cameras, Everything Else, PXW-FX9, Shooting Tips

Hot Pixels and White Dots From My New Camcorder (FX9 and many others).

3 Comments

So you have just taken delivery of a brand new PXW-FX9. Turned it on and plugged it in to a 4K TV or monitor – and shock horror there are little bright dots in the image – hot pixels.

First of all, don’t be alarmed, this is not unusual, in fact I’d actually be surprised if there weren’t any, especially if the camera has travelled in any airfreight.

Video sensors have millions of pixels and they are prone to disturbance from cosmic rays. It’s not unusual for some to become out of spec. So all modern cameras incorporate various methods of recalibrating or re-mapping those pesky problem pixels. On the Sony professional cameras this is called APR. Owners of the Sony F5, F55, Venice and FX9 will see a “Perform APR” message every couple of weeks as this is a function that needs to be performed regularly to ensure you don’t get any problems.

You should always run the APR function after flying with the camera, especially on routes over the poles as cosmic rays are greater in these areas. Also if you intend to shoot at high gain levels it is worth performing an APR run before the shoot.

If your camera doesn’t have a dedicated APR function, typically found in the maintenance section of the the camera menu system, then often the black balance function will have a very similar effect. On some Sony cameras repeatedly performing a black balance will active the APR function.

If there are a lot of problem pixels then it can take several runs of the APR routine to sort them all out. But don’t worry, it is normal and it is expected. All cameras suffer from it. Even if you have 1000 dead pixels that’s still only a teeny tiny fraction of the 19 million pixels on the sensor.

APR just takes 30 seconds or so to complete. It’s also good practice to black balance at the beginning of each day to help minimise fixed pattern noise and set the cameras black level correctly. Just remember to ensure there is a cap on the lens or camera body to exclude all outside light when you do it!

SEE ALSO: https://www.xdcam-user.com/2011/02/are-cosmic-rays-damaging-my-camera-and-flash-memory/

PXW-FX9

connecting to The PXW-FX9 Using Content Browser Mobile For Monitoring and OtheR Functions.

6 Comments

One of the great features of the PXW-FX9 is the ability to connect a phone or tablet to the camera via WiFi so that you can view a near live feed from the camera (there’s about a 5 to 6 frame delay).

To do this you need to install the latest version of the free Sony Content Browser Mobile application on your phone. Then you would normally connect the phone to the cameras WiFi by placing the FX9 into Access Point Mode and use either NFC to establish the connection if your phone has it, or by manually connecting your phone’s WiFi to the camera.

However for many people this does not always provide a stable connection with frequent drop outs and disconnects. Fortunately there is a another way to connect the camera and phone and this seems much more stable.

First put the cameras WiFi into “Station Mode” instead of “Access Point” mode. Then setup your phone to act as a WiFi Hotspot. Now you can connect the camera to the phone by performing a network search on the camera. Once the camera finds the phones WiFi hotspot you connect the camera to the phone.

Once the connection from the camera to the phone has been established you should open Content Browser Mobile and it should find the FX9. If it doesn’t find it straight away swipe down with your finger to refresh the connection list. Then select the camera to connect to it.

Once connected this way you will have all the same options that you would have if connected the other way around (using Access Point mode). But the connection tends to be much, much more stable. In addition you can also now use the cameras ftp functions to upload files from the camera via your phones cellular data connection to remote servers.

If you want to create a bigger network then consider buying one of the many small battery powered WifI routers or a dedicated 4G MiFi hotspot and connect everything to that. Content Browser Mobile should be able to find any camera connected to the same network. Plus if you use a WiFi router you can connect several phones to the same camera.

cameras, cinematography, PMW-F55, PXW, PXW-FS5, PXW-FS7, PXW-FX9, Shooting Tips

Struggling With Blue LED Lighting? Try Turning On The adaptive Matrix.

14 Comments

It’s a common problem. You are shooting a performance or event where LED lighting has been used to create dramatic coloured lighting effects. The intense blue from many types of LED stage lights can easily overload the sensor and instead of looking like a nice lighting effect the blue light becomes an ugly splodge of intense blue that spoils the footage.

Well there is a tool hidden away in the paint settings of many recent Sony cameras that can help. It’s called “adaptive matrix”.

When adaptive matrix is enabled, when the camera sees intense blue light such as the light from a blue LED light, the matrix adapts to this and reduces the saturation of the blue colour channel in the problem areas of the image. This can greatly improve the way such lights and lighting look. But be aware that if trying to shoot objects with very bright blue colours, perhaps even a bright blue sky, if you have the adaptive matrix turned on it may desaturate them. Because of this the adaptive matrix is normally turned off by default.

If you want to turn it on, it’s normally found in the cameras paint and matrix settings and it’s simply a case of setting adaptive matrix to on. I recommend that when you don’t actually need it you turn it back off again.

Most of Sony’s broadcast quality cameras produced in the last 5 years have the adaptive matrix function, that includes the FS7, FX9, Z280, Z450, Z750 and many others.

Business, cameras, Everything Else, Technology

Why Can’t I Get Third Party BP-U Batteries any more?

23 Comments

In the last month or so it has become increasingly hard to find dealers or stores with 3rd party BP-U style batteries in stock.

After a lot of digging around and talking to dealers and battery manufacturers it became apparent that Sony were asking the manufacturers of BP-U style batteries to stop making and selling them or face legal action. The reason given being that the batteries impinge on Sony’s Intellectual Property rights.

Why Is This Happening Now?

It appears that the reason for this clamp down is because it was discovered that the design of some of these 3rd party batteries was such that the battery could be inserted into the camera in a way that instead of power flowing through the power pins to the camera, power was flowing through the data pins. This will burn out the circuit boards in the camera and the camera will no longer work.

Users of these damaged cameras, unaware that the problem was caused by the battery were sending them back to Sony for repair under warranty. I can imagine that many arguments would have then followed over who was to pay for these potentially very expensive repairs or camera replacements.

So it appears that to prevent further issues Sony is trying to stop potentially damaging batteries from being manufactured and sold.

This is good and bad. Of course no one wants to use a battery that could result in the need to replace a very expensive camera with a new one (and if you were not aware it was the battery you could also damage the replacement camera). But many of us, myself included, have been using 3rd party batteries so that we can have a D-Tap power connection on the battery to power other devices such as monitors.

Only Option – BP-U60T?

Sony don’t produce batteries with D-Tap outlets. They do make a battery with a hirose connector (BP-U60T), but that’s not what we really want and compared to the 3rd party batteries it’s very expensive and the capacity isn’t all that high.

Sony BP-U60T with 4 pin hirose DC out.

So where do we go from here?

If you are going to continue to use 3rd party batteries, do be very careful about how you insert them and be warned that there is the potential for serious trouble. I don’t know how widespread the problem is.

We can hope perhaps that maybe Sony will either start to produce batteries with a D-Tap of their own. Or perhaps they can work with a range of chosen 3rd party battery manufacturers to find a way to produce safe batteries with D-Tap outputs under licence.

PXW-FX9, Workflow

DaVinci Resolve 16.1.2 Released.

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Blackmagic Design have just released the latest update to DaVinci Resolve. If you have been experiencing crashes when using XAVC material from the PXW-FX9 I recommend you download and install this update.

If you are not a Resolve user and are struggling with grading or getting the very best from any log or raw camera, then I highly recommend you take a look at DaVinci Resolve. It’s also a very powerful edit package. The best bit is the free version supports most cameras. If you need full MXF support you will need to buy the studio version, but with a one off cost of only $299 USD it really is a bargain and gets you away from any horrid subscription services.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/family/davinci-resolve-and-fusion

PMW-F55, PXW, PXW-FS5, PXW-FS7, PXW-FX9, Workflow

Catalyst Browse and Prepare V2019.2 Released. Includes support for FX9 Image STABILISATION.

9 Comments

Sony have just released the latest version of their free viewing, copying  and transcoding software Catalyst Browse and the more fully featured paid software Catalyst Prepare. These new versions includes support for the PXW-FX9’s metadata based image stabilisation. Hopefully the new Mac versions are also optimised for Catalina.

You can download Browse from here: https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/de/download/catalystbrowse

And Prepare from here: https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/de/download/catalystprepare

cinematography, lenses, PXW-FX9

Guess The Lens! A little bit of fun and an interesting test.

3 Comments

Last week I was at O-Video in Bucharest preparing for a workshop the following day. They are a full service dealer. We had an FX9 for the workshop and they had some very nice lenses. So with their help I decided to do a very quick comparison of the lenses we had. I was actually very surprised by the results. At the end of the day I definitely had a favourite lens. But I’m not going to tell you which one yet.

The 5 lenses we tested were: Rokinon Xeen, Cooke Panchro 50mm, Leitz (lecia) Thalia, Zeiss Supreme Radiance and the Sony 28-135mm zoom that can be purchased as part of a kit with the FX9.

I included a strong backlight in the shot to see how the different lenses dealt with flare from off-axis lights. 2 of the lenses produced very pronounced flare, so for those lenses you will see two frame grabs. One with the flare and one with the back light flagged off.

I used S-Cinetone on the FX9 and set the aperture to f2.8 for all of the lenses except the Sony 28-135mm. For that lens I added 6dB of gain to normalise the exposure, you should be able to figure out which of the examples is the Sony zoom.

One of the lenses was an odd focal length compared to all the others. Some of you might be able to work out which one that is, but again I’m not going to tell you just yet.

Anyway, enjoy playing guess the lens. This isn’t intended to be an in depth test. But it’s interesting to compare lenses when you have access to them.  I’ll reveal which lens is which in a couple of weeks in the comments. You can click on each image to enlarge it.

Big thanks to everyone at O-Video Bucharest for making this happen.

Lens 1 with flare from backlight.
Lens 1 with backlight flagged to reduce the flare.
Lens 2
Lens 3
Lens 4
Lens 5 with flare from backlight
Lens 5 with backlight masked to kill the flare.
PXW-FX9, Workflow

Experimental s709 LUT Specifically for the FX9.

8 Comments

I’ve had a few people comment that they feel that the PXW-FX9 is a touch green when you shoot S-Log3 and SGamut3.cine and then add the standard Sony s709 V200 LUT in post. So I have created a slightly modified version of the s709 LUT that I have tweaked specifically for the FX9. You can download it using the like below. Do let me know what you think.

AC-s709-for-fx9_v1.2_experimental.cube

PXW-FX9

Pxw-fx9 Viewfinder Mounting

1 Comment

After playing with a number of FX9’s I have noticed that the way you arrange the viewfinder rods can alter whether the viewfinder sits level or may tilt just a tiny bit. Based on experimentation with several cameras I believe the orientation of the rods and clamps shown in the pictures here works best to ensure the VF stays level.

I believe this is the best orientation for the FX9s viewfinder support bars.
Another view of the FX9 support bars.
Arranging the FX9 support bars this way seems to minimize any VF tilt.
PXW-FX9

Broadcast safe and direct to air using S-CinEtone and the FX9

1 Comment

S-Cinetone is a combination of both a gamma curve and colour matrix. So you can mix different gammas with the S-Cinetone matrix to get the same colour palette but with different contrast and brightness ranges.

The FX9’s default gamma curve is labelled “original” in the camera’s paint settings. This gamma curve is the closest to the look that the s709 “Venice” LUT provides. One important thing to note about this gamma curve is that it records using full range, so it can exceed 100% and goes all the way up to 109%. This means that it may not be suitable for some broadcast applications where the footage will go direct to air without any grading or post production adjustment.

If you do need a broadcast safe output then you should consider using Hypergamma 1 with the S-Cinetone matrix. The look is very similar to the original matrix, but Hypergamma 1 never exceeds 100% so it is “broadcast safe”.