Best ISO values for A7S?

Zack Birlew

Zack Birlew

Veteran
Hi, guys, I just got an A7S for Christmas and I've been scouring my usual sites for info on it. However, I've yet to see anything about best ISO values for the camera. If it's buried in the boards somewhere, I apologize and would appreciate a link. Anyway, I'm coming from a 5D Mark II and I've always followed the multiples of 160 (160, 320, 640, etc.) as they offer the least amount of noise. Moving up to the A7S makes me feel like I've been working in the Stone Age as far as light sensitivity goes but I know that even it has its limits. So, is there a specific range I should stick to or is following the 160 rule still the ideal workflow?
 
Avoid 1600. 3200 is better. 12000 is my quality limit but if i was doing docs 50000 would be my limit.
 
I would do some tests.
I am about to do more testing myself at UHD with the Shogun and the O7Q+.
I have found so far internal codec is excellent at up to 10,000, it may even be less noisy slightly above 3200. 6400 may actually be a sweet spot.
At 50,000 it is noisy but not really in a bad way.
I will do more testing and post my results here.
There are so many combinations these days it takes a lot to dial in a system to your liking. A lot has to do with how you want to handle post.
 
With slog2 (actually, Flaat), and always overexposing by one stop, I don't have any trouble going up to 12800.
If needed, I have gone up to 51200, but that was a last resort and the image required a truckload of NR.
 
What about midrange ISOs? That is, not trying to push it in terms of lowlight. NOT in Slog-2? Anything preferred?
 
Thanks a lot, guys, I'll avoid 1600 and try the other ISO's. I haven't played with my A7S too much but I've read a little on S-Log 2 and it sounds nice but the minimum ISO 3200 sounds like an odd thing to work with. I've read an astrophotography blog review that said that 51200 was the most they'd go to before things got to be too noisy but I think they were talking more about stills. For cinematic use, I didn't think I'd use much beyond 6400 unless the shot needed it, wonderful to be able to say that, but then I don't know as I haven't had the option to go beyond that before. I guess the camera is still too new and people are out there filming stuff right now but it will be interesting to see once detailed examinations are done. I plan on putting a little something together with mine so maybe I'll have to experiment on my own with ISO's in between.
 
Last edited:
Samuel H said:
With slog2 (actually, Flaat), and always overexposing by one stop, I don't have any trouble going up to 12800.
If needed, I have gone up to 51200, but that was a last resort and the image required a truckload of NR.
Click to expand...

I'm curious about those flaat settings. Do you think they'd work well with the Sony FS700?
 
No idea about the FS700, sorry.
My guess would be that, unless the colors are really similar to the a7s ones, only "cinema with added saturation" would be useful advice; my detailed color settings will probably be useless, since I got to them by fighting the few small color deviations that the a7s had in the cinema color setting.
 
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