Fuji X-H2S

[Attila Bakos]

3 minutes ago, mechanicalEYE said:

You're welcome. I will when I can as I am currently away from home. I had that image in my phone from when I first reached out to Atomos support. I did come across a post on Instagram where another guy mentioned the same issue in 6.2K raw. He said the pixel was in the same location as mine going off the image. 

Ok thanks, it seems to be the same location but I'd like to make sure :)

[Chrille]

21 hours ago, Django said:

eason it looks a little funky on YT is the footage was downscaled to FHD to soften it up, then upscaled back to 4K. With a heavy film stock grade in the middle. Kind of a weird process but it does come out filmic!

Yes, softer image = more filmic somehow.

 

[BrunoCH]

On 2/8/2023 at 4:14 PM, Django said:

Would love to find some XH2S ProRes footage to test grade..

Some test rushes. 3s trim copy of original media. ProRes HQ; Flog2

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1boq6yfg8TDli4c84tcyyfgUlny40fiEL?usp=share_link

[Attila Bakos]

A small update on the X-H2s + Ninja raw recording. We tried another body and another recorder as well, and this is a general issue, not related to my unit. When you put the body to 6.2K raw mode sometimes you will get like 12 fps. It's easy to reproduce it when you switch between 23.98 and 24fps 10-20 times, at some point you will enter this low fps mode, and sometimes it stays in this mode even if you hit record. Really annoying.
I also checked this another X-H2s body for that specific "bad pixel", and it's there, only in 6.2K raw mode, so this is a general issue as well. However, it was not visible when we used the Ninja V, it's related to the Ninja V Plus.
I'm discussing these with Atomos already, will keep you posted. However, Fuji doesn't reply to any of my emails, so if it's their fault, I'm not sure what I can do.

[Attila Bakos]

On 2/11/2023 at 2:17 PM, Attila Bakos said:

However, it was not visible when we used the Ninja V, it's related to the Ninja V Plus.

I'll correct myself, it's there in the Ninja V clips as well.

[Attila Bakos]

Well, just got reply from Atomos about the bad pixel issue in 6.2K raw:

Please note that our engineering has gone over your case and replicated and tested your setup.
Unfortunately, the issue lies with the camera as it is outputting the bad pixel in 6.2 k RAW.
We would love to help you fix the issue but as it is on the camera end our hands are tied.
Please contact the camera manufacturer to get this issue resolved.

Fuji doesn't give a shit about my emails, so I wouldn't expect a fix anytime soon. This, and the framerate issue, and also the fact that Fuji's ProRes RAW has noticeably less dynamic range than F-Log, not to mention F-Log2, makes me loose faith in this company, they do a lot of things right but they always have to fuck up little things like this.

 

[mechanicalEYE]

50 minutes ago, Attila Bakos said:

Well, just got reply from Atomos about the bad pixel issue in 6.2K raw:

Please note that our engineering has gone over your case and replicated and tested your setup.
Unfortunately, the issue lies with the camera as it is outputting the bad pixel in 6.2 k RAW.
We would love to help you fix the issue but as it is on the camera end our hands are tied.
Please contact the camera manufacturer to get this issue resolved.

Fuji doesn't give a shit about my emails, so I wouldn't expect a fix anytime soon. This, and the framerate issue, and also the fact that Fuji's ProRes RAW has noticeably less dynamic range than F-Log, not to mention F-Log2, makes me loose faith in this company, they do a lot of things right but they always have to fuck up little things like this.

 

I heard back from Atomos support as well last week. They said the exact same-thing to me.

I called Fuji to report the feedback from Atomos and the guy told me he tried the exact combo himself and doesn't see it but his tone was shit… He seemed very uninterested and dismissive. He actually said its not a problem for the camera, blamed Atomos, and said just because 3 or 4 cameras have this issue doesn't mean its a problem for the camera. I’m thinking they have known about the issue and sitting and quietly scaling customer feedback. I emailed them last Wednesday and haven't received response to that email. I guess it's a shoot internally for now wait and see game. I really like the camera as its fun to use but for my first time dealing with Fuji support I am very disappointed.

As you mention the dynamic range internally is better. I’m just gonna use my SmallHd indie 5 monitor and stick with F-Log2

[Attila Bakos]

7 minutes ago, mechanicalEYE said:

As you mention the dynamic range internally is better. I’m just gonna use my SmallHd indie 5 monitor and stick with F-Log2

Yes the blacks are just cut at a certain point, F-Log has at least 1 stop advantage over ProRes RAW, F-Log2 even more. Even 5D3 ML RAW has better dynamic range in 12bit mode. Something is not right about blacks being cut like this, I have no idea why Fuji does it. The only good thing I can say about ProRes RAW on the X-H2s is the color, this is the only way out of Fuji's chroma smoothing.

[Attila Bakos]

Summary of my findings so far:

 

[BrunoCH]

22 hours ago, Attila Bakos said:

Summary of my findings so far:

 

Thank you for this test. I would have preferred to see ProRes HQ instead of H265. Did you delog the Flog2 with Fuji LUTs ?

[FHDcrew]

 

[Attila Bakos]

2 hours ago, BrunoCH said:

Thank you for this test. I would have preferred to see ProRes HQ instead of H265. Did you delog the Flog2 with Fuji LUTs ?

I needed similar in-camera and external resolutions for a fair comparison. 6.2K was the only way because in ProRes RAW you only have full-sensor 6.2K or cropped 4.8K. I don't have a CF card so I can only record ProRes HQ to the Ninja, and 6.2K is not available there, it's only available in ProRes RAW mode. This is the reason for internal H.265 instead of ProRes HQ.
And if you record in UHD 24p, internal H.265 has actually more bitrate than ProRes HQ (720Mbps vs 707Mbps). I tested it, H.265 actually looks better due to more efficient compression.
To you other question, I did not use any LUTs during my testing, I usually work with color space transform or aces nodes.

[Django]

@Attila Bakos As a colorist do you know of any solutions to get the loss of colour back in post on the internal codecs or is it just gone forever? Fuji XTrans is usually touted for its color science and film simulations which is why its so disheartning and even confusing to watch these findings where it seems in fact very poor in this domain versus any other typical bayer sensor. I don't know what to make of it..

[Attila Bakos]

25 minutes ago, Django said:

@Attila Bakos As a colorist do you know of any solutions to get the loss of colour back in post on the internal codecs or is it just gone forever? Fuji XTrans is usually touted for its color science and film simulations which is why its so disheartning and even confusing to watch these findings where it seems in fact very poor in this domain versus any other typical bayer sensor. I don't know what to make of it..

Actually I'm not a colorist, I'm a developer who loves color science, but I can tell you that the loss of color is final, no chance to get it back.

[BrunoCH]

7 hours ago, Attila Bakos said:

And if you record in UHD 24p, internal H.265 has actually more bitrate than ProRes HQ (720Mbps vs 707Mbps). I tested it, H.265 actually looks better due to more efficient compression.
 

Yes for 4K the bitrate are very similar (I am around 780Mbps for ProRes HQ in 4KDCI) But for 6,2K I have a bitrate of around 2300 Mbps with ProRes HQ. This is really different from the 720 Mbps of H265

(Angelbirds SE 512GB cards are very good at a reasonable price, I got some around 180 euros)

https://www.angelbird.com/prod/av-pro-cfexpress-se-type-b-2919/?category=238

[ac6000cw]

22 hours ago, BrunoCH said:

Yes for 4K the bitrate are very similar (I am around 780Mbps for ProRes HQ in 4KDCI) But for 6,2K I have a bitrate of around 2300 Mbps with ProRes HQ. This is really different from the 720 Mbps of H265

But 6.2k frame size is 6240 x 4160 (from the file info you posted), which is approximately 3 x the pixel count of 3840 x 2160 UHD (25958400 vs. 8294400 pixels)

So in terms of compressed bits-per-pixel it's basically the same - 88 bpp for 6.2k @2284Mbs, 87 bpp for UHD @720Mbps

[Daniel Robben]

Concerning chroma details, I tested a bit, and noticed a jump of increased color details at ISO 3200 in standard profiles. Further, h265 All-I is a bad choice vs longGOP for such detailed not moving scenes. Prores has advantage as well here, even if its Intra frame encoding. f-log2 also worse than standard profiles.

So the best I could get (and almost completely get rid of smoothing) is with Prores HQ at ISO 3200 in standard profile. 

See comparison of best and worst (below is one of its chroma channels):

 

[D Verco]

Have you considered that it doesn't matter if the final image quality is as good as it is?

[D Verco]

Also internal Flog2 will always have more dynamic range than the raw options because it's coming from a 14bit readout

[Daniel Robben]

4 hours ago, D Verco said:

Have you considered that it doesn't matter if the final image quality is as good as it is?

I do. But I ended up here because something was odd (muddy) compared to my previous camera (G85), and also thanks to other people who digged deeper, it's clear that there are flaws.

I was using the S5 Pro from Fuji (incredible dynamic range by the way) for years and still love it. Same with G85. I know their sweet spots and just rely on them at some point.

With the x-h2s, of course the bars are raised, considering the specs.

Regarding dynamic range in f-log2, it's great, yes. But there are situations (maybe more than I would like) where there will be lack of richness visible and you will not be able to recover it, whereas with its competitors, you might have. 

Of course, I also noticed that some of the "richness" in the wintertrees of other cameras is actually color noise, so also bad, but at least it can be postprocessed if needed.