Which cameras have the most pleasing grain structure?

[webrunner5]

Now that makes it a lot more desirable. Thanks for the info on it.

[BenEricson]

Black Magic Pocket for sure. Komodo feels good. Canon cinema cameras have a ton of noise reduction and lack the texture of those two cameras for sure. 

Film is the absolute best though. No contest. The amount of life even a static shot has when shooting 16mm is unbelievable. The perfect amount of grain, detail, and color.

[QuickHitRecord]

18 minutes ago, BenEricson said:

Film is the absolute best though. No contest. The amount of life even a static shot has when shooting 16mm is unbelievable. The perfect amount of grain, detail, and color.

I love film too, though certain stocks are too grainy for me. Now that it's finally back in stock after months of waiting, I just bought my first roll of 250D. Now I need to find something worthy of $150+ for 2.5 minutes (and it's a test roll, since it will be my first time using my new Kodak K100).

From other tests I've seen, 250D is the ultimate, perfect grain character.

[webrunner5]

That amount of money would be too rich for my blood LOL. 😬

[kye]

On 2/18/2022 at 2:03 AM, Django said:

and in run & gun situations you sometimes just have to make hard choices, protect highlights or blow them out to preserve some shadow info. 

+1 on that.

Also, sometimes you're pushing the ISO in ways you'd prefer not to.  Some of the nicest shots I've got of the kids is when they're on their phones and the available light is so low that they're basically being exclusively lit by their phone.  That's not a native 100 situation, at least on the single native ISO sensors!

On 2/18/2022 at 4:56 AM, M_Williams said:

It's not just about recoverability or exposure errors or whatever.

HOW dynamic range is allocated is intrinsically part of that "film" look, as well as highlight roll-off. You don't get smooth highlight roll-off if most of your dynamic range is bunched up in the shadows.

It's relatively typical for colourists (and film-emulation packages like FilmConvert and Dehancer) to apply grain to some parts of the image more than others.  IIRC they apply more to the mids and almost none to the highlights and shadows, as I think that emulates the grain from a negative/positive film process, where the roll-offs lessen the strength of the grain.  Don't quote me on that logic, but it sounds right.

13 hours ago, M_Williams said:

Yes the Komodo does have built-in highlight recovery that uses other color channels to reconstruct clipped data, exactly like Da Vinci.

If I understand the math properly you can get basically the same effect by desaturating the brightest highlights on your image.  

I contemplated writing a DCTL plugin for Resolve to recover highlights on non-RAW footage (as you can't use the option in the RAW panel) and over the course of figuring out the logic this was where I got to.

[BenEricson]

8 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

I love film too, though certain stocks are too grainy for me. Now that it's finally back in stock after months of waiting, I just bought my first roll of 250D. Now I need to find something worthy of $150+ for 2.5 minutes (and it's a test roll, since it will be my first time using my new Kodak K100).

From other tests I've seen, 250D is the ultimate, perfect grain character.

Yeah, it’s crazy. I brought 10 rolls of 250d right when BH stocked it. (I have the notifications on.) They emailed me the next day saying they could only send me 4. 

I agree with you on the 250d. 50d is almost too clean but has its place for sure. 250d is just so nice.

[QuickHitRecord]

1 hour ago, BenEricson said:

I brought 10 rolls of 250d right when BH stocked it.

That was smart! I wish I had purchased more than one roll. It looks like B&H are sold out again after less than a week. Last time they were without for at least six months.

[Emanuel]

Well, quick hit record is not exactly what you're expecting when you shoot film... LOL :- )

[PannySVHS]

Looking forward to seeing some of your kewl stuff now in Kodak 250d glory. @BenEricson @QuickHitRecord Awesome!:) Just recently I browsed the webs for 16mm and S16mm film videos. Lovin it. Nothing more relaxing than watching some analogue film digitized for us to enjoy. Talking about grain. 🙂

 

 

[Nikkor]

Are there any large sensor cameras with ccd chips that record video beside the f35?

[PannySVHS]

@NikkorYes, the SRW 9000, which comes in two versions one with three 2/3 ccd sensors and one with the Super 35 CCD sensor from the F35. I once had a chance to buy one in Germany for 2500EUR but I let that rare opportunity pass. It had all boards installed, including the 444 board.

The Sony PMW F55 has a Super 35 CCD. There was or is one on sale on ebay UK for 5500EUR.

[QuickHitRecord]

3 hours ago, Nikkor said:

Are there any large sensor cameras with ccd chips that record video beside the f35?

There aren't that many. Off the top of my head:

• Sony F35 - Super35
• Sony SRW-9000PL - Super35
• Sony Genesis - Super35
• Digital Bolex D16 - Super16
• Ikonoskop A-Cam dII - Super16

And then you get into 2/3" CCDs, and there are a ton of those. Here's a good place to look for the Sony models. On the Panasonic side, there were the HPX and Varicam bodies. Toshiba, JVC, and Ikegami also had 2/3 CCD cameras, but they were mostly standard definition.

There were a handful of 1/2" CCD camcorders, mostly from Sony as I recall.

1/3" CCD sensors were mostly found in fixed zoom lens cameras like the HVX200, FX1, Z1U, DVX100, Canon XL/XH cameras, and some of the JVC GY cameras. But 1/3 sensors are pretty small.

Compared to today's mirrorless cameras, these cameras were mostly very large and meant to be operated on shoulder or tripods. The smallest and most manageable of the bunch was the Digital Bolex, which now goes for around $7K used.

The Sony F55 is a MOS sensor with global shutter, not a CCD camera.

If you'd like to have a small CCD camera to try out, I'd recommend the diminutive and inexpensive Lumix FZ47 (FZ48 in the UK). It's fixed lens and can't record in 24P or 25P, but it does shoot in 1080P and the 1/2.3" sensor is larger than any of the 1/3" cameras. And the image stabilization is surprisingly good, which is useful for the ~600mm equivalent zoom. Here's some footage I shot:

I personally love the camera, but I wouldn't say that the grain is good at all. If you freeze-frame the footage, you'll see a ton of temporal ghosting and macroblocking. But in motion, it's one of my favorites.

And here are some of my photos with it (JPEG only, the camera does not shoot RAW): https://distanceandelevation.com/blog/2021/8/9/bandontoportorford

[Patrick B.]

Wanted to revive this thread as I've searched many times for a similar discussion exactly like this, but not a lot of people seek out noise in our era of hyper sharp and clean digital footage haha.  

I bought several used cameras to shoot out and compare: C70, Komodo, X-H2S, and FX3.  I kept them way too long and just listed them all for sale after the S5 II/X was announced as it has so much of what I need in an amazing price.  I had the S5 but couldn't get on with the AF for shooting myself.  

I do love the Komodo noise and reading this makes me want to keep it haha.  C70 also seems very nice, but somehow I get a bit more of a wow factor from the Komodo even though it's sharper and I don't really like sharper.  Of course Sony is notorious in their prosumer line for heavy handed NR, but X-H2S is nice.  

I was encourage by someone's comment on the S series having good noise.  I can't remember now how my S5 looked underexposed but I do enjoy V-log and I love you can turn off NR in the camera.

I honestly enjoyed even the EOS R noise recorded in 10-bit 4K on my Ninja V, especially when graded in B&W I'd underexpose purposely to get some texture. 

I hadn't heard of this 1/40th shutter trick for Red... I'm tempted to unbox my Komodo and try it haha!

[Patrick B.]

On 2/21/2022 at 3:24 PM, PannySVHS said:

Looking forward to seeing some of your kewl stuff now in Kodak 250d glory. @BenEricson @QuickHitRecord Awesome!:) Just recently I browsed the webs for 16mm and S16mm film videos. Lovin it. Nothing more relaxing than watching some analogue film digitized for us to enjoy. Talking about grain. 🙂

 

 

This looks magic... absolutely the look I wish I could get SOOC without shooting film 😅.  I will say Filmbox is very very nice though and really does add some great mojo.  Waiting for the day camera's incorporate plugins or built-in film emulation for video.