A7s sample footage

This is it. I think you can easily spot the two shots at 51K ISO, and the one shot that is 25K ISO but underexposed and looks even worse. But not horrible by any means.

Now, think about those 51K ISO shots: backlit, at night, with the only source being those streetlamps in the background, 25 meters away. Mind. Blown.

 
fun stuff to shoot mate :) i'm sorry to inform you but this is YT. for me it's all mush and i wouldn't be able to tell the difference between iso 200 and 51k. we should be actually thankful for that ;)

iso doesn't matter. It's all about the story.
 
I had no issues with the ISO stuff either, even if I was looking for it.

I had more problems with the shaky handheld footage and things going out of focus in ugly ways on occasion (aka the DSLR look).

Other than that I love the look.

I just recieved my A7s, haven't really tried it yet, but just by waving it around in the apartment I've realised that I need to rig it up somehow... I'm so allergic to the handheld DSLR shakiness and things going in and out of focus uncontrollable... That, to me, is 100 times worse than a little grain due to high ISO.
 
* Yes it was a ot of fun :)
* The high ISO shots were noisy but have NR applied, they are not noisy anymore, they are soft instead.
* I'm usually a lot better pulling focus, but it's not easy when you're almost in the dark. Also, the zoom-in aid is not as good in lowlight as it is in proper light, it gets very noisy. And peaking didn't help much either. Plus we only had time for two takes per shot, maximum, and I chose based on performance, not image quality.
* Now, the comment about the shakyness, that one bothers me a bit more: I didn't think it was too shaky by any means. I'll survey friends&family, the untrained opinion is always important for these things. BTW it's all shot with a 50mm on a MagicRig.
 
Yeah, I'm a 100% on a tripod guy for all my professional work and I didn't think it was shaky at all. It was just handheld, but the good kind of handheld. The amount of frame movement exactly matched the subject matter; locked down would have looked weird.
 
hell i love to shoot handheld but a7s has made my buy a tripod. shaky footage is one thing but the rolling shutter that i see is just yuck. I only shoot 60p when handheld to avoid that.
 
Samuel,
Please note that I'm very sensitive to that kind of small camera shake. Most people probably don't mind. And most people seem to have gotten used to it because so many film with DSLRs.
But for me the movements of small cameras and the going in and out of focus because the shallow depth of field and limited time to get it right just makes it almost unwatchable (in general, not yours in particular!)

And I know how hard it is to get right so it was no critique to your ability.
But it's something that is very difficult to avoid when using a small full frame camera. And it takes a lot of time and effort if you want to avoid it.

As I just recieved my A7s, I was reminded of this, and started to wonder if I would have been better off getting a cheaper b-cam and bought more stuff for my FS700 instead.

But the actual footage from the A7s looks great. And the look you achieved in your clip is gorgeous and I liked the people in it too!
 
I guess you could always use crop mode on the A7s to reduce rs and help with focusing.

Phillip Bloom demonstrated using a speedbooster in crop mode to reduce RS and still get a pretty similar FOV.

Kind of a silly thing to do, but it did work for what it's worth.

Meanwhile- I'm curious to see hear/see anyone's experience bypassing the internal codec and using an HDMI recorder.
 
I had a question about speebooster. What if you use it with a full frame lens and do not engage crop mode. Does it still give you an extra stop and wider aperture than on the lens?
 
Thanks. So, to use full frame, non-Sony lenses, on the A7s, you use crop mode which crops the full frame lens, but then you get that angle of view back from the SpeedBooster and gain an extra stop of light? Seems like there should be a more direct way....
 
Depends on the lens used. I can use the long end of my Sigma 18-35 in FF mode. The problem with any cropping of the sensor is more visible noise and it only gets worse if you digitally zoom, regardless of how it punches in on the sensor to keep the detail. The noise just gets larger the farther in you crop.
 
Depends on the lens used. I can use the long end of my Sigma 18-35 in FF mode. The problem with any cropping of the sensor is more visible noise and it only gets worse if you digitally zoom, regardless of how it punches in on the sensor to keep the detail. The noise just gets larger the farther in you crop.

Isn't the idea of this camera that noise is more-or-less a non issue most of the time?
 
Technically, you'd also gain a stop. But the edges would be black.
very true.

Thanks. So, to use full frame, non-Sony lenses, on the A7s, you use crop mode which crops the full frame lens, but then you get that angle of view back from the SpeedBooster and gain an extra stop of light? Seems like there should be a more direct way....
You can use a none SpeedBooster adapter. There's no point adapting full frame to full frame.
The reason the Speedbooster works is that it takes a bigger image and concentrates it down to a smaller area. This is only possible if the lens is designed for a sensor larger than the one you are using. The extra light is mostly an side effect of that. By using crop mode on the A7s you are simply using a smaller part of the sensor, emulating a S35 sized sensor.
If it wasn't for the rolling shutter, the only reason you would wanna do that would be for the extra light. But on the A7s, that is probably not needed most of the time anyway.
 
I believe RJ camera has an affordable adapter that does aperture and IS. Metabones also attempts Af, but honestly isn't very good at that anyway.
 
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