Sony A7S III

[Trek of Joy]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Is that an affiliate link you are enriching yourself with there?

Yes it is, the gave it to me after purchasing, apologies, please delete if not allowed.

[Hangs4Fun]

1 hour ago, Dave Maze said:

let me know your thoughts! i found after making the vid that the magenta issues are more or less solved if you shoot slog2 instead

So far, I have not seen any magenta in my S-Log3 or 16bit RAW workflow, I have not seen that magenta cast thankfully.  The little bit that needs correcting seems to be corrected with the Leeming S-Log3 corrective LUT.

I'm loving the internal 4:2:2 10bit All Intra so far, with marginal benefits with RAW for what I do.  Been working with Sony's 8bit for so long, it's a nice change.  Especially paired with properly exposed and corrected S-Log3.  

[Hangs4Fun]

2 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

FYI the Prograde V90 cards are on sale, if you use the code ALPHAGVRD20 they knock 20% off. I bought two 128gb v90 cards for $188. I haven't found a better deal. 

Chris

Dang that is over $20 cheaper that 1 single Sony Tough G card at 128GB.  Man, I'm stuck on those TOUGH cards though, as my passion projects take me filming for a week or two solo in wilderness.  Sony's marketing team has me convinced those cards are indestructible, lol.

Granted, they are a solid piece of material and have zero flex in them 😉  

Thanks for the link, luckily I purchased a bunch of V90's on the day of the pre-order, because I wasn't sure if there would be any CFast Express Type A's and that would force people to panick and buy the next best thing (V90 cards).  I posted on here back then to get your V90's now before "the rush", lol.

[Trek of Joy]

First couple shoots, a delicious Czech Pilsner beer canning (unsealed cans are free samples LOL!), and an interview. Both shoots I used 10-bit 4:2:0 h265 to keep file sizes manageable, and since 4:2:2 slows things down a lot it’ll make my life easier with the edit. So far loving the a7s3, IQ is beautiful and the AF is better than anything I’ve ever used. It’s flat out amazing, well worth it to me so far. So glad I pivoted from the R5 preorder to this.  All in all very happy. 

chris

[Trek of Joy]

Frame grab from today's interview. Just made basic adjustments to balance the RGB parade, nothing else. WB needs a little tweaking and I feel like I never add enough contrast...

Shot at 4k24p roughly 50mm and f/4 or 5.6, can't remember which one as it was getting brighter and my ND only went to 5-stops, so I had to stop down to prevent hotspots on the boats in the BG.

Chris

[scotchtape]

Thanks for sharing.  If only it had more oversampling 😞 

[Trek of Joy]

17 hours ago, scotchtape said:

Thanks for sharing.  If only it had more oversampling 😞 

The image is fantastic IMO. Looks really good on my MBP and my 65" TV. But as always YMMV.

Chris

[Hangs4Fun]

1 hour ago, Trek of Joy said:

The image is fantastic IMO. Looks really good on my MBP and my 65" TV. But as always YMMV.

Chris

Ironically, I am shooting at a brewery today, lol.  Doing an OktoberFest, plus some B Roll for an upcoming commercial and interview series.  I'm scrambling, I think my capture is good, just have a lot of work to do with the 10bit footage in post (I have not worked with much 10bit 4:2:2 before now).  The A7SIII is performing great, I just need to step up my game now 😉

I think your image looks great btw, checked it out on my big screen and on my studio monitors (pair of BenQ SW320 which I calibrate weekly for my large scale printing).

Now if only I drank beer, I could have all the free beer I wanted tonight.  Just never liked the smell so I never tasted it (plus my dad drank enough growing up for the two of our lifetimes, so..)

[Trek of Joy]

On 10/3/2020 at 12:49 PM, Hangs4Fun said:

Ironically, I am shooting at a brewery today, lol.  Doing an OktoberFest, plus some B Roll for an upcoming commercial and interview series.  I'm scrambling, I think my capture is good, just have a lot of work to do with the 10bit footage in post (I have not worked with much 10bit 4:2:2 before now).  The A7SIII is performing great, I just need to step up my game now 😉

I think your image looks great btw, checked it out on my big screen and on my studio monitors (pair of BenQ SW320 which I calibrate weekly for my large scale printing).

Now if only I drank beer, I could have all the free beer I wanted tonight.  Just never liked the smell so I never tasted it (plus my dad drank enough growing up for the two of our lifetimes, so..)

Thanks, I'm still trying to get a handle on where to push the contrast, with stills I push it pretty hard but there so much more headroom to push the files around, but I'm always really conservative with video.

Beer pouring is prefect for 120fps stuff, close shots of foam and bubbles swirling around, can't wait! I'll be shooting that at the same brewery tomorrow along with more interviews. Gotta remember my CPL to kill reflections on the glass LOL! 

Got rained out this weekend in Florida, was hoping to shoot some sunset skintone stress tests with various codecs and bitrates to get a better feel for exposing Slog3 and to see how hard I can push the files. I'm still not comfortable with using Slog in a working environment (always used Cine2 and the Leeming Lut with the a7III) because I'm still learning how to get it right. Plus I want to compare internal to Prores in the Ninja and tinker with raw on some high contrast scenes. I saw a video that compared 10-bit internal/external and the colors looked better on the external recording. Maybe next weekend...

Cheers

Chris

[MeanRevert]

That image looks good although video-ish.

[ntblowz]

DR result out, lower than what Gerald tested?

https://www.cined.com/sony-a7s-iii-lab-test-does-it-live-up-to-the-hype/

 

[ajay]

Anyone with the A7SIII and a Ninja want to do a test for me? I have the A7SIII and I'm having difficulties with the camera shooting the night sky. It appears that at certain ISO levels, it eats stars. They will disappear from view. For example using pp7 (Slog2) between ISO 80,000 and 102,400 it appears that some NR kicks in and wipes out a bunch of stars from the night sky.

I'd be curious to know if recording raw externally will prevent this from occurring. I might invest in a Ninja if this works. I just hate to order it and then find out it still looks like crap.

It's a real shame since the A7SII doesn't have this problem. Rather bummed at the moment.

[Snowfun]

45 minutes ago, ajay said:

I'd be curious to know if recording raw externally will prevent this from occurring.

And, indeed, whether any external recording (eg BM Video Assist prores) also prevents it... 

Don’t mind the Sony eating Canon, Nikon et al for breakfast but stars?

[thefactory]

Starting to get a little frustrated here is Australia. I pre ordered day after launch and Im still waiting. My store got stock but only a third of what they were expecting. Yet Sony managed to get that a7c piece of shit out into stores quickly. They only had 3 years to get the a7siii right! 

[Geoff CB]

Some beautiful RAW footage. Does anyone know if it is possible to open RAW in Catalyst Browse and export a S-log3 file from that? 

 

[Trek of Joy]

16 hours ago, ajay said:

Anyone with the A7SIII and a Ninja want to do a test for me? I have the A7SIII and I'm having difficulties with the camera shooting the night sky. It appears that at certain ISO levels, it eats stars. They will disappear from view. For example using pp7 (Slog2) between ISO 80,000 and 102,400 it appears that some NR kicks in and wipes out a bunch of stars from the night sky.

I'd be curious to know if recording raw externally will prevent this from occurring. I might invest in a Ninja if this works. I just hate to order it and then find out it still looks like crap.

It's a real shame since the A7SII doesn't have this problem. Rather bummed at the moment.

Is it really obvious? I don't shoot astro so I've never really noticed the star eater problem - but I've seen the talk about it for years. I have a Ninja and I'm going to test this weekend if it doesn't rain - big if with another hurricane in the Gulf. I'd be happy to point it at the sky for a minute to check though.

Chris

[ajay]

20 minutes ago, Trek of Joy said:

Is it really obvious? I don't shoot astro so I've never really noticed the star eater problem - but I've seen the talk about it for years. I have a Ninja and I'm going to test this weekend if it doesn't rain - big if with another hurricane in the Gulf. I'd be happy to point it at the sky for a minute to check though.

Chris

That would be great if you could give it a try. The stars have to be in focus for them to disappear @ ISO 102,400 in Slog 2.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate. Yet another hurricane in the Gulf! Crazy. Thanks!

[Hangs4Fun]

1 hour ago, Trek of Joy said:

Is it really obvious? I don't shoot astro so I've never really noticed the star eater problem - but I've seen the talk about it for years. I have a Ninja and I'm going to test this weekend if it doesn't rain - big if with another hurricane in the Gulf. I'd be happy to point it at the sky for a minute to check though.

Chris

One thing that is going to be a downside on this camera is that we can't disable the noise reduction which usually do for my astro photos and time lapses (I don't shoot nearly as much video when it comes to astro)

I tend to lean on quality fast optics versus ISO when shooting astro (stills).  I used my 16-35GM until the 24GM came out.  At f/1.4 and hands down the best anti-sagital flaring I've ever seen in a lens, it one of the best IMHO.  Only downside is I typical shoot between 16 and 18mm on astro.  But what I've been having a lot of luck with is doing 2 or 3 shot pano's in portrait orientation.

Since you are talking RAW, I assume you are wanting someone to try video of astro?

I just happen to be camping with my A7SIII and my Ninja V, i would be happy to try it tonight.  Only issue is Im under major canopy closer to Atlanta than I will be by Sunday.  By Sunday I should be more in the open and up around Blood mountain in the North Georgia Mountains.  Will definitely try that for you then, as I was already going to test astro photos and motion time lapses.  Won't be much of a stretch to test RAW video. 

BTW...  When ETTR'ing at 94+ (for the corrective LUT's I use), the RAW output looks beautiful on the Ninja V using the corrective LUT as a display assist.  But when I bring it into Premiere the highlights and whites are significantly over exposed.   No clue yet why, trying to work with each of the pieces of the puzzle to resolve, Adobe, Apple, and LUT maker via support tickets and passing along findings.

So today I setup a color checker test and did regular output (ETTR 94+), RAW (94+), RAW underexposed 1 stop, 2 stops, and 3 stops from ETTR 94+.   I don't have my SSD to USB cable with me, so I don't know which one is best yet once you get it into Premiere past the Apple ProRes RAW drivers.  It looks perfect in the Ninja V when ETTR'ed at 94+ with the corrective LUT, so until I can get the footage into Premiere I won't know.

My wife is sending me that adapter, so I should be able to see by tomorrow night and will share my findings.  I mention this, because it will affect how you expose RAW on the A7SIII

Have a great day, and be safe out there

🙂

[ajay]

55 minutes ago, Hangs4Fun said:

One thing that is going to be a downside on this camera is that we can't disable the noise reduction which usually do for my astro photos and time lapses (I don't shoot nearly as much video when it comes to astro)

I tend to lean on quality fast optics versus ISO when shooting astro (stills).  I used my 16-35GM until the 24GM came out.  At f/1.4 and hands down the best anti-sagital flaring I've ever seen in a lens, it one of the best IMHO.  Only downside is I typical shoot between 16 and 18mm on astro.  But what I've been having a lot of luck with is doing 2 or 3 shot pano's in portrait orientation.

 

🙂

I think you should be okay with stills. It's the video side that eats stars. There could also be some NR going on with raw stills but it's looks really good with time exposures and time lapses should look outstanding as well. Attached is a shot I took the other night with the Sony 20mm 1.8. It's a 10 sec exposure at ISO 3,200.

You should be able to test the "star eating feature" even with skies that aren't the best. As long as the stars look sharp, the dimmer ones disappear. That would really be helpful if you could determine if recording externally will resolve this. Thanks!

[ajay]

Here's an example of what's happening at higher ISO's. The ISO threshold for the star-eating NR happens at different levels based on the picture profile. For S-Log2 it's between 80,000 and 102,400.