- Hey guys, my name is Matt Johnson with whoismatt.com.
And this is my Sony a7S II.
Well one of them, the other one's actually being used
to record this video right now.
I've owned both of these cameras since October 2015.
I bought the first on the day pre-orders opened
for this camera and my second two months later.
Considering it's been nearly five years
since they released this camera,
and I still film with it almost every day,
here on the eve of the release of the successor
to the a7S II, as well as the Canon R5,
I feel like this is a great time
to look back at this camera.
At its strengths and weaknesses
and talk about what Sony got right and what they got wrong.
I also wanna tell you why I still film with it.
And why this camera still brings me so much joy,
five years after its release.
Let's go back in time a bit.
When Canon announced the 5D Mark II,
and inadvertently or not,
ushered in the DSLR filmmaking revolution.
One of the main driving factors for filmmakers
to adopt DSLR cameras was the short film "Reverie"
by Vincent Laforet.
This short film featured stunning low light performance
and shallow depth of field,
that up until this point was really only available
from much higher end, more expensive cameras.
I remember watching "Reverie", being blown away
and this film being one of the main drivers
of why I purchased a Canon 7D when I bought my first DSLR.
Now while it wasn't nearly as big as "Reverie",
there was a short film that I saw that was filmed
on the a7S II and it had almost as big of an effect on me.
This short film was made by a company
called Makai Creative in Hawaii.
It was shot on the a7S II in the S-log picture profile
and it featured a family playing on the beach.
Content-wise, a bit random,
but from a pure, visual imagery standpoint,
showcasing the dynamic range of this camera
and its capabilities,
this film was completely mind blowing to me.
It was this video, more than any other,
that made me want to purchase this camera.
So of course I bought one, filmed my first wedding with it,
and it didn't look nearly as good.
It was a wedding where it was cloudy and rainy
with a sunset turning all the landscape orange
and I don't think my footage looked anyway as good
as that beach video.
But even with that, I knew that the a7S II
was capable of what I saw in that beach video.
And I was so excited about that.
Now what some of you may not know,
is that at the same time that I bought a Sony a7S II,
I also purchased a Sony FS5.
Both of these cameras came out at the same time.
My thinking was I'll shoot with the FS5
because my previous camera was a Sony FS100,
which is definitely not a mirrorless style camera.
I planned on having my wife Rachel film with me,
and in my mind, she would use the a7S II.
What's funny is that the a7S II arrived a few weeks
before the FS5 and in that short time period,
I completely fell in love with it.
So much so that when the FS5 arrived, I barely used it.
At this point, I'd already shot several weddings
with the Sony a7S II and I couldn't bear to part
with this camera's size and features
for a camera that was larger and made some compromises.
While the FS5 does beat the a7S II in some areas,
with unlimited recording time and no overheating, et cetera,
the a7S II still has enough going for it
from a run-and-gun event filmmaking perspective.
And that makes it worth choosing over the FS5 in my opinion.
Enough so that I put my money where my mouth is,
returned the FS5, bought a second a7S II,
and I've been filming with the both of them ever since.
If you wanna know more about my reasoning
for choosing the a7S II over the FS5,
I will like to my full FS5 review up in the corner
and down in the video description.
Now let's talk about what the a7S II got right.
Starting off with in-body image stabilization.
I don't say this lightly,
when I say the in-body image stabilization for this camera
was one of the biggest changes to how I film, ever.
Now some of you may be thinking,
"Matt we've had image stabilized lenses for years,
"what does it matter if the camera
"now has image stabilization?"
Listen, by putting the stabilization in the camera body,
and making it accessible to every single lens that I owned
no matter how new it was, no matter how cheaply it was built
it completely revolutionized the way that I filmed.
Make no mistake, IBIS was the death of the monopod.
I still remember some of the first weddings I filmed
with the a7S II.
I brought along my monopod like normal,
but I remember trying shooting handheld
and then realizing wait, I don't need a monopod
to get footage that looks just as good without one.
My hands are stable enough,
my gear is now just a camera and lens.
I'm able to film longer,
there's one less thing that I'm carrying in my bag.
To be clear, I still use a monopod,
but only for lenses longer than 100 millimeters or so.
Any shorter than that, you don't need one.
Now, of course, times have changed.
The a7S II's in-body image stabilization
has been overshadowed by better stabilization
from its competitors, like the Panasonic GH5,
but I think it's important to remember,
that Sony did it first.
And they did it well enough to completely change things.
Once you get a taste of in=body image stabilization,
you never want to go without it.
Next, we can't talk about the a7S II
without at least briefly mentioning its 4K capabilities.
Here in 2020, 4K is quite common.
Most cameras made and sold today
are shooting in this resolution.
Most TVs sold are in 4K,
but back in 2015 this was still quite a new thing.
The GH4 had pioneered the way, with 4K in mirrorless cameras
but the a7S II added a full frame sensor size
to the equation
and this made for a very impressive image from this camera.
How impressive?
Considering that Sony spent the next four years
using the same bit rate and resolution
in all of their mirrorless cameras, as they did in this one,
clearly it's been pretty good.
Then the GH5 came out.
Flaunting its 4K resolution, 60 frames per second.
This was the turning point,
when the a7S II began to lose a bit of its luster
from a resolution standpoint.
Now this may be a bit weird,
but arguably just as big as Sony offering 4K in this camera,
was the inclusion of their S-log picture profiles
with high dynamic range.
This was a huge thing for Sony to get right
and it applies to the majority of Sony mirrorless cameras.
By them putting these high dynamic range picture profiles
into their cheaper mirrorless cameras,
and not just reserving them
for their high end cinema cameras.
That is one of the main reasons
that we are seeing such a high quality image from Sony.
When the a7S II came out,
Canon was still selling the 5D Mark III,
whose picture profiles consisted of,
well you can set it to neutral
and turn the saturation and sharpness down a little bit,
but that's it.
C-log was a thing, but it would be years
before Canon started putting that into their DSLRs.
Panasonic handled picture profiles better in this regard,
but have you ever tried to upgrade your GH5
to the V-log picture profile?
You had to pay for the upgrade
and then Panasonic would take several days
to physically mail you, to your mailbox,
a piece of paper that you would then take
and enter the code on it, into their website
to upgrade to V-log.
It's like this camera was from 2017,
but the upgrade process was from 1997.
Moving on, let's talk about this camera's crown.
A crown, that even up until the time of me making this video
it still holds.
If you want the ultimate in low light performance,
if you want to be able to film in moonlight
and only moonlight, this is the camera for you still,
to this day.
For me as a wedding filmmaker,
who does not always have control
over the lighting of a room or venue,
the ability to turn up my ISO consistently
to 10,000, 16,000, 32,000 without fear of too much noise
being introduced to the image, is remarkable.
Does this excuse not lighting things, no, of course not.
But if you were running into a situation
or you have an event you're filming
and you don't have time or permission to set up lights,
which happens more often at weddings
than some people care to admit.
Having a camera like the a7S II
with it's legendary low light performance,
is a lifesaver.
I made a 50 minute long review video of the Panasonic GH5.
In that review I talked about
how I heavily considered switching to that camera,
but the low light performance,
when filtered through the lens of being used at a wedding,
just isn't good enough for me.
You can argue as much as you want
about how you bring lights to a wedding, but I guarantee you
there'll be moments that you're going to miss
because that camera does not do well above 1600 ISO.
Back to the a7S II.
To wrap up all the things Sony got right with this camera,
it really is the sum of all those things I've talked about
in a compact, easy to shoot with package,
that is why this camera is so powerful.
And why I still shoot with it five years later.
As I already said though,
there are some things this camera did not get right.
And these flaws are made even more glaring in 2020.
Chief among these flaws is mediocre battery life.
With barely an hour of recording time per battery,
you are going to need a lot
to get you through a full day of shooting.
Thankfully, using Sony's battery grip
mitigates a lot of these issues.
But even so, while I don't deal with low light stress,
having to crank up my ISO,
I have dealt with short battery life stress,
which is a thing.
At this point, I own 12 batteries between two a7S II cameras
and they've got me through nearly every wedding
that I've ever filmed.
I say nearly because I filmed a wedding in Iceland
where I knew that I was going to be filming
from 4:00 a.m. til about midnight.
Funnily enough, there are no power plugs
at the Glacier Lagoon, for some reason.
I made it the full day, but towards the end
things were getting a little bit stressful.
And I'm very happy that I rented a few more batteries
to make sure I got through with enough power.
Thankfully Sony realized that their batteries sucked
and with the A7 III, they introduced the new Z-type battery
which offers significantly better battery life.
I remember whenever I rented an A7 III for a wedding,
I accidentally rented seven batteries with it.
I rented the camera and it came with a battery,
I also rented the battery grip
and that came with two batteries
and then I rented a Sony battery charger
and that came with four batteries.
Oops, I definitely did not run out of power
on the wedding day.
The other main con of the a7S II is the overheating.
As somebody that films weddings, outdoors,
in Texas in the summer, you may be wondering
"Matt, doesn't your camera just overheat immediately?
"Don't you just take it outside of the air conditioning
"and immediately it shuts off?"
Well, no, just like any camera with quirks and drawbacks,
you quickly learn to work around them.
Keeping the a7S II indoors in air conditioning
until right before a wedding ceremony helps.
Pulling out the back screen helps.
Using a battery grip helps.
Switching to 1080 if you need to reduce overheating helps.
I've been blessed, in that the five years
that I've spent filming with this camera,
I've only had it overheat three times.
Now while I may be an outlier in that,
I've always been very careful
about trying to keep my cameras cool
and I've always been very aware of the temperature
when I'm filming.
Having a second a7S II has helped
set my mind at ease as well
and anytime I've had one of my a7S IIs overheat,
I've thankfully had a backup.
With these cons in mind,
if I had know that Sony was gonna take this long
to release a successor to the a7S II,
I definitely would have upgraded to the A7 III,
which has better battery life
and less chance of overheating.
Up until the a7S II, I was on a three year upgrade cycle.
Three years with the Canon 7D,
three years with the Sony FS100,
by all intents and purposes, 2018 rolls around,
and I should've been saying bye to this camera
and upgrading to something else.
Instead, it's been five years
and I'm still shooting with the a7S II.
So let's wrap this up.
It's 2020, this camera has been out
for nearly five years now.
It has a lot of pros, it has some cons too.
But going back to what I said at the start of this video,
this camera has brought me a lot of joy.
While joy is a bit of a nebulous characteristic,
it is arguably the most important.
And it is the main reason why I've kept filming
with this camera for so long.
This camera has genuinely made me happy
to create videos with it.
Looking back, I remember that I had joy
with my first Canon DSLR, the 7D,
but I think that was due more to that being my first DSLR
that I ever owned.
After a few years, that joy was lost
and I got tired of filming with it.
When I upgraded to the Sony FS100,
it was a fantastic camera,
but I did not get much joy out of filming with it.
I didn't take it out and shoot with it a bunch.
When I wasn't using it for commercial work
or filming a wedding,
it just sat in my closet waiting for the next gig.
I'll go so far to say that I don't think that I necessarily
would have started making educational content,
tutorials and reviews like this on YouTube,
without the a7S II.
So find you a camera that's going to bring you joy.
Find you a camera that's going to excite you,
to power it on and start filming something with it.
I found that joy and excitement with the a7S II
and now, here on the eve of the release of the R5,
and the successor to the a7S II,
I'm hoping that one of those cameras
is going to bring me that same joy.
Thanks so much for watching.
It would be a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video,
and subscribing if you want to see
more videos like it in the future.
Also, if you happen to be a wedding filmmaker like me,
and you wanna book more couples and film more weddings,
I've created a free PDF guide
that's gonna show you how to do that
that you can download for free
at the link down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.