Sony strategy: good news

[wolf33d]

Sony will focus on 4K very high frame rates, high DR products for consumers, coming from professional. 
In other worlds, we will soon see Sony's product with approaching FS700/FS7 slowmo capability for decent price. 

A7S II anywone ?

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/aims-for-worlds-highest-resolution-system-camera/

 

 

[The Chris]

If you read the whole presentation - not just the few slides SAR posted and his half-baked analysis - a lot of that is happening above the A7 in the pro broadcast realm, not on the consumer level.

[BenEricson]

Sony will focus on 4K very high frame rates, high DR products for consumers, coming from professional. 

​They should focus on color.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

​They should focus on color.

​They've actually made some great strides with the SGamut3.cine/SLog3 color space and LC-709 Type A look profile. The problem with the A7S is their use of a non-standard SGamut color space and trying to cram a log image into an 8-bit color space.

http://www.dvinfo.net/article/acquisition/sonyxdcam/sony_sgamut_vs_sgamut3.html

 

 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Sony with colour seems like a very strange topic. They make both horrible and great colours. 

From the great F35, F55, F5, F3, F65, FS7, to the horrible A7s, FS100, FS700, to the in-between A6000, RX10, RX100, 

basically decent cheaps, horrible prosumer, and great professional lineups. 

weird. 

But their worst is the a7s, really from the inability to just render normal colours like blues and greens, to the abysmmal skin tones, just unnatural everything, in fact that camera's colours completely shifts whilst changing exposure from magenta to green, just really bad unless you spend serious serious fixing time (and it can be done and that's where the counter argument comes from, that it's user error, it's not when 90% are not getting good colour and when entire colour channels clip over the hill) 

I truly hope they give us an S-Log 3 of something that gives similar colours as the great colours on the FS7/F3 and other sonys, 

[jax_rox]

But their worst is the a7s, really from the inability to just render normal colours like blues and greens, to the abysmmal skin tones, just unnatural everything, in fact that camera's colours completely shifts whilst changing exposure from magenta to green, just really bad unless you spend serious serious fixing time (and it can be done and that's where the counter argument comes from, that it's user error, it's not when 90% are not getting good colour and when entire colour channels clip over the hill) 

...But it is user error. I'm yet to see colours that are as 'horrible​' as everyone else supposedly sees from my A7s. Therefore, I can only put it down to user error, unless somehow my A7s (and those of the experienced DPs/operators who are my colleagues who have all bought them) have completely different colour science to the consumers on the internet.

I'll admit Slog2 is old news, and Slog3 is much better. If I shoot F5/55, it's Slog3 for sure.

Personally, I find the A7s' Slog2 looks pretty similar to that of the F3.

I think when people here say 'bad colour' what they actually mean is 'totally different to Canon'. My Sony V1 had totally different colours to the Canon XHA1, just like the PD170 before it had pretty different colours to the XL2. But the colours were never bad - I certainly never found myself disliking anything I got out of it.

This reminds me very much of a friend of mine who would constantly talk about how 'green' the Alexa looked. I remember saying at the time (this was a few years ago now - before the Dragon) that whilst if I was splitting hairs between the RED and the Alexa, the Alexa was maybe a tad more green, and the RED a tad more golden, but that I wouldn't say it was overwhelmingly green.

I questioned further and it turned out trhat 95% of the projects he was shooting, he had Tiffen IRNDs on the glass - which made the whole image look green.

[wolf33d]

Lol Ebrahim A7S is "horrible colour"? ...

If you think this: https://vimeo.com/116044343 and this : https://vimeo.com/118014639 is horrible, then get new eyes. 
But before you do so, I would like to see a video from you as nice as those exemples with any camera in the world (a F65 with its amazing color if you like). Thanks. 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

I can be done: that's where the argument comes from. The matter is how hard it is to get it done

[wolf33d]

It can be done: that's where the argument comes from. The matter is how hard it is to get it done

​

Lol apparently not hard at all. 
Let me quote the Author of the first video 

"I don't use S-LOG 2. Too flat for me. I shot this on Autumn Leaves creative style, contrast -3, sat 0, sharpness -3. Dynamic Range Optimization (DRO) Level 4."

"Hi, very little grading. Mostly just a bit of highlight and shadow adjustment and sometimes adding warmth to the color."

So please, stop bashing a product when you don't know, common people will read your BS here and could take it for granted. 
 

[Liam]

I have seen bad color from the a7s, but those examples were really nice and impressively easy to get that way. thank for sharing Wolf33d

[BenEricson]

Lol Ebrahim A7S is "horrible colour"? ...

If you think this: https://vimeo.com/116044343 and this : https://vimeo.com/118014639 is horrible, then get new eyes. 
But before you do so, I would like to see a video from you as nice as those exemples with any camera in the world (a F65 with its amazing color if you like). Thanks. 

​These are both great, but these are both also freeform edits, and very stylized… What I find impressive with the canon cameras, is the ability to very easy produce a very neutral and well balanced image with little effort. 

We all know you can get nice results from any camera, but the Sony cameras are just more difficult to work with. I have worked with the Fs700 quite a bit, and that camera is a real love hate. The high speed footage is amazing, but the colors and highlight clipping that happens is very frustrating. 

 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

 

So please, stop bashing a product when you don't know, common people will read your BS here and could take it for granted. 
 

​1- I know the product very well

2- My words are merely an opinion you disagree with, not "your bullshit", and I don't tolerate hence don't continue to discuss with such manners.

3- If anyone wants to start a discussion "decently" about the the A7s colour quality, I'd be more than happy to share my tests conducted against the Nikon D810, Canon 5D, and share many statements of why many of them see that specific camera to have an issue with colour rendition compared to everything else out there, including the other Sony's, and I'd also be even happier to discuss how I was able to get around the issue and get good results. 

 

 

[wolf33d]

You first say A7S colour is horrible (without giving any explanation). Then I show you 2 exemples that are very good colour and you agree with it but saying "well it's possible but very hard to get those colours". I prove you the guys did the least grading possible in the word. So now you don't know what to say anymore. 
Your video comparison means nothing, of course it's easy to get horrible colour with any camera I can give you 5D exemples with bad colours. However if you get videos with nice colour and little grading then you know the camera is good. 

There is no discussion to have, I proved it to you, broke your non-arguments in 2 sec and now you cry because I said you say bullshit. Which you did. 

PS: apparently you don't know the product well, first because of your BS statement about it at the beginning, then because you obviously don't know which mode to shoot and how to set properly the A7S to get nice colours with little/no grading. 

Sounds that we are off topic, which was originally the presentation of Sony plans for the future. 

 

[Sekhar]

There is no discussion to have, I proved it to you, broke your non-arguments in 2 sec and now you cry because I said you say bullshit. Which you did. 

​Seriously, are we in high school? You need to chill, Wolf, and treat the forum members with respect. In all fairness, Ebrahim did say "just really bad unless you spend serious serious fixing time" right at the outset, so clearly his issue is with the colors coming out of the camera and how hard it is to fix them in post. If you don't agree with that, please give an example, clearly explaining what was done in post (you need to be specific, just saying it's easy isn't enough). We're all trying to learn here, and if you can prove the A7s detractors wrong, great! But let's please be civil.

[sanveer]

​1- I know the product very well

2- My words are merely an opinion you disagree with, not "your bullshit", and I don't tolerate hence don't continue to discuss with such manners.

3- If anyone wants to start a discussion "decently" about the the A7s colour quality, I'd be more than happy to share my tests conducted against the Nikon D810, Canon 5D, and share many statements of why many of them see that specific camera to have an issue with colour rendition compared to everything else out there, including the other Sony's, and I'd also be even happier to discuss how I was able to get around the issue and get good results. 

 

 

I agree with you Ebrahim Saadawi. I have read many DoPs saying how imprecise the colors on the A7S are hphhow difficult it is to get skin tones precisely. Almost every camera ever made can get skintones right if one gets an expert solely for matching skin tones. The ease of doing it is what matters. 

 

Also the condescending tone on the forum seems to be spreading like a disease from one leper to another. I don't know which forum seems to have spread the vitriolic around here, but, suddenly disagreements aren't talen too lightly around here. Next I am guessing will be cuss words, and then bronx like brawls. 

 

Wow

 

[dahlfors]

You first say A7S colour is horrible (without giving any explanation). Then I show you 2 exemples that are very good colour and you agree with it but saying "well it's possible but very hard to get those colours". I prove you the guys did the least grading possible in the word. So now you don't know what to say anymore. 

 

Prove? Where's that proof? I think those are graded quite a bit...

 

I've seen A7S video from Brandon Li (same guy who shot the first video you linked) having the same characteristic skin colors from Sony: too green, too much yellow, too little magenta.

There's also some shots in that Go Cuba where there's too much green in skin color. People might prefer more magenta or more yellow skin colors, but I've rarely heard of people who want their skin colors to look green. Personally I count that into the category of bad colors out of the box, although it most of the time can be corrected.

[jax_rox]

We all know you can get nice results from any camera, but the Sony cameras are just more difficult to work with. I have worked with the Fs700 quite a bit, and that camera is a real love hate. The high speed footage is amazing, but the colors and highlight clipping that happens is very frustrating. 

​With Sony, you can't really base ideas of how any of their cameras work on one camera in particular. THe menu systems are sometimes drastically different between cameras, and the images you can get - with/without ease can be quite different. IMO, the A7s gives a much better image out of the box than the unsharp, muddiness you get out of the FS700. I was utterly horrified when I saw stuff I saw that I'd shot on the FS700 projected on a big screen. If nothing else, the A7s is miles sharper. You can now get quite decent images out of the FS700, but it can take a bit of work.

IMO, the A7s is quite different, and has a pretty different gamma curve, and even slightly different colours. To me, that A7s looks much more like what you get out of an F3 - and the external Slog2 looks very much like what you get out of an F3 in Slog2 (albeit on the F3 you can get 10-bit output in Slog2).

Personally, I find I tended to dislike the colours out of my Canon. The A7s certainly has a look about it, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it's bad, or has bad colour. You can get bad colour out of an Alexa if you only have a minimal idea of what you're doing (as I said up above). I've seen noisy, ugly, unsharp, muddy, green looking footage straight out of a RED Epic, which by all means shouldn't be too hard to at least get a decently exposed, nice looking image (I mean, all you really need to do is look at the Histogram).

I find Canon colours to generally be way too warm. The skin tones end up almost orange, rather than a nice pinky-red colour. I've found the colours out of my A7s tend to be a little bit more 'true to life' than the Canons which can look like you've put a warming filter over the lens.

I've done a lot of shooting with the A7s and I find it relatively easy to get quite a nice look and colours. I've never seen green skin tones on my footage. I have seen people using green tinted ND filters.

[hmcindie]

 

I find Canon colours to generally be way too warm. The skin tones end up almost orange, rather than a nice pinky-red colour. I've found the colours out of my A7s tend to be a little bit more 'true to life' than the Canons which can look like you've put a warming filter over the lens.

​

I've seen several people who have gotten good colours out of the A7s. But I'm not one of them. The 5D III does color about 3x better than my A7s.

That's a scientific number 8)

Canon DSLR's are easily quite saturated and warm, but they behave "normally". As in changing the exposure and whitebalance produces results that are standard. A7s seems to be all over the place.

[Jimmy]

I wonder if all the people struggling with S-Log colour are using auto white balance? I find dialling in your WB and just pushing the warmth a little helps alot. AWB seems to work well at night though, if you want a cooler look (which I generally do, at night).

[BenEricson]

​

I've seen several people who have gotten good colours out of the A7s. But I'm not one of them. The 5D III does color about 3x better than my A7s.

​This is my experience with the fs700. When you color correct 5D3 footage, it is even better. The untouched image is better than fs700 in pretty much ever situation as well.