I couldn’t not post this. It’s a beautiful example just how nice the Sony Venice camera can look. Shot by DP Khalid Mohtaseb for Turkish Airlines and shown during the Superbowl in the USA. I don’t need to say any more, just take a look at the video.
Turkish Airlines – Step on Earth from Khalid Mohtaseb on Vimeo.
There are already a few setup and staged video samples from the new Sony PXW-FX9 circulating on the web. These are great. But how will it perform and what will the pictures look like for an unscripted, unprepared shoot? How well will the autofocus work out in the street, by day and by night? How does the S-Cinetone gamma and colour in custom mode compare with S-Log3 and the s709 Venice LUT compare?
To answer these questions I took a pre-production FX9 into the nearby town of Windsor with a couple of cheap Sony E-Mount lenses. The lenses were the Sony 50mm f1.8 which costs around $350 USD and the 28-70mm f3.5-f5.6 zoom that costs about $400 USD and is often bundled as a kit lens with some of the A7 series cameras.
To find out how good the auto focus really is I decided to shoot entirely using auto focus with the AF set to face priority. The only shot in the video where AF was not used is the 120fps slow-mo shot of the swans at 0:53 as AF does not work at 120fps.
Within the video there are examples of both S-Cinetone and S-Log3 plus the s709 LUT. So you know which is which I have indicated this is the video. I needed to do this as the two cut together really well. There is no grading as such. The S-Cinetone content is exactly as it came from the camera. The CineEI S-Log3 material was shot at the indicated base ISO and EI, there was no exposure offset. In post production all I did was add the s709 LUT, that’s it, no other corrections.
The video was shot using the Full Frame 6K scan, recording to UHD XAVC-I.
For exposure I used the cameras built in waveform display. When in CineEI I also used the Viewfinder Gamma Display assist function. Viewfinder Gamma assist gives the viewfinder the same look as the 709(800) LUT. What’s great about this is that it works in all modes and at all frame rates. So even when I switched to 2K Full Frame scan and 120fps the look of the image in the viewfinder remained the same and this allowed me to get a great exposure match for the slow motion footage to the normal speed footage.
AUTOFOCUS.
There are some great examples of the way the autofocus works throughout the video. In particular the shot at 0:18 where the face priority mode follows the first two girls that are walking towards the camera, then as they exit the frame switches to the two ladies following behind without any hunting. I could not have done that any better myself. Another great example is at 1:11 where the focus tracks the couple walking towards the camera and once they exit the shot the focus smoothly transitions to the background. One of the nice things about the AF system is you can adjust the speed at which the camera re-focusses and in this case I had slowed it down a bit to give it a more “human” feel.
Even in low light the AF works superbly well. At 1:33 I started on the glass of the ornate arch above the railway station and panned down as two people are walking towards me. The camera took this completely in it’s stride doing a lovely job of shifting the focus from the arch to the two men. Again, I really don’t think I could have done this any better myself.
NOISE.
Also, I am still really impressed by how little noise there is from this camera. Even in the high ISO mode the camera remains clean and the images look great. The low noise levels help the camera to resolve colour and details right down into the deepest shadows. Observe how at 2:06 you can clearly see the different hues of the red roses against the red leather of the car door, even though this is a very dark shot.
The reduction in noise and increase in real sensitivity also helps the super slow motion. Compared to an FS7 I think the 120fps footage from the FX9 looks much better. It seems to be less coarse and less grainy. There is still some aliasing which is unavoidable if you scan the sensor at a lower resolution, but it all looks much better controlled than similar material from an FS7.
DYNAMIC RANGE.
And when there is more light the camera handles this very well too. At 1:07 you can see how well S-Cinetone deals with a very high contrast scene. There are lots of details in the shadows and even though the highlights on the boats are clipped, the way the camera reaches the end of it’s range is very nice and it doesn’t look nasty, it just looks very bright, which it was.
For me the big take-away from this simple shoot was just how easy it is to get good looking images. There was no grading, no messing around trying to get nice skintones. The focus is precise and it doesn’t hunt. The low noise and high sensitivity means you can get good looking shots in most situations. I’m really looking forward to getting my own FX9 as it’s going to make life just that little bit easier for many of my more adventurous shoots.
For more information on the PXW-FX9 click here.
Or take a look at the Sony website.
With Sony Venice X-OCN files to download!
I have been working with Sony’s colour science guru Pablo at the Digital Motion Picture Center at Pinewood, looking at the outer limits of what Sony’s Venice camera can do. A large part of the reason for this is that Pablo is developing some really nice LUT’s for use on dailies or even as a grade starting point (Pablo tells me the LUT’s are finished but he is waiting for approvals and feedback from Japan).
As part of this process we have shot test footage with the Venice camera for ourselves and also looked long and hard at test shots done by other cinematographers. Last week we were able to preview a beta version of the cameras dual ISO modes. This beta firmware allowed us to shoot tests at both 500 ISO and 2500 ISO and the results of both are equally impressive.
I can’t share any of the test footage shot at 2500 ISO at this stage. The firmware is still in it’s early stages and the final version may well perform a little differently (probably better). But I can share some of the footage shot at 500 ISO.
Please remember what we were exploring was the extreme ends of the exposure range. So our little test set was set up with some challenges for the camera rather than trying to make a pretty picture.
We have deep, deep shadows on the right behind the couch and we also have strong highlights coming off the guitar, the film can on the shelves and from the practical lamp in the background. The reds of the cushion on the couch look very different with most Rec-709 cameras as the colors are outside the Rec-709 gamut.
Another aspect of the test was to check the exposure rating. For this I used my Sekonic lightmeter to measure both the incident light and the light reflected by the Kodak grey card. My light meter gave me T4 at 1/48th for 500 ISO and this turned out to be pretty much spot on with what the scopes told us. So straight away we were able to establish that the 500 ISO exposure rating appears to be correct. We also found that when we stopped down by 2.3 stops we got the correct exposure at 2500 ISO, so that too appears to be correctly rated.
Once the base exposure was established we shot at 2 stops over and 2 stops under, so from T2 down to T8 using a Sony 35mm PL prime. We used the XOCN-ST codec as we felt this will be the most widely used codec. When looking at the files do remember that the 16 bit XOCN-ST files are smaller than 10 bit ProResHQ. So these are files that are very easy to manage. There is the option to go up in quality to Sony’s linear raw codec or down to X-OCN LT. XOCN-ST sits in the middle and offers a nice balance between file size and image quality, it being very hard to find any visual difference between this and the larger raw files.
The files I’m providing here are single X-OCN frames. They have not been adjusted in any way, they are just as shot (including being perhaps a touch out of focus). You can view them using the latest version of Sony’s raw viewer software or the latest version of DaVinci Resolve. For the best quality preview, at this time I recommend using Sony’s Raw Viewer to view the clips.
Click here to download these Venice Samples
If you find these files useful please consider buying me a coffee or beer.
Sony are putting together an XDCAM demo reel to show on the Sony booth at IBC. They are looking for examples of great XDCAM footage to include in the reel. The footage should be inspirational, exciting, dramatic, romantic, happy, pretty, colourful. Basically anything eye catching or with a “Wow” factor.
Here is what Sony are asking for:
· 3-5 second emotional clips (the more clips the merrier).
· Tone is emotional (fun, dangerous, could be sad but not too tragic), action, extreme – music on final project will be fast paced, action.
· No political symbols/figures, no blood, no dead people.
· It has to have been shot on a Sony XDCAM camera (and specify which one).
· PMW-100/150/200/300/400/500
· PXW-X180/X160
· PDW-680/700/F800
· These clips should be rights free, these clips will be posted on the various Sony digital channels and might be shown at Sony-run presentations – but they will not be distributed to anyone outside of Sony.
· The clips can either be in MP4 or just a link for submission, and then if we choose to use your footage we’ll come back to you and ask for a higher quality format.
If your footage is chosen to feature in the video you will be eligible to win one of 30 Action Cams up for grabs on a first come first serve basis! (Please note that your footage may still be used after the 30 action cams have been given away. By submitting your footage you will be agreeing to these T&Cs).
As IBC is coming up very fast there is some urgency to get this footage. If you have anything that you wish to submit please send a link to the clip to:
Lauren(DOT)Brogden(AT)eu(DOT)sony(DOT)com
REPLACE (DOT) with . and (AT) with @
I have uploaded a couple of short F55 raw sample for you to play with. The exposure was deliberately pushed to it’s limits on these clips so you can have a go at grading them. Resolve Lite (free) can be used with the footage.
http://www.alisterchapman.com/samples/f55-raw-samples.zip
If you find the footage useful please make a small donation to go towards the cost of hosting the files or buy me a coffee. All donations no matter how small gratefully received.
I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a pre production Sony NEX-FS700 for an evening and of course the one thing I had to check out was the super slow motion function. So my good friend Den Lennie let me shoot from his balcony overlooking the Belagio fountains in Las Vegas. The video speaks for itself really. The slow motion function is incredibly easy to use and I was surprise how well it performed shooting at night at 240 frames per second (1/240th shutter). There are lots of other nice features on the FS700 which I’ll write more about in a later post.
Hi all. Grabed a few clips today with the PMW-F3. You can download the raw BPAV file by clicking here. half a dozen clips, each only a few seconds long, shot at 24p. 170Mb download.
As well as the video clips I have also pulled of a few full resolution frame grabs. Click on the images to see the full frame version.
I have uploaded a further selection of clips from the PMW-350 shot in Norway to YouTube. It’s also on Exposure Room if you want better quality.
I have uploaded a further selection of clips from the PMW-350 shot in Norway to YouTube. It’s also on Exposure Room if you want better quality.
Here’s a quick edit of some of the Aurora footage I managed to grab with the PMW-350 on the 6th of Feb in Karasjok in Northern Norway.