Why Gerald Undone is wrong about the Sigma Fp-L

[amweber21]

On 6/2/2022 at 7:16 PM, Andrew Reid said:

3 - The Cinema DNG factor. In 8bit it can be a bit ropey in the highlights but the 12bit files are THICK. Also the full frame RAW stands up really well even though it is pixel binned from 9.5K, I can barely tell a difference to oversampled 4K. Aliasing is really well controlled and it doesn't lack detail!

I also have the 24-105 with my fp L. Look to invest in the HG-21 for larger lenses. I now have 4 different grips for the fp L, and the HG-21 is by far the best feeling, although the largest.

Maybe you can put the 8 and 10bit CDNG files through the paces. I use 12bit in 1.3x crop when I need the best, but I'm often satisfied with 10bit in 1.0x or 8bit when wanting to shoot internally to the SD card. I see a slight reduction in the highlight retention as I'm sure you have noticed, but the shadows I do not notice a dramatic difference. I know the original fp caused some serious green shifts, but I don't see that on the fp L. Is that your experience?

Also note 1080p will need to be 1.67x crop and beyond when shooting any CDNG. In .MOV it works fine until the higher frame rates. That's probably the biggest downside of the fp L, but I don't often do 1080p.

[amweber21]

On 6/3/2022 at 11:26 AM, MrSMW said:

Yes, when I tested it last year, anything outdoor not moving, no problem.

Indoors, event photography, no chance. It’s one of the worst cameras on the planet in that regard, - you can’t just go shoot with it.

So it’s only the video side I am personally interested in, but then after my last 3 weddings, I have gone back to shooting hybrid as I am getting more consistent results with…of all my cameras, the S1R’s, shooting the Natural profile, in 8 bit 4K 50p.

They are pretty sticky in the AF department so S1H and S5 have gone back to static video only duty.

It is tough indoors, but I wouldn't say you can't use it. The 24-105 gets me solid results, even being f4, since I can use shutters down to nearly a full second. I think longer lenses don't work so well, but faster wide lenses are okay since you don't need as fast as shutter speeds. With 61MP you can crop in on them if needed.

[MrSMW]

I was talking about banding rather than aperture.

When I tried it just around my house, I got banding in various rooms.

No way can I work with that at live events.

In short, it’s not reliable and that is a deal-breaker.

Still love the concept, just not the reality!

[Andrew Reid]

It could be used at 1/50 with NDs for stills.

That makes it pretty bullet proof as far as banding goes in 50hz PAL countries.

They haven't got a flicker reduction mode in the menus though.

It is a bit of an oversight.

Camera always seems to select 1/60 indoors for me, even though I set the minimum Auto ISO shutter speed at 1/50!

[amweber21]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

It could be used at 1/50 with NDs for stills.

That makes it pretty bullet proof as far as banding goes in 50hz PAL countries.

They haven't got a flicker reduction mode in the menus though.

It is a bit of an oversight.

Camera always seems to select 1/60 indoors for me, even though I set the minimum Auto ISO shutter speed at 1/50!

It's part of it's auto minimum shutter based off your focal length. It'll make your shutter 1/60 usually on standard. You can select a minimum, but they strangely don't let you select the number but use a slow, standard, fast, faster, etc type shutter setting.

I recommend just shooting in manual and set auto iso. Then you can just adjust shutter to whatever. I switch to A only when outside.

[Andrew Reid]

Nah on the Fp-L there is a specific minimum shutter speed in the Auto ISO menu you can select.

So I selected 1/50 and it insists on 1/60, probably for NTSC countries.

We could could with a PAL mode for stills!

[amweber21]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Nah on the Fp-L there is a specific minimum shutter speed in the Auto ISO menu you can select.

So I selected 1/50 and it insists on 1/60, probably for NTSC countries.

We could could with a PAL mode for stills!

Oh, I didn't even scroll down to see there were individual speeds you can select below the autos.

I tried multiple speeds. All seem to work as a minimum. Here a screenshot using 1/40

Maybe something is overwriting your setting pushing it to 1/60. Not sure.

[Andrew Reid]

1/40 I can get as well.

Did you try 1/50?

[amweber21]

Yep, tried a handful of them including 1/50. All are working.

[Andrew Reid]

Really weird. I had to restart the camera and put an L-mount lens on it before it started working. Now it is actually selecting 1/50 rather than 1/60, with the Sigma lens as well as with a manual focus Leica M adapter aka Billy No Lens.

[BTM_Pix]

8 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Really weird. I had to restart the camera and put an L-mount lens on it before it started working. Now it is actually selecting 1/50 rather than 1/60, with the Sigma lens as well as with a manual focus Leica M adapter aka Billy No Lens.

Did you upgrade to 2.00 from the dinosaur version you had on it?

It’s not mentioned in the release notes but it could be one those “solved the phenomenon where…” things (aka bugs 😂)

[BTM_Pix]

On 6/3/2022 at 5:24 PM, Andrew Reid said:

To avoid banding with the electronic shutter in stills mode under artificial light I really have to use one shutter speed... 1/50 for 50hz PAL countries.

Multiples of 50 will work.

On white tiles lit with Philips HUE Led strips, there is banding at 1/80th, 1/160th, 1/320th, 1/160th etc but it is not there at 1/100th, 1/200th, 1/250th, 1/500th.

The exception is 1/400th where it is a multiple of 50 but banding is visible.  

[Andrew Reid]

4 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Did you upgrade to 2.00 from the dinosaur version you had on it?

It’s not mentioned in the release notes but it could be one those “solved the phenomenon where…” things (aka bugs 😂)

I did indeed.

The stills/cine separation thing was a bit of a damp squib though.

It only allows you to separate exposure controls, not more exotic things like crop factor.

Thankfully the crop feature can be assigned to left and right on the d-pad so it is very quick to set.

That RED motion mount I showed you, I wonder how possible it would be to adapt it to L-mount, with a little control box for the ND?

Probably not easy but probably not impossible either 🙂

[amweber21]

10 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

I did indeed.

The stills/cine separation thing was a bit of a damp squib though.

It only allows you to separate exposure controls, not more exotic things like crop factor.

Thankfully the crop feature can be assigned to left and right on the d-pad so it is very quick to set.

That RED motion mount I showed you, I wonder how possible it would be to adapt it to L-mount, with a little control box for the ND?

Probably not easy but probably not impossible either 🙂

You can get around that by setting custom modes. I have one set for 12bit 1.3x crop, one set for 1080p 12bit 1.67x, and so on. The camera will even jump from A mode to your last used custom mode when you switch from still to cine so you don't even have to change modes.

[BTM_Pix]

7 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

That RED motion mount I showed you, I wonder how possible it would be to adapt it to L-mount, with a little control box for the ND?

The best I could offer you is controlling the wheel on the Fotodiox version 😉 

Did Tilta ever release their version ?

 

[Andrew Reid]

I don't think they did.

What would be nice on mirrorless cameras is something like this for £300 instead of 2 grand.

https://cvp.com/product/kippertie-str-nd-strata-pl-nd-mount?gclid=CjwKCAjwy_aUBhACEiwA2IHHQDU-KnAcNoXGjiCHNjT1x0A7rRa6a2GwXIA80LVdDw0Gt-z4I1ciYBoCa7YQAvD_BwE

It even has a clear setting.

[webrunner5]

Like I have said someone can give you a Red body, and it still cost a ton to equip them, but they are are pretty killer camera system. For a small company they keep coming up with cool stuff.

[TomTheDP]

28 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Like I have said someone can give you a Red body, and it still cost a ton to equip them, but they are are pretty killer camera system. For a small company they keep coming up with cool stuff.

The Raven is a good deal these days. Seeing kits with everything for under $4k. You still gotta stock up on redmags though, probably another $1k.

[Jbizz]

On 4/24/2021 at 10:57 PM, kye said:

I wasn't saying that it was aimed at the same user, or that the overlap would be 100%, but it's a lot closer than other parts of the market.

My point was really that cine cameras have a bunch of things that make sense for cinema, but are a royal PITA for other things, and on this point the FP is quite well aligned.   I shoot travel content with a GH5, and if I list every reason that a P4K wouldn't be suitable for me then almost all of them apply to the FP.  If I then listed all the things I would be looking for if I shot a narrative piece, the P4K and FP share most of them.

Coming from another professional who has used, Dedicated cams, Canon, Sony, Mini Lf, and BM cam systems. I’ll tell you the FP was definitely aimed at the BMPCC market.

Very similar in features and I will agree the auto focus is better. That said, not sure anyone in the cinema field is gonna be using auto focus much anyway. I pull focus for just about everything I use.

The fact that the production team of the Halo series ditched the BMPCC for the FP shows what cinematographers are looking for in an on-set POV Cam. It was throwin punches with Arri cams. That is serious. The reason is because it is the only pocket cam that shoots true RAW Cine DNG. I have the FP-L and can attest to the quality. I will say though the RS is there. Not much worse though than other cams out there with no Mech. shutter. It’s expected. One word Gimbal… hehe. I’m happy with my buy. I don’t use it for extreme action though, and don’t get me wrong I love Black Magic, but a camera that can give me CINE DNG, small form factor that you can rig minimalistic for travel and is Full frame… it’s a win for me.

[kye]

On 7/6/2022 at 2:40 PM, Jbizz said:

Coming from another professional who has used, Dedicated cams, Canon, Sony, Mini Lf, and BM cam systems. I’ll tell you the FP was definitely aimed at the BMPCC market.

Very similar in features and I will agree the auto focus is better. That said, not sure anyone in the cinema field is gonna be using auto focus much anyway. I pull focus for just about everything I use.

The fact that the production team of the Halo series ditched the BMPCC for the FP shows what cinematographers are looking for in an on-set POV Cam. It was throwin punches with Arri cams. That is serious. The reason is because it is the only pocket cam that shoots true RAW Cine DNG. I have the FP-L and can attest to the quality. I will say though the RS is there. Not much worse though than other cams out there with no Mech. shutter. It’s expected. One word Gimbal… hehe. I’m happy with my buy. I don’t use it for extreme action though, and don’t get me wrong I love Black Magic, but a camera that can give me CINE DNG, small form factor that you can rig minimalistic for travel and is Full frame… it’s a win for me.

Nice!  I saw those articles with it on Halo and that's the perfect use-case for it in high-end productions.  Hopefully word spreads and Sigma starts to get a presence in that niche.

For me it's the image and the dynamic range that is just soooo tempting despite being a poor fit for my use-case (hand-held travel style in purely available light).  I'm still actively looking at their firmware updates, hoping that they'll drop some more goodies in there.  Otherwise maybe an FP mk2 will come and deliver some of the holes in the mk1.  

If it had Prores, a tilting screen and some kind of stabilised options for standard focal lengths (other than the 24-104/4) then the sheer image quality would get me to swap brands and sensor sizes, not an easy feat considering I can see 5 MFT cameras from where I'm sitting, plus a tray-full of lenses!