(cheerful music)
- [Sam] Knock knock knock.
(zipper unzipping)
- Good morning.
Oh, wait, there's a net here.
Oh, how do I, which zipper,
there's so many zippers here.
Hold on.
Welcome to my crib.
I just decided to move into my trunk.
It's honestly pretty comfortable in here.
I mean, I have this Sony A7S III here,
which I guess is pretty cool,
but you know what's cooler
is this air mattress.
Like look at this,
isn't this awesome?
It has a little cutout for the
wheel wells and everything.
- [Sam] Talk about this.
- Oh fine.
So check this out.
This is the Sony A7S Mark III.
The camera that we've been waiting for
for what five years now?
And was it worth the wait?
(bleep) yeah.
Let's just start with this,
huh, flip screen.
Boom.
For me, I film myself a lot for YouTube
and when I'm vlogging,
so being able to do this is huge.
Also, another complaint I've always had
was the color science.
That's been greatly improved.
And we have 10-Bit 4:2:2.
And when you're shooting
4K 60 frames per second,
you're getting 600 megabits per second.
We're talking about getting
a professional codec
and file out of this little camera.
So here's a shot of Sam here.
Hello, Sam.
- You said I wasn't
gonna be working today.
(Gene laughing)
- I kind of tricked Sam into being like,
"hey, you want to come on a camping trip,"
but really it means like,
"hey, you want to do free
work for me?" (Gene laughing)
- I flew my girlfriend in from Georgia.
- (Gene laughing)
- And now I'm working.
- Hi, Crystal.
See, she seems fine.
She actually seems to
be enjoying it more now
that you're occupied.
The 10-Bit with a decent bit rate
was the most important thing for me.
So right now I'm shooting 4K 10-Bit 4:2:2
at 24 frames per second.
And at that frame rate,
I'm getting about 240 megabits per second.
That's a lot of numbers, but basically
that means I feel comfortable
using S-Log3 on this camera.
And that's awesome because
that's the same color profile we're using
on this Sony FX9.
And that's awesome.
Sony's always had S-Log3 in
their mirrorless cameras,
but I never touched it
because first of all,
it's 8-Bit.
And also, I always had issues matching it.
The colors weren't there 100%.
But on this A7S Mark III,
they've made a big push to
make the S-Log3 from here,
match their professional cameras.
Oh, sorry, I still have
some stickers on this.
Sony told me that I'm not allowed
to show anyone this camera
until the embargo lists
or else they'll kill
me in my sleep, but uh.
Hey, Jonathan, you signed an NDA right?
- No, no, no, I thought--
- I rolled it up in your
tent and left it right there.
- Sam, you know what to do.
(Sam grunting)
(metal clanging)
(guitar music)
Now when I'm looking for the
perfect mirrorless camera,
I want it to do two functions really well.
One, I want it to be convenient
and flexible enough to
be used as a vlog camera.
So, I'm looking for ultimate convenience.
I want to be able to turn it on
and treat it like a point-and-shoot
and get a pretty good image,
just straight out of the box.
And second, I want it to be powerful
and reliable for me to be able
to use it as a B camera
on a professional job,
maybe even an A camera.
And this just might be the
camera that does it all,
but let's start with
the fun stuff shall we?
4K 120 frames per second, looks so good.
(lo-fi music)
It's nice.
It's sharp.
It's crisp.
It looks awesome.
It's amazing to see this kind
of picture quality coming out
of a small mirrorless
camera like this A7S.
And if you want to get
really crazy with it,
240 frames per second, at 1080p.
You definitely notice a little
bit of loss in resolution,
but it's still plenty
usable in my opinion.
And at 240 frames per second
is where you really start
to see all the little details
and it almost stops time.
And you can see every single
speckle of dirt flying out.
I could think of a million
different ways to use this
and have fun with it.
So that is amazing.
I mean, I can't even get
that out of this FX9.
Have you guys heard of that
thing that people are doing
where people jump with a
straight face and they land,
and they film in a slow-mo?
- No, I haven't.
- Have you seen it?
Oh man.
Alright, who wants to go first?
(lo-fi music)
A little action.
I don't think you have enough there.
- No.
- [Group Member] Oh, you
probably just went...
(lo-fi music)
(Gene laughing)
(group members laughing)
- That's too good.
- And then it comes back up.
It goes, "Duh, duh, duh,
duh, duh, duh, duh."
(Gene laughing)
(guitar music)
(Gene laughing)
- Dude, I'm so scared.
- It's gonna be like the,
the scene in Step Brothers.
Yeah, bunk beds, gahbo.
But yeah, I'm officially now vlogging
on the A7S Mark III.
I have it in S-Log3 in 10-Bit 4:2:2.
This mode should give us quite a bit
of dynamic range to work with.
So, I am the shadow,
but all this is bright
and I should be able to recover a lot
of this in post.
In all of this the lighting's terrible.
There's a shadow and bright areas.
And this is really a good test
for the dynamic range here.
- What is going on?
(both men laughing)
- And we're back in the studio.
The footage you were watching,
it's just S-Log3,
and I just slapped an S-Log3 LUT on there.
It looks pretty good, but of course,
we still have a lot of play
room because of this 10-Bit.
And what I'm really loving is the amount
of usable information in the shadows.
Which is great.
When I was color grading this footage,
it felt very comfortable.
You have space in both the highlights
and the shadows to work with.
Now here's the dynamic range comparison
against my Canon EOS R.
Now EOS R isn't the newest Canon cameras,
so this is kind of an unfair comparison,
but let's check this out.
Here's the exposed.
Now, let's go a bit
underexposed with both cameras.
Here we're not looking too great.
I'm gonna try to bring
up the exposure there.
We're way under.
And it doesn't look great.
There's definitely noise here,
but we've been able to
recover a decent amount
of info on Sam here.
I'm gonna go ahead and try
the same thing in C-Log
on the EOS R.
And just, yeah, look at that.
Not even close.
Just look how terrible
the Canon EOS R looks
in C-Log when I'm trying
to recover those shadows.
But that's one thing I really
loved about the A7S III,
was how much detail that you
can actually use in there.
And look at this.
It's still noisy, but
it looks somewhat okay.
On the Canon EOS R not even close.
They both tend to do a pretty
decent job in the highlights.
Although, the Sony definitely
does have an advantage there.
Still, I'll be doing the same
exact test on the Canon R5,
but I am very, very happy
with how much usable
dynamic range there is
with the Sony A7S.
Definitely some of the
best footage I've worked
with out of a mirrorless camera.
Now I should mention
that I have not yet tested the Canon R5.
I will be testing that
in the coming weeks.
- I checked out that footage that you did
in the middle of the night.
And I was like, whoa, what?
- That's the low light stuff, okay.
Let's check our list of things
we need to talk about here.
Low light isn't until, oh actually
that is the next thing
we're going to talk about.
See, we've got dynamic range,
low light, next color science.
After that, how it's like
editing, all that vlog experience.
We're going over all that (beep).
I try not to care about specs,
but there are some things
that I do definitely
appreciate like big pixels--
- And I cannot lie.
- I was gonna go there.
See, dammit, Sam, you stole my joke.
I wrote it down right here.
But 8.5 microns, that's pretty huge.
- That is bananas.
B-A-N-A-N-A-A.
- 8.5 microns per pixel.
That is great.
That's what I wanna see.
It's also a backside illuminated sensor.
So because of these huge pixels,
we're getting way less noise in low light,
which means we can blast the ISO,
get that crazy low light.
So I did a little bit of
filming around the campfire
with an f/2.8 lens, shout out to Tamron
for hooking me up with
some of their lenses.
And one, I had no problem with exposure.
That fire was plenty
to light everything up.
Also, the autofocus even in
low light is pretty good.
Now typically 12,800 is my limit.
I never go past that.
And even right there at 12,800,
it's pretty noisy and a little bit soft.
So I try to avoid it if I can,
but that's generally my ceiling.
Now on this A7S looking
at this 12,800 on here,
lighting looks pretty good,
and you can still see
the blues in the sky.
I typically turn off log profiles
when I get to really extreme low lights,
just because cameras tend
to do a pretty good job
at noise reduction internally.
Like this is crazy,
cause this is 51,200 ISO.
And you know what?
It doesn't look as terrible
as I would have thought.
And I'm just lighting
him with my phone light.
Check it out.
Here's how the iPhone
looks with this lighting.
You kind of see everyone
sitting around the fire.
As soon as I pan away, gone.
On this camera it looks beautiful.
And you can still see
the sky and everything.
Again, this is with an f/2.8 lens,
which is a decent fast lens,
but there's much faster.
Should be around time for
the Milky Way to come out.
Let's see if the camera can see it.
I'm at 160,000 ISO, and
you can kind of see it.
Oh man.
If I had an f/1.4 lens,
we'd be able to see it.
- The low light's all cool and all,
but how is it in color?
- Are you the transition guy now?
Cause that's like the next
thing on my list right here.
- I thought that's what
the Sam cam was for.
- Color science is one of those things
where it's kind of subjective, right?
But in my opinion,
they've really made another big
push in the right direction.
That's one of the hiccups that I've had
with the previous A7 models.
But at the same time,
Sony knows what good
color science is, right?
Look at their high-end models.
Look at the F3.
Look at the Sony VENICE and this FX9
that we shoot with all the time.
They told me that the S-Log3 is supposed
to match the cinema cameras much better.
And I can definitely
confirm that it's the sensor
that just has so much more capability
and those big pixels, man,
that makes a big difference.
In here you can clearly see it.
The issues I used to have
with their color science
was there's so much
magenta in their shadows
that kind of purple-y color.
I've never been a fan of it.
Just like, look at this
shot here of Raphael.
Look how much more natural
he looks there on the left.
S-Log profiles are looking so much closer
to their cinema cameras than ever before.
Now I still wouldn't say it's as good
as their pro-level cameras
like their Sony FX9,
but it's really getting close there.
We've done a whole bunch
of side by side comparisons
with this, with the Sony A7S Mark III.
So that is dropping tomorrow.
So subscribe if you're not already.
Now remember to be
careful what you wish for,
because once you get higher bit rates,
stronger codex, and higher resolution,
you're talking about pretty
massive file sizes here.
So for my vlog channel,
I typically care a little bit less
about getting that perfect image
and care a little bit
more about convenience,
making it easier to edit,
taking up less hard drive space.
If that it is a concern,
there are two settings
that I particularly like.
One, I like shooting in HD,
but still using that 10-Bit Kodak.
Again, not all HD is created equal.
I want good HD.
And since it was 10-Bit,
I was still able to get
a lot of dynamic range.
If I could choose either
have more resolution
or better dynamic range,
I would always go for
better dynamic range.
Sam did some tests with the HD in the A7S
and also the HD in the A6600.
And you saw some improvements?
- Yeah.
So basically, A7S III looks a lot better.
- I mean the colors look better,
and just, it just seems to be
a sharper, overall, better image.
So across the board, you're
just getting better footage,
even if you're not utilizing that 4K.
- Do you think we're doing a good job
at selling the A7S Mark III?
- It sells itself man.
- It's a good thing that
Sony paid us a bunch
of money to promote this camera, huh?
- Well, I'm not seeing any
of that money Gene, so.
- What are you talking about?
They paid us enough to
get a 30-day membership
to Epidemic Sounds.
- Isn't that free?
- Yes.
Link in description for Epidemic Sounds.
If you want a good sound,
good music, sound effects,
all that good stuff, huh?
Epidemic's not even a sponsor.
I don't have any sponsors.
The other setting I used
was also the 60 megabit
per second 4K mode.
That is not a mode I recommend
if you're shooting in S-Log3.
But, if the lighting's pretty good,
you don't need all that dynamic range.
It looks pretty good even at
that 60 megabits per second.
And you are getting that 4K,
you are gonna notice more
details, more sharpness.
So, it's not a bad codec,
especially if you don't
plan on color grading.
There's also H.265, (HEVC) codecs in here.
So, if you like to save
space, that's an option.
Am I getting too technical?
- A tad bit.
- Let's lighten it up a little bit.
Is this a good camera for vloggers?
I actually shot most of
my camping vlog with it.
I'll link it right there.
My only issue with it
was the stabilization.
I felt like it wasn't as
smooth as I wanted it to be,
but I'm pretty sure that's
because I wasn't using a stabilized lens.
I know Sony has a 16-35
f/4 stabilized lens.
And I think that would be
the perfect lens for vloggers
with this A7S because you get
stabilization in the lens.
Then, you get IBIS, so
that's gonna be another layer
of a clean stabilization.
On top of that, if you go
into SteadyShot Active Mode,
then you get a 1.1x crop,
but it still has enough
resolution on that sensor
to give you a full 4K image.
So it does zoom in a little bit,
but gives you another layer
of digital stabilization.
And I haven't tested it yet,
but I honestly think
that's probably gonna be
the best way to do it because, really,
if I could have stabilization anywhere,
it would be on a gimbal, right?
But if you don't have a gimbal,
then it would be in the lens.
That's gonna be great.
And then you have IBIS, which is awesome.
It helps the sensor.
It could be used with any lens.
But at the same time,
if the IBIS is too strong and
you're on a wide angle lens,
you're gonna get that woo warpy feeling.
I hate that.
So I don't want my IBIS to be too strong.
And then on top of that, a
touch of digital stabilization.
Speaking of the digital stabilization
or electronic image stabilization,
what's great about the A7S
is digital stabilization,
is that it uses gyro information.
Because there's two ways to
stabilize information, right?
One is kind of like if you
were to use Warp Stabilizer
on Premiere or something like that,
where you're analyzing the
image and you're tracking
with a majority of the screen.
Pretty sure that's what this camera does.
My issue with that is if I'm
zoomed into a dog panting
or something like that, where the dog
is moving constantly like this,
then even if the camera is stable,
it's gonna track with it.
You've actually done a shoot where
it ruined your shoot, right?
- Yep.
And I had to redo it.
But on the other hand,
we have cameras like GoPro's,
which use gyro information.
So it actually knows how the
camera was shaking and moving
and applies that information
into the stabilization.
And Sony has confirmed that
that is how the digital
stabilization works.
Again, my vlog, I didn't
feel like was as stable
as I wanted it to be,
but I really want to test it
out with that stabilized 16-35.
And I think that might
be the perfect solution
because you get a stabilized lens,
little bit of IBIS, and
that digital stabilization
that uses that gyro information.
So that is definitely a test I will have
to do at a later date,
but this might be the setup I might go to.
- Why are you talking like that?
- I don't know.
Also a faster processor,
which is across the board
gonna be better for you.
One benefit is gonna be
less rolling shutter.
So if you like to do a whole lot of those
(Gene blowing air) whip pans,
you're gonna appreciate that
there's far less rolling shutter.
There are certain cameras
like the Blackmagic Pocket 6K,
(Gene blowing air) it's a cool camera,
but you gotta really be careful
with how much foreground
stuff you got moving across,
you know?
All right, let's take a
closer look at this thing.
It actually feels pretty good in my hands.
First of all, we have dual
card slots right there.
And both of these slots take an SD card
as well as a CFExpress Type A card.
So you could do two CFExpress
Type A's, or two SD cards,
or one of each, if you want.
And there's also a super high
resolution viewfinder in here,
which will be nice for many.
I don't really use the
viewfinder that much,
but this flip screen is something
that we've been needing.
And also it's been nice and bright,
even if I'm recording 4K 60,
it doesn't dim when I hit
record or anything like that.
So, during my camping trip,
I had no issues being
able to see the monitor,
even when it was really bright.
So that is a big plus.
I really like being able
to just tap the focus
on the subject, and
also look at this menu.
Brand new.
Something we've been asking for
for a while and it's touchscreen.
(Gene tapping the screen)
Why isn't it?
Oh, Touch Operation turned off.
What the heck?
You turned this off didn't you?
(Sam laughing)
- You look like an idiot.
- Did you really turn this off?
- Yeah.
- Why would you do such a thing?
- For the content, man.
See how funny this bit is.
- It's not funny.
This is annoying and I look stupid.
I'm tryna show how you can
touch screen the whole menu.
Look at that.
It's super nice.
As long as you don't have someone like Sam
going around messing with your settings.
(Sam laughing)
(Gene laughing)
That was the worst laugh
I've ever heard in my life.
The layout feels pretty familiar.
You have your C one, two,
three custom buttons here,
your dials, your joystick,
your two down...
There's a lot of stuff on here.
But as you get more and more
familiar with the camera,
you start putting in more custom settings.
I am loving how there's one,
two, and three memory recall switches.
So, I have one set to vlog mode,
where everything's just automatic.
We have our mic jack
up here, which is nice.
It doesn't really get in the way,
cause we plug in microphones all the time.
Right below it, headphone
jack right there, below that.
Look at that, USB-C and micro USB.
You could use either or to
charge the camera, which is nice.
I love that flexibility.
USB-C is the way to go and
look at that, full size HDMI.
Yes, yes, I love that.
I also want to talk about
this hotshoe a little bit,
because of course, we as vloggers love
to mount our mics up here,
swing it around, do a little
twirl, and then pop it in here.
That's how I have this camera
a majority of the time.
Right?
But what I love about Sony's is
that this is a multi interface something,
M I something.
- You're just saying letters right now.
(Gene laughing)
- What's cool about that is
that there's some microphones
where it literally just plugs into there,
and you don't have to connect it
with a cable dangling around and all that.
So that's awesome.
And even better,
there's an attachment that
you can throw up here,
which allows for XLR microphone
inputs with Phantom power.
So basically, this microphone
that Sam's using right there,
that's a Sennheiser 416.
It's a great microphone,
but it requires Phantom
power and XLR inputs
for professional microphones.
And you can do that on here.
So I love that if you
were gonna use this camera
as an A-Cam on like a doc
style shoot, that is huge.
Should we try to overheat this thing?
- [Sam] Oh, yeah.
- Let's go.
Now Sony's told me that the A7S Mark III
has a new cooling system
that prevents the camera
from overheating as easily.
So right now, I'm testing that out
by recording 4K 24 at
240 megabits per second,
in 10-Bit 4:2:2.
It's been recording for about
40 minutes straight now.
And it's actually still doing all right,
no sort of warnings or anything like that.
And this room is pretty warm.
I turned off all the air conditioning.
So I'm starting to get a little sweaty,
but apparently it's not warm enough.
Inside of here it's 40 degrees Celsius
or around 104 degrees Fahrenheit,
basically that tip top range
of the operational temperature.
Now it's been recording for
40 minutes straight already.
So the camera's already
warmed up quite a bit.
Let's see how long it lasts
once I dump it in here.
It looks like we got it to overheat.
Now it did last quite a bit of time.
But honestly, under normal
use you're probably fine.
I would feel totally comfortable
using this in most cases.
All week I've been filming with it outside
and there's been some warm
days and I had no issues.
And I did also just realize
that I can adjust the heat
tolerance of this thing.
So if I really needed to,
I could change that, and
it would probably last,
even longer in here.
So, not bad, not bad.
Ooh, finally done editing this video.
Man, there's a lot here, huh?
But one thing I do know for sure is
that this A7S III kind
of has everything I want.
I'm gonna go ahead and buy it,
cause I do have to return
the version I have.
Boohoo.
I still have to pay full price for it,
but I've seen enough to know
that it is worth the price,
which they just told me
it's gonna be $3,499.
So definitely still not a cheap camera,
but I think it's really worth it,
considering how much
capability this camera has.
I'll also throw a link down
there in the description.
If you use that link
costs you the same amount.
I get a little kickback, so yay.
Thanks fam.
Also no record time limits.
So as long as you don't run out of power,
it doesn't overheat, or run out of memory,
you can just keep it rolling.
Let me know in the comments
what else you wanna
know about this camera.
I'll be sure to test it in a later video.
And let's wrap this up
by reading a few comments
from my last video, which is
all about the AntigravityCam.
"I like whenever Gene sees
things that are expensive,
he walks away like that."
I wish I could walk away from this camera
cause I don't need more cameras.
Because if I buy this
camera, and I really like it,
that means I'm gonna start
an E-Mount lens collection.
By the way, all these shots on the A72
were on Tamron lenses.
They hooked me up with a lineup.
So that was useful for this video.
"He's more gimbal than man at this point."
"Gene is also the antigravity matter
because he's the kid from..."
Next comment.
"Imagine your daughter
bringing up her boyfriend
to the house and you come
out with that equipment
to greet him...
He'd think he's in Silent Hill."
"Whenever you guys decide
to shoot somewhere,
somehow someone finds you and tells you,
you need a permit.
Come to Vermont and New Hampshire
and you won't have
anyone saying that ever."
That is something that
does suck about Los Angeles
is if you're trying to film
and you have like a big camera,
people always kick you
out because, you know,
there's permits and
insurance and all this crap
that you need.
Honestly, if you drive
like a hundred miles
in any direction of Los Angeles, you're,
you're pretty clear.
No one cares as much.
But that is one of the nice
things about the A7S III.
I kinda want to get the camera,
put a stabilized lens on there,
and then put that little
XLR adapter thing up top
and make it into a tiny little pro camera.
You could probably get away
with filming with that in LA.
Now time to get to the next video
where we compare the A7S III to the FX9,
also a couple of ZV-1 shots,
and then just to give a
little more comparison shots.
We're gonna try to post that tomorrow,
which is actually day
after tomorrow from now.
But when you watch this, most
likely it will be tomorrow.
I, it's complicated.
I'm 12 hours in the future.
No, wait.
No, I'm in the past because
when you're watching it,
this would have happened
about 12 hour anyways.
See you guys tomorrow.
Maybe.
Or, maybe if you're watching
this way in the future
then it doesn't even matter.
- Just, let's just end this here.
(lo-fi music)
