[Todd Terry]

Are you sure you are not shooting at a too-slow shutter speed?… because that’s what it sounds like.

Just a tip… you might get better responses here if you embed pictures or video directly in the post. Just for security reasons (and because it is a bother) you are limiting your advice from those who are willing to download and upzip a file from an unknown poster. Honestly, most people won’t bother, or be very leery about it (me included).

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I’d personally “fix it in post,” even though I hate when people say that, because you are right in that it is usually easier/better/faster/cheaper to do it right in the first place.

However, since I virtually always do at least some kind of color grading to footage (even though it might be very minimal) it would be easy enough to match them. If you never do any color grading though and are reliant on camera raw footage being “good to go” then that might not be a workable solution for you.

And yes, lenses can make a drastic difference. “Real” cine lenses are known by their properties, which includes color temps. For example Cooke lenses are very warm, Zeiss lenses tend to be cooler and more contrasty, etc. And even of the same type/model of lens you can’t expect them to look the same unless they are specifically from a matched set. They might be close, but not exact. Now the stock H1 lens is a very good lens, for what it is… but still it is basically a thousand-buck prosumer lens compared to a real Cannon cine zoom lens that might cost as much as 50x that…literally. An inexpensive lens is not going to have the same quality control or purposeful matching that the cine lenses do. Your lenses were very likely not from the same exact lot… they might have been made (and coated, which is the important part) week or months or even years apart.

I’d run a quick test with the two H1 bodies but using the same lens. If it is a lens issue, that would show you.

I’d really doubt that a technician could tweak-to-match them. If they can, they would A) really have to know what they were doing, and B) they would have to have both H1 bodies (and lenses, now that I think about it).

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I think your expectations might be too high… I think the comparisons of your two H1 cameras was actually pretty darn close.

I did not look at the other cameras, just the H1s… the other cameras are comparing apples and oranges, they are irrelevant and shouldn’t be expected to match perfectly. Since one would expect to normally do at least some color grading to most any footage, I think those two are certainly well within tolerance for matching.

I would ask, are both H1 bodies set up EXACTLY the same… as in, the exact same picture profile? I mean, within the menu there are 23 (I think it’s 23) different adjustable parameters that can be tweaked to precisely paint the image. If those settings aren’t exactly the same on both cameras, right down to the tiniest digit, the cameras may not match.

You didn’t say so, but I’m assuming that you are using the same identical lens on both bodies (matched lenses of the same make, model, vintage, and batch). If two different lenses aren’t matched, they can have wildly different color balance properties. I usually shoot with a matched set of superspeed primes as my primary glass… and they all match perfectly. But in the occasional instances that I need to use a zoom lens, I have to adjust my color temperature as my zoom lens (a Russian FOTON) is much warmer than the primes… and I mean a lot… like more than a thousand degrees warmer.

Before we retired it two years ago, I shot daily with the H1 since they very first came out. I’ll have to say, I don’t think that I actually set an actual “white balance” even once. One of the things I liked about the H1 was that you could dial in the exactly color temperature (by degree) that you wanted (I know that seems common now, but it was a bit radical at the time)… so I always just did it that way.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Well, I have to say, I’ve done tons of greenscreen work, and tons of rotoscoping. Every single time, without fail, in the middle of rotoscoping I say to myself, “Man, I sure wish I had greenscreened this.”

It really just depends on the scope of the work. If It is just, say, a small part of a body part that moves quickly in front of an object… then rotoscoping is the best way to go.

If it is ANY more than that, I would greenscreen.

Remember, you don’t have to greenscreen everything. If someone, say, waved his hand and that hand needs to pass over a to-be-composited-later object, then you really only need a small insert green screen the size and position of the object that is to be covered. You’d want to, of course, shoot a same-exact-position clean background plate to fill in the composite.

Bottom line, you can do it either way. Personally, if it were only a little bit, I’d probably roto. More than that, I would greenscreen or do a combination of both techniques.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Gosh, I couldn’t say, Brian… that shoot was more than a year ago.

We have bunches of umbrellas though, and while they are different sizes none of them are what I would call very small nor very huge. They’re mostly in the “mid size” range.

If I had to guess I’d way it was probably in the 30″ diameter range… maybe a little bigger. Happy to measure it if needed, but I won’t be back in studio until Monday.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I know no real specs, but I think at least in my market most cable providers dumb down all signals to 720… or at least that’s what it looks like.

Off-air I get beautiful 1080.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Nick Griffin] “And you kids get off my lawn!)”

Those youngsters today, with their rock-n-roll and their hula hoops… sheesh.

I’m quickly becoming an oldster… but I still use multiple screens often at home.

Largely what I want is for convenience and simplicity. It’s a bit like when I bash the DLSR-fanboys. I tell them a DSLR is a great tool… but often you’re using a screwdriver when you need a wrench.

This is a bit akin to that, for me. I have an ice maker. It makes cubes. If I want crushed ice instead, I want an ice maker that makes crushed ice. I don’t want someone to tell me “Well, it will make crushed ice, you just also have to connect the ice machine up to your coffee maker.”

I have to jump through so many hoops all day long, I don’t want to do any hoop-jumping at home. I just want to switch on the convenient, discrete, attractive box and for it to work.

NOW who’s the fuddy duddy??

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Tim Wilson] “FWIW, the computer ones work really well, especially if you have Google Chromecast.”

Yeah I’m sure they do…. but it’s dedicating, tying up, or at least using a computer (or another computer) to do it.

I just want one stand-alone box, that’s already and always there, that does that.

Maybe (hopefully) that exists. I’ll review the article as soon as I get a chance and turn in my report.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] ” Cisco DVR that came with the U-verse completely revolutionized our TV lives…”

See, what I would like to have is a DVR that is completely stand alone and owned by me… and is not subscribed to any service… that will work with a cable or off-air signal.

Does such a thing even exist??

I briefly researched it a while back, and in my (admittedly lightweight and non-exhaustive) search only found solutions that were PC-based… I didn’t see any kind of set-top box that would do that.

Is there such a thing??

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Jason Jenkins] “With five kids ranging from 11 to 1 yrs…”

Hmmmm… Jason, maybe you should have been watching more TV….

I too do not have cable.

When I moved into my present house four years ago, it was not wired for cable… and every place that I wanted a TV jack was on an interior wall. I knew that I had to do all the cabling myself for it to look/work right, and by the time I got around to that a couple of months later I was too used to not having an expensive cable bill.

That’s when it occurred to me that I should be able to get a great over-the-air signal… I can stand in my back yard and on a clear day I can see three of the four broadcast towers in this market. So I thought, “Lets go back to 1959 and get an antenna!” Except… I can’t have one. My house is in a downtown historic district where antennas (and dishes) are verboten. On a lark I tried a little fifty-buck interior HD antenna from Radio Shack (about the size of a paperback book), and voilà!… it works like a charm and is actually a much better picture than cable (and since all the TVs are cabled together it works on every set). Plus, since the transition to digital broadcasting, each of the four network stations in our market has at least two or three sub-channels with pretty interesting programming.

I have to say, though, in my house we live and die by Netflix. In my living room it comes in via hardwired ethernet to the Blu-ray player… on the other TVs I have little wireless receivers made by Phillips. The better half is addicted to “Orange is the New Black” on Netflix, but I personally find it to be worth more than the subscription price for Dragnet alone.

In the car, though, I’ve gone completely the other way… I exclusively listen to satellite radio now. With the exception of some NPR shows like “Car Talk” or “Wait wait don’t tell me,” I couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to broadcast radio.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com