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!!!!
Follow me on Twitter @eriknaso and check out my page on Facebook.
Thanks for coming by! Please help support my site by using the links on this page or bookmark these from my favorite retailers, B&H, Adorama, Zacuto, Amazon.com & Think Tank Photo. Using the links cost you nothing extra, but it helps offset the cost of running my blog. Thanks again for coming by eriknaso.com!
Hi Erik,
Nice work. The email notification I received for this post said 240 fps:
“Ice Skaters Shoot With The Sony A7s II at 240 fps”
But the post itself says 120. I’m just curious, which was it? I’m planning to try something similar with dancers.
Dave
OMG! I needed more coffee! Sorry for the confusion. Bad title. Bad upload. Not a good way to post a article 😀
The camera was set to 120 fps. The a7s II doesn’t do 240 fps. Thanks!
Erik
Nice to know. My GH4 goes up to 96 fps so I should have a chance at getting footage that’s similarly smooth.
Thanks,
Dave