Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

[deezid]

4 hours ago, rawshooter said:

A firmware update is out that fixes the CinemaDNG problems:

https://www.sigma-global.com/en/news/2019/11/08/2329/

That was fast.
Still waiting for my S1H update announcement even lol

[Brian Williams]

6 hours ago, rawshooter said:

A firmware update is out that fixes the CinemaDNG problems:

https://www.sigma-global.com/en/news/2019/11/08/2329/

Yes! Pinocchio just became a real boy

[Brian Williams]

Just need a firmware update that allows Wasabi (or any other 3rd party) batteries and it'll be good to go.

[mechanicalEYE]

1 hour ago, Brian Williams said:

Just need a firmware update that allows Wasabi (or any other 3rd party) batteries and it'll be good to go.

Using Powerextra batteries just fine.

[The ghost of squig]

Just need an OLPF. Whilst I like just about everything about this cam, the aliasing is a worry. I won't touch it until there's a solution.

[Brian Williams]

4 hours ago, mechanicalEYE said:

Using Powerextra batteries just fine.

Really? And battery level works with them? I’ll have to try them out then, are we talking BP-51’s or BLC-12’s?

[Brian Williams]

55 minutes ago, The ghost of squig said:

Just need an OLPF. Whilst I like just about everything about this cam, the aliasing is a worry. I won't touch it until there's a solution.

I don’t know, a lot of well received cameras don’t have them, the Pocket 4K being one. I haven’t seen any footage of mine from the FP that concerns me.

[mechanicalEYE]

1 hour ago, Brian Williams said:

Really? And battery level works with them? I’ll have to try them out then, are we talking BP-51’s or BLC-12’s?

Yes ran one over the span of 4 days, got battery level indication throughout. Now using the Sigma branded battery and seems to be consistent behavior between the two so far.

These are DMW-BLC12's

[MikhailA]

8 hours ago, Brian Williams said:

I don’t know, a lot of well received cameras don’t have them, the Pocket 4K being one. I haven’t seen any footage of mine from the FP that concerns me.

aliasing is the problem with pocket 4k  and probably with sigma fp. but pocket 4k has 3rd party OLPF

[Lars Steenhoff]

I still have an antialisaing filter for the Nikon d800, maybe it will fit?  interesting

[paulinventome]

11 hours ago, The ghost of squig said:

Just need an OLPF. Whilst I like just about everything about this cam, the aliasing is a worry. I won't touch it until there's a solution.

Reading between the lines of how they're downsampling 6K to 4K i suspect it will help with moire situations as well. Certainly in the DNGs i've seen, with water and highlights it seems remarkably smooth. C5D had a frame with moire though. One thing i find out the image so far (from samples) is that it's naturally quite soft, in a nice way. Not digitally sharpened or anything. The sort of things i like about Reds for example. 

I'm close to just biting the bullet.

On a practical basis though the lack of an evf is my biggest issue. I don't know how that loupe thing will work and whether it's practical or not. I like the size of the camera but going back to focusing off a screen in daylight... Rather not.

Are there any small HDMI based 3rd party EVFs?

cheers
Paul

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, paulinventome said:

On a practical basis though the lack of an evf is my biggest issue. I don't know how that loupe thing will work and whether it's practical or not. I like the size of the camera but going back to focusing off a screen in daylight... Rather not.

Are there any small HDMI based 3rd party EVFs?

cheers
Paul

I've got the same one on my Sigma DP 0 and its very serviceable to be fair.

I actually also used it to make a DIY low cost EVF with a £30 raspberry pi panel and a thin USB power bank with some success.

The compact affordable EVF is a totally wide open market for someone and I don't understand why its not being filled by someone.

Portkeys looked like it was going to be them but not only is it not particularly cheap (£1200 ish) but going by this review its got a serious problem with noise.

 

Above that is the Zacuto Gratical X Micro which is about £500 more expensive and you're then getting into the territory of it being as much as the camera itself, although of course that cost can be spread amongst several cameras if you use them.

 

[KnightsFan]

My problem with EVFs is that I'm on such low budget sets, I'm running back and forth between camera, lights, audio and everything and I would never have time to actually put my eye to a viewfinder. I ended up selling my EVF because I could never use it. I wonder if that market gap is there partially because the people who can't spend $1200 are going for monitors anyway?

Now if someone made a wireless EVF that attaches comfortably to the chest so I just look down from anywhere on set... that's something I might use.

[BTM_Pix]

59 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

Now if someone made a wireless EVF that attaches comfortably to the chest so I just look down from anywhere on set... that's something I might use.

The Acsoon Cineeye and a cheap Android phone could give you that sort of thing.

It has a lot of good features like grayscale, RGB, monochrome, false colour, focus peaking, LUT loading etc and the signal can be monitored by up to 4 devices simultaneously.

Decent range and latency as well.

I'm going to do a quick write up about it sometime in the week as whilst my primary interest in it was live view remote with my app for the Pocket4K it has some potential for the FP as well.

With the Cineeye, these 2.5inch £50 Android phones could potentially be combined with a loupe to make a wireless self powered version of the LS300 lash up that I did.

Just need to make sure that the phone has enough grunt to run the Cineeye app, which I doubt will be an issue but the resolution might be.

[Llaasseerr]

On 11/6/2019 at 4:18 PM, cpc said:

Yeah, well, the main difference with offsetting in log is that you are moving your "zero" around (a "log" curve is never a direct log conversion in the blacks), so you'd need to readjust the black point. Whereas with multiplication (gain) in linear there is no such problem. Still, offsetting is handy with log footage or film scans.

Right. It would be great if there was an option to use the "printer lights" feature as a multiply (gain) operation in linear space in Resolve. That's how it is in Nuke, for example.

I can't remember to be honest, but I think ACEScc may be a direct log conversion in the blacks, because the bottom of the curve is pinned at black - which is why ACEScct was developed, to feel more like a traditional log curve when grading. I'd need to check but I have been able to get the exact same results with offset in log (probably ACEScc) vs Gain in linear.
 

[Brian Williams]

the z cam uses the USB-C connection to an iPhone, along with an iOS app, to allow the phone to work as a monitor; considering the FP can connect to a computer via USB and used as a webcam, wonder if this could be made to work the same way with a sigma iOS app. Of course no more ssd recording then I suppose

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, Brian Williams said:

the z cam uses the USB-C connection to an iPhone, along with an iOS app, to allow the phone to work as a monitor; considering the FP can connect to a computer via USB and used as a webcam, wonder if this could be made to work the same way with a sigma iOS app. Of course no more ssd recording then I suppose

It is UVC compliant so should be able to be used as is with any app that supports it like EasyCap or CameraFi (there are free versions of both that you can try it on).

I wouldn't hold my breath on Sigma doing anything connectivity wise with the FP at the moment as its not something they have any track record with and were very non-committal and vague about it when I spoke to them.

But yeah, either way, the big kicker is of course that it takes away the SSD option.

[Brian Williams]

6 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

It is UVC compliant so should be able to be used as is with any app that supports it like EasyCap or CameraFi (there are free versions of both that you can try it on)

Took me a while to figure this one out, damn iOS isn’t going to allow these apps any time soon.

[BTM_Pix]

6 hours ago, Brian Williams said:

Took me a while to figure this one out, damn iOS isn’t going to allow these apps any time soon.

Yeah, there is an adapter that Febon make but it all gets messy and not a little expensive.

One of those situations where it would make more sense to spend £40-50 on a generic Android device that you dedicate to it but again its going to block the USB recording option.

The Cineye would tick both boxes in terms of not blocking the SSD recording option and running on iOS but, as compact as it is for such a device, its definitely going to undermine the whole compact form factor aspect of the FP.

[Brian Williams]

6 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

One of those situations where it would make more sense to spend £40-50 on a generic Android device that you dedicate to it but again its going to block the USB recording option.

And also, at least when I plugged the camera into my laptop as a webcam, you can’t record internally (or even open the menu). So yeah, it’s not an option at this point.

Honestly, I’d be ok with Sigma just implementing a feature that flips the screen vertically, so a mirror at 45 degrees could be used for looking down on the camera, Rolleiflex style. That’s how I tend to shoot 99% of the time with articulated screens anyway.