What would you like to see in a HD100/200 TO 35MM transfer test?

[José L. Martínez Díaz]

Hi,

 

I'm about to dp a short feature with the HD100 / 200 with Sgpro adaptor and Nikon lenses.

 

The film will be transfered to 35mm anamorphic (2,40 to 1) at Technicolor, and I managed somehow to get some budget for a 2 mins tests.

 

So, any ideas what should I test to get a good knowledge of the limits of this camera?. I've completed a small list of things I would like to know:

 

- Emulsion test: Macbeth chart, gray card, human skin before a white / black background, two 1k's at 2 meter, 45º. Expose at key and bracketing 6 stops over and under. With fujinon stock lens alone and with the adaptor. I'll try to have an astro to check IRE values, but still learning the damn gizmo.

 

- Filage: Normal and fast moving subjet at 1/48, 1/50, 1/10, etc.

 

- Resolution chart.

 

- Flare: I need to know how the lens behave with sunlight and practicals, how ugly they are, etc.

 

- High fequency / banding / stair -stepping / moirè. Just to know what not to do.

 

- Some interior and exterior test shoot just for the look.

 

- Some 60p slow motion, just for the shake of it...

 

Anything I'm missing, anything senseless.

 

All opinions appreciated. Perhaps I could scan the negative and publish it somehow, just for info.

 

Cheers,

 

Jose

[Michael Nash]

Detail settings. I just saw a large HD projection of a feature I shot last year with the HD100 & 110, and the detail was very obvious on the large screen. In my case the film was a "mockumentary" designed to look like it was shot on video, so I didn't make any attempt to hide the detail in camera. But at "zero" it's very obvious.

 

Test your lenses against each other also. In my film we used the stock lens on both cameras but one had a wide-angle adapter, and to me that camera was noticeably softer and less contrasty. With an SG Pro and still lenses, you're probably going to introduce a lot of contrast and color shifts. Test the aperture combinations of the taking lens + camera lens to find the sweet spot where artifacts like diffusion and contrast loss are minimum.

 

Personally I think it sounds like your whole image is going to end up looking pretty soft. It's only a 720 line camera to begin with, plus a ground-glass type adapter, then cropped down to only 540 lines or so. I'd try to do some resolutions tests to see how much detail the camera can actually resolve, and how wide you can really make your shots before detail starts to look like mush on a large screen.

 

With your "emulsion test" you'll want to find the gamma and matrix settings that give you the look you want -- don't just test the camera's settings straight out of the box. The JVC's tend to crush the shadow detail and oversaturate the reds in my experience. Test the black stretch and color saturation to find a look that works for you.

[Thomas James]

It's true that a 1280x720p camera cannot compete with the resolution of a 2k or 4k digital cinema camera. However a lot of HD cameras claim full high definition 1080p but really only offer you 960x540 or 960x1080 chips that rely on pixel shifting to output 1080p. And even the HDV cameras that do give you the full 1080 pixel raster only output in a 1080F mode. I'm not saying that these cameras are bad but I really doubt that they offer much of an improvement over a 720p camera. I think to get higher resolution you will have to move on up to a camera that offers half inch chips.