Crash course in shooting video on the original A7s?

[bjohn]

I've been asked to take photos and do a short video of a traditional dance weekend at the end of August. They asked me based on the photos I've shot at similar dances, and I'm all sorted on the photography front. But the only video cameras I have experience with are my Blackmagic Micro and original Pocket cinema cameras, which I love but they are not made for shooting in low light. And the dances happen in dimly lit rooms. When I shoot photos for these dances I'm often at ISO 12,800. The native ISO on my Blackmagic cameras is 800, and anything above that starts getting very noisy very fast.

I do have an original Sony A7s that I have only ever used for photography, but obviously this could be the right tool for this job. But I am a complete neophyte on shooting video with a hybrid camera; everything is different to what I'm used to. Also, I'm in North America but I bought this A7s from a seller in the UK so it's set up for PAL; I assume that won't be an issue since this video will only be viewed on youtube not broadcast, but if I'm wrong about that please let me know.

Google searches for shooting video on the A7s largely turn up tutorials for the newer A7siii, which is a very different beast with features that aren't available in the original A7s. Can anyone point me to a good crash course on what settings I should use and anything to watch out for?

I also have very little experience in grading Sony footage in post, but most of what I read indicates that it's not worth shooting log and trying to grade since the files are so heavily compressed, and I should just use a profile that gets me close to what I want straight out of camera. I have Andrew Reid's Pro Color, but only the latest version and that doesn't apply to the original A7s; I'd have to buy an older version.

Any advice would be appreciated, I'm all ears!

[bjohn]

5 minutes ago, bjohn said:

I I have Andrew Reid's Pro Color, but only the latest version and that doesn't apply to the original A7s; I'd have to buy an older version.

Oops, looks like I was wrong about that: I can indeed use ProColor 5 on the A7s so I'll set that up.

[kye]

17 hours ago, bjohn said:

I've been asked to take photos and do a short video of a traditional dance weekend at the end of August. They asked me based on the photos I've shot at similar dances, and I'm all sorted on the photography front. But the only video cameras I have experience with are my Blackmagic Micro and original Pocket cinema cameras, which I love but they are not made for shooting in low light. And the dances happen in dimly lit rooms. When I shoot photos for these dances I'm often at ISO 12,800. The native ISO on my Blackmagic cameras is 800, and anything above that starts getting very noisy very fast.

I do have an original Sony A7s that I have only ever used for photography, but obviously this could be the right tool for this job. But I am a complete neophyte on shooting video with a hybrid camera; everything is different to what I'm used to. Also, I'm in North America but I bought this A7s from a seller in the UK so it's set up for PAL; I assume that won't be an issue since this video will only be viewed on youtube not broadcast, but if I'm wrong about that please let me know.

Google searches for shooting video on the A7s largely turn up tutorials for the newer A7siii, which is a very different beast with features that aren't available in the original A7s. Can anyone point me to a good crash course on what settings I should use and anything to watch out for?

I also have very little experience in grading Sony footage in post, but most of what I read indicates that it's not worth shooting log and trying to grade since the files are so heavily compressed, and I should just use a profile that gets me close to what I want straight out of camera. I have Andrew Reid's Pro Color, but only the latest version and that doesn't apply to the original A7s; I'd have to buy an older version.

Any advice would be appreciated, I'm all ears!

No specific advice from me, but what you've said above sounds reasonable.

I'd just say that if you can do any testing beforehand then that's something that always pays dividends.

If you need any help in grading things afterwards then just ask, happy to take a look and help if I can.  I'd imagine the client would expect the video to look similar to the photos?  If so, I'd suggest trying each mode in your tests beforehand and see what the default profiles look like under those conditions so you can choose the optimal one.

[Benjamin Hilton]

Yeah, test test test. I don't have a lot of experience with the original a7s, but I'd imagine nailing your white balance and exposure will help you out a lot. Seems to go a really long way with the older mirrorless cameras. 

[bjohn]

Thanks, both of you! Given the short timeframe (less than two weeks from now) I will probably just stick to what I know (my Blackmagic Micro and OG Pocket cameras) and just try to find some good light for the evening dances (close to the stage, which will be brightly lit, usually works), but I'll have the A7s with me and will experiment with it as well. I'll set it up in advance and test. So far my impressions are that the rolling shutter is pretty extreme; I will have a Glidecam with me as well as a monopod and will just be sure to move slowly, which of course I also do with the Blackmagic cams.

Battery life isn't great either, although I will be shooting only short clips; the entire video is envisaged as 1-2 minutes total; I'll probably shoot 30-40 minutes of footage over the weekend as raw material. I have four batteries for the A7s, so that should be enough. They aren't picky about image quality (the example video they showed me was very amateurish) and they're not paying me so there's not a lot of pressure other than my own standards and desire to give them my best work.

My BMD cameras are better set up with cages, monitors, external batteries, etc., and I am very familiar with them so that's probably what I'll use; I warned the organizers in advance that my cameras are not good in low light so I at least set expectations, but I think I can pull it off if I stick close to the stage.

Sound will be easy as they just want me to record one or two performances and use that as a soundtrack; I don't need live sound, nor does it need to be synced to video. I have a good music recording setup (MixPre 6 and a good stereo pair of mics on a tall stand).

[kye]

29 minutes ago, bjohn said:

Thanks, both of you! Given the short timeframe (less than two weeks from now) I will probably just stick to what I know (my Blackmagic Micro and OG Pocket cameras) and just try to find some good light for the evening dances (close to the stage, which will be brightly lit, usually works), but I'll have the A7s with me and will experiment with it as well. I'll set it up in advance and test. So far my impressions are that the rolling shutter is pretty extreme; I will have a Glidecam with me as well as a monopod and will just be sure to move slowly, which of course I also do with the Blackmagic cams.

Battery life isn't great either, although I will be shooting only short clips; the entire video is envisaged as 1-2 minutes total; I'll probably shoot 30-40 minutes of footage over the weekend as raw material. I have four batteries for the A7s, so that should be enough. They aren't picky about image quality (the example video they showed me was very amateurish) and they're not paying me so there's not a lot of pressure other than my own standards and desire to give them my best work.

My BMD cameras are better set up with cages, monitors, external batteries, etc., and I am very familiar with them so that's probably what I'll use; I warned the organizers in advance that my cameras are not good in low light so I at least set expectations, but I think I can pull it off if I stick close to the stage.

Sound will be easy as they just want me to record one or two performances and use that as a soundtrack; I don't need live sound, nor does it need to be synced to video. I have a good music recording setup (MixPre 6 and a good stereo pair of mics on a tall stand).

If it's an option for you, there are a bunch of really fast manual primes for MFT available for ridiculously small prices now, especially from TTartisans:

https://ttartisan.myshopify.com/collections/aps-c-lenses?sort_by=created-descending&filter.v.price.gte=&filter.v.price.lte=&filter.v.option.mount=M43

I've got the 17mm F1.4 and the 50mm F1.2 and they're basically the same level of optical performance as the (much more expensive) Voigtlander F0.95 MFT primes.  The F1.4 lenses are two stops faster than a F2.8 lens and at the native ISO800 on the BM cameras is almost as much low-light advantage as having a second native ISO (the second ISO on dual-native ISO cameras are often only 3 stops above the base one).

[bjohn]

10 minutes ago, kye said:

If it's an option for you, there are a bunch of really fast manual primes for MFT available for ridiculously small prices now, especially from TTartisans:

Thanks -- I've also had my eyes on the fast MFT lenses from Laowa. My current lenses are f2, which is okay but faster would be better. Not better enough, though. I tried shooting ISO 3200 B&W film at one of these events recently and got almost no usable photos. This dance will be in a different venue, one I haven't been to before, and it's too far away to scout out in advance but I'm sure they will lower the lights for ambience and it'll be dark. I've had good luck pointing the camera to an area near better light and waiting for the dancers to move through it.

[kye]

6 minutes ago, bjohn said:

Thanks -- I've also had my eyes on the fast MFT lenses from Laowa. My current lenses are f2, which is okay but faster would be better. Not better enough, though. I tried shooting ISO 3200 B&W film at one of these events recently and got almost no usable photos. This dance will be in a different venue, one I haven't been to before, and it's too far away to scout out in advance but I'm sure they will lower the lights for ambience and it'll be dark. I've had good luck pointing the camera to an area near better light and waiting for the dancers to move through it.

Yeah, that sounds like a difficult environment, and F1.4 is only a stop better than your current lenses which isn't that much in the grand scheme of things.

You can also slow the shutter down to 270 or even 360 degrees, which will make the footage more surreal, but that's how weddings are anyway, so it might be a nice effect, especially on wide shots where the motion-blur wouldn't be so large compared to the size of the frame.

@MrSMW may have some additional advice, but I've heard of people resorting to adding their own lighting in such situations.  A couple of strategically placed Lume Cube style lights might make up the difference perhaps?  IIRC I've heard wedding videographers say that if you use small lights with a hard light then people seem to ignore them much more than bigger lights or light panels, plus those ones are battery powered so could literally just be placed somewhere up high.  They wouldn't last long, but you probably only need to record for 5 minutes to get a few usable shots.

[bjohn]

1 hour ago, kye said:

ou can also slow the shutter down to 270 or even 360 degrees, which will make the footage more surreal

I was actually planning to do that for some of the shots.

There will be some lighting, likely string lights around the perimeter and possibly some dim overhead lighting. I've been able to get decent light that way at these dances in the past.

 

[bjohn]

Here's a link to an album of photos I took at the last one of these dances; the organizers like the motion blur and "artistic" feeling of these; they were all shot with fast manual lenses on my Sony a7s, mostly wide open or close to it, and sometimes I slowed the shutter speed to 1/15 to accentuate motion blur. So I think they'd love seeing some video shot with a 360 degree shutter; I'll try that in the darker environments. There will be daytime activities as well (teaching of dances, community meals, etc.) so all that will be easier but the evening dances will be more challenging.

https://www.flickr.com/gp/135631509@N07/4t605qh5Q3

[kye]

3 hours ago, bjohn said:

Here's a link to an album of photos I took at the last one of these dances; the organizers like the motion blur and "artistic" feeling of these; they were all shot with fast manual lenses on my Sony a7s, mostly wide open or close to it, and sometimes I slowed the shutter speed to 1/15 to accentuate motion blur. So I think they'd love seeing some video shot with a 360 degree shutter; I'll try that in the darker environments. There will be daytime activities as well (teaching of dances, community meals, etc.) so all that will be easier but the evening dances will be more challenging.

https://www.flickr.com/gp/135631509@N07/4t605qh5Q3

Cool shots!

I saw some had the longer exposure time, which suited the situation well as it showed the motion.  I think motion blur in photos is highly under-rated as it removes the movement of the moment, which often is a critical aspect of the situation - a 1/5000s shutter freezes the dancing and the longer you look at the image the more the people look like mannequins who are motionless rather than there being life in the shot.

[bjohn]

3 minutes ago, kye said:

 I think motion blur in photos is highly under-rated as it removes the movement of the moment

Totally agree; movement is life, and I dislike most static shots of people in action, especially playing music or dancing. Birds in flight is another one; I'd rather see the blur than have every feather revealed.

Focus is a larger challenge when shooting manual lenses in low light; a lot of the photos I took in that album missed focus but nobody minded and I'd rather have an out-of-focus shot that captures an evocative moment than no shot at all. I've tried stopping down to f4 for a more forgiving depth of field, but then ISO has to go up and I'm dealing with more noise. I took a bunch of photos at a wedding reception a few weeks ago while people were dancing, also in a dark room, and there was a light show -- when I slowed the shutter speed the lights painted amazing bands and patterns across the dancers. Only one person complained that the images were out of focus. I don't worry about it too much but I certainly try to get things in focus...the best approach I've found is to position myself and focus on a spot and then take photos as people move into the zone of focus.

[kye]

13 hours ago, bjohn said:

Totally agree; movement is life, and I dislike most static shots of people in action, especially playing music or dancing. Birds in flight is another one; I'd rather see the blur than have every feather revealed.

Focus is a larger challenge when shooting manual lenses in low light; a lot of the photos I took in that album missed focus but nobody minded and I'd rather have an out-of-focus shot that captures an evocative moment than no shot at all. I've tried stopping down to f4 for a more forgiving depth of field, but then ISO has to go up and I'm dealing with more noise. I took a bunch of photos at a wedding reception a few weeks ago while people were dancing, also in a dark room, and there was a light show -- when I slowed the shutter speed the lights painted amazing bands and patterns across the dancers. Only one person complained that the images were out of focus. I don't worry about it too much but I certainly try to get things in focus...the best approach I've found is to position myself and focus on a spot and then take photos as people move into the zone of focus.

I think there's two competing goals in effect with this stuff - having a technically good image and having an emotionally effective image.  I say competing because one wants technical perfection and the other wants aesthetically pleasing imperfections / distortions like motion blur, image texture in the form of noise, etc.  

The nuance that I think doesn't get explored enough is that an image doesn't get more emotional the worse the technical aspects are, and I think people often think that's what's going on, but it's that there are very specific imperfections that are aesthetically desirable.  The right quantity and type of motion, the right type and quantity of noise, the right type and quantity of overall resolution in the image.  I've found that often images with motion blur, out-of-focus elements (foreground and/or background), and noise often benefit from a very small-radius blur applied to the image.  The purpose of this blur is to make the in-focus parts of the image less sharp, which I think aides in the overall feel.  Of course, applying the blur will also do NR, so you might want to add grain back over the top of that blur too.

Your approach sounds, well, sound.  It borrows lots of elements from street photography, and I know that in my shooting (mostly family holidays and travel) I have learned a great deal from street photography as its main focus is in getting optimal results with often no control of the situation at all.  Quite appropriate for both family holidays and informal event photography alike!

In terms of dealing with the lowest light, the tradeoff is real between ISO noise, lens aperture (wider = lower ISO but softer image, stopping down = higher ISO but sharper image), and exposure time (which is dependent on subject motion).  I did tests many years ago and found that it was really camera-dependent, if you're trying to eek out that last bit of performance.  Obviously you can pre-focus and find a pool of good light and a good composition, but even with that I think there's an argument to be made for stopping down as it means you're going to have more chance of getting the subject in focus.

I'm not sure if you've seen these images I've posted before, but I've done quite a bit of very low light video with the GH5 and Voigtlander 0.95 lenses.

This was on a boat out on the water, the only lighting was from the lights on shore, which are a loooong way from the boat:

Those shots are completely mis-representative of the conditions - in real life both of them were in conditions where it was dark enough that if you were alone you'd start to be concerned about your safety because you wouldn't see clearly enough to see trouble coming and if something happened other people wouldn't be able to clearly see what was happening.

I've also captured lots of shots in situations where the shot was being equally lit by the persons phone (held maybe 15" from their face) as it was by the surrounding light.  I have great night vision (I can ride mountain bikes off-road without lights under a full moon) and the GH5 and f0.95 lenses can see better than I can in low-light.

[Django]

..a GH5+ f0.95 lens combo is not going to get you near the same results as a 10-year old BMD pocket cam with f2 lenses.

I say go use that A7S, you have one of the best low-light cams still to date.. might as well put it to good use!

Coming from a BMD background shouldn't be too difficult. The main thing is there is no shutter angle so you'll have to calculate it using shutter speed. Also yeah the 8-bit codec isn't going to go very far with grade so you may wanna avoid it for low contrast night scenes, not to mention no view assist either. The biggest issue with the OG A7S is it has a very poor AWB, especially in mixed lighting scenes. There is this nasty colour cast that is kinda hard to get out in post with baked-in profiles so yeah testing would be ideal. 

[bjohn]

2 hours ago, Django said:

The biggest issue with the OG A7S is it has a very poor AWB, especially in mixed lighting scenes.

I was planning to set white balance manually, which is after all what I do with the BMD cameras.

My main photography camera is a Sony A7iii, which is also good in low light and has IBIS, so that's an option as well. I'm just hesitant to set it up for video because I have everything set up for stills including both of the custom dial settings. I have shot a little video on that camera in the past just as an experiment and the results weren't terrible, although still a far cry from what I get from the BMD cameras. And I have some great fast lenses that I use on the Sony, including one f 0.95 lens that I could use either on the A7s or the A7iii. I'd rather keep the A7iii as a dedicated photo camera and use the A7s for video.

[bjohn]

One of the advantages of the small sensor of the Super 16 BMD cameras is the larger depth of field, which is better for this kind of video where I'm essentially doing documentary-style shooting. With the A7s I have access to my faster lenses that I'll have with me for photography, but I'll stop them down for video because there's no chance I'll be able to maintain focus with a 0.95 or even 1.5 lens wide open on fullframe video.

I've had a look at some tutorials for the original A7s and have been experimenting with different settings and so far happy enough with the results.

For shutter speed, I just need to keep it at twice (or more) the frame rate, right? So (because my camera is a UK model) if I have it at 25p I set shutter speed at 1/50 or higher; if I'm shooting slow motion at 50p I'd set it at 1/100? I might just keep it at 1/100 so I can switch back and forth between 25p and 50p with a minimum of adjustments to other settings. If I want the max dynamic range I could shoot in SLOG2, which has a minimum ISO of 3200 and use heavy ND filtering in daylight, but I'm thinking I'll use Cine 4 for daylight and Cine2 for night...I'll experiment with both approaches.

The only other concern I have is potential for flicker from the stage lighting, which has been a problem in the past in other venues...I will have to figure out the optimum shutter speed to avoid that.

[Django]

What camera are you referring to? A7iii or A7s? They are very different generation cameras with different specs. Are your lenses manual or autofocus? Hard to give info without specifics. 
 

You should be able to set the camera to NTSC in the menus. There is no specific UK/EU/USA camera models AFAIK. 
 

Double frame rate for shutter speed is correct for 180 degree.

SLOG3 has most DR but not always great depending on scene on a 8-bit codec cam such as a those you have.

[bjohn]

11 minutes ago, Django said:

What camera are you referring to? A7iii or A7s? They are very different generation cameras with different specs. Are your lenses manual or autofocus? Hard to give info without specifics. 
 

You should be able to set the camera to NTSC in the menus. There is no specific UK/EU/USA camera models AFAIK. 

I'm referring to the A7s; I don't want to shoot video on the A7iii as I have it set up dedicated for raw stills and I think some of the picture profiles can affect the raw image based on what I've read in the past. I don't use picture profiles on my A7iii. I would use the A7s for video.

I got rid of all my autofocus lenses years ago, I only use manual.

I can easily switch to NTSC but then you get an annoying warning all the time that you're in NTSC mode on a camera that was made for the PAL market. It's not the end of the world but it slows you down and is an annoyance.

Yeah, I think I'll forget about SLOG. The other thing I've noticed, though, is that rolling shutter is vastly reduced if I operate in APS-C mode. But then I'll have more noise in low light so I'm on the fence about using it, plus of course my wide-angle lenses won't be quite so wide.

[bjohn]

I've been doing a lot of tests, and currently I think I might switch things around and dedicate the A7iii to video and use the A7s for stills. I've shot a lot of concerts and dances with the A7s and am comfortable with it for photography; the only potential issue is the relatively low resolution (only an issue if someone wants to make a large print, which has never happened so far, and if it does I can always superscale it). I do sometimes need to crop a little in post, but rarely enough to be a problem with 12-megapixel files.

The A7iii has more modern options available for video, plus it has image stabilization which could help me take some static shots without a tripod (I'd use a tripod with IS turned off for pans and other moving shots). I'm not sure if the rolling shutter is any better but I can't imagine it could be worse, and the battery life will be better.

The two main dealbreakers for me with the A7s are the rolling shutter and short battery life. In good light, I far prefer the footage from my Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera, it's no contest, but good light will be scarce at this event. And I've been pleasantly surprised at most of the footage I've gotten so far from the A7s (even Slog2, which I overexposed slightly and pulled down in post) so that's encouraging me to see what the A7iii can do.

[kye]

1 hour ago, bjohn said:

I've been doing a lot of tests, and currently I think I might switch things around and dedicate the A7iii to video and use the A7s for stills. I've shot a lot of concerts and dances with the A7s and am comfortable with it for photography; the only potential issue is the relatively low resolution (only an issue if someone wants to make a large print, which has never happened so far, and if it does I can always superscale it). I do sometimes need to crop a little in post, but rarely enough to be a problem with 12-megapixel files.

The A7iii has more modern options available for video, plus it has image stabilization which could help me take some static shots without a tripod (I'd use a tripod with IS turned off for pans and other moving shots). I'm not sure if the rolling shutter is any better but I can't imagine it could be worse, and the battery life will be better.

The two main dealbreakers for me with the A7s are the rolling shutter and short battery life. In good light, I far prefer the footage from my Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera, it's no contest, but good light will be scarce at this event. And I've been pleasantly surprised at most of the footage I've gotten so far from the A7s (even Slog2, which I overexposed slightly and pulled down in post) so that's encouraging me to see what the A7iii can do.

I think that's wise.  My recollection was that the A7s2 was the "low light king", and that the A73 had similar/same low light performance.  Before I bought my GH5 I was also considering the A73 and the low-light and other video features were a solid offering.  The footage online looked very impressive too, from those that knew what they were doing.

Also, the colour science on the early Sony cameras was known for being difficult, but IIRC they significantly improved it over the models, and the A73 was much improved from the earlier models, so you'd likely have a much easier time with that footage in post rather than from the A7s.  

With the A7s you'd probably be taking RAW stills?  If so, the colour science doesn't really matter as there's no baked-in look, and you should have robust files with lots of leeway to colour them in post, including any crazy WB issues if you happen to take a shot when a very coloured light happens to be the one illuminating the scene.

Have you got lenses sorted for the two?