Perhaps one of the biggest reasons that Sony has had a bad reputation for its color science is the quality of the video produced by its range of crop sensor hybrid cameras. This short video tells you how to get the best colors, all without causing the image to fall apart.
Caleb Pike of DSLR Video Shooter has a ton of experience when it comes to using Sony A6x00 range of cameras and he draws on this to present to you a solution for maximizing the potential of these smaller cameras — without creating banding, noise, or weird, seemingly inexplicable color shifts. A few changes to your settings could completely transform the problems that arise when shooting video in an 8-bit color space with a comparatively low data rate.
If you’re wondering why 8-bit is inferior to 10-bit: 8-bit video records an RGB image that contains 256 levels per channel, meaning it can display up to 16.7 million individual colors. That might sound like a lot until you bump from 8 bit to 10 bit. Suddenly you’re recording RGB images that contain 1,024 levels per channel, creating the potential for 1.07 billion individual colors. That’s quite the difference.
Have you tried Pike’s recommended settings? Let us know if they give you better results in the comments below.