Sony Cinema Line & FX6

Yeah I totally agree - for the price, it's absolutely exceptional. I actually bought mine used on eBay recently for $1200 (without a tripod collar, which I had to replace). the beauty of it being sold as a kit lens for so long now is that used copies are plentiful. it will be my go-to doc/coverage lens now
 
Yeah the FX6 is kicking the a7siii's ass. No surprises there. Cleaner, more latitude, more detail. A/B FX6/A7SIII for the win
 
ProAV TV posted their image quality tests of the FX6, FX9 and Sony A7SIII
Very useful comparison.

It’s a pity that Sony prevents the α7S III from getting the best out of its sensor, but that’s par for the course for Sony (and Canon equally and even Panasonic).

(Would a Ninja V recording ProRes RAW completely bypass the α7S III’s heavy-handed processing? Anyone know?)

I was impressed by how clean and free of artefacts the FX9 was at lower ISOs, i.e. the ISOs at which most people will do almost all of their work. On this evidence, it remains a better choice for ultimate image quality when the slower readout doesn’t cause its own artefacts. I also expected a still-greater difference in noise between the FX6 and FX9 at high ISO.

But the FX6 lives up to its hype. Definitely the camera of the moment.
 
Yes - you bypass noise reduction by recording RAW from the A7SIII. I remember that from philip bloom's review. I don't specifically remember if he said that you bypass sharpening as well, but I think that you must or it wouldn't be RAW.

I'd like to see more ProRes raw from the A7SIII although most of my shooting with it would most likely stick to in-camera recording anyway
 
I don't think that video looks very good. I don't like the colors. The motion cadence looks rough.

But color could be due to grade. Clipping sky could be due to exposure. Motion cadence could be due to playing back 60p at odd speeds...

Come to think of it, I had the exact same set of reactions to most regular A7SIII launch videos and I have determined that those were the causes.
 
Another dancer (but, at least, not out on an airplane wing)


ATOMOS posted some of the ProRes RAW files from the video above on their website:

https://www.atomosacademy.com/sony-...nja-v-test-footage-for-prores-raw-evaluation/

I downloaded and did some quick grades on one of the files. Went with high saturation to see how the files hold up and I think they are very robust. As usual I had to transcode to ProRes 4444 with Adobe Media Encoder prior to grading them as Davinci Resolve still cannot read ProRes RAW files:

50675232851_f36bc73347_o.jpg
[/url]ProResRAW Foundlight Test_1.6.1 by Teddy Dem, on Flickr[/IMG]

50675231521_83c79d9164_o.jpg
[/url]ProResRAW Foundlight Test_1.6.3 by Teddy Dem, on Flickr[/IMG]
 
I don't think that video looks very good. I don't like the colors... I had the exact same set of reactions to most regular A7SIII launch videos and I have determined that those were the causes.

I agree. IMO this is due to shooting SLog3 and not grading it properly. A tip-off are the odd, almost fluorescent greens on foliage. He actually demonstrates what likely caused this at 2:38. The material looked blown out but "magically" could be corrected by adjusting highlights and shadows then bumping up saturation. That is the wrong procedure for SLog3 and will often produce results as shown.

The blown-out image was likely caused by putting ProRes RAW (which is HDR) in an SDR project. He should have used the built-in FCPX raw-to-SLog3 conversion then used either the built-in SLog3 camera LUT or Alister Chapman's or somebody else's.

Attached is a rudimentary skin tone correction I did based on the vector scope. It is very crude but shows how far off the color was. A global correction based on skin tone line alters all the other colors, which really need individual correction -- like the proper camera LUT would do. But I can't apply the LUT because he's already got manual color on all the shots.

Gerald Undone discusses theses issues in this video. Without a properly matched camera LUT or else a colorchecker card in the shot and a colorist who knows how to manually correct, the results will be bad. The fault is not the camera or poor "Sony color". https://youtu.be/-PWcMjIjCbI
 

Attachments

  • A7S3_ProResRAW_Before_After2.jpg
    A7S3_ProResRAW_Before_After2.jpg
    63.3 KB · Views: 0
... I downloaded and did some quick grades on one of the files. Went with high saturation to see how the files hold up and I think they are very robust...
Which they are (or ought to be). Most importantly, this is what happens when a camera gets out to the experienced users/editors. An adjustment here, a minor tweak there and, all of a sudden, it's a different product. The above is not quite as radical as sticking a popcorn kernel into R5 but it feels a lot safer too.
 
Thanks AlaskaCameraDude! Missed that one - shows it works to a fashion. Hoping to see some more tests to see the hit on image quality when these cameras get out into the wild.
 
Last edited:
Well, having to run the conversion from Prores Raw into regular Prores via FCPX (in order to bring it into Davinci) is a pain in the arse (especially without any direct ISO or exposure controls for the raw files). But the footage does grade up very nicely:

M0VNvZl.jpg


ZtjMagw.jpg


uFNxHsq.jpg
 
Last edited:
That's weird that FCPX does not have exposure controls for the A7SIII ProRes RAW files as Adobe's PP and AME both have exposure controls for it. Exposure controls and the option to change the colorspace from Linear/BT.709 to Slog3/S-Gamut3 Cine are the only two RAW controls in Adobe PP and AME.
 
That's weird that FCPX does not have exposure controls for the A7SIII ProRes RAW files as Adobe's PP and AME both have exposure controls for it. Exposure controls and the option to change the colorspace from Linear/BT.709 to Slog3/S-Gamut3 Cine are the only two RAW controls in Adobe PP and AME.

Don't quite understand. FCPX does have exposure controls for A7SIII ProRes RAW. You can adjust the conversion LUT, color space, ISO or regular NLE exposure controls, plus an exposure offset slider. You can't adjust RAW white balance yet because that is supposedly waiting on an Atomos update. Premiere Pro lets you adjust exposure and "color space", but that appears to be a RAW conversion LUT.
 
Don't quite understand. FCPX does have exposure controls for A7SIII ProRes RAW. You can adjust the conversion LUT, color space, ISO or regular NLE exposure controls, plus an exposure offset slider. You can't adjust RAW white balance yet because that is supposedly waiting on an Atomos update. Premiere Pro lets you adjust exposure and "color space", but that appears to be a RAW conversion LUT.

I was responding to Grug’s post above mine, unless I misunderstood his post. I don’t have FCPX, so I wouldn’t know or be able to confirm, but I always assumed it had all the RAW controls as you have confirmed.
 
White balance is greyed out and ISO and exposure controls are nowhere to be seen (with these three clips).
 
Back
Top