Achim Girnth

Dear colleagues, I am shooting a documentary in Montana on the 24th till 26th Oct., in NYC starting the 28th Oct. and in Baltimore starting the 2nd of November. I am looking for a rental company that can deliver some light (redheads, blondes, maybe HMI additional), grip equipment AND IF POSSIBLE: a rental company, which can supply a PAL (!) SDX 900. (2nd Cam) I would highly appreciate any information... Thanks a lot Achim

Dear colleagues, I am shooting a documentary in Montana on the 24th till 26th and I am looking for a rental company which can deliver some light (redheads, blondes, maybe HMI additional) and for a rental company which can supply a PAL (!) SDX 900. (2nd Cam) I would highly appreciate any information... Thanks a lot Achim

Hi John, I own a SDX 900 - Sony mount works perfect on this cam, of course, you have to take care that it is a 2/3 Inch lens ... cu Achim

Hi John, Tests were shot wide open (2.8), VRES was Progressive, H and V Detail was 5 which looks good on my not so "prime" lens ... My -3 setting helps me to loose depth of field even in bright sunlight so I am quite happy with it. I will go on with the slow shutter and report what happend. Thanks for your comments. cu Achim

Hallo Daniel, Thanks for the Link, didn't know the movie was shot with the 900. German (and european) Panasonic seems to be a bit sleepy on the marketing and promotion of the 900 because news like that should be spread to the community by them! Anyway, the movie is titled "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" in Germany and showing in the cinemas right now, so I will go and watch it. cu Achim

Hi Matthew, good to hear it works better. In black areas "Blackstretch" can help but tends to give a "low contrast" look to the whole image. In heavy highlights, I am very happy with the results i achieve with my 900, so it is hard for me to figure out what is happening with yout cam ... Maybe you post a screenshot in order we can give comments? cu Achim

Hi Matthew, already tried something??? I am quite interested in your results ... Achim

Hi everybody, finally going to do my first project in 25p after a lot of "classical" 50i Work. The final Product will be on TV, but possibly a Film-Out could or would be done. So getting the right settings might be tricky! In my first tests, I reduced detail and worked with pHalfShut ON. As I am used to 16mm, the results with panning and motion were quite good BUT: The strobe effect looks worse than on film! So I switched pHalfShut OFF. Now strobing was ok, BUT motion blur was much too high. *sigh* After searching the forums for quite a while, I got to the point of using the SYNCHRO SCAN Feature and trying several settings between 1/25th and 1/50th sec. for the shutter. Settings between 1/35th and 1/40th produced reasonable results with a good compromise between motion blur and strobing even in fast pans and action zooms. So I could live well with these settings BUT: Are these settings allowed for Film-Out? Could there be any other unforseen problem? Has anyone of you guys out there already tried this procedure? I think the results are quite compareble on NTSC 24p, so I would highly appreciate any comments on the procedure I am using. By the way: Under "normal" lighting conditions I always work with the L setting set to -3db in order to achieve less depth of field. Has anyone else experience with that setting? At the end of my testing phase I will share the settings and some parts of the footage with you, so let´s get in touch ... Achim

Hi Matthew, I think it is useful for all of us to share settings. Sometimes people forget, that it is not the setting which is responsable for good images, it is still the DOP ... ;-) Have a nice day, Achim

Hi Matthew, sorry, it took some time since I was quite busy last week. Attached you find my settings for the daily TV work. Take care, it's a PAL 50i setting and it is 16:9, so just switch to 4:3! One important thing I noticed, using the Filmlike1 Gamma setting is: If you are used to check exposure by zebra 70% and the viewfinder, you will tend to overexpose since the usual problems with "worn out" highlights (is this the right expression? In german we use the expression "ausgefressen") will not appear that fast. So do some tests in order to get a secure feeling on eposure. Anyway, the broadcasted results look absolutely gorgeous and differ very much from usual ENG stuff. TV tekkies will love you for using the 900! Also: I use standard detail settings, but if you shoot technical stuff and architecture, yiu should reduce these settings to achieve good results. I hope this works for you. Greetings from sunny southern germany ... Achim SCENE_F1.TXT

Hi Matthew, can't send you the settings before Friday, sorry. Included a capture from a scene I shot recently in the swiss alps. Typical extreme light situation with shadow inside car and extreme bright sunlight outside. The 900 handles these things very well. The same lighting on a D30 would produce a completely overshot white background otside the car, also would my SDJ800 do. I know several cams from intense working, none of them would give detail outside the car! (exposure was about 5.6 with -3db and ND2, ouside stop about 16 ...) So these are the results you should reach. I was very hurried for that shot but I always do exposure by hand. This is a bit blue, which I will correct in post (noon-light) but usually, color reproduction is also very fine with the 900. I will send you my files as soon as I can. Have a nice day, Achim

Hi Matthew, I am regularily shooting 50i PAL for television use. I use Filmlike 1(!) and I set HIGH COLOR to ON. The results look MUCH better than a Digibeta with FIT Chips. So, maybe your settings are wrong, because the advantages of the Gamma processing are not linked to shooting 24/25p ... Anyway, check the setting of your Matrix and as already said, try the downloadable files and: When shooting in Filmlike Gamma Modes, one always tends to overexpose because of the enhanced Headroom which the ENG Cameraman is not used to (It happens to me quite often, so I did a lot of testing on exposure...) If everything is setup correct, your 60i images SHOULD LOOK GREAT! Have a nice day Achim

Hi Jason, Two Years ago, I did a 5 hour DVD programm (3 DVDs) about World History for Bertelsmann. We had the same Decision like you to make. With my project about the 20th century in 1999 we picked the stills with a videocam. For the new project, we decided to do all stills with scans in combustion. We used very high quality scans (up to 600 dpi) and added the motion in combustion. This gave us a very precise control of the timing and gave in addition the possibility to combine parts of the stills in dissolves with very precise pans. Also lighting tilting and rotating is possible, what makes all of the footage more lively. I was very pleased with the results and we processed more than 800 stills in this manner. You have to take care for interlacing problems by use of filters and blurs, but if you plan to go to 35mm, you don't need this. You can even work with higher resolutions for that reason. Acceleration control by bezier curves is very good inside combustion and you get very "human-like" results (without the usual shaking and slow down problems, but you could add them if you want) The precise control saved us weeks in post and gave us the possibility to change motion accoring to the final commentary and edit. cu Achim

Charlie, ..ok, I think the viper and maybe some of the actual HD Cams can get very close to film stock. And, of course, if you don't show on the big screen, the difference nearly can't be judged. cu Achim Girnth

Excuse me Jan, You made the post, and it was here... Anyway, when will the PAL Version of the Guide (Funny thing, a PAL Version of a book, can it be trancoded?) be available? Achim Girnth MEDIENFRONT Germany