HDCAM for shooting feature films

Transcription

Sony HD
A Showreel magazine supplement
summer 2006 • www.showreel.org
www.sonybiz.net/hd
HDCAM for shooting feature films
DOCUMENTARIES
Shooting with the HDV HVR-Z1
ON TEST
PDW-F350 and F330 XDCAM HD
In association with Sony
HD VS FILM
HDW-F900 on Closing Escrow
ISSN 1740-682X
contents
Assessing Sony HD
his supplement deals with Sony’s
range of high definition equipment,
from its intro HDV cameras through
its new XDCAM HD range, its
Cinealta HDCAM cameras, to a
preview of the company’s recently
announced digital cinema camera.
While the supplement has been part
funded by Sony, the company has had no
input into the editorial. All of the writers
are respected DPs who have written
about their experiences with these
cameras on a variety of projects: music
promos, documentaries, sporting events
T
“Using XDCAM HD we filmed,
reviewed and edited in some of the
most changeable and inhospitable
environments in the world.”
and feature films. To preserve editorial
integrity, none of the writers were aware
prior to publication that they were writing
for this supplement rather than for the
current issue of Showreel. Thus their
judgments and opinions have in no way
been tainted by commercial
considerations.
In effect, Sony has taken the
courageous decision to commission
Showreel to produce an independent
assessment of its HD camera range. We
hope you enjoy it.
Steve Parker, editor
What does it take to handle the 2006 Land Rover G4 Challenge?
XDCAM HD.
The 2006 Land Rover G4 Challenge – as difficult to film as it was to take part. Luckily
XDCAM HD loves this kind of job. Shoot in SD or HD with variable frame rate. Review in
colour, on screen and on camera. And, with a disc-based non-linear acquisition system,
you can mark scenes on location at the touch of a button. Plus, with its 3x 1/2" HD CCDs
you get dynamic range, high sensitivity and no compromises. What’s more, with its
competitive price and low operational costs, XDCAM HD takes on the tightest of
budgets too. HD now. Be part of it.
5
HD – but which flavour?
An introduction to the various
flavours of high definition.
8
Packing a punch
Taylor Wigton has been shooting
with the HVR-Z1 since its launch.
He explains why he particularly
rates it for documentary shooting.
25 In the grey zone
Budget consideration made Ed
Mash choose the HDW-750P over
the F900 for an indie film shoot, but
he was very happy with the results
he got from the camera.
29 Moving up in the world
Dan Mulligan outlines technical
differences between the HDW-750
and HDW-F900 and gives his take
on the suitability of the camera for
different genres.
12
Perfectly formed?
Richard Payne tests the diminuitive
HVR-A1 HDV camera.
16
Light on the pocket
Robert Render Harrison took three
A1s up a mountain in New Mexico
to shoot a music promo.
32
The mid-range contendesr
Simon Wyndham tests the PDWF350 and PDW-F330 XDCAM HD
cameras.
34
18
Publisher
Denise Haskew
[email protected]
Editor
Steve Parker
[email protected]
Contents
Simon Fitzgerald, BHP Sport – Director, 2006 Land Rover G4 Challenge.
Main image: All Bar Love
Photography: Julia Boggio.
Computer or typewriter?
Randall P Dark explains why he
chose the HDW-F900 over film for
indie comedy, Closing Escrow.
A camera for movies
Michael Bravin previews the new
NGC-23 digital cinema camera, for
release in 2007.
Advertising
Vince Matthews
[email protected]
Consulting editor
Clive Collier
[email protected]
Contributors
Michael Bravin
Randall P Dark
Robert Render Harrison
Ed Mash
Dan Mulligan
Richard Payne
Taylor Wigton
Simon Wyndham
Showreel Publishing Ltd
49 Westbourne Gardens
Hove BN3 5PN United Kingdom
Tel: 01273 227048
Fax: 01273 227047
[email protected]
www.showreel.org
Copyright 2006 Showreel Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied or reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of
the publishers. While every care has been taken in the compilation of this publication, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for any
inaccuracies, or for any other loss, direct or consequential, arising in connection with information in this publication. The views herein are
not necessarily those of the publishers. Acceptance of advertisements does not imply recommendation by the publisher.
Sony and XDCAM HD are registered trademarks of the Sony Corporation, Japan.
www.sonybiz.net/g4challenge
summer 2006 | showreel supplement
3
high definition flavours
HD – but which flavour?
You want to make the move to high definition, but
which one? There are many flavours of HD, from HDV
to big budget film replacement cameras for movies.
igh definition. In many people’s
eyes, a panacea on three fronts.
First, it is replacing DV, DVCam
and even Super16 at the budget
end of the market; second, it can
offer TV news and sports a replacement
to standard definition in time for the big
HD broadcast switchover; and third, at
the higher end, it offers a replacement
for film in motion pictures and high-end
TV dramas, not only providing added
flexibility in being able to digitally
manipulate the image in post far more
cheaply than it would cost to digitally
scan 35mm film, but also in terms of the
cost of the originating film.
But you can’t do all this with one
camera. HD comes in many flavours,
and the equipment you use for HD
acquisition will depend on the nature of
the project, the distribution medium,
and of course the budget. There are of
course HD camcorders from a range of
companies, but Sony offers cameras at
every level. Here, we will attempt to
differentiate the various flavours, what
they offer, and what types of shooting
they are most suited for.
The tiny HVR-A1 HDV
camera with optional
accessories.
H
summer 2003 by
Sony, Canon and JVC
(among others). HDV
was likely devised as the
next step in consumer
camera technology
(following the natural
progression from the
1980s of 8mm (and VHS)
> Hi8 (S-VHS) > DV >
HDV, each of which offered significant
advantages over its predecessor).
However, it was clear that a handheld
camera using the HDV format could, if it
sported the right mix of pro features,
offer the natural successor to DVCam
models, such as the Sony PD150 and its
successor the PD170.
As it turned out, the quality of HDV
took a lot of people by surprise. It had
only been in the market for a short
HDV cameras
amount of time before early adopters
The entry models in the HD world are
the 1/3in chip cameras. That is, the light- started talking about its quality matching
(and even surpassing in some opinions)
sensitive chip that registers the light
coming through the lens and sends it on the pro standard definition Digibeta
format. Not everyone accepted this,
for processing and recording is 1/3in –
or more often three CCDs, each 1/3in. and some still don’t, but most people
have now come to the understanding
Standard DV cameras use 1/3in chips,
but the HD cameras pack in more light- that HDV offers – for want of a better
phrase – much better quality than its
sensitive pixels to record more
technical spec might suggest.
information. Also, most consumer
You see, part of the resistance against
camcorders have only one CCD.
HDV was because of the format it uses
Sony’s cameras in this category are
to encode the video on to tape. It
HDV models. HDV is a high definition
standard that many manufacturers have makes use of a system known as MPEG
Transport Stream. Technical analysis of
signed up to, and it was announced in
this
format can be found
on the web for the mathematically
minded, but for our purposes, suffice it
to say that MPEG-T was developed as a
broadcast method for TV pictures. Only
some of the frames (known as i-frames)
are actually represented as complete
data (although even these frames are
compressed in a similar way to jpeg
photos). The others frames are
essentially made up by defining how
they differ from I-frames, with some
other clever trickery thrown in. The
upshot is that vast amounts of picture
information can be thrown away with –
hopefully – little effect on the final
picture. As with all compression
schemes, there is a danger that the
compression/uncompression process
will introduce artefacts. However, there
is mounting evidence that the
compression scheme is far more stable
than some sceptics and prophets of
doom have predicted.
The second issue with MPEG-T is
that, because it is not made up of
5
sony hd supplement
The PDW-F350 diskbased XDCAM HD
camera – a natural
replacement for
Digibeta?
6
complete frames, it can cause a real
headache for makers of nonlinear
editing equipment. And indeed,
reasonable quality editing support for
HDV didn’t really come about until
about 18 months after the release of the
first HDV camera. If you’re new to
HDV, then you’re entering at a good
time. Most of the initial problems with
HDV post have now been ironed out,
and although there may be still a few
details to work out with different frame
rates and so forth, editing support for
HDV is now fairly widespread and well
implemented.
Sony’s professional HDV cameras
are the HVR-A1 and the HVR-Z1. The
A1 is immediately distinguished by its
size. Capable of fitting into a handbag or
even a camera bag side pocket, the tiny
A1 uses a single CMOS sensor to
record images, rather than the more
traditional arrangement of three CCD
chips. Although it doesn’t support all the
pro features of the Z1, the quality of the
image coming from the CMOS chip was
found in our test to be exceptional in a
camera of this price.
Because of its size, the A1 is a very
useful tool for situations in which
carrying heavy equipment is difficult – or
if you need a camera to fit in a space
where a conventional camera wouldn’t
fit, but where you need better than DV
quality to match with the other cameras
on your shoot. Its resemblance to a
consumer camera also means it is easy
to shoot with the camera without
drawing attention to yourself.
The Z1 has, since we first tested it,
been used extensively for all manner of
productions, from broadcast work,
through indie features and
documentaries. And it is in this latter
category that the camera shines.
Although it has the quality and featureset
for drama productions, there are
limitations due to its built-in lens and its
chip size. The latter is less to do with the
raw quality from the chip, and more to
do with the fact that 1/3in chips
inherently give almost infinite depth of
field, so unless you are shooting
extremely close-up or at the very end of
the zoom, everything in the frame is
going to be in focus. This is great for onthe-run docos, but if you’re one of
those creative filmmakers who likes to
drive the narrative through limited depth
of field, you will need to move up to a
camera with a larger chip size. Although
there are many factors influencing depth
of field – and engineers might shudder at
this vast oversimplification – but the
larger the image size, the more you can
limit the depth of field. With film, it is
commonplace to have only a few inches
either side of the point of focus sharp.
You are going to find this difficult to
achieve on a 1/3in chip camera,
although using an add-on cine lens
adaptor can help.
XDCAM HD
In the broadcast field, Digibeta cameras
and their ilk have been the mainstay of
broadcast production for years. Their
on-the-shoulder ENG styling and
extensive menu options have made
them popular in every area of TV
production, with the possible exception
of very high-end TV drama, which may
still be shot on film or, more recently,
full-blown high definition.
With the imminent switchover to
HD broadcasts, this is an important
area, and Sony has chosen to address it
with a completely new format –
XDCAM, recording to disk rather than
tape. Although Sony launched standard
definition XDCAM in 2004, it has
recently introduced two XDCAM HD
models, the PDW-F330 and the PDWF350. These cameras use 1/2in chips to
capture the image. This gives a higher
potential resolution than HDV, although
they still make use of the MPEG
compression scheme. Although they
will undoubtedly be used for lowerbudget drama, the key area for these
cameras is in the broadcast and perhaps
corporate world. The data-recording
XDCAM disks offer a workflow that is
potentially much faster than tape, which
means their greatest advantage is in
quick-turnaround productions, such as
news and sport.
The F350 has only just been made
available, so Simon Wyndham’s article
on page 18 is a full test of the new
camera and how it differs from its sibling,
the F330.
HDCAM
Moving up the range we have the
HDCAM cameras – the HDW-730 and
HDW-750, and the HDW-F900.
These camera have made their mark
in TV drama and documentary, and
even feature film production (George
Lucas used an earlier incarnation of the
F900 to shoot Attack of the Clones, and
it has been used on numerous movies
since). The 750 and F900 sport
progressive mode, very useful for filmout, so we have concentrated on these
two members of the family here, with
particular emphasis on their use for
drama. They are particularly suited to
demanding environments, such as TV
drama, feature film work and
commercials – the traditional film
production environments.
The HDCAM range use three 2/3in
CCDs, enabling better resolution and a
far more limited depth of field than the
1/3in chip cameras. The depth of field is
still not as controllable as with 35mm
film, but it is not over-limiting. The F900
has gone through several incarnations,
the latest of which is the F900R.
Showreel will carry a full test of this new
camera in a future issue.
Looking forward
Recently, there has been a move to take
high definition a step further and create
cameras specifically for the big budget
movie market, the traditional preserve
of 35mm. Cameras such as the Grass
Valley Viper and Panavision Genesis
(which Sony had a hand in through its
stake in Panavision) are already being
used on big budget blockbusters, and
Sony is set to enter this market with its
own digital cinema camera early next
year, tentatively known as the NGC-23.
Again, we shall be looking at that in
detail when one is available.
showreel supplement | summer 2006
sony hd supplement
hvr-z1
Packing a punch
format, the size of the camera reduced
my expectations further, as it was even
smaller then the SD cameras I had been
using. I loaned the Z1 and went down
to LAX airport because I’d recently shot
some footage with an SD camera there,
so I thought that it would be a good
frame of reference. I positioned myself
on the exact same spot where I’d
recorded the 747s landing before and
went back to BandPro a couple of days
later to look at the footage.
When I pulled the footage into the
display, I totally froze with disbelief at
what I was seeing; I really couldn’t
believe that I was watching what I had
just shot with that tiny little machine. It
was creating the pictures that,
compared with the $20,000 SD camera
I’d been using the week before, was in a
completely different ballpark. Logically, it
didn’t make any sense to me that this
product could exist for $5,000. At that
point I just stood there and all I could say
was, “what the hell is this?”
Then I thought about its potential for
stock footage and sent some of the test
shots I’d taken as a framegrab to a stock
house. They hadn’t heard of HDV and
at the time were only accepting
Varicam, HDCAM or 35mm. When
they saw the footage and I explained
what I had used and how cheap the
camera was, their response was, “Holy
shit”. They signed me and I bought the
camera with a matte box, my reasoning
being that eventually everyone’s going
to have HD and the old stock footage
would need to be reshot – even the
35mm stuff was telecined to SD, and
this could be a great side-endeavour.
I took it round to a few places and
people thought it was from a different
Taylor Wigton was one of the first owners of a Z1 in the States. He
has used it successfully for stock footage, drama and corporate,
and believes it to be the best documentary camera around.
Above: one of a
selection of shots that
convinced stock
footage houses in the
US to carry HDV
footage.
8
efore I ever encountered HDV I’d
shot a lot of 1/3in DV and
Digibeta, but I taught myself the
language of film on 16mm. At one
time I didn’t really take HD
seriously. I guess I didn’t really
understand it. No-one had HDTVs, I’d
seen some digital projection and didn’t
think that much of it, and I couldn’t see
any reason why it would take over from
film in the near future.
I knew it was coming, but figured
that everyone had standard definition
TVs and if we had to wait for the
switchover, then HD would really be a
long time coming. And since all the
movie houses in the world had a
standardised system based on film, I
B
figured it would take a long time before
the tens of thousands of movie theatres
switched from a system that was simple
and well-known. Then one day I had
the conversation that kind of changed
everything. I was on the phone to one
of my friends, a very smart engineer,
who said that in 2005 and 2006 we are
going to start seeing a tremendous
increase in HDTV sales. The reason was
not just to do with HD content, but the
fact that CRTs were on the way out, and
that companies were switching their
entire production lines from CRT to flat
panel, and these could easily be made
HD-ready. Well his prediction has of
course come true. But at the time his
comments made me realise that, if
everyone eventually has TVs they can
watch HD on, then there’s going to be a
huge demand for HD content. This
meant there was going to be a need for
better and cheaper HD cameras and
that there would be a tidal wave of HD
production. It made sense to shoot HD,
even if it was going to take a long time
for the format to filter through, as it
would be important to archive and
futureproof the masters. And I could
always downres to SD in the meantime.
Early last year I went into BandPro in
Burbank to check out the almost still
warm from the production line Sony
HVR-Z1 HDV camera. Although my
expectations were low from what I
thought was a glorified consumer
9
sony hd supplement
Jeff Cree’s recommended setting
“We do not believe nor advocate that you can
completely match the look of the Z1 and F900,” says
Jeff Cree of BandPro in Burbank, LA, “but we do
believe you can match the colorimetry. We
recommend the following settings when shooting
footage with the Z1 that will be used in an F900 shoot.”
Select these settings in My Picture Profile:
Colour level: +2
Colour phase: 0
Sharpness: 6
Skintone detail: NA
Skintone level: NA
AE Shift: 0
AGC limit: 0dB
Auto iris limit: F11
White balance shift: As required
Auto white balance sensitivity: Middle
Black stretch: On
Cinematone gamma: Type 2
Cineframe: OFF
For further
information on the
HVR-Z1, browse
www.sonybiz.net/hdv
DP Taylor Wigton
attended Connecticut
College where he
earned a living as a
photographer and in
his final year made a
documentary about a
pizza delivery guy. After
leaving college he shot
three low-budget
features in New
England, before
uprooting to LA.
Current clients include
Nike, MTV and Lucky
Jeans.
10
planet; it was as if I was walking around
with some rock from the moon, nobody
had seen it before. I figured I’d better
capitalise on this, and thought I’d have
about six months before everyone was in
on it. A couple of days after I bought the
camera, I met Rodney Charters, the DP
of 24, in the BandPro reception, who had
been interested in looking at the camera
too. So we were chatting about the
camera and I showed him my test footage
and he was blown away. He walked out
of there with a Z1 tucked under his arm.
I know people might think I’m crazy,
but there are times when I’ve even
recorded over old tapes. For instance, if
there was a sunset or something and I
needed to shoot immediately, and didn’t
have anything else, I’d simply tape over
old footage. Even though I’d bought
some Sony HDV tapes, the fact that I
could put HD images on to a used DV
cassette and get a stunning result was
mind-blowing.
The theory was that I could go to
directors and say, here’s the deal. HDV
is the ability to shoot in HD and have
SD clones and not change your existing
workflow at all. You can downconvert
on the fly, import off the camera right
into your Final Cut Pro in SD or make
clones so that if anyone in the future
wants the HD originals, you still have
the full-res masters.
HDV decks
Two dedicated HDV decks were
shown at NAB 2006, the HVR-M25E
and HVR-M15E. Features include:
I/O, composite I/O, and analogue
audio I/O.
Additional features on the M25:
• HDV 1080i, DVCAM and DV SP
recording and play back capability;
• Compatible with both standard
and mini-size DV cassettes;
• Downconversion function from
HD to SD;
• Switchable between 50 and 60Hz
(PAL/NTSC);
• Ability to copy external timecode;
• iLink, component output, S-Video
So that was my pitch for not shooting
SD and shooting 1080i: although the
majority of the delivery will be in SD,
you’re mastering in HD and you’ll be
able to archive that content, make
duplicates and then go back and do
batch capture – essentially increasing the
value of your production.
For anybody shooting documentary
there is no other camera I would use;
it’s small lightweight, it looks like a
consumer video camera and it’s great
for undercover stuff. I used it on the
documentary Music 101. I wouldn’t
necessarily recommend it for narrative,
as the infinite depth of field can limit your
storytelling ability. That being said, I have
used it on a low-budget narrative –
Madly In Love – and it still gives results
that are way above what you’d get using
DV. But of the HDV cameras around at
the moment, the Z1 is the easiest to use
and the most adaptable.
Profile settings
The Z1 has a lot of profile settings, such
as cine gamma, which lots of people will
really enjoy experimenting with. Jeff
Cree at BandPro set up my camera as
closely as is possible to emulate the
colorimetry of the Sony F900. Virtually
everything I’ve shot with the camera,
including narrative, was shot with those
settings. I was pretty impressed with 50i
– it has a great look.
The astonishing part was that people
have talked about how the Z1 doesn’t
necessarily perform well in low light.
That’s as may be, but the camera’s
+18db is an entirely different animal to
similar gain settings I’ve seen on other
• 1080/50i to 720/50p and
1080i/60i to 720/60p conversion
• HDMI output for connections to
consumer TVs;
• An LCD 2.7in, 16:9 panel;
• Edge crop adjustment ;
• Making duplicate tapes with the
same time-code as the original;
• Custom Repeat feature.
cameras. I’ve used the +18db a
number of times for documentary and
stock footage, and there’s some pretty
phenomenal noise reduction going on
here because the quality is still quite
astonishing.
The camera does everything I need
and doesn’t limit me at all shooting nonnarrative. Everything is straightforward;
the audio is very simple and I used the
XLR inputs for a project I shot for an
airline. It was a 45-minute gig; we had a
free flight and they wanted something
shot in SD 4x3. They had a PD150 and I
had to match it to what they’d shot a day
earlier. I was shooting HD 16x9, but the
next day I was able to hand the client the
tape with SD 4x3 that matched their
PD150. All I needed to do was flip a
couple of switches and that was it.
The viewfinder is far by the best flipout viewfinder I’ve used. It’s sturdy and
it’s bright. Post workflow was supported
pretty much from its release. Final Cut
was able to deal with it and all the other
manufacturers got their support in
pretty quickly.
The underscan is my favourite
feature. That’s a big issue nowadays, as
there’s always something that’s
vignetting or a boom that’s poking into
the frame. The underscan allows you to
push a button and see what the entire
chip is seeing, because what gets output
to TV is not the entire image, so you can
catch any intrusions before they hit the
main output area.
To me, if you want a tool that’s a
bridge between the SD world now and
the HD future, the SonyZ1U is a great
place to start.
sony hd supplement
hvr-a1 test
The compact HVR-A1 –
tiny body, but with
some pro featrues on
board.
Perfectly formed?
Richard Payne tests the upmarket version of
Sony’s second-generation of HDV cameras, the
ultra-compact, CMOS-chip sporting HVR-A1.
aving used both the Sony FX1 and
the Z1 extensively, I have a pretty
good handle on HDV as a format.
I’ve also extensively used the
HVR-A1’s consumer sibling, the
HDR-HC1. But, even though I thought I
knew what to expect, this camera still
had some surprises up its sleeve.
For a start it’s small. Very small. It’s so
small, you could be forgiven for thinking
that the A1 isn’t a serious piece of kit. It
weighs a mere 670g. I had to hide it
from my three-year old daughter to stop
her filming her version of Valley of the
Dolls. Yet I’m sure it would have survived
her attentions, because the build quality
is military. The XLR unit reminds me of
serious pro kit and there’s even an
industrial strength lens hood with a builtin shutter instead of a fiddly lens cap on a
string you get with the C1. There is also
a 16:9 aspect ratio flip-out LCD screen
that doubles as a touchscreen for a
comprehensive menu system.
Disappointment came quite quickly
when I realised it was a bottom feeder.
When you eject a tape, it emerges from
the bottom of the camera, which is a
problem if the camera is mounted on a
H
The size of the camera
means that a lot of
the settings are
accessed via menus –
in this case a
touchscreen LCD.
12
tripod. You also have to unscrew the
tripod plate to change tapes. Second
disappointment is the zoom rocker. So
titchy it’s a bit twitchy. Still, the camera
has a LANC socket so you could use a
better controller.
The flip-out LCD screen doubles as
a touchscreen menu; the other extra
features are hidden away in that menu
and some of them will really appeal to
budget filmmakers. Thoughts of greasy
fingerprints on the LCD started to
evaporate as the menu revealed more
and more features. You could not fit
enough buttons on this tiny camera
without spoiling it. It would be like trying
to fit all of Robbie’s tattoos on Kylie.
Video quality
Apart from HDV at 1080i, the A1 also
offers DV and DVCAM mode, but it’s
the HDV element we’re most
interested in. It will output standard PAL
through component, Y/C, composite or
Firewire, so you can always shoot HDV
even if you intend the result to be SD.
I shot some HDV and took a first
look at the results on a 32in LCD TV
with 1388x768 resolution via the
supplied YUV component cable. I had
expected poor lowlight performance
from a 7 lux camcorder, so I was
pleasantly surprised that even slightly
dingy indoor pictures were quite
acceptable. The Z1 was pulling more
detail out under the table and its 3 lux
spec showed up in the darker areas of
the room. The A1 was probably using
gain but none was obvious. You can’t
switch off the gain with the A1; there is
no manual control.
The A1 has a nifty Night-Shot mode,
which can film in complete darkness and
makes you feel like you’re in the SAS
and everyone else is a Martian. An
infrared light under the barrel illuminates
the green scene, which could capture
pictures of badgers or burglars.
After sunrise, a busy shot in the back
garden showed a huge amount of detail,
and the camera coped well with this
green detailed view on a large screen –
even the blades of grass were defined.
The Electronic SteadyShot was rather
good. With it switched on I could shoot
on a monopod as if on a tripod. Even
better is the ability to turn it off and get a
few per cent wider shot and
theoretically a couple of points more
resolution. I say theoretically because I
could see the shot was a few degrees
wider, but even on a test card I couldn’t
detect higher resolution. Sony call this
Full Scan Mode, and to complement it
the viewfinder has an All Scan Mode
which shows an over-scanned image so
you can be sure that boom remains out
of shot. The downside of this All Scan
mode is that it doesn’t use the entire
screen or viewfinder, so there is wasted
area around the frame.
The viewfinder is twice the
resolution of the LCD screen and can
be switched to black and
white. There is an Expanded
Focus button which zooms
the image in 2x to aid that
critical HD focus. Peaking can be
set to different colours in the
menu to help even more. With
the Z1 it isn’t possible to have
both peaking and zebra on at the
same time, but this is possible on
the A1.
Because of the higher
resolution I found it easier to focus
using the viewfinder than the LCD
screen. Unfortunately, once I had added
my big long life NP-QM91 battery I had
to tilt the viewfinder up to use it because
it doesn’t extend back like it did on the
PDX10. Incidentally, the supplied battery
would last just over an hour, whereas my
QM9 lasts between five and six hours.
The focus ring on the end of the lens
(which doubles as a zoom ring) was fast
and accurate, and I had no problem with
its servo speed. Autofocus was good
and fast, but did seem to hunt a little at
very close distances.
On the large LCD screen the high
def pictures looked good. To my eyes
they looked as good as pictures from
the Z1, but that was no proof. So I
called on the services of a man who
knows more about cameras and HD
than, well, anyone else. Alan Roberts
recently retired from
the BBC, but is still exceedingly active
and he is much in demand setting up all
sorts of high-end SD and HD cameras
for the BBC and hire companies such as
VMI and Optex. Alan turned up at
DVC’s Portslade offices in his MX5,
pulled a huge oscilloscope and some
test cards out of the boot and
proceeded to use his immense
experience to test my hypothesis.
The first test card we pointed the A1
at was the zone plate card – a series of
concentric circles which shows the
frequency response of the camera. Alan
was very impressed by the resultant
picture on the LCD monitor and
declared that it appeared to have as
much – or maybe a bit more –
resolution as the Z1. He also declared
the lens was
excellent considering its
diminutive size. We explored some of
the camera’s menu-based features such
as the Full Scan and All Scan modes.
Again we couldn’t detect a quality
change – just a slightly wider picture.
Still, that’s a useful thing in itself.
There was one slight area of concern
– some colour fringe/twinkle on high
detail areas that moved – we found this
by jogging the camera as it was pointed
at the very fine vertical lines from 600
lines up. You can see it on the test card
clearly at 1000 lines.
That slight fizzing colour in the black
and white scale happens because we
were giving it a greyscale picture with
very high frequencies. It shows that the
Bayer pattern (the distribution of R,G
and B sub-pixels) is a little too coarse for
the resolution of the lens. The camera
has to read the entire sensor every
13
sony hd supplement
For further
information on the
HVR-A1, browse
www.sonybiz.net/hdv
Richard Payne has
worked in video
production for the last
20 years. As a runner
and camera assistant in
the 1980s and after a
degree in Media
Production at
Bournemouth Uni, a
stint for BBC Drama on
Trainer and a season on
The Travel Show for
BBC Manchester he
ended up making
corporates for the likes
of Glaxo and BP.
Marriage and mortgage
saw him turning his
back on freelancing and
Richard helped David
Clarke build NLE
company DVC over the
last nine years. Richard
became a company
director in 1998.
14
field, just to get at the colour
information. Then the interpolator
looks at adjacent pixels for information
that’s missing and estimates it. If the
frequency content is nicely low, it all
works perfectly, but at high frequencies,
there’s room for confusion.
Let’s suppose that the sensor has
exactly 1920 pixels across, in an
RGRG... sequence on one line and
GBGB... on the next and so on. If the
frequency we give it is exactly 1920
lines/picture width, then on one line
we’ll get all the R pixels lit and all the G
pixels dark, and on the next we’ll get
all the G pixels lit and all the B pixels
dark. How do we get a genuine grey
signal from that? Clearly, we can’t; it
works only when there are more
pixels/width than lines/width. Since the
camera’s feeding HDV with a
horizontal limit of 1440, it only has to
cope with 1440 for recording, so
theoretically it doesn’t matter what
happens above that. But, if aliasing (the
coloured patterns) does happen, then
they show at lower frequency than the
lines/width frequency, and so get
coded. This means that under fairly
exceptional circumstances a complex
moving image may exhibit some
colour distortion which will end up on
the tape.
We were both impressed with the
Histogram feature in the viewfinder or
flip-out screen. It displays a graphic
representation of the amount of
shadows, midtones and highlights in a
frame. Features such as this can be
invaluable for helping you get to grips
with a new piece of kit very quickly,
then once you have mastered it you
can turn them off.
As we hunted through the menus
we turned on CineFrame. I knew Alan
had been pretty nonplussed with the
progressive mode on the Z1, and
expected the same disappointment
from the A1, but here the single CMOS
sensor comes into its own, and in 25p
mode we got a significant increase in
vertical resolution – this seems a true
progressive mode to rival the JVC
HD100.
While we were on a roll we tried a
different test card with the Black
Stretch feature enabled and, as
expected, dark shades became more
clearly defined, pulling more detail
from the shadows. The only
disappointment in this filmic area of the
menu was the CinemaTone Gamma,
which on the pre-production model
we had appeared to do nothing at all
whether in Type 1 or Type 2. Without a
manual we were a little stuck to know
what this was meant to do anyway.
We played with the sharpness
settings, and from the results Alan
suggested setting at 1/3 for film look and
2/3 for ‘hyper-real’ video look. We
discussed which auto tracing white
(ATW) balance setting was best. It has
four: intelligent, high, mid or low. We
assumed that mid should give good
results for skintones, but we both
agreed that, as there was a setting called
intelligent, we should put Sony’s selfconfidence to the test.
We also liked the way you can adjust
the aperture or vary the autoexposure
with the lever on the left side of the
camera (after a setting in the menu), but
criticised Sony for not giving a total
manual control of shutter and exposure
or any F-stop numbers.
Probably the most telling result of
our morning with the A1 was that at the
end of it Alan Roberts, a man at home
with cameras costing as much as
houses, announced that he would like
to buy one. Then, after several more
physics lessons and a lecture on how
the high frequency gain on modern
cameras would come back to haunt us
on the next generation of screens, Alan
was off.
Sound
And thanks for the microphone, Sony. I
remember an embarrassing
conversation with one of the first users
of a Z1, who had assumed from of all
the publicity shots that the camera
actually came with a decent
microphone. He was a little peeved
when it turned up without one. Well,
Sony must have listened because a shiny
new ECM NV1 microphone is included
with every A1. The mic is well insulated
from the body of the camera, and I
couldn’t detect any motor noise when
running or zooming.
I found I needed to set the low-cut
switch at the front of the sound block to
get rid of a distinct buzz, but then the
microphone proved to be adequate.
Soundmen would probably be wise to
get a K6/ME66 combination from
Sennheiser to really do the biz.
The auto level was actually rather
impressive and manual settings gave
me control of both XLR sockets
independently. Unfortunately, I
couldn’t set one channel to auto and
the other to manual and I didn’t like
having to dig through the touchscreen
menu to get control of the audio
levels. I would have liked a switch on
that exposure lever control to adjust
the levels, like it does when playing
back. Without the XLR Module, the
camera does have stereo
microphones either side of the lens
barrel and they produce reasonable
sound considering they’re built in.
The A1 won’t come as a
disappointment to owners of the now
deleted Sony PDX10, who will find they
can use both the wideangle or telephoto
adaptor lenses and the batteries from
their old cameras. Although, be warned,
those SD lenses might not pass muster
with the HD resolution.
I tried the A1 with a variety of HDV
editing systems, and had no problems
capturing or recording HDV back into
the camera. The Edius NX for HDV
system would do scene detection and
provide multiple real-time effects out to
a live component HD monitor on a new
Intel Dual Core edit system costing less
than three grand..
The HVR-A1E is not all things to all
people; it is an inexpensive HDV
camera that is backwards compatible
with DV and DVCAM. The lowlight
performance might preclude it from
being as much of an all-rounder as the
PD170 in SD, but I think using it in SD
mode would be missing the point.
For covert filmmaking, its size would
make the camera an obvious guerrilla
cam, and its quality should mean you
could play the result at a local multiplex,
given someone behind the viewfinder
who knows what they’re doing. Go and
look at the pictures yourselves. Get
your own fingerprints on its screen as
you hunt through the menu features. Lift
its little flaps and marvel at the
connectivity. Then realise that you could
buy one of these for less than the cost of
a family summer holiday.
sony hd supplement
hvr-a1 project
Robert found the A1
easy to use, easy to
carry, easy on the eye
and easy on the
pocket.
Light on the pocket
Robert Render Harrison recently used three A1 cameras
to record a music video several thousand feet up a
mountain in New Mexico – without putting his back out.
ast August I was videotaping a
group of Native Americans beating
a huge drum and chanting
traditional songs, performing on a
balcony overlooking the main floor
of the Sweeney Center in Santa Fe,
New Mexico. Hundreds of patrons
were examining Indian arts of all kinds
that would be offered for sale next day
in the biggest Indian arts show in the
world. Over 100,000 people would
peruse 1,000 native artists’ booths,
transforming the whole city centre for
the 83rd annual Santa Fe Indian Market.
One drummer was Cliff Fragua, a
renowned sculptor from Jemez Pueblo
I’d interviewed the previous year. Next
day he showed me his white marble
statue of Popay, the San Juan medicine
man who led the Pueblo revolt to
overthrow the oppressive Spanish
Conquistadors. The statue had been
photographed for the cover of a book
about Popay, and was later chosen to
L
16
represent New Mexico in the Capitol in
Washington, DC.
The following day I was at the stage
in the plaza, videotaping Moiety, an allIndian band, performing a song about
Popay. Cliff was the drummer. Later, the
band’s leader, Jimmy Shendo, asked me
if I would make a music video of his
band. I immediately agreed. In spring
2006, Moiety planned to re-record two
tracks from their album. We’d shoot the
recording session, then go to a scenic
location to shoot the band performing
to the new tracks.
At this time, I had been testing the
diminutive Sony HVR-A1. I was so
delighted with the image quality that I
bought two; with Sony’s review
camera, I now had three.
The recording session was in Jemez
school, at an elevation of 6,300 feet; the
March day was grey and overcast, with a
wind blowing and a big storm forecast
for that night. I hoped we’d be able to
shoot outdoors later that day.
I had enough cameras, but no other
operators. Jimmy knew a couple of
people with experience of small video
cameras. Neither showed up. And
there was no budget for crew.
The school where they were
recording was fairly new, and the stage
had the usual ‘theatrical’ lighting, which I
was able to balance fairly well with the
aid of Allan Didier, a school employee,
creating at least some semblance of
lighting for the makeshift ‘studio’. Fred
Vigil, the drummer, was the sound
recordist for the band.
I put one A1 on a Steadicam Merlin
for myself; another, fitted with the
Century Precision Optics 0.55x wideangle, I tripod mounted, framed to
cover the entire band, and left in the
charge of my wife, Ruth Corwin.
Fortunately, Jose Ponce (pronounced
Pon-say) co-founder of the New
Mexico Music Awards, had come along
to observe the recording session and
was familiar with shooting home videos.
So I mounted the remaining camera on
another tripod, asking Jose to hold one
of the musicians in frame for a while,
then smoothly pan to the next, hold
frame for a bit, and so on – and not
worry if I got in the shot. I left his camera
on autofocus as I didn’t want him
changing focus, a skill better practiced
with a large monitor to check focus
accuracy.
I didn’t like the look of the
Cineframe, so I was shooting in 1080i; I
very much liked the ability to select five
‘pages’ of user-programmed menu, so I
could put all the features I wanted in
what I considered priority order. I
matched these menus the night before;
unfortunately, there’s no way to set up
one camera and transfer the settings to
another, so it’s a bit laborious.
Many takes later, we’d recorded
about 40 minutes per camera, had two
music tracks burnt to a CD, and it was
time to brave the weather for the
outdoor shoot. The band piled drums,
cymbals, guitars and keyboard into two
pickup trucks, and our convoy headed
up the mountain. I selected a nearby
location from stills Jimmy showed me
on his digital camera. But the storm was
definitely coming in. We parked by the
side of a scenic gorge between two
tunnels. This would work, I figured. We
had maybe an hour of good daylight left
before sunset.
I started shooting the unloading of
the trucks. When one was empty, I
positioned the camera with the wideangle adapter on a tripod in the empty
truck bed, and told my wife that her
shot would start pointing up the cliff face
looming above us, slowly tilting down
until framing the band, at which point
the music would start.
The band assembled their
instruments. They were perched on
craggy rocks amid looming cliffs, with a
torrent rushing down the gorge below
them. We used the truck’s CD player
for the music. Jose operated as before,
with the same instructions: “hold on one
musician for a bit, then smoothly pan to
another, and ignore me even if I get in
the shot.”
In the second take snow started to
fall, first the odd flake, then distinct
flurries. At this elevation, about 6,500
feet, snow flakes resemble small
polystyrene pellets. They were
bouncing off the cowboy hats some of
the band members wore. Well, I
wanted scenic, and I got it.
Back in the warmth of Jimmy’s
house, we reviewed footage. Each tape
recorded almost exactly an hour. It was
delightful to just hand someone one of
these little cameras while they watched
the footage on the LCD screen. It all
looked amazing – especially the snow at
the end.
No way could I have done this
shoot on any other camera, to this
degree of quality, or this easily. I could
not have afforded to rent extra
SDX900 cameras to supplement the
one I own, and in any case they would
have been daunting to the other
operators. Just keeping manual lenses
in focus would have been impossible. I
was surprised that the resolution from
the A1 was so good, but it has a
1920x1080 pixel sensor. It’s only one
chip, but you don’t need three CMOS
chips to produce a great image, unlike
CCDs. No-one would seriously
suggest a single-CCD professional
camera, but digital cinema cameras,
such as the Panavision Genesis, use a
single CMOS chip – albeit a larger one.
Sony has made the first viable small
CMOS chip professional camera; it
weighs only 1.5 pounds, 2.5 with XLR
adapter, mic, tape and hood. For low
profile or low budget shooting, it’s
unmatched. I didn’t see the aliasing that
the Z1 can exhibit when panning over
fine detail, possibly because of the A1’s
higher pixel count. Certainly the Z1 has
more professional features, but the
image of the A1 appears to have more
resolution; I would advise keeping the
sharpness (detail) setting down on either
camera to avoid an electronic oversharp
look. The backlight button on the A1
gives a boost in speed without affecting
shutter speed, aperture or gain, and
even at 18dB of gain, the image isn’t
really noisy.
A week later, at Circuit City in San
Rafael, California, I was looking at the
footage on a 50in Sony back-projection
TV. The resolution, the whole image
quality, was amazing for a $2000 streetpriced camera. On the big screen, I
again saw snow pellets bouncing off the
cowboy hats of the band. Going back to
the opening shot of the first track, I
watched the tilt down the rocky cliff
behind, and thought I saw something in
the rocks. I replayed it, and again. As the
camera tilted down, I saw what looked
like faces, and skulls with big beaks, like
eagle skulls, in the rocks. As Jimmy had
told me, his People were watching.
For further
information on the
HVR-A1, browse
www.sonybiz.net/hdv
Robert Render
Harrison is originally
from Newport, Gwent,
and is now an
independent producer
and writer living near
San Francisco. He is
currently working on
Indian Art Summer, a
documentary series
celebrating American
Indian art and artists.
17
sony hd supplement
xdcam hd
Shooting in sweltering
conditions, the crew
might be hot and
bothered, but the
XDCAM wasn’t. When
Simon took the lens
cap out of his pocket,
it actually had
condensation on it.
The mid-range contenders
Simon Wyndham performs a side-by-side test of the
two XDCAM HD cameras, the F330 and F350, and
assesses their potential in the HD middleground.
n the May/June issue of Showreel, I
took a look at the PDW-F330
XDCAM HD, a 1/2in CCD high-def
camera which Sony is targeting at the
middle ground of high definition
production needs – the sector between
HDV and higher-end HD cameras
designed for drama. The F330 also has a
slightly better featured sibling in the form
of the F350. Here I am going to put the
F350 and the F330 to the test side-byside on an extreme sports video to see
how they fare.
In the months since its release, the
XDCAM HD system has been taking off
in a way that I did not expect. People
who stayed well away from the standard
def variation of the system appear to
have firmly given their stamp of approval
to the new high def version. Whatever
the doubters may have thought initially,
XDCAM has definitely planted itself
firmly on the map now.
I
18
This is the area of the market that
could be thought of as the HD
equivalent of Digibeta – the new way to
go for news and sports broadcasters
making the switch to high definition
transmissions. But as with Digibeta, the
cameras offer abilities that make them
suitable for other uses too.
The competition
Sony got to this sector first. Panasonic
will not release an ENG-style version of
its P2 system until 2007. However,
there are other cameras beginning to
emerge. The other manufacturers have
loaded their artillery and lie in wait ready
to unleash their systems onto the world.
Other than P2, there is the Grass Valley
Infinity system, for instance. The Revpro
recording media is very small and damn
near indestructible as the footage of
enthusiastic Grass Valley reps gleefully
jumping up and down on top of the
devices has shown. Infinity is a codecagnostic camera. Not only can it record
to different types of media, but it can
also handle many different recording
codecs too.
So where does that leave our blue
laser friend? Certainly, it means that
there will be much more competition
out there. Whether this competition will
be a good thing, or whether it will mean
the market becomes too fragmented for
freelance camera operators to own
their own equipment any more remains
to be seen. For now, though, XDCAM
is seemingly on a high.
The popularity of XDCAM has lead
to TDK releasing its own XDCAM disc
with a tough ‘Durabis Pro’ coating,
thereby bringing an endorsement and
extra competition to the market. The
low cost of recording and archiving
footage has been one of the reasons
why many have chosen to use
XDCAM over rival systems.
So, although challengers may
emerge, XDCAM currently holds the
dominant position. So let’s say you have
a few grand or so burning a hole in your
pocket, and you have decided to buy
one of the XDCAM HD cameras with
some accessories. Which one should
you get, and what kinds of lenses are
available for this new system?
When I last tested the F330 I found it
to be a very nice camera in general
operation. I had one or two
reservations, but overall it excelled at its
purpose. This time around Sony
supplied us with an F330 with a Canon
autofocus lens that is included if you
purchase the PDW-F330K package.
More importantly, they supplied us with
the PDW-F350, the flagship XDCAM
HD model. Canon also donated one of
its new KH 20x6.4B KRS 1/2in high def
broadcast lenses to marry to the
cameras.
Aside from the sleek jet black paint
job, there are two major differences
between the F350 and the lower priced
F330. The first is that the 350 omits the
analogue component outputs of the 330
in favour of an HD-SDI connection on
the rear of the camera. This connection
is not all that it seems, however. While it
does output a 4:2:2 colour signal, unlike
the standard definition XDCAM
cameras, with an SDI board installed,
the 350 does not output a 4:2:2 signal
direct from the camera head. Instead, it
upconverts a 4:2:0 signal.
Where the component outputs used
to be, the 350 has genlock and
timecode connections instead, allowing
synchronisation with other devices.
There is also an additional composite
video-out connection too. This makes
the 350 a slight step above the 330 for
multi-camera operations.
The last major difference between
the two XDCAM HD camera models is
the inclusion of variable frame rates on
the 350. Panasonic first introduced this
ability with its much-famed Varicam
model. No other manufacturer has seen
fit since to attempt it in any other
general use camera until Panasonic itself
released the HVX200 ‘prosumer’
camcorder last year. Now Sony has
decided to get in on the act.
The 350 has two modes of variable
framerate operation, standard and
extended. Assuming the camera is in the
50Hz setting, standard mode allows the
user to choose any framerate from 1fps
to 25fps in single frame increments. It
must also be noted at this point that
variable framerate operation is only
possible in progressive scan mode. The
option of 50fps for slow motion is also
available. Extended mode allows the
additional selection of framerates
between 25fps and 50fps to be chosen
in single frame increments.
Unfortunately, speed ramping is not
possible. However, it is possible to
record at 50fps and then perform the
speed ramp in post. This will require the
addition of sound recorded from a
separate device, since the camera does
not record audio in variable framerate
modes. Possibly the lack of speed
ramping might be a good thing, having
saved us from having to view the effect
in every single production made, as
opposed to having to see it in every
other production, as things stand now.
Using selectable framerates also has
one other slight drawback. From 1fps to
25fps – which performs the same
function as undercranking in a film
camera, thus speeding up the action on
playback – the video is recorded using
the full 1080p resolution. However,
above 25fps, video is recorded at
1440x540 lines. I noticed too that video
is actually physically stored at this
resolution rather than being interpolated
to 1080 lines. NLEs that read the
footage assume a pixel aspect ratio of
0.6667 to display and render the
footage in its correct shape.
Is the quality adversely affected? On
paper the idea of going down to 540
lines seems unacceptable. However, I
am pleased to report that to my eyes I
couldn’t honestly tell. Side-by-side or
split screened with 1080 footage and
the difference might be viewable. Seen
Below: an example of
how Cine-gamma 2
produces a flat look
straight out of the
camera. Bottom: how
it looks after grading.
19
sony hd supplement
Simon sports his tan,
while the 350 sports
its slow motion
capabilities.
20
in isolation I doubt the majority of
people would be able to tell that there
was a reduction in resolution.
Obviously, this is still a limitation, but not
a debilitating one.
You might be asking yourself why,
with the half resolution limitation, it
wouldn’t be just as well to record
interlaced footage with the cheaper 330
model and perform the old linedoubling slow motion trick in post?
Closer examination shows that there
are a few reasons why it is much more
advantageous to record using the 350’s
built-in variable framerates.
The first is that the line-doubling trick
creates line twitter where the alternate
fields have been line-doubled. Aliased
‘jaggies’ also appear on diagonals. By
using the 350’s built-in framerates you
won’t suffer from any of these
problems, and you will have the added
advantage of being able to select all of
those other framerate speeds. Fancy
shooting at 32fps for a subtle slow
motion? You can do that with the 350.
Fancy shooting a martial arts sequence
xdcam hd
at 20fps for that ‘Ching Siu-tung’ look?
You can also do that with the 350. You’d
never perform these sorts of speed
adjustments to the same satisfactory
degree by attempting them in postproduction.
As with the 330, the 350 is a ‘one
world, one camera’ model, as Sony
puts it. This means that it is switchable
between 50Hz and 60Hz (with the
added selection of US NTSC and
Japanese NTSC modes), thus allowing
it to be used in any country in the
world. This function allows users in
50Hz countries the luxury of an
additional extra trick when it comes to
shooting slow motion footage. Put the
camera into 60Hz mode and 60fps
recording becomes available. Because
high definition is the same resolution in
all countries, it is possible, assuming
your NLE will allow a frame-for-frame
display of the footage instead of
interpolating the framerate, to obtain
slow motion that is 10fps slower than
it would have been in 50Hz mode.
Sony Vegas, for example, by
judiciously using the clip time stretch
option, allows such frame-for-frame
conversion. If you are using frame
interpolation software such as Realviz
Retimer, this extra temporal resolution
will help when attempting to slow the
footage down even more.
It must be said that shooting good
slow motion with the camera is not a
case of just selecting the framerate that
you want and pressing record. One
factor that needs to be taken into
consideration is the shutter speed.
Those who use the old trick of linedoubling interlaced footage for slow
motion will know that usually a 1/100th
or 1/125th shutter works best for
obtaining smooth, yet crisp motion
with no smeary motion blur. What I
found when I shot with the F350 was
an altogether different result. A 1/100th
shutter at 50fps should logically be
ideal. However, I found that it looked a
bit too smeary and video-like for my
tastes. Instead, after much
experimentation, I found that using a
1/250th shutter at 50fps gave me the
most filmlike slow motion with perfect
clarity, as well as perfect smoothness of
movement. This flies in the face of
conventional wisdom, but it works. Just
remember to readjust the shutter
when you switch slow motion off or
change framerates.
When in variable framerate mode it
can become tricky to operate the
camera. This is because, while the
footage that is recorded to disk is
perfectly smooth, the view in the
viewfinder updates according to the
framerate. This means that at anything
other than 25fps or 50fps, the motion
you see in the viewfinder is a very
uneven and jerky update. This is not to
say that it is impossible to use, but it can
be tricky, especially at very low
framerates.
Sony has made it easy to switch
between the different framerates. By
using the rotary dial that is usually used
for menu selection, it is possible to
select different speeds very quickly
instead of needing to dive into the
operation menu every time you wish to
make a modification. I must warn you,
though, that using variable framerates is
addictive. It is tempting to shoot
everything in slow motion. I just hope
mechanism is a bit like arming a covert
sniper with the Vulcan rotary canon that
Jesse Ventura uses in Predator. It isn’t a
total loss though. The camera does have
Dedicated lenses
the ability to display the focusing point in
As I mentioned earlier, we were
feet in the viewfinder, but this doesn’t
supplied with two different lenses. The
solve the problem of being able to mark
Canon VLC-719BXS autofocus lens,
focus points on the barrel and repeating
and the Canon KH20 1/2in broadcast
lens. The VLC-719 is the lens that many the moves take after take unless you are
very, very careful.
budget-conscious users will be using.
This brings me nicely onto the Canon
This lens will help those wanting to get
into high def without the overheads of a KH 20x6.4B KRS. This is part of the new
higher-end lens. The trouble is that I am HDgc range of high definition lenses
Canon has developed exclusively for the
not sure how much use people will get
XDCAM HD cameras. Currently a
out of it. The build quality is certainly
family of four lenses all aimed at the 1/2in
very good. Both the zoom and iris
controls are smooth with very little play. XDCAM HD cameras, three of them
The big issue with this lens though is the are fully manual models, while the
nature of the focus control. Yep, you’ve fourth, the KH 19x6.7 KAS, is servo
driven. To develop this number of lenses
guessed it, it is one of those infinitely
for such a new format shows that Canon
rotating servo focus systems.
must have full confidence in the XDCAM
For people moving up from
Handycams or the likes of the DSR-250, HD system to succeed.
While the other lenses are all aimed
this might not be much of a problem.
at different price ranges and capabilities,
But for those that are used to fully
the KH20 can be considered to be the
manual lenses you will want to stay
away. Usually trying to focus with such a budget model, listing at around $9000.
that this kind of effect doesn’t become a
cliché of video through overuse.
The lens is a fully manual affair, and
operators of current 2/3in broadcast
cameras will feel right at home with it.
The main difference between the KH20
and the other two manual lenses in the
range is the lack of Canon’s Digital Servo
Drive, which allows functions such as
zoom movements to be programmed
in, and thus repeated precisely over
multiple takes, among other things. The
lens optics on the KH20 are of the same
quality as the other lenses, so the
difference in price is down to the lack of
the Digital Servo Drive and 2x extender,
which is included with the other models.
As one would expect, the build
quality of the KH20 is up to Canon’s
usual high standards. Once again the
controls are very smooth with very little
play. In this regard the lens is certainly up
to the same quality as the company’s
2/3in broadcast lenses. Focal lengths are
from 6.4mm at its widest to 128mm at
full zoom, with only half a stop loss of
light. On the 1/2in XDCAM HD this
means that you can expect an angle of
view of 57deg when fully wide, making
Top left: the Canon
VLC-719BXS autofocus
lens gets the job done,
but is not ideal. Top
right: the F350’s
timecode and genlock
connections. Bottom
left: the rear of the
F350 showing the
HDSDI out connection.
Bottom right: the
Canon KH 20x8.5B
KRS is the lens most
budget-minded users
should aim for.
21
sony hd supplement
For further information
on the PDW-F330 and
PDW-F350, browse
www.sonybiz.net/xdcam
it a good general purpose lens.
Maximum aperture is f1.4. While the
Digital Servo Drive is not included on
the KH20, the lens still keeps the shuttle
shot function, which allows the operator
to quickly zoom in, grab focus, and then
automatically return to the focal length
they were using previously.
The images produced by the 350
with the KH20 attached were very
sharp, even with the camera’s detail
turned off. Colours looked vibrant,
while fine detail such as blades of grass
were nicely defined. The lens was
comfortable to hold too. Canon has
introduced a new grip into the design
making the hold slightly more solid. High
definition glass is much harder to make
for smaller formats, so it is
commendable that Canon has
considered the price class of the camera
and produced a lens that most owners
of the camera will be able to afford,
without compromising the build quality.
Gamma settings
Simon Wyndham is a
freelance cameraman
and director based in
the Midlands. His
website can be found at
www.simonwyndham.co.uk
22
In the previous test of the 330, I used
the camera’s standard gamma setting.
This time I decided to give the cinegamma option a try. The SD XDCAMs
have a film gamma option, as does the
DSR-450. Sony is realising that users
want more and more from their
cameras, and quite often a post grading
process is used. Sony recently released
new software for the HDCAM HDW750, which introduced new cinegamma options. These are similar to the
gamma options on the XDCAM HD
cameras. The cine-gammas work by
adjusting the gamma curve so that more
contrast range, especially in the
highlights, is compressed into the same
tonal space as the more linear standard
gamma. This can more fully utilise the
capabilities of the CCDs. The result is an
image that looks duller and flatter than
normal. Images produced with such
gamma curves should be thought of as a
‘picture in progress’ and need to be
graded in post.
After playing around with the various
gamma selections, I decided to use
Cine-gamma 2 combined with the Cine
colour matrix preset. Theoretically this
would give me the widest contrast
range possible out of the box ready for
post grading. In fact, I was utterly
astounded at just how much range Cine
2 achieves. I managed to expose an
interior to a manageable level while the
view through the window on what was
a very sunny day was still perfectly visible
without the huge amount of blowout
that is usual with video cameras with the
standard, more linear gamma settings.
There are limitations. This isn’t a
substitute for shooting on some film
stocks. But it does drastically expand the
camera’s capabilities for those wishing to
make independent features. On the
incredibly clear bright sunny day when
we shot the mountain board footage,
this extra range came in very handy
indeed. Although I should mention that
at first it is trickier to find the right
exposure level using these curves. It is
certainly a good idea to slightly
underexpose, something that most
people who are used to attempting a
‘filmlook’ with video are familiar with.
Another difference between the F350
and the F330 is the addition of a 2in 16:9
viewfinder. The 330 uses a 1.5in 4:3
model which, while usable, is not ideal,
especially when peaking is used. Detail
can become more difficult to discern. The
2in on the 350 is a huge improvement
and is much easier on the eyes.
If you are thinking of purchasing an
XDCAM HD you will need to consider
carefully whether you wish to purchase
2/3in glass or 1/2in. The former will
allow you the option of upgrading or
adding a 2/3in HD camera to your
arsenal later on. Using the 2/3in adaptor
on the XDCAM HD increases the focal
length by 1.37x that of the lens you are
using. There is no degradation to the
image and, contrary to some reports on
the web, there is no light loss using it.
The trouble with 1/2in glass is that
there is no way of knowing how far the
1/2in format will be taken. Purchasing
such lenses without the certainty of the
resale value that accompanies 2/3in
formats make it a tricky decision. If you
wish to upgrade to another shouldermount camera, the 1/2in lens will
generally not be of any use if other
cameras in the pipeline are anything to go
by. This may also be a concern for
companies that wish to add other
cameras with different formats to their
arsenal as time goes on. After all, why
burden yourself with the need to
purchase yet another lens when one lens
that can be interchanged between
cameras would be better? The problem
becomes worse when you need a range
of lenses with differing focal lengths. Time
will tell whether the 1/2in format was a
good idea or not. Some people may
consider the use of the 2/3in adaptor a
sensible idea, despite the increase in focal
length that accompanies it.
F330 and F350 differences
For those that have made up their mind
to get one of these new cameras, the
decision will be whether to get the 330
or the 350. There is no doubting that
the 330 is incredible value for the
money. It all depends on the type of
video that you make. For low level
corporate and industrial work the F330
is ideal. Users in those areas have no
need for slow motion and other bells
and whistles. The F350 on the other
hand is far more suited to broadcast
work and independent film production.
What about the 4:2:0 colour
sampling? I hear you cry. Well, colour
sampling does need to be placed into
perspective. HDCAM for example also
suffers limitations in chroma sampling.
The trouble is that while such technical
discussions go on ad nauseam on the
web, the truth is that for many purposes
nobody in the general viewing public will
notice. People watch television with
their eyes, not a waveform monitor or
zoomed in 600 per cent in Photoshop.
Unless the footage will be used for a film
out, or really requires heavy post work,
the colour sampling issue can be a
rather moot one.
With Discovery HD having approved
XDCAM HD for acquisition, the format
could well become very popular. From
what I have seen so far, the use of 1/2in
CCDs really seems to make minimal
difference to the picture. Okay, there is
perhaps a little more noise than I would
like to see, as I noted in last issue’s look
at the 330. But at the end of the day a
camera is nothing without talent behind
it, and I feel that the XDCAM HD gives
the user a multitude of tools to help get
the job done very effectively. With all the
major NLE manufacturers now
supporting the system, including Avid
and Apple, the XDCAM wheel is set to
continue turning.
hdw-750p
In the grey zone
Ed Mash had to balance the need for high quality HD
recording on indie feature All Bar Love with the limitations
of a tight budget. He selected the HDW-750 camera.
mage-making is going through radical
changes, and the ‘art’ of the cinema is
been challenged by the digital
phenomenon. There is a schism
among cinematographers: those who
are pro-film and those who embrace a
digital future. Like many others, I have
been trying to maintain a foot in both
camps, trying to take on board all the
constantly changing technology and
understand the potential of digital.
Several years ago, when I was asked
to shoot ‘digital’ for a corporate, I picked
up my first Sony F900. The camera
design was familiar, and by testing I
found a way to produce a look that I
liked. A short film quickly followed and
eventually commercials. I knew what
sort of looks I wanted, and I was lucky to
find great technical support in order to
achieve this digitally. I discovered HD
can be filmic, it’s easy to manipulate in
post, and it has a unique look.
Last spring, a very charming voice,
introducing himself as James
Derbyshire, a film director, told me he
had seen something I had shot and
offered me his first feature film, All Bar
Love. It was a romantic comedy in which
a 30-something divorcee can’t – or
won’t – get over his ex-wife. On the day
she remarries (to their accountant), she
makes a desperate deal with him: find a
date or sell his half of their co-owned
bar to her. This leads to a series of
misadventures and misunderstandings
where our hero gets the wrong girl for
the wrong reasons, and eventually the
right girl for the right reasons. It’s always
a good sign if a script makes you laugh
out loud, so I agreed to meet James and
his producer Aubs Tredget to discuss the
film. At that time they wanted to shoot
Setting up the HDW750 on All Bar Love.
All images: Julia
Boggio.
I
mini-DV and transfer to 35mm, as the
budget was tight.
The previous year I’d been asked to
shoot a test on mini-DV for a potential
feature film and transfer it to 35mm for
projection. I used the Panasonic DVX100
because of its Leica lens and its film curve
menus. I spent a month shooting the test
and the result was impressive. The piece
of tape was barely the size of my little
fingernail, and proved that if you worked
around the limitations of shooting on
mini-DV, you can achieve results for a
theatrical release. I shot a short on the
same mini-DV camera, which was the
piece that James had initially seen. Despite
all this, I had misgivings about using miniDV for this film.
I have a great deal of sympathy for
low-budget endeavours, but ultimately
it’s a very hard and limiting arena, so I
tried to tempt James and Aubs into a
larger format. I persuaded them to
come up to Arri to look at the Arri D20.
The D20, complete with its full frame
CMOS sensor, which gives 35mm
depth of field, combined with its optical
look through, makes it highly attractive
for the operator. The other advantage is
that the camera fits with all the Arri
prime lenses and accessories that most
cinematographers are familiar with. In
addition, the fact that the D20 looks like
a film camera helped me to convince
James not to shoot mini-DV. However,
the realities of the budget and the fact
there were only four in the world at that
time meant that the D20 was out of our
range. The Viper, Genesis, and even the
Sony F900 were all similarly out of our
price range, despite some serious
negotiations and generous offers.
Two weeks before principal
photography, I still hadn’t managed to
find an HD camera that we could afford.
Then a producer on a shoot I was doing
wanted to shoot on HD, and she
mentioned the Sony HDW-750. As it
happened, I’d been reading a favourable
article about the version 2 software for
the 750, and was already very
interested in viewing the camera. The
commercial producer put me in touch
with the camera rental house, Visual
25
sony hd supplement
Impact. There, the managing director,
Roland Keane, showed me the Sony
HDW-750, and together with the head
technician, Paul Macki, we discussed a
look for All Bar Love.
We began adjusting the usual menus,
gamma, knee and detail level of the
chip. There are hundreds of sub
engineering menus in the camera, far
too many to discuss in this article.
However, Paul very quickly developed a
feel for the film’s requirements, and he
programmed a chip based on film
curves that would create a unique look.
I like a sharp fall-off into the blacks,
because the artist has better separation
from the background. Paul adjusted the
black gamma and master black gamma,
while refining the white detail to give me
enough latitude to stop the whites
burning out. I combined these menu
choices with a zebra pattern to give me
an accurate exposure balance, which I
26
hdw-750p
could take to the HD monitor for
serious consideration.
Our lighting package for the exterior
locations wouldn’t be extensive enough
to cope with unpredictable weather
conditions. Consequently, the camera
chip’s latitude would be working very
hard. I was interested in the camera
being able to handle lots of different
lighting conditions and especially the red
spectrum. I find that HD is oversensitive
to reds. All Bar Love had some very red
sets, costumes, lipstick and even a
character called Scarlett! In one of the bar
scenes, Scarlett appears in a red dress,
with red table lamps in the background,
red walls and candles. I wanted to be able
to underexpose the red spectrum, but
be able to light the faces adequately.
Keeping the lighting and actors separated
from the background was the real key to
making this work.
Finally we needed a colour
viewfinder, and because of its lighter
weight and size we asked for the Sony
over the Accuscene. The Sony
viewfinder would allow us to shoot
handheld, and also would keep my
operator’s eye as close as possible to the
action. The other advantage of the new
colour viewfinders is that you can ‘read’
the artists’ faces much more clearly and
allow the camera to react accordingly. I
always feel unbalanced by extension
viewfinders, and the Accuscene, being a
long eyepiece, means I tend to sit back
from the camera and therefore the
action. This means that my operating is
less ‘organic’.
One of the more important choices
with HD is the monitor, as it’s your
guide to exposure and lighting. I didn’t
want to burden a small crew with a large
monitor and chose the 14in HD
monitor. I also took the Astro 6in
waveform and vectorscope, which was
new to me. I was relieved that we had a
camera at last, but I was also worried, as
I would have to find a path to take the
750 up to a theatrical release. That
meant starting with the lenses. I choose
the Cine style Canon HJ11 and HJ21
zoom lenses. Zooms would allow me
to shoot fast without constant lens
changing, giving wide field of view in
tight locations as well as telephoto
ability. In short, these were great
workhorses.
We had a brand new Sony HDW750 camera, with a programmed chip,
the Sony HKDW-705 slow shutter
board and version 2 software. My
problem was that I was in the middle of
a grading session for my first feature film,
shot on 35mm. With two commercials
coming up immediately before the
shoot started I had no time to test
properly, and so I had to rely on Visual
Impact to prep the camera.
Pier Hausemer, my focus puller,
checked all the equipment at Visual
Impact the day before the commercial,
which in affect would be All Bar Love’s
camera test. The next day’s shoot was
smooth and gave us plenty of time to
tweak and set up the kit the way we
liked it. For safety’s sake I stuck a piece
of white camera tape on the camera
that said SHUTTER. A lot of people
forget to switch the camera shutter on
when shooting progressive 25p. The
750 behaved impeccably on the
commercial and the next time we’d see
it would be the first day of the film.
The commercial shoot had gone
well, but I worried. Then the next
afternoon the phone rang, it was the
director of the commercial – his first HD
shoot – he was complaining about the
rushes: “it looks too good”!
In the weeks building up to the
feature film’s principal photography,
James and I had been through the script
scene by scene and mapped out all the
camera positions we’d need to cover
the action. We drew the line between
each camera position and established
that we hadn’t crossed it, and that the
scene would edit together smoothly.
Then, in each camera position we noted
the details and pick-ups that we needed.
During the shoot, the director, first
assistant and myself all had a copy of
these ‘maps’, and this prep served us
really well. The shoot was 24 days long
and some days were really script heavy:
one particular day had eight pages,
others six or seven pages. These were
hard looking days on paper, especially as
the film hadn’t secured a permanent
gaffer. Some days I would have to gaffer
myself, as well as operating and lighting.
This would create an incredible
amount of pressure on the camera crew
and meant relying on other departments
heavily. Our production team swung
into action and funded several gaffers
who came in, at short notice, to cover
the heavy days. I have to thank our fulltime spark Angelika Padberg, who
worked the entire shoot and assumed
the role of assistant gaffer. When I
interviewed ‘Jelly’, I cringed when I
heard myself come out with the line, “I
can promise you blood, sweat, and
tears,” and by the end of principal
photography it was almost true.
On the first day of principal
photography the director was beaming
with excitement, so we went, silently,
through the shot list and storyboard
again. Silently because the location didn’t
allow anyone to talk when we weren’t
shooting. This created a very surreal
shooting atmosphere. The first day was
deliberately light and we shot nearly
three pages. The first problem I noticed
was that the 14in HD monitor was
inevitably away from the camera. This
meant travelling between the camera
and the monitor to check the lighting.
On subsequent days the schedule made
this a luxury. I began to rely heavily on
the Astro monitor, which was always
kept on top of the camera. The Astro
has a quick menu system that allows you
to switch easily from the vectorscope to
27
sony hd supplement
hdw-750p and hdw-f900
The current top of the
Cinealta range, the
HDW-F900 – recently
updated as the F900R.
a menu readout window displaying
the cameras status;
• The ability to shoot at higher speeds
than 25p.
For further information waveform view. It also keeps a small
on the HDW-750, browse viewfinder image in the top right of the
www.sonybiz.net/hdcam screen in the waveform mode. This was
Ed Mash
(www.edmash.co.uk)
was director of
photography on All Bar
Love. The film was
written by Julia Boggio
and stars Jeremy
Hancock, Ben Joiner,
Jacqueline Wilder,
Cloudia Swann and Jo
Farrell. Produced by Te
Papa Films, it is
currently in the editing
stage with postproduction scheduled
for completion early
January 07. Expression
of interest are welcome
from distributors and
sales agents with a view
for representation at
AFM and Berlinale.
Contact Aubs Tredget,
+44 (0) 7980 086 645,
[email protected]
www.tepapafilms.co.uk
28
journeyed daily from the lock-up to the
location and back. All very well
organised, but tough on both man and
machine. Steve came back positive: our
a useful facility, allowing me to quickly
Sony 750 seemed much more robust
gauge any problem areas before
switching to full frame view for a detailed than earlier models. In fact, if I’m to be
critical of the camera, my main problem
appreciation. By turning the Astro to
face forward I could gaffer lights and stay is that it’s still housed in the old
camcorder shell. This design is great if
close to camera. I used the Astro to
you’re an ENG cameraman, with the
establish the exposure for much of the
camera on your shoulder, but if the 750
film, and as a working practice this
is to be a drama camera then the design
allowed me to keep on, or near, the
needs addressing.
schedule. The Astro’s only criticism
Then there’s the ON/OFF button.
came from the sound department, who
For the whole shoot, especially with
required it off for closely confined
gloves on, it was impossible to wiggle
locations, as the monitor’s cooling fan
my fingers past the lens support bars
was noisy.
and turn the camera on/off in a hurry.
Pier was using the Century Optics
This could be easily addressed with a big
HD collimator and quickly discovered
that the wideangle zoom wasn’t 100 per button below the eyepiece. The new
colour eyepiece is a fantastic
cent and needed collimating more
frequently to guarantee back focus. The improvement, but it doesn’t have an
collimator is held against the front of the accurate lock-off. The eyepiece can
lens and avoids the need for a wall chart. rotate while you’re operating and you
can find yourself tilting the camera in
The focus puller sets the lens to infinity
and adjusts the back focus of the camera one direction while the eyepiece swings
down away from your eye.
until its sharp. It can be used in small
I’m sure that Sony intend to resolve
locations without much fuss and it’s
these small niggles, but if Sony took the
quick. A piece of kit that I’d definitely
750 back to the design bench I would
order again.
also suggest:
Two weeks into principal
photography it was time to say goodbye
• A proper lens housing that is
to Pier, who was off to operate on a
integrated within the camera body;
short film. We welcomed Steve Janes,
• A wider camera body made from
who stepped in to focus and
more durable plastics/metal with a
immediately gave the kit a severe
better balance for handheld work;
inspection. At this point we’d been
putting the camera through its paces for • An integrated menu system panel
that would help remove some of the
two intense weeks. That included night
external switches and make the
shoots, several diverse locations, some
menu easier to access, perhaps with
very fast wraps, plus the kit had
But then perhaps I’m missing the
point, because the strength of the Sony
750 is that it’s cheap and is perfect for
broadcast, with an ability to mimic
35mm and 16mm grain, negative and
reversal films, and an endless menu
system for creative cinematographers.
But then with a push it can shoot for the
cinema as well. The 750’s robust design
is able to tolerate the demands of the
modern film set, and also deliver great
images. Throughout the 24-day shoot it
was reassuring to see the buzz around
the HD monitor and appreciate the
consistency of depth, colour and
contrast that the 750 delivered all day,
every day without interruption. Given
the constraints of time and budget, I’m
really proud of the look that we
achieved on the 750 and feel the film
deserves to be a success.
The final frame
There are already some great-looking
digital films about. However, I think that
not until all involved can agree on a
universal digital format, and bring it up to
the level of 35mm film, can
cinematography move forward into the
wonderful world that digital electronic
cinema promises to be. Until then a
grey area remains, where photography,
chemistry and digital technology are
loosely fused together.
Of course, the advantages of HD are
well known. You don’t need to check the
HD camera for a hair in the gate; the HD
image has none of the weave of a filmprojected image; it’s static, beautifully still,
and it’s clean too. And in this eco-friendly
age, it’s reassuring to think that HD has
none of the chemicals that you need to
develop and process film.
When I view film rushes there is
always a bit of something unexpected. I
feel HD tends to give me more directly
what I see. It has great resolution, but
there doesn’t seem to be anything extra,
no surprises. These are all to be
resolved in the future. This is not a
criticism of digital formats, but an
acknowledgement that the two
mediums are still quite different.
Moving up in the world
Dan Mulligan assesses the technical merits of the Cinealta
750P and F900 HD cameras, and offers an opinion on the
suitability for each when shooting different genres.
opefully here I can evaluate Sony’s
F900 Cinealta camera and provide
a small insight into its capabilities.
I’ll show you the benefits of using
the F900 above other similar Sony
cameras and show its plus point, such as
gamma download curves and recording
externally to HDCAM SR tape.
I’ve used many HD cameras, from
HDV, HDCAM, F900 (series 1, 2 & 3)
up to Viper 4:4:4. The obvious thing to
bear in mind is the cost. The more
expensive the camera the better its
imaging capabilities – stands to reason –
but HDV has shown to be remarkably
cost-effective at its level.
The F900 as such is priced very high,
and so has a great deal more to it than
say the cheaper 750P (P for Pal).
Although you can use all cameras for all
H
genres (with a greater or lesser degree
of success), here I will try to explain why
I think the F900 is much more suited to
HD drama for film/TV than the 750P
and why in my opinion the 750P is a
great documentary/TV camera.
The F900/3 (series 3) was the last
upgrade of the original F900 chassis and
has now just been replaced by the
F900R (sleeker chassis, built-in HD-SDI
downconversion, etc), but I’ll
concentrate on the F900/3, the most
widely available on the market today.
The F900/3 has a 12-bit CCD (10bit on 750P) and displays the full
1080x1920 frame in either 1080i or
1080p modes at 2.2 million pixels per
frame. It carries the ability to select a
number of frame rates (23.98 to 30 PsF)
in 1080P and 50/50.94/60Hz in its
1080i mode.
It has 53 pages of menus (76 on
750P), but most are irrelevant
(engineering mostly). Gamma tables can
be loaded into the F900, disabling some
menu settings, but giving the camera a
much better response.
It has a greater exposure range than
the 750P and has a more filmic
response to the highlights and the
blacks. The camcorder design means
that the internal tape recorder suffers
from 3:1:1 compression and makes for
a fairly bulky camera. The 750P is much
leaner. You will need to convert the HD
YRB signals to HD-SDI (via an adaptor)
to achieve 4:2:2 uncompressed external
recordings.
HDCAM SR offers the very best tape
acquisition format today for 4:2:2
For further
information on the
HDW-750P or HDWF900, browse
www.sonybiz.net/
hdcamsr
29
sony hd supplement
The new F900/R was
used with great
results on Robert
Altman’s recent
feature, A Prairie
Home Companion.
Having started a
camera career as a
clapper loader and
focus puller, as well as
fashion and travel stills
photography, Dan
Mulligan is now a fullblown camera operator
and occasional DP. He
runs Rogue Element
Films providing 4:4:4
digital camera services
with Viper and Zeiss
lenses. He lives in
Worcestershire.
www.rogueelementfilms.com
30
recordings. The only portable option
being Sony’s SRW1, as the studio decks
(SRW 5500) are generally too bulky,
although they were used on Collateral.
For the HDV enthusiast, the F900 is
a considerable leap up the technical
food chain and would pose many
challenges for such a user. The menus
are tricky to navigate and to anyone not
familiar with certain terminology it could
prove very hard to understand. But
having said that, if you hired one and left
the camera at its factory settings you
would still get excellent images, just not
tweaked enough to get the full value of
the camera’s abilities.
For the film user this camera
represents the best value for filmlike
response and options. You can select
the required frame rate you need
(23.98, 24, 25,2 9.97, 30PsF, etc); and
the ability to load in gamma curves (like
film curves) means you can achieve very
filmlike results (highlight control, black
response) – especially if you are
considering a DI and eventually a filmout for cinema release.
But be warned, although you can
squeeze out an extra few MPH out of
the F900, the basic camera architecture
means you are still compromising a little
– undoubtedly one reason Sony has
announced its even higher spec NGC23 digital cinema camera (see page 34).
The F900 uses 3:1:1 compression,
which could render grading a bit more
troublesome on effects-heavy shows.
To get the best from the camera you
should record uncompressed on to an
external recorder (say an SRW1) via an
HD-SDI output adapter to enable
uncompressed 4:2:2 recording, thus
helping to record as much image data
and colour information as possible. Also,
the camera menus mean that some
form of in-camera correction is taking
place, losing a good stop’s worth of
exposure latitude compared to log
capture straight from the CCD, which
bypasses the camera’s internal menu
circuits.
I have shot 4:2:2 uncompressed to
D5 and SRW1, and the results are very
good indeed. The best way to squeeze
the most out of the F900 is to rig the
camera with an HD-SDI adapter and
record to the SRW1 via a single BNC,
giving 4:2:2 uncompressed images using
a 709 gamma curve (provided by Digital
Praxis). This is the best results I have
seen, and if the F900 is your camera of
choice, it’s the only way. In fact, Robert
Altman has recently shot a full feature
using F900 to SRW1, A Prairie Home
Companion, and the results are fantastic.
Otherwise, use the 709 curve straight
onto HDCAM internally; you won’t be
disappointed.
HDCAM SR
HDCAM SR (Superior Resolution?) is
Sony’s new ace-in-the-hole for tape
capture. Recording four times as much
information as standard HDCAM stock,
it does suffer from tape compression,
but so slight as to be virtually nonexistent. Compared to data/disk capture
it is, by eye, undetectable. I love it.
F900 compared to 750 is like
Porsche to a Subaru, both very quick
and capable, but one just offers that bit
more refinement and options. The
750P (Pal) has fewer options (1080p at
25PsF or 1080i 50Hz), a 10-bit CCD
(12-bit on F900, worth a stop or two of
latitude, highlight control, etc), but it is
cheaper, still pumps out 2.2 million
pixels per frame and has an easier menu
structure (76 pages worth). A new
version 2.0 of the camera software was
released last December (2005), which
gives a new menu for filmlike response.
This is not a gamma curve, as in the
F900, but a series of menu numbers for
you to punch in and then save to the
memory stick.
I like the 750P – it is a very capable
camera, but to me it’s a documentary
camera. It has a lot of detail level,
which you can switch off, and makes
waterfalls, mountains, landscapes and
so on stunning, but put an actor’s face
in front of the camera and to my eye it
looks too harsh. But it’s a very good
video camera.
The F900 is a much more capable
and forgiving camera, especially when
shooting drama. It has a much more
filmlike response to highlights and blacks,
and when using the gamma curves
correctly gives very pleasing results.
Ultimately, though, your budget will
decide what’s best for you, but for my
money the F900 is the much better
choice for drama and the 750P fits the
documentary/travel/TV show market
perfectly.
My choice of kit with F900/3 would
be:
• For drama/film: F900, Zeiss
DigiPrimes, SRW1 SR stock external,
gamma curves;
• For drama/TV: F900, Zeiss lenses,
HDCAM internal recorder, gamma
curves;
• For documentary/TV: 750P, Canon
HD lenses, careful menu set up.
However, as I own a Viper with
HDCAM SR and Zeiss DigiPrimes, I’d
shoot that too.
sony hd supplement
hdw-f900
Computer or typewriter?
Randall P Dark found huge advantages in shooting on the F900 as
opposed to film when making Closing Escrow – an improv comedy
where it was important that the cameras could roll and roll.
e’re not going to compare the
creative differences between
film and high definition here.
That topic has been debated
to death over the past few
years. Purists in both camps present
compelling arguments about the merits
of their particular passion and
exaggerate the weaknesses of the other.
The constant bickering is pointless and
irritating. To say film is dead is like saying
oil painting is dead. The bottom line is
that film is an art form. HD is an art
form. Period. We know HD is replacing
film, but the reason is not artistic, so a
better analogy is: saying HD will replace
film is like saying the computer will
replace the typewriter. There are
creative people still typing on a
typewriter when they write their grand
novel or their latest screenplay, but we
all know there are different ways to
accomplish the task.
The following is our account of a
cost-effective way to tell a story. A way
that helps us minimise costs, manage
images and shoot in a way that gives us
as much control over every aspect of
the creative process as possible. But
first, opinion followed by a little history.
HD will never replace film as a form
of art. HD will replace film for two
W
For further
information on the
HDW-750P or HDWF900, browse
www.sonybiz.net/
hdcamsr
32
completely different reasons. First, HD
can look exactly like film at a fraction of
the cost, and second, all the old DPs
who only know film and refuse to learn
new technology will die and be replaced
by DPs that GET IT.
There were many important events
in the evolution of HD that brought us
to where the industry is now. One of
them was America’s adoption of its HD
standards. Once that happened,
broadcasters made a commitment. In
the last four or five years the US has
gone from almost no HD broadcast
content to HD coverage of just about
every major sporting event, HD content
during primetime by all major networks,
HD morning talk shows, HD local news
coverage in some markets and HD
features in local movie theatres. The
same is set to happen in Europe.
Although the cut-off date for analogue
television broadcasts is more distant in
some regions than others, we all know
the end of analogue is coming, and this
has caused companies to start investing
in HD.
The milestone that helped HD the
most in Hollywood was George Lucas
shooting Star Wars in 24p. Up to that
point everything shot HD was shot at a
fast frame rate, which is great for
nonfiction projects, but not great if you
want the film look. For that, you have to
change frame rates. Lucas worked
closely with Sony and out of that came
the CineAlta camera, a very appealing
technology.
Why HD?
Now, back to our movie. Why did we
choose HD? We asked, why not? Today,
there are two common HD stumbling
blocks and we saw our way through
both of them. The first is overcoming the
hype. The criticism of early generations
of HD cameras was that they didn’t have
the emotional range of traditional 35mm
cameras: the colour, the detail or the
ability to handle highlights and give the
emotional impact of film. DPs are
revisiting the latest and greatest HD
technology from a variety of
manufacturers and seeing how robust
these systems are. The second is the
myth that HD does not affect the overall
bottom line. From high-end HDCAM to
low-end HDV, there’s a cost-effective
solution to imaging in HD, no matter
what your budget is.
Closing Escrow is a low-budget
independent feature intended for
theatrical distribution. That criterion
required high-quality images as well as
affordability. HD made perfect sense.
We decided during pre-production
that it would be virtually impossible to
get the required footage using a
traditional single-camera scenario for
shooting. We agreed on two CineAlta
F900 cameras, shot at 24fps. Because
HDCAM tape loads last 50 minutes,
we were able get an incredible
amount of original material: 57 hours
in 14 days. To shoot that much film
footage over the same period of time
would have been unbelievably
expensive, not to mention destructive
to our creative process. You see,
Closing Escrow is an improv comedy.
Once comedians hit their stride, it’s
devastating to make them stop midstream. Changing film every 10
minutes would have been a killer.
However, introducing an additional
camera into the mix presented a
number of risk/reward scenarios.
The risk
The obvious risk was that if both
cameras were not perfectly matched,
the end result would be hours of
additional colour correction during the
final stages of post. In addition, we
needed to break one camera off on
nearly every scene to shoot B-roll
footage, which required a completely
different camera setting. As soon as
the B-roll footage was captured, we
needed to get back to a two-camera
scenario. This opened up the
opportunity for error. There are many
switches and menu settings on HD
cameras. It’s easy for even a careful
operator to accidentally put a knob in
the ‘on’ position when it really should
be ‘off’.
The reward
Our anxieties were completely
squashed by the workflow we
generated during principal photography.
Each camera was connected to a
Paintbox and the output was fed A/B to
an Apple display device and a waveform
monitor. This gave us the instant ability
to not only ensure that each camera
was matched, but our DP, Scott Billups,
would actually time the image to the
look and feel our director, Armen
Kaprelian, wanted. So, Armen saw a
basic version of his finished image in real
time.
In scenes with multiple axes and
multiple characters, we fed a signal
directly from the camera to a Final Cut
Pro system and our offline editor
slammed together a rough cut of the
scene before we moved to the next
location. Being able to look at highresolution playback on the set meant we
knew we had the shot and could catch
the smallest detail. HD afforded us a
high quality product that we could not
have achieved with any other costcomparable technology.
One of the most interesting things
about independent ‘film’ makers is that,
as a whole, they’re not afraid of new
technology. They embrace it as a tool to
enhance their product. It’s still difficult
for them to get noticed. What excites us
about HD and new technologies related
to it is that they offer alternative ways to
attract an audience. We’ve edited a few
teasers for video iPods to create a buzz
about our feature, and we’ve created
blogs by the characters in the movie on
our website, www.closingescrow.com.
We’ve experienced positive response to
innovative concepts like these and are
told that they add to the experience of
watching a movie.
HD is not for everyone, but we do
recommend that the cost-conscious
producer take a look at the facts and not
the bias fiction we constantly hear from
nay-sayers. It’s time has come and
seeing truly is believing. We’re
convinced.
Randall P Dark is the
creative and marketing
force behind HD Vision
Studios. As a writer,
director and producer,
he offers an artist’s
point of view while
demonstrating the
technological
advantages of HD. On
May 19, 2000, Randall
was presented one of
the International
Electronic Cinema
Festival’s top honours,
The Pioneer Award. He
has been involved in
over 2000 HD projects.
He recently wrote a
children’s book, The
Tale of Sasquatch.
www.hdvstudios.tv
33
sony hd supplement
A camera for movies
Michael Bravin presents a sneak preview of the recently
announced Sony 4:4:4 electronic cinematography camera ,
codenamed NGC-23, first show in prototype form at NAB.
Prototype NGC-23
under glass at
NAB2006.
Michael Bravin has
been with Band Pro
Film & Digital for 11
years. As chief
technology officer and
VP engineering and
technical services, he
works closely as a
consultant and advisor
to cinematographers,
directors, and
producers worldwide,
in their transition from
film to digital
production. Michael is
a vocal advocate for
preserving the craft,
art, and timehonoured traditions of
filmmaking as the
transition to digital
cinematography
unfolds.
34
hen I was asked to write this
short piece about the the Sony
Electronic Cinematography
camera, I was a bit hesitant
because the camera is still in
development, with an expected delivery
early in 2007. What I write here will still
be here after it release, and whatever I
say will be measured against what the
camera system actually becomes, so
let’s just call this a ‘first impression’ and
look forward to additional changes and
improvements between now and the
release of this new camera system for
HD cinematography.
Sony is finally listening. This was the
buzz from the film community that I
heard a lot at NAB 2006. Sony has
taken a lot of heat from the film
community over the past several years
because its design for high definition
cameras is based on the ENG shouldermount camcorders, and these cameras
have had to be adapted to electronic
cinematography.
The design and performance of
ENG-style camcorders is part of Sony’s
core competency, and there have been
many wildly successful models since the
introduction of the BVW200 in the late
90s. Another of Sony’s core
competencies is its development of
CCD technology, matched with very
good in-camera image processing.
Since the deployment of the HDW
F900, hundreds of movies and thousands
of hours of television have been shot in
HD 24P with this ubiquitous HD
camcorder and the European iteration,
the HDW750P in 25P.
The new NGC-23, as it is being
referred to (while a name is being
decided), is a departure from the ENG
shoulder-mount camcorder. It is based
on Sony’s Hyper HAD EX 1920x1080
W
require cabling between the camera and
recorder. With the NGC-23, the deck
mounts on the top or the back, similar
to a film mag.
2/3in and three CCDs
Many questions came up about Sony’s
choice of three 2/3in CCD imagers for
60P imaging system and it sports a film
this model. Three CCD image capture
camera like ‘mag’ – the ever-popular
system still provides better sensitivity,
SRW-1 HDCAM SR recording deck. So better lowlight performance and better
Sony will have a full 4:4:4 film camera.
colour fidelity because you are capturing
full bandwidth colour as opposed to the
stripped arrays and Bayer matrices
Image quality
found on single-plane 35mm size
The test footage at NAB, even though
imagers. Sure, the prism optics present
coming from a camera that is in a pre-,
pre-beta version, was quite impressive. a challenge with chromatic aberrations,
even with a very well-built beamGreat highlight handling characteristics,
splitting prism in the lens-to-imager
along with rich deep detailed blacks. It
had a softer feel to it, with very nice skin optical path. Sony engineers may have
some ideas of how to deal with these
tones with more nuance and subtlety
optical artifacts electronically.
than most existing electronic cameras.
A big objection to 2/3in cameras is the
Gamma curves, which are still being
issue of reduced control of depth of field
developed and will be burnt into the
because the 2/3in image size exhibits
camera firmware, allow for nice flatter
about 2.5 stops deeper depth of field
film-emulative curves. The camera will
than a 35mm image. This is obviously a
also feature user-customisable curves
creative limitation. Weighed against the
using Sony’s CVP file editor and
improved image quality when using a
uploaded via memory stick.
high performance digital prime, like the
Zeiss 2/3in DigiPrime for instance, and
Overcrank and undercrank
the improved colour fidelity with three
Sony’s SR Motion, developed and
CCDs, there is a good argument for
released for the SRW-1, is Sony’s tool
working with the compromise in depth
to create 1080 overcrank and
undercrank recording within the camera of field in many of the situations a
cinematographer finds themselves.
system, with realtime immediate
The good news about the
playback for confirmation. With the
development of the NGC-23 is that
ability to capture variable frame rates
from 1-60p with ramping, along with an now there will be even more choices of
electronic variable shutter, these effects equipment and quality for
cinematographers to choose from: full
look amazing in full 1080p, and only
bandwidth 4:4:4 capture at 60p and
require the addition of the HKSR102
direct recording on to SR Tape.
frame capture option in the SRW-1.
It’s going to be a very interesting year
These effects are available today with
the Sony HDC1500 and an SRW-1, but in 2007.

HDCAM for shooting feature films

Transcription

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