A7S - Hollywood Fashion Show

[jcs]

Our first shoot with the Sony A7S. Shot 1080p60 1/60th shutter with Picture Profile 7 (Slog2), with Color Mode changed to Cinema.

 

Graded in Premiere Pro CC using color curves and saturation, the same setting applied to all clips. The goal was to see how well the A7S handled skintones under very challenging, changing lighting conditions: low light, multicolor spots, etc. NR was only used on the first clip (very very low light).

 

Shot handheld using the Sony SEL18-200mm APS-C lens (FS700 kit lens), AUTO ISO, AWB, AF (center spot focus area), IS, manual zoom, built in mics. With this lens and settings, the A7S makes an excellent low-light live/event camera.

 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

So that's the APS-C mode at 60p? It looks great 

-Can't comment on colour as we have no idea what it was like, no reference, but it looks alright. 

[Michael1]

Lot of magenta in the first shot (interview).  The audience has a lot of magenta.  Was that the lighting there?

 

Michael

[sudopera]

Still that green/yellow problem in skintones on most of the models on my imac, just like in that clip with P. Bloom in it.

 

[Inazuma]

I agree with Ebrahim. No point of reference so can't really say if they're good or bad. I will say it looks fairly realistic. Though, being Chinese, I'm less fussy than most others in this forum about yellow hues and such.. If anything there is too much magenta; but that's probably just down to lighting.

[varicam]

Not that impressed.

[Michael1]

I agree with Ebrahim. No point of reference so can't really say if they're good or bad. I will say it looks fairly realistic. Though, being Chinese, I'm less fussy than most others in this forum about yellow hues and such.. If anything there is too much magenta; but that's probably just down to lighting.

I saw an a7S comparison test (to other cameras such as the 5dMkIII and D800) where even Asian complexions looked too yellow.

 

Michael

[jcs]

Yes, 1080p60 APS-C.

 

The lighting was very challenging: red and blue spotlights with a white spot on the models. Red+Blue = Magenta. I do see what appears to be excess green on some models (the color complement of magenta), however I didn't change the camera settings. It's correctable in post; I wanted to show how the camera performed with a wide variety of skin tones (and no setting changes). AWB was used, however with constantly changing lighting conditions, I did not have had time to make changes during the live event. All in all, I think the A7S did a fine job (for a Sony ;) ). The FS700 was (is) tricky with skin tones; the A7S is an improvement. Not up to Panasonic, Canon, or ARRI, but moving in the right direction. Even with the challenging color science, the talent really likes the A7S look. For low light, shallow DOF, the A7S is a nice complement to the GH4 for 'tinycam' high quality shooting. Once the community figures out how to deal with the color issues (ideally in-camera), it's usefulness will improve.

[richg101]

sorry to butt in, but I keep seeing people talking about problems with colour science, yellow tint and other garbage.  here's what i got with the a7s using awb: 

 

 

no grading.

 

correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any colour issues here.

[animan]

sorry to butt in, but I keep seeing people talking about problems with colour science, yellow tint and other garbage.  here's what i got with the a7s using awb: 

 

 

no grading.

 

correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any colour issues here.

 

skintones are about 20 degrees off the 'skintone' line on the vectorscope, so possibly theres quite a strong pinkish tint, but hard to judge a camera based on using AWB

[pablogrollan]

sorry to butt in, but I keep seeing people talking about problems with colour science, yellow tint and other garbage.  here's what i got with the a7s using awb: 

 

 

no grading.

 

correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any colour issues here.

 

Neither do I. With all the in-camera colour profiles available plus the possiblility of tweaking them and the added felxibility in post of XAVC-s I don't see where the problem would be unless the WB is way off... 

[jcs]

Definitely a 3D color problem with S-Gamut Color Mode (with Slog2). WB, including in post, can't fix it: most of the skin looks correct but there are patches of green/yellow that will need qualifier-level post work to fix. When the whole frame is off (pbloom's yellow cast), WB should be able to fix it. I found Cinema Color Mode with Slog2 to not have the yellow splotch issue as with S-Gamut (which is an approximation of Sony's Pro version- perhaps that's the issue).

The FS700 did (does) better in daylight- it's continuous spectrum light. Try shooting in artificial light- that's a bigger challenge for Sony sensors/color-science (I haven't used the A7S in daylight yet- we've been using the GH4- all positive comments re:color and skintones).

I will fix the green skintones in another cut- I think the A7S did pretty well for AWB given the tricky lighting conditions.

[jonpais]

@pablogrollan up until around the 2-1/2 minute mark, the skin tones look too magenta for my taste, and the highlights in the model's face look a touch bright as well. Also, I much prefer the bokeh in the full-frame mode, but it still looks very 'busy' and distracting to me. Still, thank you for sharing.

 

@jcs I didn't have a problem with the skin tones in the fashion show, I realize lighting conditions in those situations are very difficult, and you got some very nice shots as well. I wouldn't mind however, seeing another edit correcting for the yellow-green tint.