Sony USA has compiled a single web page with all the latest XDCAM firmware updates for you including the F3 V1.4 firmware. Here’s the link.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Zacuto Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout.
I spent some time today in Soho, London watching the latest Zacuto camera shootout. It was really interesting and quite enlightening. I don’t want to go into to many details here as it may spoil it for those of you still waiting to see the results. But what I will say is that Steve Weiss certainly achieved what he set out to do and that is to question what’s more important, the camera, the operator or something else and whether the camera makes the difference between a good movie and a bad one.
First we were shown footage from each of the cameras tested, shot under matching lighting. You could clearly see differences between each camera, as you would expect. The majority of the cameras were however remarkably similar. Maybe one would have better dynamic range, maybe another would have better colour. Next we were shown a blind screening of each camera where we did not know which camera was which. A letter from A to I was assigned to each camera. For these shots the DoP responsible for the camera was allowed to tweak the lighting to get the most from his or her camera. Then the DoP was allowed some time in the grading suite to do pretty much whatever they wanted to make the camera shine.
The discussion at the end of this set of clips was very interesting. One of the main conclusions drawn was that as much as assessing the actual look of the camera we were also assessing the DoP’s artistic interpretation of what made a good shot. Some clearly favoured highlights, some shadows. It was clear to us all that in the right hands almost all of the cameras were capable of producing great looking pictures in this controlled environment (would be interesting to see a less controlled scenario). Each person at the screening was given a card so they could list their top 5 cameras and most of us were asked to name the worst. There was generally a feeling that of the 9 cameras there were 3 or 4 that most of us liked the most, a couple that were not liked at all and the remaining sat in the middle as perfectly useable but maybe not quite in the same league as the top 4. Even so they were all remarkably close.
So from this I draw some interesting conclusions. The current large sensor cameras are all pretty good. Lighting and careful grading can overcome or at least mask most of any specific shortfalls. The general public audience would be hard pushed to tell.
Adding to this though I would say that one of the cameras that was quite weak in the reference test, but did look so much better in the DoP lit test required a lot more work in extra lighting and grading to get it that way, so obviously there are advantages to be had in having a higher performing camera, but also a good DoP makes all the difference.
There were some definite surprises in the cameras that were liked. One of the higher end cameras was not liked as much as expected and this surprised everyone. An old favourite also failed to perform as expected. When I watched the blind test I scored each camera out of 10. My top camera scored 8, second best was 7.5, third 7, forth 6. So there was very little between my top 3, in fact I really struggled choosing between F and A. My top 5 were F, A, H, C and then E. If you want to know which is which you will have to go to a screening or wait till the online video comes out.
Single Sensor Cameras: Pixel count is not the same as resolution!
Oh I get fed up with this. Just came across a product manager claiming that the resolution of his bayer sensor equipped camera was the same as the horizontal pixel count. Come on guys, know your products, know what your talking about. With a single chip camera the resolution will always be lower than the pixel count. This is pretty basic stuff. With a bayer sensor the resolution is at best 0.8 x the horizontal pixel count. But manufacturers like to pull the wool over the customers eyes spouting erroneous claims that the resolution is the same as the pixel count.
If you want to call your camera 5k, 4k or 2.5k that’s fine, but don’t claim the resolution is 2.5k when the camera only has 2.4k of active pixels on a 2.5k pixel wide sensor. It’s impossible and it’s incorrect and I’m not even going to go into how much lower the diagonal and colour resolution is with bayer.
Rant over.
Bottoms Up! New Base Plate Assembly for the PMW-F3 from Transvideo.
A package arrived in the mail from Transvideo the other day. In it was one of their rather nice base plates for the PMW-F3. This plate isn’t simply a plate that it is attached to the bottom of the camera. It is in fact a complete replacement for the bottom end of the PMW-F3. Transvideo are best known for their superb high end monitors, robust, built to last monitors you often find on movie sets as they they offer a range of highly accurate calibration tools and fully calibrated displays not found on many lower cost monitors. In addition Transvideo’s 3D monitors are the monitors of choice for many 3D productions and stereographers as they offer special monitoring options that allow for very accurate measurement of 3D offsets and geometry. This new base plate is a bit of a departure from Transvideo’s normal product lines. I suspect it’s come about because Transvideo’s 3D expertise led them to realise that one of the PMW-F3’s biggest issues for 3D is that the standard base plate isn’t particularly stable which can adversely affect alignment when used on a 3D rig.
This is a problem not only for 3D but also for use with long and heavy lenses as the camera can wobble and flex on the tripod. The two 1/4″ threads on the F3 are far from ideal and the third thread at the back of the camera is offset from centre making it hard to use. By replacing the original very thin base plate of the camera ( it is is really, really thin) with this much more robust base plate you spread the loads imparted on the tripod mounting points across the entire bottom end of the internal chassis of the F3, not just the 4 teeny tiny screws that hold the sony tripod mount in place. Fitting is very easy, 8 small screws are un-done to remove the original Sony base panel, which simply lifts off and then the new Transvideo plate, complete with beautifully CNC machined cooling slots simply attaches in it’s place. Now my F3 has a perfectly flat base with both 1/4″ and 3/8″ threads (hooray!!) as well as a large number of M4 threads towards the outside. Now I can fit standard Arri accessories without having to fudge together different plates and screws to make them fit.
Frankly this is how Sony should have done this in the first place, but well done to Transvideo, now my F3 is really starting to feel like a proper camera. The only very minor down side is that you loose your serial number plate as this is attached to the original Sony part. The fit is superb and it looks great too. The list price is €265.00. 10/10.
As well as the base plate I also received a little finger tab that attaches to the Sony PL mount. this little wing tab makes it much easier to remove and attach PL mount lenses as you can grip the lens with one hand and push the tab with you thumb to release the locking ring. It’s only a small thing but it makes the F3’s PL mount much more user friendly.
For more info on Transvideo products, click here.
Calibrating your viewfinder or LCD.
One of the most important things to do before you shoot anything is to make sure that any monitors, viewfinders or LCD panels are accurately calibrated. The majority of modern HD cameras have built in colour bars and these are ideal for checking your monitor. On most Sony cameras you have SMPTE ARIB colour bars like the ones in the image here. Note that I have raised the black level in the image so that you can see some of the key features more clearly. If your using a LCD or OLED monitor connected via HDSDI or HDMI then the main adjustments you will have are for Contrast, Brightness and Saturation.
First set up the monitor or viewfinder so that the 100% white square is shown as peak white on the monitor. This is done by increasing the contrast control until the white box stops getting brighter on the screen. Once it reaches maximum brightness, back the contrast level down until you can just perceive the tiniest of brightness changes on the screen.
Once this is set you now use the pluge bars to set up the black level. The pluge bars are the narrow near black bars that I’ve marked as -2% +2% and +4% in the picture they are each separated by black. The -2% bar is blacker than black so we should not be able to see this. Using the brightness control adjust the screen so that you can’t see the -2% bar but can just see the +2% bar. The 4% bar should also be visible separated from the 2% bar by black.
Color is harder to set accurately. Looking at the bars, the main upper bars are 75% bars so these are fully saturated, but only at 75% luma. The 4 coloured boxes, 2 on each side, two thirds of the way down the pattern are 100% fully saturated boxes. Using the outer 100% boxes increase the saturation or colour level until the color vibrance of the outer boxes stops increasing, then back the level down again until you just perceive the color decreasing. I find this easiest to see with the blue box.
Now you should have good, well saturated looking bars on you monitor or LCD and provided it is of reasonable quality it should be calibrated adequately well for judging exposure.
I find that on an EX or F3 the LCD panel ends up with the contrast at zero, colour at zero and brightness at about +28 on most cameras.
S-Log, Latitude, Dynamic Range and EI S-log. Or how to modify your exposure range with EI S-Log
The big issue most people have when working with log and exposing mid grey at 38 is that when you look at it on a standard monitor without any lookup tables it looks underexposed. The assumption therefore is that it is underexposed or in some way too dark to ever look right, because that’s what people used to working with conventional gammas have become programmed to believe over many years from their experience with conventional gammas.
So, for confidence you add a lookup table which converts the log to a Rec-709 type gamma and now the image looks brighter, but as it now has to fit within Rec-709 space we have lost either some of our high end or low end so we are no longer seeing the full range of the captured image so highlights may be blown out or blacks may be crushed.
It’s important for people to understand the concept of gamma and colour space and how the only way to truly see what a camera (any camera) is capturing is to use a monitor that has the same gamma and colour space. Generally speaking lookup tables don’t help as they will be taking a signal with a large range and manipulating it to fit in a small range and when you do that, something has to be discarded. If you were to take an F3 set to S-log and expose mid grey at 38 and show that on one of the nice new Sony E170 series monitors that have S-log gamma and place that next to another F3 with Rec-709 shooting mig grey at 45% and a similar but conventional 709 monitor the lower and mid range exposures would be near identical and the S-log images would not look under exposed or flat. The S-log images however would show an extra 2 stops of dynamic range.
Furthermore it has to be remembered that log is log, it is not linear. Because of its non linear nature, less and less brightness information is getting recorded as you go up the brightness range. As our own visual system is tuned to be most accute in the mid ranges this is normally fine provide you expose correctly putting mid tones in the more linear, lower parts of the S-log curve. Start putting faces to high up the S-log curve and it gets progressively harder to get a natural look after grading. This is where I think a lot of people new to log stumble. They don’t have the confidence to expose faces at what looks like a couple of stops under where they would with a standard gamma, so they start bringing up the exposure closer to where they would with standard gamma and then have a really hard time getting faces to look natural in the grade. Remember that the nominal S-Log value for white is 68 IRE. Part of the reason for this is that above about 70 IRE the amount of compression being applied by log is getting pretty extreme. While there is some wriggle room to push your exposure above or below the nominal mid grey at 38 it’s not as big as you might expect, especially dealing with natural tones and overexposure.
If you do want to shift your middle grey point this is where the EI S-log function and a light meter comes into it’s own, it’s what it’s designed for.
First something to understand about conventional camera gain, dynamic range and latitude. The latitude and sensitivity of the F3 is governed by the latitude and sensitivity of the sensor, which is a little under 13 stops. Different amounts of gain or different ISO’s don’t alter the sensors latitude, nor do they alter the actual sensitivity, only the amount of signal amplification. Increasing the camera gain will reduce the cameras output dynamic range as something that is 100 IRE at 800 ISO would go into clipping if the actual camera gain was increased by 6db (taking the ISO to 1600) but the darkest object the camera can actually detect remains the same. Dark objects may appear brighter, but there is still a finite limit to how dark an object the camera can actually see and this is governed by the sensor and the sensors noise floor.
EI (Exposure Index) shooting works differently, whether it’s with the F3, F65, Red or Alexa. Let’s consider how it works with the PMW-F3. In EI S-Log mode the camera always actually outputs at 800 ISO from the A/B outputs. It is assumed that if your working with S-Log you will be recording using an external 10 bit recorder connected to the A/B outputs. 422 is OK, but you really, really need 10 bit for EI S-Log. At 800 ISO you have 6.5 stops of over exposure and 6.5 under when you shoot mid grey at 38 or expose conventionally with a light meter.
Now what happens when you set the camera to EI 1600? Understand that the camera will still output at 800 ISO over the A/B outputs to your external recorder, but also note that 6db gain (1 stop) is added to the monitor output and what you see on the LCD screen, so the monitor out and LCD image get brighter. As the cameras metering systems (zebras, spot meter, histogram) measure the signal on the monitor side these are also now offset by +6db or + 1 stop.
As the camera is set to EI 1600 we set our light meter to 1600 ISO. If we make no change to our lighting the light meter would tell us to stop down by one stop, compared to our original 800 ISO exposure.
Alternately, looking at the camera, when you switch on EI 1600 the picture gets brighter, your mid grey card would also become brighter by one stop, so If we use the cameras spot meter to expose our grey card at 38 again we would need to stop down the iris by one stop to return the grey card to 38 IRE (for the same light levels as we used for 800). So either way, whether exposing with a light meter or exposing using the cameras built in metering, when you go from EI 800 to EI 1600 for the correct exposure (under the same lighting) you would stop down the iris by one stop.
Hope those new to this are still with me at this point!
Because the cameras A/B output is still operating at 800 ISO and you have stopped down by one stop as that what the light meter or camera metering told you to do because they are operating at EI 1600, the A/B output gets darker by one stop. Because you have shifted the actual recorded output down by one stop you have altered you exposure range from the original +/- 6.5 stops to + 7.5 stops, -5.5 stops. So you can see that when working at EI 1600 the dynamic range now becomes + 7.5 stops and -5.5 stops. Go to EI 3200 and the dynamic range becomes +8.5 stops and -4.5 stops.
So EI S-log gives you a great way of shifting your dynamic range centre while giving you consistent looking exposure and a reasonable approximation of how your noise levels are changing as you shift your exposure up and down within the cameras dynamic range.
EI S-Log doesn’t go below 800 because shifting the dynamic range up the exposure range is less beneficial. Lets pretend you have an EI 400 setting. If you did use it, you would be opening up the iris by one stop, so your range becomes +5.5 and -7.5 stops compared to your mid grey or light metered exposure. So you are working with reduced headroom and you are pushing your mid range up into the more highly compressed part of the curve which is less desirable. I believe this is why the option is not given on the F3.
PMW-F3 in the hands of a true pro.
Here’s a link to 14 short comedy sketches shot by cinematographer Charles Papert. Shot using S-Log with a PMW-F3. Really, really good stuff and gives an amazing insight into the range of looks that can created with the F3.
Setting Exposure with Standard Gammas – Use your judgement!
First take a long look at the image to the left. look at the 3 small grey boxes. What do you see?
Is the middle of the three grey boxes brighter than the others? Does the bottom small grey box look about the same brightness as the top one?
This post comes as the result of a discussion going on elsewhere about how to correctly expose when using standard gammas. Basically discussing how to expose when your not going to do anything to your footage in post, for what I would call “direct to air”.
There are many ways of setting exposure. You could use a light meter, you could use zebras, you could use a waveform monitor or histogram.
Lets imagine that grey box is a face. If you were using zebras you would normally set them to between 65% and 70% and then expose the shot so the face exhibited the zebra pattern over any parts of the face not overly highlighted or in shadow. This is the textbook way to expose using zebras. Another way to expose might be to use a mid grey card (also known as an 18% grey card). With standard and cinegammas you would normally expose this at 50% using the cameras histogram, waveform monitor or spot meter. Again this is a textbook, technically correct exposure. But this is the real world and the real world is very different to the theoretical world because light plays tricks with our eyes and the overall brightness of a scene can change the mood of the shot.
Lets say you have a room with dark coloured walls. At one end is a window and you have an actor standing at each end of the room, one against the dark wall, one against the window. We have two shots in our scene, one looking at the actor against the dark wall, one looking at the actor against the window. What happens if we expose both faces using zebras to exactly the same textbook 65% level? Well the face against the window will look darker than the face against the black wall. Look back at the grey boxes on the left. The top and middle grey boxes are exactly the same brightness but because the middle box is against black, to our eye’s it appears brighter than the top one. Now if we were to use a histogram or waveform monitor to expose these two shots, all the extra white in the window shot might tempt you to reduce the exposure, this would make the problem even worse. In fact to expose these two shots so that the faces match as you cut between them you need to reduce the exposure on the darker shot. Looking at the grey boxes again the lowest box is actually at 45% while the other two are at 65%, yet the lower box appears to be about as bright as the top box.
So what am I trying to say? Well exposure isn’t all about setting object “X” at exposure “Y”. You must use your judgement and a known monitor or viewfinder to asses your pictures. Learn to interpret what your monitor is telling you, learn to recognise scenes that may need to be exposed away from the text book values and methods. Above all else don’t be afraid to expose for what looks right, as opposed to object “X” at value “Y”.
I suppose to follow up on this I should tell you how to calibrate your viewfinder or monitor… I’ll do that soon in a later article. Did you find this useful? let me know, I’m planning on writing more about dealing with light and lighting.
Alphatron EVF-035W Video Review.
Below is my video review of the new Alphatron EVF-035W. It really is a great viewfinder with a much better LCD panel than pervious 3rd party EVF’s. The video is best viewed by clicking through to youtube and watching in HD where you should be able to appreciate the screen quality better.
Metabones EF to E-Mount smart adapter.
The new $400 Metabones EF to E-Mount smart adapter allows you to use Canon EF mount lenses on almost any camera with an E-Mount. So that means cameras like the FS100, VG10, VG20 and the NEX series stills cameras. I’ve been trying to get hold of one of these for some time, but they have always been out of stock due to popular demand. However I was lucky enough to track one down from a UK dealer a couple of weeks ago. It is a small compact device, there are no wires, cables or remote control boxes so it couldn’t be simpler to use. Simply attach it to the Sony E-Mount and then attach your Canon EF lenses to the adapter. The camera will then control the iris just as it would with a Sony lens. So in the case of a FS100 or FS700 the iris wheel will control the iris with an accurate display of the iris setting on the cameras LCD screen. You can also use the auto iris functions. For quick focus checks there is a small button on the barrel of the adapter that momentarily fully opens the iris so you have minimum depth of field, which makes it easier to see if you are in focus. The adapter doesn’t work with auto focus so no focus functions, but it does allow any image stabilisation built into the lens to work. It works with the vast majority of lenses although there are a few that don’t work or have some limitations, best to check the Metabones web site for details. I really like this adapter for it’s simplicity and transparent operation, you really don’t know it’s there. Just wish they could do one for the Sony F3.
Coming Soon: A review of the new Transvideo PMW-F3 base plate that completely replaces the underside of the F3 with a really nice bottom end and of course the Alphatron EVF-035W review.