Simon Wyndham

No, not true. It wouldn't be 16:9 if it was based on square pixels, but it isn't. It has a pixel aspect of 1.33. HDCAM SR records the full raster 1920 x 1080. However HDCAM does not. Its the same with the Varicam. 1280 downsampled to 960.

You could try changing the DCC mode to FIX in the menu. That way if the switch is accidentally knocked the knee will be in a fixed positon rather than changing all the time.

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I think it could be the DCC. Sounds like the XDCAM HD cameras. The DCC on those can't be trusted as they continually cause 'jumps' in brightness in areas of the picture, even if things aren't changing too much.

Hmm Weird. It is linked to from the updates on my homepage. Try this one http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/phpBB2/

Hi Jac, I don't want to tread too much on other forum owners toes. http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/phpbb2 I was tempted to call them "Just another load of camera forums"! I hope some people find them useful even though some of the subjects might be similar to other places. I am concious of appearing to compete with others though, when in fact I have no intention of competing with great places like this and DVinfo etc. So I hope the mods won't mind me posting that link.

Well, if someone wants a DSR-450 forum, I've just set one up!

Don't forget Tim that some owners of 350's might also be the directors of whatever they are producing when it comes to smaller productions. I produce, dorect, and shoot my own documentaries. And I have been searching for a good in-camera look for a while. Best advice I think I could give would be to get a DSC chart (doesn't have to be the top of the line one), and something like Vidscope (www.vidscope.com) which is an inexpensive realtime software scope monitor, and setup the baseline look for your camera and then go from there. Panasonic have some downloadable looks for the SDX900. It would be cool if there was a website repository of scope overlays for various looks so that people could recreate them, or as close as possible, using whatever camera model they own and a waveform/vectorscope. Far more useful than Scene File downloads.

The STD gamma on the XDCAM HD's is fairly linear with a hard white clip. The contrast range you can capture with STD is quite limited. The Cine gammas capture a much higher contrast range and all have a nice highlight roll-off. Cine 2 captures the widest range (400% range I think), and naturally rolls off before 100ire. It gives very flat look that needs correcting in post. But you will be amazed at how good it is when you are faced with an interior shot against a bright window! The other Cine gammas go above 100ire and capture less of the range the CCD's are capable of. Of these Cine 4 is the closest in look to the STD gamma, but gives you just a bit extra range to work with and a nice highlight roll-off. Cine 1 is a good average one to use. It stretches the mid-tones less than Cine 2 but more than the others. Cine 3 gives a subtle stretch to the mid-tones. So you could say that Cine2 is the one you want to use for maximum range with a post grading process for filmlook (combined with proper detail and aperture correction setup), Cine 4 is good for normal shooting. Looking at the curves I would NOT recommend that you mess around with the knee and knee slope with Cine 2. From what I can tell it is already giving you the maximum contrast range the CCD's are capable. I would also be hesitant to use DCC with this (the DCC on the XDCAM HD tends to 'jump' mid-shot anyway, so best to leave it off).

Are you sure? AFAIK the 900 is 1920x1080. Its just that what gets laid down to tape is 1440x1080.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp034.shtml

Not sure how accurate this sort of thing is really. But this thread is kind of flying in the face of the other thread in the SDX900 forum asking the same question about that camera. The SDX is more sensitive than the PDW5xx series.

I would imagine that the PDW series would be the same as the 450. The SDI card for the PDW's is an add in card that costs a fair bit, so I would hope that at those prices it wouldn't just upconvert. Peter, have you any examples of the SDI out from the 450 compared to the standard recording?

Hi all, I found using the Bonsai a bit awkward. Although for studio based setups it might be a more practical solution. Much of the stuff I do is on the move, so having to carry an extra piece of equipment with me wouldn't be too practical. I also found the menus to be not very user friendly. They may have made improvements though. One thing I am wondering about though is the quality of the SDI from the 510 and 450, and indeed the 530. Initially I was told that the info comes straight from the camera head subject to 4:2:2 colour sampling. However we now know that with the XDCAM HD cameras the output from the SDI port on the 350 is chroma upsampled from 4:2:0. In my tests with the Bonsai Drive I was not that overwhelmed with the output, and I am now starting to think that perhaps the output from the SDI port on the standard def cameras is also upsampled. I shall try to find out if this is true or not. But I would have expected finer edges than those shown.

Good to hear you're liking your new camera Ralph! See what I mean about it producing a detailed picture with the detail off? :)

For the larger ENG cameras a lot depends on what gamma setting is chosen. The DSR450 for example has a number of different gammas to choose from. Most of these do not contain blacks at 0 ire. Instead they are slightly lifted. I always tune the picture in post to get the blacks kissing the 0ire line, and the whitest whites just touching the 100 ire line. I have yet to come across footage from any camera that couldn't do with at least some tweaking.

Lifted blacks are okay if you are going through post grading. But I woudn't use them as final release footage. They can simply look too milky. Remember that although being able to see every detail in a persons jacket is the best picture technically. Aesthetically or artistically it may not be the case. A technically 'correct' picture is never normally the best to look at, nor the one many people prefer.

Hmm. http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/video...s_nattress.html

You 450 owners are lucky. To get the service menu on the 510 requires opening up the camera and flipping a tiny little dipswtich.

They already have. http://tinyurl.com/ahntm Odd though that it has progressive CCD's, but no progressive scan shooting option!

Sometimes these links on the Sony Europe site are weird. It is difficult to link directly. Try going to http://www.sonybiz.net/dvcam Look at the Reference Information at the bottom of the page and click on the link to Shooting Tips.

A seperate forum would be nice. I've always found it odd that the SDX900 always seems to get its own forums, but not the Sony cameras. One note about crispening on the 450. Don't mistake redcing it for negative numbers in the settings menu. If you 'reduce' the crispening function into negative numbers you are actually enhancing the effect. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/qmd3s there are some really good tips on the various settings available in these cameras.

Hmm. I'm not sure if I find the Top Gear looks cheesey. Fifth Gear I find looks cheesey because they are now trying to copy the style of Top Gear, but they just don't have the polish in order to pull it off. Michael Bay is cheesey because his 'look' and editing style has almost become a self parody of himself. The Top Gear guys tend to mix things up a bit and have some fun with new ways of filming the car reports, so I think that stops their look from being cheesey in my eyes.

Hi Phil, Yes, I can see how this would be the case. Although I'm not totally convinced it really allows DV50 to be pushed a huge amount further because there are still artefacts that will be noticable. Also, one thing I have never been sure of is quite what kind of colour correction people are doing, or needing to do in order to push footage so far. I would have to deviate quite substantially from the original footage in order to show up such horrendous effects. For most footage, even on a dramatic production, I would be quite suspicious of the original footage quality if it needs so much colour correction. I have created a number of looks in post before in past projects including bleach bypass, reversal film, etc effects. None of which caused much problems due to 1) using a good camera to begin with, and 2) setting the camera up and shooting knowing precisely what sort of look I would be aiming for in post. Now, if I was adjusting the sky for example for a different look I might come across problems. However I think you need to shoot with the format in mind, ie don't shoot DV25 expecting to do lots of secondary colour corrrection. I'm not a big fan of secondary colour correction anyway. I always feel that it is a crutch for lazy shooting in the first place. If you want a sunset, shoot at sunset. If you want a purple flow, shoot a purple flower. If you want to change the wallpaper colour in a scene, shoot it with the right colour in the first place etc. Absolutely. But I would also argue that some pretty good looks can be created with DV25 without any noticeable degredation. Further, you can always transcode DV25 to another format such as Huffy compression etc, and add either a chroma smoothng filter, or even better a chroma interpolator followed by subtle chroma smoothing. Chroma interpolators such as Graeme Nattresses filter work amazingly well.

I have never understood why this should be the case. The 50mbps means that you have less compression artefacts, and the 4:2:2 means higher chroma resolution (on a pixel by pixel basis, but not shades of colour). But an 8-bit recording format, whether 25mbps or 50mbps should give exactly the same latitude for colour correction. Of course I'll eat my words if someone can practically demonstrate to the contrary. :) Now if we were talking 10-bit Digibeta that would be a different matter. The BBC use DSR500's all the time for ENG and some documentary without issue. The idea that DV25 is automatically like dredging the bottom of the barrel is a bit of a nonsense IMHO. DV25 is used in handycams, but it is also used in higher end cameras such as the 570 and 450. Those cameras obviously produce a vastly superior picture. Nobody watches television from 6" away from the screen, so I think that in most cases it is a bit of a non-issue.