Matt Gorrie

Thanks Shaun, I thought that was the case regarding the S for selectable frame rates... We're in PAL land and not going to do a film out or anything like that so we'll be shooting at 25PsF and for high speed, we'll just ramp it up to S50P. Mitch, thanks for your answers too (at least you've bench tested the camera!). It will be nice to use the optical ND's in 1 stop increments, so using the Electronic 5600K option sounds like a good idea. I will keep in mind the notion of not mixing variable speed shots on the same tape, but we could get stuck if our stock runs low. A colleague of mine was recently at a Post house where they were having all sorts of trouble locking their deck up to variable speed stuff shot with the F23. They said the material was going from 59.94 to 60 and all over the place and they couldn't get it to digitise. Also they had problems grading the material that was captured with the S-log. Apparently they said that there wasn't enough chroma information in the image to bring it back to a natural look without introducing a lot of noise. Though they were trying to grade in Shake or After Effects, not a true grading suite. A guy from Sony came out and told them they should have shot 709 linear... don't know why, if they intended on grading it? Thanks for the tip on the homemade shoulder pad too, I'll try and whip one up tonight. Matt

I'm shooting a short with the F23 this weekend and due to scheduling conflicts and what not I wont get a chance to go over the camera beforehand or do any testing. This will be the first time I've shot with this camera. I have a few questions which I hope some of my learned colleagues here may be able to help me out with. For starters I was going to use one of Steve Shaw's (Digital Praxis) log curves with the camera instead of the standard Sony S-log curve. With regards to this does anyone who has used the camera think there will be a problem using the "Moni Gamma Enable" function which applies a fixed gamma (R709) to the monitor output for viewing "corrected" images on set? Also, when shooting in log mode, should I set my zebra's to something other than the usual 65-70% for Caucasian skin tones, or would I be better off just using my light meter and monitor/wfm? I am planning to shoot 4:2:2 for this project due to budget constraints and because some of the shots will be high speed. I'm guessing that as I'm not doing any green screen or comp work the hit from dropping down from 4:4:4 will be negligible, any comments? With regards to color correction, I see in the manual the user has the option to use the optical filter wheel to set the camera to 5600K or to set it electronically, why would one use the electronic method? Can someone explain to me the difference between S25PsF and 25PsF and so on for the other standard shooting speeds? Does the S in front of the frame rate have something to do with selectable frame rates, and how does this impact on shooting higher speed footage? Also does anyone know if variable speed footage can be mixed on the same tape and if I need to change the settings on the F23 and the SRW-1 when adjusting the speed? Finally, on a more mechanical note... any suggestions for a home made shoulder pad for these things? Wish I had some time to test these ideas out for myself beforehand! Regards Matt

There's something about those old Star trek movies that takes me to a happy place... I think the anamorphic lens works in some what the same way. That "analogue" distortion of the backgrounds and highlights, that almost use to be part of the story. I agree with you David, that it would be nice to see some one make a set 1.33x lens, and I'm sure they will some time soon. Hopefully they'll still retain some of the charm of those older lenses - another tool to help us with the pristine images coming out of some of these new cameras (though we wont admit to anyone that that's what we're doing, especially the fx guys), oh and cant forget the wider aspect ratio we'll get too of course.