I’m off to Arizona on Thursday for a long weekend to shoot the monsoon thunderstorms. I had postponed this trip from earlier in the month when the weather just wasn’t right. This tim around the forecast is really good (for storms that is). I will be shooting with my PDW-700 and my EX1. I will also be giving the Nanoflash a shake down making good use of the cache function to capture what I hope will be some great lightning storms.?Anyone want to join me? I have a couple of spare seats in the car and motel rooms are peanuts.
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Stetting up video cameras without charts.
There is far too much emphasis on color charts and 100% one to one – set it up with a scope settings. Very often a 100% accurate one to one response won’t look right as the video gamut is smaller and lopsided than that of the human eye so a small amount of skewing of the color gamut can often help produce a picture that visually looks more natural. One of the very best ways to set up a camera is to use a high quality color photograph of a known scene. Shoot the photograph and look at the picture on a monitor and adjust until it looks right. This will give a more natural looking image than aligning with charts and scopes and is a technique that has been used since the very beginnings of color television. I have a scene that contains vibrant colored cars, green fields and trees, buildings and blue sky. I have a dozen large copies of this picture and use it whenever I am making camera adjustments to make sure my pictures still look natural. Of course scopes should still be used if you are making any extreme settings to ensure your images are still legal, but at the end of the day what you are after is an image that looks right too you (or the producer) and whoever else will view your material, not what looks right according to a chart and a scope.
PDW 700 Native White Balance
The PDW-700 cameras are balanced for daylight optically and then corrected electronically for tungsten etc.
Traditionally cameras were balanced for Tungsten and then added colour correction optical filters to get to daylight. This was done as CC filters absorb light and thus make the camera less sensitive. Normally when shooting outdoors in daylight sensitivity is not an issue while shooting indoors under tungsten light you used to need every bit of sensitivity you could get.
The down side to this approach is that tungsten contains very little blue light so to get a natural picture the blue channel was often running at quite a high level of gain which increases noise in the blue channel and thus overall noise. In addition when you rotated in the CC filters to get to daylight the sensitivity of the camera was reduced, so you did not have constant gain.
With the PDW-700 (and also the F350 I believe) the cameras are essentially balanced for daylight, without the use of any CC filters, which helps reduce noise in the blue channel. Then for tungsten shooting you electronically re balance the camera. By doing this the overall sensitivity of the camera is constant whether shooting at 3.2K or 5.6K and you only get additional blue channel noise while shooting under tungsten. If you are worried by blue channel noise you can always correct from daylight down to tungsten with an optical CC filter (80A) and leave the camera set to daylight, although this will reduce the systems overall sensitivity by around 1 and a half stops.
Chasing Vulcans.
Last weekend was the Royal International Air Tattoo. The largest military air show in the world. I’ve filmed this event many times and every year we try to do things a little differently to jazz things up. We have been shooting the show in HD for the past 3 years, this year it was entirely XDCAM with the exception of the minicams which were HXR-MC1P HD minicams. We had an EX1, EX3 and 3x PDW-700?s. As well as the usual extra long telephoto lenses we had a couple of gyro stabilized lenses including a schwem gyrozoom. While not an HD lens we found that the performance of the lens wasn’t too bad. There is no other lens that offers the degree of stabilization offered by the schwem so for the applications we were using it for we were happy to accept the slight softness in the corners. The application we had was to use it in one of the “Follow Me” vehicles used to marshall the aircraft around the airbase.
The high point of this was doing a tracking shot of the recently restored Vulcan bomber landing at Fairford. To do this we drove along the taxiway parallel to the runway at high speed as the Vulcan came into land. Once it had landed we got some impressive shots as it taxied right behind us. The Vulcan is a huge aircraft and to have this bearing down on you as it taxies with all four engines running (they normally use only 2) is quite a rush! The Schewm is a long lens so the Vulcan completely filled the frame, despite this the gyro stabilisation kept the images rock steady. Over the weekend I shot aircraft startups and GV’s using an EX3, then the follow me stuff with the schwem and PDW-70 as well as flying and display footage using a PDW-700 and 42x Fujinon lens. The most reassuring thing is that as these are all XDCAM cameras we know they will all cut together well in the final edit.
PDW-700 or PDW-F800 viewfinder choice.
The PDW-700 and F800?s are sold body only, so you have to choose which viewfinder you want. there are 3 choices. A cheap HDVF 200 mono CRT finder that is 480+ lines resolution, the mid range (top of the CRT range) HDVF-20A which is 500+ lines resolution and then there is the expensive colour HDVF-C35W.?I got the HDVF-20A. The viewfinder is a critical part of the package and I wanted a good viewfinder. For the past year my main camera has been my trusty EX3 which I love. This has a really good colour viewfinder with an excellent colour peaking function and image magnification. When I use my EX3 it is rare for me to not get my pictures pin sharp and spot on in focus. Plus I can frame my image taking into account both black and white contrast range and colour contrast. With the EX3 judging exposure is easy, you can see when your overexposing as you can see colours washing out. If I don’t want (or can’t) take a colour monitor on location then I really can light an interview or check colour balance without just using the EX3?s finder.?Now with the PDW-700 I am struggling. Going back to a mono CRT has been a bit of a shock, to be honest I am struggling with it. It’s not that there is anything wrong with the HDVF-20A but I have become used to working with a colour VF. I’m not sure I can live with the CRT VF for very long. I guess I am going to have to start saving my pennies as I think going back to a mono CRT is a retrograde step. I just wish the C35W was a little cheaper. Perhaps Sony could bring out a VF for the 700/F800 based on the rather good EX3 finder.?If I was making the purchase again I would opt for the more expensive C35W. I no longer see a colour VF as a luxury but more of an essential item. When you work with cameras day in – day out you want the tools that make your life as easy as possible and a good colour VF is one of them. On it’s own the C35W may seem expensive at £5.5k compared to the £3.5k of the 20A, but in terms of the total packing it’s another 10% to the cost but in retrospect I think it would have been worth it.
Chroma Key Shoot with PDW-700
Just got back from my first PDW 700 green screen shoot. We were in a tiny room and it was a hot day, so it was certainly warm! Everything went well although I have to say that I am really struggling with the CRT viewfinder. I have become so used to a full colour viewfinder on the EX3 that it really is horrid going back to a monchrome viewfinder. I shall be playing with the footage on Monday so I’ll let you know how well it keys then.
Kodak stops making film!
This kind of slipped past me this week, but Kodak have stopped making Kodachrome film. Just goes to show the direction things are taking these days. While Kodak are keen to play down the news, reminding us that they are still making other professional films the decision to drop what was once their main brand is a clear indication of the massive decline in the use of film.
Grading and colour correction
I got given the link to a video on the RedGiant site (thanks Paul) that gives a really interesting insight into how the grading in blockbuster movies is done. The nice thing about the video is that it explains why certain things and certain colours are used. It’s a really insightful video.
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/videos/redgianttv/item/23/#
Challenge Alister No 2
Challenge Alister No2
BBC Hints at XDCAM EX approval for broadcast HD production.
The BBC’s Danielle Nagler’s keynote speech at the HD Masters strongly hinted at the BBC accepting the use of the Sony EX1 and EX3 for mainstream HD broadcast production. I’ve always said that the EX cameras are remarkable cameras and this just backs up my assertion that the EX is good enough for broadcast. Danielle showed footage of an EX cut with a HDCAM camera commenting that “what this small camera can deliver is a breakthrough, allowing us to consider the migration of a much, much wider range of BBC programming than has previously been possible.”
You can read the full transcript here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/06/hd_masters_conference_keynote.html