Benjamin Eckstein
Well-known member
I've had the AF-100 for about a month, and taken it on a few shoots here and there, but I feel this last week was the first major test of the camera. While I have gotten a lot of tips on setup from this forum, there is also an overwhelming sense of complaining and disappointment, which I think I may chalk up to setting expectations too high or mis-use of the camera. Let me just say, I am really, really pleased.
The job this week was shooting for 4 days in NYC on the first part of a pilot for a 30-minute newsmagazine style show on technology and communication. The shoots involved a lot of interviews in some VERY different locations, as well as getting b-roll of our subjects. Our shooting spaces ranged from giant, loft-style artist galleries, to a radio show broadcast out of a shipping container, to a jewelry store that was (no joke) 4 feet wide by 12 feet long, in the West Village. (I asked her what rent was like for that space and she wouldn't tell me because it was laughably high). We used the AF-100 as our main camera and shot a 7D for some profile cutaways during the interviews. For lighting we used a lot of existing light and supplemented with Kinos, LitePanels, and Arris.
It was really a pleasure to use the camera. I used, almost exclusively the Olympus 14-35 and 35-100 lenses. I cannot speak highly enough of how well these look with the camera. They almost make 2.8 lenses seem kludgey. The need for rail support on the bigger lens made it take a little longer to switch lenses, but we're talking seconds, not minutes.
Anyway, I just spent the last hour, now that I'm home, playing back clips on my 50" Panasonic plasma at home, and the stuff looks great. Like, really, really excellent, and this is straight from the cam. No color correcting which will help the footage to really pop. This was really refreshing to see how nice the stuff looked, and I have to say the quality of the footage (partly from how it was shot if I do say so) looks nicer than what I've seen on most similar-style shows.
There's the whole filmic/video-ic debate with this cam, and maybe since I like contrast and colorful images, I am more towards the video-ic side, but I think there is something very nice about this footage. There are imperfections if you don't abide by the rules, and it is less forgiving in some respects than other cameras if you get out of bounds, but the tools are there to get the footage right.
My only real issues were monitoring. On my cam the LCD is pretty green. The EVF is not, so I use that for WB. I have a DP6 which is fine. I don't love it as much as I hoped. I find the image to not be that accurate. I also just started testing their new firmware though, so I need to spend some time tweaking. It was fine for the director of the show, though. That said, I felt like between 3 monitors, and looking at the stuff in FCP and on my plasma, I was solid on WB, exposure, focus, etc.
I played with different gammas a bit, mostly from what I was seeing and what others discussed here. Shot mostly CineD for the first 2 days, but did find a bit more yellow. I think HDNorm worked better for interviews when I could control the light better. CineD has the best highlight roll-off though.
Anyway, it's too bad that there is so much negativity on this forum, but that might be how it goes with these things. If you have the luxury to use or own this camera, and learn how to use it, I think you'll be happy.
The job this week was shooting for 4 days in NYC on the first part of a pilot for a 30-minute newsmagazine style show on technology and communication. The shoots involved a lot of interviews in some VERY different locations, as well as getting b-roll of our subjects. Our shooting spaces ranged from giant, loft-style artist galleries, to a radio show broadcast out of a shipping container, to a jewelry store that was (no joke) 4 feet wide by 12 feet long, in the West Village. (I asked her what rent was like for that space and she wouldn't tell me because it was laughably high). We used the AF-100 as our main camera and shot a 7D for some profile cutaways during the interviews. For lighting we used a lot of existing light and supplemented with Kinos, LitePanels, and Arris.
It was really a pleasure to use the camera. I used, almost exclusively the Olympus 14-35 and 35-100 lenses. I cannot speak highly enough of how well these look with the camera. They almost make 2.8 lenses seem kludgey. The need for rail support on the bigger lens made it take a little longer to switch lenses, but we're talking seconds, not minutes.
Anyway, I just spent the last hour, now that I'm home, playing back clips on my 50" Panasonic plasma at home, and the stuff looks great. Like, really, really excellent, and this is straight from the cam. No color correcting which will help the footage to really pop. This was really refreshing to see how nice the stuff looked, and I have to say the quality of the footage (partly from how it was shot if I do say so) looks nicer than what I've seen on most similar-style shows.
There's the whole filmic/video-ic debate with this cam, and maybe since I like contrast and colorful images, I am more towards the video-ic side, but I think there is something very nice about this footage. There are imperfections if you don't abide by the rules, and it is less forgiving in some respects than other cameras if you get out of bounds, but the tools are there to get the footage right.
My only real issues were monitoring. On my cam the LCD is pretty green. The EVF is not, so I use that for WB. I have a DP6 which is fine. I don't love it as much as I hoped. I find the image to not be that accurate. I also just started testing their new firmware though, so I need to spend some time tweaking. It was fine for the director of the show, though. That said, I felt like between 3 monitors, and looking at the stuff in FCP and on my plasma, I was solid on WB, exposure, focus, etc.
I played with different gammas a bit, mostly from what I was seeing and what others discussed here. Shot mostly CineD for the first 2 days, but did find a bit more yellow. I think HDNorm worked better for interviews when I could control the light better. CineD has the best highlight roll-off though.
Anyway, it's too bad that there is so much negativity on this forum, but that might be how it goes with these things. If you have the luxury to use or own this camera, and learn how to use it, I think you'll be happy.
