- Hey, my name is Matt Johnson, with whoismatt.com.
And today, I want to share with you how to quickly
and easily film in the S-Cinetone picture profile
with your Sony camera.
So if you've been looking for a picture profile
that looks really good straight out of camera
with minimal need to color correct and color grade,
this video is for you.
And to help save you time and bring out
the best possible colors with your camera,
I've actually created a set
of video presets called WhoisMatt LUTs.
They work great with S-Cinetone and really help give
your footage a unique look.
I will link to them down below.
Getting started now, the first thing you need to figure out
is if your camera can even use
the S-Cinetone picture profile.
This is a relatively new profile,
and it's only available on the Sony FX9, FX6,
A1, FX3, and a7S III at the time of making this video.
If you aren't sure,
just open up your camera's Picture Profile menu
and scroll down to PP11.
If you see PP11, congratulations, you have S-Cinetone.
If you don't see PP11 though, sorry, you don't have it.
But wait a second, Matt, I have an a7S III
but no PP11, what happened?
I'm sorry, you're gonna need to return it
for another camera.
JK, you're fine.
All you have to do is go to Sony's website and download
the latest a7S III firmware,
and then you will see PP11 in your Picture Profile menu.
With that out of the way, let's dive into the nitty-gritty.
Grab your Sony camera.
In my case, I'm using the a7S III.
Navigate to the Picture Profile menu.
And the first thing you should do is make sure your camera
is set to PP11 and that both the Gamma
and Color Modes say S-Cinetone.
If they don't say that,
scroll down to the bottom where it says Reset and reset PP11
to its default settings.
Moving on, let's talk exposure.
If you've watched my S-Log3 Easy Filmmaking Settings Video,
or if you shot in a log picture profile with another camera,
you're probably used to overexposing your footage
so that you can then bring down the exposure levels
in post when editing so your footage isn't noisy.
Well, S-Cinetone is different.
So you're going to need to relearn things.
You do not need to overexpose your footage,
and you don't need to underexpose it either.
With this picture profile, what you see is what you get.
So it's in your best interest to make sure
your exposure level is right in the middle,
not too bright and not too dark, just right.
It's like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"
with the porridge, but the porridge is light in color
and there's no bear attacks.
This metaphor is getting out of hand.
Anyways, going back to your camera now,
looking at the bottom of the screen,
you're going to see your shutter speed, lens aperture,
and the letters MM and a number.
In my case, it says 0.0.
This MM stands for Multi-Metering,
and it tells you how bright the image is
that your camera is recording.
If your camera doesn't say MM here,
open the menu and go to Exposure/Color,
Metering, and set your Metering Mode to Multi.
Then you can go back out and see this number,
which in my case says 0.0,
which means that this image that is recording
isn't over or underexposed.
If your camera says -1.0,
it means that it is one stop underexposed.
If it reads +1.0,
that means it's one stop overexposed.
For S-Cinetone, you want this number to read 0.0
because that's ideal for this picture profile.
That said, though, I don't want you to just trust
this Metering number and forget to look at the image
on your camera screen.
Remember, S-Cinetone is a what you see
is what you get picture profile.
Meaning that the image that you see on the back
of the camera is very close to what you will see
on your computer when you copy the footage.
So if you're looking at your meters and they say 0.0
but the person you're filming looks really dark,
they're going to look dark in the footage you're recording.
That 0.0 may be because the camera is seeing
a bright background behind the person like a sunset.
And it's saying, the background's properly exposed,
that looks great, but unfortunately,
the person you're filming is not.
Ideally, you want your subject to be 0.0 on the Metering.
So that means that you may need to brighten the image up
until it looks good to you on the back of the screen.
I do want you to be aware though, that this can cause
some parts of your footage to be overexposed though.
You may have to blow out some of your highlights to make
your subject in the footage look bright enough.
That is unfortunate, but it's also the price you'll pay
to use S-Cinetone and have the footage to look good
straight out of camera.
Now, if you don't want your footage to look overexposed,
an alternative option would be to use S-Log3.
As that picture profile has
a much higher dynamic range S-Cinetone,
and you don't need to worry
about your footage being overexposed.
I'll link to my S-Log3 Easy Filmmaking Settings Video
in the corner and down in the video description
if you wanna check it out.
Back to S-Cinetone now.
If you want to take the guesswork
out of whether it is overexposing or not,
you really need to use Zebras.
And not the animal either,
this isn't the "Goldilocks" metaphor again.
We're talking about your camera's Zebra settings,
which will put black and white lines on your screen
that show you what is overexposed.
Go into your camera's menu,
go to Exposure/Color,
Zebra Display, and for Zebra Level,
you're going to want to select 100+.
Next, make sure Zebra Display in the menu is turned on.
And as you start to bring up the exposure of your camera
either by changing your aperture or ISO,
you're going to notice Zebra lines appearing
on the overexposed parts of your footage.
Because you set your zebra level to 100+,
that number is the maximum brightness the S-Cinetone footage
can handle before it clips the highlights
and cannot recover them.
So as you're filming with your camera,
I would first look at your Metering and make sure
it's at approximately 0.0.
And then I would look for any Zebras to appear
on the back of the camera.
If they show up, then I would consider what you're filming.
If you're filming a person standing in front of the sunset
and they have a super bright sun and clouds behind them,
you will definitely see some Zebras in the background,
and that's okay.
But if you're seeing Zebras on the person's face or skin,
that means that your footage is definitely too bright
and your exposure needs to be darker.
I would highly recommend filming some test shots
with people lit by different light sources.
And as you gain experience with watching
your Metering and Zebras,
you should get a good idea of how the camera's exposing
and what looks good.
All right, you've got your Metering set up and your Zebras,
the last thing we need to talk about is ISO.
If you turn your ISO up, your footage gets brighter.
If you turn it down, it gets darker.
And as a bonus, unlike S-Log3,
which I really never recommend filming
at anything lower than 640 ISO,
With S-Cinetone on the other hand,
you can go all the way down to ISO 100,
which is great if you're filming on a bright day.
Now, if you've watched my S-Log3 settings video,
or my a7S III review, or basically any other video
about proper exposure with the a7S III, FX3, or FX6,
you will know that these three cameras share
basically the same sensor.
And it is known as a dual native ISO sensor.
This means that there are two ISOs,
where the camera will look its best and give you
the absolute maximum dynamic range that it's capable of
with the minimal amount of noise.
This dual native ISO will change depending
on the picture profile and the camera you're filming with.
But in the case of S-Cinetone on the a7S III and FX3,
they are ISO 100 and ISO 2000.
Alternatively, if you're filming
with a Sony FX6 in S-Cinetone,
these ISOs where the camera will look its best
will be ISO 320 and ISO 5000.
As I said, these camera sensors are similar,
but testing from the very knowledgeable, Alister Chapman,
over at xdcamuser.com,
has shown that they are slightly different,
which is why the ISOs vary between them.
I will link to Alister's blog post about this below
if you want to reference it.
So to wrap up the talk about ISOs,
I would keep your a7S III or FX3 at ISO 100 or 2000
if you want it to look its absolute best.
But honestly, in my testing,
because the sensor Sony is using in these three cameras
is so dang good in low light,
I haven't really been able to see a difference
between ISO 100 and ISO 1600.
And 1600 should arguably look worse
because it's right below ISO 2000,
where the dual gain sensor kicks in and gets cleaner.
So in short, S-Cinetone is a what you see
is what you get picture profile.
And that carries over to the ISO settings as well.
I wouldn't worry about the dual gain sensor
with this specific picture profile.
And instead, I would focus on how good the image looks
on the back of the camera.
All right, and that is how to easily film
with the S-Cinetone picture profile on your Sony camera.
If you have a new a7S III, FX3 or A1,
and you want to know what settings are best for it,
I would recommend watching
my Menu and Custom Buttons Setup videos
that will walk you through all the best settings to use.
And if you're using the a7S III specifically,
you can download my setup preset file,
which will give you all of my settings instantly.
I will link to that preset file
and my setup videos down below.
I will also link down below to my color presets,
which work very well with S-Cinetone.
Don't get me wrong,
S-Cinetone looks great straight out of camera,
but these will make it look even better.
With that, thank you so much for watching.
It would be a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video and subscribing
if you wanna see more videos about filmmaking
in the future.
Also, have a great day.