New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

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John Paines

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 2:21 pm

When there was only 16 or 35mm to choose from, all this was much simpler. Everyone understood that the look of the thing depended not on the camera but on production value -- money and skill. And given the origins of most movie directors, that usually meant someone else's money and the skills of the people who got hired.

It was the DIY age, where everyone does everything and mostly does everything badly, that brought out these camera preoccupations.

OTOH, no less than Stanley Kubrick pointed out that movies can be good even when they're technically bad, even crude. But that means somebody has to have a novel idea or an original mind, and the means to get it onscreen somehow or other. Which seems to happen maybe once every 20 years, and the rate has yet to increase despite the vast ramp-up in DIY production. That, or there are just too many movies to count.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 3:07 pm

John Paines wrote:
Eugenia Loli wrote:Here's a short film, shot with the A7S II in slog2, using the Phantom Luts. Perfectly cinematic.


Which just goes to show how differently we all view material. There's nothing there which this viewer would associate with "cinematic", and the closeups in particular scream, to these eyes, "video camera".

Without a commonly accepted definition -- a specification, really -- what does "cinematic" mean, other than "I like it" or "good production values"? Excluding artifacts like grain and projector weave, film itself can look like a million different things. So down with "cinematic"....


I have to agree.

Cinematic is a much abused term. For me, it means storytelling intent.

In this example, the biggest issue is the constant mismatching of shutter speeds. There’s shots with different shutter speeds randomly intermixed with 180 deg shutter shots. I find this incredibly distracting and quite un-cinematic.

There’s the always classic video problem of clipped whites. The scene with her crossing the road after the evening scene. Lost and blown highlight detail. Un-cinematic.

Looked like a few IS lock ups too....again...un-cinematic...

Hello rolling shutter. Sideways verticals on the train....un-cinematic.

Now was this a good film ?

Sure. It had an idea and it executed it well enough. Performance was good. I felt the pace could have moved a little faster. I wished the transformative moment was a bigger difference visually to what had come before. I don’t think it’s enough to simply have the environment. I would have liked to see that environment treated in a different way. Made more visceral perhaps to contrast what has gone before.

Cutting to the “beach” was a nicer idea.

Intention. Intent is cinematic to me.

This film has a lot of intent, some occasions lovely shots but it was de-energised in my view by some technical in-consistencies and shot choices.

It went form a cinematic idea with great intent, and it shed a lot of it’s cinematic potential because of those technical deficiencies. This is my subjective and personal opinion.

Kudos to the film itself. But for me this fails as an example of “cinematic”

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John Paines

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 4:08 pm

I agree that, unlike "cinematic", "cinematic intent" is a useful way to look at things. The makers of this vimeo short were plainly driven by "cinematic intent"; what they were *trying* to do isn't in any doubt, though the unkind might describe the result as pretentious, in the sense of claiming for itself more than it can achieve (somebody constantly whispering in your ear, "this is so beautiful", etc. etc. etc.).

But the odd thing is, "cinematic intent" is new for ultra-low budget material -- it came in with digital post-production and relatively cheap cameras free of the artifacts associated with consumer and SD video.

The ultra-low budget successes on the 90s and early 2000s, including lots of stuff shot on film, aspired to be movies, but didn't trade on "cinema". Production limitations were unconcealed, were part of the package. There was no attempt to replicate big budget production values or collect beautiful picture postcards. People always shot that stuff anyway ("the director's favorite shot"), but good editors always got rid of it.

Now, thanks to the technology, everybody wants "cinema". But technology doesn't deliver.... When everything's beautiful, nothing is.
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Tamas Harangi

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 5:00 pm

I would just add that "cinematic intent" is a first step, but what really makes a difference is "cinematic / filmic sensibility."

Out of the box, Sony cams in general don't respond as cinematically as some others, but any of today's CMOS sensor cameras can be graded closer to a "filmic" quality by a colorist whose sensibilities align with that. The Venice, for example, is nowhere near as filmic as the Alexa, but it can be made to look filmic in post by someone who strives to do it.

I've graded some Sony A7 projects and felt happy with the results -- not as happy as with BMPCC clips graded through the same process, but much happier than I thought I would based on what I saw out of the box.

The A7 clips included here are fine, but I do think if "filmic" grade was the goal, better results could have been gotten with a different LUT / grade. This is especially true with manufacturer sponsored "test film" content which always seems to end up using a grade based on the stock 709 LUTs -- well graded, but not digging into what the camera can really achieve with a filmic approach.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 8:41 pm

Indeed, cinematic means different things for different people. Even for myself, I have two definitions of it.

For me, cinematic is mainly the emulation of print film, particularly how movies looked between 1950 and 1980 (with more emphasis to 1950-60s). The later film was much more accurate, and more akin to today's 'digital' look.

In regards to the video earlier, despite the rolling shutter and lack of texture, the video does resemble the look of a modern indie film that would cost anywhere from $100k to a couple of million. If it had more dialog, actors, plot, it would have looked like your standard indie fare. So it could have been a film that's easily watchable in a theater, and so by definition, that makes it "cinematic", as in "showing in cinemas".

The only hang up I have in the word cinematic is when people shoot slow motion stuff on youtube and call it cinematic. Given that slow motion is used rarely in theatrical releases, and their video's color grading looks nothing like film or movie (either older, nor modern), I see nothing associated with the word cinematic about it. It's just a way to hide bad shots and trick the viewer.

That's why I don't care if a camera does 4k/60 or 4k/120. I never use these modes or shoot slow motion (I go only as far as 30p for slowed down-to-24p music videos, but never in what I call "vanity" standard youtube fair your-girlfriend-walking-in-the-woods videos).

In the case of Sony particularly, these high fps modes are good to have though, just so I'm convinced that the rolling shutter is minimized (a camera that does 4k/60/120 means that it can handle itself). Additionally, again because of how Sony's PDAF works, the more fps you have available, and you shoot at lower fps (e.g. a camera that can do 120 but you shoot in 24), means that there is available intermediary time between frames for PDAF to work faster. Owners of an A6x00 series will notice that AF in 4k is not as good as in 1080p, for that reason. In Canon's case, they use another AF calculation system that doesn't depend as much on fps, but is more constraint by Digic/cpu speed instead.
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Ulysses Paiva

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 9:13 pm

I wonder when there was only film, creators were always looking for a "cinematic look" or were just busy using the tools to help tell the story...
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 9:29 pm

How you print the film, changes the look of your movie. So it was definitely a consideration for them too.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Aug 02, 2020 11:02 pm

I've been looking at films shot in the 60's and 70's. If that is cinematic, then I think we have moved on.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 12:42 am

I see in a lot of videos and reviews uploaded the blacks are crashed, like no range of blacks. For example:
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Eugenia Loli

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 12:56 am

That's how people grade to get a punchy look. If you want to really see what the camera can do, you need to find properly exposed slog3 footage right out of the camera, preferably with a human in the frame for skin tone reference, and grade it yourself. As far as I know, there's no such footage out there right now to download.

I've been looking at films shot in the 60's and 70's. If that is cinematic, then I think we have moved on.


For color and texture, '50s Technicolor is the gold standard to me. You might not like it, but that's what I strive for.

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 1:09 am

Ulysses Paiva wrote:I wonder when there was only film, creators were always looking for a "cinematic look" or were just busy using the tools to help tell the story...


Actually, back then we were busy trying to make 16 and Super-16 look like 35mm -- "Leaving Las Vegas? Looks great! Can't tell the difference?" "What about Pro_8mm?" So, yeah, people in the indy world were always concerned with with making the affordable gear look like the pro stuff.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 1:18 am

Eugenia Loli wrote:For color and texture, '50s Technicolor is the gold standard to me. You might not like it, but that's what I strive for.

Image


"The Ten Commandments" was in fact Eastmancolor/VistaVision, not 3 strip Technicolor. Still, you're definitely an outlier. That eye popping saturation has come and gone. My guess is, most people don't miss it. 3-strip technicolor OTOH -- say, 'Black Narcissus' -- could be quite beautiful, though taste for it has also moved on.

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 1:44 am

Eugenia Loli wrote:
For color and texture, '50s Technicolor is the gold standard to me. You might not like it, but that's what I strive for.

Image


So let it be written, so let it be graded...


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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 3:26 am

though taste for it has also moved on.


I really don't think so. What happened is that film became faster and more accurate overtime. That look was basically phased out for technical reasons, not because tastes changed. People still try to emulate technicolor or that epic vistavision look.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 3:45 am

Eugenia Loli wrote:
though taste for it has also moved on.


I really don't think so. What happened is that film became faster and more accurate overtime. That look was basically phased out for technical reasons, not because tastes changed. People still try to emulate technicolor or that epic vistavision look.


Isn't it odd that pretty much all film shot today is scanned and processed digitally thereafter? You would be hard pressed to find a venue to project it otherwise. And the pandemic could even put an end to movie theaters in general. Film is a relic. The look you relish is today considered to be either too cartoonish or too crude.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 6:22 am

Ulysses Paiva wrote:I wonder when there was only film, creators were always looking for a "cinematic look" or were just busy using the tools to help tell the story...
Even when film was the only option as a capture medium, a lot of time and effort was still invested in crafting the look of each film. One of the recent Team Deakins podcasts covered this quite well:
https://teamdeakins.libsyn.com/bev-wood-journey-from-film-to-digital-0
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 8:52 am

Bloom's review



The waxy consumer processed look is allover the A7SIII footage
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 10:19 am

WahWay wrote:Bloom's review



The waxy consumer processed look is allover the A7SIII footage
To be fair Bloom himself says he's no expert in grading (and it shows IMO). I just don't think you can make any judgement on the image quality as to it's filmic/video/cinematic/consumer aspects until you have your hands on some camera footage yourself to play with inside your NLE. Filmic vs consumer are IME not intrinsic in any modern camera but products of how you grade it.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 10:59 am

javier forza wrote:I see in a lot of videos and reviews uploaded the blacks are crashed, like no range of blacks. For example:


This has about noting to do with camera itself.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 1:15 pm

Tamas Harangi wrote:
Ulysses Paiva wrote:I wonder when there was only film, creators were always looking for a "cinematic look" or were just busy using the tools to help tell the story...


Actually, back then we were busy trying to make 16 and Super-16 look like 35mm -- "Leaving Las Vegas? Looks great! Can't tell the difference?" "What about Pro_8mm?" So, yeah, people in the indy world were always concerned with with making the affordable gear look like the pro stuff.


To me, looks more like you were busy on what was best for the story.

Jamie LeJeune wrote:
Ulysses Paiva wrote:I wonder when there was only film, creators were always looking for a "cinematic look" or were just busy using the tools to help tell the story...
Even when film was the only option as a capture medium, a lot of time and effort was still invested in crafting the look of each film. One of the recent Team Deakins podcasts covered this quite well:
https://teamdeakins.libsyn.com/bev-wood-journey-from-film-to-digital-0


They were worried about "my video does not look cinematic" or were they worried about "what filter should I use for this scene? How will I light it? What lens will give the experience I want the audience to have?"?
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 2:09 pm

javier forza wrote:I see in a lot of videos and reviews uploaded the blacks are crashed, like no range of blacks. For example:


oof. I know it's not my type of camera and i'll never buy one, but watching just 45 seconds of it where they jump out of the van... yikes! it looked like go pro footage. I know you put any camera in the right hands and lighting and blah blah blah.... but this will just keep the A7__ users going with more LUT packages to download and more forums to populate.

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 2:37 pm

Adam Langdon wrote:
javier forza wrote:I see in a lot of videos and reviews uploaded the blacks are crashed, like no range of blacks. For example:


oof. I know it's not my type of camera and i'll never buy one, but watching just 45 seconds of it where they jump out of the van... yikes! it looked like go pro footage. I know you put any camera in the right hands and lighting and blah blah blah.... but this will just keep the A7__ users going with more LUT packages to download and more forums to populate.

As i sit here in my BMD-fanboi seat.


Dat hunt for focus... ahahahah. Its what most people here want. Go figure...
BTW, GoPro did a good job with their 8 series.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 3:08 pm

"All-I shoots every frame where long GOP skips some frames"- worse crap I ever heard :lol:
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 3:53 pm

OMG!
Maybe AI can help you. Or make you obsolete.

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 4:42 pm

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:"All-I shoots every frame where long GOP skips some frames"- worse crap I ever heard :lol:

I'm crushed. IJustine is where I go for the most through and accurate reviews of cameras. ;)
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostMon Aug 03, 2020 5:39 pm

javier forza wrote:I see in a lot of videos and reviews uploaded the blacks are crashed, like no range of blacks. For example:


OMG. Where's OliviaTech when you need her. All of these people are her offspring.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostTue Aug 04, 2020 2:12 am

Ulysses Paiva wrote:They were worried about "my video does not look cinematic" or were they worried about "what filter should I use for this scene? How will I light it? What lens will give the experience I want the audience to have?"?
If you listen to the podcast, you'll hear that they spent a lot of time ensuring that the film processing method itself would deliver the exact look that the DP was aiming to achieve. While it is different than the status anxiety inherent in asking the question "Does my low budget production look like higher budget cinema?" it is similar in the sense that even the top cinematographers spend a lot of time on the endlessly complicated question — How do I get this capture medium + post process to deliver the exact look that I would like to achieve?

Totally a separate issue, but just want to mention a fascinating part of the discussion on that podcast is how the transition from fully photochemical post production to digital intermediate (meaning capture on film and then scanning the negative to digital files for post production) vastly expanded the creative possibilities while at the same time throwing up a hurdle to clear communication because photochemical processing had universally defined image transform quantities (printer points) for which we have yet to develop a universally used equivalent for digital post processing.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostTue Aug 04, 2020 3:40 am

The rife problems popping up now with the a7Smk3 overheating just proves how relevant and good the Panasonic GH5 still is in 2020!

(and how well the Panasonic S1H shapes up against the new FF competition, bravo Panasonic!)
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostTue Aug 04, 2020 4:17 am

Here some footage to download and test.
Enjoy!

https://www.cameralabs.com/sony-a7s-iii-review/
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostTue Aug 04, 2020 5:46 am

Here some footage to download and test.


Quite worthless test footage really. For the slog3 file it's just a forest, a bunch of green colors with nothing else in it. A good sample footage includes a well lit person, with colorful clothes, and some bokeh for good measure. That's the kind of footage that I would feel interested in downloading and testing grades on it and see how the log profile behaves. A tree, less so.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostTue Aug 04, 2020 7:50 am

David Peterson wrote:The rife problems popping up now with the a7Smk3 overheating just proves how relevant and good the Panasonic GH5 still is in 2020!

(and how well the Panasonic S1H shapes up against the new FF competition, bravo Panasonic!)

Much to the annoyance of many the now ‘ancient’ GH5 is still capable of creating a competitive image in 2020 due to the fact that once a camera has a flexible image profile and codec ( I.e 10bit with Log) then the image quality limits shift to the abilities of the user in capture and post production and away from the restrictions of the camera I.e you can no longer blame the camera if you have technical flaws in your footage.....
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostTue Aug 04, 2020 5:18 pm

I just watched Gerald Undone`s review. While he talks about it very well, his images didnt impress me at all. Not even close to any Blackmagics. Reminded me GoPros as already mentioned here.

Gosh! Have I became a BMD fanboy???
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostTue Aug 04, 2020 5:21 pm

Jamie LeJeune wrote:
Ulysses Paiva wrote:They were worried about "my video does not look cinematic" or were they worried about "what filter should I use for this scene? How will I light it? What lens will give the experience I want the audience to have?"?
If you listen to the podcast, you'll hear that they spent a lot of time ensuring that the film processing method itself would deliver the exact look that the DP was aiming to achieve. While it is different than the status anxiety inherent in asking the question "Does my low budget production look like higher budget cinema?" it is similar in the sense that even the top cinematographers spend a lot of time on the endlessly complicated question — How do I get this capture medium + post process to deliver the exact look that I would like to achieve?

Totally a separate issue, but just want to mention a fascinating part of the discussion on that podcast is how the transition from fully photochemical post production to digital intermediate (meaning capture on film and then scanning the negative to digital files for post production) vastly expanded the creative possibilities while at the same time throwing up a hurdle to clear communication because photochemical processing had universally defined image transform quantities (printer points) for which we have yet to develop a universally used equivalent for digital post processing.


I didnt listen to the podcast so its more a question than an affirmation. Based on what you said, to me it looks more like they were trying to achieve a certain look for the movie, not worried about it being "cinematic" or not.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 05, 2020 3:32 am

No reference to Philip Bloom's livestream on ProAV TV, or his two video demonstrations, or his review?

I guess iJustine is seen here as an easier target :)

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 05, 2020 2:12 pm

Jamie LeJeune wrote:you'll hear that they spent a lot of time ensuring that the film processing method itself would deliver the exact look that the DP was aiming to achieve


All that's true, but compared to today, where pixel level control is available to anyone with a $150 GPU, printer lights and developer baths seem almost quaint.

Jamie LeJeune wrote:just want to mention a fascinating part of the discussion on that podcast is how the transition from fully photochemical post production to digital intermediate (meaning capture on film and then scanning the negative to digital files for post production) vastly expanded the creative possibilities


Way OT, but I think there's a plausible argument that the chance element of the photo-chemical process, and the *lack* of absolute creative control in post, was part of the [good] experience of watching a movie: the fact that every frame introduces stochastic variation keeps people awake. Today, the frame is so thoroughly dry-cleaned, 47-node hyper-processed and stable, it's like you're watching a high resolution comic book or graphic. When Quentin Tarantino damns digital projection as TV in a movie theater, he may have a point. It can put an audience to sleep.
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 05, 2020 3:46 pm

Still the 'Lord of Darkness'...
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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 12, 2020 1:14 am

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 12, 2020 8:29 am

After seeing the film of A7S III: First look: skin tones, I am glad that that pale woman is not my girlfriend. She is so pale and has so much makeup on that I couldn't see myself getting close to her. Her cheeks look sticky. Maybe she has been cooped up indoors for months.

The black models skin tones of John Brawley's URSA Mini Pro 12K film look more realistic. Those are harder colors to get right.

At the risk of interrupting a word from our sponsor, here are some quotes from Sony owners who react to seeing the skin tones of the A7S III:

Zorlal
I was prepared to put a pre-order on the A7Siii once I saw some footage come out, but now that it has I’m a bit disappointed. Nearly all the A7Siii footage released today with the embargo lifting has the same quality I disliked regarding skin tones on my first generation a7s. Just a subtle, anemic quality that makes most people look like moving corpses. That’s somewhat embellished by me, but I see it there.

elemen7al
I agree and it's the ONE thing holding me back from being super excited about this camera. I own and shoot on an a7iii and have been disappointed by the 8 bit color as well as the sony color science, but besides that I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Supposedly, the color science is 'improved' but I'm not seeing it. It does not include the cinetone color present in the FX9 and I think that would have made the difference.

talibsblade
My biggest consideration in moving from Sony to Canon is honestly this. I've been using the a7sii since it's launch and while the camera has been amazing to me, the skin tones and overall color is absolute garbage.

TheUrbanCheese
...I agree that most of the footage I saw had pretty ugly looking skintones

https://www.reddit.com/r/videography/co ... kin_tones/
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Eugenia Loli

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 12, 2020 9:32 pm

Yes, Sony's colors are not pleasing. Canon has the best colors (better than Blackmagic's or Panasonics, and definitely better than Fuji's magenta mess). But there is a solution for Sony. The Phantom luts. These were created by an Australian cinematographer who bought an Alexa just so he can map thousands of colors from the Alexa color science to Sony's. They do work really, really well. All the green skin colors, are gone with it.

Start watching the video on a good display to see the difference, starting at exactly 3:19:
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Tamas Harangi

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 12, 2020 11:01 pm

Eugenia Loli wrote:Yes, Sony's colors are not pleasing. Canon has the best colors (better than Blackmagic's or Panasonics, and definitely better than Fuji's magenta mess). But there is a solution for Sony. The Phantom luts.


Similar Alexa Log-C emulation LUTs and power grades are available for the Blackmagic cameras as well, making the achievable images out of the BMPCC top grade in the right hands.

Even without those, you still have the color space transfer options built into Resolve which get some amazing results -- and even if one doesn't go that route, there are some great finishing LUTs available that lend way more pleasing results than most of these tests films that just use the stock Rec-709 LUTs provided by the manufacturers.

When people talk of the "Alexa look" or the the Sony or Red "look" more often than not, they're talking about the "look as seen through the standard 709 LUT." Few people talk of the "look as graded by a great colorist" which can be wildly different from what they see on the monitor on set.
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Eugenia Loli

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 12, 2020 11:43 pm

Similar Alexa Log-C emulation LUTs and power grades are available for the Blackmagic cameras as well, making the achievable images out of the BMPCC top grade in the right hands.


I own all 3 Alexa solutions that exist for my BMPCC 4k. For Sony, only the Phantom Luts exist, and they're indeed, really good.

The difference with Canon is that it looks great right out of the box. When I use either c-log, or my favorite picture style (VisionColor CineTech), it only takes 3-4 nodes to finish the whole grade (1 node to fix exposure/wb, 1 visioncolor film emulation lut, 1 filmconvert, 1 post-adjustment if required). It's by far the easiest to work with to get pleasing colors, along with Arri Alexa footage. RED is in third position IMHO in terms of ease of use.

Worst are Sony (olive green people) and Fuji (magenta people). Blackmagic and Panasonic are middle of the road. Panasonic can be a nightmare too if you only have access to Cinelike-D (bright orange people) and not v-log (which also turns people to olive green under some moderate low light). With Blackmagic I mostly have problem with their greens turning yellow, but thankfully, joe12south's lut is fixing that, and it seems that their new ursa sensor doesn't have these past problems. Basically, you can get good colors from any camera, but it does matter how much work you have to do. It's one thing to need 4 nodes to finish a grade, compared to 8-10 nodes fighting to fix ugly colors. Interestingly, the manufacturers without the problems are all using their own, non-sony sensors...
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John Brawley

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostWed Aug 12, 2020 11:45 pm

Tamas Harangi wrote:Few people talk of the "look as graded by a great colorist" which can be wildly different from what they see on the monitor on set.


Thank you.

I'm so tired of the slap a LUT on it - LUT mentality, which is really a "look" created for a specific setup that you're then copying and pasting to other shots which may or may not work as well.

Why not get a good colourist to give that look tweaked for every shot ?

Or

Why not learn how to do it yourself ?

Resolve is such a powerful tool. Take control of the authorship of your images instead of using some insta-filter on everything chasing some mythical "look"

JB
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Eugenia Loli

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostThu Aug 13, 2020 12:31 am

Why not learn how to do it yourself ?

There is no problem in color grading by yourself, and it's what I usually do. However, if you want to achieve the colors of ANOTHER camera, then a good lut helps immensely because it has done that work for you, using thousands of samples. There are always nodes left and right of the emulation lut or filmconvert where I manually change the final "creative" look to what I want it to be. But I need and want a specific "base look" first that is close to kodak/arri look, and these emulation luts are providing me that. It's not possible to get these specific base colors just by using the wheels. It'd need a gazillion of nodes to do so. The lut is essentially a batch processing script in that notion, translating colors from one color science to another.

To make it clear, I never use luts for final creative looks. These always look bad in my experience. But I do use luts (or filmconvert, or both) for film/arri emulation, as a base for the rest of the grade.
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Ulysses Paiva

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostThu Aug 13, 2020 12:53 am

John Brawley wrote:
Tamas Harangi wrote:Few people talk of the "look as graded by a great colorist" which can be wildly different from what they see on the monitor on set.


Thank you.

I'm so tired of the slap a LUT on it - LUT mentality, which is really a "look" created for a specific setup that you're then copying and pasting to other shots which may or may not work as well.

Why not get a good colourist to give that look tweaked for every shot ?

Or

Why not learn how to do it yourself ?

Resolve is such a powerful tool. Take control of the authorship of your images instead of using some insta-filter on everything chasing some mythical "look"

JB


Im purely this philosophy. Never could get this LUT hype. With Resolve being free, its so lame not to use it other than slaping a LUT and be done.
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Mark Wyatt

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostThu Aug 13, 2020 1:58 am

Eugenia Loli wrote:Yes, Sony's colors are not pleasing. Canon has the best colors (better than Blackmagic's or Panasonics, and definitely better than Fuji's magenta mess). But there is a solution for Sony. The Phantom luts. These were created by an Australian cinematographer who bought an Alexa just so he can map thousands of colors from the Alexa color science to Sony's. They do work really, really well. All the green skin colors, are gone with it.

Start watching the video on a good display to see the difference, starting at exactly 3:19:


Obviously, this is all personal taste, but I still don't find the colours from that video pleasing, nor do they look like Alexa colour to me.

I have struggled a bit with Blackmagic's colour in the past but I think this was mainly due to my own lack of ability. However, I am finding the new Gen 5 is working very well, and it is incredibly easy to get to a pleasing image. This is a very quick qrade from the G2 with the G5 from a doc I'm working on -

G3.jpg
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Will Vazquez

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostThu Aug 13, 2020 2:31 am

For me the look I strive for in "cinematic" is Kodak 5247. This film stock went through a few formulations, but just like a Sennheiser MKH416 is the sound of the movies, 5247 is the look of the movies. From "Rocky" to "ET", no other film stock had the lovely skin tones and beautiful color rendering like 5247. Kodak should have never killed it off and replaced it with the Vision stocks. I wish they'd bring it back. Sure the newer stocks have more dynamic range, but there was something magical about 5247, because it was what we were used to seeing up on the screen if you grew up like me watching movies in the 70's and 80's.
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John Paines

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostThu Aug 13, 2020 3:03 am

Apocalypse Now, The Shining, Blade Runner, Annie Hall and Blow Out were all 5247.

Who would ever guess? They're all so different. If all it took was film stock.... An Alexa won't do it either, and neither will Alexa LUTs, exotic transforms, spaghetti sauce, etc.
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javier forza

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Nov 15, 2020 12:13 am



Enjoy!
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Nov 15, 2020 1:00 am

Biggest difference is red colour, so different.
Based on dof B is Sony, but based on red I would say opposite. Strange.
So was that bag more pale red or cherry red? Which cam is closer to real color?
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javier forza

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Re: New Sony A7 S III. The new standard.

PostSun Nov 15, 2020 11:18 pm

Its true, maybe the lut applied is not accurate for both cameras.
Sth interesting in this case is that BM and Sony cameras are very similar to work.
And the low light under Iso 1600 BM produce very good quality footage.

Someone with more knowledge can compare with histograms the color science distribution.
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