Sony A7S III

[Viscount Omega]

Color is the obvious difference.  I don't debate that.  But I can grade anything in S-log3.

I just think there's something tricky going on with the amount of info gathered.

Like I said,  600 Mb/s , right?  Same codec? Right?

Doesn't look the same to me.

[Trek of Joy]

6 hours ago, SteveV4D said:

no camera is perfect, but depending on our needs, it can be god enough for our use.

I've repeatedly said the same thing. Find the tool that fits your needs and put it to work.

Cheers

Chris

[SteveV4D]

9 minutes ago, Trek of Joy said:

I've repeatedly said the same thing. Find the tool that fits your needs and put it to work.

Cheers

Chris

That's the problem.. I haven't found it.  Fullframe DCI 4K HQ, no time limits. Strong editable codec. Upto 60p frame rate. Great AF, IBIS and colour.  Can shoot quality photos no less than 20MP. 

If you have better luck finding one than me, let me know. 

[thebrothersthre3]

14 minutes ago, Viscount Omega said:

Color is the obvious difference.  I don't debate that.  But I can grade anything in S-log3.

I just think there's something tricky going on with the amount of info gathered.

Like I said,  600 Mb/s , right?  Same codec? Right?

Doesn't look the same to me.

Well there are different codec options, may depend what any given user posting footage recorded in I guess. All-I vs longGop and all that or H265 vs H264 and which datarate as well. 
 

 

[Trek of Joy]

26 minutes ago, SteveV4D said:

That's the problem.. I haven't found it.  Fullframe DCI 4K HQ, no time limits. Strong editable codec. Upto 60p frame rate. Great AF, IBIS and colour.  Can shoot quality photos no less than 20MP. 

If you have better luck finding one than me, let me know. 

I'm with you. Still waiting for that unicorn to appear, for a brief second the R5 was it and I had one that would have been delivered Thursday. Then it literally went down in flames. Given that we really won't see anything significant for another couple of years now that Canon has gone all-in with the R5/6, Nikon is drunk and passed out with the rumored Z6s/7s, all Sony has left is the a7IV which will be hit with the cripple hammer compared to the a7s3, and nobody else is making significant headway - I've accepted the fact that the one camera hybrid solution isn't happening anytime soon. One body will shoot mostly stills, one mostly video, lots of lens changes, and lots of damn sensor swabs since Sony's 3rd/4th gen cams attract dust like no other camera I've used. Holy shit the a73/a7r3's are a dust magnet compared to the a7r2/s2 I carried across six continents!

Anyway, needing to go two cameras means I've ordered the a7s3 and I'm now looking to shift my a7r3 to a a7r4 so AF and accessories are mirrored (pun intended) between the two with grips, underwater housings and so on. This will cover me for the next 2-3 years until someone gets it right in the next round of updates.

Cheers

Chris

[Robert Collins]

5 minutes ago, Trek of Joy said:

I'm with you. Still waiting for that unicorn to appear, for a brief second the R5 was it and I had one that would have been delivered Thursday. Then it literally went down in flames. Given that we really won't see anything significant for another couple of years now that Canon has gone all-in with the R5/6, Nikon is drunk and passed out with the rumored Z6s/7s, all Sony has left is the a7IV which will be hit with the cripple hammer compared to the a7s3, and nobody else is making significant headway - I've accepted the fact that the one camera hybrid solution isn't happening anytime soon. One body will shoot mostly stills, one mostly video, lots of lens changes, and lots of damn sensor swabs since Sony's 3rd/4th gen cams attract dust like no other camera I've used. Holy shit the a73/a7r3's are a dust magnet compared to the a7r2/s2 I carried across six continents!

Anyway, needing to go two cameras means I've ordered the a7s3 and I'm now looking to shift my a7r3 to a a7r4 so AF and accessories are mirrored (pun intended) between the two with grips, underwater housings and so on. This will cover me for the next 2-3 years until someone gets it right in the next round of updates.

Cheers

Chris

Going the same route. Have an A7riii and A7riv. Will sell the A7riii and buy an A7siii. Will be set for a couple of years....

[BenEricson]

7 hours ago, anonim said:

Little bit of digression - just to remind when camera (here cheap Sony) is in service of talent/idea, not about going to specs war for 4500e Hybrid (Bullshit) Lords

 

5D Mk3 raw. Yeah, it still looks amazing 

[Super8]

1 hour ago, Trek of Joy said:

I'm with you. Still waiting for that unicorn to appear, for a brief second the R5 was it and I had one that would have been delivered Thursday. Then it literally went down in flames. Given that we really won't see anything significant for another couple of years now that Canon has gone all-in with the R5/6, Nikon is drunk and passed out with the rumored Z6s/7s, all Sony has left is the a7IV which will be hit with the cripple hammer compared to the a7s3, and nobody else is making significant headway - I've accepted the fact that the one camera hybrid solution isn't happening anytime soon. One body will shoot mostly stills, one mostly video, lots of lens changes, and lots of damn sensor swabs since Sony's 3rd/4th gen cams attract dust like no other camera I've used. Holy shit the a73/a7r3's are a dust magnet compared to the a7r2/s2 I carried across six continents!

Anyway, needing to go two cameras means I've ordered the a7s3 and I'm now looking to shift my a7r3 to a a7r4 so AF and accessories are mirrored (pun intended) between the two with grips, underwater housings and so on. This will cover me for the next 2-3 years until someone gets it right in the next round of updates.

Cheers

Chris

Nikon is hardly drunk and passed out.  They produced a better camera than anything Sony has released so far (the A7S3 is not out yet).  This tells you how far Sony brainwash has seeped into the cine world.  You can't argue AF / No AF or BM IR pollution / color science and then give Sony a free pass on everything above.  People talk about Nikon full sensor read out Pro Res RAW external and get caught up in line skip binning / recording to Atomos or whatever but then Sony gets a pass on external RAW. We talk about image quality, color science and Sony gets a pass. You can't always fix Sony color, in fact you can't fix Sony color.  Sony does not produce a NR FREE, sharpened FREE cinematic moving image.  Sony does great PR and marketing and this is evident in the You Tube producers that we dismiss but now look to for reassurance that the Sony A7S3 is better than the Canon R5 because it records longer before over heating.  Everyone has forgot the R5 does 8K RAW internally.  At the end of the day the best produced image wins. 

[Ashit Tandon]

Can someone explain to me how the extended ISO range works for Slog3.

I used to shoot Cine4 with my a7iii. I think SLOG3 had a base ISO of 1600. And we had to over expose 2 stops over. So that implied an even higher ISO.

With the a7siii, the base ISO is 640. Do we still need to over expose? Also, I see folks saying that an extended ISO range is available (can go down as low as 160 I think). But wouldn't that mean we are under exposing SLOG3 (which has a base ISO of 640). So confused how this works

[thebrothersthre3]

31 minutes ago, Ashit Tandon said:

Can someone explain to me how the extended ISO range works for Slog3.

I used to shoot Cine4 with my a7iii. I think SLOG3 had a base ISO of 1600. And we had to over expose 2 stops over. So that implied an even higher ISO.

With the a7siii, the base ISO is 640. Do we still need to over expose? Also, I see folks saying that an extended ISO range is available (can go down as low as 160 I think). But wouldn't that mean we are under exposing SLOG3 (which has a base ISO of 640). So confused how this works

Extended ISO on other cameras results in loss of dynamic range, guessing its the same here. I would assume SLOG works the same exposure wise as before. The difference now is you'll get more usable shadows with 10 bit and not have to worry as much about underexposing. 

[scotchtape]

The guy in the chinese video review said extended ISO means loss of highlight details (makes sense, and the same with other cameras when you lose DR by using extended ISO).  Everything else should be more or less the same, except of course you can use a lower base ISO.

The more I see the more I like in terms of features.  Chinese video nailed it for the most part, the S1H screen design is better, everything else is decent.  The one thing I "feel" when watching all these A7SIII videos is that it does not have the biting sharpness of oversampled sensors, and I'm constantly thinking, what is actually in focus here.  A lot of it looks oddly "soft". Most people here will probably enjoy it as it's more "cinematic" (I hate myself for using that word), but I actually like the option to have uber sharp footage. A small price to pay I suppose, but I really enjoy having the option to have that in your face detail.  You can always blur footage a bit, but it's you can't get the detail back if it's not there to begin with.

I'm surprised the footage from other people is so unflattering, especially when shooting in natural light which is basically "cheating" in terms of lighting.  Chinese vid was the first one I thought actually showed you could get decent color from it. 

[thebrothersthre3]

10 minutes ago, scotchtape said:

The more I see the more I like in terms of features.  Chinese video nailed it for the most part, the S1H screen design is better, everything else is decent.  The one thing I "feel" when watching all these A7SIII videos is that it does not have the biting sharpness of oversampled sensors, and I'm constantly thinking, what is actually in focus here.  A lot of it looks oddly "soft". Most people here will probably enjoy it as it's more "cinematic" (I hate myself for using that word), but I actually like the option to have uber sharp footage. A small price to pay I suppose, but I really enjoy having the option to have that in your face detail.  You can always blur footage a bit, but it's you can't get the detail back if it's not there to begin with.

Full sensor 4K shouldn't really lack in detail. Unless you are blowing it up on a big screen maybe or cropping heavily in post, I find it hard to believe you'd see a difference between it and downsampled 6k. I was just talking to a producer on a feature I shot last year, he said they were adding diffusion and blur in post as the image was too detailed for many shots. That was all shot on the Pocket 4k. 

I feel like soft looking shots are more likely due to very shallow depth of field where almost nothing is in focus or a truly out of focus shot. Youtube compression also ruins everything. I remember watching a comparison to the P4K and P6K and half the shots were out of focus making the comparison useless haha. I guess that is where Sony's auto focus comes in, what good is detail if your shot isn't even in focus. Alas I just bought a Panasonic S1, guess I'll be stopping down more. 

[IronFilm]

On 7/29/2020 at 9:51 PM, zerocool22 said:

I know I should not compare it to an arri alexa. But dang I just wish these companies could get arri style colour in an affordable package in 2020. The alexa is 10 years old, and these japanese companies dont come anywhere close to its image or colours 10 years later, in tech years thats ages. Sony had great colour on the F35, so not sure why they have not matched it 10 years later.  

Because the cameras they sell now don't cost a quarter of a million dollars to buy.

[noone]

18 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Because the cameras they sell now don't cost a quarter of a million dollars to buy.

They DO on Ebay if you are not careful!

[gethin]

9 hours ago, SteveV4D said:

That's the problem.. I haven't found it.  Fullframe DCI 4K HQ, no time limits. Strong editable codec. Upto 60p frame rate. Great AF, IBIS and colour.  Can shoot quality photos no less than 20MP. 

If you have better luck finding one than me, let me know. 

Agree. The z6 is nearly this. But the af is totally amateurish, as is the codec. 

Add to your list 15ms readout.  (And 13.5 stops dynamic range in stills minimum)

 

 

[Geoff_L]

1 hour ago, gethin said:

Agree. The z6 is nearly this. But the af is totally amateurish, as is the codec. 

Add to your list 15ms readout.  (And 13.5 stops dynamic range in stills minimum)

 

 

I had a z6 before my actual Panasonic S1. I believe, with the latest firmware update, the af is miles ahead than what it used to be. @Jordan Drake rates video AF very highly, and I came across comparisons with the A7iii, and the z6 is not extremely far from it (at least for my needs, which exclude eyes af, and also compared to my S1). For the codec, same thing, it punches higher than its weight. In fact, I am right now browsing "old" footages I took with it, and play with them in resolve to compare with my S1 10bit. The nikon flat profile, as frequently reported, is very good. Sure, as you point out, it is weak compared to other offerings, but it quite good. To be honest, as I browse my old footages, I find more pleasing images than with my S1. I don't know, despite the very robust specs of the S1, and the image quality, there is something in the Z6 image that I find lacking in the S1 (a bit of "soul" maybe). So yes, if nikon could raise the next Z models to the level of offering of the competition (codec and better AF like you said), it could be a beast.
I forgot about the lenses, but the Z line-up is really good, and more interesting  for me than the RF and L. Plus, as I shoot with tele, the 300pf and 500pf have no competition...

Ps : the battery problem on the S1 drove me crazy, to the point I am gonna get rid of it (plus the overall bulk and the af, that I now need, and I did not back when I bought it), and i am contemplating going back to the Z6 of entering the Sony system.

[Zeng]

Amateurish af on z6? I don’t know why this myth continues. AF in video mode is actually excellent. And native s lenses don’t breath (almost). Strangely, Nikon somewhat showed they really cared and understood the needs of video shooters, and then sort of left things in the middle of the road. Lenses need linear focus mode as an option (was mentioned they were to get it, but when?), z6 was the first with prores raw, but the wait was too long, processor appeared to be too weak (they had to compromise it a bit with pixel binning, although the quality is still great), internal rec was just 8bit. Could they fix all this with z6s? Somehow they don’t know how to market their products. Z6 is a much better product than is presented on youtube, etc.

[Video Hummus]

12 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

I'm with you. Still waiting for that unicorn to appear, for a brief second the R5 was it and I had one that would have been delivered Thursday. Then it literally went down in flames. Given that we really won't see anything significant for another couple of years now that Canon has gone all-in with the R5/6, Nikon is drunk and passed out with the rumored Z6s/7s, all Sony has left is the a7IV which will be hit with the cripple hammer compared to the a7s3, and nobody else is making significant headway - I've accepted the fact that the one camera hybrid solution isn't happening anytime soon. One body will shoot mostly stills, one mostly video, lots of lens changes, and lots of damn sensor swabs since Sony's 3rd/4th gen cams attract dust like no other camera I've used. Holy shit the a73/a7r3's are a dust magnet compared to the a7r2/s2 I carried across six continents!

Anyway, needing to go two cameras means I've ordered the a7s3 and I'm now looking to shift my a7r3 to a a7r4 so AF and accessories are mirrored (pun intended) between the two with grips, underwater housings and so on. This will cover me for the next 2-3 years until someone gets it right in the next round of updates.

Cheers

Chris

I strongly believe the A7IV will have 4K60 10-bit (probably no ALL-I) and a 20+ MP sensor. It will lack the “Venice” color tweaks they did to the A7SIII but as long has it has 10-bit it doesn’t matter as much. It might be better than the S3 but just without the 4K120p and with more strict overheating conditions.

[scotchtape]

I'd pay 2000 for it if they used crappy evf and lost the 120fps 🙂

But you'd probably lose the codec options, and you probably won't keep full HDMI, might lose eye af when using HDMI out, and other crippling. But hey, it's cheaper, I really like the a7iii for the price!

[Super8]

3 hours ago, Zeng said:

Amateurish af on z6? I don’t know why this myth continues. AF in video mode is actually excellent. And native s lenses don’t breath (almost). Strangely, Nikon somewhat showed they really cared and understood the needs of video shooters, and then sort of left things in the middle of the road. Lenses need linear focus mode as an option (was mentioned they were to get it, but when?), z6 was the first with prores raw, but the wait was too long, processor appeared to be too weak (they had to compromise it a bit with pixel binning, although the quality is still great), internal rec was just 8bit. Could they fix all this with z6s? Somehow they don’t know how to market their products. Z6 is a much better product than is presented on youtube, etc.

You are 100% correct.  The Z6 is much better than what's portrayed on YouTube.  People on the EOS don't know what they're missing.  It's all marketing.  This is what I hate about Sony marketing.  It's to the point that it's false and hyped up.  It's great for the Sony side but it takes down a company like Nikon.  That's the dishonest part.  Have people lie about the Z6 camera so it has a poor reputation.

Nikon pushed the limits of video quality that we expected, no reason they won't do it again.