Sony A7SIII = $3500, 10-bit 4K120p internal, 16-bit 4K60p RAW out

joema said:
You'd expect this to affect all cameras of similar size, shape and color equally. However the published internal cutaways of the A7SIII show lots of thermal tape carrying heat from the electronics to the frame. It's possible it could rely on heat flow from the frame to cool the electronics, whereas the R5 seems more insulated and less designed for those heat paths.
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They should sell a silver version ;)
 
filmguy123 said:
You are right, and I've unfortunately experienced that from time to time as well on wides. That said, I've learned at times to simply disable IBIS. Generally, I'd prioritize great IBIS and turning it off 10% of the time when it might cause a problem, rather than mediocre IBIS that gives me perhaps a 50% reduction in severity of problem 10% of the time. So at least for that particular metric, the S1H remains a win for me.



It's a good point, the forced S35 crop is not such a negative for me as it might be for some. I too love shooting with certain S35 lens... the Sigma 18-35 f/1.7 on the S1H is simply brilliant, to name one. And I've also found when shooting primes, the S35 crop option is immensely helpful to suddenly perform a quasi lens change. My preference would of course be that the S1H required no crop at all in any mode, but retained the S35 crop option. As it is, i generally just leave the thing in S35 crop all the time to think in more traditional cinema terms (also means focal lengths pretty much match my EVA1 and GH5 w/speedbooster so a 35 is a 35 is a 35). Then, I'll use the FF option as a way to make the camera suddenly go wider without needing to change lenses if need be.

Objectively it's a benefit that A7S III can shoot 4k120p 10-bit 422 sans crop, but it's also too bad Sony did not included an S35 crop mode as I've found it to be immensely helpful. Especially since it's exceedingly rare to need a wider FOV than afforded by S35 lenses.
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Are you sure the A7s3 cannot use s35? Newsshooter actually writes it does
https://www.newsshooter.com/2020/07/28/sony-delivers-on-the-video-centric-alpha-7s-iii/

I dont know how but Naso state it does.

BTW I used ” clear image zoom ” now and then with the A7r2 - ok when you wanted to crop without stop recording.
 
Indeed ahalpert, almost all modes are available in S35. Generally, after the first reviews, which were largely consistent in their praise and observations, I've seen a flurry of follow up videos stating the camera overheats. Dosen't make sense, with some so called 'reviews' going to extreme lengths to cause the A7SIII to blow up. Even my old small sensor camcorder will malfunction when in direct sunlight for a length of time, being literally too hot to touch! I think Canon are pulling the strings from behind the scenes here - remember the acclaim and accolades they received when they gifted reviewers a brand new Canon R series camera while paying for a full blown exotic holiday. I have the feeling they're pulling the same crap here.

Genuine reviwers all agree the Sony A7SIII has heat under control (being a full frame mirrorless camera). Changing subject, it would be interesting to see a head to head comparison with the BMPCC 6k - both in RAW (ProRes with Atomos and BRAW top quality), and compare dynamic range. Many reviewers claim the Sony A7SIII has almost two stops more latitude, which is impressive considering the 6k's already has awesome picture quality. From Facebook it looks a lot of BMPCC users are migrating en-masse to the new Sony, which makes sense as (on paper) it offers all the features of the Cinema Camera with a far more ergonomic and flexible body, leading class AF and IBIS, albeit for 3 times the price (or more if you insist on RAW).

EDIT: Data from Tom Reaper's post a few pages back

Here's the running DR compilation, all @ SNR 2.0:

Alexa 14.0
C500MKII 13.1
A7SIII 13.0
C300MIII 12.8
FS7 12.7
S1H 12.7
UMP4.6 12.6
C300MKII 12.3
BMPCC6K 11.9
BMPCC4K 11.6
XT3 11.2
GH5s 10.7
A7SII 10.6

The need for an Atomos recorder for RAW might be a blessing in disguise, as you'll be able to use normal SSDs rather then uber expensive cards - cost per gigabyte being a magnitude or more lower! Best solution would be RAW to USB3 like the BlackMagic cameras or the SigmaFP - but this is definitely a second best in my books. The much lower media costs will offest the Atomos recorder in a very short time!

Finally, any word if the gyroscope metadata is actually saved with the video files or not?
 
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tull_power said:
Indeed ahalpert, almost all modes are available in S35. Generally, after the first reviews, which were largely consistent in their praise and observations, I've seen a flurry of follow up videos stating the camera overheats. Dosen't make sense, with some so called 'reviews' going to extreme lengths to cause the A7SIII to blow up. Even my old small sensor camcorder will malfunction when in direct sunlight for a length of time, being literally too hot to touch! I think Canon are pulling the strings from behind the scenes here - remember the acclaim and accolades they received when they gifted reviewers a brand new Canon R series camera while paying for a full blown exotic holiday. I have the feeling they're pulling the same crap here.
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Well, I don't really trust any YouTube reviewer fully. They're all just data points to consider. Although to be fair, I think that they are more likely to mislead through omission (ie not stating something or testing something) than outright lying about their experience.

I get the impression that being in direct sunlight on a hot day may cause the A7S3 to eventually overheat. (Or shooting in a 104-degree oven.) It's not a huge concern for me because I already try to shield and protect my GH5 and other cameras if they're on a tripod in the sun on a hot day just to protect the electronics. And I've never had my GH5 overheat. So, it seems like an edge case to me whereas the R5 would overheat during typical operation. If I was shooting a documentary in the Sahara, I would be more concerned.

According to that list, it has about 1 stop more DR than the P6K, which is still quite impressive. And it's about 2x the cost, not 3x, even when you factor in a Ninja V.

I'd love to see a7S3/P6k shootouts. I'd also love to see tests between RAW out recording and the internal codecs.

The one thing about that dynamic range figure is that I get the impression from some stuff I've seen that the top of the exposure range loses a lot of color information. Now, that's true for most cameras so it may still be a fair comparison at 13 stops. But I may try to keep my highlights down a bit to avoid gray skies. And generally I think the color tone on this camera may benefit from under exposure, but that's my preference on my panasonic cameras as well

The internal codecs are probably good enough for most run of the mill situations. I may even take advantage of the in-body HD proxy recordings to shoot H265 without needing to transcode proxies. And that way, the bitrates are low enough that I wouldn't need any faster cards. YMMV

I haven't heard that the gyroscope data is saved. The only thing I've heard is that it uses it when you turn on active "ibis". So I really dont know
 
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ahalpert said:
Well, I don't really trust any YouTube reviewer fully. They're all just data points to consider. Although to be fair, I think that they are more likely to mislead through omission (ie not stating something or testing something) than outright lying about their experience.
-Tend to agree, although the Newshooter Allard bloke and John Behiri from Cinema5D are usually spot on in their thoughts and evaluation.

I get the impression that being in direct sunlight on a hot day may cause the A7S3 to eventually overheat. (Or shooting in a 104-degree oven.) It's not a huge concern for me because I already try to shield and protect my GH5 and other cameras if they're on a tripod in the sun on a hot day just to protect the electronics. And I've never had my GH5 overheat. So, it seems like an edge case to me whereas the R5 would overheat during typical operation. If I was shooting a documentary in the Sahara, I would be more concerned.
-That's what I said in my post, even my small sensor camcorders (also Sony, also Black) will overheat in direct sunlight, nobody, not even soccer mums will leave their cameras for any length of time cooking in direct sunlight; common sense! To me it's Canon shills trying to claim the Sony is as bad as the Canon R5 (hehe that still from a BTS of a Canon rigged with ice packs and a poor girl aiming a leaf blower at the thing is meme GOLD!)

According to that list, it has about 1 stop more DR than the P6K, which is still quite impressive. And it's about 2x the cost, not 3x, even when you factor in a Ninja V.
-I used the 4k as a basis, seeing they have the same resolution. It's one and a half stops more, remember it's a logarithmic measure (like decibels) and not leanear - so 1.5 stops is significant, more so keeping in mind the Blackmagic is prized for it's dynamic range. Besides, personally, above 4k I value dynamic range far far more then resolution. And the A7SIII is practically on the same level of the $10k monster, the C500MkII - something to keep in mind!

I'd love to see a7S3/P6k shootouts. I'd also love to see tests between RAW out recording and the internal codecs.
-Me too, hopefully someone who knows what's he's doing (rather then a 'me first' media diva) will come up with one! Particularly highlight and shadow recovery etc etc

The one thing about that dynamic range figure is that I get the impression from some stuff I've seen that the top of the exposure range loses a lot of color information. Now, that's true for most cameras so it may still be a fair comparison at 13 stops. But I may try to keep my highlights down a bit to avoid gray skies. And generally I think the color tone on this camera may benefit from under exposure, but that's my preference on my panasonic cameras as well
-Well observed! Hopefully we'll get some internal and RAW footage with challenging light to download and play around with soon! DaVinci's highlight recovery works miracles with the BMPCC - first hand experience, but no idea what it would do with Sony footage....

The internal codecs are probably good enough for most run of the mill situations. I may even take advantage of the in-body HD proxy recordings to shoot H265 without needing to transcode proxies. And that way, the bitrates are low enough that I wouldn't need any faster cards. YMMV
-Yep, that's one of the cameras' advantage in my opinion; strong gradeable, artifact free codecs without wasting tons of space. RAW has some great advantages, and can be tweaked ad infinitum, but if you know what you're doing a good codec should suffice, and for events and quick turnover it's not practical anyways - remember the A7SIII also has an all-I / Intraframe internal codec too similar to ProRes.

I haven't heard that the gyroscope data is saved. The only thing I've heard is that it uses it when you turn on active "ibis". So I really dont know....
-It would definitely be worthwhile, as stabilization could be ajdusted and fine tuned in post. Warp Stabilizer does this without the gyroscope data of course, but seeing what's being done on the FX9, that data would make stabilization far better. In any case the fast rolling shutter should help with in-post stabilization, as well as give a nicer 'motion cadence' - the superfast readout on the BMPCC does wonders in this regard, believe me!

Thanks for your response ahalpert - it's a pleasure reading your posts!
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ahalpert said:
According to that list, it has about 1 stop more DR than the P6K, which is still quite impressive. And it's about 2x the cost, not 3x, even when you factor in a Ninja V.

I'd love to see a7S3/P6k shootouts. I'd also love to see tests between RAW out recording and the internal codecs.

The one thing about that dynamic range figure is that I get the impression from some stuff I've seen that the top of the exposure range loses a lot of color information. Now, that's true for most cameras so it may still be a fair comparison at 13 stops. But I may try to keep my highlights down a bit to avoid gray skies. And generally I think the color tone on this camera may benefit from under exposure, but that's my preference on my panasonic cameras as well
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It’s always the same story with DR, people look to the highlights to *see* things when the good number comes from better performance in the low key.
 
tull_power said:
.
-Tend to agree, although the Newshooter Allard bloke and John Behiri from Cinema5D are usually spot on in their thoughts and evaluation.
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I like Allard and Behiri as well. Behiri can be a bit vague and enthusiastic, but I like that he does real-world tests. Allard is very thorough and neutral. He's my favorite blogger of all.

Re: DR - yes, an extra stop is huge. And if it's only one stop below Alexa, we are closing in on the beast. :)

Re:gyroscope - according to NorBro, the FX9 gyroscope information can only be used in special Sony Catalyst software, which severely limits its usefulness IMO. What I'd really like to see is integration with FCP/Premiere where when you turn on post-stabilisation it accesses the gyroscope data instead of analyzing the footage for dominant motion. That's what it SHOULD do! And then you'd save a boatload of computer processing time while getting a better result.

Sometimes features like that can take a year to be supported in editing
 
Tom Roper said:
It’s always the same story with DR, people look to the highlights to *see* things when the good number comes from better performance in the low key.
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Rather then look to 'see' in the highlights, I think a lot of shooters look for a smooth, film like roloff. To this day many cameras have harsh highlights roloff unless you carefully underexpose and then adjust exposure in post - so it's a bit the Holy Grail of large sensor cameras. The low range is equally important though, particularly if you're going to make up for bad / poor lighting in post.

Thanks for the chart you've posted earlier BTW!
 
Tom Roper said:
It’s always the same story with DR, people look to the highlights to *see* things when the good number comes from better performance in the low key.
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Well, I think the A7S3 can keep a lot of highlight detail and produce a nice roll-off. I just mean that a lot of cameras lose chroma info even when they keep luma gradient at the top of their exposure range. I found this neat tool at the digital picture recently which has a series of color charts at different exposures, and you can see how the color from green/yellow just vanishes on the R5 at 3 stops overexposure: https://www.the-digital-picture.com...&ISO=0&CameraComp=1221&TestComp=0&ISOComp=100
Screen Shot 2020-07-30 at 7.09.12 AM.jpg

I think that's what happened here - that the camera was well-overexposed and the sky comes out looking gray:
Screen Shot 2020-07-30 at 7.06.06 AM.jpg

But as far as highlight handling, especially for a properly exposed shot, I'm feeling very good about this:
Screen Shot 2020-07-30 at 7.06.47 AM.jpg
 
ahalpert said:
Well, I think the A7S3 can keep a lot of highlight detail and produce a nice roll-off. I just mean that a lot of cameras lose chroma info even when they keep luma gradient at the top of their exposure range. I found this neat tool at the digital picture recently which has a series of color charts at different exposures, and you can see how the color from green/yellow just vanishes on the R5 at 3 stops overexposure: https://www.the-digital-picture.com...&ISO=0&CameraComp=1221&TestComp=0&ISOComp=100
View attachment 139885

I think that's what happened here - that the camera was well-overexposed and the sky comes out looking gray:
View attachment 139883

But as far as highlight handling, especially for a properly exposed shot, I'm feeling very good about this:
View attachment 139884
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Take a look at Philip Bloom's short - both colour and highlights look remarkable. Of course it was shot in RAW, but your screenshots show the internal recording handles highlights remarkably well too.

https://philipbloom.net/blog/sonya7siii/

https://vimeo.com/441676150

According to Bloom, focus racking was done using the Autofocus!

Looks like Sony crammed $10,000+ worth of camera in a tiny tiny mirror less body. This is not about 6k or 8k - this is about having a camera which reliably gives you footage on par with the best of the best.
 
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tull_power said:
Take a look at Philip Bloom's short - both colour and highlights look remarkable. Of course it was shot in RAW, but your screenshots show the internal recording handles highlights remarkably well too.
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in fairness to matti who shot the boating samples - he was vlogging and adjusting exposure intermittently at arm's length. i'm sure when you're behind the camera like bloom was, you can get much more consistent results :)
 
ahalpert said:
in fairness to matti who shot the boating samples - he was vlogging and adjusting exposure intermittently at arm's length. i'm sure when you're behind the camera like bloom was, you can get much more consistent results :)
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You hit the nail on the head - while not blaming Mattti (or anyone) - these vlogger kind of review are more entertainment then anything else, which is why, as I've posted earlier, I appreciate more Allard and Behiri's kind of reviews, where they use the camera for a length of time day to day - and then show us both the results and their views as seasoned cameraman.
 
ok dan watson reran his overheating test with better methodology and set the a7s3 overheat limit to high. 29 minutes of rec time on the a7s3 and 34 on the r5 before overheating. this is in 4k60

of course, the r5 has a heat advantage in 4k60 because it's not doing a full readout

so 4k60 recording in hot conditions is something to be careful with. i think that even when i'm rolling 4k60 continuously, i'm usually only filming 50% of the time. hopefully i will never overheat.

more importantly - i think 4k24p will be solid. he did not test it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-SAUNuBCNM
 
Bassman2003 said:
The heat wave continues... This video shows the Sony overheating before the R5 in 4k60.
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Philip Bloom just announced he did extensive heat testing on the A7SIII for several days. He used a heat lamp and got the camera so hot it started smoking. Despite that he said it was difficult to make it shut down. He shot for days on a hot sunny beach using 4k/120 and 4k/60, and never had it overheat in actual use.

When through extreme measures he artificially forced a thermal shutdown, he said it recovered very quickly -- after 1-2 min it was ready to go for long-duration takes. He considers it as professional and usable for real world conditions as the S1H.
 
joema said:
Philip Bloom just announced he did extensive heat testing on the A7SIII for several days. He used a heat lamp and got the camera so hot it started smoking. Despite that he said it was difficult to make it shut down. He shot for days on a hot sunny beach using 4k/120 and 4k/60, and never had it overheat in actual use.

When through extreme measures he artificially forced a thermal shutdown, he said it recovered very quickly -- after 1-2 min it was ready to go for long-duration takes.
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i'm feeling good about the a7s3 heat situation. but sony paid bloom, so i don't think he's unbiased. sony themselves said it can overheat in 4k60. i don't think it will be a problem for me, though. i think it's fine
 
Tony Northrup has files available for download on his Google Drive but they are just of one room.

Probably best to take screenshots of S-Log2/3 from YouTube and grade that until someone can share original material.
 
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