Surprise! Sony Alpha A6000 video mode huge improvement

[Andrew Reid]

Because you might not be a street videographer ;) but yes, it's terrible. Anyway, it's a nikon and there are so many lenses with aperture ring (most of my lenses do) so it has never a real bummer for me when using the d7000.

 

Who said anything about street videography? If your cast is in the zone and ready to go, but the camera man is fiddling with his live view and mirror flipping up and down, it's a pain...

[Nikkor]

You said "missing a shot" and I said streetvideographer just as an example for something where you can actually loose a shot, of course it's a pain when shooting with new lenses.

[Kwstas Poulios]

 I was using Nikon dslrs and some Canons until now, I prefered the overall image quality that the Nikons gave me, but now that I use the a6000 for a few weeks , I can say for sure that the chromatic and overall image quality is great, and it looks better to me than Nikon. It's very close though, but with all the extras that Nikon doesn't give in it's firmware , and the light body of a6000, for me the clear winner in video is Sony. And yes I'll keep using both. ;)

[powderific]

Yeah, after watching EyeSoul's videos again I think the quality is going to be more than sufficient for what I'm doing. And it's just so much more interesting than the D5300 as a stills camera (to me anyway.) Somehow KEH already had a used one in stock so I picked up the body and a 35mm 1.8 OSS to start.

[EyeSoul]

Hey everyone! I just wanted to say before I picked up the A6000 I was really in the market for the D5300 being that I had the D5200 and wanted to upgrade do to the improvements. So one day I walked in the camera store with every intention on buying a D5300 and just happen to inquire when the A6000 would be in-stock, to my surprise they had it in, this was way before the projected release date. I asked to play with it a bit, long story short I left the store with the A6000.

 

I very much liked the images out of the D5200 with no real complaints other than the FPN in the shadows and the aperture issue. I had no intentions on changing brands but when I put the little thing in my hand I just fell in lust, the form factor,the features and the rumored video quality basically made me buy a camera that was on my radar but not a definite purchase in my mind. After I got home I wondered had I made the right decision and even thought about taking it back but in the end I kept the A6000 and have no regrets.

 

I feel the negatives of the A6000 are maybe the absence of a mic input and the codec but other great features tend to make you not care so much about them, personally I haven't ran into a issue with either thus far. I think the big thing with this camera is dialing the in-camera settings far as picture profile to a good starting point,considering you plan on grading your footage. A lot of sample footage I have seen online really doesn't do the camera justice, too much sharpening and other degrading factors in my humble opinion. In the right hands and when people really get to know the A6000 I feel some great images will be produced with it. Sorry for the long drawn out post.

[EyeSoul]

From my test -3 sharpness using my 35mm 1.8 is still sharp to my eye if I nail focus correct. It seems this camera sharpens up real quick going from the negative into the positive. I prefer to add sharpening in post,it seems the footage retains a more organic look far as edges are concerned. just another 2 cent.

[Kwstas Poulios]

 Î™ was going to buy the D5300 too, but right at the last moment I saw the a6000 , had the chance to test it for one day, and changed my mind quickly. So I have gone with the a6000, and I'm really happy about my decision. I still use my D5200 for video, and I love it, and my Nikon FX for stills! But the new option for a lighter body that I can have with me wherever I am, is great! And the video options in the Sony menu are much more helpful! 

[Guest]

What's the point of slightly better image quality if you miss a shot entirely due to having to quit movie mode simply to set the required aperture?

 

"Better" image quality? What is it, this "better"? I thought filmmaking was an art form. I thought we got to choose our tools based on our tastes and what our priorities are - mine in this case being the image I'm getting from the D5300:

 

 

Anyway, I use all manual aperture lenses.

[dstilio]

To 

Matt James Smith

 

I respect your opinion. And I was one of the many that was ready to buy d5300.

And although we try to create art (some of us do succeed, some of us don't), we cannot avoid that in practise, technology restrictions may prevent you from creating art.

It is not painting. You are inter-connected with a box of technology.

If this box does not help you in practise...

It is what you weight more on the road towards art.

Image quality?

Ergonomics?

Content?

I tend to weight more the last two. Because Image quality is pretty close (they share the same sensor).

But ergonomics...sony is way ahead unfortunatelly.

 

P.S> I own also a nikon d5100 so I've tested the ergonomics for quite a long.

[WDHX]

Has anybody tested the HDMI output ? 420 ? 8 bit ? 24 p 25 p ?  Looking at the image quality in some videos , the codec is a real restriction .

[Kwstas Poulios]

οh yes it is for sure ;) great video!

[Guest]

To 

Matt James Smith

 

I respect your opinion. And I was one of the many that was ready to buy d5300.

And although we try to create art (some of us do succeed, some of us don't), we cannot avoid that in practise, technology restrictions may prevent you from creating art.

It is not painting. You are inter-connected with a box of technology.

If this box does not help you in practise...

It is what you weight more on the road towards art.

Image quality?

Ergonomics?

Content?

I tend to weight more the last two. Because Image quality is pretty close (they share the same sensor).

But ergonomics...sony is way ahead unfortunatelly.

 

P.S> I own also a nikon d5100 so I've tested the ergonomics for quite a long.

Everyone has a choice - one man wants ease of use, another man wants a particular quality of image (not a "better" one). There is no "better" technology in art! There is only the right tool for the job. Nobody tells me what camera is "best" for the film I want to make. That's up to me, and my film will succeed  or fail on my choices. If we all made exactly the same films, with strict aesthetic criteria, we'd be living in a pretty awful (and dull) society.

 

Try telling any professional painter or art historian that painting - the history of painting - is not hugely driven by technology! Paint is technology just like a camera is! It is a more basic technology, of course - but technology is almost by definition about advancement and increasing sophistication. Take two of the most famous periods in art history - the Renaissance and Impressionism. Both basically began due to advancements in oil paint "technology" - the realism of the Renaissance would not have been possible if it were not for the slow-drying qualities of oil paint (until then most painting was done with quick drying egg tempera). Impressionism quite literally only happened because of the invention of the paint tube!!! Before the invention and mass-production of the very affordable, very portable metal paint tube with a screw-on top in the late 1800's, it was a huge undertaking for anyone to take an easel out into the landscape, do a day's painting and then pack the paint you made yourself in a big tin away so the colour you want to use again tomorrow doesn't dry up! It might sound funny, but the invention of the paint tube was far, far more revolutionary than the day Canon put HD video on the 5D2. Without the paint tube Van Gogh would not have been able to afford paint or take his wide, rich palette of colours outdoors. Monet could not have painted so "fast and loose". Ditto Cezanne. As Renoir said - "Without tubes of paint, there would be no Impressionism"! 

 

ALL art is bound up with technology. All of it. You cannot separate the two things. Cameras and paint-boxes are not so different. We have very sophisticated technology now, but to say paint is not technology is simple ignorance.

 

Affordable video ILC's's have made cinematic images available to almost anyone. They are todays paint tubes. This is not the time to say - "yes I have a kind-of cinematic camera, but the image is not quite up to "real" cinema standards - it needs to be "better" before I can compete with the gallons of dross Hollywood vomits on us every year." Now is the time to say, "Finally! I can make a film the way I want to! I don't give two sh*ts about whether it stacks up against the f***ing Alexa! I'm going to go out and do my thing. If it does what I want it to do then that's all that matters to me."

 

"Better"!?! For F's F'ing sake! 

 

Seriously, I enjoy a bit of heated debate on this forum and genuinely get very valuable info here, but sometimes I wonder if half of you know what you have in your hands. Today NLE's can be put on any computer going; the internet is a readymade distribution network; video DSLR's give wonderful, creative images. It's genuinely revolutionary. Stories make the world go round. And all you can do is compare your tools to the Alexa and suck on Ridley Scott/Terrence Malick/[insert canonised director of your choice here]'s great big Cooke. 

 

The world is changing. Art is bound up in technology and revolution is bound up in art. Why can't we go out and tell our stories the way we want to tell them? If for you that's ultimately with an Alexa with a view to cinematic distribution, great - all power to you. But every representational system has its limitations. In 200 years time the Alexa will be as funny as a box of paints, for sure. I love the image from that camera, but don't bloody tell me that it's images are "better" than mine. "Better" at what? Resolution, dynamic range, colour? Yes, for sure. But if Upstream Colour had been shot on an Alexa, would it have been the same film? I really doubt it. That film is it's own thing in a way very, very few features are able to be. Did I do much pixel peeping while watching it? Personally, not much at all. 

 

If you need ergonomics and usability for what you want to do, great. If you want to sacrifice your creativity at the altar of ever-improving image quality, fine. But images are what they are made of as well as what they show us - as Marshall McLuhan famously said "the medium is the message". I'd like my message to be my own, and not translated into the fascistic hierarchy of aesthetics that rears its ugly head here pretty regularly.

 

Note to dstillo: this rant is, , as usual, mainly directed at Andrew (who wrote the original response to me). I'm not really this mad at you :)

[Baz]

Matt James Smith,

 

Well said !

 

Perfect.

[Glenn Thomas]

.... this A6000 is amazing...

[Inazuma]

Lol iag, all your posts in this topic seems like youre foaming from the mouth with joy :lol:

[Inazuma]

Tbh I think you have 'the grass is always greener' syndrome. I bought the a6000 thinking it might be better than my gx7 (the same camera you have?), but my >testing proved me wrong. I would really recommend you investing in glass or other video gear than switching systems again.

[WDHX]

hello everybody ,

 

i see the thread is really going on like the tales of one thousand and one night  . Some of you reports that the a6000 is a masterpiece and on the other hand some of you say that its image quality is quite weak . I saw andrews anwser that the hdmi output gives only a slight better quality ( and that propably it is 8 bit 420 ) so not a big advantage . I have downloaded and seen a few examples which all differ so much in quality and still can not form an opinion . The best would be to buy it and test it but I am on a longer trip right now . So my question to you , can you desribe how good or bad the internal recording quality  is in terms of detail resolution ? Is it compareable to the 5dm3 ( not ML RAW , poor details , mushy picture  ) or does it rather goes more towards the quality of th fs100 ? I am thinking about  a combo together with my 5dm3 ( ML RAW for controled enviromemnt , deep focus panorama shots ) and the a6000 for handheld documentary shots ( no intensive gradeing , shorter depth of field ) . What do you thing guys ?

[EyeSoul]

I  think Glenn Thomas's video a few post up is a excellent example of what image the camera is capable of. I have only good things to say about the camera, I have yet to see a real issue with the internal recording quality far as artifacts and such. The way I see it is, if the external recording quality is indeed a "little" better compared to internal recording you still really can't complain. I have did a lot of testing and seem to come away more impressed than disappointed,considering that I'm a lite pixel peeper I think that's good news. I must ask,has anyone else had a real issue with image quality being compromised far as mud or color banding when recording in-camera?

[EyeSoul]

In my opinion this camera would be great for documentary work. I know it's frowned upon to use auto-focus but this is the first DSLR type camera where the auto-focus really may do a better job than me for run & gun. To be honest I don't think I have manually focused since I had the camera lol. If the subject is static I tend to let the camera lock focus with C-AF, then toggle to M-F to keep focus,and if the subject moves,quickly toggle back to C-AF. The A6000 is really innovative in that department, I use and have it setup like my old RX100 but with the advantage of having a more robust image in the box.

[Inazuma]

 

But the sensor of A6000 is rated a lot more by DxO and and also the video from the tests in terms of moire seems better

One of the first things I noticed when I compared the two camera was moire. Just look at the roof tiles on the left (top is a6000). As for RAW photos, the only difference I noticed was that the a6000 has a purple cast in the shadows when you lift them up.