- Hey guys,my name is Matt Johnson with whoismatt.com.
And if you're filming videos with the Sony A7S3, FX3, A1
or any of the other more recent Sony cameras
that shoot 10 bit video.
My favorite picture profile for these cameras is S-Log3.
Literally set your camera to PP8 change no other settings
and you are good to film.
But if you're filming with a Sony A7S3 or FX3, et cetera
and you're also using an older Sony camera as well
such as an A73, a6,600, a6,500
or basically any other older Sony camera that came out
before the year 2020.
In that case I'm gonna recommend you
set your picture profile to PP8,
but change the gamma to cine4
There's your settings.
I hate whenever people make me watch a video for 10 minutes
before they finally tell me the settings that I need.
But that said, if you want to know why
I'm recommending two picture profiles instead
of just one and how to properly expose
and film with these two picture profiles
you're gonna have to keep watching.
Let's not talk about the first picture profile
that I recommend for Sony's newer cameras now,
PP8 S-Log3, make sure you choose PP8
which will show the gamut as S-Log3
and the color mode as S-Gamut3.Cine
Don't choose PP9, which says S-Log3, S Gamut3
as that will be more difficult to color grade.
The reason I prefer filming in PP8 S-Log3
is because this picture profile is going
to maximize the dynamic range of these newer Sony cameras
and give you the best possible footage that you can get.
The only con of this picture profile is
that it is a log picture profile, meaning
that you gonna have to color grade it
and add contrast and saturation
if you want it to look its best.
To save you time though
and to make this picture profile super easy to film with,
I've actually created a set
of video presets called whoisMattLuts that I've created
and tested specifically to work with S-Log3.
A link to those luts down in the video description.
I also want you to know that I'm working on
an easy color grading tutorial specifically for S-Log3
So please subscribe if you wanna see that soon.
Now let's talk about how to properly expose S-Log3.
With a normal picture profile, you traditionally want
to get your exposure as close as possible
to 0.0 on your camera's metering.
This way, your footage won't be too bright or too dark.
But keep in mind S-Log3 isn't a traditional picture profile.
It is a log profile specifically created
by Sony to maximize the dynamic range
of the image that you're recording.
Because of that, instead of targeting an exposure
of 0.0 on your camera's metering,
you should instead be trying
to expose between 1.7 and two stops over.
I realized this may sound really bright.
And on the back of your camera screen
the image is definitely going to look bright.
But the benefit is that when you color grade your image
and add contrast, the color grade will bring
down that brightness and it will look awesome.
Now there's a lot more I can explain
about S-Log3 and how to properly film with it
to get the best possible image from your camera.
But I feel like that should
be its own separate video to keep
this from being too all over the place.
If you want to see more about how
to film with that S-Log3 though,
leave me a comment and I'll work on
that video and link to it down below when it's finished.
Moving on, let's talk about the second picture profile
that I recommended at the start of this video.
As I said, if you are filming
with a mix of newer Sony cameras,
like the A7S3, FX3, A1 et cetera
as well as older Sony cameras, like the A73
a6,600, a6,400, et cetera,
I'm going to recommend that you set all your cameras PP8
but change the gamma to Cine4.
Leave everything else the same just change that.
Why am I recommending that you do this though?
Why can't you set all of your cameras?
Even the old ones to PP8 S-Log3 and Call it a day.
Well, the reason has to do with color.
See previous Sony cameras
like the A73, recorded video in eight bit color.
This means they could record
up to 16.7 million different colors.
That sounds pretty good 16 million is a lot of colors.
Well, hold on for a second because one
of the headlining features of Sony's newer cameras
that highly differentiates them from earlier models
is that these new cameras can record in 10 bit color.
Instead of 16.7 million colors on the A73,
The A7S3 is now capable of recording over a billion colors.
1.07 billion to be precise.
That's a huge difference.
And it solves a big problem that earlier Sony cameras faced.
Come back in time with me now.
Here it is my Sony A7S2 that was released in late 2015.
This camera was one of the first mirrorless cameras
that Sony released that included S-Log3,
which as I already mentioned in this video
is going to maximize the dynamic range and quality
of footage that you can get from your camera.
But here's the twist.
I never recommended using S-Log3 when recording video
with the A7S2 or the A73, a6,500, a6,600, et cetera.
Basically any camera that Sony released before year 2020.
Why?
Because all of these cameras
only recorded video in eight bit color.
And when you set a camera
like the A7S2 to record an S-Log3
with it's very flat image,
there simply isn't enough colors to be able to
color grade the footage properly.
Once you add contrast and saturation,
you'll start to see weird lines
of color banding and blue skies.
And even in the skin tones of your footage.
This made S-Log3, basically unusable
on the A7S2 and any other Sony camera
that only recorded in eight bit.
To work around it I released a video
in 2016 called, "My favorite picture profile"
for the Sony A7S2, A73 et cetera.
And this video covered a picture profile
that I called Matt flat that would allow you to film
with a similar dynamic range to S-Log3 but without any
of that gross color banding, that made it unusable.
So can you guess what Matt flat was,
PP8 with a gamma set to Cine4.
That sounds familiar.
Here I am years after making that video
and I'm recommending this same picture profile again.
But now you hopefully understand that if you're using a mix
of newer Sony cameras they record 10 bit video.
And older Sony cameras they record eight bit.
You can set all of them to this Matt flat picture profile,
and they will all match up with similar dynamic range
and quality and no banding or other color issues.
Also because I'm betting you're probably wondering,
do you need to set your newer Sony cameras like the A7S3
to eight bit when recording this Matt flat picture profile?
No, you can keep them at 10 bit color information
will only help you in color grading
and help you match up these cameras.
Now let's talk about how to properly expose Matt flat.
The main thing I will keep in mind is
that this is still a log picture profile.
Mainly you don't want your camera's metering to read 0.0.
You are going to want it to be brighter.
In this case, I would recommend exposing your image anywhere
from 0.3 to 0.7 stops over on the camera's metering.
You don't have to go as bright as full S-Log3
with its 1.7 to two stops over
but you still want the image
to be a bit brighter than normal.
This will help you a ton when color grading.
Speaking of helping you a ton,
my luts are also tuned to work with
the Matt flat picture profile.
So they should help you save some time there as well.
Lastly, let's wrap this up
by talking about one more picture profile.
When Sony announced their FX9 cinema camera a few years ago
It included a fantastic picture profile called S-Cinetone.
This picture profile gave the camera a gorgeous image
that looked incredible straight out of camera.
Meaning that if you filmed with it,
you wouldn't need to color grade your footage.
The only down side is that it came with less dynamic range
but the benefit and speed of filming something
that looked good straight out
of camera was very appealing to many filmmakers.
Fast forward to 2020
and Sony has now included S-Cinetone in all
their newest cameras including the A7S3 via
their 2.0 firmware update.
Now, the reason I'm talking to you about all this
it's because I've received numerous comments
from filmmakers asking what I think about S-Cinetone.
And if that is my new favorite picture profile.
In short as S-Cinetone is not my favorite
because well I do love the colors
and skin tones that you can get from it
the dynamic range is not nearly
as good as you can get from S-Log3
And if you film running gun style like me,
when you don't have full control over your lighting
and you need the flexibility
that you can get from a log image
I greatly prefer S-Log3 over S-Cinetone.
That said though, if you want me to go more
in depth with S-Cinetone in a future video
just like I'm gonna do with S-Log3,
leave me a comment below, and I will work on it.
With that, those are my two favorite picture profiles
for Sony cameras.
If you're filming with a mix
of old and new cameras, you have Matt flat.
And if you're filming with newer Sony cameras
I guess I'll call it Matt flat 2.0
even though it's just PP8 S-Log3
you don't have to call it that
but I will probably put that in the title
in case you need to find this video again.
Very last thing now.
If you're using the Sony A7S3, FX3, A1, et cetera
and you want access to all of my settings for these cameras
I've created tutorials walking through how to set them up.
And as a bonus, if you use the A7S3,
you can download my settings file
which you can load into your camera
and instantly have every setting tuned for filmmaking.
You can download those settings
for free at the link down below.
With that thank you so much for watching.
Please check out my, whoisMattluts and have a great day.