Tag Archives: F3

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Cineroid HDSDI EVF Review.

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Cineroid EVF-4MSS

I needed an external viewfinder for my F3 rig. I could have got either a Zacuto or Cineroid HDMI viewfinder, but I felt that HDSDI would be more useful. As the HDSDI  Zacuto is not available just yet, I picked up one of the new metal bodied Cineroid HDSDI EVF’s (EVF-4MSS).

The viewfinder has the same 800 x 480 pixel 3.2″ screen as the HDMI version but in a robust metal body. There are threaded 1/4″ mounting holes on the top and bottom of the viewfinder. It is supplied with a generic battery compatible with Sony’s L series batteries and a tiny little charger.

Rear of the Cineroid EVF-4MSS

So what’s it like. Well for a start it’s very solidly made. The body and the slide on part of the eyepiece is made from metal (some kind of hard anodised aluminium I think). The diopter adjuster is made out of plastic. On the rear of the body mine was fitted with an adapter for a Sony L series battery which has a short flying lead going to a high quality lemo connector for power. The battery adapter can be removed by unscrewing two small screws if you intend to power the finder from an external supply. The supply can be anywhere from 6 to 17 volts. There is also a pair of BNC’s for the  loop through HDSDI in and out connections.

Cineroid EVF with eyepiece flipped up and menus activated.

The eyepiece on the EVF flips up like most pro viewfinders, this allows you to see the screen directly, as an alternative you can slide the entire eyepiece assembly off completely, which turns the EVF into a tiny monitor. I have a slight issue with the slide off function as there is some light leakage along the top edge of the screen as a result. On a bright sunny day this is distracting as you can see it inside the finder. It’s easily solved with a small strip of electrical tape over the tiny gap, but you shouldn’t really need to do this. All Cineroid need to do is add a small lip to the top of the slide off assembly to fix this.

On powering up and using the finder for the first time I was pleasantly pleased. The screen is bright and clear and there is only the smallest amount of lag. When I showed the EVF to some of the visitors to the Sony booth at IBC there were many comments that this version has less lag than the HDMI version. My guess is that the HDMI processing in the camera plus the HDMI processing in the EVF adds up to a fair bit of a delay. This would appear to be much reduced with the HDSDI version.

Cineroid EVF on PMW-F3

Some people have complained that they can see the pixel structure of the screen in both the Cineroid and Zacuto EVF’s. I could just about make out the pixels, the screen appearing to have a slight texture, but in operation this has not caused me any issues. This EVF is a vast improvement over the EVF fitted to the back of the F3. Using either the Cineroid’s Peaking or 1:1 pixel mapping I can focus very accurately. Higher resolution would be nicer, but it is adequate as is. You have to consider that even the Sony HDVF20A that costs £3,000 only has around 600 lines of resolution. As well as peaking there are a number of other useful tools including the usual zebras. Some of the more unusual functions include a coloured clipping indicator and various false colour modes. I have to say that I have not been through all the different modes and functions yet. I’ve just been using it with peaking and zebras. You can have a full range of safe area overlays and there is the ability to work with anamorphic camera outputs, flip or mirror the picture. The peaking is adjustable and can be either white or red, I prefer red. A couple of different colours would be nice for when your shooting scenes that already have a lot of red in them. When you have it enabled (single button press) the up and down arrow buttons on the side of the EVF will adjust the peaking sensitivity up and down, so no need to go into the menu system.

Overall I am pleased with my Cineroid viewfinder. It does the job that I purchased it for and the price was quite reasonable (£799 + VAT). It’s compact and well constructed and looks like it will survive the inevitable knocks and bumps of everyday use.

PS. I was reminded by respected DoP Jody Eldred that the LCD panel in these (and many other) viewfinders is easily damaged if the sun starts shining into the eyepiece. The eyepiece acts as a magnifier and will focus the sun onto the LCD and burn it. The large size of the loupe on the Cineroid means that it doesn’t even need to be pointed directly at the sun for this to happen. So, when not in use, point the eyepiece down towards the ground, if your mount won’t allow you to do that easily, flip open the eyepiece. This is good practice with all monocular viewfinders. I’ve seen many scorched LCD’s and melted plastic interiors over the years.

cameras, Travel

Camrade CB Single III Camera Bag.

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I was asked by my good friend Rene of Camrade to take a look at some of their new products. So over the next couple of weeks I’ll be looking at the CB Single III camera bag, the PMW F3 rain cover and a new PL lens adapter for the Sony FS100. First I’m going to take a look at the camera bag.

Camrade CB Single III

I’ve had Camrade bags before and they have always lasted well, standing up to the knocks and bumps that go along with lugging kit all over the place. I was in the market for a new bag for one of my PMW-F3’s, so I was sent the CB Single III bag. From the outside this is a functional looking bag with a large mesh pocket on one side and further external pockets on the other side and at one end. It has a nice well padded chunky carry strap that is comfortable to use.

Inside the Camrade CB Single III

The top of the bag opens up with a dual zipper system that gives you completely un hindered access to the bags interior. This is great for run and gun where you may need to quickly grab the camera from the bag and you don’t want to have to squeeze it out through a small opening. The interior of the bag has various dividers that are secured by velcro, so you can customise the layout to suit your needs. One of the dividers forms a clever storage box to one side of the bag. I’ve found this particularly useful with the F3 as I can safely store my Genus 4×4 Matte Box and a couple of DSLR lenses in here.

Opening the storage compartment shows moveable dividers

Then my batteries, other bits and bobs and the rain cover fit comfortably in the end compartments. This bag really works well with the F3 alloying you to get a complete basic shooting kit into one bag without the bag being too big or bulky.

It’s not perhaps the most fancy or sophisticated of bags, but in terms of practicality and functionality it works very well indeed. There is a strap in the main compartment to hold the camera secure if your really going to be bouncing it around. The base and sides of the bag are all semi ridged and have a good layer of shock absorbing foam in them. With one of these bags typically costing a very affordable $200 it really does represent good value for money.

My thanks to Rene for the sample bag. http://www.camrade.com/products-page/video/cambags/cb-single-iii1

In my next post I’ll look at the nice rain cover that Camrade make for the F3.

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Why using negative gain can be bad, unless you have an F3.

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One way to reduce the noise in a video camera image is to reduce the cameras gain. We all know that increasing the gain to lets say +6db will increase noise and generally the reverse holds true when you reduce the gain, the noise typically reduces and this may be helpful if you are going to do a lot of effects work, or just want a clean image.

However in most cases negative gain reduces dynamic range as it will artificially clip your low key parts of the image. The brightness range is restricted by the cameras DSP (Digital Signal Processor), it only has so many bits of data to sample the sensors output, from dark to light. If you reduce the gain the highlight handling doesn’t change (DSP bit depth limited) but your entire image get shifted down in brightness and as a result you will clip off some of your shadow and dark information, so your overall dynamic range is also reduced. Dynamic range is not just highlight handling, it is the entire range from dark to light. 3db is half a stop (6db = 1 stop) so -3db gain reduces the dynamic range by half a stop.

So for cameras like the EX1 and EX3 or even PMW-500/PDW-700 using negative gain can be a bad thing to do. You need to be aware that there is a trade off of noise against dynamic range and need to be sure that the small noise benefit are worth the sacrifice of some latitude. The problem is further compounded on the EX1 and EX3 where the use of -3db gain also reduces the peak white recording level by 3db and with Cinegamma 2 this will prevent you from actually reaching peak white (unless you change the gamma curve gain).
Interestingly the PMW-F3 has an excess of dynamic range for the normal gammas and cinegammas and the processing appears to take advantage of this to keep the images very clean. When you shoot with the standard gammas and cinegammas on the F3 the cameras base ISO (sensitivity) is 400 asa at 25p. This gives a very clean, ultra low noise image with 11.5 stops of dynamic range. When you switch the camera to S-Log, which gives a greater dynamic range (approx 13 stops by my estimation) the base ISO increases to 800 asa.  Looking at some of my S-Log test footage a clear increase in under exposure latitude can be seen when you use S-Log. I suspect that the “0db” point in the F3 is actually 800 asa as used by S-Log, where maximising dynamic range and using the full sensor range is the priority. Meanwhile with standard gammas, which are limited to 11.5 stops anyway, you can reduce the gain by 6db (1 stop) sacrificing one stop of underexposure but still have the full 11.5 stops but with 6db less noise.

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Adaptimax Lens Mount Adapters for PMW-F3, Canon and Nikon.

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Adaptimax F3 to Canon and Nikon lens mounts

I was sent a couple of Adaptimax lens mount adapters to test on my PMW-F3. I have used some of their EX3 adapters in the past and these worked very well. The new PMW-F3 adapters are finished with a very nice hard black anodised finish and look very smart indeed. I had 3 adapters to try, one F3 to Canon and two F3 to Nikon adapters. The Canon adapter is a “dumb” adapter, so there is no way to control the lenses iris. If your using Canon lenses this means using a DSLR body to set the iris before using the lens on the F3. Obviously this is not ideal, but you do have to consider that there is a massive range of lenses that can be used with this Canon adapter via a secondary adapter ring.

Canon’s flange back distance (the sensor to lens distance) is the shortest in the DSLR world. So this means that there is space to adapt to other lens mounts with longer flange back distances such as M42, Nikon, Pentax, Pentacon etc. This opens up a whole world of possibilities as now you can use those nice M42 Zeiss lenses that can be picked up cheap on ebay by adding a cheap M42 to Canon adapter.

Nikon 50mm f1.8 with Adaptimax F3 Mount.

If you have already invested in Nikon fit glass then you can use a Nikon to Canon adapter or you can use one of Adaptimax’s purpose built F3 to Nikon adapters.

There are two varieties, the original Adaptimax and the Adaptimax Plus. The Plus version includes a long screw that pushes the iris pin on the rear of the lens to give you iris control even when the lens does not have an iris ring. While this is not as elegant as MTF Services rotating adapter barrel, it works fine and the simplicity of the design means the adapter is a little cheaper. The standard version has no iris control, so you need to ensure your lens has a proper iris ring. Priced at £255 for the standard adapters and £265 for the plus versions these are good value for money.

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Night Flyers. Shot with PMW-F3 in Singapore

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I’m currently in Singapore staying at Clarke Quay. Most evenings a group of radio control kite flyers from a local store (goflykite.com) bring out their illuminated kites and fly them in the local park. It’s very pretty and seemed an interesting thing to try and shoot with my F3. As I’m travelling light, trying (and failing) to keep within a 20kg baggage allowance, I don’t have a tripod and I’ve only got a couple of lenses, my trusty 50mm Nikon f1.8 and my Tokina 28-70mm f2.6 zoom. Most of this was shot with the Nikon lens at +6db. I really wish I had a tripod and a longer lens! I did a little bit of grading work here and there to balance out the very orange street lights a little.

 

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Playing with Lenses: Pentacon 4, 300mm F4, 19 blade iris.

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Pentacon 4, 300mm F4 on PMW-F3

UPDATED: SEE UPDATE AT END!

I won this lens on ebay for the grand total of £44.00. Now for that kind of money you don’t normally expect to get a great deal, but this time I got quite a lot. I certainly got a lot of weight and bulk, this is a big lens. It was designed to work with a Pentacon or Kiev medium format camera with a 6″x6″ frame size. The front element is about 3″ (80mm) in diameter, it’s over a foot long and weighs about 5lbs (2.5kg). One of the things that attracted me to it is the iris which has 19 blades giving a very round aperture, so the bokeh is very pleasant looking. The rear of the lens has a Pentacon to M42 mount onto which I screw a M42 to Nikon adapter ring. Due to it’s length and weight it is vital that the lens is supported. The lens comes with a 3/8″ mounting ring with a 3/8″ to 1/4″ insert.

19 Blade Iris.

For the moment I’m using the bracket from a Genus DSLR shoulder rig to support the lens until my new Genus lens support bracket arrives.
So… what are the pictures like? Well at F4 it’s a little soft, but stop it down to f5.6 and it sharpens up nicely. I also tried it with a 1.5x and 2x extender as these will soon show up any lens issues. With both the lens performed respectfully well with the iris at f5.6. Stop down to f8 and the lens really performs very well. Of course with the very small s35 sensor compared to the 6″x6″ that the lens was designed for you are only using the center part of the frame, which always tends to be the sharpest part. While it may not perform as well as the latest state of the art long focal length Canon’s or Nikons, this lens does do a pretty good job and if you only occasionally need a long lens, for the money it’s hard to beat.

Pentacon 4, 300mm, MTF adapter and F3

UPDATE: To get this lens to work on the F3 I was using a M42 to Nikon adapter. This has a corrective lens in it to enable infinity focus. After playing with this adapter on some other M42 lenses I found it’s performance to be less than satisfactory at large apertures. So I tried the Pentacon 4 again, but this time with a M42 to Canon adapter and one of Steve Shovlar’s new Adaptimax Canon to F3 adapters. The performance improvement was quite noticeable and now I can use the Pentacon fully open at f4 with great results. This really is a rather nice lens.

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Duran Duran Mega Shoot – Berlin – Almost!

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The Berlin Duran Duran shoot was quite an adventure that twisted and turned this way and that. The plan was to shoot a Duran Duran concert using a range of Sony Super 35mm camcorders, however in the days running up to the shoot the band had been forced to postpone some other gigs due to illness. On the Monday before the shoot we were all sat at home waiting for the go – no-go phone call from the producers. The call came at 9pm, we were go, so first thing Tuesday I was off to the airport with 75kg of kit to fly out to Berlin with the very real threat of either Heathrow airport or Berlin airport getting shut down by Volcanic ash from Iceland. In the end my flight left 20 mins early and the plane was even backing away from the gate well before everyone had taken their seats in a mad dash to get to Berlin before airspace got closed.

The first of the cameras arrive.

My self and Den Lennie (of F-Stop Academy) in the advanced party got into Berlin OK and spent Tuesday collecting some of the rented and borrowed kit and getting it in to the venue.
However by the Wednesday morning the whole shoot was turning into a serious challenge as Berlin airport was closed by the Ash cloud from the Iceland volcano just as key members of the crew including Gavin the director and James the producer were due to fly in. They ended up going to Dusseldorf and getting the train up to Berlin. In addition some of our rented kit was delayed as well as the stage and rigging crew, so everyone was running behind, frantically trying to source more kit locally. We have to say a BIG thank you to FGV Schmidle in Berlin who went out of their way to help us out.

 

5 of the 6 PMW-F3's awaiting setup.

We had 6 F3’s, 2 FS100’s the SRW9000PL and an EX3. The EX3 was going to be used on the back of a Canon HJ21x7.5 Cinestyle lens with a 2x extender from the back of the venue to get some close up shots that we just could not get with any of the PL mount lenses we had on the 35mm sensor cameras. Long, fast 35mm lenses are few and far between.

 

To get the look that we wanted the cameras were all set up with custom picture profiles. I designed a picture profile for the F3’s that would give maximum latitude to help handle the high contrast range that the concert lightning would bring as well as de-saturating the image to prevent the coloured lights from clipping and thus give more scope for grading and post work. Detail correction was set up to give a small amount of very fine detail boost to keep the images crisp without looking like video.

Optimo 24-290 Zoom Lens on F3

 

 

Two of the Sony PMW-F3’s were kitted out with Angenieux Optimo 24-290 T2.8 lenses and Pre-Production Zacuto EVF’s. What a gorgeous lens, the EVF’s aren’t bad either! Hopefully I’ll get more time to play with both of these in the future and a review of the EVF’s should come soon. The Optimo’s allowed us to get beautiful mid and close up shots from the venue sides with nice bokeh and super shallow DoF. At the rear of the venue as well as the EX3 we had an F3 with an Angenieux Optimo 15-40 on a track to shoot wide shots of the stage through the crowds. The remaining F3’s were to be used with Nikon DSLR lenses in the 75 to 300mm range via MTF adapters (thanks Mike) and a prototype Adaptimax adapter (Thanks Steve). The other F3’s were going to go on tracks at the front of the stage or on the stage wings to pick off close ups of instruments and band members. We also had a pair of Sony MC1P mini-cams but we could not rig these until the stage crew arrived and we weren’t expecting them until early on Thursday morning, the day of the shoot. The FS100’s would be on stage, hand held and on tracks using prototype Birger mounts and Canon L series lenses.

Then the bombshell dropped. The event was postponed. The lead singer Simon LeBon has been suffering from Laryngitis and he still wasn’t well enough to sing. So the remainder of the evening was spent packing all the kit away and rebooking flights and schedules. The concert will now be held on the 8th of June, again in Berlin. I’m going to be flying back to London from Cinegear and a 3D event at Samy’s cameras on the 6th, passing through London ( 3 hours between flights) on the 7th where I will pick up my F3 kit and then travel on the Berlin, where we will once again try to complete the shoot. Photo’s and more gear porn to follow.

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Testing, testing…. Canon 800/1600 mm lens on F3

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Canon 800mm lens on PMW-F3

In preparation for the big Duran Duran shoot in Berlin later in the week I was out with Den Lennie of F-Stop academy along with Duran Duran video producer Gavin Elder and James Tonkin of Hangman Studios testing the Canon 800/1600 f5.6 lens on my F3. This is an adapted DSLR lens fitted with a PL mount. What a lens! The bokeh was simply gorgeous from this lens and I’m really excited about putting it to use in Berlin on Thursday night. Keep tuned for more info on this BIG project shooting with F3’s, FS100’s and SRW9000PL’s. We’re even throwing in a VG10 or 2 for good measure! Nine cameras in total, ultra shallow DoF is the goal, gonna be hard to do, but it should look awesome.

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Comparison clips to download.

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Here is a set of 3 clips in the native formats taken with a Sony VG10, Canon t2i (550D) and sony F3.

CLICK HERE for the zip file containing the native fies (canon .mov, sony .mts and Sony BPAV folder) or click here to watch on vimeo. If you are going to watch on vimeo I would strongly urge you to take a look at the full size frame grabs below before coming to any conclusions.

I used the same Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens on all 3 cameras (MTF F3 adapter, cheap E-Mount adapter and cheap Nikon to Canon adapter). I had the lens at f8-f11 for all three cameras and used the shutter to control exposure or in the case of the F3 the ND filters. All were set to preset white, 5600k, the sky was visually white with flat hazy cloud. The VG10 was at factory default, the t2i was default except for Highlight Tone Priority which was ON and the F3 default with the exception of Cinegamma 1 being chosen.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Don’t link directly to the download file, instead link to this page. Feel free to host the clips, just remember they are my copyright so include a link back here or a note in any text of where they originated.

PLEASE make a donation of whatever amount you feel appropriate if you find these clips helpful, to help cover my hosting fees if you choose to take advantage of these otherwise free clips. It’s a 340Mb download. As of May 9th, 122 people have downloaded the clips, that’s 41Gb of web bandwidth, yet not one person has made a donation. Come on guys and gals, if you want me to  make clips available to download, help me out.

Below are some frame grabs from the 3 cameras. If you click on the pictures a couple of times they will open full size in a new window. All 3 cameras do a pretty decent job overall. However both the VG10 and t2i have issue with aliasing on the brickwork of the far building. I know the idea with these cameras is to use a shallow DoF so often the background will be soft, but not everything will be like that all the time. There are also more compression artefacts from both the t2i and in particular VG10 (the barbed wire at the beginning of the pan looks pretty nasty). At least with the VG10 you can take the HDMI output and record that externally. Clearly the best pictures are from the F3, but then it is considerably more expensive than the others. It is interesting to note the distinctly yellow colorimetry of the F3. I do have matrix settings to reduce this, but I did not use them during this assessment.
Also note how much wider the FoV is with both the Canon t2i and even more so the F3. Clearly these cameras have larger sensors than the VG10, the largest being the F3’s Super35 sized sensor. This was another surprise, I had assumed the Canon and F3 sensors to be much closer in size than this. Remember that all three used the same lens and the shots were done from exactly the same place.
You can also view the clips on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/23315260
NEX-VG10
t2i -550D
PMW-F3

 

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35mm World Workshops at Haydock Park (UK) on May 12th.

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I’m presenting a couple of 35mm world sessions at the BPV Northern Expo at Haydock Park on May 12th. These are free sessions, around 90mins each. They will focus on the Sony F3 and FS100, but will also touch on the f65 and f35. The aim is to take a look at the pro’s and con’s of shooting with a camera with a Super35mm sensor as well as to give an understanding of which cameras are appropriate for which jobs. Hopefully we will have an interesting discussion session at the end of each workshop and the chance to get hands on the FS100 and F3. More details here: http://www.bpv.org.uk/