AF-100, con job or dream come true?

Tyrant Lizard

Tyrant Lizard

Active member
Hey guys, long time viewer, first time poster here.

Got a question for you all.

Okay. My Dad and I have been doing extensive research on the AF-100. We just finally made the plunge and pushed our chips out on the table and bought the sucker.

We un-package it, read the book by Barry Green (specifically, essentially this article: http://dvxuser.com/jason/CMOS-CCD/ ) and are literally having a "WTF" moment over the CMOS "skewed, partial exposure etc." problems.

I admit, I had heard of this before and had never experienced as I had been shooting on the CCD DVX100. However now, reading about this problem in the very book that comes with the camera, we are a bit disturbed.

After coming with high praise from Mr. Bloom himself not to mention the ravings of everyone else in the film world, we have to believe these rolling shutter artifacts are not as glaringly obvious and devastating as we are freaking out about.

So, I ask you people, who have shot with this before,

Have you run into skewing, jell-o effect, or partial exposure to a point where it has limited your ideas and shots? We certainly hope not, because we were pretty damned excited about this.

Our overall feeling is that we are overreacting a bit. If this was as big of an issue as we are thinking it is, more people would be storming the gates of Panasonic.

Thank you,

T-Rex
 
Have you shot anything with the actual camera yet?

Have you run into skewing, jell-o effect, or partial exposure to a point where it has limited your ideas and shots? We certainly hope not, because we were pretty damned excited about this.
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In answer to this...NO !

(but I dont know what a "partial exposure" is either)
 
Shooter said:
(but I dont know what a "partial exposure" is either)
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He's talking about the result of when bulbs flash in a frame and you end up with a half over exposed and the another half underexposed. He's coming from a CCD camera so to me it was kind of obvious what he meant.

To the OP....this sort of thing happns on every CMOS camera including the Red. Still, it doesn't stop hundreds of Hollywood filmakers from making great looking movies. I think it might be a weee bit overreacting. But...you should probably familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of CMOS cameras to help prevent other...um...WTF moments. :)
 
Yes.

Thanks for the great advice, guys. We will start shooting ASAP! We are waiting on some lenses and adapters and a computer to run the thing. We just freaked like, "Woah! Maybe we need to return this S.O.B. and get a global shutter, man!"

Yeah, I know the RED is CMOS too! That's crazy. I guess it has something to do with the faster refresh rate, though, right? Some CMOS cameras have slower refresh rates than others, making them more prone to artifacting (from what I understand).

Anyways. Am very excited to finally be a part of this community and am looking forward to sharing more with you guys on here soon!

Thank you!

Raawr!

T-REX :)
 
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-highend/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-show-highend-F65.shtml

Wow! That looks like a beast of a camera. It says CMOS sensor though, is it a CMOS with a global shutter?

I mean I see other cameras out there that are more expensive that are CCD, but the fact that the RED (and the Alexa??) are rolling, that makes me feel a little better. Plus you guys and Bloom say not to worry about it, so I'm not going to.

I just can't wait to start shooting something with it!

http://vimeo.com/33573646

This is my demo reel from my DVX 100.

Thanks again, guys.
 
I shouldn't worry too much about it. All large sensor cameras in this price range have those issues to some extent, but way less than DSLRs. Just keep you tripod moves a little slower than you would normally do, and avoid flash photography and you'll be fine. Once you've used it a little, you'll work out how to avoid any issues. FWIW, the problems with jello effect and rolling shutter are really minimal on this cam in my experience.
 
"True Grit" was shot on a Red, I believe, and it had "jell-o" in four or five shots, the same artifacting I have seen in test footage of other CMOS cameras. To me it's an acceptable, and avoidable, issue in what otherwise is incredible technology.
 
If you hadn't read about it, it likely would have take you a long time to discover, and you probably would have been on a freeze frame in your NLE and been like "huh what is that interesting thing going in here? hmm...oh well"

A lot of people who know about it still don't spot it unless looking for it. You are definitely over-worried. Just go shoot :)

PS every camera technology is a give & a take. You're much more likely to notice the outrageous prices of 4/3rd CCD sensor, or the poor lowlight and deep focus of a 1/3 CCD camera than some minor skewing or rolling shutter effects in select circumstances. As others mentioned, even the highest end RED cameras have this, and I'm sure you've seen movies where the effects are visible and not even noticed (and even if you did notice, probably not bothered). Barry puts it in the book because you should know exactly how your tool works so that if you run into an issue, you know why and what caused it and what steps you can take to reduce the effect. Trust me, there's WAY worse problems to have in a camera tech.
 
I don’t whip the camera around when shooting so I never have the gello issue. Do you shoot with heavy fast pans?
 
The world has moved to CMOS, so CCD tends to be expensive or old school technology. ( one of the reasons I still own a HMC-150 CCD camera )

CMOS global shutter technology will get here eventually ( I expect to see global shutter cameras within 5 years ), so in the meantime just make sure you properly stabilize your camera and avoid whip-pans.
 
The thing is, even with whip pans, it happens so fast and it blurs, you won't even notice the skew unless you are looking for it. It just all becomes part of the same blurred/fast whip pan move. Just doesn't bother me. Now, if you were shooting out a car window through a bunch of rails going 50+ mph it would look skewed and that would bug me. BUT they have plug-ins that do a decent job correcting that, i.e.

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/rollingshutter/

That said, the other day I shot a profile shot out the window of a train going through town and the skew/rolling shutter is not even noticeable
 
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Rik O'Neal said:
"True Grit" was shot on a Red, I believe, and it had "jell-o" in four or five shots, the same artifacting I have seen in test footage of other CMOS cameras. To me it's an acceptable, and avoidable, issue in what otherwise is incredible technology.
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True Grit was shot on 35mm. Though I do remember hearing about some shots (pickups or 2nd Unit or some such) being on Alexa. Deakins is an ARRI man.

EDIT: Deakins mentioning shooting inserts on Alexa: http://www.deakinsonline.com/forum2...&start=0&sid=1ca1f0788453480abfc7042cd389bf63
 
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