jgharding
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Everything posted by jgharding
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From all the footage I've been playing with I've found the same thing. C100 AVCHD is far more pliable in post than the GH4 4K, which shouldn't make sense, but just goes to show numbers aren't everything. Not sure what it is they're doing but I'm not a fan of the baked-in contrast either. 10-bit external recorder colour is better, but still I don't really feel the GH4 image that much, just not to my tastes. Of course you can make something amazing with it, but it's a personal thing, what gives you a vibe as it were. I much prefer the A7s 4K too, though it is of course much more expensive to do.
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Ah yeah it seems I posted non A7s by mistake, apologies!
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Here's a domestic test, rolling shutter doesn't look too bad here:
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Vari NDs are all-right a lot of the time if you want speed, though they can create funny artefacts. I have cheap Polaroid ones, and I don't mind em. Colour temperatures goes cool one way and warm the other though, but it's a quick way to expose in bright light, just sticking setting the same and twisting the ND! Fixed-value NDs are better for quality though, if you're not shooting run-and-gun. The shot at 3:09 here is me twisting a vari ND up and down on 550D, so it can be used for special effects:
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There's a lot of tech that falls by the way-side with mass production, it's sad. I like Sigma's DP Merril series Foveon stacked RBG sensor and leaf shutter compacts, they have detail and look that's unique, very medium format. But ever their new sensor is a compromise... it seems Bayer is here to stay...
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I know what you're saying, nesting is a nightmare. I don't think they'll ever change it, but as a programme it has to be the most bizarre and idiosyncratic in production. I don't use it much, I find it like pulling teeth, though I do know how to do quite a bit in it. Nothing compared to the real pros though. Once you master it though, the world's your oyster...
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I've been grading some A7s tests. S-log is good, but can be noisy in shadows. Very noisy actually! Be careful out there... LUT conversion from S-log 2 s-gamut to 709 gamut makes green shades an odd plastic colour that i don't find pleasant. Look at the trees in many tests and see what I mean. Conversion to Cine+ 709 is much more cinematic, less Sony plastic. This is a top-layer LUT, so you can grade under it. Or grade over it if you like... there's no rules really! Get your LUTs here: http://community.sony.com/sony/attachments/sony/large-sensor-camera-F5-F55/2872/2/RosolveCubeFiles.zip Here's how they work: http://community.sony.com/sony/attachments/sony/large-sensor-camera-F5-F55/2872/1/SonyLookProfilesSummaryV1_1.pdf Buy me a beer if you see me in Soho ;)
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That chimes with what I've seen, all the tricks to get more DR don't get much more DR. The tones get shifted about but the exposure points are the same. Once you unsqueeze the image you're almost back where you started. A log profile with a CUBE LUT to go with it, and some official info on exposure point would be ace. Canon, Arri, Sony, Blackmagic Design, all have log profiles, Panasonic needs one across the board too.
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I watched the 4K footage on a retina MacBook the other day, and it's pretty stunning. This camera really does look good, The only issue could be the rolling shutter. I hope they've gotten it down to C100/C300 levels.
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I have a feeling they'll do what they always do. Wait about a year or two on everyone else... then make the best one ;)
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Used these the otyher day too, very good. The kit box is quite heavy though, but has wheels and handle, which is great. Also, the LED Z Mini PAR kit is even lighter, even smaller, and almost as bright if memory serves, though it's only a two kit. Great for flights. A lot of punch for tiny lights though...
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Ah yeah It could be that... I do hope it does allows white outside of "legal" though, cos with the Cxxx series I like to pop my highlights up there and pull 'em back in post, since I never deliver to broadcast directly. The QT gamma Mac/PC thing is really annoying.
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This is the only Nikon D810 film I can find. Dynamic range looks abysmal. Aliasing etc don't seem so bad but it's hard to tell. The acting is just.... well have a look ;) It all looks very old school DSLR video here. But then these promos always suck.
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Yes indeed, I think the problem is capturing and compressing like this. For delivery it 's clearly fine, very efficient in fact and Blu-Ray look ace to me, no such motion problems. Truth is, these codecs were really optimised for delivery... capturing with them is a compromise.
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To expand on it, let's take 24 frames or one second at film rate. With film you have 24 full images, motion blur is kept in each image, not smeared netween them. With ML 5D raw, Alexa Pro Res, Red Raw, Blackmagic cameras etc, you have 24 distinct images, individually compressed either losslessly or mildly lossily. Motion blur is kept within each image. With AVCHD and other Long GOP CODECs, the I-frame image is divided into pools of pixels for analysis across time. only some frames are whole, the I frames, the rest refer the different pixel pools to the I frame and usually to a frame in the middle of the group too. In order to remove data the codec only moves what it has to. Your one second may have only two complete images, the rest are created as best can be from the other frames, with huge changes causing pixellation and blocking due to so little data headroom. On top of this, the red-channel resolution is quartered, and the blue channel halved in 4:2:0, so the spatial resolution for movement is cut down, as well as the temporal resolution. In short, the plastic movement you get from many implementations of such long GOP CODECs reflects the methods use in compression. Motion blur is also smudged and blurred by chroma sub-sampling (4:2:0:) and by interframe compression.
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Highlight recovery looks great! remind me of C300 ability to pull back the super white...
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it's mostly codec implementations that do this i reckon. Since non i-frame codecs dont display individual frames, motion is usually more "smudged". All Sony cams look like this to me. Things like AVCHD are taking one complete image, then making, lets say the next 12 or so, by altering the full, or "I" frame. Oddly, the C100 is AVCHD but has great cadence.... there's always an exception ;) Raw streams and ProRes streams tend to look great motion wise, but they're more like individual film frames, so they would. It's often down to taste, I wasn't a fan of FS100 or GH2, but liked even the 550D, somehow I think Canon nailed it. RAW and I-frame codecs get rid of most of this issue though. Then it comes down to other factors, like colour and just the overall "look".
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Angry girlfriends? They're in most test videos too... I'm waiting to see some gruelling reviews of it. The Sony "good on paper, wonky in reality" curse ever hangs over them for me. I hope it's not true this time. They do tend to make plastic video footage with funny dead colours though... Fingers crossed
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Though of course rumours of a new Canon sensor are likely true. If I were Canon, I'd go dual channel Alexa style, for both stills and video. That'd be something else.
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I've worked with Alexa LogC, Canon Clog, Sony sLog in post and on set, the real difficulty is exposing correctly. Because of the way a log gamma bends the response of the camera, it's easy to overexpose, even though exposure looks right on screen, so expose conservatively or you'll put the skin and the like on the severe end of the log curve. In post, it's best to source an LUT for your chosen log as a starting point, and work from there. For Canon Log, the Abel Cine Clog to Wide DR Full Range is best. For Alexa Clog, Arri's website contains all the LUTs you need. For Slog you can get away with Cineon LUTs as a starting point. To answer the specific situation there, you'd recover the scene as it was shot, with the extended highlight benefits of log. So once you apply your LUT your colour saturation returns, you have full black and white and it'll look more like it would had you shot in Rec709, except you'll have more highlight range to play with. If you overexposed on set, the LUT will clip out the tops. With some LUTs you can just pull back the highlights and recover, be aware that some just slice ff your overs though, so experiment. In 8-bit, yes it's much harder to use log, because the colour space is very unforgiving. Canon are clever about how they do 8-bit in some way, so it's pretty good. Alexa is better of course.
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It kind of does improve it using gamma. It doesn't improve the range of the sensor, but squeezes in more highlight range by bending the gamma.
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I don't think Cinelike D is full log, it is slightly flat though. You don't need a "colourist" to shoot Log Gamma, I'm not sure where that comes from. You just need to learn a few things a colourist would have to know. Log gamma is a bumped logaritmic gamma curve effectively squeezing in more dynamic range. If you start in post with a purpose-made LUT you'll be in normal gamma again and you can grade from there, or you can grade from log if you like. Using it doesn't require that you make your living exclusively colouring commercial footage! It's worth noting that you get more tolerant highlight protection in log, but unfortunately it becomes even harder to nail exposure correctly. So if you're going to shoot log, spend some days in post correcting different shots so you get a feel for it. You should also ignore talk of "legal" unless you're delivering for TV directly. Lots of people talk about "legal" ranges on shoots to make themselves sound important and experienced. A web only video which is going to be graded does not need legal capture, it needs best exposure for the selected gamma.
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looks great! I do like BMPCC raw, I'm going to wait a little longer though, til the latest firmware is out, til the memory cardfs are cheaper and more a compatible, then I may buy one. -
You get both. Your DOF with the speedbooster becomes full frame again, and you gain a stop on the lens. Using APSC mode and speedbooster speeds up your shot by a stop. Good plan!
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Yes I forgot about Magic Lantern, it does come with heavy aliasing though becuse it's alternate channels, not every channel having both levels, we aren't talking about dual-gain stages at a hardware level, but it's the same theory. The BMCC etc I didn't know about, I'll have to have a look for more info. It certainly should be cleaner and have a broader range with proper dual channel. Maybe they just use it for noise processing in ProRes mode? I know the sCMOS2 has dual 11-bit ADC, but that's not in their cameras yet.
