Hi all. I’m off to Austin Texas to run a workshop at Omega Broadcast on the 22nd and 23rd of May. This should be an informative and fun workshop where I will be teaching how to shoot and light interviews, green screen. How to set up cameras with picture profiles or scene files as well as looking at shooting log, raw and in 4K. For more info take a look at the Omega Broadcast Web Site.
Flicker, jaggies and moire in down converted 4K.
I kind of feel like we have been here once before. That’s probably because we have and I wrote about it first time around.
A typical video camera has a special filter in it called an optical low pass filter (OLPF). This filter deliberately reduces the contrast of fine details in the image that comes from the cameras lens and hits the sensor to prevent aliasing, jagged edges and moiré rainbow patterns. It’s a very important part of the cameras design. An HD camera will have a filter designed with a significant contrast reduction on parts of the image that approach the limits of HD resolution. So very fine HD details will be low contrast and slightly soft.
When you shoot with a 4K camera, the camera will have an OLPF that operates at 4K. So the camera captures lots of very fine, very high contrast HD information that would be filtered out by an HD OLPF. There are pro’s and con’s to this. It does mean that if you down convert from 4K or UHD to HD you will have an incredibly sharp image with lots of very fine high contrast detail. But that fine detail might cause aliasing or moiré if you are not careful.
The biggest issue will be with consumer or lower cost 4K cameras that add some image sharpening so that when viewed on a 4K screen the 4K footage really “pops”. When these sharpened and very crisp images are scaled down to HD the image can appear to flicker or “buzz”. This will be especially noticeable if the sharpening on the HD TV is set too high.
So what can you do? The most important thing is to include some form of anti-aliasing to the image when you down scale from 4K to HD. You do need to use a scaling process that will perform good quality pixel blending, image re-sampling or another form of anti-aliasing. A straight re-size will result in aliasing which can appear as either flicker, moire or a combination of both. Another alternative is to apply a 2 or 3 pixel blur to the 4K footage BEFORE re-sizing the image to HD. This seems a drastic measure but is very effective and has little impact on the sharpness of the final HD image. Also make sure that the sharpening on your TV is set reasonably low.
I previously wrote about this very same subject when HD cameras were being introduced and many people were using them for SD productions. The same issues occurred then. Here are the original articles:
Getting good SD from HD Part 1.
Getting good SD from HD Part 2.
Remember to take a look in the TECH NOTES for info like this. There’s a lot of information in the XDCAM-USER archives now.
Sensor sizes, where do the imperial sizes like 2/3″ or 4/3″ come from?
Video sensor size measurement originates from the first tube cameras where the size designation would have related to the outside diameter of the glass tube. The area of the face of the tube used to create the actual image would have been much smaller, typically about 2/3rds of the tubes outside diameter. So a 1″ tube would give a 2/3″ diameter active area, within which you would have a 4:3 frame with a 16mm diagonal.
An old 2/3″ Tube camera would have had a 4:3 active area of about 8.8mm x 6.6mm giving an 11mm diagonal. This 4:3 11mm diagonal is the size now used to denote a modern 2/3″ sensor. A 1/2″ sensor has a 8mm diagonal and a 1″ sensor a 16mm diagonal.
Yes, it’s confusing, but the same 2/3″ lenses as designed for tube cameras in the 1950’s can still be used today on a modern 2/3″ video camera and will give the same field of view today as they did back then. So the sizes have stuck, even though they have little relationship with the physical size of a modern sensor. A modern 2/3″ sensor is nowhere near 2/3 of an inch across the diagonal.
This is why some manufacturers are now using the term “1 inch type”, as this is the active area that would be the equivalent to the active area of an old 1″ diameter Vidicon/Saticon/Plumbicon Tube from the 1950’s.
For comparison:
1/3″ = 6mm diag.
1/2″ = 8mm
2/3″ = 11mm
1″ = 16mm
4/3″ = 22mm
A camera with a Super35mm sensor would be the equivalent of approx 35-40mm
APS-C would be approx 30mm
What is a Gamut or Color Space and why do I need to know about it?
Well I have set myself quite a challenge here as this is a tough one to describe and explain. Not so much perhaps because it’s difficult, but just because it’s hard to visualise, as you will see.
First of all the dictionary definition of Gamut is “The complete range or scope of something”.
In video terms what it means is normally the full range of colours and brightness that can be either captured or displayed.
I’m sure you have probably heard of the specification REC-709 before. Well REC-709, short for ITU-R Recommendation, Broadcast Television, number 709. This recommendation sets out the display of colours and brightness that a television set or monitor should be able to display. Note that it is a recommendation for display devices, not for cameras, it is a “display reference” and you might hear me talking about when things are “display referenced” ie meeting these display standards or “scene referenced” which would me shooting the light and colours in a scene as they really are, rather than what they will look like on a display.
Anyway…. Perhaps you have seen a chart or diagram that looks like the one below before.
Now this shows several things. The big outer oval shape is what is considered to be the equivalent to what we can see with our own eyes. Within that range are triangles that represent the boundaries of different colour gamuts or colour ranges. The grey coloured triangle for example is REC-709.
Something useful to know is that the 3 corners of each of the triangles are whats referred to as the “primaries”. You will hear this term a lot when people talk about colour spaces because if you know where the primaries (corners) are, by joining them together you can find the size of the colour space or Gamut and what the colour response will be.
Look closely at the chart. Look at the shades of red, green or blue shown at the primaries for the REC-709 triangle. Now compare these with the shades shown at the primaries for the much larger F65 and F55 primaries. Is there much difference? Well no, not really. Can you figure out why there is so little difference?
Think about it for a moment, what type of display device are you looking at this chart on? It’s most likely a computer display of some kind and the Gamut of most computer displays is the same size as that of REC-709. So given that the display device your looking at the chart on can’t actually show any of the extended colours outside of the grey triangle anyway, is it really any surprise that you can’t see much of a difference between the 709 primaries and the F65 and F55 primaries. That’s the problems with charts like this, they don’t really tell you everything that’s going on. It does however tell us some things. Lets have a look at another chart:
This chart is similar to the first one we looked at, but without the pretty colours. Blue is bottom left, Red is to the right and green top left.
What we are interested in here is the relationship between the different colour space triangles. Using the REC-709 triangle as our reference (as that’s the type of display most TV and video productions will be shown on) look at how S-Gamut and S-Gamut3 is much larger than 709. So S-Gamut will be able to record deeper, richer colours than 709 can ever hope to show. In addition, also note how S-Gamut isn’t just a bigger triangle, but it’s also twisted and distorted relative to 709. This is really important.
You may also want to refer to the top diagram as well as I do my best to explain this. The center of the overall gamut is white. As you draw a line out from the center towards the colour spaces primary the colour becomes more saturated (vivid). The position of the primary determines the exact hue or tone represented. Lets just consider green for the moment and lets pretend we are shooting a shot with 3 green apples. These apples have different amounts of green. The most vivid of the 3 apples has 8/10ths of what we can possibly see, the middle one 6/10ths and the least colourful one 4/10ths. The image below represents what the apples would look like to us if we saw them with our eyes.
If we were shooting with a camera designed to match the 709 display specification, which is often a good idea as we want the colours to look right on the TV, the the greenest, deepest green we can capture is the 709 green primary. lets consider the 709 green primary to be 6/10ths with 10/10ths being the greenest thing a human being can see. 6/10ths green will be recorded at our peak green recording level so that when we play back on a 709 TV it will display the greenest the most intense green that the display panel is capable of. So if we shoot the apples with a 709 compatible camera, 6/10ths green will be recorded at 100% as this is the richest green we can record (these are not real levels, I’m just using them to illustrate the principles involved) and this below is what the apples would look like on the TV screen.
So that’s rec-709, our 6/10ths green apple recorded at 100%. Everything above 6/10 will also be 100% so the 8/10th and 6/10ths green apples will look more or less the same.
What happens then if we record with a bigger Gamut. Lets say that the green primary for S-Gamut is 8/10ths of visible green. Now when recording this more vibrant 8/10ths green in S-Gamut it will be recorded at 100% because this is the most vibrant green that S-Gamut can record and everything less than 8/10 will be recorded at a lower percentage.
But what happens if we play back S-Gamut on a 709 display? Well when the 709 display sees that 100% signal it will show 6/10ths green, a paler less vibrant shade of green than the 8/10ths shade the camera captured because 6/10ths is the most vibrant green the display is capable of. All of our colours will be paler and less rich than they should be.
So that’s the first issue when shooting with a larger colour Gamut than the Gamut of the display device, the saturation will be incorrect, a dark green apple will be pale green. OK, that doesn’t sound like too big a problem, why don’t we just boost the saturation of the image in post production? Well if the display is already showing our 100% green S-Gamut signal at the maximum it can show (6/10ths for Rec-709) then boosting the saturation won’t help colours that are already at the limit of what the display can show simply because it isn’t capable of showing them any greener than they already look. Boosting the saturation will make those colours not at the limit of the display technology richer, but those already at the limit won’t get any more colourful. So as we boost the saturation any pale green apples become greener while the deep green apples stay the same so we loose colour contrast between the pale and deep green apples. The end result is an image that doesn’t really look any different that it would have done if shot in Rec-709.
But, it’s even worse that just a difference to the saturation. Look at the triangles again and compare 709 with S-Gamut. Look at how much more green there is within the S-Gamut colour soace than the 709 colour space compared to red or blue. So what do you think will happen if we try to take that S-Gamut range and squeeze it in to the 709 range? Well there will be a distinct colour shift towards green as we have a greater percentage of green in S-Gamut than we should have in Rec-709 and that will generate a noticeable colour shift and the skewing of colours.
This is where Sony have been very clever with S-Gamut3. If you do take S-Gamut and squeeze it in to 709 then you will see a colour shift (as well as the saturation shift discussed earlier). But with S-Gamut3 Sony have altered the colour sampling within the colour space so that there is a better match between 709 and S-Gamut3. This means that when you squeeze S-Gamut3 into 709 there is virtually no colour shift. However S-Gamut3 is still a very big colour space so to correctly use it in a 709 environment you really need to use a Look Up Table (LUT) to re-map it into the smaller space without an appreciable saturation loss, mapping the colours in such a way that a dark green apple will still look darker green than a light green apple but keeping within the boundaries of what a 709 display can show.
Taking this one step further, realising that there are very few, if any display devices that can actually show a gamut as large as S-Gamut or S-Gamut3, Sony have developed a smaller Gamut known as S-Gamut3.cine that is a subset of S-Gamut3.
The benefit of this smaller gamut is that the red green and blue ratios are very close to 709. If you look at the triangles you can see that S-Gamut3.cine is more or less just a larger version of the 709 triangle. This means that colours shifts are almost totally eliminated making this gammut much easier to work with in post production. It’s still a large gamut, bigger than the DCI-P3 specification for digital cinema, so it still has a bigger colour range than we can ever normally hope to see, but as it is better aligned to both P3 and rec-709 colourists will find it much easier to work with. For productions that will end up as DCI-P3 a slight saturation boost is all that will be needed in many cases.
So as you can see, having a huge Gamut may not always be beneficial as often we don’t have any way to show it and simply adding more saturation to a seemingly de-saturated big gamut image may actually reduce the colour contrast as our already fully saturated objects, limited by what a 709 display can show, can’t get any more saturated. In addition a gamut such as S-Gamut that has a very different ratio of R, G and B to that of 709 will introduce colour shifts if it isn’t correctly re-mapped. This is why Sony developed S-Gamut3.cine, a big but not excessively large colour space that lines up well with both DCI-P3 and Rec-709 and is thus easier to handle in post production.
Look in to my eye’s….Not up my nose!
Bit of a rant this I’m afraid, but since the decline of the traditional shoulder mount camera there has been an annoying (to me at least) shift of the standard shot shooting angle from eye height to chest hight. The upshot of this is that once upon a time the majority of shots looked directly into the talents eyes from a normal eye level, so it mimicked what most of us see with our own eyes, day in day out. But now with more and more cameras being used hand-held at chest or even waist height a very large percentage of shots end up looking up peoples noses rather than straight into their faces.
Don’t get me wrong, when the shot benefits for creative reasons from being shot at a low angle I have no objections whatsoever. But I really don’t like looking up someones nose just because its harder to hold the camera at eye level. What’s more I’m starting to see this phenomenon creep in to ever more shots as tripods get used at lower levels because camera operators are used to, or find it easier to look down at their LCD screens.
Camera gimbals and stabilisers are also helping this trend as the camera is often used hung below the handles, handles held at chest height, so now we have cameras at waist level or even groin level. One of the great things about the original stedicam is that the camera ended up at around eye level, so during a walking-talking shot you had the impression that you were walking with the subject, not grovelling along on your hands and knees.
So, please everyone, consider this when your setting up your shots, which looks better, eye level or lower than eye level and then adjust your shooting height to get the best shot. Consider getting a monopod to help you hand hold your camera a bit higher or one of the many other contraptions available today that will help you support your camera at eye level.
When To Use The 2K Optical Low Pass Filter for the PMW-F5 and PMW-F55
A little while back I took the opportunity to run some tests during the CML camera assessments at UWE Bristol with the Sony PMW-F55 and both the 4K and 2K Optical Low Pass Filters. The results were largely as expected, but I didn’t have the time until now to share those results, so here they are.
I shot two different series of test shots. The first series are of a resolution test chart, the second set of the model that was on set, in order to asses the impact on skin tones etc. It should be noted that the resolution chart did not have patterns that can show 4K resolution, really what I was looking for was aliasing and other image undesirable artefacts.
What’s the 2K OLPF filter for?
When the PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 are shooting at high speeds above 70fps the camera sensor is read as a 2K sensor instead of the normal 4K. There are two ways that this can occur. 2K Full Sensor Scan and Center Crop 2K.
Full Scan 2K uses the entire sensor but now the sensor is read as a 2K sensor instead of a 4K sensor. The camera is fitted with a 4K optical low pass filter (OLPF) at the factory. However when shooting using 2K full scan the 4K filter is ineffective and needs to be replaced with a 2K OLPF. Fortunately Sony made the OLPF on the F5/F55 interchangeable and an optional 2K filter can be purchased from Sony. It takes just a couple of minutes to swap the filters.
The 2K OLPF is also required when shooting in 2K raw when the Sensor Scan in the cameras “Base Settings” is set to 2K Full Frame (2KFF).
Another possible application for the 2K OLPF is to soften the pictures a bit when shooting in 4K. If you find the 4K images with the 4K OLPF too sharp you can use the 2K OLPF to provide a softer, creamier look. Unlike a soft effect filter in front of the camera lens a filter behind the lens is not effected by changes in aperture of focal length, so the results are highly consistent.
On to the tests.
Click on any of the images to enlarge them and see the full size 4K images. NOTE THAT YOU MAY SEE ALIASING THAT ISN”T IN THE TRUE IMAGE WHEN VIEWING A SCALED IMAGE ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN, SO PLEASE VIEW WITH 1:1 PIXELS.
The first test was to see what happens when you shoot using 2K Full Frame with the standard 4K filter. Really there is no surprise here. Because the factory fitted 4K OLPF is ineffective at 2K you will get a lot of aliasing and moiré as can be seen by the rainbow patterns on the test chart.
So what happens if you swap the 4K OLPF for the 2K OLPF while shooting in 2K Full Frame? Well all the unwanted aliasing simply goes away and you have a nice artefact free image.
So it’s easy enough to see that if you want to shoot 2K Full Frame, whether for slow motion or for 2K raw you really do need the 2K OLPF option.
But what about when shooting 4K Full Frame, how does the OLPF effect the sharpness of the image. Below are both the full frame, frame grabs plus a couple of crops of the girl so you can see how skin tones are effected.
Notice how the shot done with the 2K OLPF is noticeably softer, the texture in her hair is softer, her skin looks smoother, yet the difference between the two images is not really that great. The 2K OLPF does not excessively blur the image, but it does give it a pleasing softness. This could be beneficial for cosmetics or fashion shoots, dream sequences etc. However it is also possible to soften footage in post production to produce a similar effect. Below are the full frame originals if you want to see the entire shot.
One thing that you definitely don’t want to do is to accidentally use the 2K OLPF when you are shooting in any of the center scan modes. Remember that in center scan mode the sensor is still in effect a 4K sensor, just now you are only reading out a smaller 2K section from the center of the 4K sensor. As a result the 4K OLPF is still optimum. Below are some further crops from the whole image just shown the center of the test chart. Starting with 4K full frame scan using the 4K OLPF, which is beautifully sharp and clear.
Next is with the 4K OLPF in 2K crop mode. The lens was changed to give a similar field of view.
It’s not really that surprising that the image is a little softer, the first image is part of a 4K image while this is from a 2K image, so it is lower resolution. There is some coloured moiré in this image, probably a result of changing the the lens, perhaps this lens is slightly sharper than the original lens so has greater resolving power. It is almost impossible to entirely eliminate coloured moiré with a bayer sensor and a chart like this will show it up, it’s a very tough test for a sensor. But compare this to a similar section of the shot done with the 4K OLPF with the camera shooting in 2K full frame scan mode and you can see that actually the moiré isn’t actually all that bad. In most real world applications you are not going to see the aliasing above unless you have a very very fine, in focus, repeating pattern similar to the one on the chart:
But what about using the 2K OLPF in 2K center scan mode, well take a look at how soft the image is. It just looks completely blurred and soft.
You really don’t want to shoot like this your pictures will look very soft indeed.
So there you have it. The 2K OLPF really is needed if you want to avoid heavy aliasing and moiré when shooting in any of the 2K Full Scan modes. You can also use it if you want to soften your 4K images a little for a smoother creamier look. But you definately don’t want to use the 2K OLPF in combination with any of the sensor center scan modes.
PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 Quick Reference Guide.
Here is the latest version of my PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 quick reference PDF guide. This will be updated and exapnded on a regular basis so please bookmark this page: http://www.xdcam-user.com/2014/04/pmw-f5-and-pmw…eference-guide/ so you can come back to download the latest version.
Please do let me know of any errors or omissions and anything else you would like to see added. Feel free to share and distribute the document, but note that a lot of work has gone into this and it is copyright, so hand it out, give it away, but don’t sell it and don’t remove the copyright notices or links.
Here it is: F5-F55-quick-reference-guide (updated 20th August 1014 V8.1) click on the link to see the PDF.
Vocas PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 Shoulder Rig. Really Nice Stuff.
I’ve been using various shoulder mounts for my F5 over the last year. They have all worked well for me. But at CabSat in Dubai I was lent a Vocas shoulder mount and handles to use with one of the F55’s I was using on the Sony booth.
Now, I’ve come across Vocas many, many times before, they are not new players in this arena and thier products have always looked to be well thought out and well made, but when I put the F55 rig on my shoulder and my hands wrapped around the beautifully carved wooden handles I just fell in love with it. When you use a camera day-in, day-out, how it feels in your hands or on your shoulder is really important and it’s amazing how a great shoulder rig can make using a camera a much more enjoyable experience. A bad rig will make using the camera a miserable chore.
So what is it about the Vocas rig I like so much? First of all it’s a fully modular system so you can buy just the bits you want or need. Many of the parts will work with other systems. Initially I just got the shoulder mount and hand grips, but after using these for a short while I realised I also wanted to replace the existing top plate and somewhat uncomfortable carry handle that I had been using with the Vocas one, so I added the top cheese plate and carry handle to my rig this week.
The thing that got my attention when I borrowed the rig back in March was the comfort of the handles. The carved wooden hand grips were developed in association with Cam-A-Lot, one of the larger high end cinematography rental houses in Europe. So they know their stuff and know what camera operators want. The design is simple but beautifully executed, a carefully shaped handgrip with an Arri style rosette. The top of the grip has a notch/extension that your thumb wraps around making your grip really secure, this won’t slip out of your hands by mistake. You don’t have to hang on to these handles, your grip is secure even with very light pressure. Your fingers wrap around smooth grooves in the front of the grip and it’s hard to explain, but it just “feels right” and wood is much nicer to hold than plastic or rubber (Vocas also make leather hand grips).
The hand grips are then attached to some extension arms and these arms then attach to the base plate. Again the design of the arms is really simple, but sometimes simple is really effective and these arms are really really light, yet very, very stiff, the quality and finish of the alloy used is excellent. You can join any Vocas arm to any other Vocas arm to create different angles and lengths and there is a range of different arms of various lengths and offsets to choose from. I’ve ended up with one short straight arm and one longer offset arm. Using these two arms I can configure the rig several ways.
Using just the short arm I can place the right hand grip up alongside the lens for a very secure and very comfortable single handed ENG style shooting rig. There is no need for the strap that you have on the hand grip of an ENG lens. The wooden grips are so easy to grasp and so secure that you just don’t need that extra strap around the back of your hand. I could use the longer offset arm, mounted on the right side and offset to the left to place the hand grip under the lens for an alternative single handed rig.
By using the short arm on the right, angled down and the longer offset arm on the right angled down I can create a two handed rig. One thing I did find is that if you mount the single arm sections that I have on the rosettes on the shoulder mount the handles are quite close to your body. If you prefer your hand grips a little further away from your body you have a couple of options. Either double up on the arms joining two together to make a longer articulated arm, or do as I did and add the 15mm rail bracket that has a rosette at each end to mount the handles from the rods (Vocas also do a 19mm system). The rail bracket has a very neat quick release catch, so it’s a breeze to fit.
But what about the shoulder mount that all this is hanging from? The one I have is the Vocas standard PMW-F5 and F55 base plate. Now, this doesn’t look anything special, but looks can be deceiving. This very comfortable base plate weighs only 600g. That’s quite a lot lighter than my previous base plates and lighter than the Sony equivalent. It’s a VCT-14 compatible plate so snaps in and out of the very common Sony quick release plate quickly and easily. If you don’t want VCT-14 compatibility the silver part with the VCT wedge in the picture above can be replaced with a flat plate for mounting directly on to tripods or other mounting systems.
The base plate can be slid forwards and backwards relative to the camera body to help you achieve perfect balance. The mounting screws run in a slot with deep shoulders that make the plate very ridged and secure. The comfortable soft shoulder pad can also be moved forwards and backwards within the base plate giving you further flexibility. On the sides of the base plate are a pair of Arri style rosettes and at both the front and rear there are holes for the usual 15mm rods.
Moving on to the top of the camera….. The comfort of the carry handle is so important, especially when the camera is rigged up with weighty accessories and heavy batteries. The last thing you want is blisters on your hands from a bad handle. So after experiencing the comfort of the hand grips I decided to add the Vocas top cheese plate and handle.
The handle has a very nice wooden grip insert which makes the camera very comfortable to carry. You also get a pair of posts to take a standard Sony shoulder strap. Oh Joy! Sony take note: please include provision for a shoulder strap on all your cameras, they are very useful! The top cheese plate is well… a cheese plate with lots of mounting holes for all your accessories. It’s very slightly raised from the top of the camera body to avoid inhibiting any cooling of the camera. The handle takes a mounting bush for the F5/F55 viewfinder that can be placed either at the front of the handle or on the rear. This is handy for film style shooting from behind the camera rather than to the side. You can also use a pair of 15mm rods attached to the handle that run above your lens if you need to mount a Matte Box from above or add extra items like follow focus motors. Integrated into the handle is a pair of cold shoes for accessories such as a camera light. If you have a very heavy lens, like perhaps the new Canon 17-120mm or a Cabrio then the handle can be mounted facing forwards to get better balance.
The last part of the kit is the optional side cheese plate. This serves two purposes. The main one for me is to protect the rather vulnerable viewfinder connector that sticks straight out from the side of the camera body. With a list price of just 95 Euros, this is a really wise investment (if you don’t use a cheese plate etc why not get one of my plastic viewfinder connector protectors that I sell on ebay). The other purpose is to provide yet more 1/4″ threaded mounting points on the side of the camera. I think it also looks cool! A small observation is that the rather flimsy connector still protrudes beyond the cheese plate by about 15mm, so bash it into a door frame walking through the door way and you could still damage the end of the connector. So I’m going to add a 1/4″ bolt to one of the threaded holes in front of the connector. This will stick out a bit and further protect the connector from damage.
So while a shoulder rig might not be the most interesting part of your camera kit, it is one of the most important. It’s what connects you to your camera, or what connects your camera to your tripod. If it isn’t comfortable, your camera will feel awkward. A bad rig might compromise your shots or shooting style, so getting the right rig is important and I can highly recommend Vocas as a supplier of shoulder rigs and associated support equipment. If you get the opportunity, do try the wooden hand grips. They are a bit more expensive than most plastic or rubber based hand grips, but they are just so nice to hold. Using this rig is a delight, I love my PMW-F5 and this rig makes it very easy and comfortable to use.
FYI. The Matte Box is one of the new Alphatron Matte Boxes. A review of which will be on-line very soon. It’s nice! The follow focus is an Alphatron ProPull, a great little compact follow focus with adjustable end stops for fast focus pulls. The lens is a Samyang Cine Prime. Based on a DSLR lens but with pitch gears and smooth aperture adjustment. Great image quality and T1.5.
Alister’s NAB Round Up.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to spend a lot of time walking the floor at NAB. If you haven’t been, the venue and the event are huge. It would take days to go around and see everything. I was at NAB shooting some video’s for Sony Europe and that kept me busy, so I only got to see a few things away from the Sony booth. I’ll come back to the Sony stuff later.
BlackMagic and AJA cameras.
Lots of talk about these. I didn’t get to see the BlackMagic cameras so I can’t really comment on these. I have read a lot of negative comments about the size and weight of the BM Ursa. I did get to see the AJA Cion. It certainly looks the part and the design and ergonomics look pretty sound. But when I was over on the AJA booth the camera was shooting a couple of actors dressed in 1920’s clothes. The female actress was pretending to smoke a cigarette. Every time she brought her hand up to her face the back of her hand completely over exposed turning into a blobby white highlight. Not nice. Now this is a prototype camera, so maybe this will be sorted before release. AJA, like BlackMagic claim 12 stops of dynamic range for their cameras. I wasn’t seeing this at NAB.
Going forwards dynamic range is going to be just as important as high resolution. For a start being able to capture a greater dynamic range gives you more to play with in post and helps give pleasing highlights, even with today’s restricted range 709 based TV’s and monitors. But Dolby has developed Dolby Vision which brings images with a 100 times greater dynamic range to TV screens. Technicolor has also developed a system of it’s own a they claim is even better. These new technologies when combined with 4K will produce a viewing experience the likes of which we haven’t seen before. So it’s not just resolution that’s important but also dynamic range and 12 stops, whilst good isn’t really in the same league as cameras like the Alexa, F65, F55 which can all manage 14 stops or more.
Most of the cameras that I use rely on V-Mount batteries. I have been using batteries from various manufacturers and to be honest they have all worked well and without issue. One brand that I use is Dynacore. Dynacore are a Chinese manufacturer that specialise in batteries and lighting for broadcast. They had some interesting new batteries at NAB. First off it the one pictured to the left. This is a V-Mount or AB Gold mount battery with an integrated charger. It also has a D-Tap output as well as a 5v USB output. The D-Tap is great for powering lights and other 12v accessories and the 5V USB out can be used to power or charge a phone or tablet. With so many cameras now including control over WiFi, having that 5V output is very handy.
Another interesting Dynacore Battery is this one, the DS-U77B. This is a replacement for the Sony BPU series batteries as used on everything from the EX1 to the new PMW-300. I asked if this will work on the PMW-300 and was told yes, no problem. The 77Wh battery includes a D-Tap output and a 5V USB output making it very versatile, plus the higher capacity than the Sony BP-U60 (56Wh) means it will run your camera for longer.
Dynacore also make lights and had some nice 1×1 LED panels with pretty good CRI’s on show along with a LED Fresnel. The panels I saw were bi-color and DMX controllable. A test with a digital CRI meter returned an average CRI of 96 which is pretty good and pictures I took of objects illuminated by the lights look reasonably well balanced.
Another Dynacore light that caught my eye was this large Fresnel LED. The CRI is not as good as the 1×1 panels, coming in around 90 – 91, but I didn’t observe any nasty hue’s or color casts. It would be interesting to try this light in anger and see how it really performs in practice.
Whilst on the subject of lights Alphatron had a nice new Ledpro ES96 camera Light. The example on show at NAB was a pre-production unit, production should start soon. What’s interesting about this light is that it uses the same LED’s as the very nice and very bright Cineroid LM400 LED light. Shining it around the hall at NAB showed the Alphatron/LedPro light to be extremely bright for it’s size and the color purity looked to be excellent for an LED. As always Alphatron like to try to offer good value and I was assured that this LED light will be extremely competitively priced. On the back there are brightness and color controls as well as a socket for external power. Also on the Alphatron booth was their new Matte Box, based on a Vocas design this is a really nice Matte Box. I have a sample for review and will be writing about this soon.
Talking about Vocas, they had some new bit’s and pieces including a new shoulder mount for the Sony F5 and F55 cameras. This new base plate is extremely light. A lot of thought has clearly gone into the design. It looks pretty simple, but the design allows it to be slid forward and back for balance and then the shoulder pad can be moved forward and back within the shoulder mount. I’ll be writing a more in depth review of this very soon.
So what about Sony?
Lots of fuss around the Sony A7S. This is a new version of the already popular and highly regarded Sony A7 stills camera. Some big difference though. The A7S has a sensor better suited to video. It “only” has 12 megapixels compared to the 24 million or more found on most DSLR’s. The benefit being that as this is a full frame sensor the pixels are huge and you only need 8.8 Million pixels for 4K. Big pixels means great sensitivity and excellent dynamic range. The A7S has incredible low light performance with the ISO going almost all the way up to almost 1/2 a million (409,600 ISO to be precise). As well as low light sensitivity and high dynamic range the A7R can also output 4K video over micro HDMI. So this means that with a 4K capable recorder like the new Atomos Shogun or perhaps the Convergent Design Odyssey (if they enable the HDMI as a 4K input) you can use this camera to shoot 4K. Internally the camera records very high quality HD using XAVC-S or Mpeg4. With no line or pixel skipping the video from this pocket sized camera are really very good. To take advantage of the large dynamic range the A7S even has Sony’s SLog2 gamma curve. It’s a full frame sensor that uses Sony’s E-Mount. You can still use your older non full frame E-Mount lenses from the NEX range or your FS100/FS700, the camera reverts to a crop frame mode when you do this. If you want to know more about the A7S then take a look at Den Lennie’s in depth review and videos. It’s all very impressive. http://www.fstopacademy.com/blog/sony-alpha-7s-first-hands-on-shooting-review/
As well as the A7S Sony were also showing a new E-Mount power zoom lens. The 28-135mm lens looks very nice, but the specs are a bit vague and subject to change. There will be a firmware update later in the year for FS700 owners so that these new lenses can be used on the FS700. In addition the firmware update will auto-correct for geometric distortions and shading present in may E-Mount lenses, so a nice little update coming soon.
Another new camera from Sony is the PXW-X180.
The X180 is a 1/3″ camera that replaces not only the XDCAM PMW-150 but also the NXCAM NX5. The “X” in the X180 signifies that the camera also has Sony’s new XAVC codec. So, the X180 includes a multitude of codecs starting with standard definition DVCAM going up to HD with NXCAM AVCHD then on to XDCAM and finally XAVC. That’s an impressive list! In order to record all these different codecs there are also a number of different recording media options. The camera can use SD cards, SxS cards or XQD cards.
There are two SxS sized card slots and adapters are used for the other cards. An SD card adapter will be included in the box, so NXCAM owners moving up to this camera will be good to go from day 1. The two card slots can be independently controlled, so you can use the record button on the handgrip to trigger record on one slot and the record button on the handle for the other. Dual recording can be used for safety or to shoot say one long clip for a conference with shorter highlights clips for fast turn-around editing.
As well as all the neat recording features the X180 has an amazing 25x zoom lens! From very wide to very long this camera can do it all and with optical stabilisation. The cool features don’t stop there either. On the top of the handle there is a MI hot shoe. We have seen this shoe before on many consumer cameras, but the version on the X180 will allow you to connect many accessories including radio mics directly to the camera. If you have one of Sony’s new UWP-D radio mics the receiver will slide into a simple hot shoe which will power the mic as well as routing audio into the camera without wires or cables. Very neat. All in all the PXW-X180 is a very interesting camera, I hope to get one soon to review.
The PDW-850 was a bit of a surprise!
I wasn’t really expecting to see a new optical disc camcorder, but here it is the PDW-850. On the outside this doesn’t look a lot different to the older PDW-700 and F800 cameras, but under the skin there are some very useful updates. For a start power consumption has been reduced to 41W in record and 37w in standby giving a useful extension to operating times when battery powered. In addition the weight has been reduced to 4.2Kg. New 2/3″ CCD sensors are used so picture quality may be a little better. The small info LCD on the side of the camera has gone (to save weight and power) and the LCD screen has been upgraded with a higher resolution panel that is quite a big improvement over the one used on the 700 and F800.
And For Sony’s PMW-F5 and PMW-F55?
Just before NAB Sony announced a codec upgrade option for the PMW-F5 and F55. This new board will add both Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD. AT the show itself Sony revealed a very interesting shoulder kit for the cameras that converts them into fully fledged ENG camera.
This rig is a lot more than just a fancy shoulder mount. At the front it adds a number of extra assignable buttons as well as familiar switches for white balance camera/bars select and gain. Under the front of the camera it adds a shutter select switch and white balance switch along with a rotary gain control for audio.
At the back on the side there are more audio controls including 4 knobs to set the audio levels across 4 tracks. On the very rear, just where they would be on a XDCAM shoulder camera are a pair of XLR audio inputs, a 5 pin XLR out and a headphone socket. On the right side of the mount at the front there is a 5 pin XLR input for the on-camera mic. At the top of the camera there is a new much longer handle that includes posts for a carry strap (hooray). It should be noted that the mount shown at the show was an early prototype so the finished product may be a little different/improved.
New Canon ENG style cinema lens.
I want one! What more can I say. The Fujinon Cabrios are very nice but on paper at least this looks like it’s going to be great. Designed for 4K and super 35mm sensors this is a 7x zoom (compared to the 4.7x of the 19-90mm Cabrio) with a really useful range, 17-120mm, nice and wide, reasonably long. It has a servo hand grip for smooth power zooms and is not too big (although it is heavier than most 2/3″ B4 zooms). At T2.95 it’s not too slow either, but the aperture does ramp at the long end of the lens down to T3.9. I guess this is a small price to pay for a compact lens with such a large zoom ratio. Must take a look at NAB. Now, I wonder how much this beauty is going to cost? UPDATE: Well it appears that the price will be approx $33K/£20K, which is very good value compared to a Cabrio. It’s still a bit steep for me to buy, but it’s certainly one to consider on a rental basis. That’s a pretty good price, if it was £14K then I’d be seriously tempted to lay down some cash.
Follow this link to go to Canon’s press release and more information.