What is the Sony Alpha 7S capable of in real life?

Sony Alpha 7S in real life

Here's a great example of the Sony Alpha 7S, famous for its low light capabilities, performing well in some difficult shooting environments. (Sorry to anyone who tried to watch the video before. We're re-publishing this article with a working video link).

Alex Mejia has shot a lovely documentary/commercial film on the Alpha 7S with some slow motion help from an FS700.

The Alpha 7S is lauded for its low-light capability which you can see in abundance here, but also for its rich, cinematic look.

This film is nicely edited and it skillfully tells a story. It's an object lesson in how to make a small scale video with large scale values.

Alex told us:

On the interview shots I used a a 1K softbox, a 250w backlight, and a dimmed 250 spot diffused to fill.

Outdoors was all natural light, I used no bounce. 

Indoors was a closed arena with really difficult lighting conditions, bright sunlight outdoors, with no lighting inside.  I just had to use the natural light and allow slog2 to shine when it came to exposure.

Everything was graded in Davinci Resolve, using a combination of ImpulZ film Luts and FilmConvert. 

  And here's his equipment list:

·       

            Fs700+A7s combo

·         ImpulZ film luts for color grading

·         Shot in one day, with another half day for pickups

·         Single operator docu style piece for the launch of her new website.

·         Canon lenses 16-35 F/2.8L II 70-200 F/2.8 IS I

·         Sony 24-70 f/4.0  Surprisingly good in autofocus mode on the Steadicam.