XDCAM-User passed a new milestone last month with record breaking traffic levels. In October the site took an average 50,000 hits per day from just under 3,000 visits a day. Over the course of the month the site had 1.5 million hits from 90,000 visits by 36,000 unique visitors. I’m flattered that so many people are visiting the site. As usual let me know what you want me to write about. I’m going to be really busy between now and Christmas so I’m not going to be able to devote a huge amount of time to the site. I do have plans for some documentation on the various workflows for XDCAM, the PMW-F5/F55 and raw. In addition I’ll be looking at the differences between S-Log and S-Log2 and the differences between using S-Log and raw.

I was just looking at this picture of the F55 on a shoot in the UK:

I noticed the camera was being powered by two VL-175 batteries, that’s two 175Wh batts! Seamed a bit overkill to me, it may be just to balance out the heavy PL-Mount lens. But it got me thinking. I’ve checked the specs and the camera body is rated at 25W. A viewfinder will probably add around another 5W (maybe more) and the ASX-R5 has a rather large fan which suggests it gets hot, so it probably consumes a fair amount of power. If we say 15W as a guess for the R5, then your looking at an all up power consumption of around 45W. So I think you may be looking at somewhere between 40 and 50 watts for a complete F5/F55 R5 outfit. That’s a lot of power, no wonder Sony have also released the new high current Olivine batteries to power them. Remember to allow for a decent set of batteries when you looking at getting an F5/F55.

I hate crop factors!

Crop factors create more confusion than almost any other subject. Why? Because they get applied to a lenses focal length which is completely incorrect. The focal length of a lens does not change, no matter how big or small the sensor is.

What changes is the field of view. A bigger sensor gives a wider field of view, a smaller sensor gives a narrower field of view. The focal length stays the same and it’s important to know the true focal length of the lens as this will govern your Depth of Field and any DoF calculations you make must be based on the lenses actual focal length, not some converted equivalent focal length. Use an equivalent focal length and all your calculations will be wrong as may be any estimations of the expected DoF.

All you need to know is how the sensor size in the camera your using affects the Field of View. Compared to a full frame 35mm camera, for any given focal length, a super35mm film or video camera will give a 34% narrower field of view for any given focal length, so 1/3rd narrower.

Cinematographers and DoP’s with film based backgrounds don’t use crop factors. For them a 20mm lens is a 20mm lens, a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens. They know the field of view that lens will give them on their camera. If you start talking about “50mm equivalent” etc then it just gets confusing….. equivalent to what? The only thing a 50mm lens is the equivalent to is a 50mm lens. What changes is the camera or more specifically the cameras sensor size and as a result different cameras result in different field of views, but the lens itself does not somehow change focal length.

Sensor size does not change focal length, only field of view.

Well, it’s been Movember for 6 days so I’m a little late starting. If you don’t know Movember is about raising awareness for prostate cancer and testicular cancer in men. Anyone can join in, guys and gals. Us guys can grow a Mo (Moustache) to show our commitment to the cause, so for the next 24 days, I’ll be cultivating that little bit of facial hair that resides under my nose and hopefully by the end of the month I’ll have my first Mo. Please if you think this is a worthwhile cause please make a donation using this link.

I’ll post pictures soon so you can see how the stubble grows!

I was going to call this: “There’s never been a better time to buy a camera”, but then the more I thought about it the more I realised that actually in some respects, right now it’s really difficult to make the right camera choice due to the large number of very capable cameras on the market. At one extreme you have the Black Magic Cinema camera offering raw HD for just $3K and at the other end there is the Sony F65 with it’s 8k sensor and 16 bit raw high speed recording. Confusing the issue is the fact that both the $3K BMCC and the $100K F65 both shoot raw, what is it that makes a $97,000 difference between these cameras? Obviously there are many differences, but even so, will the audience be able to tell in the finished film, in a lot of cases perhaps not?

So what your paying for is after sales support, ergonomics, reliability and usability. This is where I think the F5 and F55 may be game changers. If Sony have put together these camera packages as well as it appears, then it looks like the F5 and F55 tick all the right boxes. Lets look at each of those 4 factors in more detail.

After Sales Support: Sony has a world wide network of repair and service centres. While not always cheap, if you need support you can get it almost anywhere in the world. The Sony ICE program (of which I am a member) is being expanded, the idea is that experienced and competent users will be able to help new users with getting the most from their equipment. This is often in the form of free workshops and seminars. This allows users to get up to speed fast, to avoid costly mistakes and to maximise on their investment.

Ergonomics:The PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 are evolutions of the PMW-F3, but gone is the now common place integral LCD monitor, replaced instead by a large clear multi function LCD control panel surrounded by 6 large buttons whose functions change depending on the mode you are in. The LCD menu panel is on the camera operators side of the camera. There are 4 modes, Camera, File, Timecode and View. In Camera mode these give you control over frame rate, shutter speed, colour temperature, exposure index or gain, gamma and look up tables. These really are the 6 key camera functions that you need rapid access to when shooting and the corresponding setting are clearly displayed on the LCD screen. There are perhaps fewer assignable buttons (4) than on previous cameras but this helps keep the camera un-cluttered. The built in ND filters (3 stop and 6 stop) are controlled via a rotary knob which I much prefer over the slide switches on some other cameras.

On the other side of the camera body are all the connectors. Sony have been quite clever here in that they have made the XLR connectors and timecode connectors removable. While most users will probably never remove these connector modules what it does do is allow them to be taken off for 3D applications where camera width can be critical. The cameras also feature spare 12 volt 1.8 amp power outputs for accessories. Although the camera body is very box like which may not at first glance appear very ergonomic there is a shoulder mount system complete with arri rosettes designed specifically for the cameras along with a detachable top handle. The top handle on it’s front has the very same viewfinder mount as found on almost every Sony shoulder mount camera.

On to this mount you can attach one of three viewfinders. The entry level viewfinder is a 3.5″ LCD finder very similar to the viewfinder used on the PMW-350 or PMW-500. The DVF-L350 3.5-inch LCD viewfinder has a new high resolution 960 x 540 LCD panel with better contrast than previous panels. The resolution is exactly half full HD (interestingly this is a remarkably similar spec to the new Alphatron and Cineroid EVF’s). There is also a very nice sounding the DVF-EL100 OLED EVF. This 0.7-inch viewfinder is 1280 x 720 resolution and will have the lovely true blacks that only OLED or CRT offers. If you want a big viewfinder then there is the DVF-L700 compact 7-inch ultra high resolution LCD view finder which gives pixel-for-pixel 1920 x 1080 HD images and is really aimed at those shooting 2K and 4K.

Adding either the DVF-L350 or DVF-EL100 along with the shoulder mount will turn the PMW-F5 or F55 into a true shoulder mount camera, designed to be shoulder mounted from day one, no dodgy lashed together rigs needed with these cameras. Of course your not tied to a Sony viewfinder. The HDMI out as well as one pair of the 4 HDSDI outputs can be set to carry the cameras overlays and menu information, so you should be able to use almost any viewfinder you want.

So, ergonomically it looks like Sony really have got it right. Not too big, not too small, shoulder mount or handheld, big buttons for the primary functions and a clear multifunction display.

Reliability: These are Sony cameras. Both the F5 and F55 share the same body and I suspect most of the innards are the same (we do know the sensors are different). As the PMW-F55 is going to be a mid range model, it should come with the kind of reliability that you get with cameras like the PMW-500 or PDW-700, cameras that are workhorses of the broadcast world. One issue that can sometimes let the F3 down is dust sealing around the ND filter slide switch. Hopefully the new rotary knob for the ND filters will eliminate this issue. I fully expect these to be solid, reliable cameras with high quality connectors etc that will withstand the rigours of life on location.

Usability: There is some cross-over here with ergonomics, which I’ve already covered but the F5 and PMW-F55 have some great features that make them really flexible and versatile. They use the same lens mounting system as the PMW-F3. The FZ lens mount mount with it’s very shallow flange back makes it so easy to adapt to other lens mounts. The cameras will be supplied with a PL mount adapter and third party adapters are already available for everything from Canon and Nikon DSLR lenses through to B4 2/3″ broadcast lenses. The sensors are full size Super 35mm sensors, no odd sizes here so no problems finding lenses to fit. If you don’t need or want raw recording and the very large file sizes that come hand in hand with raw then you have lots of options. For a start the raw recorder the ASX-R5 is optional.

It docks to either camera via a clever quick release mechanism. When mounted it appears to be part of the camera and works seamlessly with the camera. As it is a separate recorder it brings the possibility of dual mode recording, shooting in both 16 bit raw and compressed video simultaneously. If you don’t need raw then you can shoot with a wide range of modes and codecs.

Internally both the F5 and F55 can record 8 bit XDCAM HD 422 at 50Mb/s. This would be the ideal proxy format for those shooting in raw. If you need better quality then there is the new XAVC codec, which is based on AVCHD (level 5.2 of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) and is highly expandable. It will allow for HD,2K and 4k compressed recording at up to 60p and Sony are inviting 3rd parties to help develop applications that make use of the codec. The F5 will record XAVC at up to 2K and the F55 will record compressed 4k. If that isn’t enough then both cameras will also be able to record using the HDCAM SR codec,  SStP. To cope with all this data Sony are also introducing a new SxS card. The SxS Pro+ cards are plenty fast enough to deal with recording 4k compressed. Standard SxS cards can be used for XDCAM.

If all that isn’t enough these cameras can shoot at high speeds. The F5 will go up to 120fps and the F55 up to 240fps both compressed and raw, although shooting raw at 120fps or 240fps raw will generate scary amounts of data. Unlike the FS700 your not limited to short bursts, these cameras can roll continuously at the high frame rates, provide you have sufficient space on your SxS Pro+ or ASXM media cards.

When shooting compressed you have a choice of using conventional gammas and Hypergammas and there will be 6 Hypergammas on the F5/F55 (HG1, HG2, HG3, HG4, HG7 and HG8). For even greater dynamic range you have the option to use S-Log2. S-Log2 is similar to Sony’s original S-Log but extends the dynamic range to 14 stops. The beauty of the S-Log2 workflow will be the ability to capture the sensors full dynamic range but without the need to do all the time consuming file and data processing needed with raw.

The big question that still remains with these cameras and the ASX-R5 recorder (which will also work with the FS700 via the $2k HXR-IFR5 adapter) is what will the costs be?

My guess and this is a guess, given that the F3 will continue to be a current model is that the PMW-F5 will be in the region of $18k – $24k for the body only. The F55 with it’s extra features and global shutter $32k to $40k. I guess the ASX-R5 will be around $8k – $10k and the DVF-L350 about $3k-$4k.

Now, given my pricing estimates, what do I think? Well I hope they are cheaper, but I’m not sure that they will be as they need to be priced above the F3 and the F55 needs to be expensive enough to keep the F65 as a viable 4k proposition. But the flexibility that these cameras offer is truly incredible. If you are a news shooter you can stick a 2/3″ B4 lens without an optical adapter, flip in the 2x extender, shoot in compressed 4k on the F55 and then extract an HD image by cropping in to the center of the frame. You would have deep DoF so focus would not be as critical as when using the full super 35mm sensor. Shooting a documentary, then you can shoot compressed, shooting a movie then shoot 4k raw. The very thought of 16 bit raw with 14 stops of dynamic range is making me drool, these cameras will seriously encroach on F65 territory and give the Arri Alexa a very hard time indeed, heck even the F5 will give the Alexa a very hard time. A clear sign of just how significant these cameras are is the way Red have slashed the prices of their Epic and Scarlet cameras. It really is a great time to be a film maker, the tools available now are incredible and the prices equally amazing. If nothing else, if I find my price guess is way off and the F5 unaffordable, they have put a fully configured Scarlet in my price range! So to answer my initial question, yes I think these are game changers. They have a large element of future proofing. They will work now as high quality compressed HD/2K cameras, add the R5 and you have 16 bit 4k linear raw. Shoulder mount, handheld, 3D these cameras can do it all.

Here’s a link to an informative 18 min video about the F5 and F55

http://www.sony.co.uk/pro/article/broadcast-professional-camcorders-pmw-f55-video?SM=FB1&src=311012_video_Fintro_

I will have more info for you soon, but I’m travelling at the moment. I have some very exciting projects lined up for my F55 (if my budget will stretch to the 55) including some behind the scenes work with a Formula One race team as well as my usual adventure stuff.  Looking forward to trying out the 2000ISO sensitivity on the Northern Lights.

So here they are the new F5 and F55 cameras as well as the ASX-R5 raw recorder and a new 100 Mb/s XAVC codec. On top of that there is also a completely new range of 6 PL mount lenses from 20mm to 135mm. The cameras are modular, with various viewfinder and shoulder mount options. The shoot HD, 2K and 4K 16bit raw. The key difference between the F5 and F55 is that the F55 has a global shutter so no more rolling shutter artefacts. In addition the F55 can shoot at up to 240fps while the F5 is limited to 120fps.  It may be that the sensors are different in the F5 and F55 as the F55 sensor has the same type of colour filter arrangement as the F65. In both cases dynamic range is in excess of 14 stops.

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-highend/

I’m not going to list all the really exciting features here, follow the link above for that. But these cameras are a radical departure from what Sony normally do. These cameras are designed to be future proof  certainly for the next 4 or 5 years. You buy the body of your choice, add your preferred OLED viewfinder and then add the options you need as you go. Built in recording is 422 XDCAM HD or a new AVC Intra codec which Sony is calling XAVC. XAVC is a 100 Mb/s 10 bit codec, so this means that internal log recording is now viable as well as a future internal 2K option (upto 120fps). In addition there will be a future internal option for SR recording at upto 444 RGB, 440Mb/s. The F5 will be able to record upto 120fps using next generation SxS cards called SxS Pro+ while the F55 will go upto 240fps and record 4K raw internally.

Its worth noting that these new cameras do not replace the F3. The F3 will continue in Sonys product line up sitting below these new models as a high quality but lower cost option.

My video camera operators are unfamiliar with contrast ratios, mid grey and white cards. With older restricted dynamic range video cameras you simply looked in the viewfinder and if the picture looked right, then it was right. Simples.

But now with extended range gammas, log curves and linear raw recording things are much more difficult as sometimes the image your looking at in the viewfinder is very different to the way the image will look after post production. This makes judging exposure harder. As a result you often need to resort to extra tools to help and one of the most common tools is the grey card and white card. A grey card should reflect 18% of the light that falls on it. A good white card will reflect 90% of the light falling on it. If you view a white, grey and black card side by side the 18% grey card will appear to your eye to be half way between the white and black card, so it’s know as “middle grey”.

The important thing to note is that we are not looking at finite values here. We are looking at ratios. The grey card reflects 18% of the light falling on the scene. The white card reflects 90% of the light, so the white card is always reflecting 500% more light than the grey card. It doesn’t matter how bright or dark the scene, the white card will always be 500% brighter than the grey card.

Another ratio is the f-stop. An exposure increase of one stop is a doubling of the light or 100% more. if you add another stop then that’s another doubling, so thats another 200% (total 300%), double it again and we add a further 400% (total 700%). From this we can deduce that if white is 500% brighter than mid grey, then white will be 2.5 stops brighter than mid grey, no matter how bright the total scene illumination. These are ratios, so the light level doesn’t matter, the ratio between the two remains constant.

This can be a difficult concept to grasp as it’s about ratios. Also remember we are looking at light reflected from cards with a know reflectance. We are not including direct light sources like a bright sky or a lamp that can be many stops brighter than the white card.

If you using S-Log then the normal exposure for middle grey is 38% of the way up the S-Log curve. Because the curve is not linear and compressed (squashed) a white card will be at 68% on the S-Log curve, not 90%. It doesn’t matter how bright or dark the scene that’s where the fixed reflection ratio of 500% or 2.5 stops between grey and white cause the levels to fall when you expose correctly using S-Log.

I’ve had one of Samyang’s 14mm f2.8 photo lenses for some time and it really is a fantastic lens. It’s one of my favourites for shooting the Northern Lights as it nice and wide and pretty fast for such a wide lens. In addition it stays nice and sharp even when wide open. When I heard that Samyang were bringing out a range of budget cine lenses with integrated 0.8 mod pitch gears it was music to my ears as I have been looking for some decent cine lenses for a long time, but didn’t want to fork out a small fortune on expensive PL glass.

Up to now, for my own projects, I have been using a mix of Nikon fit and Canon fit DSLR lenses. Mostly Sigma Nikon fit lenses as these focus the “right” way and have manual aperture rings. For my larger budget commercial projects I then hire in PL glass to suit the project.

The Samyang’s arrived nicely packed in decent looking boxes and each lens comes with a soft carry pouch. There’s the usual petal shaped lens hood and lens caps. The lenses I chose have the Canon EF-S mount, but you can also get them with a Nikon mount. Because they have proper manual iris rings there is no problem using these lenses on cameras like the Sony PMW-F3 where you don’t have electronic iris control.

Out of the box the lenses really look the part. The black finish is very nice and there is an attractive red metal ring around the camera body giving them a quite classy look. One thing though is that there is a lot of plastic in these lenses. The lens mount is metal and it appears that the core of the lens body is metal, but it appears to be shrouded in plastic. Certainly the iris and focus rings are plastic and front shroud around the lens is plastic, but it does appear to be a good quality plastic. The large amount of plastic does make the lenses feel cheaper than a decent PL mount lens but it’s no worse than the plastic Sony PL mount lenses that cost 8 times as much and you do have to remember that these lenses are really well priced, really, really well priced.

The 0.8 mod pitch gears are nice and proud from the lens body and I had no issues using them with my Genus follow focus controls. There is no click stop on the iris ring as there would be on a conventional DSLR lenses and the movement of the iris ring is very smooth and has just the right amount of resistance for smooth aperture changes during a shot. The iris scale, marked in T-Stops is clear and easy to read and the travel reasonable. You don’t get as much travel as many PL mount lenses, but there is plenty of travel and getting an accurate exposure is easy. Having T-stops is great as you can change lenses and your exposure will remain constant because T-stops are the lenses  f-stop plus any other light losses in the lens, making exposure more accurate and consistent from lens to lens.

The focus rings on both the 24mm and 35mm lenses rotate through about 160 degrees. This is a lot compared to most other modern DSLR lenses. My Sigma 20mm f1.8 lens only rotates about 90 degrees and my 24-70mm lens only rotates about 45 degrees. This extra throw on the focus ring really helps with accurate and precise focus and makes these lenses a pleasure to use. The focus scale is in both feet and m. I do find the brown “ft” scale a little hard to see, especially in low light, but this is a minor complaint.

So overall these lenses are really nice to use compared to most other DSLR lenses, in fact I would say they are pretty close to many much more expensive PL lenses. But handling is one thing, what about the image quality? Well I wasn’t disappointed. Both lenses perform very well. Edge to edge sharpness is very good, contrast is very good, these lenses produce lovely crisp images with very good neutral colour. I didn’t test them with charts. Instead I used them (and am continuing to use them) on a range of shoots in Hong Kong and the UK and compared them with some of my other lenses out in the field. Image wise the 24mm produces an image very similar to my 20mm Sigma, if anything I feel the Samyang is the sharper of the two, even when wide open.

The 35mm Samyang performs at least as well as my favourite 35mm f1.8 Nikkor. My only small concerns are that the 24mm softens a little at T1.5 (the 35mm also softens a little but not quite as bad) and that both lenses do suffer from a bit more lens flare in some situations than my Nikkor’s. I suspect the coatings used on the Samyang’s may not be quite as good as those on the Nikkor’s but by using a deeper lens hood, matte box or flag to stop strong light sources from shining directly into the lens this flare can easily be controlled or eliminated. If you have a strong light source coming into the lens slightly off axis the lens flare exhibits itself as a slight raising of black levels and as a result a reduction in contrast. Most lenses suffer from some flare and this isn’t a deal breaker provided you are aware of it.

I really like these lenses. Not just because they are cheap, but because they perform very well and they really handle like baby PL mount lenses. I think you have to see them to believe them because the images are really very sharp. I’d much rather use these than most conventional DSLR lenses on my video cameras. The Samyang 24mm T1.5 is an excellent wide angle lens for video applications. The 35mm is a great “standard” lens and will probably be my “go-to” lens for most shoots. The field of view you get from a 35mm lens on a Super 35mm video camera is very close to our own human field of view, so your shots look very natural and true to life. At T1.5 these are fast lenses so achieving a very shallow depth of field is easy. I probably wouldn’t use the 24mm at T1.5 unless I really needed to, but at T2 the image starts to sharpen up nicely. As well as the 24mm and 35mm lenses Samyang have 8mm T3.8 and a 14mm T3.1mm cine lenses and an 85mm T1.5 lens will be coming at the end of the year. All they really need is to add a 50mm to create a really complete lens set.

Initially I approached Samyang UK and asked for the loan of the 24mm and 35mm lenses for review. After using them I decided to buy them, so now I’m the happy owner of the Samyang 24mm and 35mm Cine lens. All I need to do now is sell of some of my other Canon and Nikon lenses so that I can get the 8, 14 and 85mm Samyang Cine lenses. They also do an interesting 24mm tilt-shift lens!

This is some footage I shot in Hong Kong using a production PMW-200. The pictures are not graded but I did use a picture profile to get the vivid colours and deep blacks. The night shots were done with between +6 and +9db gain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04Mc_UjOuQ&feature=share&list=ULZ04Mc_UjOuQ