Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

[Anaconda_]

10 minutes ago, FHDcrew said:

Old post I know. But do you leave this little setup rigged when placed in your camera bag?  Do you leave the HDMI clamp in place?

Depending on the bag, I mostly leave it attached, but try to make sure it won't ever lean or take weight on the HDMI clamp. For the day I mentioned in that post, the setup was lens down in a satchel style bag, so all the weigh was on the lens.

as you can see in the second picture thuogh, the cable doesn't come out past the edge of the clamp, so if it was to rest on it's side, I don't think it would cause any damage.

[Alt Shoo]

I keep both of mine rigged, only taking out the hdmi from the Atomos’s hdmi port during transport. I feel confident with the port protection that the SmallRig cage provides. 

[FHDcrew]

49 minutes ago, Alt Shoo said:

I keep both of mine rigged, only taking out the hdmi from the Atomos’s hdmi port during transport. I feel confident with the port protection that the SmallRig cage provides. 

Do you have a micro HDMI clamp on the FP?  On my Z6 I don’t, because I got worried and just unhook it each time I put it in the bag. 

[FHDcrew]

But even though mine is mini HDMI, I’m worried the constant plugging and unplugging will wear on the port. 

[FHDcrew]

On my Nikon Z6 I mean. 

[TomTheDP]

28 minutes ago, FHDcrew said:

On my Nikon Z6 I mean. 

Mini is probably way more reliable than micro. On my FP the plan was to never remove the port or put any stress on it. I used a micro to full hdmi. The micro is secured into the camera cage and the full hdmi is also bolted to the cage. That allows for the least amount of stress being put onto the port. 

[FHDcrew]

4 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

Mini is probably way more reliable than micro. On my FP the plan was to never remove the port or put any stress on it. I used a micro to full hdmi. The micro is secured into the camera cage and the full hdmi is also bolted to the cage. That allows for the least amount of stress being put onto the port. 

Agreed, if we can't have SDI or full-size HDMI, mini HDMI is the preferred option.  I work with a Panasonic G7 and 2 Panasonic FZ1000s for a live-stream setup.  The micro HDMI is just so fragile, i have the full-HDMI smallrig cage bolt on the FZ1000s.  The G7 as with you, is double-clamped.  And I just never ever touch the micro HDMI.  I notice mini HDMI, while not perfect and i still get a bit nervous, is 1000 times better than micro HDMI.  Honestly as long as you are careful and only run short cables to monitors i don't even think you need a clamp.

[TomTheDP]

15 minutes ago, FHDcrew said:

Agreed, if we can't have SDI or full-size HDMI, mini HDMI is the preferred option.  I work with a Panasonic G7 and 2 Panasonic FZ1000s for a live-stream setup.  The micro HDMI is just so fragile, i have the full-HDMI smallrig cage bolt on the FZ1000s.  The G7 as with you, is double-clamped.  And I just never ever touch the micro HDMI.  I notice mini HDMI, while not perfect and i still get a bit nervous, is 1000 times better than micro HDMI.  Honestly as long as you are careful and only run short cables to monitors i don't even think you need a clamp.

I don't have enough experience with mini to really say for sure as most cameras either go micro or full. Honestly micro should just be banned 😅

[FHDcrew]

Yeah that’s why I said if they are adamant on not using SDI or full-HDMI, mini is the next best option. 

[Alt Shoo]

14 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

Do you have a micro HDMI clamp on the FP?  On my Z6 I don’t, because I got worried and just unhook it each time I put it in the bag. 

Yes there’s a clamp that I purchased from SmallRig when I first received the cameras. I haven’t seen that clamp again on the SmallRig catalog site, which is pretty odd. 

[Alt Shoo]

13 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

I don't have enough experience with mini to really say for sure as most cameras either go micro or full. Honestly micro should just be banned 😅

All of the small hdmi ports should be banned on these types of tools. Sigma is calling this a cinema camera, which I agree because the images produced with it are exceptional, but to have non professional inputs on a device like this is an oxymoron. On a similar note, I actually use to think that the port at the side of the fp, used for the flash attachment, was going to be a peripheral port for more professional inputs. Maybe even a power boost to get higher frame rates. 

[Devon]

Hey all!

I’ve been following this thread since it started in 2019. I’ve finally got me my own Sigma FP! So far, I am loving the camera. I think I was lucky to wait so long to get me an FP, as now we are on firmware Ver.5.02 and the camera seems to run pretty smoothly! I’m very happy, and haven’t noticed any of the bugs mentioned back in 2019/initial release.

Apologies to resurrect this thread after a year. But I found something for those of you still shooting with the FP.

I have noticed a new “bug”. One that I think is easy to overlook for the fast paced video producer. (Again, apologies if this has already been found.)

We did a video shoot, and I noticed that the footage was a bit harder to white balance than our other (Blackmagic) cameras. So I did a test.

The results of the test are a little concerning (at least for the sake of color consistency.) See images in this post. I will also post a link to my Davinci Project file, and single DNG frames from my tests.

I set up a few objects in my apartment to capture different colors (apologies for not having a true color checker chart.) A green painting, white foam core board, a red roll of tape, and a yellow hat. I literally had nothing blue to film, but the painting has a little blue in it. I wasn’t testing for color ACCURACY, as much as I was testing for color CONSISTENCY. Everything is lit by a single Godox SL60. No house lights were on, and I blacked out all windows to make sure everything was lit by a single source for consistent color and exposure. The Sigma FP was mounted on a tripod, all camera settings & lens stayed exactly the same for each clip, EXCEPT I changed the in-camera color mode. All clips shot UHD DNG 12bit.

This is where our “bug” is: in-camera color modes. I have noticed that shooting clips (CinemaDNG/RAW, every resolution and frame rate) with ANY color mode activated EXCEPT color mode “OFF”, exhibits shifts in Davinci Resolve.

It has always been my experience that in-camera color modes DO NOT affect how RAW data debayers in post. It’s always been, “RAW is RAW.” “Sensor data is sensor data.”

SO, I shot a clip for each color mode. What I found is that color-mode: “OFF” produced footage as expected. It balanced and graded easily. BUT any clip shot with ANY other color-mode activated, exhibited color imbalance/shifts.

The images in this post are a representation of this issue. In DaVinci Resolve, I balanced the in-camera color mode “OFF” clip, to make the white foam core in the frame neutral. White balance adjustments were done in the RAW panel on the color page. I then applied that same grade to all other clips. I debayered every clip as P3-D60, linear. White balance stayed the SAME between each clip. In my node graphs, I then color space transformed from P3-D60, linear, to REC709, REC709. Tone mapping set to “None”. I did simple Lift gamma gain adjustments for contrast, added saturation, then soft clip to keep things from clipping (all on separate nodes.) Again, the very exact same RAW panel settings, and nodes were applied to each clip.

Still curious, I opened the DNG’s in Adobe Camera RAW. Adobe Camera RAW DID NOT exhibit the same balancing issues as Davinci Resolve did. Both DNG’s debayered identically in Adobe Camera RAW/Lightroom. This possibly means that the RAW sensor data between “OFF” clips and activated color mode clips, has consistency. I suspect there’s something in the DNG metadata throwing things off in Davinci Resolve. SO, I had the idea to convert camera original DNG’s using Adobe DNG Converter. Lo and behold, after conversion using Adobe DNG Converter, both clips were visually identical when imported and debayered in Davinci Resolve. In fact, the Adobe DNG Converted DNG's very closely resembled the color mode "OFF" original. I had this idea because I know some people use DNG Converter to get lossless (or lossy) compression to their DNG sequences. The issue with that/this workflow, is that Adobe DNG Converter removes some Cinema DNG metadata like frame rate, timecode, and I noticed that it reports “16 bit” color depth (among other things. [Just use SLIMRAW software for compression to avoid these metadata issues.] Adobe DNG Converter is ultimately meant for use by photographers.) Since Adobe DNG Converter strips metadata, it must be stripping the metadata that is causing Davinci Resolve to debayer clips differently.

EXIFTOOL shows a few differences between the DNG’s. I suspect the culprit is the “color matrix” difference between these clips. Although I’m not a software engineer, so which metadata it truly is requires someone smarter than me. Maybe some of the Magic Lantern developers could have some insight for us? I will leave out the EXIFTOOL reports since this post is already very lengthy.

I’ve tested a lot of cameras, and have never experienced this issue with any other RAW footage I’ve shot and graded.

Dear Sigma, if you find this post; thank you for making full frame RAW available to those of us without a big budget. You changed the game because of that. Props to you all! I hope you find this post, and patch this metadata issue (probably?) for CinemaDNG clips.

DNG's and Davinci Resolve project files here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/lf9jmvqz5eyajfz/Sigma-FP-Ver.5.02-DNG-Debayer.zip/file

[kye]

3 hours ago, Devon said:

Hey all!

I’ve been following this thread since it started in 2019. I’ve finally got me my own Sigma FP! So far, I am loving the camera. I think I was lucky to wait so long to get me an FP, as now we are on firmware Ver.5.02 and the camera seems to run pretty smoothly! I’m very happy, and haven’t noticed any of the bugs mentioned back in 2019/initial release.

Apologies to resurrect this thread after a year. But I found something for those of you still shooting with the FP.

I have noticed a new “bug”. One that I think is easy to overlook for the fast paced video producer. (Again, apologies if this has already been found.)

We did a video shoot, and I noticed that the footage was a bit harder to white balance than our other (Blackmagic) cameras. So I did a test.

The results of the test are a little concerning (at least for the sake of color consistency.) See images in this post. I will also post a link to my Davinci Project file, and single DNG frames from my tests.

I set up a few objects in my apartment to capture different colors (apologies for not having a true color checker chart.) A green painting, white foam core board, a red roll of tape, and a yellow hat. I literally had nothing blue to film, but the painting has a little blue in it. I wasn’t testing for color ACCURACY, as much as I was testing for color CONSISTENCY. Everything is lit by a single Godox SL60. No house lights were on, and I blacked out all windows to make sure everything was lit by a single source for consistent color and exposure. The Sigma FP was mounted on a tripod, all camera settings & lens stayed exactly the same for each clip, EXCEPT I changed the in-camera color mode. All clips shot UHD DNG 12bit.

This is where our “bug” is: in-camera color modes. I have noticed that shooting clips (CinemaDNG/RAW, every resolution and frame rate) with ANY color mode activated EXCEPT color mode “OFF”, exhibits shifts in Davinci Resolve.

It has always been my experience that in-camera color modes DO NOT affect how RAW data debayers in post. It’s always been, “RAW is RAW.” “Sensor data is sensor data.”

SO, I shot a clip for each color mode. What I found is that color-mode: “OFF” produced footage as expected. It balanced and graded easily. BUT any clip shot with ANY other color-mode activated, exhibited color imbalance/shifts.

The images in this post are a representation of this issue. In DaVinci Resolve, I balanced the in-camera color mode “OFF” clip, to make the white foam core in the frame neutral. White balance adjustments were done in the RAW panel on the color page. I then applied that same grade to all other clips. I debayered every clip as P3-D60, linear. White balance stayed the SAME between each clip. In my node graphs, I then color space transformed from P3-D60, linear, to REC709, REC709. Tone mapping set to “None”. I did simple Lift gamma gain adjustments for contrast, added saturation, then soft clip to keep things from clipping (all on separate nodes.) Again, the very exact same RAW panel settings, and nodes were applied to each clip.

Still curious, I opened the DNG’s in Adobe Camera RAW. Adobe Camera RAW DID NOT exhibit the same balancing issues as Davinci Resolve did. Both DNG’s debayered identically in Adobe Camera RAW/Lightroom. This possibly means that the RAW sensor data between “OFF” clips and activated color mode clips, has consistency. I suspect there’s something in the DNG metadata throwing things off in Davinci Resolve. SO, I had the idea to convert camera original DNG’s using Adobe DNG Converter. Lo and behold, after conversion using Adobe DNG Converter, both clips were visually identical when imported and debayered in Davinci Resolve. In fact, the Adobe DNG Converted DNG's very closely resembled the color mode "OFF" original. I had this idea because I know some people use DNG Converter to get lossless (or lossy) compression to their DNG sequences. The issue with that/this workflow, is that Adobe DNG Converter removes some Cinema DNG metadata like frame rate, timecode, and I noticed that it reports “16 bit” color depth (among other things. [Just use SLIMRAW software for compression to avoid these metadata issues.] Adobe DNG Converter is ultimately meant for use by photographers.) Since Adobe DNG Converter strips metadata, it must be stripping the metadata that is causing Davinci Resolve to debayer clips differently.

EXIFTOOL shows a few differences between the DNG’s. I suspect the culprit is the “color matrix” difference between these clips. Although I’m not a software engineer, so which metadata it truly is requires someone smarter than me. Maybe some of the Magic Lantern developers could have some insight for us? I will leave out the EXIFTOOL reports since this post is already very lengthy.

I’ve tested a lot of cameras, and have never experienced this issue with any other RAW footage I’ve shot and graded.

Dear Sigma, if you find this post; thank you for making full frame RAW available to those of us without a big budget. You changed the game because of that. Props to you all! I hope you find this post, and patch this metadata issue (probably?) for CinemaDNG clips.

DNG's and Davinci Resolve project files here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/lf9jmvqz5eyajfz/Sigma-FP-Ver.5.02-DNG-Debayer.zip/file

Interesting.  As you say, likely just a bug in Resolve for this metadata.

Although, if you're shooting in RAW then one would hope that you're colour grading the footage with sufficient sophistication that you can adjust the WB appropriately.  Also, it would only be a problem if you changed profiles during the shoot, otherwise shots should be consistent with each other and it would just be a look, rather than an issue to deal with in the grade.

[Devon]

3 hours ago, kye said:

Interesting.  As you say, likely just a bug in Resolve for this metadata.

Although, if you're shooting in RAW then one would hope that you're colour grading the footage with sufficient sophistication that you can adjust the WB appropriately.  Also, it would only be a problem if you changed profiles during the shoot, otherwise shots should be consistent with each other and it would just be a look, rather than an issue to deal with in the grade.

Exactly my thoughts. Simple white balance on the color activated clips prove much more difficult versus just shooting with color mode "OFF" makes balancing far faster. It's just a bummer, because having a color mode activated makes it so much easier to pull focus and judge exposure when filming 😭

[kye]

7 hours ago, Devon said:

Exactly my thoughts. Simple white balance on the color activated clips prove much more difficult versus just shooting with color mode "OFF" makes balancing far faster. It's just a bummer, because having a color mode activated makes it so much easier to pull focus and judge exposure when filming 😭

What happens when you WB in post on the neutral surface?  Do they all become identical?

[Devon]

4 hours ago, kye said:

What happens when you WB in post on the neutral surface?  Do they all become identical?

Unfortunately not. The camera original DNGs using a color mode, are impossible to match to the “OFF” clips via white balance in the RAW panel

[OleB]

When you are externally recording RAW (BRAW or PRR) "OFF" is hardcoded. Menus are greyed out, so cannot be changed. So avoid using anything else in cDNG recordings would be a good idea I guess. 😉 

[kye]

8 hours ago, Devon said:

Unfortunately not. The camera original DNGs using a color mode, are impossible to match to the “OFF” clips via white balance in the RAW panel

Wow.  I guess Resolve is doing something odd based on the metadata.

[Devon]

On 9/18/2023 at 6:49 PM, kye said:

Wow.  I guess Resolve is doing something odd based on the metadata.

Most definitely. Hope this gets resolved. 

[kye]

3 minutes ago, Devon said:

Most definitely. Hope this gets resolved. 

Have you reported it via the BM forums?

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewforum.php?f=21

That's probably the best way to get their attention, and considering you have solid examples to post it would likely be taken seriously at their end.