Matching F900

[John Sharaf]

I don’t mean to be cute, but the “similar” settings are those achieved by a skilled VC, DIT or Camera Engineer derived by side-by-side setup with a DSC chart, waveform, vectorscope and critical master HD monitor.

Even with that, matching two models from two different manufacturers is problematical at best, and would probably not be attempted in a real professional environment. I can only assume that some two people are trying to use gear they own, when in fact one of the two should rent the correct camera body to match the other (and still use their lens).

The producer is the one who will suffer in this proposed scenario with two different format recordings (rent two machines to digitize? or pay for clones??) of mismatched cameras. He is the one who should put his foot down and decide whether he/she wants to shoot DVCPRO100 or HDCAM.

JMHO

[Paul Cronley]

I am shooting a stand alone segment for an on-going project. The producer says it’s not critical to perfectly match. My footage and the other footage will never be shown side by side. I am simply trying to get as close as possible.

I appreciate your response and comments.

[John Sharaf]

In that case, I recommend Film Look Gamma and crush the master gamma to .50 to prevent a washed out look. In addition try to paint a colorful matrix to match the F900, or turn matrix off in both cameras!

JS

[Tony]

With all due respect Johnny is quite correct and in addition your numerical values mean nothing because you do not know if they are master reference numbers or offsets.

I won’t go into a detailed explanation as it is clear the producer is more interested in a BS match and not a dead on which is irrevelant because one camera shoots 1080P whereas the other one does not natively.

But I guess that is really beside the point.

One last item is it possible to drop a motor from a Ford Taurus into my Ford F150 truck? Afterall they are made by the same manufacturer so they should be close right? Yeah I guess sort of like what is possible with HD cameras.

Tony Salgado

[Tj Williams]

Hi Nelrem

this has come up for me a lot also. Despite the above comments it is common for producers to use different shooters with different sd equipment packages to shoot different segments of programs.

Now that there are more choices in hd cameras we will be seeing this more commonly also. If the edited master is being put through the Davinci at the end, then the various cameras will match suprisingly well. If budget is not so good then it becomes more of a problem to match for each of us.

One possibility that I have used is to get a tape of a facial closeup from another segment of the show and have your local tech try to match as closely as possible on your camera system using this as a reference on the same monitor. The charts and numbers thing usually does not work much better even between similiar cameras. Another concern which wasn’t adressed here is similiarity in lighting style and composition as these are way harder to fix in post color matching.

I recently worked on an HD program for PBS which had 1080I 1080P Varicam and digital betacam footage. There is no place in the program where the audience gasped….. “Oh my gawd they changed cameras” yes I can probably pick out the different shots, but we didn’m make this for ourselves.