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Archive 2014 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...

  
 
Mescalamba
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


AhamB wrote:
How many cameras do you know that have a full frame sensor and the capabilities of the GH4 or FZ1000? The difference in sensor size makes fast readout more challenging.


Hm.. in real life, shooting with FF camera is bit challenging. Actually smaller sensor is better.. Super35 is APS-C for good reason.

But A7s is one of the kind and probably not last.. I think they will do much more advanced things in the future.



Aug 21, 2014 at 11:09 AM
AhamB
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


That's totally beside my point of course, but there isn't such a wealth of affordable lenses available for super 35 as there is for full frame. The speed boosters have changed things a bit though.


Aug 21, 2014 at 11:30 AM
Matt Grum
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


joychris wrote:
Numbers don't tell the entire story, the A7s internal files have more DR and far less noise than the GH4 - regardless of GH4 output. There's a great thread on DVXuser - both cameras recorded externally - that shows the GH4 noise at 1600 is about the same as the A7s at 12,800 - despite "only" being 8-bit.


Presumably they did the test at the same f-stop. In most situations you will need to stop the A7S down to provide enough DOF so you will have to shoot at ISO 12800 compared to 1600 with the GH4.




Aug 21, 2014 at 11:43 AM
snapsy
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


Matt Grum wrote:
Presumably they did the test at the same f-stop. In most situations you will need to stop the A7S down to provide enough DOF so you will have to shoot at ISO 12800 compared to 1600 with the GH4.

I wouldn't go as far to say as most situations require the A7s to be stopped down, and many times the opposite is true, as evidenced by the popularity of speed boosters for MFT.



Aug 21, 2014 at 12:07 PM
millsart
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


Mescalamba wrote:
Hm.. in real life, shooting with FF camera is bit challenging. Actually smaller sensor is better.. Super35 is APS-C for good reason.

But A7s is one of the kind and probably not last.. I think they will do much more advanced things in the future.


Boy ain't that the truth!

I always thought super fast glass would make for such great low light video, such as the MD 58mm f1.2, but then I found how difficult keeping focus is, and if the subjects move even slightly, they visibly get out of the plane of focus.

Challenging to say the least, especially if your only other video experience is using small sensor consumer/prosumer grade video cameras where pretty much everything is always in focus



Aug 21, 2014 at 12:13 PM
joychris
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


The nice thing about the A7s relative to its competitors is just how clean the ISO's are to 12800 - and stuff much higher (ISO's that are impossible with any other camera) is still useable. You're not forced to shoot at f1.4 to keep the ISO down and noise at manageable levels. Its far less limited than most ILC's, pick whatever aperture you want. If you want to obliterate the background or have a great rack focus you can easily do that too. Plus there's no crop factor unless you're shooting 4k, so you don't have to play the focal length numbers game with sensor size, speedboosters and such. Its image is aliasing and moire free (unlike the GH3/4) and its sharp with less banding issues (unlike anything Canon). If you want an S35 image, enable crop mode and you have it, with almost no loss of sharpness and less rolling shutter. Though aliasing and moire does come into play when shooting in crop mode. Its also sharper and has more DR than the GH4 when recorded 4k externally - and the GH4's output is 10-bit compared to the A7s 8-bit.

Its not perfect, the highlight aliasing can come into play and rolling shutter is pretty bad in FF mode. You can't record video with the shutter button (annoying, and frustrating given how small the rec. button is on the A7), you can't do a custom WB when shooting slog2 (you have to switch to a different profile and then access the custom WB after switching back to slog), like all A7 cameras you can't assign EVF/LCD to a button and switch between them quickly and as far as I can tell - the focus magnify in video mode won't punch in as much as it does in stills mode. Most of this can be addressed in a firmware update, though we know its hit and miss with Sony's updates.

Its shoots nice stills too.



Aug 21, 2014 at 02:45 PM
sflxn
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


Interesting video on the ISO, color retention, AF, and 8-bit vs 10-bit.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1671783775&feature=iv&src_vid=uez82EdoNNU&v=qdMypfYrKgw



Aug 21, 2014 at 03:00 PM
U.C.
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


Matt Grum wrote:
Presumably they did the test at the same f-stop. In most situations you will need to stop the A7S down to provide enough DOF so you will have to shoot at ISO 12800 compared to 1600 with the GH4.


Only 2 stops difference, so iso6400 on the A7s.



Aug 21, 2014 at 05:08 PM
tigerbengal
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


what about the 30min record limit in the a7s?, the gh4 has no limit...that's another thing to have in mind about this two cameras


Sep 18, 2014 at 10:45 PM
miguel_13
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


joychris wrote:
Numbers don't tell the entire story, the A7s internal files have more DR and far less noise than the GH4 - regardless of GH4 output. There's a great thread on DVXuser - both cameras recorded externally - that shows the GH4 noise at 1600 is about the same as the A7s at 12,800 - despite "only" being 8-bit. The GH4 at 3200 is so noisy, I found it unusable even after noise reduction, and that's with the 200mbps bitrate, the A7s easily tops it at 50mbps. So my 64gb card has 4x the recording time and produces better 1080p. I
...Show more

I actually don't understand what people are doing with their A7s's, from a practical standpoint I need 6-7 stops of ND to work in a lens's sweet spot (maybe at the most 2 stops down from wide open) in exterior daylight with ISO 200. I just finished two projects that I did with a pair of GH4s and even shooting interiors available light I never needed more than ISO 800. I could easily go to ISO 320 when lighting an interview with a 750watt Rifa and a couple of 250 Prolights. So yeah, shooting bats in cave with ISO 25,000 ? ok.

Frankly I would probably take issue with the idea that increased DR has anything to do with "video-ishness", I'm pretty certain we were getting more DR in the hacked GH2 than we were with 16mm neg back in the golden age of film. Also any "moire or aliasing" you are seeing in GH4 footage is a function of your work path, its not in the original footage, at least not if you are shooting UHD or 4K. There has also been a lot of online crap about the skin tones with the GH4, it took me one or two afternoons of testing to put that to rest.

I actually like the A7's, and the E mount in general, already being committed to the format and mount with an A7r is the best reason to get an A7s, although I think that ergonomically and functionally the GH4 is a better to camera to actually do video work with. The advantage with FF for legacy and adapted lens is mostly at the wide-end, the Sony native FE mount selection remains a little anemic, I think if Sigma ever came around to adapting its line to FE mount it would be a huge shot-in-the-arm for the Sony system.



Sep 20, 2014 at 03:03 PM
Lee Saxon
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · I would love an A7S mostly for video but...


AhamB wrote:
How many cameras do you know that have a full frame sensor and the capabilities of the GH4 or FZ1000? The difference in sensor size makes fast readout more challenging.


Maybe, but not so much so that they couldn't have done it, I'd wager. There's just no way CMOS-juggernaut Sony's sensor program is so far behind little independent Red's that in a time when Red can give us minimal rolling shutter at 6K 100fps, Sony can't do it at 1080p24.

I think the difference is in not the sensor but the processing horsepower behind the sensor, and how long the A7/r/s take to boot up - 20x as long as my decade-old DSLR, completely unacceptable - tells you how totally Sony cheaped out on that.

Now, I'll accept that the processor doesn't yet exist that could've given the tiny A7s internal 4K (or maybe even 1080p120) without adding size, heat dissipation, and cost, but I won't say that about minimal-rolling-shutter 1080p24. Especially since it has a purpose-built sensor.

No, they cheaped out on the processor to goose profit margins and even more so to protect their underspecced CineAltas.



Sep 20, 2014 at 07:54 PM
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