Ex Picture Profile Thread

[basspig]

My frank opinion is that shakey camera work looks just plain sloppy. I like the huge vistas in the earlier films like Gone with the Wind. THAT was cinematography. Let's face it: a lot of life is viewed from stationary positions, unless we're running a footrace, or riding a motocycle, etc. We direct our gaze, we turn out head, the eyes dart around, but when we find the target, generally the field of view is somewhat static.

A well thought-out shot, where light is used to 'paint' the scene in a creative way, somewhat like those old Twilight Zone episodes, or that 1963 movie The Haunting (of Hill House), in which a lot of darkness saturates the frame, but for a few ribbons of light that dramatically illuminates the characters' faces and amplifies the character of their expressions. Cinematic lighting is a lot like a Picasso painting--lighting is the subject.

I used to use paint with light techniques in still photography. That was where you keep the shutter open for several seconds and you move the light source around to 'paint' the subject. A good DP should paint with light in a similar manner, but with consideration to the temporal nature of motion pictures.

[FrankC]

I loved doing that when I was a kid. Others have taken that to an artform...even using strobe flashes instead of continuous beams of a flashlight.

Now I think we're really off topic...but love your thoughts Mark!

[dom bridges]

Ex1/sgblade

here is a low light test with the EX1/SGblade combo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-X7f...e=channel_page

thanks

[MitchLewis]

Real nice Dom! Great job!

[dom bridges]

thanks Mitch

[Chadfish]

Here are three that I have been working on. For weddings, fine detail and night shooting:


PP1 STANDARD PP2 WEDDING PP3- FINE DET "PP4
Night"
MATRIX ON ON ON ON
Select STD Cinema Cinema High SAT
Level 0 +20 0 +10
Phase 0 0 0 0
R-G 0 0 0
R-B 0 0 0
G-R 0 0 0
G-B 0 0 0
B-R +16 0 0
B-G 0 0 0
COLOR CORRECTION OFF OFF OFF OFF
WHITE OFF OFF OFF OFF
Offset A 0 +1 0 -2
Offset B 0 +1 0 +2
Offset ATW +1 0 0
PRESET WHITE 3200 3500 4500 6500
DETAIL ON ON ON OFF
Level 0 -30 +20 0
Frequency 0 +80 +80 0
Crispening 0 0
H/V Ratio 0 0
White Limiter +80 +80
Black Limiter +80 +80
V DTL Creation Y Y
Knee APT Level 0 0
SKINTONE DETAIL ON ON OFF OFF
Level -90
KNEE ON OFF ON ON
Auto-knee ON OFF Off
Point 90 70 75
Slope 0 +20 +25
Knee SAT level 0 50 50
GAMMA Level 0 +15 +10 -5
Select STD4 CINE3 STD4 STD4
BLACK 0 0 0 -1
BLACK GAMMA 0 0 0 +50
LOW KEY SAT 0 +5 0 +20

I'm having trouble reading this. Some settings don't have 4 choices, so I'm not sure which applies to what. Does anyone have some good Night/Low light PPs? Something for dark clubs with badly lit bands.

[FRG House]

I see a JVC not the Sony.

[MitchLewis]

Honestly I've had the best results shooting in low light with the PP turned off and shooting 720 30p or 60p. (720 is brighter than 1080) Also turn the shutter off.

[basspig]

720/24P gives the highest luma signal of the available formats/frame rates.

Tested by aiming the camera at a white card in dim light and using the built in light meter to take percentage readings.

[Chadfish]

Honestly I've had the best results shooting in low light with the PP turned off and shooting 720 30p or 60p. (720 is brighter than 1080) Also turn the shutter off.

Is this because the EX1 uses the whole chip at any resolution? I mean rather than cutting off the extra when one chooses 720 over 1080. Some cameras do that.

Anyway I'm suprised nobody other than BassPig has tried to develop a low loght PP for clubs. I'll remember that 720 30p or 24p is better though. I'd still like something that stretches the low light ability without just having no PP going on.

[basspig]

My own experience with the field of view being constant across resolutions suggests that what I've read about the EX series using the whole imager and then resampling the result is indeed the case. Why that results in higher video levels, I'm not sure, but it's possible that Sony calculated the amount of noise reduction happening through downsampling and added an appropriate compensating gain (but that's my speculation, purely).
Any other methods, such as gain and gamma stretches, will, of course, lift noise levels.

[Chadfish]

Is it good form to turn the shutter off in low light situations? I'm not quite clear what happens when you turn the shutter off in any situation. I've always just left it on, and have yet to change anything.

[basspig]

Turning off the shutter is, in film parlance, roughly equivalent to a 360° shutter angle, if that were possible. This allows light to accumulate on the CMOS chips for the FULL duration of each frame. The effect, besides a brighter image, is that the exposure duration is double that of a 180° shutter, so fast moving objects will have blur streaks twice as long as with the shutter set to it's slowest speed/angle. The difference, at 24fps, would be the difference in position of an object in motion in 1/48th of a second, versus 1/24th of a second for shutter off. I hope that wasn't too confusing.

[Chadfish]

So shutter off is good to grab some extra light, but at the expense of clarity with motion streaking. So it could help in a club with a band playing, staying relatively put. With 'shutter on' you control the shutter rather than just having it be relative to the frame rate.

[basspig]

Yes, that's correct. Not a problem with relatively low motion stuff, and may even be a useful effect in some styles of shooting. But definately adds a stop or so of extra light.