adjust exposure before the Arri LUT observing the where the skin tones start hitting the highlight curve (go too high and you will lose contrast in the skin).  You might want to adjust gamma up as well because the LUT is quite contrasty.  Basically the you want to put things where the LUT expects them to be otherwise everything will look weird.  Then after the lut, you can boost exposure to "video" levels where everything is brighter for youtube etc.  IF you boost exposure too much before the LUT you'll push everything into the highlight compression and lose contrast.

The other part is after the LUT I do skin tone correction by isolating and using the hue adjustments.

[kye]

8 hours ago, Deadcode said:

He's not doing any color correction. He said that years ago at the weddingfilmscool channel.

In the Panasonic S1H "review" he is referring to his go to settings which is Standard factory default with any camera, A7 III included.

So yeah... bad sony color science and stuff...

Well, that's definitely a credit to Sony as I haven't spotted a single clip with colour issues.

My understanding of Sony colours is that they are the most accurate but that people don't find them pleasing, and that their log profiles can be hard to grade.  But having said that I haven't worked with Sony footage (apart from my new X3000 action cam) so none of that is from personal experience.

 

Sounds like the OP should just use the default settings......

[noone]

Regards lenses.

 

Whatever you do, if 85mm is a thing for you just, get the FE 85 1.8 as it is a excellent lens and an absolute bargain.    Bonus is you can use it as a 85-170 zoom FF for video on Sony without much of an IQ dip (also for jpeg stills) and use it in APSC mode for even greater range.

[Mark Romero 2]

1 minute ago, noone said:

Regards lenses.

 

Whatever you do, if 85mm is a thing for you just, get the FE 85 1.8 as it is a excellent lens and an absolute bargain.    Bonus is you can use it as a 85-170 zoom FF for video on Sony without much of an IQ dip (also for jpeg stills) and use it in APSC mode for even greater range.

How's the AF speed on the Sony 85mm f/1.8?

On paper, it looks to be a good lens for sports in dark areas where you don't need a super long reach. Just I know that some very fast lenses tend to hunt... don't know if the Sony 85 f/1.8 is one of those or not.

[noone]

11 minutes ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

How's the AF speed on the Sony 85mm f/1.8?

On paper, it looks to be a good lens for sports in dark areas where you don't need a super long reach. Just I know that some very fast lenses tend to hunt... don't know if the Sony 85 f/1.8 is one of those or not.

I have only used it on an A7s where it worked great for AFS in ANY light (AFC on that camera is almost non existent).      I would think on an A7iii it should be fine but others who have used the combination might want to chime in.   Sold the lens when my A7s broke but I wish i had it still now I have another.

[Mark Romero 2]

4 minutes ago, noone said:

I have only used it on an A7s where it worked great for AFS in ANY light (AFC on that camera is almost non existent).      I would think on an A7iii it should be fine but others who have used the combination might want to chime in.   Sold the lens when my A7s broke but I wish i had it still now I have another.

Thanks. Yeah, original a7S was not a speed demon when it came to AF.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

Color-wise, I like to shoot in SLOG2 and SGamut3.cine, then use the color space transform tool on my second node in Resolve to translate that into r.709. Grade normally from there. Using the second node is key, because you can do all your white balance and highlight/shadow recovery on the first node, pre-transform, without clipping any data or creating tricky color balance issues. 

[SRV1981]

Would the 24-105 f4 be good enough for indoor and not well lit sport facilities to get my track kids running? 
 

the 24-105 has great distance and f4 is still enough bokeh/separation but can the ISO performance of the a7 iii make

up for the f4 aperture?

 

theres now way I can afford a 70-200 2.8 for being an enthusiast