I have just published a major update to my guide to Cine-EI on the PMW-F55 and F5. The guide now goes in to a lot more depth. I have tried to make it easy to understand but it is also quite technical, I have deliberately included the technical background stuff so that hopefully you will understand why Cine-EI and LUT’s work the way they do. I’ve added a whole new section on exposure methods for some of the different LUT’s as well as how to create your own LUT’s.
Please take a look if you use these cameras. Soon I will add a section on post production.
My old Metabones MK1 adapter is not suitable for full frame lenses on the new Sony A7s. So in anticipation of the arrival of my A7s I ordered a cheap CommLite full frame autofocus ready adapter on ebay. This adapter (CN-EF-NEX) was only $90 USD so I thought I would give it a try, much cheaper than the metabones.
To be honest I wasn’t expecting much, but now I have the adapter in my hands I am pleasantly surprised. It appears well made and very solid. It even carries a CE mark. It works just fine on my NEX5N and FS700. On the NEX5N I have working autofocus. If the lens has image stabilisation this works too. I have tried a wide variety of Sigma and Tamron Canon EF lenses with it and they all work. Even my new Tamron 16-300mm works with this adapter, this lens doesn’t work with a number of other adapter.
Autofocus is a little slow, especially if the light is bad. Having not used the MK3 Metabones I don’t know how this compares but certainly this adapter works and is quite useable. It’s said to be compatible with full frame lenses on the A7, but as yet I have not been able to test this. The little mounting post is easily and quickly removable, but a real boon on the NEX5N with bigger lenses. For the price, you can’t go far wrong, really quite impressed considering how little it cost.
Been playing a lot with HFR recently on my F5. One of the niggles with HFR on the PMW-F55 and F5 is that you don’t have LUT’s when shooting HFR. But, in firmware V4 Sony added a new high contrast mode for the viewfinder. I now have this allocated to one of my assignable buttons and it makes a pretty good LUT alternative for shooting in HFR.
I find that when shooting with S-Log3 HFR I can get a pretty good approximation of correct exposure using the VF High Contrast mode and as the image has decent contrast, focus is much easier than when trying to work without any kind of LUT. Sadly this is only available in the viewfinder, but I find that it is much more obvious if your exposure is off when you use the VF High Contrast mode.
The camera automatically turns this mode OFF when you power the camera down, so you must re-enable it when you power cycle the camera. This is probably a good thing as it means you shouldn’taccidentally.
Sadly zebras etc either measure the LUT output or the Slog, they are NOT effected by the viewfinder HC mode, so in HFR they will be measuring the SLog.
It’s very easy to check out this function for yourself. In regular, non HFR Cine EI,at the native ISO, turn ON the 709(800) LUT and view the image in the viewfinder making a mental not of what it looks like. Now turn the VF LUT’s OFF and turn on the VF High Contrast mode. You will see that the VF image is as far as I can tell identical in both modes.
So at the native ISO: Cine EI + 709(800) LUT gives the same image in the VF as CineEI NO LUT + VF High Contrast mode.
I recommend that if you haven’t played with this in HFR you give it a try. It’s not a true LUT, but it looks just the same as the 709(800) LUT.
For the past 18 months almost everything I have shot has been shot at 4K. I have to say that I am addicted to the extra resolution and the quality of the images I am getting these days from my PMW-F5 and R5 raw recorder. In addition, the flexibility I get in post from shooting in 4K to crop and re-frame my shots is fantastic.
BUT: I have a Sony A7s on order. Us European buyers won’t get them until late July as the European model is different to the US model, in the US the cameras are based on the NTSC system, so do 24, 30 and 60fps while the European models are based on PAL, so do 25 and 50fps but with the addition of 24fps as well. Right now there are no realistic portable 4K recording option for the A7s, these will come later. So this means that for a now if I want to shoot with the A7s it will have to be HD.
Is that really such a bad thing? Well, no not really. It’s a sideways step not a backwards one, as I’m getting the A7s for a very specific roll.
Image quality is a combination of factors. Resolution is just one part of the image quality equation. Dynamic range, contrast, noise, colour etc all contribute in more or less equal parts to getting a great image. The A7s delivers all of these very well. If I am delivering in HD then most of the time I don’t NEED 4K. 4K is nice to have and if I can have 4K then I will take advantage of it, but for an HD production it is definitely not essential in most cases.
The reason for getting the A7s is that I want a pocket sized camera that I can use for grab and go shooting. It offers amazing low light performance and great dynamic range thanks to it’s use of S-Log2. I’m really excited about the prospect of having a camera as sensitive as the A7s for next years Northern Lights trips. I should be able to get shots that have not been possible before, so even at “only” HD the A7s will get used along side my 4K F5/R5.
In the future there will of course be external 4K recording options for the A7s making it even more versatile. I probably won’t always use them with the A7s but the option will be there when I NEED 4K.
Given the choice, if I can shoot in 4K I almost always will. I want to shoot in 4K whenever I can. It really does give me much greater post production flexibility, for example I can shoot a wide shot of an interview in 4K and then crop in for a mid shot or close up if I’m delivering in HD. So 4K will always be very high on my priority list when choosing a camera. But if you can’t afford 4K and are still delivering in HD then worry not. It’s probably better to have a well optimised HD camera than a cheap, poor quality less than perfect 4K camera. Don’t let 4K trick you into buying a lesser camera just because the lesser camera has 4K.
Well shot HD still looks fantastic, even on a big screen. Most movies are shown at 2K and few people complain about the quality of most blockbusters. So, HD is still good enough, 4K has not made HD obsolete or degraded the quality of existing HD cameras.
But is good enough? Good enough for you and your clients? I am passionate about getting great images, so I don’t just want good enough, I want the best I can get, so I’m a 4K convert, as are some of my clients. I’m actually delivering content in 4K for many of my customers. But sometimes, 4K isn’t practical, so in these cases I’ll just get the very best HD I can (hence the A7s for very portable and ultra low light shooting).
The bottom line is that right now, maybe you don’t need 4K, but it’s OK to want 4K. You may need 4K very soon as it becomes more mainstream (some nice Samsung and LG 4K TV’s are now available in the $1.5K/£1K price range). 4K might bring you many benefits in post production, but that doesn’t mean you need it, not yet at least. But once you do start to shoot in 4K there is no going back and while you might still not need 4K, you’ll probably find that you do actually need 4K. 🙂
I was in Windsor, Berkshire, close to the Castle, a major tourist attraction, shooting with a Sony AX100, a compact consumer handycam. I was using a small 3 stage tripod and I was standing on the public right of way pavement shooting the castle. I had arrived in Windsor early to avoid the worst of the crowds.
After a few minutes I am approached by a single Police officer and a council warden. After exchanging pleasant “good mornings” The first question I am asked is: “What are you doing, is it for professional or private purposes?”.
Now, I know that as I am not on private property I can shoot without restriction and it makes no difference whether I am an amateur or a professional, there is no differentiation between the two under UK law when it comes to taking photos or video both have the same rights.
So as I’m unsure quite how to respond as I am a professional cameraman, but I was not shooting for any particular production or client I respond: “Does it make a difference whether it’s professional or private?”, to which the warden tells me yes it does, it makes a difference (which is incorrect). Next I’m asked who I’m working for etc.
OK, OK, hands in the air, I could have handled this better. But, I don’t have to explain to the police what I am doing, who I work for etc. I am perfectly within my rights to shoot video from a public pavement and I don’t need to explain to all and sundry what I am doing and why. I get fed up with being stopped by the police in this country whenever I turn up on a street with a pro camera or tripod.
So next I get the whole, well we have to be vigilant, you might be a terrorist bit. Huh? Would a terrorist stand with a tripod in such an obvious manner, there were people all over the place with all kinds of cameras shooting all kinds of thing, but because I had a tripod, was on my own and taking my time I was singled out as a terrorist threat! For goodness sake, it was a consumer camcorder just like the hundreds of others in the hands of the thousands of tourists that visit Windsor every day. Do the police stop all of them, or are they just singling out those that look like they might be professionals? If they want to know who I am then they should have asked for ID, but they didn’t, they never asked who I was, where I lived, jus whether I was shooting for professional or private purposes.
So I asked to be left alone so I could get on with what I was lawfully doing. After a couple of minutes they gave up and stood behind me chatting into their radios and making snide remarks that I was obviously meant to hear about about my attitude. I continued to shoot shots of the castle.
Then I look up from the camera to find a police sargent standing right in front of me, blocking my shot. “Excuse me sir can you tell me what your doing?”. By now I’m getting pretty angry with this whole thing. “I’m trying to shoot some video of the castle, but you’re preventing me from doing it”. “Oh no, I’m not stopping you” say’s the policeman.
Prevent from shooting by the Police in Windsor. Although not physical stopped, by standing in front of the camera this police office made it hard for me to shoot.
Uh well actually, while perhaps not physically restraining me, the fact that the guy was standing in front of me along with the constant hassling meant I was prevented from shooting, so after a further “discussion” about my right to shoot and not being a terrorist I was in effect forced to move on simply to get away from the now 3 police officers and a warden making it very hard to do what I wanted to do.
Why is it I can travel around the world shooting this and that all over the place, but when I return to my home country I get prevented from going about my lawful business under the pathetic pretext of being some kind of terrorist threat. I don’t have to explain what I am doing, who I work for, whether I’m shooting for private or commercial purposes when I’m going about my business in a public area. Clearly the police didn’t like the fact that I knew my rights.
I admit that I could of handled the situation better, but when the first question you get asked is whether your shooting for private or commercial purposes you just can’t tell what’s coming next. Plus, frankly the situation should never have arisen in the first place. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I shouldn’t have to explain to the police what I am doing just because I’m using a tripod. I am really fed up with this happening here in the UK. It’s crazy because whenever I want to go and shoot something, I don’t want this kind of hassle, so I have to try to figure out locations where I won’t be bothered by the police. I shouldn’t have to do this.
At last weeks Broadcast Asia trade show in Singapore, Sony revealed that they are working on a new highly compact XDCAM camcorder. They showed a prototype camera that was under a glass cover (which was a working unit).
Very few details are available at this time. The camera shown appears to be based on either the Sony AX100 4K camcorder or the similar CX900 HD camcorder. These both use a 1″, 20MP CMOS sensor that produces really rather good images (although it does suffer from a fair bit of skew/rolling shutter) and have 8 bit XAVC-S recording to SDXC or SDHC cards in 4K and HD in the AX100 and HD only in the CX900. This new camcorder will be able to record using 10 bit 422 XAVC long GoP, probably at 50Mb/s like the new PXW-X180. Whether it will also be able to record the XDCAM Mpeg2 codec is less clear, personally I suspect not.
This camera follows on from the Sony tradition of taking a top end compact consumer model, tweaking the recording codecs, adding a few more pro style features and adding an XLR input. So it’s no surprise to see this really. Given the great images from the CX900 and AX100 I would imagine that this new camcorder will pack quite a punch for such a small unit. The AX100/CX900 have a 12x optical zoom with image stabilisation and the ability to digitally increase the zoom range to 18x in 4K(AX100) and 24x in HD with very little loss of image quality.
EDIT: I Note that 1: There are no 4K badges on the camera body as the AX100 has. 2: The zoom range is noted as 24x on the camera body. This makes me suspect that this camera will be HD only.
Here are some pictures of the unit shown in Singapore.
New, as yet un-named compact XDCAM camcorder. Left sideNew, as yet un-named compact XDCAM camcorder. Right rear with SDI connector.New, as yet un-named compact XDCAM camcorder. Right Side.New, as yet un-named compact XDCAM camcorder. Top of the handle.New, as yet un-named compact XDCAM camcorder. From the rear. Note that this unit actually works!
I was lucky enough to get to spend some time with a pre-production Sony PXW-X180 here in Singapore. I put it through it’s paces shooting around the botanical gardens, China town and Clarke Quay.
For a 1/3″ camcorder it produces a remarkably good image. Really low noise, very clean images, much better than anything I have seen from any other 1/3″ camcorder. The 25x zoom is impressive, the variable ND filter is very clever and it might seem trivial but the rear viewfinder was very nice. It’s a very high resolution OLED, much, much better than the LCOS EVF’s found on many other models.
The zoom lens has proper manual calibrated controls with end stops, much like a PMW-200. The ability to use a multitude of codecs is fantastic and perhaps better still is the fact that you can use SDXC cards for XDACM or XAVC at up to 50Mb/s, so even XDCAM HD422 can be recorded on this low cost media. This will be great for news or other situations where you need to hand off your media at the end of the shoot.
A more in depth review will follow soon, but for now here’s the video. Un-graded, un touched, straight from the camera footage. Looks very nice if you ask me.
It’s very easy to create your own 3D LUT for the Sony PMW-F5 or PMW-F55 using DaVinci Resolve or just about any grading software with LUT export capability. The LUT should be a 17x17x17 or 33x33x33 .cube LUT (this is what Resolve creates by default).
Simply shoot some test Slog2 or Slog3 clips at the native ISO. You must use the same Slog and color space as you will be using in the camera.
Import and grade the clips in Resolve as you wish the final image to look. Then once your happy with your look, right click on the clip in the timeline and “Export LUT”. Resolve will then create a .cube LUT.
Then place the .cube LUT file created by the grading software on an SD card in the PMWF55_F5 folder. You may need to create the following folder structure on the SD card, so first you have a PRIVATE folder, in that there is a SONY folder and so on.
PRIVATE : SONY : PRO : CAMERA : PMWF55_F5
Put the SD card in the camera, then go to the File menu and go to “Monitor 3D LUT” and select “Load SD Card”. The camera will offer you a 1 to 4 destination memory selection, choose 1,2,3 or 4, this is the location where the LUT will be saved. You should then be presented with a list of all the LUT’s on the SD card. Select your chosen LUT to save it from the SD card to the camera.
Once loaded in to the camera when you choose 3D User LUT’s you can select between user LUT memory 1,2,3 or 4. Your LUT will be in the memory you selected when you copied the LUT from the SD card to the camera.
First of all. You can use either, LUT’s or Looks. But there is a quite marked difference in the way they behave, especially if you use EI gain.
At the native ISO there is little to choose between them. But just to confirm my earlier suspicions about the way the 3D LOOK’s behave I ran a quick test.
I found that when you lower the EI gain, below native, the output level of the LOOK lowers, so that depending on the EI, the clipping, peak level and middle grey values are different. For example on my PMW-F5 at 500 EI the LC709TypeA LUT has a peak output (clipping) level of just 90% while at 2000 ISO it’s 98%. This also means that middle grey of the LOOK will shift down slightly as you lower the EI. This means that for consistent exposure at different low EI’s you may need to offset your exposure very slightly. It also means that at Native EI if the waveform shows peak levels at 90% you are not overexposed or clipped, but at low EI’s 90% will mean clipped Slog, so beware of this peak level offset.
When you raise the EI of the LOOKS, the input clipping point of the Look profile changes. For each stop of EI you add the LOOK will clip one stop earlier than the underlying Slog. For example set the LC709TypeA LUT to 8000 ISO (on my PMW-F5) and the LOOK itself hard clips 2 stops before the actual SLog3 clips. So your LOOK will make it appear that your Slog is clipped up to 2 stops before it actually is and the dynamic range and contrast range of the LOOK varies depending on the EI, so again beware.
So, the Looks may give the impression that the Slog is clipped if you use a high ISO and will give the impression that you are not using your full available range at a low ISO. I suspect this is a limitation of 3D LUT tables which only work over a fixed 0 to1 input and output range.
What about the 1D LUT’s? Well the LUT’s don’t cover the full range of the Slog curves so you will never see all of your dynamic range at once. However I feel their behaviour at low and high EI’s is a little bit more intuitive than the level shifts and early clipping of the LOOKs.
The 1D LUT’s will always go to 109%. So there are no middle grey shifts for the LUT, no need to compensate at any ISO. In addition if you see any clipping below 109% then it means your SLog is clipping, for example if you set the camera to 500 ISO (on an F5), when you see the 709(800) LUT clipping at 105% it’s because the Slog is also clipping.
At High ISO’s you won’t see the top end of the SLog’s exposure range anyway because the LUT’s range is less than Slog’s range, but the LUT itself does not clip, instead highlights just go up above 109% and this is in my opinion more intuitive behaviour than the clipped LOOK’s that don’t ever quite reach 100% and clip at lower than 100% even when the Slog itself isn’t clipped.
At the end of the day use the ones that work best for you, just be aware of the limitations of both and that the LUT’s and LOOKs behave very differently. I suggest you test and try both before making any firm decisions.
Personally I prefer to use the 709(800) LUT for exposure as the restricted range matches that of most consumer TV’s etc so I feel this gives me a better idea of how the image may end up looking on a consumers TV. Also I find my Slog exposure more accurate as the LUT’s restricted range means you are more likely to expose within finer limits. In addition as noted above I fell the LUT’s behaviour is more predictable and intuitive at high and low EI’s than the LOOK’s.
In addition the higher contrast makes focus easier. I will often switch in and out of the LUT to look at how the Log is coping with any over exposure. This is my personal preference, but I do also use other LUT’s and Looks in particular the 709TypeA from time to time.
There is an ongoing and much heated debate on another forum about the practicalities of using the LUT’s or Looks built in to the PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 for setting the correct exposure of your SLog or Raw footage. In response to this I put together a very rough video demonstrating how this actually works.
Before watching the video, do please understand the following notes:
Correct exposure is normally determined by the level at which middle grey is recorded. This is true of both video and film production. Light meters are calibrated using middle grey. Expose with a light meter and you will find middle grey at the levels indicated below.
Different gamma curves may use different middle grey levels depending on the contrast required and the dynamic range of the gamma curve. Generally speaking, the greater the dynamic range, the lower middle grey must be set in order to leave room above middle grey for the extra dynamic range. This means that the relationship between middle grey and white will be different from curve to curve. Don’t always expect white to be some fixed value above middle grey. Some of the Sony looks for example LC709TypeA are very low contrast and while middle grey still sits at around 42% (The ITU standard for Rec-709 is 41.7%), because it is a low contrast, high dynamic range curve white is at a lower level, around 70%. The Hypergamma LUT grey points are given by the “G40″ or G33” number – G40 meaning middle grey at 40%.
When you take Slog or raw in to post production it is expected that the middle grey of the recordings will be at the correct nominal level (see chart below). If it is not, when you apply a post production Slog or raw LUT then the footage may appear incorrectly exposed. If you try to bring Slog or raw into an ACES workflow then ACES expects middle grey to be at the correct values. So it is important that your Slog or raw is exposed correctly if you want it to work as expected in post.
Correct exposure levels for Sony’s Slog.
Having said all of the above… If you are using CineEI and lowering or raising the EI gain from the native ISO then your Slog or raw will be exposed brighter or darker than the levels above. But I must assume that this is what you want as you are probably looking to adjust the levels in post to reduce noise or cope with an over exposure issue. You may need to use a correction LUT to bring your Slog levels back to the nominal correct levels prior to adding a post production LUT.
Anyway, here’s the video.
Cinematographer and film maker Alister Chapman's Personal Website
