Gear Talk: Sony A1
Low light studio shooting; capturing stills and video with the Sony A1
Last month we had the opportunity to test out the Sony A1 for a studio shoot. We chose to shoot on this body for X reasons: 1) We wanted to keep the files light weight since we had a small window for shoot time, 10 subjects to capture, and wanted to make use of 120 FPS shooting; 2) Having one body for stills and video simplified our gear and lighting needs, reduced setup time between stills and video, and was amenable to our client’s budget; 3) We wanted to see how viable of an option this would be for assignments that require a single shooter to cover photo and video for a client.
The takeaway is that we liked it.*
We wish that we could say it was perfection housed in magnesium alloy, but it didn’t quite cut the mustard in some critical ways for us. Sony’s flagship mirrorless camera is a beast in a lot of ways. Shooting 8k 10 bit internal video with eye/face detecting autofocus is an incredible selling point, and shooting burst stills at 24 FPS in raw is no joke. The main hang up we have with this camera lies in image consistency between shooting modes. It seems that something about the color space would change on the body that we had rented when we switched between video and S&Q mode.
Since this was a rental, we don’t have a way of verifying if there might have been something off between picture profiles, but it was set Slog3 in both modes. This wasn’t a catastrophic mishap, but it was something that had to be rectified during color grading. That means it cost us time. This is also a more niche issue to have with a camera.
In the end, being able to go from stills, video (60FPS), and S&Q (120 FPS) with a simple twist of a dial made it possible for us to keep our shoot running smoothly. Also capturing footage in 4k and 8k in an efficient codec allowed us to keep the camera running longer. This was crucial to us getting the amount of coverage we needed in the short time we had to shoot.
If most of our shoots were one man bands, then this might be the perfect camera. Currently for our needs though, it won’t have a permanent place in the stable.
