In one of my favorite a7s III videos yet, Dale Sood takes us through his workflow for the fashion short ALUAD. Remarkably, after watching Brandon Li’s “Crossroads” video and testing out the camera’s profiles to see how the model’s skin tones responded to each of them, he decided to shoot in Standard rather than the more popular S-log3. Dale says:
What I hope you can take away from this are two things: number one is – and this applies to all cameras – which is, get to know your camera. Test all the profiles in a very similar physical setting to the one that you’re going to be shooting in and know what the camera is and isn’t capable of. And number two – this is specific to Sony – there is a temptation with this camera to want to shoot in S-log 3, and rightfully so: with the new 10-bit 4:2:2 signal, S-log3 looks fantastic on this camera. But don’t get tricked into thinking S-log3 is a catch-all – this camera is incredibly powerful in its standard and its cinegamma profiles and additionally it’s going to save you a whack of time and frustration in post.
shooting 4k at 120 fps because you do lose five stops of light over 24 fps.”
Like Brandon Li, Dale also made a luminance mask to reduce noise in the shadows without affecting the mid-tones or the highlights. The results speak for themselves – and the a7s III appears to handle both fair and dark complexions with equal ease.
Dale sums up his experience shooting with the a7s III as follows:
I do feel compelled to say that this is probably not just the best Sony mirrorless camera I’ve ever shot video on but the best mirrorless camera period that I’ve ever shot video on. Sony has solved all their critiques: this is an incredibly reliable camera; great color science; super strong codec; and a beautifully redesigned body and menu system.
The Daejeon Chronicles 
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