A7S II documentary picture profile ?

C

coutard

Well-known member
hello

I'm usually a canon C100 user for my documentaries,
but for my next doc shoot I'll be using an A7S II which a friend is lending me for testing, since I sold my C100 which was getting older and I wanted to change for something very light, 4K, high speed in hd......so this shoot will be about is it a good idea for me to buy an A7S II for docs ?

For higher budget documentaries I'm used to shoot either F55 or FS7 which I really like, and shoot mostly on cine-EI profile, Slog3, REC 709 Type A monitoring LUT, and Slog2 for low light scenes

But I've used an A7S II a couple time for short films and was quite disappointed with slog3 on this specific camera...
add the fact that for this doc I'm planning, I won't get as much colour grading time as usual so slog3 might not be the best option

considering all of this, what would you recommend as a good picture profile for documentary, which could suit most of situation, low lights and exteriors, pretty neutral in skin tones, not too contrasty, that would need less grading than slog 3 ?

Thanks in advance and for any other advice regarding using an A7S II for documentary shooting !
 
I just bought a A7sII to use as a travel camera and I'm looking for results that require minor grading as I'm working on learning to grade video. Because of the banding in Slog3, some A7sII shooters are just changing the gamma to Cine 4 in PP8, seems to produce nice results shown here:

http://www.marienho.com/how-to-use-slog3-luts-for-the-sony-a7s-ii-without-banding-in-the-highlights/

This modified profile creates a nice in-cam look as well that only needs minor tweaking:

http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/20843-gfilm-a-easily-graded-flat-profile-for-sony-cameras/

There are others floating around. Please post if you find any more.

Also, I found a video on either youtube or Vimeo that the guy called the cine4 change "mattflat", but I'm I China right now and I can't access either one (blocked by the government) to provide the link.

Cheers
 
A lot of people create their own "wide DR" settings on Sony cameras. I did this back in the day on some broadcast cameras with the hyper gamma settings, and then Sony F3, and then now with the A7s II. Start with S-log, and then adjust the black levels, gamma, and saturation. and offset the white balance to taste. Then test it, and make sure the highlights look right, by overexposing a familiar person's face.
 
geffyb said:
Hey I made this one that you can try out, I made it when I had to match my A7r II to an URSA mini for a short film.

https://medium.com/@geoffcbassett/gfilm-a-grade-friendly-video-profile-for-sony-cameras-5fa857c446b2

Have a thread on EosHD with examples: http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic...-graded-flat-profile-for-sony-cameras/?page=5

This was shot with it on an A7s II:

https://vimeo.com/208447835
Click to expand...

Cool, the GFilm thread is one of the links I posted above. I'm testing it with Slog and Cine4. Just picked up the A7sII to audition as my travel camera, unfortunately its been very cloudy and gray where I am in China right now, so I haven't had it out much. I do like what I'm seeing so far though. Will post frames when I get the chance.

Cheers.

Chris
 
I can recommend the EosHD profile for a great straight out of the camera look on documentaries. It's what I mainly shoot and I feel like the color is very natural, and holds up well over many situations.
 
Trek of Joy said:
Cool, the GFilm thread is one of the links I posted above. I'm testing it with Slog and Cine4. Just picked up the A7sII to audition as my travel camera, unfortunately its been very cloudy and gray where I am in China right now, so I haven't had it out much. I do like what I'm seeing so far though. Will post frames when I get the chance.

Cheers.

Chris
Click to expand...

Whoops! :) Thanks, every time someone uses it I'm glad it's helping others on their production.

As was said above, if you can handle the lack of DR, EOSHD is a great profile.
 
Whoa thanks for all this ! I'll take a look at all those links.
My friends use Cine4 as well and it looked nice

When you say "changing the gamma to Cine 4 in PP8", Does it change anything to use cine 4 in PP8 or in another PP ?
 
geffyb said:
Hey I made this one that you can try out, I made it when I had to match my A7r II to an URSA mini for a short film.

https://medium.com/@geoffcbassett/gfilm-a-grade-friendly-video-profile-for-sony-cameras-5fa857c446b2

Have a thread on EosHD with examples: http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic...-graded-flat-profile-for-sony-cameras/?page=5

This was shot with it on an A7s II:

https://vimeo.com/208447835
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing your settings. Your footage looks really nice!
I've a few questions though :

- about the knee. With my c100, when you use c-log, you can't use knee so I've lost the habit or setting it, but I remember back in the days of big DSR, we used to use a negative setting to preserve highlight, but your setting for slope is+3, could you explain ?

- Then about color, I find it odd that you raise almost everything up, even if it is not the same value, isn't it after all balancing it self for exemple adding R+3, G+3, B+4 isn't the same as letting R and G to 0 and add +1 on B ?

You are also removing some magenta AND putting -4 to the color phase, that seems a lot ! Is original footing that magenta ?

Thanks ;)
 
Very interesting thread. On my Sony A7sII I am always shooting SLOG2 with SGamut3.cine in the color settings - I find that rather easy to grade as SGamut3.cine seems to align well with REC709 )I grade everything in Resolve). I have a new documentary coming up, here is a trailer that I posted yesterday. But I am always curious, hence I will have a look at the settings above!

 
did some first tests.
I tried your settings with Slog2 and with cine 4.
I find slog2 rather noisy, but results are really nice with cine 4 !
with cine 4 though I changed the knee setting from 77% to 95%

the skin tones look much better. cheers !

still curious
 
coutard said:
Thanks for sharing your settings. Your footage looks really nice!
I've a few questions though :

- about the knee. With my c100, when you use c-log, you can't use knee so I've lost the habit or setting it, but I remember back in the days of big DSR, we used to use a negative setting to preserve highlight, but your setting for slope is+3, could you explain ?

- Then about color, I find it odd that you raise almost everything up, even if it is not the same value, isn't it after all balancing it self for exemple adding R+3, G+3, B+4 isn't the same as letting R and G to 0 and add +1 on B ?

You are also removing some magenta AND putting -4 to the color phase, that seems a lot ! Is original footing that magenta ?

Thanks ;)
Click to expand...

Yes the original footage is that magenta. Honestly there was no scientific method to coming up with these settings. I raised saturation so high because with SLOG 2 I found the footage was just breaking whenever I was trying to grade it, so I wanted to pour as much color information into the profile while still having the nice highlight rolloff of S-log.

I adjusted color by eye by using this guide by sony: http://helpguide.sony.net/di/pp/v1/en/contents/TP0000909111.html

The knee settings were determined by me just adjusting tons of knee settings, shooting footage, then comparing them until I hit the one I preferred. Mainly the profile was created by trial and error :)


I also found this guide useful for camera setup, and you might want to give his settings a try as well:
https://www.erwinvandijck.com/nieuws/optimized-video-settings-sony-a7r2
 
I have been exploring various profiles to be used on different projects when needed with the A7rii as well. It may just be my imagination, but initially when comparing various test footage between the S35 vs Fullframe mode when seeing if the A7rii would possibly be a good option, it often seemed that the test footage available was a bit more magenta in the full frame mode than that of its S35 mode, even though the same scene was compared. Anyone ever notice this or is it just me?
I think the “gfilm” setting that geffyb mentioned above looks like a pretty robust profile, but I haven't tested it yet. It doesn't seem as subtle as some slog2 with s-gamut footage I have seen for some of the colors, since the color mode of Pro Color is not as wide a color space and is supposedly Rec709. The dvx site member “Macgregor” gets a more subtle color variation with his approach, albeit with the appropriate processing and grading abilities. I guess he may use his own slightly modified slog2 profile mixed with his particular color grading approach, but I think it produces a very natural look.
Here is an example video I came across recently of his.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dITxfzvMoY

Midway into the video between around the 1:00-1:04 mark with the lime greenish auto, he mentions “s-gamut” as compared to “Cinema”. Certain primary colors pop and become more saturated as the gamut goes from wider to more Rec709 color space. It seems the green color changes the most followed by red and blue. The skin tones also change to more red, given the changed color mode from the wider s-gamut. These response changes shown, could be adjusted and dialed into ones preferred look later, but thought the over color palate presented through the use of s-gamut is still very nice. Maybe the overcast marine-layer also probably helped a bit to soften the overall look and contrast as well.
Well anyway, I still look forward to delving into testing these things out whenever I get the chance.
 
I recommend a color mode setting of Still, with Cine1 or Cine2 gamma. It's really easy to grade by hand, and also supported in Logarist.

You can use S-Gamut3.Cine if you want a wider gamut, but then you really need some kind of color management to make the transformation from S-Gamut3.Cine to the display's BT.709/sRGB gamut. Gamut transformations usually cannot be performed accurately by hand. With S-Gamut3.Cine you also risk color banding. Banding is minimized when you use Cine1 or Cine2 gamma with Still color (or any of the standard 709-ish gamuts like Pro, Movie, or Cinema: pick your favorite). I strongly recommend against using S-Log2 or S-Log3 on an 8-bit camera, because of banding.

As an added bonus, Cine1 and Cine2 on the a7S-II give you a lot more highlight range than S-Log2 or S-Log3, because Cine1 and Cine2 are available at 100 ISO vs. the 3200 ISO of S-Log2 and S-Log3 on this camera. That translates to 3.5 more stops of highlight range than S-Log2, and 2 more stops than S-Log3. That means when shooting in bright conditions you can use a slower shutter, wider aperture, or get away with no neutral density filter.
 
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