Hey, my name is Matt Johnson.
And today I want to share with you how to quickly and easily film
with the Sony Slog three picture profile in your Sony A7 for camera.
Also to save you time and make this picture profile super easy to film with.
I've created a set of video presets called Who is Matt Lutz
that are made to specifically work with Slug three.
I've tested these presets extensively with the Sony A7 four and they look
fantastic and I will link to them down below in the video description.
Getting started out first, grab your A7 four, navigate to the picture profile menu
and the first thing you should do is make sure your camera is set to P8
and that for the gamma it says slog three and the color mode says SGamut3.Cine
If it doesn't say that, scroll down to the bottom that says reset and reset.
P8 to its default settings.
Next lets talk exposure.
If you want the best possible image quality out of the A7 four
with minimal noise, you need to make sure that you are exposing properly
when filming in Slug three.
How do you expose properly?
Well, just like the A7, S3 X and A1, etc.
you actually want to overexpose your footage when filming.
Then when you color great, you'll bring the footage exposure back down.
When you add contrast and saturation, which will greatly minimize
any noise in your footage.
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 image and a number.
In my case, it's a 0.0.
This image stands for multi metering and it tells you how bright the image is
that your camera is recording.
If your camera doesn't say Im here, open the menu and go to exposure,
slash color metering and set your metering mode to multi
with a traditional camera picture profile, you would want your camera's metering,
which is the number next. Mm.
To read 0.0, which means that the image it is recording isn't over or underexposed.
But if your camera says -1.0, it means that it is one
stop underexposed if it reads plus one point.
So that means it's one stop overexposed.
But remember, we are shooting in slug three
and you need to overexpose to make sure that it is properly recording.
So you are actually going to want
your camera's metering to read between 1.7 and 2.0 stops over.
That is going to look bright,
but I promise you this is how your camera will look.
Its best.
Also be careful because when I say 1.7 to 2.0 stops over,
you're going to want to make sure that the 2.0 isn't blinking.
If it is blinking, that means that it is overexposed by two stops
and that's a bad thing because it's too bright.
Now to help you out with exposure and make sure you aren't
overexposing your footage.
I would highly recommend using zebra's enabling zebras on your A74
will tell you if your footage is overexposed by putting these nice
black and white lines
that kind of look like zebra stripes on the overexposed parts of your image.
You will need to calibrate these zebra stripes to work properly with your slug.
Three footage though.
Incidentally, if you've watched my A7 for camera setup video and downloaded
my settings preset, you already have your zebra set up for Slug three.
If you haven't watched that video though,
I will link to it in the corner and down in the video description
in case you haven't downloaded
those settings though, here's how to set up your zebras properly.
Go into your camera's menu.
Go to exposure, slash color zebra display, and for zebra level,
you're going to want to go down to C2 so you can set a custom zebra level.
Press right and select lower limit,
then press right again and change the number to 94 plus.
Next, make sure zebra display in the menu is enabled.
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 levels to 94.
Plus that number is the maximum brightness the slug three footage
can handle before it clips the highlights and cannot recover them.
So as you are filming with your camera, I would first look at your metering
and make sure it is between 1.7 and 2.0 stops over.
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 are filming.
If you're filming a person standing in front of the sunset
and you have a super bright sun clouds behind them, you're
probably going to 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.
That way, 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 that 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.
But there are two very important things to keep in mind.
Whatever comes to your ISO and SLUG three and these two things are specific
to the Sony A7.
For looking at the ISO menu of your A7 four,
you'll see that you can actually set the ISO all the way down to 200,
but all of your ISOs from 200 to 640,
all have lines on the top and bottom of the numbers.
But when you get to isolated, they go away.
This is because in slug three, the recommended base ISO is 800 on the A7.
For this ISO 800 is the lowest ISO Sony recommends.
If you want to maximize the dynamic range of the camera,
as I just showed though, you can go lower if you want to all the way down to 200,
but you're going to have two issues once you go below 800
ISO, the first issue is going to be very obvious.
Here's my camera
filming at ISO 800 with the zebra showing where the image is overexposed.
Drop the ISO to 640 now and you see the issue.
The zebras are gone.
Yes. If you set your camera below the minimum base, ISO
zebras will no longer work
and the camera
will not be able to tell you which parts of the image are overexposed.
This is a huge bummer, but is not the only one.
The second issue, which is harder to see when filming,
but arguably worse, is that if you drop your ISO below the base ISO of 800,
the camera is going to start to electronically clip
the highlights of your footage at a lower level,
which means that you're going to lose dynamic range,
which is really the whole point of filming in Slug three.
So as a rule, I would never recommend dropping your ISO below your camera's base
ISO if you can help it adjust your aperture, your shutter speed
and consider investing in an indie filter before dropping your ISO.
Got it.
Okay.
We've covered the minimum iso, but we aren't quite done talking about
isos yet because now we need to talk about low light performance with the A7 four.
When you're filming in Slug three and specifically we need to talk about
the ISOs that I would be careful to avoid when filming with the camera.
The A7 four, like other Sony cameras, has what is known as a dual native ISO.
This means that there are two ISOs where the camera will look its best
and give you the absolute maximum dynamic range that it is capable of.
This dual native ISO will change depending on the picture
profiles you're filming with, but in the case of SLR three,
these ISOs are ISO 800 and ISO 3200.
We've already discussed ISO 800, but ISO 3200 is super important too
because this is another ISO where your video will look its cleanest
with minimal noise.
So as a final rule of thumb, I would recommend either filming at ISO 800
or if you're in a low light situation, I would bump your ISO up to 3200.
To guarantee you have the cleanest footage.
Of course, if you need to go higher, you can add the A7 four is quite good
and has relatively low noise up to about ISO 25,600 or so.
Just keep in mind that ISO 830 200 are the sweet spots
for noise free footage with the camera
and you can try to avoid those ISOs in between the two.
If you want to avoid noise.
All right.
And that is how to film in slug three quickly and easily with your Sony A7 four.
Remember my Slug three color presets that I've tuned to work
perfectly with the A7 four are linked down below,
and if you combine those presets with these settings,
hold on to your beard because your footage is going to look awesome.
I willing to my other Sony A7 for videos below as well.
Thank you so much for watching and have a great day.