Sony have just released an update to Content Browser. The new version (2.1) now has a 30 day trial period before a licence key is required. From version 2.0 Content Browser has included support for XAVC as well as XDCAM and NXCAM, so just one unified content management tool is required for the majority of the Sony professional camera range.
Well I’ve just got back from what was meant to be a one week trip to Broadcast Asia, that turned into a 2 week trip that included a visit to the Movie Production for Digital Migration event in Manila. This was an inspiring event, led by a group of like minded individuals keen to see the Filipino movie industry take a giant leap forwards by embracing the latest digital production methods combined with digital distribution and presentation. I think that for smaller economies with limited budgets, digital movie production could be a real enabler. But, with so few people with real world experience and technical skills in these areas, education will be crucial to making it work. I wish them luck and hope to get back soon to see how they are getting on.
One surprise in my inbox was a rumour that Sony are about to launch a new smart phone that has a built in 20MP camera that can shoot 4K video! At first I though this had to be a joke, how would you store the files? But then I discovered the phone can take what I assume must be Micro SD cards up to 64GB. I’m not convinced that this is really a practical use of 4K, but an interesting development none the less. Below is the rumoured specification:
Sony Xperia “One”
Specification :
*SCREEN = 5″ Triluminous LCD Display (Used in 2013 Bravia TVs with quantum dots over regular RGB) with X-Reality filter & White Magic technology (Use of white pixel with regular RGB) : Overall better saturation , contrast & viewing angles !
*CAMERA = Camera 20 megapixel 1/1, 5 inch Exmor R (Same as Sony REX II), 4K Video Recording , Bionz Image Processor Mobile , Integrated Lens G lens , F2.0 aperture , SteadyShot Image Stabilization , ISO 50-12800 , Cybershot UI with Multiple features.
*SOUND = Separate audio processor chip , such as Walkman S-Master MX , 5.1 Support , Stereo speakers magnet technology Bravia liquid (Still in rumour stage , to be confirmed).
*BUILD = Waterproof , Dustproof with IP58 certification , 9mm thickness , uses Aluminium , Glass & Iron frame!
SOFTWARE = All new interface , new set of features , updated Sony Media apps & new Augmented reality.
Cinematography workshop at Broadcast Asia.
The workshops I ran at Broadcast Asia went down very well with all of them ending up as standing room only. There was a lot of interest in Sony’s new PMW-300 camcorder and the FS700 was seen working with the R5 raw recorder and Convergent Design Odyssey. The FS700 raw is almost indistinguishable from the PMW-F55’s raw. There was lots of discussion with various people about running some large scale digital film making and documentary production workshops in Asia later in the year, possibly centred around Singapore.
Cinematography workshop BC Asia.
If you are in Asia and you would like to attend a workshop do let me know. If there is enough demand and I can show that demand, then I can look for sponsors to bring the workshops to your country.
Some people are struggling with lens options for the Sony half inch interchangeable lens cameras. Many try to use 2/3″ lenses via the ACM-21 with disappointing results. Lenses are designed to meet certain criterion. The lenses for the PMW-EX3 and PMW-320 actually perform very well, yet these are inexpensive lenses, so why when you use a much more expensive 2/3″ ENG zoom lens can the results be disappointing?
There is a very big difference between the way most typical ENG lens focus and the way an EX1/3, PMW-320 or PMW-200 lens focusses. An ENG lens will be a Par Focal lens, a lens that maintains constant focus throughout the zoom range. This is incredibly difficult to design especially with large zoom ranges and is one of the reasons ENG zooms are normally expensive pieces of glass.
The lenses used on the EX1/EX3, PMW-320 are not Par Focal, this makes them much cheaper, the focus shifts and changes as you zoom….. But clever electronics inside the camera and lens compensates for this by adjusting the lenses focus as you zoom so that in practice the lens appears to stay in perfect focus. An electronically compensated lens like this is lower cost to produce than a sophisticated typical ENG type zoom and makes the lens compact and lightweight as well as much cheaper.
Another factor is that as you increase the resolution of a lens, trying to bring everything in to focus on an ever smaller point, you run in to more and more problems with chromatic aberrations. Different wavelengths (and thus colours) of light get bent by different amounts when they pass through a glass lens. As you make the focussed light for one single colour smaller and sharper, the other colours of the spectrum become more dispersed. As a result, generally a softer lens, for example an SD lens (lower MTF) will exhibit fewer colour aberrations than a sharper HD lens. To compensate for these aberrations lens manufactures use very exotic types of glass with different refraction indexes to try to cancel out or at least minimise CA (chromatic aberration), but this glass is extremely expensive. The higher the resolution of the lens, the more expensive the glass gets.
With a camera like the EX1/EX3, PMW-320, PMW-200 when you know the exact characteristics of the lens (as they all use essentially the same lens) instead of employing exotic glass, you can program the camera to electronically remove or reduce the appearance of the CA and this happens inside the EX1/EX3, 320 and PMW-200 etc.
Next you must take in to account pixel size. In simple terms to work with the resolution of the cameras sensor, the lens has to be able to focus a point of light small enough to hit only one pixel. A typical 2/3″ HD camera has much bigger pixels that the pixels on the 1/2″ sensor of the PMW-320. As a result a lens that is only just able to achieve HD resolution on a 2/3″ camera, will not achieve HD resolution on the PMW-320 with it’s smaller pixels, it’s simply not designed to work with such small pixels. This means that you really need an HD lens designed for the 1/2″ sensor size and the corresponding pixel size.
These factors combined mean that the standard kit lens on the EX3, PMW-320 etc appears to perform very well and it takes a much more expensive, designed for 1/2″ lens to even match this apparent performance in most cases. Perhaps the new 16x lens coming for the PMW-300 will be available to purchase on it’s own. This would offer EX3 and PMW-320 owners the option of a high performing lens with a greater zoom range, probably for less than a similar performance conventional lens.
As things quieten down after the very busy Broadcast Asia show in Singapore and while I kill some time before flying to Manilla tomorrow, I decided to look at some raw clips I shot with the Sony FS700 and R5 recorder. On the Sony booth there was a PMW-F55 with a 50mm f2 Sony PL lens next to an FS700 with the 18-200mm Sony servo zoom and this was attached to the IFR5/AXS-R5 combination for raw recording. This gave me the opportunity to grab some almost side by side raw comparison footage from both cameras. Now this is hardly a fair contest. The F55 had one of Sony’s great PL mount lenses and the FS700 had the low cost zoom. The cameras were at least shooting the same scene, a reasonably contrasty set with about a few shiny highlights and with strong colours. Despite the vastly different lenses the results were quite surprisingly close.
NEX-FS700 4K raw converted to SLog2 in Premiere CC frame grab.
I didn’t really expect to see much of a difference, after all these are both cameras shooting raw with very similar sensors (the FS700 quite possibly uses the same sensor as the PMW-F5). The F55 sensor has a wider colour gamut and the raw output is 16bit while the FS700 is 12bit. So how does this translate into real world footage? Although I have included a couple of frame grabs from the raw footage converted to SLog2, DO NOT USE THESE TO LOOK CLOSELY AT THE IMAGE QUALITY. They are 8 bit jpeg frame grabs, so they do not have the amazing flexibility or grade-ability of the original 12bit and 16bit raw files.
PMW-F55 raw converted to SLog2 in Premiere CC. Frame Grab.
To compare the clips I used Sony’s raw viewer software as well as Adobe Premiere CC with the Sony raw plug-in (see bottom of post for links to the apps). I tried to use Resolve, but it won’t open the FS700 raw clips at this time, full FS700 raw support will be included in Resolve 10. I have uploaded a couple of very short raw segments from the clips for download from here: www.alisterchapman.com/samples/fs700-f55-raw-samples.zip As always I ask that if you do download the files (380MB) and find them useful that you make a small donation to help cover my hosting costs. I suggest a $5 donation per download, but any donation, no matter how small is gratefully appreciated.
So what do I see? Frankly there really is very little difference between the two. The 18-200mm zoom exhibits a bit more flare on highlights, but otherwise does a pretty good job. One thing that did surprise me was to see the native ISO of the FS700 marked as 500ISO in the raw viewer. I don’t know whether this is normal or whether I had the camera set in some odd mode, but I had expected to see a higher native ISO. I need to learn more about the FS700’s raw mode and do some further tests! You can see the wider colour gamut of the F55. The colours are not just richer but also deeper. By that I mean that there is greater colour contrast between some of the very deep and strong reds in the scene. In addition the F55 material can be manipulated just a little harder before the image degrades, but this is still only a small difference and you really can push both very hard. Perhaps a scene with a greater dynamic range and the exposure pushed more towards it’s limits would show a greater difference, but for this scene the differences are small. The 12 bit raw shadows are grainier and noisier than the 16bit and this may be down to the lack of data in 12 bit raw. Looking at the highlights and reflections on the wooden chair I suspect the dynamic range of both cameras is about the same.
The FS700 in raw mode clearly punches above it’s price point and it begs the question: Why by an F5 or F55 when the FS700 is almost as good? Well, not everyone is going to shoot raw all of the time. The F5 and F55 have the ability to shoot 10 bit compressed internally using XAVC or SStP (The HDCAM SR codec – coming soon in a free update). You can also shoot 8 bit XDCAM with the F5 and F55 to create a proxy file to the raw for editing, although admittedly you can shoot using AVCHD at the same time as raw with the FS700. The F5 and F55 are far better ergonomically and have a multitude of outputs for monitoring. Adding the IFR5 and R5 recorder to the FS700 does create a somewhat clumsy camcorder with either the recorder mounted on rails behind the camera or kept separate and used as a portable recorder. The F5/F55 with R5 docked to the camera is a beautifully elegant design. Don’t forget as well that the F55 also has Frame Image Scan which completely eliminates rolling shutter artefacts. But these features and ergonomics will deprive you of more of your hard earned cash. In pure “bang for you buck” terms the FS700 and IFR5/R5 is a very powerful combination.
I have an FS700 and I’m trying to decide whether to get the IFR5 so I can use it with my R5. I don’t think I’m going to bother, instead I’ll wait for the Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q. 2K raw at 240fps will be very nice to have and 4K compressed will also be useful as an alternative to the F5 and 4K raw. The Odyssey 7Q is a much neater solution with the FS700 and works out cheaper than the IFR5/R5. As well as being a raw recorder it is also a first class OLED monitor, so has many uses beyond the FS700 adding to it’s value.
It’s a great time to be a cinematographer on a budget. If you want 4K raw, only the IFR5/R5 can record this with the FS700 (it’s a shame that Convergent Design are not allowed to record 4K raw on the Odyssey, it could do if Sony would let them). The image quality from the FS700/R5 is incredible and there is no reason why you could not shoot a Hollywood blockbuster with it. I do much prefer the ergonomics and recording flexibility of the F5/R5 but it is quite a bit more expensive, the FS700 is a fantastic camera that just became a whole bunch better.
Sony recently released a set of 4 cube LUT’s (Look Up Tables) for use with SLog2. You can download those LUT’s here: DaVinciResolveCubeFiles. In addition there are many other LUT’s that you can use with SLog2 to help create different looks. Most LUT’s designed for SLog and Arri LogC also work reasonably well with S-Log2. In this article I’m going to look at how you can use these both on set and in DaVinci Resolve. Currently on set you cannot upload LUT’s to the F55/F5 or FS700, so if you want to use the LUT’s to alter your monitor output you need to use some additional hardware. One of the most affordable solutions is the Black Magic Design HDLink Pro. This $500 box has HDSDI inputs and outputs as well as other output options including DisplayPort to which you can connect either a DVI or HDMI monitor with the appropriate adapter.
By placing the HDLink between the cameras HDSDI out and your monitor you can apply a LUT by connecting a computer to the HDLink via USB and using the HDLink software utility to import the LUT to the Black Magic box. If you don’t have a LUT you can use the HDLink software to adjust many parameters of the picture to create your desired look live on set. There is one limitation however, without a LUT, you cannot adjust the overall saturation of the image, so when shooting with SLog2 and SGamut the pictures will not have the full saturation (colour) of your final graded output. To compensate for this you can always turn up the saturation on the monitor, just remember to restore the saturation control back to normal before you put the monitor away at the end of the shoot! When using a 3D LUT like the cube LUT’s linked above you do get a full correction including saturation. The computer (which can of course be a laptop) does not need to remain connected to the HDLink. Once you have uploaded the LUT to the box and are happy with your look you can disconnect the computer. The HDLink will remember the LUT and setting. Whenever you use it, it’s always a good idea to plug a computer back in from time to time to check how it is set especially if your making exposure adjustments using the LUT’d output.
If the plan is to use the same LUT both on set and in the grade then you must set up the camera to output correctly. Most LUT’s are designed for use with Log recording, so this means that in the majority of cases the camera will need to be set to output SLog2 (Slog with the PMW-F3). If you are shooting raw using the Sony AXS-R5 recorder then you can take the AUX out from the R5 and use that to feed the HDLink box. This output is a real-time de-bayer of the raw recording with SLog2 applied. By using this output you can still use the F5 and F55’s built in LUT’s if you needed as the built in LUT’s are not applied to the R5’s AUX output. If you do use EI Gain then this will have an impact on your LUT as the recordings (and AUX output) will most likely be exposed brighter, but the result should be similar for both the on-set view via the HDLink and in post production. For FS700 users shooting raw with the R5 the additional AUX output is the only way to feed HDSDI to the HDLink as the cameras HDSDI is used to feed the raw data to the R5.
After the shoot, to use the LUT in DaVinci Resolve, first you must place the LUT or LUT’s, in the correct library folder before opening Resolve. The LUT’s must be saved in the .CUBE format to the Cinespace folder or a new sub directory in:
Mac:
System Drive/Library/Application Support/Black Magic Design/DaVinci Resolve/LUT/
On a PC the folder may be hidden, if so go to windows explorer and select “organize” then “view” and click “show hidden folders”.
Once you have installed your LUT’s you can then open Resolve and import your SLog2 footage. If you are shooting raw with the AXS-R5 then you need to open the project settings and ensure that the raw files are being correctly displayed using SLog2 and SGamut. I do this by going to the “camera raw” page and set “Decode Using” to “Project” and then change the Gamut to “SGamut” and gamma to “SLog2”. This ensures all Sony raw clips will be treated as SLog2 even if you did use an internal camera LUT.
Next select the clip or clips that you wish to apply the LUT to and right click on the clip and select “3D LUT” and go to the “Cinespace” folder or the folder you created. There you should see your LUT’s listed. Simply choose the LUT you wish to use. You may need to add some gain or lift adjustment to tweak your images, but they should look as they did via the HDLink box.
You can also use Resolve to create a .cube LUT for use on set. Simply shoot some test Slog2 clips and grade them as you wish the final image to look. Then once your happy with your look, right click on the clip and “Export LUT”. Resolve will then create a .cube LUT that you can use with the HDLink.
Although this is really aimed at those shooting using log, this process will work with almost any camera and any gamma curve. The key thing to remember is to always use the same camera settings with LUT’s tailored to those particular settings. So for example you could use this with a PMW-200 using a Hypergamma or a Canon C300 using C-log or a DSLR. Provided the LUT was created to work with the way the camera is set up, it should work correctly. Just don’t expect a LUT designed for Log to work with a non Log camera.
Here are some better quality images of the PMW-300, including it’s base where there are 2x 1/4″ mounting threads plus the lever for adjusting the shoulder brace.
The right side of the PMW-300. Dual SDI outputs provide connectivity for both a monitor and a second device such as the Sony streaming and proxy recorder.The clean and uncluttered right side of the camera, not all that dissimilar to the PMW-200 but with the addition of a dial for S&Q motion.
The rear connections include full size HDMI, USB for connection to the WiFi or streaming dongle, firewire, USB for file upload, and bottom left is DC in, hooray DC in is not inside the battery compartment.
Here you can see the thumbscrew that attaches the viewfinder mounting bracket to the camera body. There is some side to side adjustment at this point. The viewfinder also slides off the end of the fore-aft adjustment rail by pulling out a small pin.
PMW-300 sit’s on your shoulder nicely. Big improvement over EX3 design.There is a huge range of forwards – backwards – up – down and side to side adjustment for the viewfinder. The EVF uses the same screen as the PMW-F5 and PMW-200 which is 1/4 HD resolution (960 x 540).There are 3 switches on the side of the viewfinder of the PMW-300. Don’t know what they are for! The viewfinder rotates on an arm which in turn slides forwards and backwards by about 3 inches.There is a single 1/4″ thread on the top of the extending PMW-300 shoulder pad for the addition of accessories. A bit of weight back here will help with the cameras balance. I’m informed that this is not the final design of the shoulder pad.The base of the PMW-300 showing the almost completely flat base with 2x 1/4″ threads and the lever that releases the pull out shoulder pad.
Adobe released Premiere CC today. This includes Media Encoder CC and both packages have support for Sony’s XAVC codec. It’s a major update so can be installed alongside Premiere 6 to allow for easy migration from one to the other.
Here are some pictures of the new PMW-300 taken at Broadcast Asia. I should be able to get some higher quality images after the show, when it’s no longer in the box. Good news is that the viewfinder is detachable. There are 2 HDSDI outs plus HDMI and dual RCA audio.
The rear connectors include 2 x HDSDI. (one will be needed for the wifi link box).The viewfinder bracket can be removed from the camera and has lots of adjustment.
The top of the handle.
Rear connectors and extended shoulder pad. The camera will actually sit on your shoulder, but front heavy.
PMW-300 Right Side.The viewfinder connector appears to be the same as the F5 / F55PMW-300 Right Side.
Ever since the launch of the PMW-200 people have been asking about whether the EX3 would also be replaced. With the EX3 being such a popular camera it wasn’t really a case of “if” but more of a case of “when”.
So here it is, the PMW-300. Like the PMW-200 this is an evolution of the EX1R/EX3 cameras with many similarities but with that all important 50Mb/s 422 broadcast XDCAM codec. Like the EX3 it has 1/2″ sensors and it uses the same EX3 type lens mount, so can use the same lenses as the EX3. As well as the 14x 1/2″ zoom there is also now a new 16x zoom. In addition via adapters you can use both 1/2″ hot-shoe lenses and 2/3″ B4 lenses (1.4x magnification). You can also use an adapter to use Nikon DSLR lenses (5x magnification) for long focal length shots, so it’s sure to be popular with wildlife and natural history shooters. This is almost certainly the smallest self contained broadcast quality camcorder that can take interchangeable lenses.
The shape and design of the camera is different to the upward curving EX3. The body is a very functional rectangular shape that sits up against your shoulder like the EX3. It incorporates extending flip down shoulder/chest pad for added stability. The viewfinder design is new, it has a higher resolution panel than the one in the original EX3 and is closer in design to the PMW-350 or PMW-F5 LCD viewfinder. It’s mounted to the body with a rotating arm, that allows about 4″ of forward, backward and height adjustment so adapting the camera for use with a full shoulder mount should be quite straightforward.
As this camera uses essentially the same sensors as the EX3, sensitivity and dynamic range will be little different. But a new noise reduction system that Sony are calling 3DNR which should offer lower noise especially in low light situations.
At launch the camera will have the Sony XDCAM codec built in, offering 50Mb/s 422, 35Mb/s 420 as well as both IMX and DVCAM in standard definition. So a great range of codec choices out of the box. Next year you’ll be able to add the new XAVC codec as an option. This will be the Long GoP version of the codec announced at NAB and also coming as an option to the PMW-400. Throw in features like Genlock, RCP remote control and not only is this a great camera for use in the field but it also becomes an interesting option for small or low cost studio applications.
For hooking up to external devices you have the usual HDSDI and HDMI outputs as well as Firewire/ILink for the HDV and DVCAM modes.
I’m quite sure this camera will be as successful as the EX3, maybe more so thanks to the out-of-the-box broadcast codec and ability to add the 10 bit XAVC codec next year. I hope to get hold of one very soon for a full review, as soon as I do I’ll let you know more about it.
So here it is… a short compilation of clips shot across 10 days in the US this May. To get these shots I drove over 3,500 miles criss crossing the states of Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and South Dakota. It was a trip that started and ended with some tragic events and left me quite unsure of my own emotions and thoughts with regard to storm chasing, something that has been a very big part of my career, business and life for nearly 15 years.
The aim of the trip was to start building up a library of 4K stock footage to supplement the extensive (200+ hours) of high quality HD storm and natural extremes footage that I already hold and sell worldwide, almost all of which was shot using Sony XDCAM camcorders of one type or another. To help share the costs I opened up the trip as a week long workshop and I was to be joined by Les from Scotland and Michael from Australia. A few days before my scheduled departure from the UK to Oklahoma I was looking at the long range weather forecasting models (a vital part of storm chasing) when I noticed that a highly dangerous weather pattern look set to hit Oklahoma the following day. A quick call to the airline and some frantic bag packing saw me heading out in a rush on the first available flight to Oklahoma City on May 19th.
My shooting kit included my PMW-F5 with R5 raw recorder, a selection of DSLR lenses (Canon mount), a Miller Solo tripod, media, batteries, chargers, and a whole bunch of storm chasing electronics and computers. When your packing in a hurry like this a check list can be a life saver. Forgetting something as simple as a cable when you won’t have time to find a replacement can ruin a shoot. 24 hours later, me and my 75Kg of gear were in Oklahoma City.
Rainbow under a severe thunderstorm.
The morning of May 20th was like many spring mornings in Oklahoma. Warm, humid and a little overcast. The local TV stations were all warning of the possibility of severe storms, but this isn’t uncommon in tornado alley in the spring. I spent a couple of hours fitting all my storm chasing gadgets to the car and analysing weather data, trying to figure out where the best chances of seeing a storm or tornado would be. I didn’t need to go far. By lunchtime I was near Lawton in Oklahoma and soon after the first storms of the day started to get going. I followed a storm south of Oklahoma City that produced a brief tornado. I couldn’t find a safe place to stop and shoot it so I didn’t get any footage, frustrating! Meanwhile on the mobile weather radar in the car I could see another very strong storm approaching Oklahoma City. At 2.56pm this storm produced a large, violent tornado that struck the Oklahoma suburb of Moore. Listening to this unfold just a few miles away on local radio stations and watching it on my mobile radar was quite shocking. The storm had developed very quickly, very early in the day (storms don’t typically get going until early evening) and it was obvious it was going to be a killer. I didn’t chase it, it was in a busy city and congested roads and panicking people would make it a dangerous place to be.
That evening in my hotel the full story of the Moore tornado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Moore_tornado) was on every TV channel, sadly 23 people were killed, over 12,000 homes were destroyed, 30,000 people displaced. While I love seeing the power and beauty of mother nature, it deeply saddens me when things like this happens, but happen they will whether I am there or not. Little did I know that terrible things would come even closer to home later in the week.
The next day and more storms were forecast, this time in Texas, so on with the storm chasing. I was shooting with my PMW-F5 with the R5 raw recorder docked on the back. The more I use this camera the more I like it. One of the big issues with storm chasing is the speed at which things change. So I needed an all round lens that could shoot wide panoramas one moment but then also get in tight for action shots. In addition I needed to be light and very portable. This meant using a DSLR super zoom. I was going to use a Sigma 18-250 but that went faulty just before I was due to leave home, so I used a Tamron 18-270mm lens (the Tamron focusses back to front which is why I prefer the Sigma). This is an image stabilised lens, very useful when shooting in high winds! To get the stabilisation to work you have to use a powered mount with electronic control. This means a Canon mount as no one makes an active Nikon mount. I used one of my prototype servo zoom handgrips with Canon iris and remote focus control. Other mount options would include the MTF Effect or Optitek Canon mount. I shot at 23.976p in 4K raw and XDCAM HD, this would give me a little over an hour of 4K on a single AXS card. Why XDCAM and not XAVC for the secondary (proxy) recordings? Well simply because I can edit the XDCAM material with any application, XAVC isn’t at the time of writing supported in Premiere and that’s what I currently edit with (it’s coming in Premiere CC due very, very soon). In addition a 32GB SxS card holds 60 mins of footage just like the 512GB AXS card and 24p raw, so I have the same clips on pairs of cards rather than all over the place.
The 3rd day was when I was joined by Les and Michael, it was also a chase day so an early start as we headed out to the Texas Pan Handle. The storms that formed that afternoon produced some very strong winds, hail the size of baseballs and dust. Tons and tons of dust from the parched Texas farmland was getting sucked into the storms and then blown back out again creating zero visibility sand storms. By the end of the day everything was covered in sandy, gritty dust. The cameras, the car and us. The F5 being solid state just carried on working despite the dust, but did require a good clean with a soft brush at the end of the day. If you have a dust covered camera don’t use canned air or compressed air to blow the dust off. The compressed air can blast dust in to the cameras interior and do a lot more damage than good. A soft paint brush will quickly remove dust from the cameras exterior. If you have dust on the optical port a gentle puff with a hand held puffer can be used to blow the dust off before you wipe it with a clean high quality lens cloth. Also keep your lens cloth in a sealed bag like a ziplock bag. Cleaning a lens or other optics with a dusty or gritty lens cloth is not a clever thing to do.
Storm Chasing in the USA with the PMW-F5
As the week progressed we were to see some incredible storms. One one night we witnessed one of the most impressive lightning shows that I have ever seen. A spinning Supercell thunderstorm was throwing out bolts of lightning every few seconds and we had a grandstand view. While the Sony F55 uses Frame Image Scanning to eliminate rolling shutter artefacts the F5 like most CMOS cameras does not, so it suffers from a degree of rolling shutter. A trick I learnt some time ago when shooting lightning, strobe lighting or flash photography with a CMOS camera is to use the slowest shutter speed possible. So this means turning the shutter off and using straight 23.976p for lightning during the day. At night I use a 2 frame slow shutter. Shoot like this and 90-95% of the lightning I shoot is not affected by rolling shutter effects. Sadly my budget wouldn’t stretch to the F55, I could only afford the F5. For my lightning shoot in Arizona later in the year I’ll probably hire an F55.
As the end of my planned storm chasing shoot drew near, while I had shot some amazing storm footage I had not yet captured a big tornado in 4K. With a lot of money invested in the shoot I was starting to feel a little disappointed. But the weather gods decided to play ball. My morning weather forecast had suggested Salina in Kansas as a good place to target for the day, so off to Salina we went. As we approached the town the first storms of the day started to fire. After briefly chasing one short lived storm we were soon parked up right in front of a second, almost stationary Supercell thunderstorm. You didn’t need to be a weather expert to see that this storm meant business. The clouds above us were swirling and turning. Just a short distance ahead a wall cloud had formed, this angry, looking low cloud was spinning rapidly and soon a small tornado formed. Trying to accurately expose when your in a hurry, fighting strong winds and have only moments to get the shot can be difficult at the best of times. I was shooting raw, so I was able to take advantage of the F5’s built in look-up tables and Cine EI gain. By dropping the EI gain to 800 EI (use 640 EI on the F55) and with just the smallest hint of zebra 2 (100%) starting to show on my brightest highlights I know that my exposure is good and bright but not quite clipping. This gives me nice low noise levels after grading and is an easy way to shoot.
Quick frame grab from the F5.
The tornado didn’t last long, but then just a few minutes later a second tornado formed. This was a big one, a powerful one. In the viewfinder I could see it getting bigger and bigger, yet it wasn’t moving left or right. This isn’t normally a good sign, normally you only have a few moments to get a quick shot of the tornado before it’s time to run away, but this tornado barely moved at all, it was just simply getting bigger and bigger. It’s slow movement allowed me to get some great shots, some wide, some close up. Now I was happy! Following storm chaser tradition we celebrated that night with a steak diner.
Me shooting the tornado with the PMW-F5 and AXS-R5
At the end of each day I made a backup of my footage. Using a the Sony ACS-CR1 card reader, a retina MacBook Pro and a 3.5″ 2TB desktop hard drive I had space to backup up the equivalent of 4 full AXS cards, a little over 4 hours of material. A full card taking about 30 minutes to transfer. Once the cards were transferred to the 3.5″ drive a secondary copy was made to a 2.5″ drive overnight. The 2.5″ drives are much slower, but it’s easier to hand carry them on flights. The SxS cards were backed up to a NextoDI, NVS-Air. These are great stand-alone devices for backing up SxS cards. You simply pop the card into the slot in the NVS-Air’s side and select the backup mode you want, fast or secure and off it goes, backing up your card. A 32GB SxS card can take as little as 6 minutes to backup. It’s simple, it’s fast and you can even plug in a second drive to make two simultaneous copies.
Even though the weather pattern for the next few days was great for storms I had to break off the chase to go to Los Angeles for the Cinegear trade show. As I left Oklahoma City early on the 31st of May I was aware that there was a significant risk of tornadoes in Oklahoma that day. Oh well I thought, I’ve done well, got some great footage, time to move on.
Friday the 31st of May is a day that storm chasers around the world will remember for a long time. A Supercell storm near the town of El-Reno in Oklahoma exploded in size and ferocity. It produced the largest tornado ever recorded, 2.6 miles wide, a tornado that was erratic and violent, rated at EF5, the strongest tornado strength rating. The storm caught many chasers out, many literally driving for their lives creating storm chaser traffic jams on narrow roads as they tried to escape the rapidly expanding storm. Some didn’t make it. Several cars were swept up by the tornado. Tragically 4 storm chasers were killed by the storm. 3 of them I knew, one was a friend. The 3 chasers I knew were researchers measuring the wind speeds around tornadoes in an attempt to better understand them. They were some of the most experienced storm chasers out there. I think every storm chaser knew that one day a chaser would get killed by a storm, but no one expected it to be theses guys, highly experienced, professional, researchers. Not hung-ho adrenalin junkies just there for the thrill of getting as close as possible. I have to admit that this was a bit of a wake up call. I’m not a big risk taker and I do like to keep a a little distance from the storms, I’ve always had the greatest of respect for their power, in the future I’ll be avoiding chasing in areas where large numbers of chasers can lead to traffic jams and blocked roads, most notably around Oklahoma City in May.
Once back at home it was time to review the footage shot and to put together a short demo clip. Using my off-the-shelf 15″ Retina MacBook pro I cut together a short sequence using Premiere Pro with Sony’s raw plugin. I edited directly off the single 3.5″ hard drive, no raid or anything else. Once I was happy with the edit I exported an AAF file from Premiere which I then took in to DaVinci Resolve. I used Resolve to grade and finish the footage rendering it out overnight. It did take about 3 hours to render the finished 4K project, but I used a little noise reduction on many of the clips and this takes a lot of processing. Lets face it a laptop isn’t the best way to work with 4K material, but it can be done. I’m currently putting together a workstation specifically for Resolve that will have dual graphics cards to really boost the render performance. I have to say that I am delighted with the quality of the material. The detail in the corn fields is incredible, the lightning bolts are detailed and crisp. There are no clipped highlights in any shot. Now all I need to do is to go back through the entire 4 hours of footage that I have, clip it down into stock footage sized chunks and write all the keywords and metadata for the stock footage libraries and my clients.
PS: On my last day in LA I had an interesting discussion with a production company about a 4K, 3D storm shoot. Maybe I’ll be back chasing storms in July with a pair of F5’s!
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