Sony A7S saturation test and skin tone test - with film convert

[Guest]

I took a look at your films on Vimeo and the colors were uniformly bad. I don't think a different camera will help there. What I do think will help is just learning grading. And learning to shoot. It's way better to shoot with a slightly worse performing camera and trying to make it look good than getting an Alexa and learning nothing.

 

Unless what you are saying is that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", which is kinda true. Still.

 

More personal attacks? No actual critique just ridicule? Again?

 

If you're going to talk down to me about my work, at least have the balls to post a link to your own work. Otherwise aren't you just a coward? And how about at least having the courtesy to explain why you think my grading is "bad".

 

No doubt this will be met with more lazy, empty insults ...

 

Or perhaps just silence ...

[Michael1]

Wait, what? I'm not seeing any yellow cast in the A7S video stills.

 

http://***URL removed***/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr29_0=panasonic_dmcgh4&attr29_1=sony_a7s&attr72_0=1080&attr72_1=1080&normalization=full&widget=131&x=0.6482927576175164&y=0.17170596393897378

 

That's because you are comparing it to the GH4, which is also a bit yellowish, although not as much.  Compare it to a Nikon, and look at her neck.  Also look at the girl to the left, too.  If you look at the paint mixing bowl, the brush has almost no color with the a7S.  At the paint mixing platter, the yellow next to the red looks the same as the yellow next to the teal for the a7S.  For other cameras, they are not the same yellow.  The one next to the teal is a darker shade with a bit more green.  Also the green fur over the Asian girl's head has a bluish cast.  It should be green.

 

Michael

[SleepyWill]

More personal attacks? No actual critique just ridicule? Again?

 

If you're going to talk down to me about my work, at least have the balls to post a link to your own work. Otherwise aren't you just a coward? And how about at least having the courtesy to explain why you think my grading is "bad".

 

No doubt this will be met with more lazy, empty insults ...

 

Or perhaps just silence ...

 

I've seen his work... it's fine, competent but his use of colour is certainly nothing to write home about, it's clean, crisp, clinical and.... yawn... devoid of any expression what so ever. Cinematography by numbers - if it wasn't so well lit, I would assume his portfolio was shot on "full auto".

 

Apart from his medal of honour video, where he tries to do something interesting and lets just say, he's no Jeunet.

[Guest fe4a3f5e8381673ce80017d29a8375f1]

I'm happy for him to be the greatest colourist in town - I just think he's acting like a twit. It's hard for me to make any time for someone who thinks there's a rulebook for filmmaking, or any form of creativity for that matter.

 

My signature says it all really. For me Lynch's comment really gets to the heart of all this nonsense about right and wrong. I'm not averse to saying somebody's work is bad, but it's a hell of a thing to tell them their creative choices are "wrong" when you obviously have a completely different agenda to theirs.

[hmcindie]

 

Apart from his medal of honour video, where he tries to do something interesting and lets just say, he's no Jeunet.

 

That's not my grading though (I only shot it, disagree with the grade too)

 

Here's my Vimeo and Youtube

 

Some reason I can't link the vimeo page so I'll just link one video here from Vimeo:

 

https://www.youtube.com/hmcindie

 

I really have no problem in people criticising my "work", it goes with the territory and it's actually quite useful. I'm not a grading guy, been doing it for low budget music videos though.

 

In another note, it was funny as I got to see Arriraw square off with the Red Epic today at work. I am amazed how good the Arriraw looked. It actually looked sharper than the Epic (though I have no idea how well the shots were focused and they were both scaled to HD). It also was very clean in the shadows. Red Epic had some seriously noisy blues.

 

They also shot a color chart. Skintones were pretty much almost the same (daylight). Alexa had a bit less saturation in some tones. Neither camera shot completely neutrally when compared to a color chart. Funny because a lot of people here claim how the Epic has poor skintones. Looked pretty much alike (though we did a slight curve to both cameras)

[hmcindie]

 

My signature says it all really. For me Lynch's comment really gets to the heart of all this nonsense about right and wrong. I'm not averse to saying somebody's work is bad, but it's a hell of a thing to tell them their creative choices are "wrong" when you obviously have a completely different agenda to theirs.

 

I may seem like a twit but that was not the intent. The intent was on trying to prove how odd your demand of the A7s and "natural colors" were when there are no "natural colors" in your videos.

 

It's also actually completely ok to say someones creative choices are "wrong". It doesn't mean wrong in a univeral sense of course, that should go without saying.

 

I once had a director who really hated one of my edits and he wasn't afraid to say it (I was editing a commercial for him). I did adjustments that he loved and I hated. Go figure. Yes there is no universal "right or wrong" in subjective taste but that doesn't mean we can't discuss sometimes very harshly about them. They are not "personal" works (or atleast you shouldn't look at them as such).

[Guest fe4a3f5e8381673ce80017d29a8375f1]

I may seem like a twit but that was not the intent. The intent was on trying to prove how odd your demand of the A7s and "natural colors" were when there are no "natural colors" in your videos.

 

It's also actually completely ok to say someones creative choices are "wrong". It doesn't mean wrong in a univeral sense of course, that should go without saying.

 

I once had a director who really hated one of my edits and he wasn't afraid to say it (I was editing a commercial for him). I did adjustments that he loved and I hated. Go figure. Yes there is no universal "right or wrong" in subjective taste but that doesn't mean we can't discuss sometimes very harshly about them. They are not "personal" works (or atleast you shouldn't look at them as such).

 

The whole reason I was getting so annoyed is that I've never demanded anything about the A7S colours - all I've done is stated my personal dislike for them. The other problem is that I used the word "unnatural" very casually, because I couldn't think of a better word, and it got picked up on as my major criticism.

 

We seem to have managed to mellow our silly argument, so let's stop. But the honest truth is that I personally will never buy this camera for anything other than low light work until I see someone grade it differently. That's because I can see that it is not right for my work (my "unnatural colours"  ;) ). But that doesn't mean it's not right for other people who want different things from their images, and I have no problem with that.

 

Thanks for posting the fight video anyway, I like it.

[Viet Bach Bui]

That's because you are comparing it to the GH4, which is also a bit yellowish, although not as much.  Compare it to a Nikon, and look at her neck.  Also look at the girl to the left, too.  If you look at the paint mixing bowl, the brush has almost no color with the a7S.  At the paint mixing platter, the yellow next to the red looks the same as the yellow next to the teal for the a7S.  For other cameras, they are not the same yellow.  The one next to the teal is a darker shade with a bit more green.  Also the green fur over the Asian girl's head has a bluish cast.  It should be green.

 

Michael

The GH4 was just the default camera when I opened the page. I'm just looking at the A7S image by itself and there I see no yellowish tint. And it seems you're grasping at straws here. First you emphasized on the A7S skin tones, and when that didn't work out you had to cherry pick from the scene. But let's see if your new examples hold up:

 

I also don't see the D610 doing any better in skin tone here. And what of the neck?

 

 

The brush has almost no color? I disagree, the colors are just less saturated, but they are there, and very realistic looking too.

 

As for the yellow paint tubes, the top one has a noticable darker shade of yellow, just not as pronounced as the D610. Btw, the blue tube looks better on the A7S to my eyes :)

 

You are talking about this green fur right? I see no blue cast in it.

[Viet Bach Bui]

Here's a few clips for you Matt, hope you like them more than the previous ones:

[Michael1]

I'm just looking at the A7S image by itself and there I see no yellowish tint. And it seems you're grasping at straws here. First you emphasized on the A7S skin tones, and when that didn't work out you had to cherry pick from the scene.

That's enough personal attacks for me.  You are now on my forum ignore list.  Don't bother responding, because I won't see it.

 

Michael

[Viet Bach Bui]

Man, how were those considered personal attacks :(? They are just attacks on the arguments, not on personal characters. In a debate, it is normal to call out others' fallacies and weak reasoning.

Anyway, I'm sorry I offended you (if you ever see this).

[Quirky]

Hey ladies, just a friendly reminder about the fact that your cat fights are only adding topic litter. 

[Guest fe4a3f5e8381673ce80017d29a8375f1]

Hey ladies, just a friendly reminder about the fact that your cat fights are only adding topic litter. 

 

From the guy who writes the longest, most patronising, most boring posts on this entire forum. Just a bit of friendly feedback  :)

[Guest fe4a3f5e8381673ce80017d29a8375f1]

I need to use that ignore list thingy. Could have saved countless hours of my life if I'd known about it. I shall start today.

[Quirky]

From the guy who writes the longest, most patronising, most boring posts on this entire forum. Just a bit of friendly feedback  :)

 

My friendly reminder was not aimed at you alone, but to all the drama queens in this thread.

 

But since you felt compelled to go personal and start criticising my contributions here, let's check some facts:

You have submitted 24 of the total of 73 messages (so far) in this thread alone. That's one third of all messages, 5 to 8 comments per page, by you alone. Quite a few, if not most of them arguing with someone about opinions rather than the subject on topic. 

 

Looks like you're setting a trend rather than leading by example here, and yet you blame everyone else for the sinking signal to noise ratio. 

 

So yes, you're right, looks like I'm far behind you, according to a quantitative analysis. I should probably thank you for all those kind superlatives, which coming from you are compliments, and I always prefer quality over quantity.  ;)

 

As for my contributions, by all means feel free to simply ignore them. I won't mind, in fact I recommend it.

[jgharding]

Slog has a slight cast from whatever white balance is there it seems, that's one of the things with compressed log. But then most film stocks have a cast too, I don't see a problem, just different unrealistic colours from all the cameras.

 

I think it looks good and I can make it look how i want happily. I'm not concerned too much about the charts. If someone made a camera that was perfectly real, no-one would use it because it'd look boring.

 

The A7s makes beautiful pictures in video mode!

 

The green particularly is odd and desaturated, looks a little blue to me. But also I'm not fussed, it reminds me of Kodak Ultramax. That cheap film is my favourite 135 stock probably. I say well done to Sony.

[animan]

camera definitely has a strange cool colour bias that looks a little flourescent in the greens with this profile, a great effort to fix it though

[Viet Bach Bui]

Hey ladies, just a friendly reminder about the fact that your cat fights are only adding topic litter. 

Thank you, Mr. Pot, for hanging with us kettles.

 

I don't think the A7S has a color problem out of Slog2. Cine4 seems to be the most balanced between DR and color saturation, and that's what I'm going to use most of the time unless I want to preserve more highlight details.

 

But even with Slog2 though, I think the colors can be brought back nicely using LUTs. It's just a matter of time until people figure out the right LUTs to use in different situations. I have seen some people do it successfully and the results are really nice and closer to what can be achieved with RAW videos.

[utsira]

I had a go at grading Roman Legion's original files using the ImpulZ LUTs:

 

 

I wanted to compare the generic log LUT that Impulz ships with, to the one that's calibrated for the FS700's s-log 2. I didn't touch the colour board, just a very quick and easy test. 

[Viet Bach Bui]

Best looking skin tone from Roman's clip by far, even though I think it comes at the cost of not having enough green in the trees/grass.