Hi Guys. It has been pointed out to me (Thanks Nate) that most people don’t have the software tools to work with linear raw data correctly. The previous F55 sample frames that I provided were linear DPX. So, here’s another couple of DPX files, this time converted from the linear raw of the F55 to log DPX. These should be much easier to work with, especially the 16 bit DPX files (use the free version of Resolve for great results). Here’s the link to the log DPX files. The link will expire on January 31st.

Here are a couple of single DPX frames for you to play with. Created by converting the Sony linear raw frames to linear DPX using the Sony raw viewer application. I have provided a 10 bit and 16 bit DPX frame. If you can try the 16 bit frame, it has incredible flexibility. The 10 bit DPX can be opened in most recent versions Photoshop. Here’s the link. The link will expire on the 31st of January. SEE ALSO THESE CLIPS which are Log DPX. You will find it easier to work with the log DPX files in most grading packages without the appropriate importer/plugin for the Sony Linear Raw files.

Want to learn more about working with 4K using Sony’s F5 or F55 cameras? Why not join me at a workshop being run by Advanced Media of Dubai where we will be fully exploring these remarkable new cameras from Sony and how to get the most from them. We will look at how to set them up, how to shoot with them and then how to handle you material in post production. We are still working out the final details of the event, but we may also have an F65 to play with too. I’ll also be in Dubai for the CabSat trade show a week later.

I was lucky enough to go out and play with an F55 while in Singapore. There was no pressure, nothing specific to shoot, just play time. This meant I could try different frame rates, different frame sizes, basically I could experiment. I also had the use of one of the lovely (but very heavy) Fujinon Cabrio 19-90mm PL mount servo zooms. The F55 was configured with the LCD EVF (my choice, I could have used the OLED) R5 recorder and a couple of Olivine batteries. The camera was one of Sony’s early pre production models, so while most things did work there were some modes and functions that couldn’t be used together that will be available on the production cameras. Most of the time I shot at 25p recording 1920×1080 XAVC HD with S-Log2 in camera and 4K raw in the RAW.  I did also shoot quite a bit of 4K XAVC at 25p and 4K raw at 50p.

The cameras menu system is well laid out and clear and easy to use. It’s different to the menu system used on the F3 and EX cameras, it’s actually much closer to the menu system used by the F65. The cameras key functions, things like ISO, shutter speed and white balanced are controlled using the 6 hot keys arranged around the camera function LCD on the left of the camera (Sony refer to these buttons as “switches” in the manual which is a little confusing). So much of the time there is no need to go in to the main menu. One thing I did miss was a dedicated white balance switch. There is a hot key button that allows you to choose between presets for tungsten, daylight or your own numerical colour temperature (just dial in the temp you want). But to do a white balance with a grey card, you have to go in to the menu and set the white balance from within the menu. Maybe on the production cameras you will be able to assign this to one of the assignable buttons. Of course with raw your not really changing the white balance in the traditional sense. What your changing is the white balance of the monitoring output and the white balance settings attached to the raw clips metadata.

The camera is simple to operate once you have it in the record mode you want. But the multitude of modes, frame sizes, frame rates, compressed, codecs and raw, EI or non-EI will I’m sure confuse some people. Currently the camera has to be in some quite specific modes in order to be able to make use of the R5 recorder for raw recording. If the camera is in the wrong mode the R5 doesn’t even come online. But this is a pre production camera with early firmware so I’m sure the range of modes that can be used together will increase. As it wasn’t possible to shoot 4K XAVC S-Log internally and 4K raw on the R5 at the same time, for most of the filming I did I shot internally in HD using XAVC and S-Log2 while recording 4K raw on the R5. I did also take some time to shoot similar shots in 4K XAVC to compare to the raw footage.

In the viewfinder you get the usual comprehensive information about the camera setup including the remaining record time on both the SxS cards and AXS card in the R5. The nice thing about the R5 is that it really does become a part of the camera and is controlled fully by the camera unlike many off-board recorders where you have to setup the recorder separately from the camera. The R5 has no buttons or switches on it’s exterior, just a couple of status LED’s, it’s all controlled from the F55’s menu.

VIEWING YOUR FOOTAGE.

For viewing and managing the raw footage Sony have a clip viewer application (which will be supplied with the camera or for free download) which is essentially the same as the F65 raw viewer. There are Mac and PC versions. Being realistic your going to need a fast computer with USB3 to be able to use this properly. I’ve just upgraded to a new Retina MacBook pro in anticipation of the arrival of my own F5. Transferring 250GB of raw data from the AXS card to a 2.5″ USB3 hard drive took about an hour. Thats not even real time. 250GB is about 30 mins of footage, some of which was 50p.

Of course 2.5″ hard drives are not the fastest of drives so I’m sure I will be able to speed this transfer process up, probably to just a little faster than real time. But even so, be prepared for a slower workflow when working with 4K raw than perhaps your used to right now with conventional HD cameras. The Raw Viewer software allows you to view and playback clips using different gamma curves and lookup tables, as well as applying a number of image adjustments and corrections. You can also use it to convert the raw files to DPX files, either with or without adjustments such as a gamma curve, so right out of the box you should be able to work with the material.

BlackMagic already have the raw and XAVC codecs working within a soon to be released versions of Resolve (including the free Resolve Lite), this software will be released well before the cameras becomes available. There are also working plug-ins for Adobe Premiere Pro from Rovi that should be finalised before the cameras ship with other NLE’s like Edius and FCP-X promising support in the very near future. For Avid MC, there will be Sony Plug-Ins for both XAVC and RAW at the start of Feb. For FCP-X, Apple has a plan to support XAVC (both 4K & HD) soon (I don’t have an exact timescale I’m afraid) with a plug-in developed by Sony. Sony Vegas, will support XAVC at the start of Feb as well.

I’m looking at building a dedicated Linux based workstation for working with the F5/F55 4K material. I plan to use the HD internal recordings as proxies for the edit on my Macbook or iMac and then do the 4K finishing using Resolve running on a Linux machine with plenty of graphics processing grunt. It’s much cheaper to build a Linux workstation than a MacPro, in addition it’s much easier to add additional graphics cards to get more GPU cores. These days it’s the number and power of the GPU (Graphics Processor) rather than the normal CPU that counts.

Getting back to the shoot. The Fujinon Cabrio lens interfaces directly with the camera, so power is supplied to the lens for the servo zoom. Annoyingly the record button on the lens didn’t work, so I had to press the REC button on the camera body. I suspect this is just a camera firmware issue (UPDATE: According to Fuji this is a limitation of the Cooke i/Arri LDS lens connection protocols, in the future it may be possible to use either an adapted protocol or a cable between the lenses 20 pin connector and the cameras remote port). It behaves much like a traditional ENG lens, but it is a massive lump of glass making the camera extremely front heavy. I had a slight problem one morning coming from a nice air conditioned hotel out into the humidity of Singapore. The lens fogged up, as would any lens in those circumstances, as the front element is so big, it did take a very long time to get to the ambient temperature before I could use it. One small feature that is very nice is that the lens markings have been applied using glow-in-the-dark paint, rather like a watch face. So when shooting in the dark at night you could still easily see your focus markings. I wish camera manufacturers would do this with the camera button markings etc. The images produced by the Cabrio 19-90 are really very good. Lens flare is very well controlled, the images are sharp and free from any obvious defects. The bokeh is also very nice considering it is a relatively compact high ratio zoom lens. The Cabrio lens really makes the F55/F5 well suited to run and gun shooting. Stop the F55 down by an additional 2.5 stops and you’ll have approximately the same DoF on the F55 as you would have on a 2/3″ ENG camera. With such sensitive cameras as the F5/F55 this should be easy enough to do in most shooting situations.

The F55’s native ISO of 1250 meant I didn’t need to use any additional gain shooting around Singapore’s Marina Bay area at night. This is a well lit area, but even so the low light performance is impressive. Noise and grain at 1250 ISO is very hard to see, it’s a really, really clean camera. At higher ISO’s you do start to see noise and grain, but thanks to the 4K sensor this has a very fine film like look. I checked out the noise on the F5 at 20,000 ISO and it’s really not that bad, in fact during the workshop someone turned the camera to 20,000 ISO and most people looking at the monitor didn’t realise.

In S-Log2 the camera has an EI mode that keeps the recording ISO at 1250 but then adds gain to the monitor and viewing LUT’s as well as the clips metadata. I deliberately over exposed a number of S-Log2 shots to see how they would grade. The results were very impressive, not quite as forgiving as raw, but very good with lots of information preserved in the highlights. One concern I have with the F5 is that it may actually be a little bit too sensitive. The F5 we had in Singapore in S-Log2 was rated at 2500 ISO, that’s really sensitive and I do have a fear that I’m going to have to use a lot of external ND filtration in addition to the cameras internal ND’s when I want a shallow depth of field.

The camera really didn’t take long to get used to. I think new users will need to read through the manual to look at the various recording options, monitoring and look up table settings. For example the camera has to be in the correct base mode (EI or Custom) before you can setup the 4K raw recordings. But beyond that it is a very logical and straight forward camera to use.

Shooting in 4K has it’s challenges. Focus is ultra critical, especially if you are shooting in 4K so that post production can crop into the image for re-framing. I found that I was using the focus-mag button on the viewfinder for every shot, checking and double checking focus. I was using the 3.5″ LCD EVF for the shoot but I did try the OLED too. When your viewfinder is “only” HD or maybe not even HD you are going to need to magnify the image to see that critical 4K focus.

As well as focus-mag you also have the usual peaking modes and settings (which can be assigned to the assignable buttons). But I really found that for 4k, while very useful, peaking alone was not enough to be 100% certain that your focus is spot on with any of the viewfinders, not even the OLED. I’m not saying that the viewfinders are sub standard, just that you really need a much bigger screen than 7″ to see 4K focus without zooming in to the image.

While the DVF-EL100 OLED EVF is rather nice the small size of it’s panel (0.7″) does mean that some of the sharpness advantage it has over the 3.5″ LCD DVF-L350 is lost. The bigger screen of the 3.5″ LCD is easier to see than the very small OLED. In addition the flip up monocular of the 3.5″ LCD does make it more versatile. For ENG type shoots, run and gun or documentary shoots, I think the 3.5″ finder is the better choice. If you shoot drama then you can use the higher resolution OLED EVF and then add a larger monitor/viewfinder as well. The F5/F55 has to separate HDSDI busses. The main bus can be used to output clean video while the sub bus can be used to feed video with camera data overlays added for external viewfinders etc. There are two HDSDI connections on each bus.

I really enjoyed shooting with the F55. It was easy to use and the key camera controls are well placed. With the right shoulder mount (including the Sony one)  it will be reasonably well balanced with most prime lenses (I only had a generic base plate for the matte box rails). I do think that with many heavier lenses, rather than use the relatively light NP-FL75 batteries you will be better off with larger and heavier batteries to get better balance. One FL75 ran the camera for around 2 hours so a 150Wh battery would run it for about 4 hours.

The NP-FL75’s do charge very fast indeed, taking about 90 mins to fully charge from flat. You don’t have to use the new Sony batts. Any standard V mount battery will work. I’m going to be testing some of the new LiTH 150Wh batteries that are the same size as a typical 95Wh battery when I get my F5.

My next shoot with an F5 will be at the end of January when I will be taking one up to Arctic Norway to shoot the next part of my on-going Northern Lights film project. I’ll be shooting interviews with the local Sami people about the folklore and traditions that surround the Aurora as well as the Aurora itself. It will be interesting to see if I can shoot the Aurora in real time 4K using the F5’s 20,000 ISO rating. It should be possible as I managed with the F3 last year. I’ll be posting some sample clips from my Singapore shoot very soon (once I work out the best way to distribute a gig or more of material).

One of the most commonly asked questions for me right now is which camera do I choose  out of the PMW-F5 and F55. The price difference isn’t huge, around $10k USD. If you have the budget, if money is not a major concern then the choice is actually quite simple. Buy the PMW-F55. The F55 has a slightly better sensor, it uses a global shutter, so unlike most CMOS cameras there is no problem with image skew or flash banding. This alone is probably worth the $10k USD extra. The other major extra features that the F55 offers is the ability to record compressed 4K footage and it can shoot at up to 240fps while the F5 only manages 120fps. The F5 can only record HD and 2K internally, it can’t record 4K internally. If you want to record 4K with the F5 you have to get the add on R5 raw recorder and shoot 4K raw.

If you are on a tight budget (like me) then choosing between them is a little more complicated. You see I have two options, I can afford either the F5 plus R5 or I can afford the F55 on it’s own. Either way I can shot 4K. With the F55 it would be 4K XAVC compressed recorded internally to the SxS cards. With the F5/R5 I can shoot 4K raw recording to the AXS media. Raw will be better for grading, overexposure and high dynamic range shots will be handled much better than the compressed log recordings that the F55 records internally. It’s a tough decision. I’ve actually ordered an F5/R5 but having shot with an F55 using S-Log2 XAVC I have to admit that I’m questioning that decision. The S-Log2 material is very impressive, it copes very well with a couple of stops of overexposure and grades easily and nicely. The files size is quite reasonable with an hour of footage taking about 100GB. The 4K raw footage on the other hand is 5 times the size with an hour of material taking 512GB. That’s a lot of data.

Right now 4K is only really being used for high end productions and if you are working on a high end production then in my opinion, raw is the way to go, so where does that leave 4K XAVC? Well, consider this. Your working on a big production and for your key scenes you would shoot using raw. But what about some location shots, maybe in a remote place where you only have limited access to recording media or back up and archive systems? This is where you would use 4K XAVC. I’m thinking about some of my storm chasing or Northern Lights expeditions, 4K XAVC would be a great candidate. On some of my storm chasing trips I might shoot 10 hours of material in just a few day. With 4K raw that would be 5TB of data to manage and backup. With XAVC that’s just 1TB which will go on a single 2.5″ USB3 hard drive (or at least a pair of them, one being a backup). Even over USB3 it can take an hour or more to make a single copy of a 512GB AXS card, so backups could be a long and slow process.

One thing the F5 does do better than the F55 is low light performance. In S-log2 the F5’s native ISO is 2500 ISO while the F55 is 1250 ISO. Both are impressive figures, but the 2500 ISO of the F5 for me at least will be a fantastic asset when shooting storms etc where the light levels are low. However the flip side to that is that with so much sensitivity I’m going to need to use a lot of ND for many conventional shoots. I will add that both the F5 and F55 are remarkably noise free. Even at 20,000 ISO the F5 noise is really not all that bad.

Basically though, the F55 is the better camera of the two and as I said at the start, I think you should strive to afford the F55. It’s likely to hold it’s value better than the F5 so is probably a better long term investment. I’m still undecided about my pre-order for the F5, maybe I will ditch the R5 for now and strive to get an F55. I can always add an R5 later, while trying to swap from an F5 to an F55 is going to be harder and more expensive. I have to admit that the one thing that’s really hurting my budget right now is the way the resale value of the F3 has fallen through the floor. It’s all but impossible to sell an F3 right now and I have two of them.

So that’s the camera body what about the viewfinders. There are 3 to choose from. The 3.5″ LCD, the OLED EVF and a DVF-L700 7″ viewfinder. All 3 are very nice. The 7″ is more of an on camera monitor than a viewfinder, so really the choice is between the LCD or the OLED. I know there has been quite a bit of excitement about the OLED, it was only the other day that I first got to try one. To be honest I found it rather underwhelming. I’m not saying that it’s bad, but it really doesn’t seem to be that much better than the LCD. The LCD is using a new 960 x 540 lcd panel (is this another iphone screen?). This is higher resolution than the now familiar EX1/F3 LCD panel and I really struggle to see the pixels with the new 3.5″ LCD. The LCD is sharp and clear and has a 1000:1 contrast ratio, it’s a good viewfinder. It also has the flexibility of being a monocular viewfinder or by flipping up the mirror assembly becoming a small LCD monitor. You can’t do this with the OLED finder. The OLED finder is marginally sharper and does have a higher contrast range with true black blacks. But, for me at least I prefer the flexibility of the 3.5″ over the very small image quality advantage of the OLED finder. If you have the budget then the best solution is probably to have both the OLED and the 7″ LCD. You can use both together by plugging the OLED into the dedicated EVF socket (which sticks straight out from the side of the camera and is vulnerable to damage) and then use the main or sub HDSDI outputs to feed the 7″ LCD. The F5/F55 outputs can be split so you can get a clean output on the Main HDSDI’s and video with camera data overlay on the Sub HDSDI’s. Even if the OLED and the LCD EVF’s were the same price I would still get the LCD for it’s flexibility on location. Someone that does more larger crewed film type shoots may prefer the OLED EVF and then add on an on camera monitor.

With winter well upon us I thought it would be good to share some of my arctic shooting experience. Overall modern tapeless cameras do very well in extreme cold. The most reliable cameras are larger solid state cameras. Tape cameras are highly problematic and I wouldn’t use a tape based camera in extreme cold. Larger cameras tend to be less problematic as their bulk means that they take longer to cool down and are generally higher powered so the electronics inside will keep the temperature up a little. Condensation is the big deal breaker. When you take the very cold camera inside into a house/hotel/car you will get condensation. If the camera is very cold this can then freeze on the camera including the glass of the lens. If there is condensation on the outside of the camera, there will also be condensation inside and this can kill your camera. To prevent or at least reduce the condensation you can place the camera in a large ziplock bag BEFORE taking it inside. Then allow the camera to warm up to the ambient temperature before removing it from the bag. Peli cases are another option, but the large volume of the pelicase means there will be more moisture in the case to condense and the insulating properties of the case mean that it could take many hours to warm up. You can leave the camera outside provided it does not get below -25c. Below -25c you risk the LCD panel freezing and cracking. Very often in cold regions houses will have an unheated reception room or porch. This is a good place to store you camera rather than taking it inside into the warm. Repeatedly taking a camera from cold to warm without taking precautions against condensation will shorten the life of your camera.
If you can, leave the camera on between shots. The camera generates some heat internally and this will prevent many issues. Li-Ion batteries are effected by the cold but they are not nearly as bad as Nicads or NiMh batteries which are all but useless below freezing. li-Ion battery life gets reduced by between 25 and 50% depending on how cold it is. Keep you spare batteries in a pocket inside your coat or jacket until you need them. After use let the battery warm up before you charge it if you can. Charging a very cold battery will reduce the lifespan of the battery.

If your lens has and snow or ice on it, don’t be tempted to breath on the lens or blow the ice off. Also try not to breath on the lens when cleaning it as your breath will condense on the cold glass and freeze. A small soft paint brush is good for keeping your lens clean as in very cold conditions you’ll simply be able to brush and snow or ice off. Otherwise a large lens cloth.

Conventional rain covers become brittle below about -15c and can even shatter like glass  below -20c. Special insulated cold weather covers often called “polar bears” can be used and these often have pockets inside for chemical heat packs. These are well worth getting if you are going to be doing a lot of arctic shooting and will help keep the camera warm. As an alternative wrap the camera in a scarf or cut the sleeves of an old sweater. If you have a sewing machine you could make a simple cover out of some fleece type material. Plastics get brittle at low temperatures so be very gentle with anything plastic, especially things made from very hard, cheap plastic. The plastic Sony use appears to be pretty tough even at low temps.

Other considerations are tripods. If outside in very low temps for more than 30mins or so the grease in the tripod will become very thick and may even freeze, so your fluid damping will become either very stiff or freeze up all together. Vinten and some of the other tripod companies can winterise the tripod and replace the normal grease with arctic grease.

I find that the best way to operate the camera is by wearing a pair of large top quality mittens (gloves are next to useless below -15c), consider getting a pair of Army surplus arctic mittens, they are very cheap on ebay. If you can get Swedish or Finnish military winter mittens, these are amongst the best. I wear a pair of thin “thinsulate” gloves that will fit inside the mittens, i can then slip my hands in and out of the mittens to operate the camera. I keep a chemical hand warmer inside the mittens to warm my fingers back up after using the camera. The hardest thing to keep warm is your feet. If you’ll be standing in snow then conventional hiking boots etc will not keep your feet warm. If your feet get cold then you are at risk of frostbite or frost nip. Invest in or hire some decent snow boots like Sorel’s or Baffin’s. I have an arctic clothing guide here; Arctic Clothing Guide |

Due to a short notice cancellation I have a spare place on either of my February 2013 Northern Lights expeditions. If your interested please use the contact form to get in touch asap. I expect these places will go quite quickly. There is ONE place open on each of the tours: http://www.xdcam-user.com/northern-lights-expeditions-to-norway/

The picture below is from my Northern Lights expedition earlier this month and gives you an idea of the kind of pictures you too can hope to get.

I’ve just ordered a new MacBook Pro. It’s a Retina MBP, so has a 512GB SSD. Upgrading this is difficult and extremely expensive. So in preparation for the new machines arrival I started freeing up disc space on my current MacBook Pro. I used a useful piece of free software called “GrandPerspective” to visualise what’s using up my disc space. While searching around I came across a bunch of files eating up a huge amount of disc space. These are Adobe Premiere’s cache files. These never get deleted unless you do some house keeping. Even if your projects and media are saved on external drives, these cache files will slowly fill up your system drive unless you select the tick box to “save media cache files next to originals where possible” under the “preferences”, “media” tab. While your there you can also “clean” your cache database to remove older cache files.

Well the picture says it all really. The December Northern Lights expedition to Tromso and Karasjok in Norway was a big success. Everyone went away with some excellent pictures and great time-lapse. I shot the picture below with one of my NEX5n cameras with the 16mm f2.8 pancake lens. I also got some great time-lapse with the FS700 which I will cut together and post when I get back home.