Sony A7s for documentaries

dustylense said:
C100 with dual pixel. 2 batteries. One shotgun mic. 18-135 STM. 55-250 STM. 17-50 of your choice. Everything else is built into the body. far less RS.

Or, that A7s kit I mentioned and you're still short stuff. Plus, you will have to rig the sucker up everyday. The C100 you just pull out of the bag, turn on, and roll. Get home, sell it and thank me later.
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Go the C100 route.
 
Never would I pick my A7s over my C100 or C300 for shooting a doco - not for A cam single op anyway. The C100 is far better suited and the images are similar to the A7s (that is, nice). I've always intended the A7s to be a B-cam/crash cam against my C300 in lieu of carrying a C100 around. It's a size savings thing.

Heck, I'd pick my GH4 over a A7s for doco shooting (it handles better), and that's not saying much. Go for the C100.
 
As you can see from many comments go c100. If you want to enter the pro shooting world there is no better entré than a c100 and a desire to learn.
 
The Sony FS100 is a very capable camera and small too, great for a beginner and professional alike with a lovely image almost similar to the C100, great low light performance, a Fullframe look can be achieved with Metabones Speedbooster, no time record limit, XLR audio inputs, almost any lens can be adapted, the real downside for me is the lack of ND filter and for some (not me) a awkward form factor both downsides present on the A7s too, and right now the Sony FS100 is $2500 at B&H Photo and Adorama, at this price is a bargain.
 
Supposedly, gh4 + 12-35/2.8 (around 2500$) is also a good start for a kit in a smaller budget than c100+24-105/4.
Of course, audio is still a pain.
 
well, the thread is from july and the OP probably has come back from his project by now. would be nice to hear from him how shooting with the A7S turned out.
 
Consider if you go the C100 route, you're married to EOS mount lenses whereas the A7s has a practically unlimited resource of adapters available to it.
I wasn't really pleased with the look of the C100 until the network gave me their blessing to shoot in C-Log, which obviously opens the camera up and made life a lot easier. That said, I was constantly re-rigging it to make it work in doc mode, the best result was marrying parts from several manufacturers, all of which cost more than the A7s.

I should say the C100 was a solid performer and stood up to everything we could throw at it, which was quite a bit. I used it for the entire run of a show called Fight to Survive, now airing. Sorry for the plug, just wanted to point anyone interested to some C100 footage.
 
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