- Felicia struggling to talk today.
Why isn't this episode
a hundred, take four.
If you've been following
me on Instagram lately
you'll know that I've been working a lot
with Sony Australia I'm not an ambassador,
I'm not an affiliate, I'm
not anything like that
they've just been kind enough
to take me on board
for a couple of videos.
And they've been kind
enough to also lend me
an A7S Mark III before it comes out,
which isn't nerve wracking at all.
Maybe you'll hear from the
live stream with Sony Australia
which would have happened
a couple of hours before
this video went live.
If so, welcome, hi.
Now considering the low light
capabilities of this camera
we wanted to test it
using a low light scenario
by lighting a scene using only candles.
But we also had a practical
light in the background
and we had a light
coming through the window
to act as moonlight but both
of those were accent lights.
In terms of key lights, we used candles.
Let's watch the scene and then we'll talk.
(upbeat music)
Alright, so this is what we started with.
It's a fairly small space,
there's a fair bit of
furniture in the way,
but it's intimate.
And I think it can work to our advantage
'cause it's quite deep.
It means we can create depth
in our lighting as well.
The first step was to cover the couches.
Now we did that using
black and white fabric
and we did it strategically.
We made sure that we had white fabric
either side of the action
which was going to happen
on the rug in the foreground.
And then we made sure that
there was black fabric
at the background so that our
character, our ghost character
didn't get lost in the background.
The white fabric on the sides
also acted as reflection.
Then we set the Lupo
Actionpanel Full Color
through the window to act as
a little bit of moonlight.
We tried a few different settings
it took a little bit of
tinkering to work out
but we ended up settling
on color temperature
instead of using the presets.
Going through the presets,
there were a couple of different options
that we had in terms of a bluish look
but none of them were quite right
they were a little bit too
saturated for what we needed.
But it's really cool
that a light like this
has those presets and then has full HSI
as well as full color
temperature, full spectrum color.
That is so helpful in
these sort of circumstances
where you're not too sure
what sort of color setting
you want to achieve, when you want
and you have all those options there
laid out in front of
you, no need for gels.
Anyway, we went through the
presets, we found a few blues.
We tried them out they
were a bit too blue.
And then we thought,
well, we're shooting at
3,200 Kelvin on the camera
which means our daylights will
be pushed towards the blue.
So what if we just make the
color of the light in CCT mode
in the color temperature
mode, more than daylight
we make it like 69,000 or 7,000 Kelvin
that should push it far
enough into the blue
to make it look a little bit more
like that stereotypical
Hollywood moonlight,
and it worked.
Another thing about this light
is it's super duper powerful.
And considering that the inside,
we weren't really using that much light,
we're just using candles.
So we have to balance that equally
to make it not be
overpowering in the background
which meant that we had
to bring it down to 1%.
And even that was edging on too bright.
Speaking of color, I do wanna
touch on the color science
of the A7S Mark III which is improved.
It is really nice looking
compared to older models.
I used to have an A7R Mark
II and I've gotta be honest
the colors in that were
very hard to work with.
It was just very hard
to get it looking nice.
There were just extra steps
involved and that took time
but it's actually starting
to look really nice
it's actually making me consider
whether I should change back to Sony.
I think I have a gear problem.
Right, so now it's time to start filming.
We didn't really have that
many complicated shots.
There were maybe two shots
that were a little bit more complicated.
There was a gimbal shot,
which was our opening shot
that we were going to use
a track in or a track out,
I wasn't really sure which
one I wanted, so I did both.
And then we also had like
this pan up transition shots.
It was like fit to midsection
and the midsection to face
that didn't really work in the edit.
So we ended up working away around that
but we really only had
a handful of shots to do
so it was kinda contained
really easy to do
as with most things it was nice to start
with that wide shot
that establishing shot,
that track in that allows us to kinda see
where everything is placed,
where all the lights are coming from.
And if we wanted to modify
that in the closeups, we could.
Now, aside from me needing to
brush up on my gimbal work,
I think this shot worked really well.
There was a couple of issues
with a little bit of focus
but then again we were
throwing a lot of curve balls
at this camera.
Our actor, our character
doesn't have a face.
They are wearing glasses
in their white sheet.
So it doesn't really pick
up eye auto focus on that,
coupled with the fact that we're shooting
in very dark conditions.
In other tests with the camera,
I found that the eye
auto focus is spot on.
It's really quick and responsive
and you can actually
change the responsiveness
in the settings, which is
a really nifty feature.
Do I think that auto focus
is something that filmmakers
should use pretty much all the time?
No, I don't think auto-focus
is going to replace a focus puller.
There's something so
organic about focus pulling
that it's just much better
when it's done manually
but when it comes to situations like this
where you're the only shooter
and you're maybe using a gimbal
and you don't have the ability
to do that manual focus,
then it's a godsend.
There were also moments with close focus
where the camera was having trouble
trying to pick up close details.
In those cases, I ended up
just using the touch focus
on the touch screen at the back
and sometimes even the back focus button
to just try and kick it into gear
and get it focused on what I wanted.
I had a few reflectors on standby
'cause I thought maybe we might need them
to get a little bit more
level into our scene.
I didn't end up using them,
I didn't need them at all.
We did shoot the scene at
16,000 ISO, which is insane.
The camera's native ISO is 640
and I did find I will note here that
it was kind of hit and miss
in between 640 and 16,000
but then at 16,000 it
kinda cleared up again.
I found that other people
who've mentioned that as well
so I think I'm on the
right track in thinking
that maybe it is kind of like a dual ISO
even though it's not advertised
as one, I'm not really sure.
But I do recommend if
you're shooting high ISO
you probably wanna go
16,000 and then stop down,
which is what I did.
If I needed to change the exposure down,
I would just stop down
instead of changing the ISO
because in doing that you
will change the noise pattern
and I didn't wanna do that.
The direction of the candles and the light
didn't have to change either,
which is something else
I thought I'd have to do.
I thought I'd have to
move the candle around
to get more level out of
them or change the direction
but because of the size of the camera
I could put it effectively,
wherever I wanted.
I could hand hold it and
the IBIS would kick in
and produce a really nice stable shot
as long as I was holding it correctly.
Obviously you still need
to think about your pose,
your stance when you're using
a camera handheld like that.
But I found it really easy to use.
I found it really nice to get
into the nooks and crannies
and get the shots looking the way
that I wanted them very easily.
All in all, I gotta say that those images
are fairly usable at 16,000 ISO.
Would I do it all the time?
No, but is this feature useful?
Hell yeah.
There have been a few times in my career
where this sort of thing would
have come in really handy.
I may have been on a job where
there isn't enough money
to get enough lights
to shoot an exterior nighttime scene.
And the shots are all grainy and yucky.
It would have been nice to have an option
with a really highly
sensitive camera like that
to be able to get a less noisy image
and spend less time in post production
trying to fix that up.
So in short, Sony I'm impressed.
I have a few more videos coming out
about the Sony A7S Mark III.
They're less on the technical side
and more on the practical side
because that's what I
like to focus on here.
I don't really like to get too bogged down
in the tech specs.
If you do like that sort of stuff,
you can check out some links down below
to my favorite videos
which outline tech specs
'cause I love tech specs I
think they're really interesting
and I come from a technical background
so I know and understand
that people like that stuff.
It's all linked down below.
So thank you Sony Australia
and thank you for watching
I hope you enjoyed that video
and I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)
