Sony A7sII Initial Impressions

My understanding is that
1) All native E-mount lenses work with 5-axes stabilization. If the E-mount lens has inbuilt OSS two of the 5-axes stabilization are performed by the lens, and the remaining three by the camera. Otherwise, 5 axes by the camera
2) Adapted lenses with electronic contacts that transmit the distance information and focal length data through the adaptor (like Sony A-mount lenses), also work with 5-axes stabilization by the camera. I think Canon lenses with Metabones fall into this category, but I am not sure about that. Commlite or other inexpensive adaptors don't work very well for IBIS, and you have to set your focal length manually...
3) Adapted lenses that do not transmit the distance information and focal length data through the adaptor (like vintage manual lenses), only work with 3-axes, and you have to set manually the focal length of the lens through the menu for the stabilizer to be efficient.

So far I have tested the IBIS with some A-Mount lenses and it is great. Usable handheld video. I feel it works more or less like having a lens with inbuilt stabilizer.
All in all, I feel that if you don't mind the extra bulk and weight, Sony A-mount lenses are possibly the best solution to use both for photography and videography on the A7RII, A7SII.
1) good AF for photography (LA EA3 on the A7RII, LA EA4 on the A7SII)
2) good use of 5 axes IBIS
3) great glass and complete professional lens lineup (you can find more "exotic" or professional lenses missing in the Sony E-mount lineup)
4) mechanical manual focus for video (not the silly fly by wire of the new e-mount lenses).
5) good prices in the used market compared to new E-mount lenses

independent said:
Can anybody with the A7S ii confirm that all 5-axis are engaged for stabilization, yaw, pitch, roll, x and y, on all lenses, native or 3rd party? Some conflicting information is out there. You can input the focal length of the lens in the menu, so that'll give you at least 3, correct? But how about 5?

Obviously a Sony lens w/ OSS will work for all 5-axis.

But how about:

-Sony w/o OSS - 3 or 5 axis?
-Zeiss Batis lenses for Sony mount
-Canon, Zeiss, or Nikon w/ adapter, active or passive

Any clarity / tests would be much appreciated. Thanks
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squig said:
The A7rII is pixel binned 4k isn't it?
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a7R II 4K APS-C reads 15Mpix and downsamples to 8Mpix, this is the highest-quality option
a7R II 4K FF does something suboptimal (I think it's lineskipping, Sony calls it binning, but I'd say binning is what I described for APS-C) but I haven't seen any practical issues at all (in particular: no aliasing/moire in real shots) apart from the fact that you get around one stop more noise (so, a7S APS-C ISO 3200 has about the same noise as a7S FF ISO 6400, but a7R II APS-C ISO 3200 has about the same noise as a7R II FF ISO 1600).

Not sure about the II, but the low-light advantage of the a7S over the a7R II appears only at very high ISO values (25600 or higher). As long as ISO 12800 is similar, I'd rather have great AF for stills. YMMV.
 
How is the noise at 1600 with S-log - is it better then the s-log of the a7s(at iso 3200)? And can anyone compare it to the 5D iii RAW Magic lantern footage ? Im curious to see if it gets close to the quality of magic lantern raw 5D footage.
 
llirik said:
http://www.llirik.com/2015/10/sony-a7r-ii-vs-a7s-ii-low-light-and-rolling-shutter/
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Thanks , that was my main reason, as I need the extra stop. So, I got mine S II today, exchanged it with a R II.


I did an overheating test - and to make it short: it succeeded. The cam felt exactly as warm at the back as the A7R II while 4K recording, but it did not shut down. I could record more than 3 hours in a row, so 6x times recording 29:50 (thought it would be 29:59, but it's not) and +15 minutes after, and it did not shut down. It even did not show me a temp warning at any time.

The only things I did to prevent overheating:


  • fold LCD fully open
  • turn off cam after every 29:50, immediatly change battery to a fresh one, turn camera on again. This took less than 1 minute

I was indoors, room temperature 18°C at the beginning, 20°C at the end. Cam was on tripod.
Cams back was at the end 35°C warm, but not hot. Closing LCD did increase temp. immediatly. I would assume, that 2-3 more degrees could shut cam down soon. But is much better than my A7RII with early FW. Probably they just increased the temp limits in FW ;)

Settings were:


  • IBIS 8mm on
  • noise reduction low
  • 4K 25p 100Mbit
  • PP Cine on
  • manual video mode, 1/50
  • foreign lense, so no AF or similar
 
^ Curious, were you shooting a static image that did not tax the compression engine -- or was it a dynamic image that forced the compression engine to work hard?
 
paulcurtis said:
This just looks correct out of camera now. Don't underestimate that. ... But for me i am much more likely to pick the camera up and shoot properly with it.
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Thanks for all of your testing and posts to this thread, it's be quite illuminating (no pun intended).

I'm curious, with the less-than-optimum Slog3/8-bit implementation, which Picture Profiles (or not) have you settled on for the majority of your work? If you don't mind, I'd be interested in learning the Picture Profiles that you've settled for two different scenarios: 1. Where you are looking to achieve the maximum DR possible and 2. Where the workflow demands the use of the video straight out of the camera with little-to-no LUT application or grading (such as needing to hand the footage off to a 3rd party).

Thanks in advance.
 
Non-scientific overheating test:
4K 25p 100Mbit. Battery grip with two fully charged batteries, IBIS on, 55mm f1.8 native Zeiss lens, with AF on.
For the most part of the test the camera was firm with a static image, but every now and then I picked it up in my hands and used it like if I were doing handheld video, (look through the viewfinder, AF off, zoom in to manual focus, rack focus, go through the display menu, move the camera around etc.). I had a 64GB card in and my target was to fill it with footage.
The camera has recorded the first 29.50 mins flawlessly, then I immediately pressed the rec button again.
It has recorded another 29.50 mins but around 26 mins an overheat message was displayed. Without turning the camera off, another press of the rec button and it went on recording for 2mins and 38 before shutting down. I waited for a couple of minutes and pushed the rec button again. The camera body was cooler, and it went on recording without overheat message until the card was full (another 10-12 mins of footage). By then the first battery in the grip was completely drained, and the second one was at 87%.
In my opinion it is very acceptable.
I will do the same experiment with the A7Rii in the following days (I don't have the camera yet), just out of curiosity.
 
blafarm said:
Thanks for all of your testing and posts to this thread, it's be quite illuminating (no pun intended).

I'm curious, with the less-than-optimum Slog3/8-bit implementation, which Picture Profiles (or not) have you settled on for the majority of your work? If you don't mind, I'd be interested in learning the Picture Profiles that you've settled for two different scenarios: 1. Where you are looking to achieve the maximum DR possible and 2. Where the workflow demands the use of the video straight out of the camera with little-to-no LUT application or grading (such as needing to hand the footage off to a 3rd party).

Thanks in advance.
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I'm always happy to share, i need to know this stuff for my work anyway.

I've settled on SLog2/SGamut3.cine. The Slog2 because it fits the dynamic range offered by the camera, so minimising wastage and the SGamut3.cine because the colour primaries define a smaller colorspace than SGamut which again i think seems to fit better with what the camera offers and makes best use of the 8 bit container. However on the colour side there is very little in it, so it's splitting hairs.

So far i cannot think of a reason why i'd ever use SLog3. Unless we get 10 bit output. I'm open to suggestions but i can't see why right now.

My use is always in post, so i never need anything straight out of camera but actually i posted a LUT above which is all you need to get the above into Rec709A space and it looks really good without any work.

I finally have some more time to look at footage i shot, both in XAVC and ProRes. What is interesting is i am seeing decoding differences between different applications - from PPro to Nuke, all giving me slightly different results with regard to noise and emphasising the blobby noise i've been noticing all the time. I haven't worked out why yet, so this is potentially a real issue - some xavc decoders are not the same. In addition i've noticed that the colours in the XAVC are also different to the prores taken from the HDMI - The ProRes appears to be more accurate and the XAVC is slightly green. Again, i'm not sure why. When you get into these comparisons there are so many links in the post chain that any one of them could be doing it. It may be nothing to do with the camera.

I'll be investigating and post what i find, with some real world samples hopefully.

But broadly speaking looking the footage i've very happy with the tonality of it.

cheers
Paul
 
kostas said:
Non-scientific overheating test:In my opinion it is very acceptable.
I will do the same experiment with the A7Rii in the following days (I don't have the camera yet), just out of curiosity.
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That's great to hear. Broadly speaking i guess unless you're shooting concert footage or long form shows then the heating issue should never be one. In normal start/stop slates and takes i had no issues for an entire day in a number of locations.

If you've got an A7rII as well i think we'd be interested in comparisons between the two, like resolution and colour. I guess Samuel would be especially interested in that if he's thinking of that route...

cheers
Paul
 
Paul you haven't mentioned anything about the A7s prores black crushing issue so is it right to assume it's not happening with the A7sII?
 
squig said:
Paul you haven't mentioned anything about the A7s prores black crushing issue so is it right to assume it's not happening with the A7sII?
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Good point.

Just to recap, on the A7s i found the black point of the Slog2 was lower than the official definition of Slog2. This was actually a good thing because it meant more of the 8 bit container was being used. However if you just popped a LUT on that assumed a particular black point then the effect would be to clip some blacks. It would black anything below that value.

Initial quick poke around and i'm seeing roughly the same thing.

The other thing is that the HDMI output is full range and that can catch you out with LUTs a bit.

So XAVC appears to be legal range, meaning you have Slog2 scaled between 16 and 235, so you never see 255 white. On something in front of me the darkest colour i see is around 28, the brightest is 236. On the same frame through the ProRes i see 14 and 255 for the same points.

Black in Slog2 is 22.5 in 8 bit.

The Slog2 curve is designed to be applied to full range data, so we can see that the ProRes black point is lower than what Slog2 expects.

If we scale the XAVC to full range then that 235 becomes 255 and 14 again (math being (value-16/219)*255) ). So same range but again the black is lower than 22.5 therefore you will clip that in most LUT operations. In a lot of cases maybe you don't notice but if you adjust that black before an operation you may get a little more shadow out of it. On the A7s that area is pretty much all noise, but the A7sII is better in that regard.

In addition, if you're going to be really really anal about the whole thing. You can take your YUV data and do the conversion to RGB yourself and in those cases i've noticed that you can squeeze a tiny bit more highlight sometimes. That's perhaps taking it too far, especially when you consider that whacking a LUT ontop of something invariably looses some range too.

One day i'll do some tests to show how rough some LUTs are, when you don't do interpolation between the values. But that's another day.

cheers
Paul
 
paulcurtis said:
I'm always happy to share, i need to know this stuff for my work anyway....
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Thanks for that explanation Paul, and for confirming that the HDMI output is still full range -- as opposed to the legal range internal files.

1. Just wanted to confirm: The LUT you generously supplied in this post is for legal range internal files ("This is assuming you're importing the XAVC directly") and not full range HDMI output. Is that correct?

2. As you continue to work with this LUT, are you having any nagging issues -- or are you largely satisfied with the results?

3. Curious, have you created a similarly performing LUT for recordings made using the full range HDMI output?

Thanks very much.
 
Moire and Aliasing in 60fps and 120fps? It seems to appear more then when i saw with 4k (which is amazing in that department).

On another note, i have heard from Philip Bloom that he is unable to edit 4k A7sii footage in Premiere in real time(needs render or conversion) - is everyone having this kind of issue?
 
For A7S II 4K XAVC-S 100Mbit/s footage on a GTX980ti and 12 3GHz 12-Core MacPro with Samsung 850Pro SSD, Premiere Pro CC 2015 can't render in real-time at full resolution. Must go to 1/2 Playback resolution, then real-time is possible. This is on Windows 10 and dual 4K monitors, will try booting into OSX to compare performance.
 
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