Help me not screw up my next job (A7S II)

[ashclever]

I just wanted to say WOW ashclever, love your work. Are you the only videographer on those jobs or did you have a team?

Thanks, yes, I did all those solo. When I film an actual band though, I bring on a couple of additional shooters as the edits are actually live vs with DJ's, I montage the night to one of their studio tracks. One camera angle for a live performance whose edit needs to be in real time will give you no post options whatsoever so you would almost be best just planting a tripod and centering the stage. OR...get you C100 on a tripod as a second running angle...then you can actually edit something.

I would avoid stedicam unless your very seasoned with it or mainly want to use off the hip for stabilzation if you don't have a shoulder rig set up. If it is crowded you wont be able to use stedicam except from stage.

Go manual focus and ride as close to f/2.8 as can handle to pull focus with. There are tons of people in the audience filming this thing with smart phones that are full depth of field and you need to separate your footage from theirs with something that pops. The club owner is expecting your footage to look very different from everyone else and staying full depth of field wont help with that. Ask the owner if he is more interested in capturing the performers or how thick the crowd is. That will dictate a lot of what you film. A lot of club owners are more interested in showing how many hot girls their club brings in.....that would guide your shoot in quite a different direction.

Get a board mix with your external recorder to blend with your camera audio. Set your on camera audio solution to low sensitivity to avoid clipping. Blend the two in post to thicken your on camera audio and make your board mix not sound stale and dead.

 

[paulcurtis]

Not sure the OP is shooting in a club though, he talks about employees singing - this may not even be manic, could be nice and sedate karaoke?!

As for that blue LED light on A7s vs A7r, i can't test for this but i would imagine similar results. IMHO some of the wavelengths that these blue LEDs emit is beyond the blue primaries of these sensors, hence going crazy. Not that much you can do about that - white balancing colder may retain more, but light that can't be seen by the sensor, can't be recorded. It does my eyes in, let along the camera.

cheers
Paul

 

[ashclever]

Not sure the OP is shooting in a club though, he talks about employees singing - this may not even be manic, could be nice and sedate karaoke?!l

Valid point Paul!


As far as blue LED or LED's in general, I have not met an LED that the FS700 + 7Q has not been able to handle. The A7s + 7Q+ unfortunately is still the same story with posterization.

 

[Beeboop]

Not sure the OP is shooting in a club though, he talks about employees singing - this may not even be manic, could be nice and sedate karaoke?!

As for that blue LED light on A7s vs A7r, i can't test for this but i would imagine similar results. IMHO some of the wavelengths that these blue LEDs emit is beyond the blue primaries of these sensors, hence going crazy. Not that much you can do about that - white balancing colder may retain more, but light that can't be seen by the sensor, can't be recorded. It does my eyes in, let along the camera.

cheers
Paul

You are correct. This is a yearly event for some employees that rented out the Foundation Room at House of Blues.

 

[sbrenner]

You might want to use a DOF calculator to determine exactly what your DOF is going to be at various apertures.

 

[Beeboop]

Okay, I know. I'm going to shoulder mount instead of glidecam.

 

[paulcurtis]

As far as blue LED or LED's in general, I have not met an LED that the FS700 + 7Q has not been able to handle. The A7s + 7Q+ unfortunately is still the same story with posterization.

Let me introduce you to some of mine

I have had some real issues even with gelled tungsten lights.

An interesting test with the cameras is to shoot a RAW still and see what can be pulled from it. It's pretty poor in RAW too.

cheers
Paul

 

[ashclever]

Let me introduce you to some of mine

I have had some real issues even with gelled tungsten lights.

An interesting test with the cameras is to shoot a RAW still and see what can be pulled from it. It's pretty poor in RAW too.

cheers
Paul

Really!?! Even with ProRes I have not had an issue with the FS700 vs A7s. Skip around 3 minutes into this video of a live band shoot I did. The FS700 shots are focused on the lead guitar (House Left View) and the other two angles are both A7s's with serious posterization issues throughout. Just watch for a minute or two at how the FS700 is handling all the different colored LED's by comparison.

skip to around 3min in....
PASSWORD: big hurt

 

[paulcurtis]

Really!?! Even with ProRes I have not had an issue with the FS700 vs A7s. Skip around 3 minutes into this video of a live band shoot I did. The FS700 shots are focused on the lead guitar (House Left View) and the other two angles are both A7s's with serious posterization issues throughout. Just watch for a minute or two at how the FS700 is handling all the different colored LED's by comparison.

skip to around 3min in....
PASSWORD: big hurt

Wow, that's a huge difference. My experiences with the FS700 were a while back with internal recording via the normal profile curves. Pre RAW and all that and i've just been careful since, i don't tend to shoot in these sorts of environments though (i did my youngest street dance competition once which was a bit like that, but the results were okay on the A7sII)

What profiles are you shooting on the A7s? The FS700 exposure is toned down by comparison, it appears a lot flatter. If you're not shooting log on the A7s could it be down to that? Too much exposure and not log?

Just wondering

cheers
Paul

 

[ashclever]

I know right, isn't it terrible! LOL

I too had the issue with the a blue LED situation when filming a car commercial with the FS700 internal recording before I got the 7Q. The 7Q completely aleveated it for every type of shoot I have done since with the FS700. I was really rooting for the 7Q+ to bring forth the same miracle for the A7s but it did not change that aspect about the picture quality.....it did however improve everything else about the picture quality by leaps and bounds as long as filming 4K, the 1080p ProRes feels almost just like internal when I go to grade it and it looks overall more flat.

On that shoot, I saw this issue occurring in A7s before the performers went on. Myself and one of the other camera ops tried other picture profiles, other color gamuts, etc. and nothing was alleviating what we were seeing on the monitor. At the end of the day we just went with SLOG2 and the Cine Gamma over S-Gamut. I have done more test since and there just seems to be no way of getting around this issue with the A7s. I still haven't investigated if it is an issue in the A7s II?

Now a days, I am always using 7Q's on both units, the FS700's Slog2 with S-Gamut is flatter than the A7s Slog2 with S-Gamut when doing comparisons in grades. I usually have to bring color down in post on the a7s footage about 10% - 15% after applying LUT's to get it in the same ball park of saturation as the FS700.