Hello friends Brandon here with my first ever camera review The a7s Mark II like
the original this camera has had many in the video Community talking but does it
stack up to the current camera Market
before I go any further this camera has Stills features but I will be tackling
this review from a video perspective the original a7s hit the market along with
the GH4 about a year ago the a7s stole the hearts of many shooters with its
unbelievable ability to nearly see in the dark the mark 2 looks to add some
functionality while maintaining what everyone loved about the Mark 1 the body
of the camera is very similar to the original design with only a slightly
larger side gri and a few more buttons the record button is unfortunately still
on the far right of the camera above the SD card door and is as awkward to press
as ever you can however remap it to almost any other button on the camera so
it becomes much less of an issue in the Box notably you get two batteries which
is nice since the a7s chews through Power lasting about 2 to 3 hours of
shooting per battery going a step further Sony has again included the
ability to power the camera off of a USB battery Bank as long as you have a
battery in the camera a feature I will definitely Ely be taking advantage of
during long shoot days at events like CES the display on the a7s2 composes of
a 1.2 million do 3-in screen and a 2.3
million dot electronic viewfinder the 3-in display is reasonably bright but
with a couple of issues first off the mechanism for how the monitor
articulates which Sony has still not changed since they got into the
mirrorless camera Market is not incredibly useful it simply tilts up or
down and has very insignificant travel I found a particular particularly annoying
when using it on our tripod at its highest height making it very difficult
for someone at my height to see the shot easily coming off of a year of shooting
with the GH4 which has many more position options for its display this
took some adjusting on my part the evf on the a7s2 is very solid and using it
as another point of contact when shooting handheld with this camera is
great until we get into the biggest issue with both displays on the
a7s2 focus the punching to check focus
and peeking on the a7s2 are the worst I have ever used on any camera especially
of this caliber is incredibly soft punch all the way in and gives very little
confidence for critical Focus particularly when you're in fast-moving
situations the peaking is passable but isn't particularly useful on such a
small display even on the lowest setting if you are the type of person who often
shoots events or fast-paced documentary work I would recommend a small inl
monitor to add to your rig to combat this issue let's get into the a7s 2's
improved autofocus system I tested tested it while walking around the
office and the results are disappointing the autofocus seems to be a bit slow to
react and with the lens I tested Sony's 1635 mm F4 there was weird micro Jitter
that renders the shot unusable it's possible the performance issue is due to
the lens however that does not give me very much confidence to trust the
autofocus system in most situations but your mileage may vary so what makes this
camera so special that sensor the a7s2
sports an effective 12.2 megapixel full-frame sensor that has stolen the
title of low light King from every other camera on the market so to see proof for
myself I went down to Vancouver's Olympic Village to test out the low
light here's a shot of some large steps near the area with what my eyes could
see now here's what I could see with the
camera what sorcery is this here's
another example of what my eyes can see and what the camera can see now you
might be thinking that's great I'll never have have to use lights for videos
again this camera can basically see in the dark let me stop you right there the
point of having the ability to use such high isos on a camera like this is not
simply to crank your ISO to get the exposure for your shot but to really
take advantage of the control you have over your depth of field you no longer
have to expose your shots at f1.4 with a
razor thin depth of field for night shots to me that is the most powerful
part of the low light ability of this camera you can really think about how
shallow or deep you want your focus and for those of you working in narrative
your focus puller will thank you the second party trick this camera has is
Sony's new in sensor 5 AIS stabilization
which again I tested on a swagway and I was really surprised with the results
this shot feels to me like it might have been done on a 3axis gimbal but it was
simply me holding the camera while riding forward for comparison here's a
very similar shot with the stabilization off this feature is a great addition but
again to truly take advantage of it you really need to have e-mount lenses
arguably the Most Wanted improvement over the Mark 1 is internal 4K which
this camera can do at 30 FPS and 24 FPS
in the xavcs codec at either 100 or 60 megabits
per second this is a very welcomed addition since it will give you a bit
more wiggle room when reframing shots in post comparing it to the 1080p honestly
the difference especially when downscaling the 4K to 1080p is Rel
relatively minor you can however see the difference when zoomed in all the way at
400% the last of the recording modes is Sony's two flavors of slow motion you
have the option of 120 FPS at 100 or 60
megabits per second which will need to be conformed to your desired frame rate
in post the admittedly more consumer friendly option is to have the footage
slowed down for you in camera however I do not recommend this for pro use since
the footage is fairly noisy and soft so in conclusion the a7s Mark II is BAS
basically everything you could ask for in a small form factor camera if you can
work around the relatively minor issues that I mentioned before as well as other
little things like not being able to control monitor brightness while shooting 4K and not being able to custom
white balance while in manual exposure really Sony you'll be looking at one of
the best small form factor cameras on the market and going forward this will
be the main camera I use to do Boll for all of our videos as I have been since
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beautiful yeah yeah so thank you guys for watching I
had a lot of fun making this review and if you liked it leave a thumbs up and if
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like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through the Forum now that
you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so
click that little button in the top right hand corner to check out this video where I reviewed the metabone
speed booster it's quite a cool little adapter