Choosing The Original Sony A7S in 2021
Summary available at the bottom.
This isn’t a review.
The A7S is one of the single most reviewed cameras in history.
I recommend this one.
This is an article on why I chose this camera in 2021, and why I believe it’s a strong choice for filmmakers today and into the future.
A 2014 camera in 2021, added flaring and film grain. 1080p
I started shooting films on the almighty Canon T3i in 2014. It was my first camera, and until April of 2020 the only camera I’d ever owned.
As I finished Mockingbird and looked toward the future, I found a concept nestled in a book my wife had been writing on and off since she was in middle school.
She called it Ava, and I wanted to use our new home as the main location.
A huge amount of the film takes place at night, lots of very deep shadows, dark hallways, and cavernous interiors. All of this would have to be lit by available, in-wall nightlights that we had throughout the house. The T3i would fall apart at anything above 800ISO and anything north of 1600ISO was flat out unusable.
Ever since I’d bought my T3i, I’d heard about the A7S. The SLog2, the “full frame look” (whatever that means), and the unbelievable low light capabilities.
By April of 2020, the A7S2 had been out for five years, and the fabled A7S3 was on the horizon. Being a frugal (read: poor) filmmaker, I knew I wouldn’t be able to buy any of the new ones, but investing in that older camera might be a good option. I started researching.
Test footage for “Ava”. Color graded, added flaring and grain.
The camera arrived, the low light was better than I could ever imagine, and the image in SLog was insanely noisy when not exposed properly. It became a new tool to learn.
As the months passed, I was shooting tests while I wrote the story this camera had been bought to shoot, I came to a realization.
“…I think I want 4K.”
I’ve been vocal about my dislike for the fetishization of high resolution. I think 1080p delivery is more than good enough for just about anything. But 4K acquisition is a different beast. Having four times the pixels means you can crop 4x as close before the image breaks down. Stabilization, masking, reframing, and so much more becomes so much easier.
Ava was going to be a number of firsts for me, why not make it my first 4K project too?
It was August 2020, and with the announcement of the A7S3 so fresh, it was impossible to find anything new about the original. Instead, ten thousand Canadians with backwards caps flooded my recommendations, all asking if this is the “BEST CAMERA of 2020??” while all pointing to something with a red circle in the thumbnail. When the hype finally died down, I found the videos I’d been looking for:
Jason Bagherian’s Whitby In Wide Angle, and Locks and Narrowboats.
The A7S, the Ninja V, and something that wasn’t just shot just to show the cameras well-vetted low light.
It was perfect, and shortly (after watching a Gerald Undone video or six) it was in my checkout cart.
Mockingbird, 2020: captured on the T3i
The pairing of this camera and this monitor is just sublime. The screen is bright and sharp, the histogram and false colors are immaculate, and most importantly there’s almost ZERO lag between the two, to the point that I only discovered there was any lag in the first place by accident, last week.
Most importantly, the 4K resolution is undeniably sharper and has more pixels, but the image quality is almost exactly the same as the 1080p image. The real upgrade was in the file formatting, replacing the 50mb/s internal codec with up to a ridiculous 700+mb/s, or more reasonable ProRes flavor.
Color grading was easier, I could go further before the image broke, and most importantly as this was happening I was also learning better techniques for grading in the first place.
As I learned more, the camera began to do what my T3i had done for so long I’d just taken it for granted: it disappeared. I can use it seamlessly, there’s no barrier between what I see and getting that to show up in the recording.
As the writer/director/dp/catering service I am when filming, this is absolutely essential. I can’t be grappling with the camera to get what I need, it has to be invisible.
In Summary:
The A7S is amazing: the low light, the SLog, and all the other features you’ve heard about are great.
But what really won me over was the things I didn’t even think about:
It’s light, barely a pound, maybe double that with the lens. Putting it in a cage still keeps it light enough for me to hold out with one hand.
There’s an immaculate sensor inside this little box. Sure, it’s been surpassed by hundreds of cameras since, but not being “The Best™” doesn’t mean it isn’t still really really awesome, and that sensor facilitates low light so good it can only be compared to it’s own successors.
The image quality, and color science, are great. Canon colors look better out of the box, sure, but the customization available on the A7S’s picture profiles dwarf anything I’m used to on the T3i, and I was able to replicate a look I like after some testing.
For a faster route to better Sony colors, try this pack for $15.The camera disappears, once you’ve learned it. This is true for everything, I’d be saying the same if I bought a C200 or a GH4, but it’s true. Learn your tool. At this point even the most banal camera is capable of capturing incredible images, and if it can’t it’s because of the user more often than not.
I think I’ve made a good choice, and with the 4K solution, I’m able to say that I think this camera will be with my for the first half of the 2020’s and beyond.