Tag Archives: FS700

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Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q To Work With FS700 Raw!

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Waveform and measurement options on the Convergent Design Odyssey7Q
Waveform and measurement options on the Convergent Design Odyssey7Q

Hot off the press from NAB is the announcement that the Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q will be able to work directly with the FS700 to record  4K and 2K with from the FS700 with 2K raw going up to 240fps. This is really great news. I’ll be posting a video blog about this later in the week. for now here is an extract from the official press release

LAS VEGAS, NAB Booth C11001, April 8, 2013 — Sony is announcing that its affordable 4K production camcorder, the NEX-FS700, will support a direct connection to Convergent Design’s new Odyssey7Q. The combination will allow recording of 2K RAW at up to 240 frames per second, with 4K video enabled via a single 3G connection.

The NEX-FS700 can achieve a high frame rate of up to 240 fps recording in 2K RAW while recording to the Odyssey 7Q. The 240 content fps is recording continuously, without windowing the imager or line doubling the signal. This assures full resolution at all times without windowing artifacts.
The direct connection to Convergent Design’s new Odyssey 7Q complements Sony’s own newly announced recording solution using the AXS-R5 RAW recorder and the new HXR-IFR5 interface unit. Now professional users have even more flexibility in choosing a workflow that meets their needs for today’s diverse client requirements.

“The addition of RAW and 4K recording unleashes the full power of the FS700’s state of the art 4K imager, vastly increasing the potential applications for the camcorder and resulting in tremendous flexibility in post-production,” said Peter Crithary, marketing manager for large sensor technology at Sony Electronics. “Now, interoperability with the exciting Odyssey 7Q in addition to our own recording technology gives users a wide range of cost effective choices when working with diverse workflows.”

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Video overview of MTF Services B4 2/3″ to super35mm adapter.

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In this video I take a look at the MTF Services (http://www.lensadapter.com) B4 2/3″ to super35 mm lens adapter. This adapter allows you to use a conventional 2/3″ ENG zoom lens on most video capable cameras that have a Super35 sized sensor or APS-C sized sensor. It comes in two parts, the optical converter (the expensive bit) and a simple low cost lens mount adapter ring. Adapters are available to work with the Sony PMW-F3, Sony E-Mount (FS100, FS700, EA50, NEX5 etc) as well as Canon EF (C100, C300, C500, 7D, 550D etc). To work correctly the lens must have a 2x extender. All is explained in the video.

 

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Picture Profiles to match PMW-F3 and NEX-FS700

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IMPORTANT PLEASE ENSURE YOU USE THE REVISED SETTINGS UPDATED ON 24th  JULY.

After my recent side by side look at the F3 and FS700 and seeing how different the two cameras look, I decided to try to match them a bit better. There will be many shoots where I will use them both together so getting them to look the same is important. I thought this would be a relatively straight forward task, simply dial in the FS700 to match the F3.

Well it wasn’t simple and it ended up taking me several hours to get to the point where I couldn’t get them any closer. The main issues are that the F3, like most of the XDCAM cameras has a yellow colour cast that’s hard to completely remove and the FS700 has quite a blue image and only very limited matrix controls. Initially I started to try to match the FS700 to a standard F3. While I could get the FS700 closer to the F3, I just couldn’t get a near match let alone a complete match. So back to the drawing board.

For my second attempt I decided first to work on getting rid of the yellow/orange cast to the F3 pictures by adjusting the F3’s matrix, at the same time creating a neutral look picture profile with good dynamic range, but one that could be used without grading. This took some extensive matrix tweaks. You will find the full details of my new “STD-REAL” picture profile in the forum by clicking here.

So once I had a neutral starting point on the F3 I then turned to the FS700 which I think is very blue. The matrix settings on the FS700 are quite limited so I wasn’t able to get an exact match to the F3, however the setting I came up with get them close enough for most jobs, it’s not perfect but it will do. I’m quite happy with my new FS700 settings and I think with this profile it produces a very nice image. You can find the full profile settings in the forum by clicking here. Remember you need to use the matching F3 profile in the F3 for the best match. If you want the maximum dynamic range then instead of Cinegamma 1 you should use Cinegamma 4 with the black gamma set to zero. My STD REAL profile for the FS700 is closer to a standard F3 than the default FS700 settings.

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NEX-FS700 Significantly reduced shutter when in Super Slow Mo!

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UPDATED WITH NEW FRAME GRABS FROM STROBE LIGHT AT BOTTOM.

One of the things that did concern me slightly about the FS700 was how would the sensor behave in Super slow Mo. The sensor is a CMOS sensor, so I expected it to exhibit rolling shutter artefacts, which it it does indeed do when in standard shooting modes and S&Q motion. It’s not bad, but you can make the pictures skew and when you try to shooting something like a spinning propellor you can get some weird effects, especially at higher shutter speeds. However when you switch the camera to Super Slow Mo the rolling shutter effects appear to go away. I was able to shoot propellors, do fast pans, shake the camera about etc and there was little sign of the usual rolling shutter artefacts.

FS700 25P 1/100

Just take a look at these two frame grabs. One shot done at 25P with a 1/100th shutter, the other done at 100fps with a 1/100th shutter, so in both cases the shutter speed is the same, so you would expect the rolling shutter artefacts to be the same, but clearly they are not. In standard mode the fan exhibits a typically lop sided, asymmetrical look and the fan blades appear curved, the upper and lower fan blade both bent towards the right of the frame. But in Super Slow Mo mode the fan blades are straighter and the fan is a lot more symmetrical with noticeably less bias towards the right, notice in particular the differences in the lower fan blade.

FS700 Super Slow Mo 1/100th shutter

You can tell the shutter periods are the same as the amount of motion blur and spreading of the fan blades is near identical, so it’s not a shutter speed difference, this is clearly a sensor scan difference. This is very interesting and requires further investigation as it suggests that the sensor read out process is different in the high speed mode. It is probably just a significantly faster scan rate, but it could also possibly be a global shutter of some kind. It’s just a shame that you can’t access this read out mode for normal shooting.

UPDATE:

FS700 Flash band at 25fps 1/100th shutter.
FS700 Flash band at 25fps 1/100th shutter.

Here are a couple more frame grabs done with the strobe focussing flash from a Canon DSLR. In both cases the shutter speed is 1/100th of a second so you would expect the width of the “Flash Band” to be the same. The narrower the band, the slower the sensors scan speed. These frame grabs suggest the scan speed is around twice as fast when in Super Slow Mo. It’s not a global shutter, but certainly a nice improvement. This is 100% repeatable.

FS700 Flash band in Super SlowMo 100fps, 1/100th shutter

You can take advantage of this for normal speed shooting by setting the camera to SSM and  recording the SDior HDMI feed to an external recorder.

Speculation: There is a little more aliasing when shooting in SSM. Is there some line slipping going on perhaps during SSM? This would allow a faster scan speed as fewer lines of pixels are read and thus might account for both the slight aliasing increase and the faster read out speed.