Best Filming Mode and Memory Cards For Sony A7siii
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Best Filming Mode and Memory Cards For Sony A7siii
In this video, Will shows you the best setting to film with when using the Sony A7s iii as well as why he chooses to stick with SD cards over the higher end CF Express Type A cards.
🎬SD CARDS WE USE:
➜256GB: https://amzn.to/3zEHqmL
➜128GB: https://amzn.to/2VazkDj
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🎬SD CARDS WE USE:
➜256GB: https://amzn.to/3zEHqmL
➜128GB: https://amzn.to/2VazkDj
âžœSD CARD READER (Fast Transfers): https://amzn.to/3vz0WkR
GENERATED CAPTIONS:
In this video we're going to talk about the setting i'm now using to film clips with the a7 s3 and how it's a little different than what i recommended in my review video a few months back and i'm also going to talk about why i'm not going with the very expensive CF type A cards.
First let's talk about the all intro mode you may see it as all-i this means that your camera captures each frame with the full amount of color information at the highest level the a7s3 can capture footage at 1200 megabits per second and then save it to the memory card at 600 megabits per second this is in the all intra 120 frames a second snq mode that means there is minimal compression and it'll be a little easier for a computer to play back these files the problem though with that is because there's all this color information being captured in every single frame that means the file sizes are going to be massive.
You're going to need very fast cards to record with but you're also going to need a lot of hard drive storage i declare bankruptcy currently there are no sd cards that can capture at a speed of 600 megabits per second so you won't be able to use any sd cards with that highest mode on the a7 s3 that means if you do want to shoot in the 120 frames a second snq all intro mode you will have to go with the cf express type A cards. The downside of using these cards as i've mentioned is they are very expensive but also the capacity they come in meaning like the size of the cards themselves, they're pretty small and that means that you're going to need extra cards in order to get through a full day of shooting.
As mentioned in my review video for the a7s iii i did originally get the cf express type a cards but i returned them because i realized i wasn't ever going to really use the all intra mode so this opened up the possibility of sticking with sd cards and exploring some of the other options that the camera offered and comparing if i would ever use the higher end options it has.
The SD CARDS that i ended up going with are from Prograde. i'd highly recommend them because they've been great so far. If you want to get the exact ones that i'm using, use this Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3zEHqmL
There are a lot of options when it comes to sd cards and you may not even need the fastest ones available so make sure you understand what settings your camera has and if you're even going to use them for example if you're using the a7s3 like i am, it is possible to stick with v60 cards which are a little cheaper and you'll be able to use pretty much every single setting available on the camera except for i think two for me i decided on using v9d cards yes they're a little more expensive not quite as expensive as the cf express type a cards but the v90 gives me the ability to use every setting that i've used over the last eight months with the a7s3, so you can buy more cards and shoot for a longer period of time in a day.
The a7siii offers three shooting modes xavc s xavc hs and xavc-si the si is the all-intro mode that i was talking about before when using the xavc-hs mode it's almost impossible to distinguish between that mode and the all-intra high bitrate mode that we talked about at the beginning of the video the image quality of the hs mode is very very good and that's because it's a modern new codec called the h.265. It's the next generation after h.264 and the compression is so good you almost can't tell the difference between even ProRes uncompressed footage, and besides the image quality, the file sizes with h.265 are going to be very very small, even smaller than the older generation h.264 files, and like anything in the computer world, more compression means it will be a lot tougher for your computer to handle and process those files because it's a lot of data stored in these little tiny files.
When it comes time to editing or playing them back it needs to extract all the colors and information in order to give you an image that you can play back properly so you're going to need a very fast machine or at least a lot of patience, but luckily sony implemented another setting on the a7s3 that not a lot of cameras have which is the ability to still shoot in 10 bit, but shoot in 420 instead of 422.
Capturing 10-bit footage compared to 8-bit is massive however going from 422 to 420, i would bet that 99.9 of people can't tell the difference at all that being said if you're doing any keying with the footage or you're doing color grading where you're pushing the colors very far in those scenarios 422 would be a better option but still very manageable with 420 so while filming in 10 bit is important on the a7s3 for all shoots staying in 420 is just fine for most shoots i mentioned earlier that the hs mode will be pretty difficult for your computer to work with if you don't have a higher end machine however 422 is the real culprit here because i believe there is no hardware on the market available today that allows you to decode and work with a 422 footage efficiently. UPDATE* The latest Apple M1 Computers (Mac Studio) have built in hardware decoders that can easily work with 422 footage!
As of right now shooting with the HS mode with 10bit 420 is my recommendation for the best setting to use on the a7s3 unless you're shooting externally through the hdmi port to an external recorder. Again i'll leave a link in the description for the exact sd cards i'm going with those cards coupled with the hs mode using 10 bit 420 will give you very very good quality but the file sizes will be very small that means you can get extra memory cards but you also can save on hard drive storage space all right i hope this video was helpful on what video mode to use with your Sony a7s3 this also works on the fx3 they're basically the exact same camera and hopefully you can save some money by going with the v60 or v90 sd cards instead of going with the more expensive CF express type A cards we have over 100 other filmmaking tutorials on the channel that you can learn from so subscribe to the channel to see those each week thanks so much for watching and we will see you next time.
🎬SD CARDS WE USE:
➜256GB: https://amzn.to/3zEHqmL
➜128GB: https://amzn.to/2VazkDj
âžœSD CARD READER (Fast Transfers): https://amzn.to/3vz0WkR
SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE FOR MORE! (120+ FILMMAKING TUTORIALS):
https://youtube.com/alliandwill
OUR VIDEOS ARE EDITED IN ADOBE PREMIERE PRO. GET IT HERE:
https://adobe.prf.hn/click/camref:1101lr4SX