[Bruce Greene]

Thanks for the suggestion Paul.

I did get the tape repaired by a nice man in the Panasonic service department. The good news was that the break was after the last take!

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

I would say the D65 is the “official” standard.

That said, when shooting under tungsten lighting 3200k, the image may look blue after your eyes have adjusted to the 3200k lighting. Sometimes I set the monitor to D56 when shooting with tungsten lights and viewing the monitor on the set…

The User setting lets you set the color to any color temp the monitor can display, your choice.

The VAR setting lets you adjust the white balance (and the black balance sort of) of the display using separate R,G,B controls. I would suggest using a monitor “probe” or light meter designed for LCD displays to use this custom setting.

Hope this helps.

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

I see that there are no responses…:)

So I did some testing.

1. I can not see any increase in noise using the daylight setting vs. using a CTO filter in the wheel and using the tungsten setting. Perhaps my waveform monitor does not show enough resolution (astro), but I could not detect any difference. So far so good.

2. Checking for color shifts in the highlights:
As expected at -3db there is an larger clipping of the blue channel at 500% dynamic level in both tungsten and daylight set-ups. My surprise is that under tungsten light there is a significant blue clip (i.e.. yellow whites) at 400% dynamic level and even a little at 300%. When shooting in the daylight mode, there is less clipping of the blue channel, not more.

My conclusion is that the camera/chips are closer to a natural “daylight” balance than “tungsten” balance. My other conclusion is that when shooting in FilmRec mode, do not go over 300% dynamic level if using -3db gain, and not over 400% dynamic level if shooting at 0db gain. Doing so will mean that the whites get a hard color shift to yellow when the blue chip clips. At +3db gain, 500% dynamic level is safe to use without a color shift in the whites. And the color shift is slightly more pronounced when using an orange filter (or tungsten lighting) rather than no filter at all when shooting in daylight.

For those who shoot in VidRec mode, note that the same phenomena will take place with aggressive knee settings as well, but I have not tested this systematically.

Please feel free to make a comment if you’ve had other experiences with this.

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

BarryLyndon,

I faced the same issue a few years back. I called people I knew who were “experts” and went with them to camera rental houses to familiarize myself with the cameras/menus. I learned a little bit, but didn’t really have enough time with the cameras and found that many are “shy” about giving away their knowledge for competitive reasons.

Largely in frustration I bought a camera to really learn how to do it. Fortunately, you must have access to the equipment to play with at the station…

I could never find a book or web site that really explained this stuff, but I did learn a bit by taking a workshop. (Varicamp / HD expo)

That said, when I went to the workshop I was armed with important knowledge that allowed me to get the most out of my time there. And this knowledge I obtained from learning digital still photography and photoshop. And I think this is where you might want to start. The concepts of gamma, knee, color space, etc are all essential parts of photoshop, though often with different lingo and names. Once you learn it you’ll be able to transfer your new knowledge to the digital video camera and it will make much more sense.

So I would get yourself a copy of the full version of photoshop, any version from photoshop 5 or newer will be good enough. And also get a good book such as “Real World Photoshop”.

When you’ve mastered color correction and printing from photoshop you’ll be well on your way to understanding the digital video camera, and perhaps you’ll even create your own still photography portfolio!

Best of luck.

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

[Mandaro] ”

Hi there! I’m new on the cow, I’m looking for all your wisdom on this!
I’m trying to find all possible knowledge on shooting with Varicam for a film out.
First of all we are using a P+S 35 pro film lenses adapter, and I’ve heard about some problems concerning white shading issues for film lenses, I’m using Zeiss Hi-speed lenses, but so far I haven’t noticed any problem concerning the use of any of the normal prime lenses (18,24,35,50,85,135) but I haven’t made any test to check this so, do you know any test I can do to check this out?
Second, in the film rental house they ofered to try to take out the “ground glass” on the p+s pro35 to take out this “grain” texture, does anyone knows anything concerning this?, I mean is this possible? any experiences on this will help a lot.
Third I’m looking forward to use a little diffusion in camera (I was thinking on SFX and or Black Promist) to get a little softness on the image instead of taking a little detail off the image (death scared of out of focus issues!) any other idea or experience?”

I have not shot with the pro-35 adapter so take my opinion with some skepticism please.

#1 You will loose almost 2 stops of light sensitivity with the pro 35 adapter. So a 2K lamp will need to be a 10k lamp instead…

#2 You will have to shoot near wide open on your zeiss lenses so you will need a really really good focus puller

#3 You will be shooting a picture of a ground glass and some softening of the image will result. You should really shoot a test with and without the pro 35 and output to film to see if it will be acceptable. I have done this testing without the pro 35 adapter and found the result to be slightly softer than a 35mm optical print from the original negative but the test did look like it was shot on film though. The test was performed by e-film in hollywood and I was very impressed with their work.

I can’t imagine how the pro 35 will work at all without a ground glass.

#4 Personally I shy away from softening filters on the Varicam because the image is already soft enough, especially with the detail turned off. Sometimes I will use a Mitchell “A” diffuser for women’s close ups and it’s similar to the soft fx filters. I haven’t liked black promist as they raise the black level of the image and invariably, the blacks get pushed back down to black in post and makes for a more contrasty image than was the intent. Better to shoot in FilmRec mode and adjust the contrast with the dynamic level menu item.

Best of luck with your film and please post about what you decided.

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

OK, here’s what I would try:

1. Get yourself a hardware monitor calibrator such as the Eye-One Display 2, and calibrate your monitor using the supplied software. Cost about $230.00

2. If your monitor is one of those LCD displays that get lighter and darker as you move your head up and down, replace the monitor with one that doesn’t. I’ve got an old 15″ CRT that will work ok for this. You can take it off my hands for very little if you’re in LA…

3. Quicktime on the Mac seems to assume that your monitor is set to gamma=1.8. When you calibrate your monitor, set it to gamma 1.8 / 6500k.

4. Since you’ll be viewing in gamma 1.8, set your photoshop working space to Colormatch RGB, a gamma 1.8 working space. It sounds like you’re working in Adobe RGB space and that accounts for the over saturated still images. If Colormatch RGB makes for stills that look too dark (I think) in the movie, change your photoshop working space to sRGB, a gamma 2.2 space. You’ll need to use the command “convert to profile” to change your images from Adobe RGB to another space.

The confusion here is that video is 2.2 gamma, but quicktime assumes you’re using a gamma 1.8 display and corrects the images (for computer playback) for 1.8 gamma displays which is the old Apple standard. Unlike photoshop, quicktime is not colorsync enabled.

5. If the above doesn’t fix things entirely, you’ll need to start using FCP to color correct your movies/still clips. Perhaps you can do this in after effects and skip FCP.

Let us know if this solution works out and good luck.

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

I used film tools in Final Cut Pro software to convert footage from 23.98 fps to 25p and it worked out fine. I don’t do this stuff that often so I don’t remember the exact workflow, but I think you should be able to just change the time base of your footage to 25p pretty quickly using this tool.

Try it and let us know if it worked.

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

Carlos,

The challenge of using the light meter with most video cameras is that the iris on the camera is so sensitive that getting a good exposure by setting the iris will be hit and miss.

Judging exposure in the viewfinder can be tough if the finder changes brightness as you move your head (poor quality LCD).

So you’re left with zebras + your imagination, or a decent monitor which you find too expensive.

I guess you could light using the light meter and expose using the zebras after careful testing of the camera using a good quality monitor (just for the test)…

[Bruce Greene]

When people shoot 24p, is the shutter still 1/60th? That would acct for why it always has that strobey look to me. 1/48th just gives a little more motion blur I guess.

When shooting 24p digital, 1/48th sec shutter is almost always used.

It has that strobey look because …. it’s only 24 frames per second. Movie projection has the same issue, only more severe because the entire image (not just changed pixels) goes black between frames. Movie projection came up with a clever solution. I believe, that testing was done to discover the brain’s “flicker threshold”: i.e.. when a light going on/off becomes perceived as always “on”. I think they came up with something like 60 flashes per second. To solve the movie projection issue, they placed a 3 bladed shutter in sync with the movie so each frame would flash 3 times or 72 total flashes per second for a sound film (~16×3 or ~48 flashes/sec for silent –there’s a reason they called movies “flicks”).

60 field video is beyond the flicker threshold for me, but when I see PAL at 50 field/second it flickers to my eye for a while until my brain adapts and I don’t see the flicker anymore. LCD displays don’t flicker at all since each pixel is always lit until changed, but the motion at 24 fps looks a bit jerky, and to me, the motion blur now looks “false”.

I’d like to see the display/shooting standard adapted to a higher FPS rate. Something like 48 or maybe 60 in this digital age…(yes I know, it won’t have the “look of film”…:)

[Bruce Greene]

[providmike] “Bruce have you at any point had the chance to use theAngenieux 11.5×5.3 HD Cine?
“

Sorry Mike, haven’t used that lens…
-bruce