Adobe’s Creative Suite CS6 is available from today and Creative Cloud will go online on the 11th of May. I’m looking forward to trying out using Premiere CS6 for editing and then SpeedGrade for finishing. I think this will be a great combination as they offer support for all the common codecs as well as many of the more advanced codecs like OpenEXR, DPX, Alexa, Red etc. There will even be a plugin for F65RAW in August.
It looks like Adobe are taking full advantage by the void left between FCP 7 and FCP-X. While FCP-X is starting to look like it will mature into a true Pro application, some of us can’t wait for that to happen and CS6 looks to be very nice indeed.
The organisers of Seoul 3D Fair are offering a $500 rebate for overseas visitors on the Santa Fe workshops. The workshops will cover all aspects of 3D production, cinematography, stereographer, rig technician, RAW and post production. There is an amazing instructor line up and the classes are small so you’ll get plenty of one to one time with the instructors. Come and join us in Korea, amazing country, great food, great hospitality.
Great news. I have managed to create a set of .lut files from the standard MLUT’s included with the PMW-F3. These new files work with most LUT enabled software, like LUT Buddy, Colorista, Resolve etc. The standard Sony files don’t work so I had to create these which should be 100% matches with the F3’s included LUT’s. I have created both 8 bit and 10 bit LUT’s, so those experimenting with 8 bit S-Log files or using 8 bit edit software can try them out as well. You’ll find the files in the forum:
I get asked a lot about settings for shooting in low light with the EX1 and EX3. To be honest there is not much that will make a big difference that can be done, beyond adding in camera gain. There are a few tweaks you can make to the picture profiles that will help minimise noise levels and give a slightly brighter picture without resorting to overall gain and I’ll go through those here.
Gamma: By using a brighter or higher gain gamma curve you can get a slightly brighter image without an across the board gain increase. Do however consider though that gamma does add gain so a brighter gamma curve has more gain and thus more noise than a darker gamma curve. Where you light range is limited or controlled then I recommend using Standard Gamma 2 with the black gamma set to +40. Raising the black gamma helps lift shadow and dark areas of the image. For scenes with bright highlights then it’s useful to have some extra dynamic range and in this case I would choose cinegamma 4, again with the black gamma raised, this time to +50.
If you are happy with turning detail off altogether then this may be a wise choice as it will prevent any noise from being enhanced. If not in order to keep the appearance of noise to a minimum I would decrease the detail level to -10. As we are shooting in low light then I will assume there are a lot of dark areas in the image. To keep noise less visible in low contrast areas I would set the crisping to +50. This will slightly soften the image but help control noise.
There are two principle forms of noise, chroma noise and luma noise. There’s not much we can do about luma noise other than controlling detail enhancement as above, but if we reduce the image colour saturation we can reduce the chroma noise. Better still using the low key sat function we can just reduce the chroma (colour) level in low key parts of the shot. So for my low light profile I would set Low Key Sat to somewhere around -50.
So by changing the gamma we can increase the sensitivity a little, turning off the detail correction or using crispening we can ensure that the visibility of any noise is as minimised and the Low Key Sat function will keep the noise to a manageable level.
These setting won’t turn your EX1 or EX3 into a mega low light monster, but they will give a small boost to the low light performance before you have to resort to adding gain. Talking of gain, do make sure you read this to understand what gain is doing.
EX1/EX3 Picture Profile suggestions for low light:
Gamma Standard 2, Black Gamma +40 OR Cinegamma 4, Black Gamma +50
The "coffin" set used to simulate a collapsed building.
Since the beginning of March I have been working as 3D supervisor and sterographer for a 3D shoot for Nat Geo and Sky. Working with DoP David Barlow (renowned for his miniature and In-the-womb work) we were the effects unit for a big budget series of 4 programmes with the working title of “Storm City”. The programmes are hosted by Ben Fogle and explore some of Natures most extreme disasters including Hurricane, Tornadoes, Earthquakes and Tsunami’s. With a budget in the millions this is high end stuff. Our job was to provide material to illustrate many of the interviews with disaster victims, often reconstructions of the situations the people found themselves in. As most of this was to be shot in 3D slow motion, we were using a pair of Red Epics on a Hurricane Rig 3D rig owned by David. Our first reconstruction was of a collapsed building with people buried under the rubble, our “studio” was an industrial unit in Southampton. The set builders had constructed a small set filled with rubble and collapsed concrete. The surprise for me when I walked on to the set in the morning was just how small it was. The whole set was built in a box measuring about 10ft by 6ft and just 4ft tall, it became know as the “coffin”. The idea was that by using such a small set we could create the impression of the trapped people being in a very confined and claustrophobic space. The illusion worked very well and as the set was contained within a box type enclosure we could shoot into the coffin from 3 sides for a wide variety of shots. All the debris, concrete and rubble was made out of light weight materials, yet looked totally convincing.
The coffin and the 3D rig.
To help tell the story of the people trapped in the collapsed building we used a lot of slow motion with dripping water and falling dust to accentuate the sensation of time passing slowly. Shooting at 200fps we did encounter issues from strobing lights from time to time. This is one of the real slow mo nightmares as the strobing is rarely visible to the naked eye and it’s only when you play the clips back that you see the issue. Some of the problems were down to running the HMI’s off different mains phases, others were problems with the bulbs and the arc rotating around the electrode. In order to get enough light for the higher frame rates we often used a pair of 4K HMI’s with fill from 1.2K HMI’s.
The collapsed building scenes were finished off with shots of wires arcing and sparking. This was achieved through the use of small pyrotechnic charges that contained magnesium as this gives a brilliant white flash much like a spark.
DoP David Barlow checking focus for debris the tornado shoot
Our next scene was a reconstruction of a child getting sucked out of a bedroom window by a Tornado. For this we had a 3 wall bedroom set with a window. To simulate the effects of the tornado we had a wind machine made out of a hovercraft fan. This was then complimented by smaller fans to fill in any gaps and add extra circulation and turbulence to the wind storm. The last piece in the equation was an air canon to blast out the window with a shockwave of air and debris. This was one of the messiest shoots I have ever been involved in. We used fullers earth, leaves, twigs and insulation material to fill the air with blowing debris as well as a smoke machine and a hazer machine. This was the first time I’ve ever had to wear overalls on a set, but it was not going to be the last! Once that hovercraft fan got going it really was like being in a tornado. Anything not bolted down would fly around and the dirt and debris went everywhere. It was great fun, but after every take the 3D rig, lenses and cameras would need a strip down and clean. Sadly I have been asked not to show pictures of the sets until the show airs later in the year. I wish I could as it’s quite amazing to see how we recreated these scenes in what was a fairly small space.
Thundervoltz lightning machine.
As I always had a great view of what was being shot on my 3D monitors I also had the job of operating the lightning machine. This machine used a giant 70,000 watt strobe lamp to create massive flashes of light to simulate lightning. It made quite a loud zap every time I pressed the button, lots of fun but I had to be careful not to overdo it as if the flash duration was too short we could get flash band issues due to the use of CMOS sensors. Our next scene was of the tornado aftermath. We had to recreate a night time scene of total destruction, giving the impression of destroyed houses and scattered belongings. It’s amazing what a good art department can do when assisted by copious amounts of smoke and haze from the hazer along with some subtle lighting effects. Our next scene took us from tornado alley in the USA to the UK for a reconstruction of a tree falling through the roof of a house. I’ll tell you how we did that and recreated an earthquake in the next instalment. In the final instalment I’ll tell you about how we recreate falling electricity cables, and ice storm and bury a house in an avalanche!
This is something that I did with DoP Geoff Boyle and motion control expert Justin Pentecost last year. It involved lugging a giant motion control head and arm up a very big hill overlooking Corfe Castle before dawn and shooting about 10 passes between before sunrise and 10am. These were then composited together to make this clip. It was done as a proof of concept test for a larger project that as yet we have not managed to secure funding for, but will continue to investigate. The cameras used were a pair of Sony PMW-F3’s. The clip is in 3D, click through to YouTube and use the selector button at the bottom to choose your preferred viewing mode.
A little while back I was loaned a Triad PL to E-Mount adapter for review. E-Mount is the Sony mount used on the NEX-FS100, NEX-FS700 as well as The VG10, VG20 and NEX stills cameras. While more and more E-Mount lenses are becoming available from Sony and other DSLR lens manufacturers there will be many times when something more suitable for video work might be needed. One of the big issues with DSLR lenses is the very small amount of rotation on the focus ring to go from near to far, often only 45 degrees which makes accurate focus tricky. A good PL mount lens will have over 180 degrees of rotation. PL has been the industry standard for movie cameras for years and most rental companies have large ranges of PL lenses to choose from. So the ability to be able to use a PL lens on any super 35mm camcorder is always welcome. While I use DSLR lenses on my cameras for my day to day shoots, if I am doing a high end production such as a commercial then I will hire in the appropriate PL lenses for the job. Sony’s soon to be released FS700 is a camera that will, I’m sure end up getting used for many commercials as slow motion is a technique widely used to show off new products or ideas. As a result there will be many time in the future where I will need a PL adapter.
The Triad adapter showing the Flange Back adjustment ring.
The Triad adapter is very solidly made, machined from high grade alloy with stainless steel and chrome plated steel inserts. One of the very nice features is that the adapter has a built in adjustment for the back focus distance. A locking outer ring on the adapter can be rotated to alter the physical distance between the PL receptor and the E-Mount bayonet. This will allow the user to calibrate the back focus or flange back distance so that the focus witness marks on any PL lenses will be 100% accurate. It will also ensure that PL zooms will track focus correctly through the entire zoom range. As the FS100 and FS700 don’t have built in back focus adjustments this really is a vital thing to have. The Sony E-mount was only designed to support the weight of light weight DSLR type lenses so the Triad adapter has a support post that can be attached to 15mm or 19mm rails (via a suitable bracket) to help carry the weight of heavy PL lenses without over-stressing the cameras E-Mount. One note from Triad is that the Sony PL lenses supplied with the kit that comes with the PMW-F3 do not fit this adapter. There are quite a few PL mounts that don’t accept the Sony PL lenses without shaving a bit of metal from the Sony lenses mount. So this isn’t a flaw with the Triad adapter, it’s a non standard quirk of the Sony PL lenses.
There’s really not much more to say about this mount. It’s well made and does what it designed to do.
At NAB I was offered a TVLogic 5.6″ monitor kit for review and assessment. The VFM-056WP sits somewhere between being a monitor and a viewfinder. It’s not as big as most monitors and it’s not really a viewfinder, like the soon to be released Alphatron/TVlogic EVF. So I was somewhat sceptical as to how useful it would be as my normal cameras all have built in LCD panels.
The kit included the monitor, a deep detachable hood, battery adapter for the ever so common Sony NP-F batteries, mounting ball joint, power supply and a few other small accessories, all inside a good quality flight case.
The rear of the VFM-056W
One of my few criticisms of this kit is the size of the flight case. The monitor itself is very compact and lightweight, but the flight case really is quite big. For my fly-away jobs I probably wouldn’t use this flight case, it’s just to big for such a small monitor. Anyway back to the monitor. Externally it feels nice and solid and to be made of good quality materials. On the bottom there are a pair of BNC’s for the HDSDi input and output. The HDSDi input works in both conventional 1.5G and 3G modes (WP version only) making it suitable for use with cameras that have a 3G 4:4:4 output, so it works great with the S-Log output of my PMW-F3. As well as the HDSDi there is also an HDMI input plus 3 phono connectors for the composite and component input. So all in all there is just about every type of input you could possibly want. In addition the WP version will convert any connected HDMI signal to HDSDi
VFM-056W with deep hood on top of my PMW-F3
On plugging in the HDSDi feed from my F3 I was presented with a very good looking, sharp and clear display. Checking the colour response using a DSC Chroma Du Monde chart showed very accurate colour reproduction, brightness and contrast. Although the LCD panel is quite small the resolution at 1280×720 makes the image look nice and crisp. Next I tried using it to focus. On the whole I found I could achieve reasonably accurate focus without resorting to peaking, but turning on the monitors coloured peaking function does make it much easier to find optimum focus. The other tool that helps focussing is a 1:1 pixel image zoom that is accessed using the menu switch on the rear.
The VFM-065WP has all the usual tools in the menu’s. The menu system is easy to use with a Function button on the rear of the monitor and a rotary dial on the side used to select and change settings. One thing that would be nice perhaps is a couple of assignable buttons to which you can assign your favourite functions.
The clear display of the VFM-056WP (click to enlarge)
As well as the common stuff like markers, false colour and zebras, it has some nice extra functions like a DSLR zoom feature that will expand the less than full screen output of Canon and Nikon DSLR’s so that it fills the screen. There is also a Range Error feature that allows the user to set maximum and minimum levels for luma and chroma. If these levels are exceeded, the areas in excess of these values blink on and off. The WP model includes waveform and vectorscopes that can be superimposed over the pictures in 3 different sizes, small, large and full screen.
So with it’s full set of features and tools, excellent build and image quality, the diminutive TVLogic VFM-056WP is a great little monitor that can be camera mounted without adding a lot of extra weight to your kit. I have been quite impressed by this neat little monitor and I’m sure it will end up in my kit for most shoots. It’s small size and low weight makes it particularly suitable for overseas shoots where I need to keep the total weight of my kit to a minimum to avoid excessive airline baggage charges.
In theory if two cameras are both set to REC-709 then the dynamic range should be identical as both cameras responses will be limited to the REC-709 specifications. The original REC-709 specification only allows for 5 stops of dynamic range from 0 to 100%. The addition of superwhites at 109% gives a little more and then the knee on top gives a bit more again. The whole point behind REC-709 is that when a REC-709 camera captures something of a specific brightness, then when that image is shown on a TV or monitor, the apparent brightness will be exactly the same. As REC-709 is based on legacy television standards that go back to the very beginning of television broadcasting, it only allows for the dynamic range of older television sets. If a camera deviates from REC-709 then there will be a miss-match between the image the camera records and the image the viewer sees.
So, if we have two cameras with sensors capable of a dynamic range greater than the REC-709 specifications and then we restrict them to REC-709, they should exhibit identical dynamic range. Just like two cars fitted with speed limiters, they would both have identical maximum speeds. In fact the REC-709 specification is actually a viewing and display specification, not a camera specification and in reality the REC-709 gamma curves in most cameras don’t correspond exactly to the true 709 monitor specs as everyone would be up in arms if the camera only had a 5 stop range.
With almost any reasonably up to date cameras, anyone comparing a couple of cameras dynamic range with REC-709 and saying A has more dynamic range than B is a bit of a misnomer. Yes there will be differences in the way the gamma curve has been interpreted by the manufacturer or the way the knee works and perhaps camera A will give a more pleasing picture than B, but this is unlikely to actually be due to the dynamic range of the camera, just different ways the manufacturer has chosen to interpret the restrictions imposed by REC-709.
In my opinion, the only times you would want to use 709 is when you are shooting direct for broadcast where there won’t be time for grading or if you have enough control over your lighting to stay within a 6 stop range and that 6 stop range gives you the look you want.
Otherwise, I would use one of the extended range gammas included in most cameras these days, log, cinegamma, hypergamma etc, as these extended range gammas don’t try to comply to the REC-709 specifications they are not restricted to the legacy dynamic range imposed on us by REC-709. As a result they can easily accommodate much greater dynamic ranges and get closer to utilising the camera sensors full range, but at the expense of requiring some grading to restore contrast.
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