Consensus on Sony A7SII Picture Profiles

thanks for the replies guys. note taken as to s-log 2 sgamut3.cine being the preferred. now, if people would share their cine profiles that they like and in which circumstances? cine 4 for day cine 2 for night is one thing i've heard. thoughts? also, if using cine, which color space do people like and why? people using those tweaked out cine profiles with totally changed custom settings?


thanks!
 
I think it's great that these cameras allow us to change gamma and color separately, so cleanly. My low-light profile is identical to my daytime profile, but with cine gamma instead of slog2 (I use cine4 but I haven't really tested the others).
 
Thanks for the info in this thread. Finally added an A7sII to the arsenal and this should give me a nice starting point to play. Still wondering if there is much mileage with the A7sII in going to an external recorder or not if the output is still 8-bit.
 
Ben Scott said:
Thanks for the info in this thread. Finally added an A7sII to the arsenal and this should give me a nice starting point to play. Still wondering if there is much mileage with the A7sII in going to an external recorder or not if the output is still 8-bit.
Click to expand...

Sometimes. In scenes with a lot of fine movement (trees, sea, hair blowing in the wind) then the low bit rate of the XAVC will break down, you'll see macro blocking and general mush. If you're not going to do anything with the footage (i.e. keying and tracking) then it may well be fine. If you're going to shoot UHD and deliver HD then again you may be fine.

Just be wary that the bitrate for that 4K is pretty low. And yes the HDMI is still 8 bit.

Even so the ability to even record 4K internally is really useful at times.

cheers
Paul
 
To be honest I think it will mostly be on sticks for basic setups with the grown up cameras for the main stuff. Thanks for the info.
 
I am currently testing the Totolovision profile from Bill Totolo (mentioned somewhere on dvxuser as well), it is based on a cine4 gamma, Rec709 color spaced and tweaked colors on my A7s II and I find it surprisingly clean, and it works well for highlights and midtones. On the shadows it looses a bit against Slog2. No macroblocking - encoder in 4K seems to deal much better with it. Also, for slowmo it works much much better, as in Slog you start at ISO 3200 which breaks the codec in the shadows anyway.
 
good point on the slo mo and s-log 2 not being great together. the slow motion needs a super low iso to be clean i've found.

anybody else care to chime in on which if any cine profiles they use and for what: low light, etc.?

thanks
 
In a few tests I've also found I like the totolo profile. Seems to have good dynamic range and must importantly accurate and life-like colours and skin tones.
 
Austinchimp said:
In a few tests I've also found I like the totolo profile. Seems to have good dynamic range and must importantly accurate and life-like colours and skin tones.
Click to expand...

Yes, the totolo profile is a good start - but it was made for the A7s and as the colors on the A7s II look a bit different it still needs some tweaking. I went out yesterday on a cold morning, snowcovered with a WB at 5200K. The totolo colors were way to warm / orange for that, needed a bit of tweaking.
One thing I have noticed is that the highlight roll - off with that profile is quite abrupt. In Slog2 it is way nicer. You can't have it all it seems ;-)
 
I have seen 8-bit S-log2 and S-log3 both look pretty rough on low-contrast overcast days. If you have a proper colorist, I'd consider coming out of log altogether when your whole scene fits in the middle of the waveform. If you don't have a proper colorist, I suppose maybe log is a bad choice, anyway.
 
You are right, if the scene is not demanding for a high dynamic range the SLOG's do not fill the 8bit bucket properly and you loose a lot of tonality. Thats where the cinegammes (e.g. Cine 4) are a good idea to use. The issue I have is that I cannot always decide on each shot if the scene would be better in Cine 4 or Slog2, also matching clips later will be difficult. Therefore my philosophy now is to do some further research but at a certain point I will quit pixel peeping and just shoot with the profile I have settled on. Which for me is still Slog2 and Sgamut3.cine for all 4K shots, and as it seems Cine 4 with Rec709 for all slowmo shots. SLOG2 just doesn't work well with slowmo.
 
GMC said:
You are right, if the scene is not demanding for a high dynamic range the SLOG's do not fill the 8bit bucket properly and you loose a lot of tonality. Thats where the cinegammes (e.g. Cine 4) are a good idea to use. The issue I have is that I cannot always decide on each shot if the scene would be better in Cine 4 or Slog2, also matching clips later will be difficult. Therefore my philosophy now is to do some further research but at a certain point I will quit pixel peeping and just shoot with the profile I have settled on. Which for me is still Slog2 and Sgamut3.cine for all 4K shots, and as it seems Cine 4 with Rec709 for all slowmo shots. SLOG2 just doesn't work well with slowmo.
Click to expand...

Maybe I missed it, but can you explain why slog doesnt work well for slomo?
 
paulcurtis said:
I'd seriously look at getting LUTCalc, by cameramanben (Ben Turley). There're settings for A7sII Slog/SGamut3.cine and you can very very easily create a LUT that will move that into, say Alexa Rec709 space, which is a great starting point for footage. Obviously major grading and you'd want a different route, but that version of 709 is a great ball park to be in.

cheers
Paul
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,
I purchased LUTcalc, just wondering if you know the best settings or if you could give me a screen grab of your settings in the LUT creator. I'm not experienced with LUTS, but I captured the footage in Slog2/SGamut3.cine and need the correct LUT to be applied in Premiere Pro, thanks
 
for those wondering, s-log isn't workable for the slo mo in a7s ii because it crops in for one thing, also it makes the base iso 3200 instead of 1600. it forces you to use 3200 minimum.

so, basically for slow mo you need lots of light, a low iso, and to use a cine profile

for s-log you need to use 4k

so, one more question for everybody. if shooting in a cine profile, what is your favorite and why. i saw somebody say cine 4 with rec. 709. can i ask why? other people like using cinema or pro or even a gamut color space with the cine profiles???? thanks for the replies.
 
GMC said:
You are right, if the scene is not demanding for a high dynamic range the SLOG's do not fill the 8bit bucket properly and you loose a lot of tonality. Thats where the cinegammes (e.g. Cine 4) are a good idea to use. The issue I have is that I cannot always decide on each shot if the scene would be better in Cine 4 or Slog2, also matching clips later will be difficult. Therefore my philosophy now is to do some further research but at a certain point I will quit pixel peeping and just shoot with the profile I have settled on. Which for me is still Slog2 and Sgamut3.cine for all 4K shots, and as it seems Cine 4 with Rec709 for all slowmo shots. SLOG2 just doesn't work well with slowmo.
Click to expand...

I do the same, except that i leave sgamut3.cine with cine 4 - any reason with you pair cine4 with Rec709 instead of any other color gamut?
 
I will just say that so far i've had pretty good results filming with

Slog2
S.gamut3.cine
+20 saturation
+1red
-1magenta
-1yellow

In low light and slow mo situations however, i switch to
Cinegamme4
sgamut3.cine
+0saturation
+1 Red
-1 Yellow
-1 magenta

Both footage are not too hard to mix, although with cinegamma 4 you really have to watch out for blown highlights as they are quite harsh and do not have the smooth rolloff that s-log2 gives.

I will also add that if you are doing 120fps slowmo and you have lowlight conditions - ITU709 with Sgamut3cine gives good results. There's very little noise until you reach 25000iso
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top