According to FedEx there is a Convergent Design Gemini in a van on it’s way to me. I’ll be testing it out with S-Log. Then trying the whole backup/transcode(optional)/edit workflow as soon as it arrives. More news to follow.
CamRade PMW-F3 Rain Cover. WS PMW F3
As winter rapidly approaches, with all the talk in the news papers of mini-iceages, cold spells and the knowledge that winter generally means rain here in the UK I thought it would be a good time to take a look at a rain cover.
Rain covers for the PMW-F3 are few and far between at the moment, so when Rene at CamRade told me that they were producing a tailored rain cover for the F3 I had to get my hands on one to take a look.
The cover arrived in a nice compact pouch made from the same high quality waterproof fabric as the cover itself. This fabric is some kind of soft rubberised material that feels very tough, yet is very flexible and soft to the touch, which is important if you have the camera up against your face. According to CamRade this soft material helps reduce the noise that rain drops falling on the can camera make. The cover is a tailored loose fit with velcro straps and fastenings that can be used to take up any excessive slack.
There are clear panels on the left side, more about them in minute. There’s an elasticated opening for a gun microphone at the front as well as a velcro protected opening on the right side for cable access to the XLR connectors. This opens up into a small tube so keeps the cable entry well protected from the weather. Along the top of the camera handle there is a long velcro opening to give access to the carry handle and top of the camera. This opening folds over to one side and is secured by a small velcro pad so that should not collect and rain when not in use.
The main clear panel on the left side of the cover can be opened out and expanded so the the F3’s LCD panel can be used in the open position. the clever design allows the LCD to be viewed from above, from in front as well as from the rear, so you can continue to use the LCD panel in the rain. However in practice rain falling on the cover itself will tend to obscure or distort the images on the LCD to some extent. Ahh… the joy of shooting in the rain!!
You can of course use the rear VF if you wish as this sticks out through a hole in the back of the rain cover. The rear of the cover opens up via velcro for easy battery access and will easily accommodate oversize batteries. I think the rear end of this cover is it weakest area and personally I’d like a cover that completely encloses the rear viewfinder, but that’s just me.
Another feature on the left side of the cover is a clear window that allows you to see the lenses focus and iris rings and markings. If your using a long lens the cover comes with a clear extension that attaches to the front of the main cover and makes it long enough to to protect much longer lenses including lenses like the Optimo 16-24 zoom. This extension piece comes with a strip of self adhesive velcro that can be attached to the lens to stop it flapping around in the wind.
On the right side of the cover there is an opening under a flap that allows you to insert your hand into the cover so you can grip the camera via the hand grip without having to open up the rain cover. I really liked this feature. The bottom of the cover has small side flaps that will prevent rain from running off under the camera or onto the very top of your tripod. A nice touch.
I’ve had many small camera rain covers over the years. Very often they are so stiff and ridged that they are a complete nuisance to use. The material used in this cover is really nice and makes the camera reasonably easy to use even when trussed up inside the cover. The fold out clear cover for the LCD means that rain should not prevent you from being able to carry on shooting due to the camera becoming wet.
I give this cover 7/10. It would be 9/10 if the rear end was a little neater and there was a way to cover the EVF, but as small camera rain covers go, it’s a good one.
Picture Profiles – Scene Files – Crispeneing. How to clean up your image.
I promised I would re-visit some of my Picture Profile stuff. I thought I would start with this one as it is one of the least well understood settings. It’s effects are quite subtle, but it can mean the difference between a noisy picture and a clean image, but also between a sharp image and a soft image, in particular in areas of subtle detail or low contrast detail such as foliage, grass and textures.
Crispening is a part of the detail correction circuit. It does not in itself, as it’s name suggests (at least on an EX of F3) make the image “crisper”. What it does is control the contrast range over which the detail circuit operates. Basically it sets the threshold at which detail correction is applied to the image, which in turn can make the image look a little sharper or less sharp. The apparent sharpness itself is controlled by the Detail Level and Frequency controls.
Why is this useful? Well it allows the user to choose whether to opt for a cleaner looking image or a sharper looking image. An important consideration is that this adjustment does not change the actual resolution of the image or the noise level of the camera, but it does make subtle details in the image more or less enhanced and as noise is also a subtle, even if unwanted detail within the image it will also make noise more or less enhanced, thus more or less visible.
In the first illustration I have drawn an imaginary video waveform signal coming from the camera that contains a mixture of noise and both subtle and more obvious picture information. The bigger the up/down change in the waveform the more obvious the change in brightness (and thus contrast) on the monitor or TV would be. Throughout the image there is some noise. I have indicated the noise level for the camera with a pair of red lines. The EX1 and EX3 is a moderately noisy camera, not the worst, nor the best for an HD camera, but pretty good in it’s price range. So if we can do something to make the noise less obvious that would be desirable in many cases. Crispening can help us do that. Crispening ONLY has an effect when you are applying detail correction to the image. It sets the threshold at which detail correction is applied. The default setting on an EX is zero.
If we reduce the crispening setting, lets say to -60, it REDUCES the threshold at which detail is applied which generally makes the pictures look sharper. Looking at the second and third illustrations you can see how if you reduce the threshold too much then detail correction will be applied to even the most subtle changes in the image, including the image noise. The little black spikes I have added to the diagram illustrate the way the detail “enhancement” will be added to both noise and subtle contrast changes as well as larger contrast changes.
This will make the pictures look more noisy, but… and this is important… it will also help bring out subtle low contrast textures in foliage, skin, fabrics etc. A area where perhaps the EX1 and EX3 don’t do terribly well.
If you want a clean image however where noise is less visible, then raising the crispening level to a high positive value, lets say +60 will increase the threshold at which detail correction is added, so signal changes will need to be bigger before detail correction is applied.
With a high positive number the image will look cleaner and less noisy, but you will loose some enhancement in textures and low contrast areas as these will no longer have detail correction applied to them. This can lead to a slightly muddy or textureless look to tress, grass, skin and fabric.
The real problem areas are the subtle textures and low contrast areas (circled in orange) where the true image detail is barely above the noise level. It’s very difficult to bring these out without increasing the appearance of noise. 
Unfortunately there is no clear answer to how to set the crispening level as it will depend on what you are shooting and how much noise you can tolerate. I tend to have crisping set between +10 and +30 for most things as I do tend to do a fair amount of grading work on my footage. When you grade noise is often the limiting factor as to how far you can push the image, so I like to keep noise under control as much as possible. For green screen and chroma key work I push crispening up to +40 to +60 as this helps me get a cleaner key, especially around subtle edges and hair.
If I am shooting exteriors and scenics with lots of foliage, grass etc then I will sometimes go down to -30 as this helps bring out the subtle textures in the leaves and plants, but this can make noise a little more pronounced, so it’s a trade off. And that’s what Crispening is all about, trading off subtle textures and detail against more visible noise. Ultimately only you can make the choice as to which is more important, but the Crispening level control gives you that choice.
Refreshing an old Mac Pro.
First of all – rest in peace Steve Jobs. A great visionary.
I’ve had my Intel Mac Pro since Apple first switched to Intel. So it’s a version 1.1 Mac Pro, or at least it was. Originally it had 2Gb of ram and 2 dual core CPU’s running at 2.33Ghz, so 4 cores in total. Over the years I’ve upgraded the Ram and last year I swapped out the CPU’s and now have 8 cores running at 2.4Ghz. It would be pretty straight forward to take it up to 8 cores at 3Ghz, but the faster Xeon processor chips are very expensive.
The biggest issue though has always been the Graphics cards. The problem being that the first and second gen Mac Pro’s have a 32 Bit EFI (the software that allows it to boot). The later Mac Pro’s have a 64 Bit EFI. Only a Graphics card that supports 32 Bit EFI will work in a 1.1 or 2.1 MacPro and the choices are very, very limited and non of the newer Mac Nvidia cards can be used so no CUDA or Mercury Engine with Adobe Premier unless you get the extremely expensive Mac Nvidia Quadro cards.
However for many years people have been putting together PC’s that will run OSX very well by booting up using the PC’s Bios and then loading a software version of the EFI on top, so that OSX thinks it’s installed on a real Mac. So if you can run a 64 Bit software EFI on a PC, what about using it on a Mac? After some research I discovered that this was possible and now my 1.1 Mac boots up and loads a software version of the 64 Bit EFI and will now allow me to use any Mac Graphics card. As it is still a real Mac underneath, all my software updates and everything else works completely as normal.
However it doesn’t stop there. As the software EFI is one written to run on any Intel based computer it has the ability to work with PC graphics cards. This means that the machine will work perfectly well with the PC version of any of the Mac Graphics cards. I’m currently using a PC Nvidia GTX285 which was half the price of the Mac version, yet I still get full CUDA/Mercury Engine acceleration under Premier. Next I’m going to try a PC ATI 6870 to see how that works with Avid and FCP.
So I’ve extended the life of my Mac Pro for another year or so. I do have a new IMac coming tomorrow with a 4 core i7 processor. It will be interesting to see how they compare. On paper the IMac should be about 20%-30% faster than my 5 year old MacPro.
The iMac upgrades are soooo much cheaper than the MacPro. For example 4x 1Gb Ram sticks for a MacPro cost around £100. I got 4x 4Gb of Ram for the iMac for the same price. An i7 4 core 3Ghz CPU costs around £300 while a comparable 4 core xeon costs at least double that. Plus of course the iMac itself is half the price. While it might not be all signing, all dancing and have 12 cores, it will be an improvement over my current machine which has served me very well so far. Perhaps when work picks up again, another MacPro will be on the cards.
Short Site Outage – Too Many Readers!
A few of you may have experienced a brief site outage today. My apologies for this. My web host turned off the domain without any notice due to my consumption of “excessive resources”! The main reason being the number of pages this site was having to churn out, on average in excess of 5,000 pages a day to just under 2,000 visitors. Anyway I now have some extra web caching in place which should significantly reduce the server load.
Using DSLR lenses on 3D rigs.
Just a quick note on a rather obscure subject. I do a lot of 3D work. Buying pairs of PL mount lenses for my F3’s is beyond my budget right now, so I hire in lenses when I need them. However for my own projects I use DSLR lenses, mainly Nikkors and Tokina’s. One thing that i have discovered is that many of the older manual Nikkors have a tendency to shift the image left and right when you focus. This then miss-aligns the rig. The more modern internal focussing lenses are much, much better in this respect with little or no shift at all. The only problem with the more modern IF lenses is that they often don’t have iris rings (so iris is adjusted with a MTF adapter) and the focus control often has a slipping clutch making repeatable focussing a little harder. So neither is perfect. For 3D applications I think the more modern IF lenses are preferable.
Cineroid HDSDI EVF Review.
I needed an external viewfinder for my F3 rig. I could have got either a Zacuto or Cineroid HDMI viewfinder, but I felt that HDSDI would be more useful. As the HDSDI Zacuto is not available just yet, I picked up one of the new metal bodied Cineroid HDSDI EVF’s (EVF-4MSS).
The viewfinder has the same 800 x 480 pixel 3.2″ screen as the HDMI version but in a robust metal body. There are threaded 1/4″ mounting holes on the top and bottom of the viewfinder. It is supplied with a generic battery compatible with Sony’s L series batteries and a tiny little charger.
So what’s it like. Well for a start it’s very solidly made. The body and the slide on part of the eyepiece is made from metal (some kind of hard anodised aluminium I think). The diopter adjuster is made out of plastic. On the rear of the body mine was fitted with an adapter for a Sony L series battery which has a short flying lead going to a high quality lemo connector for power. The battery adapter can be removed by unscrewing two small screws if you intend to power the finder from an external supply. The supply can be anywhere from 6 to 17 volts. There is also a pair of BNC’s for the loop through HDSDI in and out connections.
The eyepiece on the EVF flips up like most pro viewfinders, this allows you to see the screen directly, as an alternative you can slide the entire eyepiece assembly off completely, which turns the EVF into a tiny monitor. I have a slight issue with the slide off function as there is some light leakage along the top edge of the screen as a result. On a bright sunny day this is distracting as you can see it inside the finder. It’s easily solved with a small strip of electrical tape over the tiny gap, but you shouldn’t really need to do this. All Cineroid need to do is add a small lip to the top of the slide off assembly to fix this.
On powering up and using the finder for the first time I was pleasantly pleased. The screen is bright and clear and there is only the smallest amount of lag. When I showed the EVF to some of the visitors to the Sony booth at IBC there were many comments that this version has less lag than the HDMI version. My guess is that the HDMI processing in the camera plus the HDMI processing in the EVF adds up to a fair bit of a delay. This would appear to be much reduced with the HDSDI version.
Some people have complained that they can see the pixel structure of the screen in both the Cineroid and Zacuto EVF’s. I could just about make out the pixels, the screen appearing to have a slight texture, but in operation this has not caused me any issues. This EVF is a vast improvement over the EVF fitted to the back of the F3. Using either the Cineroid’s Peaking or 1:1 pixel mapping I can focus very accurately. Higher resolution would be nicer, but it is adequate as is. You have to consider that even the Sony HDVF20A that costs £3,000 only has around 600 lines of resolution. As well as peaking there are a number of other useful tools including the usual zebras. Some of the more unusual functions include a coloured clipping indicator and various false colour modes. I have to say that I have not been through all the different modes and functions yet. I’ve just been using it with peaking and zebras. You can have a full range of safe area overlays and there is the ability to work with anamorphic camera outputs, flip or mirror the picture. The peaking is adjustable and can be either white or red, I prefer red. A couple of different colours would be nice for when your shooting scenes that already have a lot of red in them. When you have it enabled (single button press) the up and down arrow buttons on the side of the EVF will adjust the peaking sensitivity up and down, so no need to go into the menu system.
Overall I am pleased with my Cineroid viewfinder. It does the job that I purchased it for and the price was quite reasonable (£799 + VAT). It’s compact and well constructed and looks like it will survive the inevitable knocks and bumps of everyday use.
PS. I was reminded by respected DoP Jody Eldred that the LCD panel in these (and many other) viewfinders is easily damaged if the sun starts shining into the eyepiece. The eyepiece acts as a magnifier and will focus the sun onto the LCD and burn it. The large size of the loupe on the Cineroid means that it doesn’t even need to be pointed directly at the sun for this to happen. So, when not in use, point the eyepiece down towards the ground, if your mount won’t allow you to do that easily, flip open the eyepiece. This is good practice with all monocular viewfinders. I’ve seen many scorched LCD’s and melted plastic interiors over the years.
Ultimate F3 ENG rig?
So, here’s what I am working on. This is a “work in progress” but I’m liking where it’s going. My aim is to create a truly useable kit for the F3 that will turn it into an ENG type camera. Now I’m not suggesting that the F3 is a good camera for news or that type of fast moving thing. But for documentaries it has a big place and the easier I can make it to use, the better. The rig is made up form all kinds of bits and pieces.
1: This is an old Canon J16x8x2 SD broadcast lens, which becomes a 20 to 320mm f4 zoom lens. It works OK, fine when wide but a little soft in the corners at the long end.
2: New metal body HDSDi Cineroid EVF attached with a custom bracket (5)
3: Genus GMB-P ENG camcorder adapter with 15mm bar support. This has the quick release wedge needed to work with the VCT-14 tripod plate.
4: My B4 to F3 adapter. Watch this space, in production very soon.
5: Custom made (by me) PMW-F3 ‘H” plate. This attaches to the two 1/4″ threads on the top of the camera body and gives you lots of 1/4″ threads along the entire length of both sides of the top of the F3. To this attaches a custom fully adjustable viewfinder mounting system.
6: Custom made shoulder mount. On production units this would be a little shorter, it’s a bit tall on the prototype. It features an adjustable soft shoulder pad and mounts for the cheese plate and VCT-14 adapter.
7: Genus cheese plate.
8: IDX V-Lock adapter plate. But you could also use an Anton Bauer plate.
9: DSM V-Lock battery (98Wh). Will run the rig for over 4 hours.
10: VCT-14 quick release plate.
The balance point for the rig is just slightly forward of the centre of the shoulder pad, so it’s really nice to handhold. A slightly bigger battery or a Convergent Design Gemini on the back would give near perfect balance.
So, what do you think, would you by this lot (excluding lens and EVF) as a kit? I’m looking to do a small run of kits, no idea of the price yet. More pictures below, click on the thumbnail for a high-res image.
Vinten Vision 100 Long Term Review.
I’m a long time Vinten user. My first true, pro tripod was a Vinten 5 with alloy legs that I purchased in 1989 (I think). 22 years on I still have that tripod and it is still perfectly useable. Since then I’ve been the very happy owner of a fabulous set of Vinten FibreTec legs (still have them, still love them) and a new model Vinten Vision 5AS. All of these have been excellent, reliable and virtually indestructible. I’ve taken them up into the Arctic where it’s been -36c. I’ve taken them to the Arizona desert, into Hurricanes, Sand Storms and all kinds of extreme weather. I’ve even used them stood waist deep in the sea (not really recommended). Anyway, I’m waffling… When I needed a bigger tripod to support my Hurricane 3D rig I obtained a Vinten Vision 100.
The Vision 100 is not a new model, but it has a reputation for being able to take a quite remarkable payload for it’s size. You see the Vision 100 head is not much bigger or heavier than my Vinten 5, yet it can take double the payload (20kg). This means that I can still pack it in to my luggage when I’m travelling without getting crippled by high excess baggage charges.
One of the features that has made it particularly useful for 3D is the digital counterbalance readout that tells you exactly where you are within the heads very generous and continuously adjustable counter balance range. When swapping between the 3D rig and a conventional camera I can simply dial in the numbers that I know give me optimum balance and off I go. One minute I can have a 3D rig with a pair of F3 etc, weighing over 15kg, then after a few turns of the counterbalance knob I can mount just a single F3 weighing only 3kg and the tripod works beautifully well with either payload. The continuously adjustable drag adjustments for pan and tilt are easy to set and if you want you can get a lot of drag. I find this very useful when shooting air shows with long lenses as I like to have quite a bit of drag to work against to keep things smooth. The smoothness of this head is lovely with no sudden slips or tight spots, it’s a pleasure to use.
The legs I have been using with the Vision 100 head are the Vinten 3 stage carbon fibre Pozi-Loc legs. Even though these are nice and light, they are remarkably stiff. I also have one of Vinten’s clever Spread Loc mid level spreaders. I first got one of these with my FibreTec legs and I’ve never looked back. You can lock the spreader at almost any spread position with a quick turn of the single locking knob. If you need to get the legs down low there is a little button on each arm of the spreader that allows the arm to extend to up to twice it’s original length. The end result is the ability to get very low, even when using standard legs.
Tripods are pretty boring things really. Not as glamourous as a camera, but an essential piece of kit anyway. Get the right tripod and it will last you many, many years, almost certainly out lasting those glamourous cameras. All the Vintens I have owned have been superb. The Vinten 100 is a solid, well made piece of kit that I don’t even really think about when I’m using it. And that is after all what you want, gear that just gets on with its job.
British Airways Ad. Stunning, stunning, stunning.
Every now and again a great commercial comes along. Sometimes the budgets available to commercial producers allow them to pull out all the stops and produce something quite special. The new BA ad is one of them. Called “Aviators” the full length ad takes us from the beginnings of air mail through to modern day British Airways taking in half a dozen different periods in just 90 seconds. Clearly they had a decent budget, there’s a large mix of live action with actors in period costume and period aircraft (filmed at Old Warden and Duxford amongst others). It looks gorgeous. Shot on film with possibly a little bit of DSLR footage. The only thing that spoils it is a bit of Jello Cam on the on-aircraft footage (maybe this was a DSLR?).
Well done to Frederick Planchon, Academy Films, the BBH creative team, MPC and all involved.
There is also a behind the scenes video: http://youtu.be/chjN5SerNeQ
Oh and one last thing, they almost messed up, leaving an aircraft with a Virgin registration in the Ad. See: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/09/25/ba-used-virgin-plane-in-20m-advertising-campaign-115875-23443836/