FS5: Problems Matching Sony FS5 to A7S

L

Leo Burton

Member
I'm having problems using these as an A+B camera setup.

I set both cameras to the same picture profile, gamma (cine 2 or 4 depending), white balance, resolution, shutter speed etc..

But the colours are very different in the final output, and even grading is difficult to get them to match.

The fact that they are both Sony cameras, one would assume the colour science would be similar if not identical.

Has anyone used this combo that can suggest anything to me, it would be much appreciated, as in theory this should be a killer combo to use together.

Thanks in advance folks!
 
I have matched the FS5 with an A7Sii, not the original A7S, so this advice might not be perfect, but it may point you in the right direction. I have found that, while the A7Sii is much closer in look than say a Canon 5D, it still needs tweaking to match to the FS5.
My guess is that Sony's still cameras are design by a different division than their video cameras, hence the difference in color science.

The big discovery I made is the difference in white balance between the two cameras. The FS5 tends to white balance cooler than the A7Sii (and cooler than any other camera I have owned). This is the case when manually white balancing, and also on the Presets. My solution to this on the FS5 is to set the WB Shift in the Picture Profile to +3. Also, when using the Outdoor WB Preset, set the Outdoor Set to +2 in the menu.

If you have access to a monitor with a vectorscope and wave form, you can point both cameras at a color chart (or a monitor with SMPTE Bars) and adjust the Color Phase and Color Depth to match the two cameras reasonably.

I set both cameras to Cine 2 to avoid the clipping that happens to superwhites in Premiere. My goal was to try and emulate the colors of S-LOG3.cine but using Cine2, as the workflow at my job doesn't allow for shooting flat and using LUTs. So I set the Color Mode to "Pro" on both cameras and then adjusted the Color Depth to match S-LOG3.cine as close as I could.

What I noticed is that with Blue, Cyan and Magenta, the color depth had to be set lower on the FS5. And it's still not a perfect match between the two cameras.

Also, the Color Phase is slightly different between the two. I set the A7Sii Color Phase to +2 and the FS5 to +1 to match them. This has the benefit of improving skin tone warmth, IMHO.

Last thing: the ISO settings between the 2 cameras do not match at all. So if you set them to the exact same ISO, f-stop and shutter, the exposure will NOT be the same. I have found that 1000 ISO on the FS5 is equivalent to 400 ISO on the A7Sii. And when shooting in S-Log, 3200 ISO on the FS5 yields the same exposure as 1600 ISO on the A7Sii. Crazy but true.

Hope this helps!
 
Last edited:
Leo Burton said:
I'm having problems using these as an A+B camera setup.

I set both cameras to the same picture profile, gamma (cine 2 or 4 depending), white balance, resolution, shutter speed etc..

But the colours are very different in the final output, and even grading is difficult to get them to match.

The fact that they are both Sony cameras, one would assume the colour science would be similar if not identical.

Has anyone used this combo that can suggest anything to me, it would be much appreciated, as in theory this should be a killer combo to use together.

Thanks in advance folks!
Click to expand...

I feel ya. However, I match my FS7, A7s and even my old trusty EX3 with very little effort.
For me, I have found using the Odyssey 7Q+ in Apollo mode, allows me to do a visual match. If I have to shoot non-log, I use PP-4 on the DSLR and select a very similar look profile look with the EX3 and tweak within that profile appropriately.
If shooting log with the FS7 (I use sLog-2), I find the PP-7 on the A7s is a pretty good match. I do have to tweak the color temp on the A7s down about 400k or 2800k to match the FS7. The EX3...again going into the picture profile and selecting one of the cine gammas and tweaking seems to work for me.
That said, I always, always shoot a McBeth Chart at the head of each scene...without fail.
Seems to work for me.
I was of the mind the FS5 and FS7 were the same chip array so not sure what could be causing your issue but I would most definitely consider dropping the color temp of the A7s.
 
Many thanks Guys, that is some insightful advice! I will certainly give it a go, and do a little experimenting. I would never have thought to offset white balance in the profile settings, so thats a new one for me to consider.

Regarding ISO, I guess with the large sensels on the A7S sensors (which make it such a good low light camera) compensate for levels against the S35 sensor of the FS5.
 
Last edited:
Not really. Still struggling to get a good match that isn't a pain in post to colour match. Really disappointed this is not a great A/B cam combo. Maybe the AS7II, but the original A7S is a ***** to match!
 
The original A7s definitely has a green colour cast to it compared to the A7sII. I spoke to others including Cinema 5D's Nino Leitner who confirmed he had that too when match cameras so always push the A7s towards magenta before doing any other corrections and that should get you in the ballpark of a foundation to match.
 
Ben Scott said:
The original A7s definitely has a green colour cast to it compared to the A7sII. I spoke to others including Cinema 5D's Nino Leitner who confirmed he had that too when match cameras so always push the A7s towards magenta before doing any other corrections and that should get you in the ballpark of a foundation to match.
Click to expand...


Thanks Ben! Will try that.
 
I have heard that the color in the original a7S is much different than the mark II. If it were me, I would dive into the PP settings on the a7S and adjust the Color Mode, Saturation, Color Phase and Color Depth settings until I have a good match with the FS7 (or FS5). I'd use a color chart and an external monitor with a good scope on it. And truthfully it would probably be easier to match the FS7 footage to the a7 than the other way around as the FS7 is going to have much more latitude for adjustment.
 
I just set up my SF5 with a color profile from Doug Jensen's Master Class on Vimeo. I wrote to him to see if he had any thoughts on matching with the A7Sii but I suspect there isn't much in common between the two. Anyone else tried this? My answer to this is to use a flat profile on the A7sii like the one suggested by Matt Johnson and then try to match with the baked profile for the sf5.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top