Been playing a lot with HFR recently on my F5. One of the niggles with HFR on the PMW-F55 and F5 is that you don’t have LUT’s when shooting HFR. But, in firmware V4 Sony added a new high contrast mode for the viewfinder. I now have this allocated to one of my assignable buttons and it makes a pretty good LUT alternative for shooting in HFR.

I find that when shooting with S-Log3 HFR I can get a pretty good approximation of correct exposure using the VF High Contrast mode and as the image has decent contrast, focus is much easier than when trying to work without any kind of LUT. Sadly this is only available in the viewfinder, but I find that it is much more obvious if your exposure is off when you use the VF High Contrast mode.

The camera automatically turns this mode OFF when you power the camera down, so you must re-enable it when you power cycle the camera. This is probably a good thing as it means you shouldn’taccidentally.

Sadly zebras etc either measure the LUT output or the Slog, they are NOT effected by the viewfinder HC mode, so in HFR they will be measuring the SLog.

It’s very easy to check out this function for yourself. In regular, non HFR Cine EI,at the native ISO,  turn ON the 709(800) LUT and view the image in the viewfinder making a mental not of what it looks like. Now turn the VF LUT’s OFF and turn on the VF High Contrast mode. You will see that the VF image is as far as I can tell identical in both modes.

So at the native ISO: Cine EI + 709(800) LUT gives the same image in the VF as CineEI NO LUT + VF High Contrast mode.

I recommend that if you haven’t played with this in HFR you give it a try. It’s not a true LUT, but it looks just the same as the 709(800) LUT.

For the past 18 months almost everything I have shot has been shot at 4K. I have to say that I am addicted to the extra resolution and the quality of the images I am getting these days from my PMW-F5 and R5 raw recorder. In addition, the flexibility I get in post from shooting in 4K to crop and re-frame my shots is fantastic.

BUT: I have a Sony A7s on order. Us European buyers won’t get them until late July as the European model is different to the US model, in the US the cameras are based on the NTSC system, so do 24, 30 and 60fps while the European models are based on PAL, so do 25 and 50fps  but with the addition of 24fps as well. Right now there are no realistic portable 4K recording option for the A7s, these will come later. So this means that for a now if I want to shoot with the A7s it will have to be HD.

Is that really such a bad thing? Well, no not really. It’s a sideways step not a backwards one, as I’m getting the A7s for a very specific roll.

Image quality is a combination of factors. Resolution is just one part of the image quality equation. Dynamic range, contrast, noise, colour etc all contribute in more or less equal parts to getting a great image. The A7s delivers all of these very well. If I am delivering in HD then most of the time I don’t NEED 4K. 4K is nice to have and if I can have 4K then I will take advantage of it, but for an HD production it is definitely not essential in most cases.

The reason for getting the A7s is that I want a pocket sized camera that I can use for grab and go shooting. It offers amazing low light performance and great dynamic range thanks to it’s use of S-Log2. I’m really excited about the prospect of having a camera as sensitive as the A7s for next years Northern Lights trips. I should be able to get shots that have not been possible before, so even at “only” HD the A7s will get used along side my 4K F5/R5.

In the future there will of course be external 4K recording options for the A7s making it even more versatile. I probably won’t always use them with the A7s but the option will be there when I NEED 4K.

Given the choice, if I can shoot in 4K I almost always will. I want to shoot in 4K whenever I can. It really does give me much greater post production flexibility, for example I can shoot a wide shot of an interview in 4K and then crop in for a mid shot or close up if I’m delivering in HD. So 4K will always be very high on my priority list when choosing a camera. But if you can’t afford 4K and are still delivering in HD then worry not. It’s probably better to have a well optimised HD camera than a cheap, poor quality less than perfect 4K camera. Don’t let 4K trick you into buying a lesser camera just because the lesser camera has 4K.

Well shot HD still looks fantastic, even on a big screen. Most movies are shown at 2K and few people complain about the quality of most blockbusters. So, HD is still good enough, 4K has not made HD obsolete or degraded the quality of existing HD cameras.

But is good enough? Good enough for you and your clients? I am passionate about getting great images, so I don’t just want good enough, I want the best I can get, so I’m a 4K convert, as are some of my clients. I’m actually delivering content in 4K for many of my customers. But sometimes, 4K isn’t practical, so in these cases I’ll just get the very best HD I can (hence the A7s for very portable and ultra low light shooting).

The bottom line is that right now, maybe you don’t need 4K, but it’s OK to want 4K. You may need 4K very soon as it becomes more mainstream (some nice Samsung and LG 4K TV’s are now available in the $1.5K/£1K price range). 4K might bring you many benefits in post production, but that doesn’t mean you need it, not yet at least. But once you do start to shoot in 4K there is no going back and while you might still not need 4K, you’ll probably find that you do actually need 4K. 🙂

Welcome home back to the UK, NOT!

I was in Windsor, Berkshire, close to the Castle, a major tourist attraction, shooting with a Sony AX100, a compact consumer handycam. I was using a small 3 stage tripod and I was standing on the public right of way pavement shooting the castle. I had arrived in Windsor early to avoid the worst of the crowds.

After a few minutes I am approached by a single Police officer and a council warden. After exchanging pleasant “good mornings” The first question I am asked is: “What are you doing, is it for professional or private purposes?”.

Now, I know that as I am not on private property I can shoot without restriction and it makes no difference whether I am an amateur or a professional, there is no differentiation between the two under UK law when it comes to taking photos or video both have the same rights.

So as I’m unsure quite how to respond as I am a professional cameraman, but I was not shooting for any particular production or client I respond: “Does it make a difference whether it’s professional or private?”, to which the warden tells me yes it does, it makes a difference (which is incorrect). Next I’m asked who I’m working for etc.

OK, OK, hands in the air, I could have handled this better. But, I don’t have to explain to the police what I am doing, who I work for etc. I am perfectly within my rights to shoot video from a public pavement and I don’t need to explain to all and sundry what I am doing and why. I get fed up with being stopped by the police in this country whenever I turn up on a street with a pro camera or tripod.

So next I get the whole, well we have to be vigilant, you might be a terrorist bit. Huh? Would a terrorist stand with a tripod in such an obvious manner, there were people all over the place with all kinds of cameras shooting all kinds of thing, but because I had a tripod, was on my own and taking my time I was singled out as a terrorist threat! For goodness sake, it was a consumer camcorder just like the hundreds of others in the hands of the thousands of tourists that visit Windsor every day. Do the police stop all of them, or are they just singling out those that look like they might be professionals? If they want to know who I am then they should have asked for ID, but they didn’t, they never asked who I was, where I lived, jus whether I was shooting for professional or private purposes.

So I asked to be left alone so I could get on with what I was lawfully doing. After a couple of minutes they gave up and stood behind me chatting into their radios and making snide remarks that I was obviously meant to hear about about my attitude. I continued to shoot shots of the castle.

Then I look up from the camera to find a police sargent standing right in front of me,  blocking my shot. “Excuse me sir can you tell me what your doing?”.  By now I’m getting pretty angry with this whole thing. “I’m trying to shoot some video of the castle, but you’re preventing me from doing it”. “Oh no, I’m not stopping you” say’s the policeman.

Uh well actually, while perhaps not physically restraining me, the fact that the guy was standing in front of me along with the constant hassling meant I was prevented from shooting, so after a further “discussion” about my right to shoot and not being a terrorist I was in effect forced to move on simply to get away from the now 3 police officers and a warden making it very hard to do what I wanted to do.

Why is it I can travel around the world shooting this and that all over the place, but when I return to my home country I get prevented from going about my lawful business under the pathetic pretext of being some kind of terrorist threat. I don’t have to explain what I am doing, who I work for, whether I’m shooting for private or commercial purposes when I’m going about my business in a public area. Clearly the police didn’t like the fact that I knew my rights.

I admit that I could of handled the situation better, but when the first question you get asked is whether your shooting for private or commercial purposes you just can’t tell what’s coming next. Plus, frankly the situation should never have arisen in the first place. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I shouldn’t have to explain to the police what I am doing just because I’m using a tripod. I am really fed up with this happening here in the UK. It’s crazy because whenever I want to go and shoot something, I don’t want this kind of hassle, so I have to try to figure out locations where I won’t be bothered by the police. I shouldn’t have to do this.

So we all like to dress our cameras up with all kinds of accessories. One of the most common being a Matte Box. So, what’s a matte box for? Well the obvious thing is to hold filters for creating an artistic look, for colour correction or light level reduction. But the other very important role is to block unwanted light. I’ll take a brief look at filters later in the article.

We all know that if you shoot into the sun or a bright light source you might get a lens flare in the shot. You know, those sometimes pretty rings of light that can look cool on a good day or ruin a shot on another. But the other thing you can get is lens flare. So whats the difference between “a lens flare” and “lens flare”.

Well, lens flare is when light bounces around inside the lens between the glass elements in an uncontrolled way, some of this unfocussed light making it’s way to the sensor where it spills and bleeds into darker parts of the image reducing contrast and raising the black level. Whenever you reduce the contrast in an image it will appear softer, so to get the sharpest and highest resolution images, we really want to keep as much unwanted light out of the lens as possible. In addition some cameras can suffer from other image artefacts when off-axis light finds it’s way to the edges of the sensor. So anything we can do to stop this happening is obviously a good thing.

Higher end cameras will often have an electronic flare adjustment that pulls down the cameras black level when the overall scene light level gets high. The idea is that this helps compensate for the almost inevitable flare that will occur in the lens when a lot of light enters the lens. This flare setting is normally adjusted on a lens by lens basis as different lenses will flare by different amounts. As lenses get older, very often vapour from the oils and materials used in the construction of the lens will coat the internal glass surfaces with a very fine haze that increases flare. This can make an older lens more prone to flare and is one reason why getting an older but expensive lenses professionally cleaned is often worth the expense. The other thing you can do is to make be sure to use a good matte box or lens shade to prevent excess light from entering the lens.

Don’t use a matte box that is excessively large. You want a Matte Box big enough to fit your lenses and hold the size of filters you need. It also needs to be wide enough to allow you to use the aspect ratios you want to shoot in, but no larger. If it’s too big, the shade/hood will be less effective. Make use of an adjustable top flag and side flags to keep out as much light as possible. Looking through the cameras viewfinder bring the flags in close to the lens until they start to creep into the edges of your shot, then back them off just a little bit.

Also make sure your rear donut or other light seal is doing it’s job and keeping out the light. A flexible bellows or “nun’s knickers” can be used to allow you to move the matte box forwards so that the lens sits deeper in the nice dark recess of the matte box. Light entering the Matte box from the rear will cause reflections off the back of any filters used, especially any ND filters or glimmer glass filters and this can easily spoil a shot.

A Matte Box can be attached to the lens directly via a clamp ring that clamps around the end of the lens or more commonly attached to rods or bars connected to the bottom of the camera. If you only ever use one lens then a lens clamp might work well for you, but if you swap and change lenses regularly then a rod or rail mount is often easier as a flexible donut will fit a multitude of lenses. The donut on the Alphatron Matte Box will fit a wide range of lenses and the neoprene insert can easily be exchanged or replaced simply by unscrewing the two halves of the donut holder. The neoprene is sandwiched between the two halves and just drops out once released.

Some Matte Boxes like the Alphatron one shown here have small extra “eyebrows”. These are like mini flags that can be adjusted to provide extra shade for the lens. In the picture you can see how the shadow from the top eyebrow is keeping stray and unwanted light from falling on the lens. This will help minimise flare and preserve contrast in the images. It’s a small thing but it can make a big difference. Eyebrows and flags also keep light out of the matte box itself and help prevent reflections between any filters that you might use and the lens itself.

If you’re using prime lenses then you will probably need to change lenses regularly. A great time saver is the use of a swing-away adapter. The Alphatron Matte Box that I use has an optional quick release swing away mount option. By twisting a single lever the Matte Box opens up and swings away from the lens. This gives you easy access to the lens for cleaning or for a quick lens change without having to remove the Matte Box. When shooting out on location this is a big deal as there’s never anywhere clean to put your Matte Box when you want to do a lens swap.

Matte boxes can have both fixed and rotating filter trays or a combination of the two. Fixed trays are fine for ND filters and most diffusion filters. For graduated filters a rotating tray is preferable and for polarising filters a rotating tray is essential. The Alphatron Matte Box here has one fixed tray and one rotating tray. So I can use the fixed tray for any ND filters and then the rotating tray for grads or polarisers. I very nice feature of the Alphatron is a little recess in the very front of the sun shade and a little locking tab that allows you to put a safety glass in place in front of any filters to protect you filters and lens. This is very handy especially if your shooting something that could possibly splash on your expensive filters and damage the coatings.

So what filters should you get for your nice new Matte Box? First of all do be prepared to spend a little bit of money to get good quality filters. Filters can be plastic, resin or glass. Optical grade plastics and resins can make very good filters, but they tend to be prone to collecting dust through static electricity and they scratch easily. In addition if left in a hot car they can distort and warp. But, plastic and resin filters are light weight and normally a lot cheaper than the glass equivalent. Better quality filters will have anti-reflective coatings. A good quick test of the quality of any filter is to use a long focal length lens or zoomed-in zoom lens to check for distortions or focus issues introduced by the filter. You might not notice this at wide angles or zoomed out. So do check at longer focal lengths.

Good brands include Tiffen, Formatt and Schneider. These won’t be the cheapest on the market, but the quality is consistently good.  Filters come in different sizes, the most common is the 4×4 or 4″ by 4″. For longer focal lengths these are fine, but if you want to shoot at wider angles you may find that 4×4’s are not wide enough. The next size up is the 4″x 5″ but the next commonly used size is the 4″ x 5.65″ which is close to the old 4:3 TV aspect ratio. The extra width really helps when shooting wider shots in 16:9.

My most commonly used filters are ND filters. These help manage light when it’s too bright allowing you to use a smaller aperture to gain a shallower depth of field. If your using a CMOS camera you should use IR ND filters that cut not only the visible light but also infra red light that most CMOS cameras are sensitive to.

Next is a polarising filter. A circular polariser is great for reducing or controlling reflections from windows, cars etc, it’s also good for enhancing the contrast in clouds and the sky making the sky a richer, deeper blue. When using a polariser it needs to go in a rotating tray so you can turn it when composing your shot to alter the polarising effect.

Graduated ND filters are also useful to help deal with excessively bright sky. The top of the filter is a ND filter or coloured filter and the bottom is normally clear. By sliding the filter up and down within the matte box you can alter level where the brightness reduction takes place. A tobacco or orange coloured graduated filter can be used to create or enhance a sunset type look. Just watch for the graduation crossing through foreground objects in the scene which can give the game away and look odd.