Panavision Genesis

[Tenolian Bell]

Some people have noted the slight difference in color on the purple flowers.  This really doesn't mean much, since both elements went thru digital color correction.  They could probably go back to cc and make them match better.

The issue isn't so much about technical color gamut and what is acceptable with in color space, its more about how that color feels and does it match the feel of the scene.

 

Most of the time you wouldn't want purple reproduced in that way, and few would want to go through the trouble of correcting it later, if there were an option that you didn't have to in the first place.

 

What if you were shooting a field of flowers, or the director wanted the actress to wear a purple dress that reminds her that has some significance to the character or whatever, we generally wouldn't want to go through a whole film correcting that dress.

 

Vision 2 stocks have been engineered to give us neutral color and neutral skin tone. Which much of the time is the desired look. I would want a digital system being offered as an alternative to film to offer me the same option.

 

Even if you were going for saturated colors or an off kilter look, you want to know where neutral is.

[Jason Rodriguez]

What's the difference between color-correcting a purple dress and adding power-windows all the time?

 

From a demo I saw at NAB of Lustre and the work they did on Master and Commander, they tweaked every scene with a lot of different windows, etc., so CC'ing a dress wouldn't have been much of an additional workflow cost.

 

Also if the genesis has a matrix like the other Sony cameras, then I'm sure you can set Purple to whatever you want.

[Rob Belics]

As for the film being "dumbed down" to match Genesis, I doubt it. It doesn't look that way to me.

Well, if you scan 35mm film to digital then it's dumbed down. Sometimes the only way to color correct or manipulate an image is through a DI. Sometimes an optical correction makes it worse but, in any case, a scan is dumbing down.

[Sam Wells]

What if you were shooting a field of flowers, or the director wanted the actress to wear a purple dress that reminds her that has some significance to the character or whatever, we generally wouldn't want to go through a whole film correcting that dress.

You in fact might "go through a whole film" in that fabrics can fluoress, "purple flowers" can reflect into the UV etc

 

I don't see any argument here pro or con re Genesis

 

-Sam

[John Sprung]

The main difference between this camera and F950 is a larger CCD chip = shallower DOF. No major breakthrough.

 

Does anyone know if you could use the new Sony SRW1 with The Viper?

 

Pete

The very much larger CCD is definitely not an easy thing to make. I guess it's just a matter of opinion how important DOF is, but getting it back to a comfortable place is important to me. Nominal 2/3" CCD's require an image that's actually in between the size of 16mm and Super-8. Making lenses to produce a decent image for that tiny chip is extremely difficult. It should be a no-brainer to leverage the world wide investment in high quality lenses for 35mm flim.

 

Getting rid of the prism block removes another significant restraint or two in lens design. You can put the back element on a film camera or single chip camera closer to the focal plane because you don't have that optical block in the way. 3CCD cameras have a brick wall at f/1.45 because of the block. Separation is a technique that seems to show up early in the development of an imaging technology, to be replaced later by single-surface methods. We saw this in still photography, in three strip Technicolor, and now in digital.

 

Anyhow, to me this is a significant advance over all the nominal 2/3" 3CCD technology.

 

We had a pilot that shot with the Viper cabled to a rack-mounted SR recorder, so that could be done with the little SRW1. Putting it on-board would just be a bunch of bracketry and adapters, just a matter of getting the engineers to do it. The tragedy of the Viper is that a reasonable way to record its output finally showed up, but attached to a camera that renders it obsolete.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[John Sprung]

> Most of the time you wouldn't want purple reproduced in that way,

 

True, the purple flowers do pop out severely. I wouldn't want that unless the purple object were important to a story point or the punchline of a joke. In the test I saw, they grab your eye on both film and digital. In both cases, I'd want to fix them in post. Either that or just frame the damn things out in the first place. (But for this test, they clearly wanted them in.)

 

They're especially an issue in this test because they're one of very few places where you can pick out a JND.

 

> and few would want to go through the trouble of correcting it later, if there were an option that you didn't have to in the first place.

 

I really don't like the idea of burning production time on messing with internal camera tweaks, and the risk of not getting it un-tweaked correctly for the next setup and the rest of the day. But for some productions, I spoze you could go that route on Genesis. On film, you'd have to send a note to telecine to take the curse off those flowers.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Filip Plesha]

Bob

 

I wouldn't call every scan a "dumbing down"

Surely the usual 2K 10-bit is dumbing down, but film IS scannable.

It's not like you can never scan film and not loose the qualitty.

 

Remember how many times you have seen beautifull phographs printed

in catalogues or some other high-end print? They have all been made with

drum scanners. And those printed images look awsome, so organic so real,

just like a slide transperecy on a light table. Film is scanable. I supose that a million dollar cine film scanner can match the qualitty of a drum scanner even though it is CCD based. (for that money it better)

 

the problem is how much space and time you are willing to use.

If you work at 4K-6K using 14-bit files surely you will get wonderfull images

that are not "dumbed down" like you say.

 

Digital technology is not the problem on its own, the limited use of its unlimited potential is the problem we are facing these years.

[Mark Allen]

wow, just read 13 pages of this forum... and I have one major question...Has there been any information released about what this camera will cost (to buy and/or rent) and what its availability will be?

 

(I tried to look on www.panavision.com and was shocked at how low tech and empty their website is.)

[Mike Brennan]

"Has there been any information released about what this camera will cost (to buy and/or rent) and what its availability will be?"

 

September October for rental.

No offical word if they will sell it.

They have to come in at under $3000 a day to compete with Dalsa.

SRW rental cost may be between $400-$700 a day so it would leave $2k for the camera.

 

Sony are unlikely to make their money back on this 1st incarnation of this camera, they will on the SR format.

 

Only buy it if they can give you contract for the option to trade up to a Mark 2.

I suspect/guess that Genisis will be proof of concept (proved by Panavision rentals over the course of 2 years) then next improved camera will appear and be available for sale.

 

Over time they have an opportunity to develop a killer digital cinematography rental company using Panavison as the base, but I suspect this is a hard concept for a "box shifting" company to get to grips with.

 

 

 

Mike Brennan

[Rob Belics]

November 1 is the target date for rental of the Dalsa. Did not notice any "for sale" listing.

 

Panavision does not sell cameras, only rents.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> really don't like the idea of burning production time on messing with internal

> camera tweaks, and the risk of not getting it un-tweaked correctly for the next

> setup and the rest of the day

 

If this is a concern, I hate to imagine how you deal with the uncertainty of film! I mean crikey, these are menu settings; you look at the menu and check to see if they're set correctly, and you know instantly if it is wrong in any case. People really will come up with any objection...

 

Phil

[Mike Brennan]

"Panavision does not sell cameras, only rents."

 

The Genisis was made by a new company setup by Sony/Panavision and ????

to research and make the prototype. Company is called something like "DHD" Don't quot me on the exact name as it probably isn't correct.

 

So question is does "DHD" sell cameras.

 

I guess Sony would own +51% of "DHD" anyway!

 

 

Mike Brennan

[John Sprung]

They have to come in at under $3000 a day to compete with Dalsa.

> They have to come in at under $3000 a day to compete with Dalsa.

 

Not really. Dalsa was at the show, too. They don't have a production camera. They don't even have a prototype. What they have is an engineering demonstration of principle unit.

 

It's roughly the size and shape of the front half of a BNCR. It has to be cabled to an offboard rack of electronics. They put lenses intended for 35mm film on it, and get severe vignetting -- both sides, not just the corners -- because their chip is actually too big. Lenses from the 65/70 system should work on it.

 

The Panavision Genesis could cost more to rent and less to use just because it's easier to use. When you work 18 hour days and 6 day weeks, ergoromics matter a lot. Time is money.

 

Panavision's first competition will likely be the Arri D-20. They weren't at CineGear, but they showed some tests at HPA in February.

 

Edit: Oops, I was wrong. I remember now that Arri was at CineGear with some nice new film cameras. It was just that they didn't bring the D-20.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[John Sprung]

I hate to imagine how you deal with the uncertainty of film!

Uncertainty? What uncertainty? Once in a blue moon you'd get a major screwup like a mis-labeled short end, and you're shooting 45 when you thought you had 98. I like the Plus-8 gear where they've added those latched clear plastic covers. You can see how things are set, and be confident that nothing has been touched by accident -- or will get touched by accident.

 

The more important point is that it makes no sense for me to be tweaking the color of the purple flowers while the cast and crew are on the clock, if it could be done in post. It's actually kinda rude in addition to being wasteful. Time is money, but the cost of time is variable. As a general principle, complexity should migrate away from high cost time to low cost time.

 

 

-- J.S.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> Uncertainty? What uncertainty?

 

The fact that no matter what happens you won't know about it for at least a day. This to me has to be the ultimate film switchoff. Director: "Okay, did we get that?" DP: "I dunno, ask me tomorrow/next week/in three months." Terrifying.

 

Phil

[John Sprung]

The fact that no matter what happens you won't know about it for at least a day.

Ah, but with film there are really only two possible outcomes:

 

Either it's fine, or you blame it on the lab. ;-)

 

Seriously, though, knowing what you have on film is a skill that you develop with experience. A few months working as an assistant and going to dailies, and you pretty much have it. A few more years of the same, and by the time you move up to DP it's as much a part of you as knowing how to breathe.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Filip Plesha]

I'm not a DP, but as a photographer I think I can indentify with this regarding "knowing what you did get"...

 

If you are experienced and do your job right, the only thing that can go wrong

is that your equipment is not functioning right, the film is not properly manufactured (it never happened to me, even for non-tested consumer film),

or the lab does something wrong.

 

What else can go wrong. Wrong exposure? Well as a DP, a man should know better than to miss the wanted exposure.

[Mattias Ohlson]

Let me see if I get this right , the Genesis has a 12 Megapixel rgb non bayer pattern sensor and should be able to output 4k but only saves 2k in a tape format.

 

How does this compare with the highest format that Dalsa´s camera can produce?

 

It has been said in this thread that this camera can grow in capacity in the future with the 12M pixel sensor in mind. Does this mean we will eventually see Genesis be able to store in format with more information than that of today?

[David Mullen ASC]

Basically the folks at Panavision have decided to couple the Genesis with the simplest method these days of recording 4:4:4 HD, the HDCAM-SR recorder -- so this is limiting the image to 1920 x 1080 pixels after recording.

 

The Dalsa is more open-ended and will put out an uncompressed image that is 8MP, I believe (4000 x 2000?), but with a Bayer filter, so in reality, it's not "4K" for all colors (but then, neither is the Genesis.) In practical reality, I'd expect something more on par with 2K to 3K resolution. Now to keep things simple, one could connect the Dalsa to an HDCAM-SR recorder and get 4:4:4 HD but only at 1920 x 1080.

 

As for connecting the Genesis to something that can recording greater resolution in real time, I don't know if Panavision's set-up allows that. It would probably limit you to 24 fps though...

 

I seem to recall that de-matrixing the Bayer-filtered signal from the Dalsa was pretty time-consuming. How is the Genesis doing this? In real time as it goes to the HDCAM-SR recorder?

[Tenolian Bell]

I seem to recall that de-matrixing the Bayer-filtered signal from the Dalsa was pretty time-consuming. How is the Genesis doing this? In real time as it goes to the HDCAM-SR recorder?

 

The Genesis isn't using bayer filters. The Panavision guys said it was a true RGB chip.

But wouldn't give any more detail on how it worked.

[Eric Steelberg ASC]

He didn't have any more details but my rep at PV said that the Genesis doesn't need Bayer filtering. When I asked how that was possible I was told something about a new kind of RGB chip and was pretty vague beyond that.

 

At this point it's beyond my technical knowledge to understand it more than that. Maybe one of you can make sense out of it.

 

 

And to answer a couple of the other posts:

 

PV will NOT ever sell it. They will continue to improve the camera but are largely waiting on Sony to develop a portable recording format which can handle the potential of the immense data the camera body (chip) can provide. They have future proofed the camera for a while by having the ability to increase the resolution as technology progresses.

 

I asked if Sony was allowed to use the technology invented in this camera with PV for their own Sony branded camera and was not given an answer. Regardless, the Genesis will be the way to go as it has been developed in conjunction with the wishes of cinematographers by one of the top two movie camera companies.

 

My Opinion:

If I had to guess, Sony will put out an improved ENG style HD camera with a 2/3 or 1" 4k chip in SR format. It's not in their interest now to try and create a "full frame" 12mp chip camera to compete with Genesis. Remember that they need to market their camera for ENG type field use, a market not suited for the Genesis and 35mm primes.

[Mattias Ohlson]

How long will it take to develop a storage system capable of recording 4k data at super high bit rates from the 12 Mega pixel sensor in Genesis?

 

For example for Dalsa

4k, 16bit , 24p and with lossless compression is about 400MB/s

I am sure some of you would like to try 48p one day -> 800MB/s

The Dalsa sensor can operate up to 60fps in the future according to their home page.

 

Thus is there any system on the horizon that can record 1000MB/s? Are we talking 5 years for this to be possible or can it happen faster?

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

This Bayer/RGB thing is interesting. Either it's a three chip block, which it isn't; it's a Bayer filtered CCD or some variant (which is what I suspect, and they're simply weasel-wording their way around it) ; or they've found a way to stack transparent CCD pixels. And if they've found a way to do that, then we can look forward to a quantum leap in the quality of video imaging over the next few years as this massive technological innovation takes effect.

 

However, I find it much more likely that they simply laid out the RGB filters slightly differently and called it something other than Bayer, thus allowing them to claim "it isn't Bayer."

 

Phil

[John Pytlak RIP]

A "Bayer" filter would be any color imaging array covered by the Kodak patent:

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

United States Patent  3,971,065 

Bayer  July 20, 1976 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Color imaging array

 

 

Abstract

A sensing array for color imaging includes individual luminance- and chrominance-sensitive elements that are so intermixed that each type of element (i.e., according to sensitivity characteristics) occurs in a repeated pattern with luminance elements dominating the array. Preferably, luminance elements occur at every other element position to provide a relatively high frequency sampling pattern which is uniform in two perpendicular directions (e.g., horizontal and vertical). The chrominance patterns are interlaid therewith and fill the remaining element positions to provide relatively lower frequencies of sampling. In a presently preferred implementation, a mosaic of selectively transmissive filters is superposed in registration with a solid state imaging array having a broad range of light sensitivity, the distribution of filter types in the mosaic being in accordance with the above-described patterns.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inventors:  Bayer; Bryce E. (Rochester, NY) 

Assignee:  Eastman Kodak Company (Rochester, NY) 

Appl. No.:  555477

Filed:  March 5, 1975

 

Kodak inventor Bryce Bayer had several other significant patents related to digital imaging and image processing.

[John Sprung]

What do you think of the Foveon multi-layer single chip technology? Here's their web site:

 

http://www.foveon.com/X3_tech.html

 

Could it be that Panavision/Sony have licensed this, or invented another way to do single surface full color?

 

 

 

-- J.S.