The latest free firmware release for the Sound Devices Pix240, called “Aurora” adds the ability to record 10 bit or even 12 bit ProRes444 RGB or YCbCr. Using the Pix240’s 3G HDSDI input this means that you can record the full 10 bit S-log RGB output of the Sony PMW-F3 (or the F5 if you want ProRes or DNxHD). This makes the PIX240 the cheapest portable recorder that can record the RGB output, previously the cheapest option was the Convergent design Gemini. Of course you must have the RGB option on your F3 for this to work, but with the prices of used F3’s at rock bottom (I’m looking for £5.5k for mine) a used F3 plus a PIX240 works out at about £8k ($13K) which really is a bargain for this quality of image. Full details on the firmware update are on the Sound Devices website. 
The Pix240 is a good, solid and robust external recorder with a high quality monitor, XLR audio inputs and the ability to record to compact flash cards or SSD’s making it very versatile. It really is quite incredible how little you need to pay these days for top end image quality, more than good enough even for cinema release. I’ve shot several cinema commercials with my F3’s and they have always looked excellent when projected on a big screen.
Yearly Archives: 2012
Tips for shooting in very cold weather.
(Updated 12/2023)
With winter well upon us I thought it would be good to share some of my arctic shooting experience. I’ve shot in temperatures down to -45c in the arctic in winter.
Overall modern tapeless cameras do OK in extreme cold. The most reliable cameras are generally larger solid state cameras. Larger cameras cool slower than small ones and larger cameras will hold on to heat generated internally better than small ones. Cameras and electronics with lots of cooling vents can sometimes also be troublesome as the vents allow them to cool more quickly. But cold is not necessarily going to be the biggest problem.
IMPORTANT NOTE: It is EXTREMELY dangerous to charge normal lithium batteries that are below freezing. Below freezing the lithium in the battery migrates to the anode of the battery cell. This cuase permanent damage to the battery shortening its life and if enough builds up around the anode it can short the battery out causing a sudden fire/explosion. Each time you charge a very cold lithium battery more lithium builds up. It is possible for a lithium battery that has been charged when very cold to suddenly burst into flames some weeks/months/years later if bumped or knocked causing the lithium build around the anode to shift. Always warm up any lithium batteries before attempting to charge them.
Condensation:
Condensation is the big deal breaker. When you take the very cold camera inside into a warm house/hotel/car/tent you will get condensation. If the camera is very cold this can then freeze on the body of camera including the glass of the lens. If there is condensation on the outside of the camera, there will almost certainly also be condensation inside the camera and this can kill your camera.
To prevent or at least reduce the condensation you can place the camera in a large ziplock or other sealed bag BEFORE taking it inside, take the camera inside in the bag. Then allow the camera to warm up to the ambient temperature before removing it from the bag. Peli cases are another option, but the large volume of the pelicase means there will be more moisture inside the case to condense and the insulating properties of the case mean that it could take many, many hours to warm up.
I don’t recommend storing a cold or damp camera in a Pelicase (or any other similar waterproof case) as there is nowhere for the moisture to go, so the camera will remain damp until the case is opened and everything dried out properly.
Rather than moving a camera repeatedly from outside to inside and repeatedly generating risky condensation you should consider leaving the camera outside. You can leave the camera outside provided it does not get below -30c. Below -30c you risk the LCD panel freezing and cracking. LCD panels freeze at between -30 to -40c. If you are using a camera in very cold conditions and you notice the edges of the LCD screen going blue or dark you should start thinking about warming up that LCD panel as it may be close to freezing.
LCD displays will become slow and sluggish to respond in the cold. Your pictures may look blurry and smeary because of this. It doesn’t affect the recording, only what you see on the LCD.
Very often in cold regions houses will have an unheated reception room or porch. This is a good place to store your camera rather than taking it inside into the warm. Repeatedly taking a camera from cold to warm without taking precautions against condensation will shorten the life of your camera.
If you can, leave the camera on between shots. The camera generates some heat internally and this will prevent many issues.
BATTERY LIFE:
Li-Ion batteries are effected by the cold but they are not nearly as bad as Nicads or NiMh batteries which are all but useless below freezing. li-Ion battery life gets reduced by between 25 and 50% depending on how cold it is and the quality of the battery (very cheap cells may have a higher water content which can freeze causing the cell to dramatically lose capacity and the ability to deliver power).
Down to about -10c there is only a very marginal loss of capacity. Down to -25c you will lose about 20%-30% below -25c the capacity will fall away further and it becomes impossible to use the full capacity of the battery.
Keep your spare batteries in a pocket inside your coat or jacket until you need them. After use let the battery warm up before you charge it if you can. Charging a very cold battery will reduce the lifespan of the battery and it won’t fully charge (see note above – DO NOT CHARGE a battery that is below freezing, it is very dangerous). One top tip for shooting outside for extended periods is to get a cool box. Get some chemical hand warmers or better still electric rechargeable handwarmers and place them in the cool box with your batteries to keep them warm. If you don’t have hand warmers you can also use a hot water bottle. Chemical hand warms typically use an iron powder mixed with salts. The heat comes from the iron rapidly rusting. This process needs moisture to work. A chemical handwarmer will work great in a pocket close to your body moisture but when it is very cold there isn’t enough moisture in the air for a chemical warmer to work when it is away from your body moisture. As a result chemical warmers inside camera covers or in a cool box might not actually produce any heat.
Watch your breath
If your lens has and snow or ice on it, don’t be tempted to breath or blow on the lens to blow the ice off. Do not to breath on the lens when cleaning it as your warm breath will condense on the cold glass and freeze. Also try to avoid breathing out close to the viewfinder. When it is very cold and if you are warm in your nice thick winter clothes even standing close to the camera can lead to frost and ice building up on it. Small amounts of sweat from your body will evaporate and this moisture will find its way to the camera, even if you are a few feet (1 or 2m) from it. If doing a timelapse of the Northern Lights, once the camera is running you should move away from the camera.
A small soft paint brush is good for keeping your lens clean as in very cold conditions you’ll simply be able to brush and snow or ice off. Otherwise a large lens cloth.
Your lens will get cold and in some conditions you will get frost on the front element. To help combat this wrap some insulating fabric around the body of the lens. Wrist sweat bands are quite good for this or an old sock with the toes cut off. For time-lapse long sessions in very cold weather you might want to get a lens heater for the lens. These are normally 12 volt or USB powered and wrap around the lens. They don’t use lots of power but they do warm the lens just enough to keep the worst of the condensation, dew and frost off the lens. They are sometimes also called “dew heaters” and are sold by most good telescope suppliers.
Covers.
Conventional plastic rain covers become brittle below about -15c and can even shatter like glass below -20c. The clear plastic panels in other covers can also suffer the same fate. So use if you use a cover use one made out of fabric. Special insulated cold weather covers often called “polar bears” can be used and these often have pockets inside for chemical heat packs (although when very cold these don’t work, use a USB hand warmer instead). These are well worth getting if you are going to be doing a lot of arctic shooting with a larger camera and will help keep the camera warm. But for very small cameras the bulk of a thick cover can make it almost impossible to use. As an alternative wrap the camera in a scarf or cut the sleeves of an old sweater to make a tube you can slide over the camera. If you have a sewing machine you could make a simple cover out of some fleece type material.
For DSLR’s and stills cameras a balaclava can be used to cover the camera body to provide some protection. However unheated covers don’t make a big difference when the camera is outside in very cold temperatures for extended periods unless it is always left turned on, eventually the cold will get to it.
Brittle Plastic.
Plastics get brittle at low temperatures so be very gentle with anything plastic, especially things made from very hard, cheap plastic. The plastic Sony use appears to be pretty tough even at low temps. Wires and cables may become as rigid as a steel rod. Be gentle, bend then too much and the insulation may split and the cable break. I try to avoid bending any cable once it has become very cold.
Other considerations are tripods. If outside in very low temps for more than 30mins or so the grease in the tripod will become very thick and may even freeze, so your fluid damping will become either very stiff or freeze up all together. Contact your tripod manufacturer to see what temperatures their greases can be used over. Vinten and some of the other tripod companies can winterise the tripod and replace the normal grease with arctic grease. If you are unsure put your tripod head in your deep freeze at home for a few hours and see if it still works when you take it out.
Looking after yourself.
I find that the best way to operate the camera is by wearing a pair of large top quality mittens (gloves are next to useless below -15c), Consider getting a pair of Army surplus arctic mittens, they are very cheap on ebay and from surplus stores and will normally have an additional “trigger finger”. This extra finger makes it easier to press the record button and things like that. If you can get Swedish or Finnish military winter mittens, these are amongst the best. I wear a pair of thin “thinsulate” fleece gloves that will fit inside the mittens, i can then slip my hands in and out of the mittens to operate the camera. If you can get gloves with finger tips compatible with touch screens this will allow you to use any touch functions on a camera or your phone. Get extra large mittens, then it is easier to slip your hand in and out.
I keep a chemical hand warmer inside the mittens to warm my fingers back up after using the camera (or use heated mittens powered by a USB battery pack).
The hardest thing to keep warm is your feet. If you’ll be standing in snow or standing on ice then conventional hiking boots etc will not keep your feet warm. A Scandinavian trick if standing outside for long periods is to get some small twigs and tree branches to stand on and help insulate your feet from the cold ground. If your feet get cold then you are at risk of frostbite or frost nip. Invest in or hire some decent snow boots like Baffin’s. There is almost nothing worse than having ice cold feet when working. Don’t forget that if you do get cold, moving around, running on the spot etc will help get your circulation going and help you to warm up. Also consider some high energy food and snacks, you will burn a lot more calories in the cold than you would do normally. Also a flask with a hot drink is always welcome. I have an arctic clothing guide here; Arctic Clothing Guide |
One place available for on my Norway Northern Lights Expeditions, Feb 2013.
Due to a short notice cancellation I have a spare place on either of my February 2013 Northern Lights expeditions. If your interested please use the contact form to get in touch asap. I expect these places will go quite quickly. There is ONE place open on each of the tours: https://www.xdcam-user.com/northern-lights-expeditions-to-norway/
The picture below is from my Northern Lights expedition earlier this month and gives you an idea of the kind of pictures you too can hope to get.
Edit with Premiere and disappearing disc space.
I’ve just ordered a new MacBook Pro. It’s a Retina MBP, so has a 512GB SSD. Upgrading this is difficult and extremely expensive. So in preparation for the new machines arrival I started freeing up disc space on my current MacBook Pro. I used a useful piece of free software called “GrandPerspective” to visualise what’s using up my disc space. While searching around I came across a bunch of files eating up a huge amount of disc space. These are Adobe Premiere’s cache files. These never get deleted unless you do some house keeping. Even if your projects and media are saved on external drives, these cache files will slowly fill up your system drive unless you select the tick box to “save media cache files next to originals where possible” under the “preferences”, “media” tab. While your there you can also “clean” your cache database to remove older cache files.
December 2012 Northern Lights Expedition.
Well the picture says it all really. The December Northern Lights expedition to Tromso and Karasjok in Norway was a big success. Everyone went away with some excellent pictures and great time-lapse. I shot the picture below with one of my NEX5n cameras with the 16mm f2.8 pancake lens. I also got some great time-lapse with the FS700 which I will cut together and post when I get back home.
Training, Education and the DoP.
One of the things that’s struck me on my travels is the different attitudes to training, education and accreditation around the world.
Lets face it, these days anyone can call themselves a DoP, I do! But what is a DoP? What does it mean? It means a lot less today than it did 10 years ago. When I started in the industry there was a kind of unofficial apprenticeship system. You started as an assistant, became a camera operator, learnt how to light, becoming a lighting cameraman and worked your way up. If you tried to sell yourself as a lighting cameraman without having the skills to back that up, word of mouth would mean no one would hire you. Today however it seems that almost anyone can pick up a camera and call themselves a DoP, Director of Photography, a very grand sounding title. There is no requirement to have actually had any training or real world experience before you can call yourself a camera operator, DoP, colourist or whatever you fancy.
The problem for production companies is working out who really does have the skills and experience to back up their job title. I’ve spent many days helping production companies train their staff and frankly it’s quite scary sometimes as I’ve met many so called DoP’s and camera operators that have huge holes in their basic skills and knowledge that really shouldn’t be there.
Education and accreditation are what’s needed. I don’t just mean education through college and university courses, but real world, hands on education. Out in the field with more experienced camera operators. That’s hard to get these days as few productions have the budgets for camera assistants and even fewer have the time for mentoring and one to one teaching. You also tend to find that a production, depending on the budget will use either more expensive, skilled and experienced operators or low cost self shooting AP’s and the two rarely come together on the same project at the same time. In addition we need certification or recognised accreditation. We need industry standard recognition of skills and experience, not just for those new to the industry but also for those of us that have long term practical experience. The IOV (Institute of Videographers) has the right idea. You can gain different levels of accreditation through assessment of your skills by a panel of IOV members. However this accreditation is not widely acknowledged outside of the IOV and is not always relevant to some areas of broadcast television.
A further issue we have here in the UK is that we don’t like paying for training. In the USA and Asia for example that attitude is quite different. I know many Asian freelancers that consider it normal to spend significant sums of money to attend week long, peer led, practical workshops. Why? Because at the end of the workshop they know they will have new or improved skills and they will have a certificate to back that up. That certificate will help them get more work or better paid work. Because the workshop is run by working industry experts, not just college lecturers, the knowledge gained goes beyond just the “how to” but also includes the “why’s” and “when’s” and practical how to run a business experience that is often lacking in traditional schooling. Because many here in the UK either can’t afford to pay for training or simply think it’s not worth the investment they will turn to the internet for help. That’s a whole can of worms in itself because absolutely anybody can set up a web site and write anything they want. While there is a lot of very good information on the internet, there is also a lot of incorrect information and if you don’t know any better how do you know whether what your reading is right or wrong?
This isn’t something that can be fixed overnight. Our attitude to training and education needs to change, especially as the rate of technology change continues to increase. There are new concepts to grasp almost every day these days. Great cameras do not, on their own make great pictures. It also takes a skilled operator. We need a formal way of recognising different ability levels to make it easier for production companies to find the right people for the job. I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years, but I’m still learning and many of the most useful things I’ve learnt have been from those more experienced than me. So we need more peer based training and it needs to be accessible to freelancers, not just those with staff jobs. We also need to think of education as an investment. People are prepared to invest £1000’s in a camera that may have a working life of just a couple of years, but are much more reluctant to invest a few hundred in a workshop that might give them skills and knowledge that might last a lifetime.
Finally, what is a DoP anyway? It used to mean Director of Photography. The person that directed the camera operator, chose the lenses and film stock. The DoP did not normally operate the camera. The DoP would normally be the most experienced person in the camera department, typically with many years of experience as an assistant then camera operator. Today it appears to mean anyone that can operate a camera and make a YouTube video.
Official European List Pricing for the F5/F55 released, very attractive!
So here’s the offical list pricing for the F5 and F55. Looks very attractive indeed. Some dealers are already listing the F5 body for just a little under £10.5K GBP + VAT and the F55 for around £18K + VAT.The 512gb AXS Access card at €1.5k Euro’s is not as expensive as I thought it might be. Still a pretty big investment though if you ned 3 or 4 of them. The Olivine batteries are really rather expensive. You can get similar capacity V-Lock batteries from other manufacturers for quite a lot less. OK you can’t charge them super fast but do you really need ultra fast charging?
PMW-F5 €15.340 Euro
PMW-F55 €27.804 Euro
AXS-R5 S35mm F-series External RAW Recorder €5.206 Euro
AXS-CR1 Access Card Reader €549 Euro
AXS-512S24 Access Card 512GB for AXS-R5 External Recorder €1.535 Euro
SCL-PK6/F CineAlta PL Lens Pack (6 lenses) €19.895 Euro
SCL-PK3/F CineAlta PL Lens Pack (3 lenses) €11.118 Euro
DVF-L700 7″ LCD Viewfinder for F-series €4.113 Euro
DVF-L350 3.5″ LCD Viewfinder for F-series €2.925 Euro
DVF-EL100 0.7″ OLED Viewfinder for F-series €4.113 Euro
BP-FL75 Olivine Battery for F-series €470 Euro
BP-L90 Olivine Battery Charger for F-series €766 Euro
Why it’s almost impossible to have true Par-Focal zooms on the cheaper 35mm camcorders.
So, first of all what is Par-Focal? Well it’s the ability of a zoom lens to maintain the same focus point throughout the zoom range. In other words as you zoom in and out there is no focus shift. Most DSLR zoom lenses are not Par-Focal, they don’t need to be, as when taking stills photos you would zoom to get your desired framing, then set the focus. Some are closer to par-focal than others, some are pretty good, others are way off.
If you have ever used a full size shoulder mount broadcast camera with a removable zoom lens you’ll know that the lenses used have an adjuster on the rear of the lens to set the back-focus. This adjustment is there to take into account tiny variations in the lens mount, the optical filters behind the lens, wear and tear and temperature extremes. If you don’t adjust this correctly the zoom lens will not be Par-focal. DSLR lenses and most PL Mount zoom lenses don’t have this adjustment. Without a means to adjust the back focus it is the luck of the draw as to how par-focal your lens will be. On the Sony PMW-F3 you can adjust the back focus by adjusting the sensor to lens mount distance with an adjuster screw. However the way the ND filters work, with one stacked above the other will shift the optimum back focus distance depending on which ND filter you use. Most higher end 35mm video and film cameras have mounts that can be fitted with shims to adjust the flange back. In addition the better quality PL mount lenses are designed to be fitted with shims so that all the lenses in a set are corrected for the 52.00mm flange back distance for PL mount.
So, seeing as all the cheaper 35mm and APS-C video cameras have no facility to adjust or shim the distance between the lens mount and the sensor you are relying on the precision of the the camera manufacturer. In addition you are also relying on the precision of the lens manufacturer and the manufacturer of any mount adapters you might be using. Overall, even if the lens you have is truly par-focal the chances of everything being absolutely perfect are small, so the chances of your focus tracking perfectly accurately is also small. As a result, in most cases when using zoom lenses on a lower cost large sensor camcorder your focus will not track perfectly throughout the zoom range.
PMW-200 Firmware V1.1 Update. Helps Fix Back Focus Issues.
Sony have just released a firmware update for the PMW-200. Click Here for a download link.
One of the key features of this update is the ability to automatically adjust the cameras back focus. This will be great news for the few users out there that are reporting slight focus shifts when zooming. The design of the Fujinon lens used on the EX1, EX1R, EX3 and new PMW-200 means that if the camera is bumped around, say in transit somewhere or during delivery shipment the back focus can get misaligned. The auto flange back adjustment operates by placing the camera at least 3m (10ft) from a wall with patterned wall paper or a flat brick wall (something with a texture or pattern the camera can focus on easily) or a Siemens Star chart. The camera must be square on to the target. Then execute the FB Adjust option in the menu to run the calibration routine.
The next new feature is the ability to add the CBK-WA01 WiFi adapter to the camera for remote operation from an iPhone, iPad or Android device (although I have not seen the matching app for this yet). Finally there is now the ability to save the camera setup to a USB memory stick.
Strokkur: An Icelandic Geyser in Super Slow Motion.
Here’s a little compilation of some clips from my recent trip to Iceland. All shot with the Sony FS700 using the 18-200mm kit lens. The slow motion clips were all done at 240fps. I’ve done a small amount of grading, but nothing major, primarily a bit of a colour boost to bring out the greens and blues in the water.