Some quick help with the A7S II Please

[egproductions]

So I have a last minute project where I need extreme low light capabilities (my FS7 won't cut it). I'm not familiar with the A7S II but I plan on renting it for the weekend and playing around before using it on the job. I've tried googling certain questions but I value the users here on DVXUser and want to see if I'm missing anything:

• I plan on using my metabones speedbooster ultra that I use on my FS7 on the A7S II in crop mode. Will this work? Can I still record 4K?
• Would I get better low light capabilities shooting with a speedbooster in crop mode or shooting with the metabones adapter in full frame mode?
• What kind of batteries does the A7S II take and how many do you think I would need for about 6 hours of shooting?
• Can I use my 128GB Sandisk Extreme Plus cards in all modes of the A7S II?
• It records slog 3 correct?
• Are there any concerns about the camrea overheating? How do I avoid this?
• Any other quirks I should be aware of before shooting (IR pollution, stuck pixels, not going above a certain ISO, etc.)

 

[Sol M.]

• 4K recording is only available in full-frame mode
• The a7S II uses NP-FW50 batteries. Each battery powers the camera for about 1 hour
• The a7S II requires U3 SDXC cards for full functionality in all recording modes. If your card meets those specifications, then there's a good chance it will be fine, though Sony's cameras have a reputation of being a bit more choosy about whether a card meets its requirements or not. This is merely anecdotal, but I have had good experiences with Transcend's U3 SDXC cards, and have heard of issues with PNY and Lexar cards.
• The a7S II can shoot in S-Log 3, but since it only records in 8-bit, it's often not pretty (banding). I generally stick to the Cine 1-4 profiles.
• Have not experienced any overheating issues with the a7S II, even after recording for 1+ hours. The a7R II had issues with overheating, but a recent firmware update seems to have improved things quite a bit.

 

[Samuel H]

* Not only can't you shoot 4K in APS-C mode, but if you go to 1080p you'll have one stop more noise on APS-C than on FF. So, using a speedbooster because of lowlight reasons doesn't make sense here. Just go full frame with the standard adapter.
* slog3 doesn't make sense to me either: it's clipped on the highlights at the same point as slog2, so you're not getting any extra DR, just a different curve that will help you if you're cutting with FS7 slog3 stuff. But if it's all a7S II, I'd go with slog2 and sgamut3.cine. Also: run a test and see if you want to overexpose by a stop or so, I found it really useful on my a7S (haven't tried the II).
* Unless it's handed to you already configured, you'll have to spend a while playing with the menus. They usually come with useless settings (such as "only auto exposure when shooting video").