I'm a casual shooter coming from a 5d Mark iii. I love the threads in this forum, but I find a lot of them are a little advanced for where I'm at (although, I'm learning a lot from you folks!) I wanted to share some observations that may help educate fellow noobs.
I shot my daughter's birthday party using Kholi's Slog2 profile (Pro color setting) indoors with a ton of windows and bright sunlight. 3200 ISO, no ND. I'm currently color correcting the footage in DRII, and will post the video here when it's done.
Exposure is tricky, but the Spot exposure setting helped a lot
I started the shoot using the Multi metering mode and the exposure scale told me everything was blown out (understandably.) I switched to the spot exposure setting, and it made things easier to interpret. For me, making sure the kids etc. were exposed correctly was more important than the entire scene, with natural light pouring in the windows. One challenge I'm finding however is with faces / skin tones. In some shots, faces are exposed nicely in the middle, but the side is blown out. Clearly, as people have pointed out, the 3200 minimum ISO in Slog2 is a severe limitation if you're not using NDs.
Holy he**, in camera focus peaking is amazing
On my 5D, I did have Magic Lantern installed, but it was (and still is?) a little buggy. So I didn't use it all that much. As a result, I wasn't able to always nail focus. Now I'm nailing it 95% of the time, and am able to manually adjust so quickly on the fly it looks like fast autofocus. This is huge, and in my opinion in-camera focus peaking alone is worth switching from a 5D.
Punching in to grab focus while you're shooting is invaluable
Again, coming from a 5D this is a brand new feature to me. A number of times while shooting I punched in, and left it punched in to make sure I was grabbing focus on the kids faces while they moved around.
You can really push the image in post
When I first got the a7s, and compared footage to some from my 5D, I was a little disappointed. To me, I couldn't see a huge difference in quality, and the 5D colours out of the camera looked better. I wasn't pixel creeping, mind you, so maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. But with my 5D footage, all I could do was push the saturation a little. As soon as I started manipulating the colours, the picture would fall apart - it would start to look unnatural. Now, with the XAVC, I can do a TON - add saturation, move contrast around, and adding LUT's is a breeze and doesn't ruin the image. So for those of you that are on the fence, just know that a huge benefit of this camera and codec is in post.
That's it for now - will post the video shortly!
I shot my daughter's birthday party using Kholi's Slog2 profile (Pro color setting) indoors with a ton of windows and bright sunlight. 3200 ISO, no ND. I'm currently color correcting the footage in DRII, and will post the video here when it's done.
Exposure is tricky, but the Spot exposure setting helped a lot
I started the shoot using the Multi metering mode and the exposure scale told me everything was blown out (understandably.) I switched to the spot exposure setting, and it made things easier to interpret. For me, making sure the kids etc. were exposed correctly was more important than the entire scene, with natural light pouring in the windows. One challenge I'm finding however is with faces / skin tones. In some shots, faces are exposed nicely in the middle, but the side is blown out. Clearly, as people have pointed out, the 3200 minimum ISO in Slog2 is a severe limitation if you're not using NDs.
Holy he**, in camera focus peaking is amazing
On my 5D, I did have Magic Lantern installed, but it was (and still is?) a little buggy. So I didn't use it all that much. As a result, I wasn't able to always nail focus. Now I'm nailing it 95% of the time, and am able to manually adjust so quickly on the fly it looks like fast autofocus. This is huge, and in my opinion in-camera focus peaking alone is worth switching from a 5D.
Punching in to grab focus while you're shooting is invaluable
Again, coming from a 5D this is a brand new feature to me. A number of times while shooting I punched in, and left it punched in to make sure I was grabbing focus on the kids faces while they moved around.
You can really push the image in post
When I first got the a7s, and compared footage to some from my 5D, I was a little disappointed. To me, I couldn't see a huge difference in quality, and the 5D colours out of the camera looked better. I wasn't pixel creeping, mind you, so maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. But with my 5D footage, all I could do was push the saturation a little. As soon as I started manipulating the colours, the picture would fall apart - it would start to look unnatural. Now, with the XAVC, I can do a TON - add saturation, move contrast around, and adding LUT's is a breeze and doesn't ruin the image. So for those of you that are on the fence, just know that a huge benefit of this camera and codec is in post.
That's it for now - will post the video shortly!
