A7 iii picture settings and knee.

Chris Johnston

Chris Johnston

Veteran
I bought an A7 iii to use for shooting some web stuff to lighten up the kit. (vs shooting with 2 fs7's)

I'm not a tecky, so I went to my friends google and youtube to get some ideas about setting up the camera to get the best images I can get out of it.

I've noticed more than 2 or 3 videos that show peeps changing the picture settings but not giving any explanation why you would do this (or that) in the pic profile.

(i.e. I changed this red to -3 and saturation to +4.. etc etc)

I'm guessing at least half the videos I watched were just "dslr kids" that just got the cam and were wanting to get a video out as fast as possible to get some views on their youtube page without really having an in depth knowledge of what they were
changing or why. Which leads me to my most important question...... wait for it....

One video had the guy setting the knee to 80% with a slope of 2.... Like I said, I'm no tecky but that seems a little much... (seems like you might be losing some DR???)
After seeing that I tended to notice that exact same knee setting several other times from different users. (wondering if someone just set that and others are just using it also without any testing or validation on how good this setting actually is.)

Any thoughts? or web links to anything that shows some real testing to see which setting actually work right with this sensor?
 
You can "paint" these cameras anyway you'd like; there's no right or wrong. Most people will not be able to provide you any technical reasoning on why they are making certain adjustments besides that it simply looks good to them...and that's all that really matters.

With that said, if you're concerned about DR, it's worth pointing out that most people use these cameras with the default S-Log2/3 PPs and grade the footage in post.
 
Agreed...with everything you said. (almost) but knee on my fs100s is set to 95% with a gradual roll off. (or something similar?) not sure off the top of my head what the fs7's are... setting the knee at 80% seems kind of drastic. (so...maybe wrong.) I suppose you could set the knee at 40% if you wanted but the image would be.... well, you get the point. Just didn't know if this 80% number I keep seeing is something valid, that someone actually did some testing and gave their thoughts that this would be a viable setting, or someone just set the knee at 80% with slope of 2 and said, "looks ok" and everyone else is just assuming they actually did some tests to show it's viable.
 
If a popular YouTube personality made a video [for instance] about how to optimize the a7III for the 'best' video performance, chances are good other people are copying him or her because that's a very specific and usually uncommon setting to change, IMO.

Feel free to share any links if you'd like.
 
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