NAB 2024 - Rumors and Wishes

Peter C. said:
I agree it was left out with intention... It's not a run n gun, it's not shoulder camera, what is this really good for?
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BM are beginning to act like Canon! I guess this camera is aimed at small tripod based cine productions who can not afford more expensive box cameras. :) Or single person interview shooters.
 
It is the Sunday before NAB. Any good press conferences today or are we in for another year of drone an NDI advancements? It used to be "the most wonderful time of the year". Now we do not know what to expect.
 
ahalpert said:
Looks like he finds the C500mk2 internal NDs are excellent. No IR pollution and just a touch desaturated compared to his reference filters.

Interesting that he mentions Burundi IR problems at the end. If true, it's not acceptable for a $25k camera
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Norway, thanks for the shout out. And yeah, I think Abe nailed the synopsis pretty much to a T.

In the internal vs. external ND debate, I side with the internal pretty much every time. It does make life 100% easier and I prefer a camera that has them...as long as they're quality ND's. Some ND's do have issues, as currently being reported on the Burano.

The most prominent Burano video I've seen that mentions this is from Robert Machado here:
https://youtu.be/-ye5-g9tfNQ?si=LLsuCGKoEFdbHTO_&t=598

I'm not sure what's going on with the Burano to cause this issue. But when I saw that I did think, "well maybe I should test the C500 II and my fixed ND's and see how they stack up".

I can't say I was surprised to see how well the Canon did, but I was enthused with how good they are when you compare them to a bespoke solution that costs $1400 and you have to buy separately. I guess that's the "cinema tax" you have to pay for shooting on cameras that don't have internal ND like the RED Komodo, which is why I purchased the Element filters.
 
morgan_moore said:
apparently not.

my personal guess is strong ir makes bad skintone - so the ir was weakened for the more pro camera.
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Strong IR reduction, you mean? Ruins the skintones? I've never heard that. Certainly, the C500mk2 footage I've worked with has had nice skintones, though i doubt any of it used ND as it's all been interiors.

I mean, can't they scale the strength of IR reduction with the strength of the ND? Isn't that what many filters do? It's not like they need to cut it all off at once, is it? And I would expect that the system they design to cut visible light could also handle IR.
 
DustinSchmidt said:
How many working video professionals don't own at least a couple of different options for ND at this point? I have variable ND's, fixed ND's, etc. I have ND's for small mirrorless run and gun setups and ND's for slower, more deliberate cinema-style work. I've got ND's built into cameras and ND's for point and shoots.

The no ND's thing isn't that big of a deal IMO, but it DOES depend on how you intend to use this camera.

If you truly need a documentary style camera with good onboard audio, built in ND's, a form factor that goes quickly from tripod to shoulder mounted work, etc. then this isn't the camera for you.

But if you're just doing interviews and broll with it, and editing your own footage, then this camera can do everything you need it to. One XLR gives you a boom straight into camera for audio and you go back home and throw the Blackmagic RAW on your system and bang out an edit that looks and sounds good. Bob's your uncle.
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Internal ND used to only really be a thing on broadcast and ENG cameras, but now it’s a rare camera that’s intended for serious use that doesn’t have it. It would give me great pause in 2024 to consider buying a camera without an internal ND system. Besides mirrorless style bodies, RED is really the only other outlier with cameras without a built-in ND system today, and even they have at least one.

Even if everything is planned out and slow moving, external ND is still, at the very least, a hassle compared to rolling a knob or hitting a button.
 
Peter C. said:
…but you know the golden rule never compete directly against another manufacture or have models in your own lineup overlap...
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Steve Jobs famously said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will”. And the quote was actually in reference to Apple smoking Sony, because Sony operates under those “rules”.
 
Peter C. said:
Further more they are going to say true cinema shooters will use a mat box or cine lenses that use the same filter size.
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I’d still say bad analysis on their part. Look at what are probably the four or five most used cameras on “real sets” today: Arri mini, miLF & Alexa 35 and Sony Venice 1 & 2. All of them have built-in ND systems.
 
ahalpert said:
I mean, can't they scale the strength of IR reduction with the strength of the ND? Isn't that what many filters do? It's not like they need to cut it all off at once, is it? And I would expect that the system they design to cut visible light could also handle IR.
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Im not the man for the science.

The Science.

Building filters is not an exact art

Say you want to filter waves (aka iR liight) at 3*10>11hz you need to do this with dye or some physical thing. (made up numbers!)

Probably it will cut waves at 2.8*10>11hz too.

Now let us imagine the deepest red in skin is 2.8*10>11hz

If you filter that .. well any dark bits of skin go black because the light was filtered away from reading on the sensor.

This is not smooth and is known as bad skintones.

So back to the factory.. R+D department.

We have the skin people (DOPs) asking for less filtration and the science test chart nerds asking for more.

The cheap RnG cameras the science people win. The Cinealta meeting there are some DOPs on the comitee. And the thinner filter is chosen.

Makes sense as the solo guy shooting the orchestra need black suits looking black out of the cmaera.. but the cine guy sees some red in a dark costume (on his 27in village monitor running a LUT) and calls his 1st for some IR cut.. all while the leading lady looks her total best in the other shots.
 
The true performance of an IR cut filter is pretty analogue.. not stepped. I guess its all about whats going on at 725!
 

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Run&Gun said:
Steve Jobs famously said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will”. And the quote was actually in reference to Apple smoking Sony, because Sony operates under those “rules”.
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Imagine if BM put the same internal ND, and flipout screen from the Pocket and could record any format and ran off v-mount batteries... oh no they know better. Feels very much most of these camera companies have no inclination to listen to what the customer wants.

While you can't please everyone you see when they by accident give fully capable camera people go bonkers buying it. Look at the A7S3 or DJI pocket 3.
 
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morgan_moore said:
Im not the man for the science.

The Science.

Building filters is not an exact art

Say you want to filter waves (aka iR liight) at 3*10>11hz you need to do this with dye or some physical thing. (made up numbers!)

Probably it will cut waves at 2.8*10>11hz too.

Now let us imagine the deepest red in skin is 2.8*10>11hz

If you filter that .. well any dark bits of skin go black because the light was filtered away from reading on the sensor.

This is not smooth and is known as bad skintones.

So back to the factory.. R+D department.

We have the skin people (DOPs) asking for less filtration and the science test chart nerds asking for more.

The cheap RnG cameras the science people win. The Cinealta meeting there are some DOPs on the comitee. And the thinner filter is chosen.

Makes sense as the solo guy shooting the orchestra need black suits looking black out of the cmaera.. but the cine guy sees some red in a dark costume (on his 27in village monitor running a LUT) and calls his 1st for some IR cut.. all while the leading lady looks her total best in the other shots.
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Nice analysis. I don't think that the DP/engineer conflict is the correct explanation, though. Because the Venice 2 has internal ND and presumably would have already had at least as much if not more input from working DPs as the Barista received. And as far as I know, people don't complain about IR pollution on the Venice 2. So one would think that Sony knows how to cut IR whilst pleasing high end DPs...

But notably, the Venice 2 uses a mechanical filter wheel, not Sony's eND. Maybe they did this because they couldn't achieve the same quality with eND. And maybe you're right that they erred on the side of protecting skintones on the Bazinga more than they did on the FX9...

I just looked at the Machado video. The IR issue is definitely noticeable. It's interesting that he says you can't correct for IR pollution in post. I would think that if it were just an issue with the blacks, you could just desaturate or neutralize them. Maybe he's saying that it affects colors all throughout. But it certainly seems most noticeable on the blacks.
 
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ahalpert said:
Nice analysis. I don't think that the DP/engineer conflict is the correct explanation, though. Because the Venice 2 has internal ND and presumably would have already had at least as much if not more input from working DPs as the Barista received. And as far as I know, people don't complain about IR pollution on the Venice 2. So one would think that Sony knows how to cut IR whilst pleasing high end DPs...

But notably, the Venice 2 uses a mechanical filter wheel, not Sony's eND. Maybe they did this because they couldn't achieve the same quality with eND. And maybe you're right that they erred on the side of protecting skintones on the Bazinga more than they did on the FX9...

I just looked at the Machado video. The IR issue is definitely noticeable. It's interesting that he says you can't correct for IR pollution in post. I would think that if it were just an issue with the blacks, you could just desaturate or neutralize them. Maybe he's saying that it affects colors all throughout. But it certainly seems most noticeable on the blacks.
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The FX6 and FX9 automatically apply compensation to cancel out colour shifts caused by the eND. Maybe this was considered too hacky for the Venice. Also in my (non-scientific) testing, at low levels of ND (0.9) solid B+W filters caused less colour and contrast shift than the internal ND - even with the eND having the head start of in-camera compensation.

That said these are tiny differences even for most pros. I love eND and use it all the time.
 
Unfortunately most of these feature decisions are made because of marketing and product slotting considerations . Even if a camera included internal eND was below your standards it wouldn’t preclude you from using an external ND of your preference.
 
Ir is “not correctable” because a black cape and a dark maroon dress input the same numbers out of the sensor.

so if you key that dark red tone you may make a black cape black.. but you will also ruin the lovely dark maroon of the dress

like it is hard to key a man in a green shirt filmed on a green-screen

i guess doing it with vnd and the space constraints of wobbling emount is very hard as the filter element mist be thin
 
morgan_moore said:
Ir is “not correctable” because a black cape and a dark maroon dress input the same numbers out of the sensor.

so if you key that dark red tone you may make a black cape black.. but you will also ruin the lovely dark maroon of the dress.
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This is why I find on certain shoots the "Low Key Sat" settings on certain Sony kit, if used correctly can separate very low light dark colors. Quite noticeable when used correctly.

Chris Young

https://www.sony-asia.com/microsite/.../CSTGB10-0.pdf
 
morgan_moore said:
Ir is “not correctable” because a black cape and a dark maroon dress input the same numbers out of the sensor.

so if you key that dark red tone you may make a black cape black.. but you will also ruin the lovely dark maroon of the dress

like it is hard to key a man in a green shirt filmed on a green-screen

i guess doing it with vnd and the space constraints of wobbling emount is very hard as the filter element mist be thin
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It's a good point but not explicitly correct. The black cape can be masked independent of the maroon dress, and the tint correction applied within the mask.
 
morgan_moore said:
Ir is “not correctable” because a black cape and a dark maroon dress input the same numbers out of the sensor.
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I was meaning to test this before responding. But wouldn't the maroon dress look different with the +IR tint than the black cape? I would think they should land in different places and you might be able to push the color wheel in the opposing direction to correct both
 
ahalpert said:
I was meaning to test this before responding. But wouldn't the maroon dress look different with the +IR tint than the black cape? I would think they should land in different places and you might be able to push the color wheel in the opposing direction to correct both
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IM not the science guy.... buy I do own the IR famous EX1.

The dark red dress reads as dark red.

The black cape reads as dark red.

The dark red dress should be dark red.

If you add a qualifier to catch all dark red and transform it to black you will cure the cape and ruin the dress.

As tom mentions you would need secondaries to cure it.
 
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