a7s slog2 is really, really flat

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

90$ Canon 50mm f/1.8 

(with a passive non-brand E-mount adapter, so wide open all the time). Extremely high contrast lens with tack-sharp images, it's uncanny how it optically outperforms "all" my much more expensive Canon lenses including the 24-105L and 35mm 1.4L!

[caseywilsondp]

 

90$ Canon 50mm f/1.8 

(with a passive non-brand E-mount adapter, so wide open all the time). Extremely high contrast lens with tack-sharp images, it's uncanny how it optically outperforms "all" my much more expensive Canon lenses including the 24-105L and 35mm 1.4L!

​

it's honestly one of the best lenses you can buy for the money if you're on a budget. it is at least on par optically with the 1.4 (minus the ability to be that open) and significantly less expensive.

to reference andrews post about fiddling with the color on every shot:

i can see already that will be common place with this camera... which for me is OK (though i can see for many people purchasing it will be very disappointing). most of my shoots are controlled lighting which I think will significantly help... but I'll be able to report back on that in a couple weeks.

it's looking more and more like the 1DC is the right camera for you in this price bracket. Canon certainly have been slowly dolling out technological updates compared to others like samsung and sony, but you can't argue with the image from their sensors... they're great and they've been doing it for a long time and it shows.

for me, the a7s is still currently seeming like a good choice as I'm out maybe $5K total with the camera, shogun, 2 nikkor lenses, and misc items like memory cards, batteries, tripod/head etc (when I sold my last camera a few years ago I got rid of virtually everything, and didn't think I'd be owning again for a long time).

hopefully we'll see some updates from sony in regards to the sensor/color as well as from shogun (did a super brief test last night and the image seems much less malleable than the internal codec, which seems off... but i was also trying some online 'suggested' tweaks to the picture profile.)

anyways thanks everyone for posting your shots (befores/afters are quite helpful), it's really starting to help me understand this sensor.

[Oliver Daniel]

When I originally reviewed the A7S I loved the colour, from picking out the odd shot here and there.

Afterwards I spent months developing my own LUTs in Resolve that I could blanket onto an entire sequence in Premiere.

Didn't work because each scene / lighting needed their own nob fiddling.

​Hi Andrew, could you elaborate on why this is an issue? 

I film and edit music videos daily and find that tweaking each and every scene is a given with every camera I use as the variables change throughout the day, such as the choice of lighting, direction of the light source, the time of day, the lens used, change in weather, change of location..... (Doing everything you can on set to make it as close as possible for each scene). 

..... Every single shot gets tweaked to match in the grade so the style, feel etc are consistent throughout. If I put the exact same grade on every clip and kept it that way, it would look a mess as a whole. (If used, I would use the same LUT but change the colour parameters on each clip so it all runs seamlessly). 

So by saying each scene needs it's own nob fiddling, I find that just as usual as anything else in filmmaking.

Just asking just in case I've missed something, I've mis-understood you or we are just different in our work and approach. 

Thanks. 

[caseywilsondp]

​Hi Andrew, could you elaborate on why this is an issue? 

I film and edit music videos daily and find that tweaking each and every scene is a given with every camera I use as the variables change throughout the day, such as the choice of lighting, direction of the light source, the time of day, the lens used, change in weather, change of location..... (Doing everything you can on set to make it as close as possible for each scene). 

..... Every single shot gets tweaked to match in the grade so the style, feel etc are consistent throughout. If I put the exact same grade on every clip and kept it that way, it would look a mess as a whole. (If used, I would use the same LUT but change the colour parameters on each clip so it all runs seamlessly). 

So by saying each scene needs it's own nob fiddling, I find that just as usual as anything else in filmmaking.

Just asking just in case I've missed something, I've mis-understood you or we are just different in our work and approach. 

Thanks. 

​I can't speak for Andrew, but I feel like something about this sensor just requires more fiddling (which again, for me, it's a challenge and not a problem). the amount of correcting needed to get even a moderately acceptable image was a bit more than what i typically grade (mostly r3d files... even starting with redlogfilm as a base). and though i only uploaded one image, i shot a variety of wide, medium, cu, ecu and each was almost like a different lighting setup. the cu and ecu takes were much closer (as would be expected) but still more different than I would have initially thought. (this opinion might change in the next couple weeks... my first 'test' was admittedly a crappy way to begin to understand how an image grades.)

however for people that are used to matching and grading each shot like those that work in the commercial and music video worlds, this really isn't that much of a paradigm shift compared to how things are done with other cameras.

[Andrew Reid]

It has a narrow window of peak performance in terms of colour.

[Andrew Reid]

​If I put the exact same grade on every clip and kept it that way, it would look a mess as a whole

It shouldn't do though.

A camera's sensor and colour processing should be consistent from skin tone to skin tone, light to light, as long as you have it right at the time the shot was taken.

In post you should be able to convert LOG to Rec.709 and have the colour looking great over everything, again if it was right at the time of the shoot!

What I find with the A7S is that for every different skin type, every different light source, every different location I am losing hours in post correcting for a very narrow and fickle performance window re: colour.

This problem went away with the 1D C and Canon's sensor.

Under interior practical lights on the A7S I have a yellow cast. Under bright blue lights I have clipping. In low light I have to expose completely differently. In daylight I have issues with purple reds. I never had the same inconsistent behaviour with my old GH2 shooting without LOG in rec.709. To be perfectly honest, it's bloody distracting.

And with Blackmagic raw or 5D Mark III Magic Lantern raw video I can apply the same LUT to the whole sequence and it will all look the same and consistent no matter what the light or subject or skin.

I hate spending hours on a grade fixing stuff, when it could be spent editing.

[Ivar Kristjan Ivarsson]

 

It shouldn't do though.

A camera's sensor and colour processing should be consistent from skin tone to skin tone, light to light, as long as you have it right at the time the shot was taken.

In post you should be able to convert LOG to Rec.709 and have the colour looking great over everything, again if it was right at the time of the shoot!

What I find with the A7S is that for every different skin type, every different light source, every different location I am losing hours in post correcting for a very narrow and fickle performance window re: colour.

This problem went away with the 1D C and Canon's sensor.

Under interior practical lights on the A7S I have a yellow cast. Under bright blue lights I have clipping. In low light I have to expose completely differently. In daylight I have issues with purple reds. I never had the same inconsistent behaviour with my old GH2 shooting without LOG in rec.709. To be perfectly honest, it's bloody distracting.

And with Blackmagic raw or 5D Mark III Magic Lantern raw video I can apply the same LUT to the whole sequence and it will all look the same and consistent no matter what the light or subject or skin.

I hate spending hours on a grade fixing stuff, when it could be spent editing.​

How I wish I was getting a 1dc. I just got hired for a gig in march and the producer said I could use his 1dc. I immediately said yes please

I've never used it. Don't even think it's available here for rent. Can't wait........except I'll probably want it more after the gig......ouch

Maybe I should do some more digging for a good price for the 1dc and not get the A7s? Just use my gh2 and rent until I have enough for the 1dc.

Arrrgh so hard to decide hehe 

[Andrew Reid]

1D C has gone back up to $12,000 at B&H now, from $9999.

So the used prices if you can find one are genuinely a bargain.

[Oliver Daniel]

It shouldn't do though.

A camera's sensor and colour processing should be consistent from skin tone to skin tone, light to light, as long as you have it right at the time the shot was taken.

In post you should be able to convert LOG to Rec.709 and have the colour looking great over everything, again if it was right at the time of the shoot!

What I find with the A7S is that for every different skin type, every different light source, every different location I am losing hours in post correcting for a very narrow and fickle performance window re: colour.

This problem went away with the 1D C and Canon's sensor.

Under interior practical lights on the A7S I have a yellow cast. Under bright blue lights I have clipping. In low light I have to expose completely differently. In daylight I have issues with purple reds. I never had the same inconsistent behaviour with my old GH2 shooting without LOG in rec.709. To be perfectly honest, it's bloody distracting.

And with Blackmagic raw or 5D Mark III Magic Lantern raw video I can apply the same LUT to the whole sequence and it will all look the same and consistent no matter what the light or subject or skin.

I hate spending hours on a grade fixing stuff, when it could be spent editing.

​

In my experience, grading is very consistent with Blackmagic, RED & Canon. I always have a challenge on my hands with GH3 and all Sony cameras. I use the latter by far the most due to the high FPS (music videos) and all are Sony sensors. I have to twiddle every nob imaginable, don't mind much, just more time consuming! 

Canon and Blackmagic lack the high frame rates so I don't use them no where near as much, although they are much, much easier to grade. This is the reason I've stalled on a new purchase on the "new era." 

[Andrew Reid]

Have you tried SLOG 3 on the FS7 yet Oliver?

Supposed to be a good improvement!

[Daniel Lee]

How are you guys correcting and grading? It doesn't seem hard to me and I get there with levels. I'm used to correcting raw film scans however.
 

[caseywilsondp]

Can you post before/after and what you did?

[jax_rox]

 

Afterwards I spent months developing my own LUTs in Resolve that I could blanket onto an entire sequence in Premiere.

Didn't work because each scene / lighting needed their own nob fiddling.

Andrew - that's what colour grading is! The whole point of the Slog gamma is to be able to grade each shot and scene the way it needs to be graded. ​

You can apply a standard LogC to REC709 lut to Alexa footage and it will look more contrasty, but that doesn't mean that it will look good, or work, for every shot or every scene. Turn Picture Profiles off if you want something that's going to be okay for everything - or try Cine 3 or Cine 4.

I'd love to tell my colourist that I heard of someone complaining because each scene or shot needs its own colour grade and see what she says!

[Oliver Daniel]

Have you tried SLOG 3 on the FS7 yet Oliver?

Supposed to be a good improvement!

​Yes I have, but haven't started editing yet. Shot in 4k 50fps and some 180fps. I also have another shoot this Friday using the FS7 in SLOG 3. 

To my eye, it did seem a lot better than other Sony cameras underneath it. I'll post the videos when they are complete, I'm not allowed to show anything until they are released, end of Jan. 

Curious to see what comes out this year, this is surely a "big" one for cameras.