Tyler Purcell

Robin, please back off. You need to stop being so close and tight to your Sony cameras. I have my reasons for not liking Sony cameras, especially the current fleet. You don't have to constantly defend your purchase decision with me. I don't own one, but then again I would never recommend one to anyone, ever. I have enough 4k proof right here for those people to see and understand. It's hard to transmit 10 bit 444 4k over the internet and for you to see it on a calibrated monitor on your side. So lets just say, since my job is to make what you shoot look good, that perhaps I have more insight to what each of these cameras does. Again, in perfect lighting, without any true dynamics, what you shoot with is down to glass more then anything else. When you get out of that world, when you truly run and gun, that's when these cameras show their true colors. I wrote a diatribe on the other thread, maybe you'll understand more where I come from. I also never said the material I work with is unusable. I said it requires a lot of re-working and the net result is noisy/grainy all the time. I think it's unfathomable that all the cinematographers, guys who have shot for 30+ years, don't know what they're doing. This is why I tend to blame the camera, especially since it's almost ALWAYS Sony cameras that are the problem. Since I'm an editor and colorist for hire, I've worked with a lot of cameras.

I'm discussing literally dozens of projects, shot over at least 6 years, none of which I've shot. Yes, this year I've had more experiences using modern 4k MPEG cameras, but I stay away from them based on the following experiences: Unlike your job, MY job is to make the show. I take the footage you shoot and put together what the audience see's and hears. Most of the time I work in Avid and color with Symphony/DaVinci. My workflows are industry standard, based on my editorial experiences working at various top post houses in Hollywood. So what I see is what I know. I'm not looking at a viewfinder and saying the shot is good. I'm not looking at a monitor on set and saying the shot is good. I'm not looking at a meter and saying shot is good. I'm looking at the final output camera file and having to match that file to other material, which in most cases is shot by the same cinematographer. This requires me to "tweak" the shot material in order for it to be a match. What I've learned over the years is based on my experience in post, more then it is a perfect setting on set, where you aren't seeing the actual file matched against maybe 600 shots that will compile the final project. All you know is what you're shooting at that very moment, you don't know how it will look in the back end, but I do. Armed with that knowledge and frustration when coloring, trying to meet clients expectations, I've formed my opinion on this matter. Mind you, I work A LOT with RED and Alexa cameras as well. I also shoot quite a bit with Pro Res cameras, like the one's I own. I use the same workflow with the Pro Res material and I'm happy to say, I rarely have the same issues. Yes there are times when poop happens, like the massive documentary project I took on earlier this year, which was under exposed by at least 3 stops and shot with a Red Epic. It took me days to come up with a workable solution that could be applied to all shots and even then, I will have to re-color once the client is done editing. I also don't like swiss army knife products at all. I'd say the only thing I own that's like that is my iPhone, it does a lot. All of my cameras have one function. All of my lenses do as well. This is probably why I dislike most digital cameras. My personal digital camera, the Blackmagic Pocket camera, looks fantastic for a $1000 body with $600 piece of glass. In the color suite, I find coloring my pocket cameras to be a piece of cake. I rarely have problems and when I do, it's because I was running and gunning on location and didn't have the time to make it better. I've pushed my pocket cameras where the MPEG cameras fall apart and far greater. Not saying the pocket camera has a better imager per say, just saying when it comes to noise levels and how much luminance and chrominance is in each frame. This goes for the Alexa as well, it's just an amazing looking camera right out of the box, that doesn't require much tweaking to make look awesome. Well anything looks good streaming 8 bit 4:2:0 50Mbps MPEG. Ohh wait, that's ALL forms of media delivered to the home; internet, satellite, cable, broadcast. So again, how do YOU know what it actually looks like? I've seen many documentaries and narratives shot with XAVC cameras and they always look like ENG cameras from the 90's. Lots of motion blur, lots of clipped highlights and plenty of noise. Most people use cameras like the FS7 due to it's high ISO setting, so that doesn't help either. I could care less if the audience can see in the dark, I'd rather have less noise on screen. I proved a few months ago how bad the 50Mbps Long GOP codec is... when I'm done with these two films, I will gladly post raw material in 4k for you to see how noisy and how much of a pain it's been to work with the FS7.

I never said XAVC is longGOP. I'd be glad to show you samples of how poor the XAVC codec is when you push it. I just can't do that right now... too busy editing.

Yes, I know and I never mentioned XDCAM anywhere. I'm specifically talking and mentioned many times iFrame, which as you well know is XAVC. Dude, I shot and serviced Sony for over a decade. I can say anything I want about them.

I have never worked with a good cinematographer. Maybe I'm just too picky.

Right, but that is a worthless codec that doesn't work for anyone but 1080p customers watching on a small television. I ignore it's existence because it's not 2005 anymore. That codec should have died off when the XDCAM optical format died in 2010 ish.

I said iFrame many times.

XAVC IS MPEG!!!!!

XAVC is MPEG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't have problems with stuff I've shot. I have problems with stuff OTHER people have shot. 3rd party companies are forced to make special stuff for Sony cameras.

Sorry, I was referencing many different cameras at the same time.

The cameras I've been talking about record out of the box in iFrame MPEG. Yes, the FS7 and F5 both have hardware updates to allow additional codec's. I've only seen people equip their cameras with those upgrades on rare occasions. I just used an FS7 with the Pro Res card, but only because I was like "HOLY poop" it was a unicorn in the wild! When I'm shooting, I work at a the lowest ISO I can and I will light more to compensate. However, I will still underexpose a tiny bit, to protect highlights. With film, I also work at the lowest ISO I can, but I over expose to that particular ISO, but not by much.

I don't use a meter when shooting digitally, I use a histogram and zebra set at 70. So I'm just use to protecting my highlights, probably a bit more then most people. "LOG" doesn't make enough of a difference. It actually makes the MPEG noise much stronger because it decreases the signal to noise ratio. I've worked quite a bit with raw recently, just to keep myself up to date on the coloring aspects of it. Even with RAW, I'd rather use a lower ISO and under expose a tiny bit, just when the 70% zebra's are starting to show up, that's the cap of my highlights. So I ignore the cameras native ISO rating and shoot like film. This gives less grain/noise, even when you punch it up. This trick works flawlessly on every camera I've worked with, outside of Sony. The Sony cameras don't like it, but then again, I despise Sony. I'll say this much, the C300MKII stuff I shot, looks perfect, with zero grain/artifacts. Yet the stuff our "cinematographer" shot has been noisy, he shot 2000 ISO outside in broad daylight with 1/64 ND. With film, I work just the opposite, I use a meter and I saturate the living crap out of it because I know there will be data in the highlights no matter what. I generally run a full stop over exposed on film, sometimes even setting my meter to compensate. Obviously there are occasions when you don't want that look, but generally I prefer the "pop" look it delivers.

I used Cinelab for years and never once had an issue. Love'em! :)

Yep, they sure are! You do have to push them a tiny bit in order to reduce the noise, that's 100% accurate. The only problem is when you do that, you're limiting how much excess range you have. This is why a camera that isn't noisy, where you CAN underexpose a tiny bit to retain better highlight levels, will be a lot better. This is for sure one the reasons I discount Sony cameras... that AND the cost v features... they tend to be expensive for what they are, thanks to the proprietary accessories.

I'll say this much, I think seeing a lens wide open is far more important then a lens closed down. It really tells you how good the glass is. As David points out, glass becomes more similar when stopped down. The need for good/high speed glass is really only warranted when near to all the way open. Whenever I do a shoot, first thing I do is test lenses all the way open and figure out how much they can be pushed. Looking forward to seeing the test! Thanks for sharing. :)

I'm coloring a show right now that's mixed FS7 and A7SMKII. We shot SLog2 with both cameras and I made a home-made LUT for the A7SMKII because the cinematographer's exposure was all over the map. I'm pretty happy with the results, but its been a lot of work and it's just talking heads. I can't imagine dealing with the sun or anything outside of a closed environment with a larger dynamic range camera is necessary. The FS7 material looks MUCH better and the F5 in my opinion is TWICE the quality of the FS7. We did some tests with an external recorder and one of the shots in the final project is Pro Res origination. Honestly, it was the worst looking of the shots, don't know why, but it needed the most work and has the most noise. Not sure if the HDMI output is noisy or not, but perhaps it is. Honestly it really depends on how you shoot it, that's going to be the key. I've done quite a bit of A7SMKII work recently for one of my clients and in certain limited dynamic range situations, the camera looks OK. Where it fails in my view is it's lack of dynamic range and it's just not very colorful. Almost all of my corrections include heavy saturation gains, even on top of the LUT. The color science of the F5 is MUCH better, it's a very good looking camera. I've colored lots of F5 material, most of it recorded in Pro Res and even when you underexpose, you can get something out of it. Over exposing on ANY Sony camera is death to your shot, they have very little tolerance compared to the more "cinema" specific cameras like the Alexa SXS and Red Dragon. I personally don't think you can match'em very well, even if you use the same glass.

More and more, people are reverting back to separate system sound, thanks to the advent of lower-cost external recorders. In fact, every single show I've been on this year has been double system sound, first time in my entire career. I'm a huge advocate of single system sound, but it appears the market is changing again. When I refer to "run and gun" I'm using using it as a general term that refers to a single camera unit, which is easy for one person to use. I also like to use the term "ENG" because originally the "all in one" camera was designed for that purpose and to this day, the external basic design hasn't varied much. Yes, manufacturers put their own personal touches on the cameras, but anyone who picks up a different brand's camera, should be able to make it work quick, unlike today's cinema cameras, which are so heavily menu driven. I also do think, if you're spending money on a real production, you'd better make it for a 70ft screen because that's where things are headed, that's what netflix delivery is already requesting. They already have higher standards then our cinemas!

It is when you add the extension box to the back, which I feel is critical to making that camera look decent, thanks to the addition of "proper" codec's. I mean lets face it, the only people buying camera's with XLR inputs, built in filter wheel and extremely limited MPEG recording, are people doing run and gun productions, which is in the same world as ENG in my opinion. The FS7 works fine with static talking heads and running around in a war zone, neither one of which is being blown up to a 70+ ft wide screen. "Cinema" cameras are an entirely different animal. Some cameras like the F5 and F55, are a hybrid between ENG and Cinema. However, when you shoot "cinema" you really need RAW or extremely high quality, full bandwidth recording, like Pro Res XQ as mostly all products made for cinema are heavily manipulated in post and need that bandwidth. Coloring the FS7 and C300MKII stuff (with native codecs) is a lesson in futility. Might as well be wearing a straight jacket and coloring with my nose.

Storyboards are great if you're an artist. If you aren't, then it's almost better to have extremely detailed notes of each shot so when you get to set, you understand how things are going to flow.

Yea, I'd totally do the Sorkin class. Tho I have a feeling, the level of education is probably low. Nobody is going to give away their trade secrets.

The FS7 is a fine ENG camera for 1080p broadcast stuff. It's just not very good outside of that world. It's a swiss army knife that does everything, but nothing very well. Even with the RAW/Pro Res board, it's still pretty noisy and has all the standard Sony highlight clipping issues. Having just shot two pretty large projects back to back, one on the C300MKII and one on the FS7 with Pro Res board, I vastly prefer the C300MKII. It has a superior image, uses standard CF cards, doesn't destroy batteries and is a lot smaller. The FS7 is a better ENG camera, but for narrative, the C300MKII beats it, even with iFrame MPEG capture.

What kills me about Canon is they have pretty good color science and excellent imagers. Yet they're hindered by poor electronics, mid-grade codec's and over-all poor design. Personally, I'd rather have 2/3" 3xCCD camera with a B4 mount, all the codecs in the world in a big box that goes on your shoulder, then a design that failed in the film camera days (holding the camera in front of you), with all the issues talked about above.

Right, but there are FAR better 1080P cameras.

Canon still hasn't woken up to the fact, they're not good at making video cameras. Everything they make that shoots moving images, is substandard in one regard, all the way back to their first video cameras. They always skimp on something critical and it leaves their cameras lacking compared to the competition. It's true that all cameras within the consumer price bracket, must skimp on something. Yet, the 30 some odd years Canon has been making consumer video cameras, they haven't yet learned what's important. What frustrates me is that Canon is willing to re-tool the entire factory to make a new body, which is an astronomical cost. Yet, they are unwilling to use a better processor, constantly resorting to their own in-house Digic processor, which I've always disliked. Canon has purposely crippled this new cameras abilities so people will be pushed towards the super expensive and ultra-useless MPEG disaster C series. I understand if Canon had a phenomenal video camera and didn't want to share technology. They simply don't have that, so the underwhelming C series is considered the highest tech they have, so the still cameras must have "worse" tech. So now, they push out yet another camera that's still 3 years behind its competitors on the video side. Heck, it's even behind on the still side, 30MP is nothing in todays word.

Ok cool, yea sounds like your plan is solid. I always run an AC on my film shoots because it's nice to have someone clean stuff, load magazines and do the camera logs. So where a 3rd camera is nice to have, I'll just throw a competent AC on it. This gives them some seat time and I've found the AC's I've worked with, do a pretty good job operating because it's usually where they want to be, so they take extra care. So if you do have an AC, that's a good place to put them, on those occasions where a 3rd camera is necessary. Otherwise, like you said, run 2 cameras most of the time. As the cinematographer, it's nice to be looking through the critical lens at all times on a film shoot.