SONY A7S ANATOMY SONY A7S
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ABOVE The A7S’s feature set makes it a force to be reckoned with in the filmmaking market, offering professional touches that rival more expensive offerings. BELOW Already in the hands of pro users, the compact but capable A7S has attracted attention and complimentary remarks.
The Sony A7S is designed to be ultra compact and yet to still offer the functionality and performance of a full-size HDSLR, such as the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. Despite being a compact model it still comes with a full-frame sensor (1). Although this only offers 12.2 megapixels of resolution it’s super sensitive - hence the ‘S’ in the name - and has the ability to offer ISO speeds up to 102,400. On the front of the camera you’ll find the Wi-Fi sensor (2) and an AF illuminator/self-timer lamp (3). At the top of the camera (4) you’ll find the front dial, and there is also an equivalent rear dial. These allow you to change the settings required for each shooting mode with immediate effect.
Other headline features include the fact that the camera comes with the ability to output 4K via its HDMI port to an optional external recorder, namely the Atomos Shogun, which will add another £1000 or so to your initial £2000-plus body only price, and it does this without the need for line spinning or pixel binning. It also comes with some really professional touches that, in my opinion, put it somewhere between the FS700 (street price £6600) and the F5 (street price £12,000) in terms of video performance, which starts to explain why I’m so excited by it. One of the neatest touches is the provision of S-Log 2, a $3800 upgrade just a few years ago on the Sony CineAlta F3, which is a gamma function that can reproduce the entire tonal range captured by a CCD or CMOS imager. This is something that’s amazing to see on a model in this price range, and it really does work on this camera to deliver enormous dynamic range without the usual artefacts and banding we’ve seen with flat picture profiles before on DSLRs. The image once graded is silky smooth at the native ISO of 3200. What grain there
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The back of the A7S is simple and straightfoward to negotiate. One of the most important controls is the menu button (1), from where you can access a wide range of camera and custom key settings. The 3in 921,600 pixel monitor (2) is designed to fold out in one direction to give you a better angle to view from. Other controls that can be found on the rear of the camera are the AF/ MF/AEL switch lever (3) the FN/ Send to Smartphone button (4), the control wheel (5), the playback button (6) and the C3 (Custom 3)/delete button (7). At the top of the camera you’ll find the rear dial (8) and the C2 (Custom 2)/Enlarge button.
The top-plate of the A7S is likewise uncomplicated and easy to work around, and will be familiar to anyone who has previously worked with a DSLR. The main control up here is the Mode Dial (1), with all the usual settings that you’d expect. Moving to the right you then encounter the Exposure Compensation Dial (2), which will give you a maximum of three stops of over and underexposure very quickly and simply, and next to this is the C1 (Custom 1) button (3). The Multi Interface Hotshoe (4) is a proprietory hotshoe introduced by Sony two years ago to replace a previous assortment of other hotshoes used in the past.
WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
PMM-WINT14-074-079 SONY A7s ljchbNEW.indd 75
75 03/10/2014 09:09