Ice Skaters at 120 fps With The Sony A7s II

Last night I went out to get a few shots for a promo I’m working on. Every year we do a Holiday Show that consist mainly of ice skaters. The rink is donated and all the proceeds go to a local Childrens Hospital. It’s great local event that goes for two months. My station is the media sponsor.

I needed a few shots for the spot and decided to grab the Sony a7s II for the shoot. I haven’t tried 120 fps yet so this felt like a great opportunity! First thing I learned. It’s not easy shooting ice skaters with a large sensor camera. I had to close the iris down to 5.6 – 6.5 so I could have a chance at getting the skaters in focus. Pretty challenging. Another challenge is shooting at night and setting the shutter to roughly 180 degrees. This put it at 250th of a second. Thats fast! To get a good exposure I had to crank up the ISO over 5000 at some times. Oh boy! Knowing it’s better to go over a little I went for it.

So I have a fast shutter and f5.6 with high ISO. What was I thinking! 😀 Oh well I’m sure I can fix it post right?

I used the Canon 70-200 f4 too. When I got home and loaded the footage I was pretty happy with how it came out. It was noisy so I added some Denoiser and a little unsharp mask. I think it looks pretty good considering the conditions its very acceptable. I set the a7s to CINE 2 with Still color mode. I didn’t want to grade it to much because pushing the image around will also break it and add more noise. I really like the CINE gammas. They are easy to work with especially with a 8bit 4:2:0 compressed codec.

Thats it! Have a Wonderfull Thanksgiving everybody! Oh one more thing if you’re going to go crazy on Black Friday please us my affiliate links! Thank. Thank! Thank you!!!!

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Filed in: A7s II • Featured Post • Mirrorless • Sony
Tagged with: 120fps • a7s II • CINE Gamma • Sony a7s II