Hi guys, so i put my A7S to the test for first time yesterday with a trip to the zoo with my family.

I know some of you will be wanting to know how it looks.

I'd like some critique on the grading specifically - I find it tricky personally.

One thing that bothered be on such a bright day was the evf. I would prefer to use it because among many things, the focus peaking is a lot more noticeable on it. Problem is, I'm a glasses wearer and I found that because i couldn't get my eye right in, the bright sun was interfering with my view of it.

Are there any kind of mini loupe type adapters to go on the evf at all?

The Zoo - Sony A7S Film - SLog 2 Profile XAVC-S on Vimeo

Hi Clive

I think everyone will have a different opinion but to me the footage looks very, very flat and has no punch at all. If you look at the grass it seems to look a grey green rather than what grass should look like.

I guess sLog is a totally flat profile?? I would have really pushed the saturation for starters but it also appears that your black levels are very high too ..the images, especially wide shots, sometimes almost looks like the contrast has been dropped right off so the whole image looks "misty" ... This is obviously the profile that has been set up like this.

Then again that may be the look you want, I'm not sure, but when anyone says "Ireland" to me I just see lush greenery so I expect vibrant colours especially in lawns are trees. Am I wrong??

The images besides that certainly are nice and sharp!!

We shall see what others tend to say and hopefully I'm the odd man out?

Chris

Thanks Chris. You could well be right, grading for me is tricky. When you're working with super flat (you can see original Slog 2 at the end) you THINK you have pushed the saturation by comparison to the original, and maybe you need to take a break and come back to it before you realised you could probably saturate it more.

I'll give it a go later. But thats said, I do tend to grade a little flatter than the norm. I kind of like it.

Also, when you say black levels are very high, do you mean that you think I've crushed the blacks? Or that there's not enough contrast in them?

Also, in case anyone is interested - this was ALL handheld with my Canon 35mm f2 IS.

Hi Clive

To me (and that's just me) the black levels look like they have been clipped about 15% above zero which is the theoretical solid black level. I think you used to used Sony Vegas didn't you? If you did and are familiar with the vectorscope and colour curves plug in it is almost like the log curve (I'm assuming that what the SLog profile abides by, has a big bulge to the left at the low end so blacks are limited and an opposite one on the right so highlights are pushed ....I can only relate to the waveform display which shows the high to low levels as a % rather than 0 -255 ...If you supress black levels then the waveform would show whites just touching 100% but blacks not dropping below about 15% instead of zero %

This tends to also kill contrast as you are reducing black levels and it just seems the video either has low contrast or black levels that have been supressed.

I'm no guru but crushing blacks to me is increasing the black level ..down to zero if need be which of course creates stunning contrast but then you lose all shadow detail so that's not normally what you would want. Your video, to me, shows very high shadow detail so the blacks in my layman's terms are not crushed at all BUT like that you get all the detail showing thru but contrast suffers where nothing is black anymore ..(sorta 50 shades of Grey???)

On my Sony EA-50's without a profile setting I have the opposite problem! It crushes the blacks right to zero so a black suit at a wedding is absolutely black with no detail. I just finished a wedding and was trying the "no profile" setting and it had the complete opposite to your video!!

Sorry I'm a dummy explaining things but compare this thread where the guy used the cinegamma profile http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/photo-hd-video-d-slr-others/523949-first-test-a7s-120fps.html#post1855362


Chris

This a step in the right direction Chris? password:slog2

Private Video on Vimeo

I am a Vegas user. What tools should I be using? I've done what I've done using Sony Levels and Sony Color Corrector (Secondary), and in this version I used Color Curves so i could adjust the green only.

Is there any other tool I could be using?

Hi Clive, on a first watch I was too engrossed in the content, the compositions and the music to think much about the grading. Nice video! I'd be proud of that.

On a second look... Well, I picked up the same thing Chris noticed -- video looks grey and misty, low contrast, blacks are milky. But maybe that look worked for the subject matter, especially since I was engrossed in watching it. Felt a bit like '70s film stock, or like a polaroid.

Second video -- looks like you did indeed introduce more contrast, crushed the blacks more or whatever, and this had the effect of also boosting perceived saturation. But I'd still call the second video low contrast, and I wouldn't call those greens "lush", if that's what you were aiming at.

How to fix... Some things that come to mind are:

-- boost the overall contrast first, with a general curves or levels effect, before you start tweaking specific channels.
-- "you THINK you have pushed the saturation by comparison to the original" -- well, looking at a histogram or other scope might help. Then it's no longer just about your eyes and your monitor settings, but you know where your black point is.
-- after you've played with contrast, then think about boosting saturation independently, at first an all-over saturation adjustment, then by channel (or even by masking off separate areas and adjusting them independently, if you want to get down to that sort of detail).

You might be missing an effect. You say you're using levels, color corrector, and color curves. Well, I've never used Sony Vegas. But just going by the names, I'm curious if any of these would let you boost saturation. Levels sounds like it lets you adjust luminance and contrast; color curves sounds like it lets you do this by individual colour channel; color corrector sounds like it's about tinting the image, but possibly it allows you to boost saturation as well?

Edit: I've skimmed some articles on this subject. I think I'm probably wrong about an increase in contrast (with levels or curves) affecting luminance only and not colour, and only affecting "perceived" saturation -- now I suspect that saturation is affected by this effect also.

The grading wasn't to my taste - I prefer a more video look (yikes!) - but you pulled off the handholding and that is a very significant attractive factor for me.

Pete

Hey Clive

To be honest I didn't see an awful lot of difference! Maybe that's what SLog gives you??

Yes Adrian in Vegas the first plugin I drop in is Colour Corrector because it also has gamma and saturation sliders and I'm not really sure if that will lift contrast but I would say the first step would be to zap up the saturation slider on the Colour Corrector Clive and see if your grass does actually become green again. I would overdo it initially to a ridiculous point (say take it up to 2!! ) and then reduce until you have people's skin tones looking normal again.

In the vectorscope, what are your levels looking like on the waveform ..the highlights shouldn't be over 100% and the shadows just a tad above zero.

On the slomo post I listed above you will see the video there has probably gone too much the other way and their saturation looks a tad too high. I would definitely start with basic stuff like the colour corrector and just wack the saturation slider up high and see what happens

Can you maybe upload a short segment (say 60 seconds) of the raw stuff but rendered to MP4 so it's a smallish file and some of us can play with it???

Chris

Hi Clive,

The second version is a definite improvement but I agree with Chris, it's still somewhat too flat for my taste. I also used to find colour correction a bit tricky, I used to shoot in Cinestyle profile on my 60D. Even with the LUT applied it was difficult to judge contrast and colour depth by eye and no, I can't afford a calibrated monitor.

What I do now is use and trust the video scopes in my NLE. Sometimes a correction looks wrong in the monitor, but if I look at it later, by several hours or next day, I can see the scopes were right. I no longer have Vegas installed anywhere, I now edit in Kdenlive on the Linux platform, so there may be some slight differences.

What I do:
1. Open the histogram (in Kdenlive it can show both luma and colour saturation at the same time) or the waveform monitor, apply a Bézier curve and set the blacks to just hit zero, then set the highlights to just touch 255. I then tweak the mids if necessary.

2. Using the histogram or RGB parade, apply saturation and adjust until the first colour hits 255.

It may help. Also, have a look at this tutorial Color Correction Tutorial for Sony Vegas (1) Establishing the Tonal Range on Vimeo.

Dave

If you plan to mix the a7s with other camera's I"d avoid shooting slog unless you have advanced experience in color correcting, I think with your film there is not directly an issue with the contrast or blacks but with the highlights which are seriously compressed. There is also hardly any colorinformation. I don' have much experience in color correcting but I have been shooting in the cine-d mode with my gh4 which is also very flat and a mistake I made during shooting (I underexposed) turned out to be a good learning experience, I found it quite easy to lift the highlights without causing any banding in the sky and exposed each shot exactly like I wanted in post, it almost looked as if shooting this flat benefits from shooting underexposed. You can see that particular video here: (I"ll just provide the link so that the video doesn't appear here)
vimeo.com/99912988

This is not the A7S but the FS700 and shows you the difference between no profile, ITU709 (which I use) and sLog and you can see that Clive got exactly what the camera delivered.

I would suspect that the sLog profile would be quite similar on the A7S ... I thought that 709 was flat until I watched this..My ITU709 profile has a colour level upped by two points which gives a nice indoor image at weddings but very flat outdoors so I usually boost the saturation a bit more for outdoor shots.

FS700 Picture Profiles & Sony Zoom Lens Review - SLog-2 709 footage - YouTube

sLog is not really my thing as it's in raw form a very flat and dingy image but obviously there are people that do amazing things with it. It's got awesome shadow detail so for indoor low light it would probably fare well! My issue is that I forget to change profiles at weddings and need the cameras on just one profile so it's one less thing to remember to do and a modded ITU709 works pretty well!!

Chris

I'm not a fan of S-Log. I think there's simply too much information lost when grading so flat on an 8 bit codec. The amount of noise in the shadows is horrible after you start grading it as well. I've been using I've been using Kholi's PP6 profile and it's much better.

Also bear in mind that sLog has a fixed base ISO of 3200 in order to have that massive dynamic range so I would think great for taking stuff at midnight but not really good for bright sunshine.

Yep I also have a feeling that the 8 bit codec will start to get noisy with the heavy grading required. sLog is great on the F3 or F55 but those are serious money cameras!!

The Cine profiles for weddings will probably work a bit better unless the entire wedding has only tea candles for lighting then sLog and 128,000 iso will turn night into day.

However I'm sure Clive does quite ordinary weddings like we all do so he does need a profile that's not so flat!

Wow, I've got some reading up to do! But what an interesting thread this has become!

I doubt I will use SLog for my weddings - in fact I'm certain i won't - but the reason i wanted to do this project in SLog is because I want to improve my skill-set. And you all are helping me in that process.

I will upload a little of the original footage of maybe 2/3 scenes just to see what some of you guys can do with it. I'll let you know when.

Available to download and mess about with! Show me how it 'should' look if you have time!

https://vimeo.com/101856686

Ah, fun! :) I have absolutely no idea what I"m doing but some very quick and dirty cc in edius gave me this: (I probably overdid it but, hej, I"m in a colorful mood today.)

password: test
Private Video on Vimeo

Yea Noa, I would have to say you overdid it. Its very unnatural looking IMO. But then I guess its down to taste.

Here is my third tweak, and truth be told, I Like this one and might just save it as a preset regardless of what you all think. But I'd like to hear your thoughts either way. It is going to come down to a taste thing in the end!

Password: SLog

Private Video on Vimeo

I guess I'm with Pete (thanks for saying "I like the video look first...!). It very much looked "vintage", including a nice grain, but also looked like how "old stock" fades, and has a low contrast/saturation look. If that's what you're after, it was quite good (I sometimes like to try to emulate "vintage" looks - it's good practice to try to replicate different old "film" looks!).

Not sure if you've got a calibrated system or not, but there are fairly inexpensive devices that can help with that, or at least get you close to calibrated... I'm not 100% convinced, as sometimes my "calibrated" results look different between monitors, and I'm fighting with this Seiki 4K monitor to get a calibration that isn't too bright for "normal" use but too dark for video, BUT you can definitely get much closer by using one of these devices!

Since I already "know" my monitor is a bit dark, I'd say some of those scenes (elephants particularly) were tending towards overexposed and washed out. Noa's "mix" was a bit over-saturated, but didn't look too bad.

The odd feeling I get is that the vintage "look" you got suits the footage quite well, and therefore "works", where a punchier "video" look might not have, even though it might have looked more modern with more "pop" in the colors and contrast.

Its very unnatural looking IMO.

I know it all comes down to taste but do you find your last attempt natural looking? The highlights are still very compressed and the colors also look weird, like the grass doesn't look naturally green to me, it all looks quite lifeless and from the Sony promo videos I have seen the camera is capable of producing some eye popping colors. I did push the saturation in my try out on purpose as I wanted to see how far you could pull color back from a apparent colorless s-log image. But I"m no colorist in any way, I wouldn't use a s-log image as I would find it too difficult to expose and colorcorrect right.

Does the a7s not have any standard profiles? If that would be the case would it not be better to get it right from the start?

I agree with Noa sadly so it's all to do with personal taste I guess. For weddings of course, you have to supply what the brides want so if all your web samples are de-saturated then that's how the wedding film should look.

I like deep saturated colours that are natural and vivid but not overdone. Clive's grading to me brings back memories when instead of full colour stills people went crazy for the antique sepia look prints of yester year and loved it.

Chris

Since I offrered advice, I thought I should "put up or shut up", so here's the clip done my way. It's only 720, I'm not a plus member!

The password is CliveM.

Private Video on Vimeo

Dave

Hey David

Yep I could go for that as it does look pretty normal to me. As said before whether we like it or not, we have to produce video clips that brides will like not what we like.

I learnt that many years ago when I was still in my early twenties and played in a band and we started off playing what WE liked not what the people at the gig wanted and nearly failed in the attempt...we switched to playing what the crowd wanted and hey presto ..they loved us even though the songs were mostly not ones we would have chosen!

Wedding videos are the same, and brides are weird creatures too...we look at shallow depth of field as creative and some brides simply say "Why is part of the picture all fuzzy" I think with saturation we need to try and create something so if the bridesmaids dresses are bright red we need to make sure that they look bright red like on the day and not a washed out pink .... and of course on the other side of the coin we mustn't over saturate that delicate peach coloured dress so it looks orange.

With our own projects of course (including Clive's one here) the grading can be exactly what he wants as it's his video.

Chris

A little off topic, but how is the low light performance of it at iso 12,800 ? I am mostly concerned about the grain at that point. Has anyone shot with it at a low light venue at those iso with 60 or 30fps at 2.8 ?

Hi Chris,

Glad you like my version.

Yes of course, I realise what you say is true Chris, but in this instance I am simply proving that what I said will work, does. If it helps Clive, great! If not, well I tried.

Dave

Hey Arthur

There is a video hanging around somewhere with an ISO comparison between this and a 5D and they ramp the A7S up to over ISO 400,000 ..that's a bit noisy but the image even around the 25,000 mark still looks amazingly clean so I would suspect that 12,000 is very clean. In sLog mode the base ISO is 3200 ..shucks that's about as far as I take my Sony NEX when I'm really struggling!!

Chris

One thing that bothered be on such a bright day was the evf. I would prefer to use it because among many things, the focus peaking is a lot more noticeable on it. Problem is, I'm a glasses wearer and I found that because i couldn't get my eye right in, the bright sun was interfering with my view of it.


Clive why can't you simply adjust the diopter?

Pete

Does the a7s not have any standard profiles? If that would be the case would it not be better to get it right from the start?

Noa I received my A7s yesterday and it seems to (upon a quick glance) have the same profiles as the EA50

Pete

Chris,
I shot fireworks on Friday night (SLog) with the A7S and a wedding yesterday (Standard), and hopefully I'll get some samples up of High ISO stuff.

Clive what lenses are you using with it? I've just ordered the metabones smart adapter IV so I can use my EF glass :) I've been testing it so far with my Speedbooster but can only do that in APS-C mode

Ceremony/Speeches - Canon 85mm f1.8
Stabiliser Shots - Canon 17-40mm f4 L
Everything Else (Handheld) - Canon 35mm f2 IS

I'm getting a weird lens type flare when there is a bright light just outside of frame. I'll post a sample of that too.

Is that with all your lenses? lens flare is often linked to the lens only, like I have a 12mm f2.0 from olympus but you also have a 12mm f1.6 from slr magic, the last one is known to flare a lot more then the Olympus, some get that lens just because of that effect but you can decrease the flare by stopping down the iris, that at least works on the slr magic, not sure how that will work out on your Sony.

Philip Bloom noticed that the sensor has a bit of a purple flare on the left of the image with some lenses. If that's what you are getting take a look at his review on the A7S

He mentions it somewhere in here but the content is a good watch anyway

The evolving review of the Sony A7s now with extreme low light video. | Philip Bloom (http://philipbloom.net/2014/07/03/a7s/)

Chris

Here is the lens flare type thing I experience... Any thoughts?

Sony A7S - Strange light leak / flare - Metabones Canon EF Lens to Sony NEX Smart Adapter (Mark IV) used with Canon 35mm f2 IS on Vimeo

Pretty sure that's lens related, somehow catching a "bounce" off those lights off to the side... maybe a hood would help?

I see that philip bloom has reacted on the vimeo video saying it happens with a sony lens he has as well.

Having run into a few odd lens issues (small bits of dirt, odd flares, the infamous "blue dot"...) here and there, my guess is that those lights somehow were bright enough to bounce off an internal wall off the lens, which then flared onto one of the elements, but that's just a guess based on the very odd flare you're getting (happens AFTER the light is out of the frame!). Thus my suggestion that a hood might be in order to prevent "off angle" light from entering the lens.

I don't think it's likely the camera... that would be a really nasty mount gap! If that's even a suspicion, you can try the hair scrunchy trick to cover the lens/body joint and see what happens.

You should be able to repro this under controlled conditions with a bright light until you get to the bottom of the problem! That's what I've done when dealing with odd flare artifacts...

Hi Clive, thanks for sharing. I got the A7s too and I'm struggling with S log 2. Did you use colour curves and colour corrector to get the look? I noticed the Saturation needs to be pushed real hard to get there. In low light its really noisy in 32bit but in 8bit it doesn't "look" that noisy in the preview strangely!