Tips for shooting a feature with an F5 and a7S mk2 together in 4K?

[Tyler Purcell]

I'm confused here. You're talking about MPEG noise when these cameras don't necessarily record in an MPEG codec.

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!

 

Then you say you use a lower ISO (overexpose), but underexpose your images (which makes no sense),

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.

 

Next paragraph, you say you work the opposite with film.

With film, I also work at the lowest ISO I can, but I over expose to that particular ISO, but not by much.

[Tyler Purcell]

So your not shooting in Cine EI mode.. nor shooting XAVC .. your shooting custom XDCAM 8 bit..?.. or even worse your shooting LOG in 8 bit XDCAM.. and under exposing it.. Yikes.. the other guy is shooting ISO2000 as thats the native ISO of the F5.. plus in Cine EI its locked to that too.. sorry but it does seem yet again you don't know the Sony camera,s or understand LOG curves at all and so you are having troubles.. you cap your highlights at 70% ?.. thats ok but your advising others with out any knowledge of the camera or LOG set ups.. Arri log.. Canon log all work the same its not a Sony thing.. and the other guys footage always seems to be crap.. ?

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

[Robin R Probyn]

Tyler totally wrong ..

 

The Fs7 and the F5 have always had XAVC intra.. from new.. straight out of the box.. its not a hardware up date at all.. you really need to get to know the camera you are using or being paid as a cameraman to use..

 

Your only going to get your max DR from native ISO.. tweak a stop or two sure.. thats nuts to have an Alexa/f5/f55 fs7.. any camera with cine EI and LOG and just set it 100 ISO.. no wonder you are losing your highlights.. your capping your highlights at 70% and under exposing in RAW.. let alone LOG ??? you have massive highlight headroom.. there is no knee or roll off.. I think you are shooting RAW and LOG like standard 709 gamma,s.. no wonder you are having problems..

 

And the Sony not being able to use 3rd party accessories ..?? please answer that .. sorry its just totally wrong..

Edited September 1, 2016 by Robin R Probyn

[Tyler Purcell]

Tyler totally wrong ..

 

The Fs7 and the F5 have always had XAVC intra.. from new.. straight out of the box..

XAVC is MPEG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Your only going to get your max DR from native ISO.. tweak a stop or two sure.. thats nuts to have an Alexa/f5/f55 fs7.. any camera with cine EI and LOG and just set it 100 ISO.. no wonder you are losing your highlights..

I don't have problems with stuff I've shot. I have problems with stuff OTHER people have shot.

 

And the Sony not being able to use 3rd party accessories ..?? please answer that .. sorry its just totally wrong..

3rd party companies are forced to make special stuff for Sony cameras.

[Stuart Brereton]

I have problems with stuff OTHER people have shot.

 

It really is extraordinary how many incompetent DPs you have to deal with. Thank god you are there to deal with their mistakes.

[Robin R Probyn]

Yes but XAVC is not the same XDAM setting in those camera,s.. XAVC is very different .. please study the camera a bit..

 

Why is it always the other guys stuff is crap.. mmm?

 

Why are 3rd party co,s forced to make special stuff.. all the threads,BNC..Lemo.. HDMI ,bars etc are all standard .. the Rosette is different thats the only thing.. . none of my 3rd party ass are "specail" in any way to Sony.. a cheese plate will always be camera specific .. as with Arri/RED/Canon all of them.. my shoulder plate is Zacuto Universal.. as the name suggests this works on many camera,s..

 

Where are you getting all these ideas from man..

Edited September 1, 2016 by Robin R Probyn

[Tyler Purcell]

It really is extraordinary how many incompetent DPs you have to deal with. Thank god you are there to deal with their mistakes.

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

[Tyler Purcell]

Yes but XAVC is not the same XDAM setting in those camera,s.. XAVC is very different .. please study the camera a bit..

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.

 

Why is it always the other guys stuff is crap.. mmm?

Dude, I shot and serviced Sony for over a decade. I can say anything I want about them.

[Robin R Probyn]

I know a guy who has serviced Merc,s for a decade.. but hes not a better driver than Lewis Hamilton ..

 

If you know what your doing with XAVC LOG or RAW.. which sorry but judging from your exposure methods you don't.. you can achieve a very good picture from XAVC in HD or 4K.. and there are hundreds or more like thousands who are going that.. one of them is my good self.. just go on line and see what has been shot with XAVC.. dont believe a hack like me fair enough .. but there are very experienced DP,s who have shot incredible footage on XAVC even on Fs7,s.. exactly the same camera you had.. are they all crap.. or could it be that... ?

 

And the 3rd part accessories ?

[Tyler Purcell]

If you know what your doing with XAVC LOG or RAW.. which sorry but judging from your exposure methods you don't..

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.

 

you can achieve a very good picture from XAVC in HD or 4K.. and there are hundreds or more like thousands who are going that.. one of them is my good self.. just go on line and see what has been shot with XAVC.. dont believe a hack like me fair enough .. but there are very experienced DP,s who have shot incredible footage on XAVC even on Fs7,s.. exactly the same camera you had.. are they all crap.. or could it be that... ?

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.

[Robin R Probyn]

ISO means nothing.. ISO 2000 in an F5 is 0db.. alot of misunderstanding here.. On an Arri 800 is 0 db.. ISO is just a number to set your light meter to.. or to use in Cine EI mode..

 

Anyway to avoid the flogging of the dead horse .. again I would ask.. how is it so many people can get great results from XAVC even on a Fs7..in custom let alone LOG.. there really are thousands of them.. but then there is you and every DP you work with getting crap results.. its purely empirical logic that you guys are the ones doing something wrong..

 

So long and thanks for all the fish..

[Stuart Brereton]

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.

 

It's unusual to have one person cut and color in narrative work. What kind of projects are you working on?

 

 

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's hard to believe that an entire project was accidentally underexposed by such a large degree. Occasional shots, perhaps, but 3 stops across the board?

[Giray Izcan]

I wish Tyler left this forum and left us in peace. Now he was the Sony repairman as well. Man, you are a joke, sorry to burst your bubble.

[Tyler Purcell]

It's unusual to have one person cut and color in narrative work. What kind of projects are you working on?

Yes, it's actually very unusual. Most editors stay away from coloring. I only do it because it interests me. Sometimes what I do is final, other times I will export my DaVinci project for someone else to finish. Needless to say, I enjoy the "finishing" aspect of projects as much as editing, so I attempt to secure that part of the project whenever I can.

 

It's hard to believe that an entire project was accidentally underexposed by such a large degree. Occasional shots, perhaps, but 3 stops across the board?

Not accidentally, absolutely intentional. I don't have any footage online, but I will gladly post some samples someday. I'm going to reboot that project in October/November and I'll have things online once more.

 

I wish Tyler left this forum and left us in peace. Now he was the Sony repairman as well. Man, you are a joke, sorry to burst your bubble.

I was professionally trained as a youth and used it as a backup job for years.

[Stuart Brereton]

Yes, it's actually very unusual. Most editors stay away from coloring. I only do it because it interests me.

 

But you don't say what kind of projects you are coloring.

 

 

Not accidentally, absolutely intentional.

A DP intentionally underexposed all his material by 3 stops?

[Tyler Purcell]

But you don't say what kind of projects you are coloring.

Everything. Narrative, documentary, commercials, industrials, BTS, trailers. The only thing I don't do is model/fashion work.

 

A DP intentionally underexposed all his material by 3 stops?

There is no other explanation. "Mistakes" are corrected when you turn on the histogram and realize how far off you are. "Mistakes" are corrected when you look at the video monitor and see how off it is. "Mistakes" are corrected when your DIT watches the material (in this case with Red Cine X) and tells you something is wrong. I believe the shoot was multiple weeks, but on the same sound stage.

[Justin Hayward]

So there must have been no script supervisor or any sort of camera reports or any notes whatsoever passed on to you if you had to... 100 percent GUESS... if the cinematographer was a complete moron or was purposely under exposing the footage by THREE whole stops???

 

I mean, if the budget was so low they couldn't afford any notes on the camera work, why didn't you call the DP and ask if he purposely underexposed everything by three stops? Editors and colorists have called me on multiple occasions to ask my intention if it wasn't totally clear.

 

Please don't tell me you're so cut off you can't get the cinematographer's phone number on a project of theirs that you're coloring.

[David Peterson]

This thread turned out both longer and more amusing than I thought it would be :-D

In other somewhat more relevant news.... I found out unfortunately that the F5 we're using doesn't have 4K!!! Which kinda defeats the entire purpose of us using it :-o Otherwise we'd have gone with an URSA Mini 4.6K

 

So after a **LOT** of head banging against the wall last night I at last got it working.

 

However.... Fun fact: the free 4K workaround doesn't work if your md5 checksum is not in lower case

[Tyler Purcell]

Please don't tell me you're so cut off you can't get the cinematographer's phone number on a project of theirs that you're coloring.

The producer/production company split ways with the client and I was given the project after that happened.

 

The client couldn't find their own mailbox in a rain storm, let alone script notes.

 

Luckily, I have all of the red raw files and with Red Cine X, you can see the metadata and it gives you a picture of what happened on set.

 

The cinematographer is a pretty well known guy in the industry, I'm sure many of you have heard of him. He's a FB friend with me and we chat every once in a while. So I could ask him, but since I already fixed the issue, thanks to the high latitude of the RED raw files, I don't see a need to bug him about something he shot 4 years ago. It was a lot of work to fix though... It would be fun to show how I fixed it through a screen grab.

[Robin R Probyn]

whats the DP,s name... I would be quite interested to know about the 3 stop intentional under exposure.. in RAW .. . at least not one of the ones who doesn't know what they are doing,as it was intentional.. I think alot of the forum might be interested in his technique ..?..

 

Well they were lucky you could save it.. good to see a screen grab.. you must have all the metadata on the clips right..

 

David.. if you have time.. the up grade.. although it does cost about $1K.. is simply an electronic key.. nothing has to go into the shop .. the camera was always capable of 4K from the start.. slap on wrist for Sony saying it wasn't ..

[Tyler Purcell]

I don't think it's right to post people's names in a public setting, where they may not remember what happened and aren't here to defend themselves. Also, if someone where to google their name, this thread could pop up. No reason to piss anyone off for the curiosity sake.

 

I would love to post what I did to fix that clip, but after spending 20 minutes trying to get things back online, I realized that it's a futile attempt. The section in question is very difficult to find in the 20+ TB worth of material that's scattered about on 8 drives.

 

If I stumble upon it, I will gladly make a thread about it and discuss it further. I also have a really cool fix I did that's similar, something I shot and messed up badly. It's always great to learn from mistakes, but even that material is long gone.

[Robin R Probyn]

Im not saying its a screw up.. a screw up would be a couple of shots or one morning after a long night.. a whole film with rushes/dit/monitor etc is Im sure as you say intentional.. and as he's a well known guy.. and not one of the useless ones.. there must have been a reason.. because RAW usually you would over expose if anything .. I would be curious.. maybe you could ask him and relay the info..

[Stuart Brereton]

There is no other explanation. "Mistakes" are corrected when you turn on the histogram and realize how far off you are. "Mistakes" are corrected when you look at the video monitor and see how off it is. "Mistakes" are corrected when your DIT watches the material (in this case with Red Cine X) and tells you something is wrong. I believe the shoot was multiple weeks, but on the same sound stage.

A documentary shot entirely on a sound stage? Unusual.

 

It does sound like an intentional exposure, as the DP would have had his viewfinder, onboard monitor and DIT all telling him he was under-exposed. Given that he was doing on purpose, perhaps it was not meant to be corrected by you.

[Giray Izcan]

I highly doubt that a project like that even exists let alone Tyler the magician 'fixed' exposure issues blah blah. What can I say? He is one delusional man. He is the man who has stories on whatever the topic is. Let's talk about motorcycles, I'm sure he would tell us he's a trained Harley technician or something. It's sad.

[Tyler Purcell]

Did I say documentary? Sorry... it's an industrial. So green screen and built/physical sets on a sound stage. It has people being interviewed and people reading scripted (teleprompter) lines.

 

The material in question was green screen, so the people doing the visual effects, couldn't pull a key from the converted material. They couldn't work with the raw RED files. So I had to do the clean up work in DaVinci, which works natively with RED material. It was kind of a hybrid solution, but it solved the problem and the net result looks great. Of course, when you pre-color 900 shots, it's hard to color match. So once the VFX people are done, I will get the entire project back as sequences and color balance everything.