FS7: another Sony Look or not thread

Serious? If so that's my post Bake-Off viewing sorted :)

EDIT: Well... recording to watch tomorrow :)
 
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Sam, Thanks for finally defining the plasticky nuclear Sony look and admitting that it wasn't confined to Sony either. So yes i would have to agree that if you were not careful with shooting typical 709 video it could look like utter dogmeat. But if you were a professional video shooter in the last 30 years - before log and raw became available - well that's what you were paid to understand. You did your damnest to avoid pretty much anything that was too hot for your limited dynamic range, or to keep it confined to areas where it didn't hurt. Within those limitations though it was perfectly possible to get very pretty flattering pictures and we went to all sorts of lengths to cheat the basic limitations of the cameras including shooting with careful lighting or taking great care when you had no lighting, sometimes shooting with subtle diffusion or nets behind the lens which were very popular before HD, and even sending your footage out for mysterious "film look processing" when that became available. Of course its also true that no matter your skills it was also quite common to face situations that you just gritted your teeth at and did the best you could, especially on docs.

So its sounds like you're only saying video was nuclear and plasticky if you didn't shoot it well or had to shoot outside the dynamic range it was suited for. No argument there, but as you admit that didn't mean all video looked like XXXX.

Many of us also shot film negative back then though and we didn't really shoot tremendously differently - just watched highlights more and thankfully could relax with 14 stops of lattitude instead of 7 -10. But its always been true that jobs are different and require different looks. 20 years ago I sometimes shot with virtually no gear and tried for a very natural look and sometimes had a grip truck and large crew. Same as today. Some projects I work on want a very natural look like the screen grabs you and Ben have posted. However personally I more often work on stuff that wants a more stylized produced look. I just finished a shoot for a computer company that likes a "high tech look" with saturated colors and careful lighting. But we also sometimes shoot events where we bring a single LED or nothing at all. Its not that one is a modern style of shooting, its just different strokes for different folks.

However while its possible to get nice flesh tones in 709 , I do think that Log and Raw offer a great improvement in how even carefully shot video looks. Its simply more natural and pleasing. To be honest - yes traditional video even well shot tends to be more plasticky, though nowhere to the extent that has dominated this forum. Many of my clients however don't want to deal with correcting Log yet ( lets leave that argument aside) so i need to give them a baked in look. With an FS7 we know that Sony in its wisdom has created a huge stumbling block by denying us LUTs in Custom and color balance and NR in CINE EI. Outside of shoots in 3200 or 5600 you just can't bake in. However, we now shoot with LED's and Flos whose color temperature rarely hits those numbers precisely so what's a guy to do? Personally i often gel my lights to create some color contrast to the background environment. With an Alexa or a RED you can balance your shot but with an FS7 you may just have to shoot Custom and do your best.

Until Sony ups its game and wises up, Cameraman Ben's LUTCalc offers hope though. I just got off 4 days on an industrial at a trade show shooting on the floor under mixed light and carefully lit interviews using Divas as the key. ( I like 2 Divas next to each other for a nice large soft key - or better- 2 4x4 Kinos going through diffusion) . In the first couple of days I shot Custom but snuck off a few shots in Slog Cine EI under different lighting situations. From the Slog I pulled stills that I took into LUTCalc which I then used to create LUTs for Cine Ei. Its tricky getting the LUT's right but I'm getting better. On the last day I shot the interviews in baked in Cine EI even though the Divas seemed to clock in around 6000K with probably some magenta/green offset as well. Now I've got a LUT for those lights - Yay. On the trade show floor it was trickier but in the last day I was getting close to a good LUT. That was exciting. Unfortunately CINE EI was still too slow for the trade show run and gun because we choose to shoot with the Sony 18-200 (f6.3) for flexibility on a face paced schedule. (BTW - the 18-200 was great for that purpose - similar to shooting with an EX-1 or B4 camera.)

Also playing with LUT's for Custom Slog but those can't be baked in. The nice thing there is you only need a couple LUT's because the color has always been white balanced first in CUSTOM.

Eventually I hope to have a large collection of LUT's on an SD card for many situations. Maybe after that I'll rail about how horrible Custom is! (Probably just when I've finished Sony will give us LUT's in Custom, white balance in CINE EI or a more likely a whole new camera that does both.) :smile:

Ben thanks for the tip of the low-cost ice light as I've heard good things about them from friends. Just a nice tool to have in your bag. i've always wanted to try a ringlight, but a friend who has one hates how it mounts on the camera. I'm also a fan of Chinese cheap lights if you're careful to get ones without much green spike. Check out the Yongnuo 600.

Lenny Levy
 
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Also, if you watch most tv from pre 2000, as a matter of course skies were always blown; often completely and utterly. Especially that longish period of UK dramas being shot on Super 16mm.

Come to think of it, it still bugs the hell out of me that 'A Place in the Sun', a lifestyle show that's been running for over 10 years and is 99% about filming nice sunny stuff, still blows the sky out in every shot! HOW HAVE YOU NOT FIGURED OUT HOW TO SHOOT SUNNY DAYS YET?
 
Just watched your show Sam. Good work!

The formal composed interview shots on the trains especially look great.
 
I agree about lack of NR.. but I presume you guys will get this.. as the F5/55 did eventually.. I have it set to low.. sort of a safety level.. didn't think i would ever use High level though.. I don't think we will get "Auto"color balance in Cine EI.. as that is going against the whole concept..having a whole lot of different WB and ETTR for each shot would be a nightmare to grade.. Cine EI is to have a proper grade thats made very plain by Sony.. it cant be both ways..
I now only shoot Cine EI.. and a lot burning in the LUT.. you can get very good results in pre set WB.. most of the time.. except when you come up against weird sodium lights etc..
Shooting LOG doesnt mean you can have your exposure all over the place.. the large DR actually makes it more critical to get your exposure right ..

Thanks for taking the time to shoot your tests
 
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I have heard that line of reasoning before and frankly it doesn't add up. If you shoot and edit a Red raw .r3d file you can apply a generic lut to it and still adjust the underlying WB and not have any problems whatsoever.

It is a ridiculous and abitrary limitation of the camera and system.
 
But arnt we talking about applying a WB in camera while shooting Slog.. are you talking about applying a LUT in post ..? of course you can change the WB in post .. ? if thats what your saying ..
 
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What I'm saying is there's no reason to not be able to adjust WB AND apply a generic lut in terms of issues with colour without needing a different lut for every WB permutation. That's our business as shooters to work with.

As for the technical limitations - whether forced or genuine - of whether Cine-EI is capable of having WB adjustments... I have no idea.

While it seems Cine-EI, SGamut3.cine and slog3 are huge steps forward for Sony, they are still miles and miles behind the other two members of the big 3 when it comes to colour management.
 
I'm with Ben. Of course I don't really know the underlying electronics but after it became explained recently that SGamut-3 was largely about creating a gamut that didn't change with Kelvin temp, i began to doubt that white balance was impossible to reconcile with Cine EI. You can shoot Custom SLog3 with white balance and apply just one LUT - what's the difference. I think its just sloppy thinking by Sony engineers who didn't bother to really research their market. I could be wrong of course.

Re blown skies. Gee I don't recall always shooting blown skies at all unless I was backlit and just couldn't fix it. Even then however I liked to travel with a set of hard & soft grads. of course it depended on the speed of production and how run & gun it was.

lenny
 
It must be the larger gamut of CINE EI, but I noticed this camera handles mixed lightings (daylight + tungsten) very much as it appears to the human eye. I find the presets cover things quite well. I think Sony got it pretty much right.
I recall reading that the reason for the limited number of presets was so that they wouldn't require a different LUT for every color temp. There are times when too many options are just as bad as not enough.
 
basspig said:
I recall reading that the reason for the limited number of presets was so that they wouldn't require a different LUT for every color temp. There are times when too many options are just as bad as not enough.
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Which is the bit that is complete bollocks because no other camera on the market has that issue. If anything, accurately telling your camera what colour 'white' is before applying a LUT to it should vastly simplify the transformation.
 
morgan_moore said:
Playing the other sport at the weekend. Here is a shot (nikond D600 still straight out of camera) with a pile of blown highlights that I just dont think any Sony 'look' could make.. im sure something would have gone nuclear!

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That's a nice image. Is your point you couldn't get an image like that straight out of the FS7? I'd agree you can't get an image like that with CUSTOM and HGs etc. I reckon shooting in CineEI with SGamut3.cine and burned in LC709a would do it especially in UHD. For straight out the camera files I wouldn't hesitate to use it.

My neighbour has a kayak that hits the sun in the afternoon and with the FS100 the highlight was always blown to tippex white but the the FS7 with the burned in LC709A LUT had a very pleasing highlight roll off. Nothing nuclear about it. The cine gamut keeps all the colours under control too and combined with the desaturated highlights makes over exposure pleasing.

I shoot in UHD (for HD) CineEI SLog3 with cine gamut and LUT in post and I've been very pleased with the majority of footage I've come back with. I suspect you have greater ambition for the image that I do because the FS7 is the camera I've always wanted (for the money.)
 
In many ways the FS7 is a step down from my previous camera but in the way that matters most - ie the amount it has been hired and how quickly it paid for itself - it's been one of my best investments ever. It's quirky as hell though.
 
Ben Scott said:
In many ways the FS7 is a step down from my previous camera but in the way that matters most - ie the amount it has been hired and how quickly it paid for itself - it's been one of my best investments ever. It's quirky as hell though.
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I still get the feeling the FS7 is in beta and maybe firmware 3 will remove that feeling, maybe not?

Video work is a bit of a sidecar to my business so without spending silly money I'll never get a return on the FS7 is right on the money. If I/we decide to do more video work and maybe even a higher level then for not a lot of extra moolah I can be shooting RAW.
 
Whatever you do, don't bother shooting raw on the FS7!

What constitutes Raw to Sony is nothing like what Raw means to Arri or Red.
 
Lenilenapi said:
Sam, Thanks for finally defining the plasticky nuclear Sony

So yes i would have to agree that if you were not careful with shooting typical 709 video it could look like utter dogmeat.

But if you were a professional video shooter in the last 30 years - before log and raw became available - well that's what you were paid to understand.

So its sounds like you're only saying video was nuclear and plasticky if you didn't shoot it well or had to shoot outside the dynamic range it was suited for.
Lenny Levy
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Len - nice to read the long response.

I thought the plastic Sony look and its causes were known - simple technical things - knee and highlight shifts (that took me a while to learn when I transitioned from a 16bit raw shooting Hasselblad - still a better file and bigger chip than an Alexa65 - to an EX1)

But those simple technical things can box you in to selecing scenes of a certain DR or getting dogmeat. Film or a decent digicam you can work outside that box if the the highlights go nicely (and or the shadows!) you can shoot a scene of any DR - to me that is the shock of the 'Sony Look'.. being boxed in to controlling the DR.

Overall I think I push some form of cultural dream. Simply in my teens and twenties I idolised the wandering NatGeo and AP stills photographers, doing Pulitzer winning work with a small satchel of kit. That is the culture I come from and did do a few interesting wanderings over the years. My personal transition to 'video' has been somewhat frustrating as shooting with the thinner codec cameras (thin compared to film or the fat digital stills cams Im used to) does indeed reqiure care.. and kit. I still hope to wander off into the woods with a satchel and come back with a feature or a top end doc someday.

As for the FS7 - Im very happy with it.. as long as there is space to finish in post. I have not really even started considering getting a burned look that works :)

S
 
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What you're calling the Sony look, really doesn't apply strictly to Sony At all. It's just traditional 709 video.
 
Yup. And I guess Sony were the market leaders for broadcast, semi-pro and consumer rec709 cameras so they inadvertantly take 'ownership' of that look.
 
Those choices were in some ways not bad, especially when, and I don't know the tech, hitting an illegal white would 'blow up' the transmitter!

Sony just sat on it too long - 2008 or there about the 5d2 crashed in to the bottom end with no thought of broadcast standards and Red were playing the same trick at a higher level.

S
 
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