Travelling the world with an A7SII

[dcbryan]

I've recently embarked on a several month long trip with plans to make movie that I've been thinking about for quite some time. 

 

I bought the A7SII a couple weeks after it was release, spent another week or so testing with it, packed up and left. This was my first mirrorless camera and my first Sony, coming from Canon's DSLR's there has been a bit of a learning curve. At this point I've memorized just about all the menu's, got the custom buttons all set and am beginning to feel quite comfortable shooting with the camera. 

 

In my research I'd decided on a Picture Profile and settings to get the best image out of the camera. The purpose of this post is to get your opinion, and some feedback on my choice of settings. Which are as follows:

 

Picture Profile Settings

Black Level: 0

Gamma: S-Log3

Black Gamma > Range: Middle , Level: 0

Knee: > Mode: Auto , Auto Set > Max Point: 100, Sensitivity: Mid

Color Mode: S-Gamut3

Saturation: 0

Color Phase: 0

Color Depth: 0

Detail: -7 > Mode; Auto, V/H Balance: 0, B/W Balance Type3, Limit: 7, Crispening:0, hi_light Detail: 0

 

Record Settings

XAVC S 4k: 30p 100M

XAVC S HD 1080: 120p 100M (for slow motion)

 

Exposure

I always try to over expose by 1.5 to 2 stops. I'd planned on using zebra's at +100 to keep my over exposure in check, but in my Picture Profile, I wouldn't see them even in the brightest conditions. 

 

White Balances

Avoiding Auto white balance anytime I can.

 

Shutter Speed

I find myself shooting at 1/50th of a second pretty much all the time. I was shooting 1/60th at home, but in Asia that cause flicking with some light sources. I've also gotten strobing while shooting slow motion 120fps, and a the minimum shutter speed of 1/125th. The only solution I could find for this was to shoot 60p instead of 120p, which did not seem like a great solution.

 

ISO

Is almost always locked at 1600. I have prime lenses that go to f/1.4 so I rarely need to turn it up. When shooting at night, I have a choice of either underexposing my image or turning up my ISO. The higher ISO seem to have a lot of noise in the shadows with the settings I have, so I had chosen to underexpose sometime at night. I'm starting to think that's the wrong decision. I should keep turning the ISO up until my meter tells the image have correct or even slightly over exposure. Straight out of the camera the footage will have some noise, but once corrected back to Rec-709ish the noise should be better acceptable. Does this seem correct?

 

Focus

I had focus peaking on at first, but have found it to be not as accurate as I'd like. I've not got Custom Button 1 set to "Focus Magnifier" and I use it often to punch in to ~10x, check focus, back out, then start shooting.

 

 

Concerns

when reviewing the footage are: Noise and sharpness. I've been throwing a LUT on the shots to check my work at night, and even with that there still seems to be more visible noise than I expected. As for sharpness, since I've got it turned down to -7 in camera, I'm assuming there's something I should be doing in post to correct that. Unsharp mask? I'm editing in Premiere, Lumetri has a sharpness slider... Let me know if you thoughts of either of these issues.

 

 

Here are some still frames straight out of the camera (4k has been scaled down to 1080). Sorry, I don't know the exact ISO for each.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[christer]

Why on earth do you want to OVER-expose? The result will be blown out highlights. Try UNDER-expose instead. It is much easier to recoup  hidden details in the shadows when you do post processing than it is to save the blown out highlights.

 

On the pictures you show, is that air pollution, or why is everything so grey?

[pilsburypie]

@ Christer If you underexpose and bring it up in post you will have the possibility of adding noise. If you overexpose without blowing highlights and then bring back down in PP you will get less noise. HAMSTTR - Histogram and meter settings to the right. Keep an eye on the histogram to avoid blowing highlights.

 

@DCbryan - Why go no higher than 1600iso on the A7sii? By opening up the aperture you are loosing your deep DOF which might not be so good in certain shots. I'd of thought to set a limit of 12800 would still be nice and clean and let you use whatever speed and apperture you wish for creativity.

[dcbryan]

@christer, that's just what S-Log footage looks like ungraded. Take a look at this video, might help give you a better idea of things 

 

@pilsburypie - You know that's something I just realized while shooting tonight. As the sun set and things got darker I would start to see noise in the shadows, and my gut instinct was definitely NOT to turn up the ISO, figuring that would only worsen the problem. But what I'm now seeing is that by keeping the ISO low, I was beginning to underexpose the image and introduce noise. Here's a 200% crop of one of the shots above. I doubt that ISO was over 4000. I wish I could go back, turn up the ISO, bring exposure back down in post and compare. But that's why I've made this post!

 

 

 

Now if only somebody could shed some light on the mysterious Picture profile - black gamma, crispening, knee settings. 

[pilsburypie]

Yes mate - that picture is classic underexposing noise. Bang up the iso as the A7sii is a beast for that, keep an eye on the histogram and don't blow the highlights then bring back down to taste PP. Noise will be so much better.