A7s sample footage

Really made A7S look nice compared to a lot of the videos in this thread. Excellent skintones imho, waiting to hear a Canon fanboy chime in about how dreadful they are ;). I liked the edit, wish there was some location variation, like they started out in their apt or somewhere, arrived at that location etc. Still my favorite video in this thread by far.
 
I also liked that one quite a lot (and I wouldn't have started anywhere else if it wasn't a very visual place too: in the age of YT you have to give your best in the first 10 seconds, otherwise people pause and leave).
 
Samuel H said:
I also liked that one quite a lot (and I wouldn't have started anywhere else if it wasn't a very visual place too: in the age of YT you have to give your best in the first 10 seconds, otherwise people pause and leave).
Click to expand...

Kids these days with their ADD and what not.
 
Here is a short sequence that is part of a larger plot.

"Trevor pays a visit to The Order."

Camera: Sony a7s, s-log 2, internal 1080p

(This version has the highlights turned back up.)

 
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Hi. Thanks.

I'm making a film to enter into film festivals. I don't know what length it will be yet. The a7s is ok for a short film, I guess. I'm still learning photography and grading. In the version you saw I had turned the highlights waaaay down and I don't like it. I'm going to upload a different version of this right now with the highlights more intact and turn the exposure down instead. The windows will be more blown out and the sky will be brighter but, to me, it looks more natural--less of those contrasty trees in the windows and banding in the sky. The new version will be up in a few hours. See what you think.

Chris

Edit: I restored the highlights in the link above.
 
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A artist portrait I did of a friend from here in Albuquerque, NM. First time I've really used the high ISO capability of this camera on a serious project. The evening shots were ISO 25k all on Zeiss Contax - recorded in UHD ProRes 422 then downscaled to 1080p at 62.5mbps. I experimented with Neat Video for noise reduction, only to find that with this particular footage it accentuates banding / does some funky things to color when used in conjunction with certain 3D LUTS (namely the Vision Color variety). What tips do you fine people have for producing cleaner looking images other than shooting at the native ISO and crushing out the noise? Thanks!
 
A few shots taken from Steadicam work in the month of June 2015.
Shot with Sony A7s, Atomos Shogun, 4k ProRes 422 (downconverted to1080 for web), Zeiss 50mm & 18mm Distagon, Fotodiox ND Throttle, Lenzhound Wireless Follow Focus (Cine), Aries Prime Wireless Monitoring.
All shot in SLog2 (S-Gamut), slight color shift towards magenta.
Very quick grade in Premiere Pro with Vision Color LUTS (Ektar100 FC, Kodak Vision 50D 5203 FC) and Fast Color Corrector.
Music:
Atbs Theme - Daniel Hart

 
Some drastically different looks to these samples. I like looking at other people's work to try to guess what settings/software they used. Not crazy about mine but I'm glad I shot in s-log because it's so malleable. The grading job I've done so far is so saturated it almost looks cartoonish compared to you guys. Been playing with Magic Bullet Looks, GenArts Sapphire, Film Convert, etc.. but can't find anything I love yet.

But...

I've been wanting to tell you all about my shoot at that historic mansion. It was just me and my gear. It might look simple--like a walk in the park and an empty mansion but I was so rushed and it was so unpleasant I want to redo it somewhere else.

I attended a wedding at that mansion about 10 years ago and e-mailed them for permission. They were renovating that week and since I'm an amateur they let me film there for free. Normally they charge $3,000 per day for pro photographers doing weddings, banquets, parties, etc.. I pleaded and told them I would only need an hour or so and they agreed. Later I nudged them up to 90 minutes but that's all I could get.

I showed up early and shot some stuff in the park outside. There was a mother with two little kids playing around and she kept staring at me like, "Wtf are you doing?" and the whole thing felt creepy. I just soldiered on and got my shots. She got on her phone and then later her husband showed up. He looked me over, smiled and that calmed her down. I felt insulted and sick about it though.

Days before I had hopes of doing a few of my patented simultaneous "power-zoom-pan-tilt-rack-focus-sliding" shots but after a few minutes inside I realized I would barely have enough time to shoot the essentials. There was the phone ringing, the secretary talking, construction workers, tourists wandering in, etc. and I needed absolute quiet.

I dumped the idea of shooting every take in both the "Light" profile and s-log2 and only did s-log2. Normally I would custom white balance every room but I gambled and set it to auto white balance G1. If focusing took longer than 5 seconds I just left it as is and moved on.

I only had time to get basic wide, medium and tight shots so the only lenses I used were the Minolta 35mm f1.4, 50mm f1.4 and 100mm f2. All original style. I wish I could have used the 20mm and/or 24mm wide lenses in certain places, some slider and tilting shots, and a couple of power zooms.

I got 45 minutes of footage in 90 minutes and edited it down. I think it could have been so much better. Luckily there are quite a few of these historic places around Baltimore and DC so I might just re-shoot it.

Thanks for listening. Stuff like this comes with the territory, I guess.

Chris

p.s. I know I'm getting old because I look fat and I don't really care.
 
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