Adobe’s creative cloud went online today. If you are a subscriber you can now upload your projects to the cloud as well as get your CS6 apps activated online.
All posts by alisterchapman
F65 4K 16 Bit DPX sample.
If you have been following me on Facebook, you’ll know that I have been in Dubai running an F65 and SRMaster workshop. Quite a few people have asked for a sample file to take a look at. The Jpeg shown on this page does not do the DPX file justice. It has incredible dynamic range, while the Jpeg looks over exposed, if you take a look at the DPX you’ll see that it’s no where near overexposed. So I have uploaded a sample file for you to play with. It is a 16 Bit 4K DPX frame. Unless you grade it, it will look mostly black, thats the nature of a correctly exposed 16 Bit Linear Raw image. You will find the file here for you to download. The file is a zipped up 4K DPX and it’s 35Mb. Make sure you can open 16 Bit DPX files before you download it. Premiere can only handle 10 bit DPX, but Resolve should open it.
Several people have commented that the image looks very un natural. I would largely agree with that, but you must consider this: If you start with an extremely high resolution, unsharpened image with massive dynamic range and colour gamut, in post production you can then choose your desired contrast range and soften or sharpen the image to meet your needs.
An easy mistake to make with the F65 is to take advantage of it’s huge latitude when shooting without considering what the end viewer will see. In this test shot we were actively trying to show off the cameras dynamic range. Again I refer you to the DPX file, you will see that the raw image is not clipped. But, modern displays, even OLED cannot show more than about 10 stops. So if you start with 14+ stops, something has to give when you try to show that on an 8 stop LCD screen. So, even though you can capture a massive dynamic range, it is not necessarily desirable to do so. By that I mean that if you can keep your dynamic range lower (through lighting or re-framing) then the pictures the end viewer sees will often look better.
If you find the file useful or anything else on my site useful please feel free to make a small donation to help cover my web server and data costs.
Adobe CS6 available now and Creative Cloud from May 11th.
Adobe’s Creative Suite CS6 is available from today and Creative Cloud will go online on the 11th of May. I’m looking forward to trying out using Premiere CS6 for editing and then SpeedGrade for finishing. I think this will be a great combination as they offer support for all the common codecs as well as many of the more advanced codecs like OpenEXR, DPX, Alexa, Red etc. There will even be a plugin for F65RAW in August.
It looks like Adobe are taking full advantage by the void left between FCP 7 and FCP-X. While FCP-X is starting to look like it will mature into a true Pro application, some of us can’t wait for that to happen and CS6 looks to be very nice indeed.
$500 Rebate on Santa Fe Workshops at Seoul 3D Fair.
The organisers of Seoul 3D Fair are offering a $500 rebate for overseas visitors on the Santa Fe workshops. The workshops will cover all aspects of 3D production, cinematography, stereographer, rig technician, RAW and post production. There is an amazing instructor line up and the classes are small so you’ll get plenty of one to one time with the instructors. Come and join us in Korea, amazing country, great food, great hospitality.
PMW-F3 MLUT’s converted to .lut files. Works with most LUT software
Great news. I have managed to create a set of .lut files from the standard MLUT’s included with the PMW-F3. These new files work with most LUT enabled software, like LUT Buddy, Colorista, Resolve etc. The standard Sony files don’t work so I had to create these which should be 100% matches with the F3’s included LUT’s. I have created both 8 bit and 10 bit LUT’s, so those experimenting with 8 bit S-Log files or using 8 bit edit software can try them out as well. You’ll find the files in the forum:
http://www.xdcam-user.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=1010
You will need to be a registered forum user to access the files, but registration is free.
Low Light Picture Profile for EX1/EX3
I get asked a lot about settings for shooting in low light with the EX1 and EX3. To be honest there is not much that will make a big difference that can be done, beyond adding in camera gain. There are a few tweaks you can make to the picture profiles that will help minimise noise levels and give a slightly brighter picture without resorting to overall gain and I’ll go through those here.
Gamma: By using a brighter or higher gain gamma curve you can get a slightly brighter image without an across the board gain increase. Do however consider though that gamma does add gain so a brighter gamma curve has more gain and thus more noise than a darker gamma curve. Where you light range is limited or controlled then I recommend using Standard Gamma 2 with the black gamma set to +40. Raising the black gamma helps lift shadow and dark areas of the image. For scenes with bright highlights then it’s useful to have some extra dynamic range and in this case I would choose cinegamma 4, again with the black gamma raised, this time to +50.
If you are happy with turning detail off altogether then this may be a wise choice as it will prevent any noise from being enhanced. If not in order to keep the appearance of noise to a minimum I would decrease the detail level to -10. As we are shooting in low light then I will assume there are a lot of dark areas in the image. To keep noise less visible in low contrast areas I would set the crisping to +50. This will slightly soften the image but help control noise.
There are two principle forms of noise, chroma noise and luma noise. There’s not much we can do about luma noise other than controlling detail enhancement as above, but if we reduce the image colour saturation we can reduce the chroma noise. Better still using the low key sat function we can just reduce the chroma (colour) level in low key parts of the shot. So for my low light profile I would set Low Key Sat to somewhere around -50.
So by changing the gamma we can increase the sensitivity a little, turning off the detail correction or using crispening we can ensure that the visibility of any noise is as minimised and the Low Key Sat function will keep the noise to a manageable level.
These setting won’t turn your EX1 or EX3 into a mega low light monster, but they will give a small boost to the low light performance before you have to resort to adding gain. Talking of gain, do make sure you read this to understand what gain is doing.
EX1/EX3 Picture Profile suggestions for low light:
Gamma Standard 2, Black Gamma +40 OR Cinegamma 4, Black Gamma +50
Detail OFF or Detail Level -10, Crispening +50
Low Key Sat -50
Black level -3 (restores black to zero)
NAB S-Log presentation.
You can view my NAB S-log presentation here:
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/video/related-home_page_featured/video-F3_S_Log_Stage_Presentation/
A Month Shooting Effects Shots for Nat Geo and Sky in Slow-Mo 3D. Part 1 of 3.
Since the beginning of March I have been working as 3D supervisor and sterographer for a 3D shoot for Nat Geo and Sky. Working with DoP David Barlow (renowned for his miniature and In-the-womb work) we were the effects unit for a big budget series of 4 programmes with the working title of “Storm City”. The programmes are hosted by Ben Fogle and explore some of Natures most extreme disasters including Hurricane, Tornadoes, Earthquakes and Tsunami’s. With a budget in the millions this is high end stuff. Our job was to provide material to illustrate many of the interviews with disaster victims, often reconstructions of the situations the people found themselves in. As most of this was to be shot in 3D slow motion, we were using a pair of Red Epics on a Hurricane Rig 3D rig owned by David. Our first reconstruction was of a collapsed building with people buried under the rubble, our “studio” was an industrial unit in Southampton. The set builders had constructed a small set filled with rubble and collapsed concrete. The surprise for me when I walked on to the set in the morning was just how small it was. The whole set was built in a box measuring about 10ft by 6ft and just 4ft tall, it became know as the “coffin”. The idea was that by using such a small set we could create the impression of the trapped people being in a very confined and claustrophobic space. The illusion worked very well and as the set was contained within a box type enclosure we could shoot into the coffin from 3 sides for a wide variety of shots. All the debris, concrete and rubble was made out of light weight materials, yet looked totally convincing.
To help tell the story of the people trapped in the collapsed building we used a lot of slow motion with dripping water and falling dust to accentuate the sensation of time passing slowly. Shooting at 200fps we did encounter issues from strobing lights from time to time. This is one of the real slow mo nightmares as the strobing is rarely visible to the naked eye and it’s only when you play the clips back that you see the issue. Some of the problems were down to running the HMI’s off different mains phases, others were problems with the bulbs and the arc rotating around the electrode. In order to get enough light for the higher frame rates we often used a pair of 4K HMI’s with fill from 1.2K HMI’s.
The collapsed building scenes were finished off with shots of wires arcing and sparking. This was achieved through the use of small pyrotechnic charges that contained magnesium as this gives a brilliant white flash much like a spark.
Our next scene was a reconstruction of a child getting sucked out of a bedroom window by a Tornado. For this we had a 3 wall bedroom set with a window. To simulate the effects of the tornado we had a wind machine made out of a hovercraft fan. This was then complimented by smaller fans to fill in any gaps and add extra circulation and turbulence to the wind storm. The last piece in the equation was an air canon to blast out the window with a shockwave of air and debris. This was one of the messiest shoots I have ever been involved in. We used fullers earth, leaves, twigs and insulation material to fill the air with blowing debris as well as a smoke machine and a hazer machine. This was the first time I’ve ever had to wear overalls on a set, but it was not going to be the last! Once that hovercraft fan got going it really was like being in a tornado. Anything not bolted down would fly around and the dirt and debris went everywhere. It was great fun, but after every take the 3D rig, lenses and cameras would need a strip down and clean. Sadly I have been asked not to show pictures of the sets until the show airs later in the year. I wish I could as it’s quite amazing to see how we recreated these scenes in what was a fairly small space.
As I always had a great view of what was being shot on my 3D monitors I also had the job of operating the lightning machine. This machine used a giant 70,000 watt strobe lamp to create massive flashes of light to simulate lightning. It made quite a loud zap every time I pressed the button, lots of fun but I had to be careful not to overdo it as if the flash duration was too short we could get flash band issues due to the use of CMOS sensors. Our next scene was of the tornado aftermath. We had to recreate a night time scene of total destruction, giving the impression of destroyed houses and scattered belongings. It’s amazing what a good art department can do when assisted by copious amounts of smoke and haze from the hazer along with some subtle lighting effects. Our next scene took us from tornado alley in the USA to the UK for a reconstruction of a tree falling through the roof of a house. I’ll tell you how we did that and recreated an earthquake in the next instalment. In the final instalment I’ll tell you about how we recreate falling electricity cables, and ice storm and bury a house in an avalanche!
Corfe Castle in Hyperstereo, 3D clip.
This is something that I did with DoP Geoff Boyle and motion control expert Justin Pentecost last year. It involved lugging a giant motion control head and arm up a very big hill overlooking Corfe Castle before dawn and shooting about 10 passes between before sunrise and 10am. These were then composited together to make this clip. It was done as a proof of concept test for a larger project that as yet we have not managed to secure funding for, but will continue to investigate. The cameras used were a pair of Sony PMW-F3’s. The clip is in 3D, click through to YouTube and use the selector button at the bottom to choose your preferred viewing mode.
Triad PL to E-Mount Adapter. A PL adapter for the FS100 and FS700.
A little while back I was loaned a Triad PL to E-Mount adapter for review. E-Mount is the Sony mount used on the NEX-FS100, NEX-FS700 as well as The VG10, VG20 and NEX stills cameras. While more and more E-Mount lenses are becoming available from Sony and other DSLR lens manufacturers there will be many times when something more suitable for video work might be needed. One of the big issues with DSLR lenses is the very small amount of rotation on the focus ring to go from near to far, often only 45 degrees which makes accurate focus tricky. A good PL mount lens will have over 180 degrees of rotation. PL has been the industry standard for movie cameras for years and most rental companies have large ranges of PL lenses to choose from. So the ability to be able to use a PL lens on any super 35mm camcorder is always welcome. While I use DSLR lenses on my cameras for my day to day shoots, if I am doing a high end production such as a commercial then I will hire in the appropriate PL lenses for the job. Sony’s soon to be released FS700 is a camera that will, I’m sure end up getting used for many commercials as slow motion is a technique widely used to show off new products or ideas. As a result there will be many time in the future where I will need a PL adapter.
The Triad adapter is very solidly made, machined from high grade alloy with stainless steel and chrome plated steel inserts. One of the very nice features is that the adapter has a built in adjustment for the back focus distance. A locking outer ring on the adapter can be rotated to alter the physical distance between the PL receptor and the E-Mount bayonet. This will allow the user to calibrate the back focus or flange back distance so that the focus witness marks on any PL lenses will be 100% accurate. It will also ensure that PL zooms will track focus correctly through the entire zoom range. As the FS100 and FS700 don’t have built in back focus adjustments this really is a vital thing to have. The Sony E-mount was only designed to support the weight of light weight DSLR type lenses so the Triad adapter has a support post that can be attached to 15mm or 19mm rails (via a suitable bracket) to help carry the weight of heavy PL lenses without over-stressing the cameras E-Mount. One note from Triad is that the Sony PL lenses supplied with the kit that comes with the PMW-F3 do not fit this adapter. There are quite a few PL mounts that don’t accept the Sony PL lenses without shaving a bit of metal from the Sony lenses mount. So this isn’t a flaw with the Triad adapter, it’s a non standard quirk of the Sony PL lenses.
There’s really not much more to say about this mount. It’s well made and does what it designed to do.