@apefos,

I just looked again and I do see 3 very small holes underneath the camera next to tripod mount screw-in.

@apefos,

The black back with white letters is actually solid. The white writing is "imprinted" on this solid black back, so not an adhesive label with writing on it.

Maybe they are hidden somewhere else on the camera that's not immediately noticeable to the naked eye.

For the curious. This guy has not done extensive testing, but says that shadows look better when using an external recorder.

You can see a very brief comparison at about 6:00 His opinion on other aspects of the HDMI out recordings at about 10:00. He is not too into it. I'd love to get some original footage for me to colour correct and play around though.

Just a test with neutral creative style at different settings.Basically I wanted to see if I could grade footage with different creative style adjustments to match each other. I also tested DRO at Level 5 and on OFF to see how it would impact the image. I can't say I see a real big difference if any at all.

Download footage straight from camera re-wrapped in DNxHD MOV. files. http://we.tl/hpFXN2C0pO

Take notice of sleeve and back side on the man's shirt. Excuse the shaky camera work. I know the pattern of the gentleman's shirt is a known cause of revealing ugly moire. I personally never saw this in the A6000 until I was going through random clips and discovered this. Yes it does exist, to what extreme? only more time with the camera will tell.

@EYESOUL,

The DRO settings are best for High contrast Sunny day scenes and night scenes. Negative 3(-3) for contrast will also hide most of the effect of DRO. Try "0" for contrast, this will show the DRO settings better. You won't notice a big difference in the DRO levels between DRO level "off" and "level" 1 , but you will notice a difference between DRO level "off" and "level" 2 to 3. The biggest difference will be between DRO level "off" and "level" 5.

I have seen moire pop up from time to time in my A6000 footage as well. It happens a bit more than in my D7100, but usually I can see it in the viewfinder and mostly avoid it. It seems to show up more in my 50mm lens and less so in my 58mm lens, and hardly ever in my 85mm and 105mm lenses. It also seems to be related to distance from subject to camera.

I try to get as close to the final look I want in-camera and only adjust the RGB values in post for a better white balance.

@bleach551 actually I thought by using -3 contrast and adding level 5 DRO it would technically get me the flattest image overall. I knew by doing this it may effect the image negatively but I just wanted to see the results. Your right, it didn't prove to be noticeable in the situation I was shooting. I thought if anything with DRO at level 5 it would introduce a undesirable image effect. I didn't see that, the images looked the same with it on or off,at least in the situation I was shooting. I think I will keep it off just to be on the safe side.

Also where do you like to keep your sharpness setting? I think I'm liking -1 or -2.

@EYESOUL,

I have done a lot of experiment with the sharpness and have found that -2 seems to be the best "all-around" sharpness level. I have tried from -3 to +2. The most widely held advice in most DSLR and MFT conversations on most blogs is to use the lowest level of sharpness in-camera. That is good advice I think more so for MFT than DSLRs.

From my experience from owning a canon 7D, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7100 and now the sony A6000 DSLRs, I've found increasing the in-camera sharpness by +1 or +2 was a good final sharpening level or a starting point to sharpen upon.

For example, with the 7D and both the D7000 and D7100, a "0" sharpness image shown at %100 had a "haze" around it and lacked, IMHO, a good starting point to sharpen further upon. I used a +2 sharpness in all 3 the 7D, d7000 and D7100. In most viewers in all NLE's, the image is set by default to "fit in window". I like to pick a define area of the image and increase the image to %100 view.

With the %100 view selected in my NLE's(Final Pro 7 and Avid Media Composer 5.5), I noticed that at -3 sharpness in the A6000 all images had soft undefined edges and a Slight "haze" to the image. At -2 the image at %100 view, the image had defined edges, without the appearance of in-camera sharpening and no haze around the image. At -1 at %100 view, I started to see the beginnings of the in-camera sharpening. The settings of "0" to +3 in-camera sharpening only exacerbated the sharpening artifacts in "-1" in-camera sharpening. I didn't observe these subtle differences between the sharpness levels until I change the viewer in my NLE's from "Fit to window" to a %100 view.

I mentioned above that -2 was the best "all-around" sharpness level. What I meant by this was that if you want the best sharpness level for every occasion, IMHO, -2 is it. However, I have found that higher sharpening levels can look good in some scenes without well defined edges like landscapes.

With DRO, I initially like yourself used -3 contrast to try to get the widest dynamic range possible. This was because, coming from the 7D, D7000 and D7100, dialing down the contrast to its lowest settings was the best way to get the widest dynamic range. However, this could come with the expense of some shadow detail noise. When I used -3 contrast along with DRO "level 5" in the A6000, the image took on a "milky" appearance so i no longer used both in conjunction with each other. I found leaving the contrast, at least in the "Portrait" creative picture style, at "0" and using the DRO function to increase the dynamic range gave me both the detail in the shadows that i wanted and allowed me to get or keep the contrast levels that i also liked.

All of the above info is from my experience with the A6000, others will have varying experiences and will use different settings.

@bleach551 you are doing great tests. I found similar settings with the old 5n. The DRO 5 with contrast 0 or +1 is better than contrast -3. sharpness -1 or -2 is also good. The polarizer or vari nd filter helps a lot to improve dynamic range because when rotating it the shadow/highlight balance becomes better. I did not find the neutral profile in the 5n but the standard is the best for me because it gives a more real world like image, the portrait turns things into a grey look not so pleasing, not good textures. standard, dro5, contrast +1 saturation-1 and sharpness -1 or -2 is the best settings I found in 5n. I just avoid Iso 3200 in the 5n, but the 1600 cleans ok with neatvideo. I avoid using dro in iso 1600 due to noise. dro5 works better up to iso 800 in the 5n. but the a6000 seems to be 2 fstops better in low light than 5n...

The DRO in sony nex is amazing, it lift the shadows in 5 levels and are manual, not just auto like the idynamic in gh2. Also dro does not increase noise so much as idynamic does. I am still trying to find a way to lock the idynamic on in the GH2 to get same dynamic range I got in the 5n.

The A6000 seems to be the best camera at this moment if 1080p is enough. good low light in 6400 iso, low price, great dynamic range, great colors and resolution, very low moire/aliasing, super 35 sensor for better wide angle and shallow dof, can use almost all lenses, can use focal reducer to get full frame look and 1 fstop light gain... the 1.6x crop factor is amazing, it uses the best part of the lens avoiding the corners of full frame lenses and the amount of shallow dof is beautiful, much better angle of view than GH2. I hope the focal reducer will turn GH2 into super 35 with great quality, because I found the super35 sensor size in 5n is something like the sweet spot for digital cinema. I feel hungry for use a focal reducer in GH2, but I do not feel the same thing with the 5n, I just like the sony nex sensor size.

@apefos,

Thanks, I appreciate that very much. I am still going through all of picture profiles looking at the pluses and minuses. However, like you mentioned previously, -1 and -2 for sharpness and 0 and +1 for contrast are the settings I go back and forth with. Sometimes I think I can see sharpening artifacts in the "-1" sharpness setting, sometimes I don't. With the Contrast, sometimes "+1" makes the blacks look a little too crushed, sometimes it doesn't.

I appreciate the DRO iso info, I haven't had to use anything above iso 600 so far so knowing what you have found with the 5n is very helpful. All of the lenses i use for indoor/ low light are relatively fast. I have a Zeiss 50mm 1.4 ZF.2, Voightlander 58mm 1.4 SLII Nokton, Contax Zeiss 85mm 1.4 MMJ and a Nikon 105mm 1.8 Ais. I have other lenses, but I don't use them for indoor/ lowlight work.

I also use, again as you mentioned, Neutral density filters. They range from a 52mm Tiffen set of from .3 to 2.1 a 72mm Tiffen set of from .3 to 1.2 and a 77mm Tiffen IR/ND set of from 1.5 to 2.1. I will try the "standand' picture profile since it seems we have come to some of the same conclusions you much earlier than I with the 5n.

It's also good to know that you as an owner of the GH2 found that the Idynamic function on the gh2 was noiser than the DRO function on the A6000. That was something I was interested in knowing but I didn't have a GH2 to test that theory with. I have also just learned from you that the Idynamic function was not manual like sony's DRO function, that was something again i didn't know. Thanks for this info.

like everyone else, the Panasonic GH series cameras were something I wanted because of their high bit rate and sharpness. I owned a GH1(7) for a short time and even with its 1.86X crop factor due to its M.A.R. sensor, high bit rate and sharpness, I still prefered the 1.6X APS-C FOV of the 7D I sold to get it.

I also loved the depth of field, not too much(full frame) and not enough( 2X crop MFT). I believe the metabones speedbooster and other focal reducers will give the the GH2 either a true super 35mm film crop factor of 1.42/1.45 or even a less crop factor.

@bleach551 understood, again thanks for the insight.

Maybe the Sony users already know this, but I will share because it can be useful information:

In the 5n videos I found that the video signal goes up to 110 IRE in the waveform monitor. The TV and Monitor screens just show video up to 100 IRE. If you use a filter/effect in timeline to low down the 110 IRE from the Sony cameras to 100 IRE, there will be lots of image details and textures hidden in the cliped whites. It looks like 1 fstop gain in the dynamic range.

I think this is called Sony "super white"