Fun story A7R / 5D III

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I don't want to make that compromise between resolution and colour anymore when buying my next A camera (you don't make that compromise when buying a Canon high end 1DC/Cx00 or a Sony FS7/F5/F55 so the capability is their for both companies to give both great colour and resolution)

When are we going to have a 3000$-ish body with 

-Canon-like Colour science & Codec Colour thickness 

-C-Log like filmic gamma and sharpening level

-Sony A7s/GH4/1DC Resolution 

-Sony A7s/1DC dynamic range 

-Sony A7s/1DC Lowlight performance 

Basically a 3000$ Canon with Sony-like resolution or a 3000$ Sony with Canon-like Colours, who's going to be first? 

I think it's not soon, sadly. 

 

 

The topic is about stills, so I'm not sure where this fits into the conversation...

[agolex]

This may be a little OT, but it is a stills topic so what the hell. How are you two finding the transition from Adobe to C1? Is it fast and intuitive enough to use? How do you like the default NR/Sharpening/Color/Tonality? (I'm very disappointed with Adobe in that regard.) Anything else you can share about your experience transitioning? 

What Inazuma said. Haven't imported my Lightroom catalogue, yet (since I'm on the Sony trial for C1 and don't know if I'm going to invest in it), but things seem really smooth and intuitive (once you get accustomed to not having the strange Library/Develop/Yaddayadda tabs, I'm pretty sure you won't miss them). In terms of responsiveness in editing I'd say it's better than LR5, and about on par or a little bit below LR6 with GPU acceleration (which has crashed for me on Win 10 and now isn't working anymore. C1 feels less bug-prone to me, too. I've never really loved Adobe due to the numerous bugs and strange behaviors of the software and I do believe they will be severely challenged in the next few years due to apps like C1 and Resolve.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

 

The topic is about stills, so I'm not sure where this fits into the conversation...

 

Fits here: 

 

what a surprise! A7S has specs (120fps, 4K, 23427490284294782048 ISO....) 1DC has nothing but the image is just miles ahead. 

If Canon does a 4K 5DIV or a 5DC because they choose to segment (and I think they will do one or the other) then it's gonna be a hell of a camera. 

I decided to post this stories because of the similarities with the video world (canon colors, sony colors...). 

I am still waiting for a good FF camera that does photo/video WELL... 

 

I honestly think the A7RII will be disappointing for video. Got a feeling.

A cinema DSLR (1DC) that doesn't have peaking, what on earth is all that about? No 4k on the C100 Mk II? No 60fps on the C300 Mk II? They just miss key stuff out. 

For video though, why would you go with a Canon DSLR??

Perhaps I have the virtue of coming here to learn more about the A7s, but I've shot with a lot of cameras - not just Canons and in my personal opinion the Canon colours are incredibly over-rated on here. Nowhere else, either when I'm out working, or on the internet, is there such a cry of 'oh man the Canon has the best colours in the world'.

Maybe it's because a lot of people here have used Canon for a long time, or in some cases, only ever used Canon and so are simply used to the image and colour you get out of it.  I'm sure if the A7s was the 5DmkII of its time, people wouldn't have complained about the supposedly 'strange colours' (which I'm personally still yet to replicate on my A7s).

You can get nice colours out of almost any camera - the point of colour grading is to get colours you like. Personally, for day-to-day usage (i.e. not studio use), I'm looking for a camera that's light, easy to use and gives me a great picture. I've used 5Ds, 7Ds, and Rebels and not once was I happy with the picture straight out of the camera (and even after grading etc. it still looked meh). Now, you can say 'well you get great results if you shoot flat, reduce contrast, reduce sharpening, or use ML raw' - and that's true. But I can also get great results (if not better) by doing the same with my A7s. Except all I have to do with my A7s is turn it to Picture Profile 7.

I continue to be amazed at the quality of the imagery I get out of my A7s, especially paired with the Shogun. I don't want a camera that's going to work against me, or that I have to hack to oblivion to get a half-decent image out of it. The 5D3 raw is nice, but it's not 'mind-blowing' as half the users here would have you think.

I've had friends tell me they prefer the RED image to Alexa because Alexa is 'way too green' (at least it was until I pulled the green ND filter out of the matte box). In this day and age of colour correcting and grading every shot, colours start to matter less and less. Yes, they matter - but one person's dislikes an Alexa because it's too green, another dislikes RED because it gets really red noise in shadow areas from time to time, another dislikes the F55 because it can be over-saturated (or whatever). Do colourists say 'man you should have shot this on a Canon because the colours are oh so much better?' No. They correct the green out of the Alexa that the person operating forgot to take the ND off, they correct the red out of the RED that the operator under-exposed accidentally (which is why there was noise there in the first place), and they correct the saturation out of the F55 that was there because the operator didn't check the saturation setting when they picked up the camera, and the previous shooter had bumped it up.

Imagine the outcry on here of 'it must have been operator error' if I said I'd seen some terrible colours out of a Canon! But you use a Sony and suddenly it's Sony's fault!

In regards to the OP, if the only thing the Canon 1Dc can offer over the A7s is marginally better colours to those who have spent most of their time shooting Canon anyway - and it still costs more than 3x that of the A7s, then Canon have got real problems.

 

Canon, Sony or any other system for that matter can give you great results. Sony A7s shoots a log image that you an basically push it anywhere you want, you just need to know what you're doing. All "video screen grabs" shot on A7s , colored in Resolve. I posted these before, but I have to remind people it's not the tools....................

 

Well excuse me but I don't like at all the colors and grading of the 2 images above. 

I never said A7S colors are shit however. I even showed in another post some great videos of A7S with nice colors (and in each case it was not SLOG2, and very little grade). 

Just an exemple :

 

In my extremely limited experience with the A7s (for video), I've noticed that the A7s works brilliantly only if you have the white balance dialled in to the T. Tungsten seems to turn the skin green if unlucky and yellowish if lucky. With Canon the C100 and C300 do have a green tone with Tungsten too. Quite frustrating actually with darker skin.  My biggest gripe with with the A7s though is the Blue Flouro Puke that happens with the Highlights clipping at certain white balances.

 

 

[dafreaking]

So we want the lovechild of the A7s and the 1Dc. priced at $3500 

[hmcindie]

 

In regards to the OP, if the only thing the Canon 1Dc can offer over the A7s is marginally better colours to those who have spent most of their time shooting Canon anyway - and it still costs more than 3x that of the A7s, then Canon have got real problems.

Have you actually used the 1Dc versus the A7s in 4k mode? 1Dc wins by a landslide. It's not even debatable, like anyone who has used both and graded both will immediately fall in love with the 1Dc. Even in very lowlight the 1Dc plugs along happily. Only problem is the 1.3x crop and very heavy files. A7s has a bunch of problems. Even though the 1Dc lacks peaking, the A7s is way worse in usability.

[wolf33d]

Ebrahim, 

Indeed and don't forget some slowmo capacity. 

So 1DC with some Sony specs, in a A7 or 5D body.  

 

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I don't want to make that compromise between resolution and colour anymore when buying my next A camera (you don't make that compromise when buying a Canon high end 1DC/Cx00 or a Sony FS7/F5/F55 so the capability is their for both companies to give both great colour and resolution)

When are we going to have a 3000$-ish body with 

-Canon-like Colour science & Codec Colour thickness 

-C-Log like filmic gamma and sharpening level

-Sony A7s/GH4/1DC Resolution 

-Sony A7s/1DC dynamic range 

-Sony A7s/1DC Lowlight performance 

Basically a 3000$ Canon with Sony-like resolution or a 3000$ Sony with Canon-like Colours, who's going to be first? 

I think it's not soon, sadly. 

 

 

The GH4 with V-Log has all of that except the lowlight. Come on, Panasonic!

[rak_heri]

I moved from Canon 5D III to Sony A7II, after 6 years with Canon.

It's been only a few months but my experience is that LUTs (for video) or color presets like VSCO (for photography) are necessary for Sony shots otherwise they might look like taken by smartphones. Green shift, skin doesn't look so good etc.

Sony should hire a Canon color engineer and also collaborate with professionnal photographers and cinematographers and work seriously on their feedback. It seems they are too focused on paper specs (dynamic range, more megapixels, etc.) 

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I moved from Canon 5D III to Sony A7II, after 6 years with Canon.

It's been only a few months but my experience is that LUTs (for video) or color presets like VSCO (for photography) are necessary for Sony shots otherwise they might look like taken by smartphones. Green shift, skin doesn't look so good etc.

Sony should hire a Canon color engineer and also collaborate with professionnal photographers and cinematographers and work seriously on their feedback. It seems they are too focused on paper specs (dynamic range, more megapixels, etc.) 

In the pro video division, at least, they do work with professional cinematographers on suggestions and feedback. Look at the work they've done with Art Adams. He asks for it, they provide it. He suggests it, they design it. They're incredibly responsive. 

On the stills side, I haven't seen nearly as much of that. Battery life is still a massive problem for most professionals, as is the lack of adequate professional support and lossy RAW compression. Problems with prosumer video are either ignored or aren't addressed until much later, when they're almost ready to replace those models anyway. 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Sony have been incredibly responsive with their camera division lately and that's what  makes them special today. You want a FF sensor in a cheap small body? here. Want 4K? here. Want insane lowlight? here. Want highest DR? here. Want in-body IS? here. Want lenses? here. Want better codec? here. The list goes on and on. 

I wonder how complicated the ''colour science'' is to design and put into a camera. Is it a sensor quality? sensor filters/dyes quality? processor quality? complicated processing tricks? Gamma/colour tweaks afterwards? How complicated? where does it fit inside the chain and how hard it is to get it pleasing straight off the camera?

It's a subject we know sooo little about and would be extremely interesting to get into the details of it, somehow, maybe asking a camera manufacturer, an open-minded one like Blackmagic for example would give a comprehensive answer. 

[Mattias Burling]

Ask Bolex, they tell you pretty much everything. 

[jax_rox]

I wonder how complicated the ''colour science'' is to design and put into a camera. Is it a sensor quality? sensor filters/dyes quality? processor quality? complicated processing tricks? Gamma/colour tweaks afterwards? How complicated? where does it fit inside the chain and how hard it is to get it pleasing straight off the camera?

Custom sensor design is very finnicky. The image is affected even by how each element is wired to each other. There's a lot that goes into it, and that's why the Alexa costs the price it does.

Sony are pretty responsive in regards to their camera divison - the big difference being that their professional camera division adds features into the already existing cameras, the consumer division simply brings out a new body. Sony will fix the issues you have with your consumer camera - but you'll need to buy a new body to get them. That's been the way even as far back as the NEX series.

In my opinion, if you've worked at all with the F5/55, FS7 or F3, you won't be 'shocked' by the colours in the A7s. They're not wildly different (to any camera for that matter), so if you think the F5 has great colour, and the A7s has terrible colour, I can only gather that it's purely operator error... The A7s is slightly different looking, but it's pretty similar - and definitely has that 'Sony' colour. The F5 and the C300 look very different - if you want to compare Sony vs Canon colour, try the difference between those (both can, and do, look great though)

The only time I've had issues on my A7s with colours is if the white balance is wrong (which is going to give you funky colours on any non-raw camera anyway, and is pretty easy to fix), or if skin is under-exposed it can struggle to hold up to extreme grading because of the 8-bit codec.