Investigating Cine and SLOG on A7s

[Gregormannschaft]

Found this on dvxuser and thought it was really interesting. Tells a lot of us what we kind already know but in a lot more depth.

Article: http://www.inventome.com/Blog/2015/8/a7exposure/Sony-A7s---how-to-expose---cine-or-log?

dvxuser: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?339113-A7s-detailed-breakdown-of-the-gamma-curves-slog-or-cine

Basically, SLOG2 is mostly great but overexposing correctly and bringing it down in post but will generally crush the blacks.
Cine 1 is great for when you want to retain detail in the highlights.
Cine 4 is when you'd like to keep detail in the shadows.

I'm a big fan of Cine 1 for bright outdoor conditions so this makes sense to me, I know a lot of people are also Cine 4 fans. But recently I've been using SLOG2 more and more and the general aesthetics are beautiful.

[The Chris]

I used this profile created by Samuel H for awhile shooting slog, but eventually I wound up using Cine 1 or 4 more. 

http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-a7s/index.html

Going to try that and some of the other A7s profiles people posted to see how they perform on the A7RII.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?334121-a7s-Picture-Profile-Compilation-2015

[Gregormannschaft]

I'm a big fan of Kholi's SLOG2 profile settings, with the saturation dialed down just a touch.

[The Chris]

Never tried Kholi's PP, but I will with the A7RII. The nice thing about Samuel's is you can just go one stop over what the camera meters and its pretty much always spot on. With the A7RII lowering the min ISO to 800, that should make life a little easier.

[docmoore]

I'm a big fan of Kholi's SLOG2 profile settings, with the saturation dialed down just a touch.

Kholi's SLOG2 profile prevents you from using standard commercial LUTS as he has tweaked the color settings ... so the LUT 

which expects standard SLOG2 is inaccurate. He gives great color without a LUT - Vision Color, FilmConvert or James Miller all

are less than ideal with his profile.

Bob

[mjfan]

I shot this Michael Jackson Tribute using Kholi's SLOG2 profile with the Sony a7s https://vimeo.com/128967990

[Axel]

How about NO Picture Profile?

Every more or less flat profile robs values from the skin tones and results in worse images, because in the 8-bit codec, little can be done in post to add vibrance to those. This Michael Jackson video shows this, imo. The skin tones are poor. Even if you had the best luts to nail down the right *colors*. Rungunshoot (Brandon Li) just uses autumn leaves, and then apparently you have some options for CC (though not for heavy grading, but this, again, is hampered by the 8-bit).

I don't say I'm right, I'm just starting to test with the A7s. I'd like you to show me that I'm wrong.