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A Week With The Canon C300.

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C300 with 24-70mm f2.8L lens and Genus Matte Box

So, I’ve had my Canon C300 for a week now and had a chance to play with it and evaluate it. Am I pleased with my purchase? Yes, absolutely, the C300 will be a camera that I will use a lot. It’s well built and feels very solid, the pictures are great, but there are a few things that have frustrated me, I few things that the more I use it, I don’t like. But there are also quite a few things that I really like.

Why C300?

First I’d like to explain why I purchased it when I already own a couple of F3’s. Since buying the F3’s my EX1R has sat on the shelf gathering dust. I really like the look you get with a large sensor camera along with the improved sensitivity and lower noise. But as I shoot a lot of stuff for broadcast I need to record at 50Mb/s as a minimum, so with the F3 (and EX1R) this means using an external recorder. When your in a studio, on a film set etc, this really isn’t a problem and I love shooting with the F3 using the RGB output and the Convergent Design Gemini. The end results are beautiful, the kind of images that I never really thought I would own the equipment to produce. But, if you follow my blog, you’ll know that I specialise (amongst other things) in shooting natural extremes. Things like Tornadoes, hurricanes, the Northern lights etc. For these shoots an external recorder is quite simply a pain in the rear end. Jumping in and out of a car, running to shoot a tornado with anything extra hanging off the camera is tricky and in the heat of the chase things get bumped, bashed or simply forgotten.

So for me, the idea of a one piece solution that gives me the benefits of a s35mm sensor, including excellent low light performance, shallow DoF for all the interviews and story telling footage, plus low power in a compact package is great. The C300 looked to be the camera just for me for these shoots.

After reading up all I could on it and taking a look at one during an open day at Visual Impact, I placed my order. The camera arrived last week.

After One Week.

So, after a week with the camera, do I think it will work for what I want? Yes, I am sure it will, but there are some things that would frustrate me on other types of shoot.

Picture Quality:

I’ve already written about this in earlier posts. It is very good. Using C-Log you get around 12 stops of dynamic range. Out of the box the camera is a little over sharpened, but that’s easy enough to tame through the custom picture profiles. The colour reproduction is good, if a little over saturated for my liking (again easily corrected). Skew is minimal and the sensitivity and noise levels are also very good, similar to my F3’s.

C300 Moire

There is a little bit of moire and aliasing, right at the limits of the cameras resolution, but this is no worse than any other camera in this class.

At higher gain/ISO the C300’s user settable noise reduction system is very good at cleaning up the image. At 3200 ISO with the noise reduction level set to 4 the noise is all but gone, at 6400 ISO, noise reduction level 7 cleans the image up. However each extra level of noise reduction does introduce a small amount of softening of the image and above 5 there are some artefacts on rapid exposure or contrast changes. Even so, the ability to shoot at 6400 ISO with relatively  low noise  images is quite remarkable and one of the C300’s trump cards. Of course you can go still higher with the sensitivity, all the way to 20,000 ISO but the pictures are pretty noisy and with the noise reduction engaged the image does get a bit soft and certainly doesn’t look anywhere near as nice as it does at lower gain settings. For me I will try to stay below 3200, but it’s nice know that 6400 or higher is there when you need it. For image quality I give the C300 a very high score, but in my opinion it’s not quite (by the very tiniest of amounts) up to what an F3 recording to a 10 bit external recorder can deliver. However for the types of shoot I want to use it on, that very small difference is not going to matter.

Annoyances.

The function LCD, almost hidden from view.

Now, going back to gain settings this is one of the things that annoys me. On the back of the camera there is a small supplementary LCD screen, much like the information display on a Canon DSLR. Normally to change the C300’s ISO (gain/sensitivity), shutter speed or white balance, you press the “FUNC” button, by the side of the screen until the function you want to change is displayed and then you use the rotary dial or small joystick (on the hand grip or camera rear) to change the setting.

The iris wheel on the hand grip. There is also a mini joystick and assignable button just under the grip.

There’s a couple of problems with this. The LCD is hard to see from the sides or below and if you have the EVF Viewfinder extended, you can’t see it from above at all. The options you are changing do also get highlighted in the EVF or on the LCD (if you have the camera info overlay enabled), but as you have to take your eye from the viewfinder to find the small FUNC switch, it would have been nice if this status LCD was better placed, maybe on the side of the camera body where it is easier to see. I suppose eventually I will get to know where the FUNC button is by feel, but as it’s right next to the record button, you do want to make sure your pressing the right button! You can also assign FUNC to any of the other assignable buttons, but with  no dedicated switches for gain/shutter/white balance you can quickly run out of these.

The multi function menu dial (top) and iris dial below.

On my F3’s if I want to change the ISO, white balance or switch the shutter on and off, all I need to do is flick a dedicated switch and I know from the switch position how it is set. All this fiddling around on the C300 is tedious and not quick to do. You can assign these functions to any of the multitude of assignable buttons, but you still need to press the correct assignable button and then move to the dial or joystick to change the setting. I guess I’ll get used to it, but it’s not something I like.

On the positive side the press button operated ND filter system is really nice, although again you need to check in the viewfinder to know which ND filter is selected other than a small window tucked away in the top corner of the hard to see status display.

EVF and LCD:

The built in EVF (electronic viewfinder) is really rather good, certainly a huge improvement over the one on the F3 and when used in conjunction with the cameras peaking and magnification options good enough to use for accurate focus. On the C300 you can have both an expanded image via the magnification function and peaking on at the same time. So it is quite possible to use the camera without any external devices attached. But you do need to be aware that when you don’t have the LCD Monitors  attached to the camera the only way to plug in a mic is via a 3.5mm stereo jack socket on the side of the camera body. There is no built in mic. I really wish there was at least 1 XLR socket on the camera body. In addition, the only way to control the audio record levels (when using the body only) is by going into the cameras menu and selecting audio level set. Then you can use the joystick or function dial to set the level, which is OK until you have to change something else like the ISO or shutter, where you loose the audio level control until you go back into the menu. I can see Beachtek adapters becoming popular with C300 owners! But this kind of defeats the object of a standalone camera with no external boxes. Doh!

The thick cables that connect the monitor module.

So, I hear you all shouting… “Why don’t you use the plug-in LCD monitor adapter thingumajig? Well I’ll tell you why, it’s cumbersome, makes the camera very top heavy and the cables that attach it to the camera body, which are thick enough to support a suspension bridge, just get in the way. The handle is colossal too, nice and chunky and feels very solid indeed, but colossal all the same. The LCD on the monitor unit is nice with good resolution. It can be positioned in a multitude of angles, up/down/left/right which is great, but it just makes the camera very top heavy and bulky, which for my particular application is not what I want. OK for studio use, on a film set or on a corporate shoot, but not good for news types shoots. Incidentally, I really like the built in waveform monitor and vectorscope. Much better than the histogram on the F3 in my view. But then I’m a die hard video guy. Someone from the DSLR world might prefer a histogram. Also the waveform monitor and vectorscope are only displayed on the LCD Monitor, they do not appear in the EVF, so your out of luck if you want to use them to check levels and you don’t have the monitor with you.

The Monitor Adapter attached so you can get at the audio controls. Note skyward pointing mic holder!

When using the XLR inputs on the Monitor unit the control pots for the audio levels can’t be seen easily all the way up on the top of the unit if the camera is on a tripod at eye height, so often you end up putting the whole monitor assembly on the camera on it’s end with the mic holder pointing skywards so you can get at the audio controls. Like this the rig is getting really ungainly and very top heavy. In addition you must have the LCD panel open to get at the audio controls. Audio appears to be an afterthought on the C300, it’s not well executed.

Iris Control.

I’ve been using a Canon 24-70mm f2.8L lens on the C300. This is a great lens. But like all Canon EF lenses the iris is electronically controlled. On the C300 turning the iris dial on the back of the camera or the small wheel on the handgrip steps the iris open and closed in small steps. Even when set to “fine” you can see the image brightness changing in steps, it’s not smooth. If your working on a tripod this arrangement means taking a hand off either the lens or pan bar to change exposure. I much prefer a manual iris ring. Of course if you use Zeiss CP2’s or Nikon lenses you can still get a manual iris ring. A further observation is that my EF mount  Sigma 18-200mm f3.5 image stabilised lens clicks loudly when you change the aperture. Loud enough to be clearly audible on a camera mic or even a mic a few feet away in a quiet room. The other thing is that the camera has a fan that runs continuously, again this is not silent and gets picked up by the camera mic. It’s not loud, but it’s always there. One thing I didn’t try (budget would not stretch to it) is the WiFi adapter that allows you to remotely control the Iris and even the focus of the camera from an iPad. The camera streams a near live video feed to the iPad and you can use the iPad to control all the primary camera functions including iris and focus. However the slight lag in the video stream might make focussing tricky.

As well as the WiFi option the C300 has a lot of nice functions, things like the ability to dual record to both CF cards at the same time for safety. It can shoot at up to 60 frames per second at 720P and can shoot true 24P as opposed to the 23.98P found on most video cameras. This is particularly important when recording off board audio as many pro audio recorders only have 24P timecode and timing, so a camera running at 23.98 will slowly drift out of sync with the audio recorder. It can also do time-lapse (interval record), but strangely the C300 can’t shoot single frames in interval record mode when set to 25P, 50i, 50P or 60P, the lowest setting is 2 frames, so any time-lapse sequences need to be sped up by 200% in post to get smooth motion or done with the camera set to 23.98P, 24P or 30P when it can do 1 frame, very strange indeed. The C300 also has a Pre-record function (cache record) but the memory only gives you 3 seconds, which is barely enough time to react to seeing something and hit the record button, I’d really like at least twice this, my F3 goes up to 12 seconds.

So as you can tell there’s quite a few things that bug me about the C300. I hate to be so negative, because it is a great camera, it does produce great images and is beautifully well built. With all the hype surrounding it’s launch it’s hard to not be just a little disappointed in these little annoyances. But, the C300 will allow me to shoot with a s35mm sensor at 50Mb/s without the aggro of an external recorder. The pictures will be of great quality when used with a decent lens. I can also use stabilised lenses for long lens shots and handheld. So it will make a great compact (without the monitor unit) grab and go camera, once I figure out a smaller handle, mic mount and maybe get a Beachtek box.

So who is the C300 going to appeal to?

Well there’s no getting away from the fact that to meet the 50Mb/s rule you don’t need an external recorder and the pictures are very nice indeed. With just the camera body and a lens you have a highly portable camera (although you’ll need some kind of adapter to plug in an XLR mic as the body only has a 3.5mm jack).

However…. The F3 still IMHO produces a marginally better image and generally I prefer the F3’s ergonomics, especially on a tripod or shoulder rig. If you don’t need 50Mb/s then the F3 is excellent. If you need high end performance, squeezing every last bit out of the image, the F3 is better than the C300 IMHO, largely down to the 10 bit output and flatter log curve.

So it depends on what you want to do and your shooting style.

If you don’t need 50Mb/s then I would probably favour the F3. You have a choice of lens mounts, arguably better iris control, ergonomics more suited to video applications.

If you need 50Mb/s but don’t need more than that, the the C300 is the obvious choice. DSLR shooters will I’m sure be very happy with the control layout, video pro’s may find it frustrating.

If you need better than 50Mb/s then we come back to the F3 again. After all if your going to add an external recorder, at this level, it should really be a 10 bit one. Plus you have RGB options, LUT’s, no need for a funky LCD adapter with unwieldy cables just so you can plug in an XLR mic.

I think the C300 will find a very happy home in many a news, documentary or corporate production company. I have mine for the Storm Chasing and natural extremes that I shoot, where the convenience of no external recorder is wonderful. In this role I believe the C300 will excel. But I’m absolutely keeping my F3’s for commercials, shorts and those productions where an external recorder is not a big deal and image quality is everything. Plus I find the F3 much easier to work with on a tripod or shoulder rig.

If I could only choose one? Right now it would be the F3 as it is more adaptable. You can use different lens mounts, record internally or add a 10 bit 422 or 444 recorder. I can use the F3 to shoot what I am planning on using the C300 for, only with the inconvenience of an external recorder, while if I was asked to shoot a commercial I would really want the 10 bit RGB output of the F3, so the C300 would not be appropriate.

That’s just my opinion. Other’s will vary. Don’t get me wrong the C300 is a great, great camera, but it’s not necessarily better than the F3 and the F3 is not necessarily better than the C300. I’m not saying this to hedge my bets or sit on the wall, I say this because that’s the way I think it is. Tough choice. I’m just glad I can afford both and then choose the most appropriate camera for the particular shoot.

I guess what I’d really like is an F3 with the build quality of the C300, internal 50Mb/s recordings, the C300’s variable noise reduction, ultra highISO and EVF.

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Canon C300 and Sony F3 footage to download.

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I’ve been testing and evaluating my new C300 today. Of course being the owner of a PMW-F3 I was more than a little curious to see how the two compared, so the obvious thing to do was some side by side shots. making use of one of my Hurricane Rig 3D rigs, I mounted the C300 and F3 side by side so I could grab the footage at almost exactly the same time, so the scene would be the same. In addition I used a Transvideo 3D monitor with both cameras fed into it so that I could use the 3D waveform monitor, which shows both inputs overlaid at the same time. I used this to match the exposure as accurately as possible. At the bottom of the post you’ll find a link to the raw clips, straight from the cameras.

Both cameras were fitted with matched Tokina 28-70mm AT-X Pro zooms. Doing 3D really helps for this kind of test as I have matched pairs of lenses etc. So exposure and focal lengths match. Notice how the C300 gives a slightly wider FoV compared to the F3. This means the C300’s sensor is bigger than the F3’s which makes it a fair bit bigger than the APS-C sensors used in the Canon 7D, 550D DSLR’s etc, so you are going to have to watch out for vignetting with cheaper EF-S fit lenses.

If you click on the images you will be able to see a full size, full resolution version, however these are jpegs so there may be additional compression artefacts.

C300 C-Log, 850ISO
F3 S-Log 800ISO

C-Log and S-Log have similar, but different gamma curves, they are clearly not the same, the F3 has a bit more compression above 50% than the C300. Not sure what this will mean in reality yet, it may be that the F3 has a tiny bit of extra headroom. I deliberately overexposed both cameras by the same amount for one shot and the F3 just appears to hang on to the highlights just the tiniest bit better. This is NOT a very scientific test as I am not exploring the full dynamic range of either camera and you can’t really ignore shadow and low key performance when evaluating dynamic range, but initial indications are that the F3 does have marginally better DR.

C300 C-Log overexposed (mid grey at 50%)
F3 S-Log Overexposed (Mid Grey at 50%)

Next I looked at the stock, out of the box images from both cameras. So no picture profiles or any other settings. This is how both cameras look straight from the factory:

C300 Standard settings, 400ISO
F3 Standard settings 400ISO

The colorimetry is interesting. I prefer the Canon look, it just looks nicer than the Sony look. BUT, I think the reality is that the Sony look is more accurate and true to life. So which is better? I don’t think one is better than the other, it really depends on your own personal preference. Both cameras have highly tweak-able matrices so you can create your own look (which is something I will be doing). In this simple test the C300 appears to hold on to highlights a little better than the F3. I guess that Canon have optimised the knee a little better. Both images are sharp and crisp, showing good resolution. I think the C300 is a little over sharpened, but that will be easy to reduce through a custom profile.

Now with all the talk of noise and sensitivity I did do a quick comparison at 3200 ISO, which is the highest you can go with a stock F3 (S-Log F3 can go to 6400).

C300 Standard settings, 3200ISO
F3 Standard Settings, 3200 ISO

Now, you really need to look at these frames full size to appreciate the added noise or better still download the clips. Compare the 3200ISO images with the 400 ISO images and look at the concrete road. You can clearly see the extra noise from both cameras. My visual assessment is that the noise levels are similar, but that the C300 noise has a much finer structure than the F3. The finer noise looks more filmic to me, so I think I prefer the C300, but it’s not a deal breaker either way. I did take a peak at the noise at 20,000 ISO last night and there is a heck of a lot of it. It would have to be something pretty special to make me want to use more than 3200 ISO.

So, I’m liking the C300 a lot. It’s compact, well built and nice to hold. I find it hard to really distinguish the in camera recordings from the C300 and from the F3, but the C300  has that magic 50Mb/s codec that the BBC and others insist on. So for Grab and go the C300 makes a huge amount of sense. Indications are that the F3 may still have an edge in terms of ultimate latitude and I would expect the 10 bit output from the F3 to allowed harder and more intensive grading of the footage. But, that then means an external recorder with wires, batteries and other stuff.  All that “stuff” is fine in a studio or drama shoot, but not so hot chasing tornadoes or similar. So far , this is exactly what I was expecting. The C300 will be a great grab and go camera, a very capable drama and documentary camera, but the F3 will still be my choice when I am doing high end drama or studio work. I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford both, I really like both, but for different reasons.

More tests will follow, in particular grading C-Log and S-log, 8 bit and 10 bit as well as low light performance. In addition I will be testing the C300 with a NanoFlash at higher bit rates to see how much of difference that can make. After that it will be time to create some picture profiles, in particular profiles to get the F3 and C300 closer together as I’m sure I will have projects that will use both.

Below is a link to download the original clips from the cameras. There are 4 clips from each, the total download size is about 400MB, so…….

Below is the link to download the original clips. IF YOU FIND THIS USEFUL IN ANY WAY please make a small donation to help cover my bandwidth and hosting costs. You are free to re-distribute the clips provided a link or acknowledgement of where they came from is included.

 



 

There are no big surprises in the results. [downloads_box title=”C300 and F3 Clips”]
Canon C300 and Sony F3 Raw Clips.
[/downloads_box]

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CamRade PMW-F3 Rain Cover. WS PMW F3

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CamRade F3 rain cover pouch.

As winter rapidly approaches, with all the talk in the news papers of mini-iceages, cold spells and the knowledge that winter generally means rain here in the UK I thought it would be a good time to take a look at a rain cover.

Rain covers for the PMW-F3 are few and far between at the moment, so when Rene at CamRade told me that they were producing a tailored rain cover for the F3 I had to get my hands on one to take a look.

PMW-F3 inside the CamRade rain cover.

The cover arrived in a nice compact pouch made from the same high quality waterproof fabric as the cover itself. This fabric is some kind of soft rubberised material that feels very tough, yet is very flexible and soft to the touch, which is important if you have the camera up against your face. According to CamRade this soft material helps reduce the noise that rain drops falling on the can camera make. The cover is a tailored loose fit with velcro straps and fastenings that can be used to take up any excessive slack.

Left side of the CamRade WS PMW F3 rain cover.

There are clear panels on the left side, more about them in minute. There’s an elasticated opening for a gun microphone at the front as well as a velcro protected opening on the right side for cable access to the XLR connectors. This opens up into a small tube so keeps the cable entry well protected from the weather. Along the top of the camera handle there is a long velcro opening to give access to the carry handle and top of the camera. This opening folds over to one side and is secured by a small velcro pad so that should not collect and rain when not in use.

Fold out clear section allows the LCD to be used in the rain.

The main clear panel on the left side of the cover can be opened out and expanded so the the F3’s LCD panel can be used in the open position. the clever design allows the LCD to be viewed from above, from in front as well as from the rear, so you can continue to use the LCD panel in the rain. However in practice rain falling on the cover itself will tend to obscure or distort the images on the LCD to some extent. Ahh… the joy of shooting in the rain!!

The rear end. Plenty of space to run cables to and from the various connectors and easy battery access.

You can of course use the rear VF if you wish as this sticks out through a hole in the back of the rain cover. The rear of the cover opens up via velcro for easy battery access and will easily accommodate oversize batteries. I think the rear end of this cover is it weakest area and personally I’d like a cover that completely encloses the rear viewfinder, but that’s just me.

Clear window to view the lens markings.

Another feature on the left side of the cover is a clear window that allows you to see the lenses focus and iris rings and markings. If your using a long lens the cover comes with a clear extension that attaches to the front of the main cover and makes it long enough to to protect much longer lenses including lenses like the Optimo 16-24 zoom. This extension piece comes with a strip of self adhesive velcro that can be attached to the lens to stop it flapping around in the wind.

Expanding flap allows easy access to the hand grip.

On the right side of the cover there is an opening under a flap that allows you to insert your hand into the cover so you can grip the camera via the hand grip without having to open up the rain cover. I really liked this feature. The bottom of the cover has small side flaps that will prevent rain from running off under the camera or onto the very top of your tripod. A nice touch.

I’ve had many small camera rain covers over the years. Very often they are so stiff and ridged that they are a complete nuisance to use. The material used in this cover is really nice and makes the camera reasonably easy to use even when trussed up inside the cover. The fold out clear cover for the LCD means that rain should not prevent you from being able to carry on shooting due to the camera becoming wet.

I give this cover 7/10. It would be 9/10 if the rear end was a little neater and there was a way to cover the EVF, but as small camera rain covers go, it’s a good one.

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Cineroid HDSDI EVF Review.

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Cineroid EVF-4MSS

I needed an external viewfinder for my F3 rig. I could have got either a Zacuto or Cineroid HDMI viewfinder, but I felt that HDSDI would be more useful. As the HDSDI  Zacuto is not available just yet, I picked up one of the new metal bodied Cineroid HDSDI EVF’s (EVF-4MSS).

The viewfinder has the same 800 x 480 pixel 3.2″ screen as the HDMI version but in a robust metal body. There are threaded 1/4″ mounting holes on the top and bottom of the viewfinder. It is supplied with a generic battery compatible with Sony’s L series batteries and a tiny little charger.

Rear of the Cineroid EVF-4MSS

So what’s it like. Well for a start it’s very solidly made. The body and the slide on part of the eyepiece is made from metal (some kind of hard anodised aluminium I think). The diopter adjuster is made out of plastic. On the rear of the body mine was fitted with an adapter for a Sony L series battery which has a short flying lead going to a high quality lemo connector for power. The battery adapter can be removed by unscrewing two small screws if you intend to power the finder from an external supply. The supply can be anywhere from 6 to 17 volts. There is also a pair of BNC’s for the  loop through HDSDI in and out connections.

Cineroid EVF with eyepiece flipped up and menus activated.

The eyepiece on the EVF flips up like most pro viewfinders, this allows you to see the screen directly, as an alternative you can slide the entire eyepiece assembly off completely, which turns the EVF into a tiny monitor. I have a slight issue with the slide off function as there is some light leakage along the top edge of the screen as a result. On a bright sunny day this is distracting as you can see it inside the finder. It’s easily solved with a small strip of electrical tape over the tiny gap, but you shouldn’t really need to do this. All Cineroid need to do is add a small lip to the top of the slide off assembly to fix this.

On powering up and using the finder for the first time I was pleasantly pleased. The screen is bright and clear and there is only the smallest amount of lag. When I showed the EVF to some of the visitors to the Sony booth at IBC there were many comments that this version has less lag than the HDMI version. My guess is that the HDMI processing in the camera plus the HDMI processing in the EVF adds up to a fair bit of a delay. This would appear to be much reduced with the HDSDI version.

Cineroid EVF on PMW-F3

Some people have complained that they can see the pixel structure of the screen in both the Cineroid and Zacuto EVF’s. I could just about make out the pixels, the screen appearing to have a slight texture, but in operation this has not caused me any issues. This EVF is a vast improvement over the EVF fitted to the back of the F3. Using either the Cineroid’s Peaking or 1:1 pixel mapping I can focus very accurately. Higher resolution would be nicer, but it is adequate as is. You have to consider that even the Sony HDVF20A that costs £3,000 only has around 600 lines of resolution. As well as peaking there are a number of other useful tools including the usual zebras. Some of the more unusual functions include a coloured clipping indicator and various false colour modes. I have to say that I have not been through all the different modes and functions yet. I’ve just been using it with peaking and zebras. You can have a full range of safe area overlays and there is the ability to work with anamorphic camera outputs, flip or mirror the picture. The peaking is adjustable and can be either white or red, I prefer red. A couple of different colours would be nice for when your shooting scenes that already have a lot of red in them. When you have it enabled (single button press) the up and down arrow buttons on the side of the EVF will adjust the peaking sensitivity up and down, so no need to go into the menu system.

Overall I am pleased with my Cineroid viewfinder. It does the job that I purchased it for and the price was quite reasonable (£799 + VAT). It’s compact and well constructed and looks like it will survive the inevitable knocks and bumps of everyday use.

PS. I was reminded by respected DoP Jody Eldred that the LCD panel in these (and many other) viewfinders is easily damaged if the sun starts shining into the eyepiece. The eyepiece acts as a magnifier and will focus the sun onto the LCD and burn it. The large size of the loupe on the Cineroid means that it doesn’t even need to be pointed directly at the sun for this to happen. So, when not in use, point the eyepiece down towards the ground, if your mount won’t allow you to do that easily, flip open the eyepiece. This is good practice with all monocular viewfinders. I’ve seen many scorched LCD’s and melted plastic interiors over the years.

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Vinten Vision 100 Long Term Review.

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Vinten 100 Tripod Head

I’m a long time Vinten user. My first true, pro tripod was a Vinten 5 with alloy legs that I purchased in 1989 (I think). 22 years on I still have that tripod and it is still perfectly useable. Since then I’ve been the very happy owner of a fabulous set of Vinten FibreTec legs (still have them, still love them) and a new model Vinten Vision 5AS. All of these have been excellent, reliable and virtually indestructible. I’ve taken them up into the Arctic where it’s been -36c. I’ve taken them to the Arizona desert, into Hurricanes, Sand Storms and all kinds of extreme weather. I’ve even used them stood waist deep in the sea (not really recommended). Anyway, I’m waffling… When I needed a bigger tripod to support my Hurricane 3D rig I obtained a Vinten Vision 100.

The Vision 100 is not a new model, but it has a reputation for being able to take a quite remarkable payload for it’s size. You see the Vision 100 head is not much bigger or heavier than my Vinten 5, yet it can take double the payload (20kg). This means that I can still pack it in to my luggage when I’m travelling without getting crippled by high excess baggage charges.

Vinten 100 Counter Balance Adjuster

One of the features that has made it particularly useful for 3D is the digital counterbalance readout that tells you exactly where you are within the heads very generous and continuously adjustable counter balance range. When swapping between the 3D rig and a conventional camera I can simply dial in the numbers that I know give me optimum balance and off I go. One minute I can have a 3D rig with a pair of F3 etc, weighing over 15kg, then after a few turns of the counterbalance knob I can mount just a single F3 weighing only 3kg and the tripod works beautifully well with either payload. The continuously adjustable drag adjustments for pan and tilt are easy to set and if you want you can get a lot of drag. I find this very useful when shooting air shows with long lenses as I like to have quite a bit of drag to work against to keep things smooth. The smoothness of this head is lovely with no sudden slips or tight spots, it’s a pleasure to use.

In the Arizona desert shooting thunderstorms

The legs I have been using with the Vision 100 head are the Vinten 3 stage carbon fibre Pozi-Loc legs. Even though these are nice and light, they are remarkably stiff. I also have one of Vinten’s clever  Spread Loc mid level spreaders. I first got one of these with my FibreTec legs and I’ve never looked back. You can lock the spreader at almost any spread position with a quick turn of the single locking knob. If you need to get the legs down low there is a little button on each arm of the spreader that allows the arm to extend to up to twice it’s original length. The end result is the ability to get very low, even when using standard legs.

Tripods are pretty boring things really. Not as glamourous as a camera, but an essential piece of kit anyway. Get the right tripod and it will last you many, many years, almost certainly out lasting those glamourous cameras. All the Vintens I have owned have been superb. The Vinten 100 is a solid, well made piece of kit that I don’t even really think about when I’m using it. And that is after all what you want, gear that just gets on with its job.

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Adaptimax Lens Mount Adapters for PMW-F3, Canon and Nikon.

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Adaptimax F3 to Canon and Nikon lens mounts

I was sent a couple of Adaptimax lens mount adapters to test on my PMW-F3. I have used some of their EX3 adapters in the past and these worked very well. The new PMW-F3 adapters are finished with a very nice hard black anodised finish and look very smart indeed. I had 3 adapters to try, one F3 to Canon and two F3 to Nikon adapters. The Canon adapter is a “dumb” adapter, so there is no way to control the lenses iris. If your using Canon lenses this means using a DSLR body to set the iris before using the lens on the F3. Obviously this is not ideal, but you do have to consider that there is a massive range of lenses that can be used with this Canon adapter via a secondary adapter ring.

Canon’s flange back distance (the sensor to lens distance) is the shortest in the DSLR world. So this means that there is space to adapt to other lens mounts with longer flange back distances such as M42, Nikon, Pentax, Pentacon etc. This opens up a whole world of possibilities as now you can use those nice M42 Zeiss lenses that can be picked up cheap on ebay by adding a cheap M42 to Canon adapter.

Nikon 50mm f1.8 with Adaptimax F3 Mount.

If you have already invested in Nikon fit glass then you can use a Nikon to Canon adapter or you can use one of Adaptimax’s purpose built F3 to Nikon adapters.

There are two varieties, the original Adaptimax and the Adaptimax Plus. The Plus version includes a long screw that pushes the iris pin on the rear of the lens to give you iris control even when the lens does not have an iris ring. While this is not as elegant as MTF Services rotating adapter barrel, it works fine and the simplicity of the design means the adapter is a little cheaper. The standard version has no iris control, so you need to ensure your lens has a proper iris ring. Priced at £255 for the standard adapters and £265 for the plus versions these are good value for money.

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Today3D Electronic Follow Focus and 3D Rig Controller. FIZ

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Today 3D FIZ Controller

Here’s a very exciting new product I was first given a sneak preview of at Cinegear in LA a couple of weeks ago, but now I have had a slightly longer look and a chance to take some pictures at Broadcast Asia. It comes from a new name to the market, Korean based Today 3D, but don’t let that worry you, I know some of the guys behind this and they know what they are doing. In addition many of the products coming out of Korea in recent years have been very good, like the NextoDI range of media backup devices. The device is a full wireless electronic follow focus designed primarily for 3D applications. There will be different models capable of driving up to 8 motors for full stereo focus, zoom, iris, interaxial and convergence control down to an entry level 2D wireless follow focus.

Today3D controller screen

The hand controller is beautifully well built, machined out of a solid block of alloy and it feels reassuringly solid, if just a little heavy in your hand. On the right side there is a nice big, silky smooth focus control that sits nicely in your hand. On the face of the controller there is a slide control that would normally be used for the other functions such as convergence or most commonly interaxial. The unit is full programmable via a small joystick and menu system with a multicolour display giving you information about your focus distance, zoom position and interaxial etc. It runs off rechargeable Canon DSLR batteries which easy enough to get hold of wherever you may be. The final price has yet to be announced but I have been reassured that it will be extremely competitive, probably a lot less than a comparable C-Motion controller. It won’t initially come with motors but it has the industry standard motor interface so can be used with motors from Heden, Preston, M-One etc. It’s a great looking piece of kit that really feels built to last. I’m hoping to get hold of one for a full review and test drive in the near future. There are also some other interesting 3D products coming from Korea including some innovative transparent alignment charts! Watch this space.

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Sonnet QIO Review – Really, really fast!

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Sonnet QIO

I had heard about the QIO some time ago, so I approached Sonnet to see if I could borrow a unit to review. I was given the loan of a Sonnet QIO at NAB. I have been playing with it since then and you know what, it’s a great device. So what exactly is it? Well it is an extension box that allows you to connect a range of peripherals and flash memory cards to your computer via the PCI bus. The reason I wanted to borrow one was because the QIO is one of the few devices (the only device?) that allows you to connect SxS, Compact Flash and P2 cards to a computer using the high speed PCI bus with hot-swappable functionality.  Hot Swap means you can eject and remove cards without having to re-boot the computer or do anything else, something that some of the other adapters on the market force you to do.

PCI-E extension board.

Installation was very straight forward. On my Mac Pro workstation I had to plug in a small PCI-X card into one of the vacant slots inside the rear of the machine. This is easy to do and should not put anyone off buying the device, it took me all of 5 minutes to plug the card in and install the drivers. Then a short cable runs from the back of the Mac Pro to the QIO and a separate power supply is plugged into the QIO for power.

 

 

 

On my Mac Book Pro I simply slotted the Sonnet express card PCI bus expansion adapter into the express card slot and then connected this to the main QIO unit via the extension cable and installed the drivers, again a 5 minute job, very simple.

PCI-E Express Card Slot adapter

If you do want to use it with a Mac Book Pro, you will need a model that has the express card slot. At the time of writing the device only works with Mac’s, but Windows support should be coming very soon. When buying a QIO there are two versions. The desktop version supplied with the desktop adapter or the laptop version with the express card slot adapter. The functionality is the same for both, it’s just a case of which adapter you need. You can buy the alternate adapter should you want both as an accessory.

So, I have it installed, how is it to use?

It’s really extremely straight forward. You simply pop your media into the slot and away you go. When your done with that card you eject it as you would with any other removable media and stick in the next card. On the workstation this was so much better than plugging in my XDCAM camcorder via USB.

Of course convenience is one thing, but how about performance? The QIO is fast, very fast. I was able to offload a full 16Gb SxS card in about 150 seconds, less than 3 minutes to the internal drive on the Mac Pro. That equates to an hours worth of XDCAM EX material in around 3 minutes or 20x real time. The performance for compact flash cards doesn’t disappoint either at around 15 seconds per Gb so clearly the transfer speed is limited by the speed of the CF card and not the connection as would be the case with USB or firewire. If you want to use the QIO for SD cards then you can use the supplied adapter. Again the performance is very good, but not as good as SxS and CF due mainly to the lower speeds of the SD cards.

Laptop Performance and Expansion.

One of the issues with Laptops is how do you expand them? It’s all very well being able to put an SxS card into the express card slot for fast off load, but where do you then put the material? On a Mac Book Pro you do have firewire 800 but this is still nowhere near as fast as the SxS card. As the SxS card is in the express card slot you can’t use it to add an eSATA drive, so your a little stuck. But not with the QIO. You see the QIO has a built in eSATA controller and 4 eSATA connectors on it’s rear. This means that you can plug in one or more eSATA drives to the QIO and transfer directly from the SxS card to an eSATA drive or drives. So now even on my Mac Book I can make multiple eSATA copies of my media at speeds of up to 200MB/s (total). So once again the speed is usually limited by the card and not the interface.

Torture Test:

For a real torture test I put two full 16Gb SxS cards into the QIO and offloaded both cards at the same time to the Mac Pro’s raid drive. Where one card had taken a little under 3 minutes, two cards took abut 190 seconds, just a little over 3 minutes. Transferred this way, two cards at a time you could offload 2 hours of XDCAM EX material in around 4 mins, that’s an incredible 30x real time. I tried the same test with CF cards  and again there was little difference in transfer speed between one card and two cards.

Conclusions:

This is one fast device. If you have lots of media to off-load and backup it’s going to save you a lot of time. If you are a production company that works with large volumes of solid state media it will pay for itself very quickly in saved man-hours. If your working in the field with a Mac Book Pro the ability to connect both the media and eSATA devices at the same time makes the QIO a very interesting proposition. It is well constructed, simple to install and use, what more could you ask for.

Value for money?

That’s a little harder to answer. It depends on how much material you work with. It’s a fairly pricey device at around $800US or £700GBP for a card reader, but the time savings are substantial, especially if you are asking people to back up material at the end of a days shoot. The faster it can be done, the more likely it is that it will be done straight away, rather than put off until later. It’s also a lot more than just a card reader, the eSATA ports make it so much more useful for connecting drives or even a raid array to a laptop. Overall I think it is actually well worth the investment for the time savings alone. 8/10 (it would have been 9/10 if it didn’t require the power adapter). Great product.

 

I approached Sonnet and requested a loan QIO for this review, which Sonnet provided. I was not paid to write this and the views expressed are entirely my own. Speed tests were conducted using my own SxS (blue) cards with the QIO attached to a 1.1 first generation Mac Pro with an internal 4 drive raid array, or with a 15″ Mac Book Pro.

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Updated notes for FS100 – F3 Video Review.

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To see the video scroll down to the next blog entry.

The main aim of the shoot was to see how the FS100 held up against the F3. We shot on a bright sunny day by the River Thames and again in the evening in a typically lit living room. There were no big surprises. The FS100 is remarkably close to the F3. You would have no problems cutting between the two of them in a project.
I did find that the FS100 LCD appeared less sharp and not quite as good as the F3’s even though they both use the same underlying panel. This is probably down to the additional layers required for touch screen operation on the FS100. I also did not like the 18-200mm f5.6 kit lens. There was too much lag in the focus and iris controls, but the beauty of this camera is that you can use a multitude of lenses. For the evening shoot I used a Nikon 50mm f1.8 which was so much nicer to use. On reviewing the footage I did find that we were tending to over expose the FS100 by half a stop to a stop, this does make making accurate comparisons difficult and I apologise for this. I believe this was down to the slightly different images we were seeing on the LCD’s. I did use the histograms on both cameras to try to ensure even exposure, but even so there is a difference. A small part of this is also likely down to the very slightly different contrast ranges of the two cameras.
Oe thing we discovered, not mentioned in the video is that when you use a full frame lens, like the Nikon 50mm. You must ensure that the E-Mount adapter you use has an internal baffle or choke. If it doesn’t you will suffer from excessive flare. The adapter I had did not have a baffle and some shots (not used) were spoilt by flare. The adapter I have from MTF for the F3 has a baffle as do MTF’s E-Mount adapters, so these should not suffer from this issue.
The FS100 performance is so very close to that of the F3’s (at 8 bit 4:2:0, 35Mb/s) that it is hard to tell the two apart. I believe the F3’s images are just a tiny bit richer, with about half a stop more dynamic range, in most cases it takes a direct side by side comparison to show up the differences.
The range of camera settings and adjustments on the FS100 is not quite as extensive as on the F3, nor do the adjustments have such a broad range. However there is plenty of flexibility for most productions.
If you don’t need 10 bit 4:2:2 then it is hard to justify the additional cost of the F3, both cameras really are very good. Despite some other reports else where I felt the build quality to be very good and the buttons, while small, are big enough and well placed. If you do want autofocus then you will be pleased to know that it actually works pretty well on the FS100 with only minimal hunting (of course you must use an AF compatible lens).
I did also record the HDMI output to one of my NanoFlashes at 100Mb/s. Comparing these side by side it is extremely hard to see any difference. It is only when you start to heavily grade the material that the advantage of the higher bit rate Nanoflash material becomes apparent. There is less mosquito noise in the NanoFlash material. I was really impressed by the AVCHD material. The lack of noise in the images really helps.
The FS100 really is the F3’s little brother. The pictures are remarkably close, which they should be as they share the same sensor. The FS100 packs down into a remarkably small size for transport. The loan camera from Sony was actually packed in a case designed for the MC1P mini-cam, about 15″x10″x5″ so very compact indeed. The F3 is considerably larger and bulkier, in part due to the extra space taken up by the built in ND filters.
The lack of ND filters does need to be considered. There are some clever solutions in the pipelines from various manufacturers as well as existing solutions such as vari ND’s, screw on ND’s and a Matte Box with ND’s, so it’s not a deal breaker
I think there is every chance that the FS100 will be the first NXCAM camera that I will purchase. It will be a good companion to my F3. It’s modular design will allow me to get shots that are not possible with the F3. I felt that the FS100 (with the 18-200mm lens that I don’t like) was better suited to “run and gun” than my F3 with either manual DSLR lenses or PL glass. You can, with the FS100 simply point the camera at your subject and hit the one push auto focus and auto iris and have an in-focus, correctly exposed shot. This is much more like a traditional small sensor camcorder in this respect. The long zoom range also makes this more like a conventional camcorder, although there is no servo for the zoom.

In conclusion, in my opinion, for “run and gun” or quick and dirty setups the FS100 with the 18-200mm lens has an edge over the F3 due to the fast auto focus and auto iris one-push controls. For more precise work and shallow DoF your going to want a different lens, something with manual control and calibrated focus and iris scales. For more demanding shoots then the F3 is probably the better choice with it’s slightly improved dynamic range and the ability to use S-Log and 4:4:4. In either case these cameras can produce highly cinematic pictures and I see no reason why you could not shoot a great looking feature with either.