Couple of FS100 Projects

D

danstone

Active member
Here are a couple of things we shot on the FS100 which turned out okay. These are the test projects that made us decide not to buy 9 more FS100s for an upcoming documentary series.

About 80% of this footage was shot with the stock lens, 95% is handheld and we tried about 25 different picture profiles throughout both pieces.


 
Just curious. Why did you decide to not buy 9 more? And what are you planning to use instade? Red channel/color still looks horrible on fs100 for me.
 
dan-

very nice piece.

congrats.

in the federal hill film, there is a warm-ness to the look of the media.

is that indicative of too much of the red channel?

or is everyone on this board so very red focused?

for me, nothing felt too red or too warm. i thought the esthetic was spot on.

care to share picture profile info that you liked best/used most?

care to share handheld info? how/what did you use to stabilize the 95% of the handheld footage?

again, good job.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions
nyc
 
Khachik Mkrtchyan said:
Just curious. Why did you decide to not buy 9 more? And what are you planning to use instade? Red channel/color still looks horrible on fs100 for me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the color issue is one of the reasons we decided not to go with the camera. We brought the footage into a DaVinci for grading and found that you have VERY little room to tweak before the footage starts to pull apart. We were able to arrive at natural skin tones and a rich look but at the expense of overall quality.

While this camera has some great benefits (fantastic low light sensitivity, excellent stabilizer, form factor), it has too many downsides for our use. When you're shooting a documentary-style television show the camera op has enough to think about--exposure, focus, color balance, framing--and with this camera we'd be adding 25 more things like sensor reflections, crawling mid-tones, highlight handling, funky colors, and gradient surfaces. In fact, every single time we've shot with this camera we've found some sort of "issue" with the footage in post.

Here are our "deal breakers":
- Sensor reflections - much more than any other camera we tested
- Highlight handling
- Limited color space - this footage is extremely unforgiving and difficult to grade in post. You can dig into the blacks a bit but if you blow highlights, that's it. Any significant color grading yields massive banding and nastiness.
- "Crawling" mid tones - it's a type of compression artifacting on this camera that sometimes makes people's skin look like it's crawling. Also happens to medium-tinted walls.
- Customer support - we tried contacting Sony support about a couple of these to see if our camera might be a dud but Sony just kind of dropped us.

We were talking about it here and came up with a theory that once the FS700 gets a foothold in the marketplace Sony will kill the FS100, chalking it up to a 'market test for the FS700'. Just a theory.

We actually tested several cameras, including the Scarlet, the EX1 and the AF100. The Scarlet had the most beautiful picture by far but was a nightmare in that the operation was buggy (required a reboot almost every half hour), the form factor was obnoxious (you can't touch it without accidentally hitting some button), the fan sounds like a V8, and it ate batteries for lunch. The EX1 was a solid workhorse but the picture is really noisy and the 1/2" sensor makes everything look somewhat flat. The AF100 is probably the camera we're going to go with. It's a cropped sensor but it was a solid camera. Not as 'experimental' as the Scarlet, not as 'what surprises are we going to find when we look at the footage in editing' as the FS100, and a little more 'dramatic' than the EX1.
 
dan-

very interesting analysis of your fs100 experience.

funny but even with all of those "deal breakers", the footage posted looked lovely.

ymmv

as for your camera purchase, i am sure that panasonic is feeling besieged by canon's c300 and sony's fs100/fs700 success on the big sensor type of camera.

i wouldn't be surprised if the good folks at panasonic was very flexible with their price point especially when buying quantity.

too bad you never felt any sony love. their customer service is often good-at least they have been to me.

that said, i have ALWAYS appreciated the way panasonic has treated me from the dvx100b -> hvx200 -> hpx500 (rentals).

good luck to you.

rob
smalltalk productions
nyc
 
robfilms said:
dan-

very nice piece.

congrats.

in the federal hill film, there is a warm-ness to the look of the media.

is that indicative of too much of the red channel?

or is everyone on this board so very red focused?

for me, nothing felt too red or too warm. i thought the esthetic was spot on.

care to share picture profile info that you liked best/used most?

care to share handheld info? how/what did you use to stabilize the 95% of the handheld footage?

again, good job.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions
nyc
Click to expand...

Thanks Rob!

The stock lens is one of the things I LOVE about this camera. I just set the stabilizer to "active", pull it in tight to my shoulder and sway back and forth. For the 'handheld' look, I set the stabilization to "normal", weigh the camera down with accessories (matte box, rods, rod plate, etc.) and hold it at about half arm's length.

For the picture profiles we used a mixture of Glencain, James Miller (posted on Vimeo), AbelCine and in-camera profiles. James Miller's were my personal favorite because, to me, it matched the look of some film stocks I've used in the past. You just have to do some math in your head while shooting because his profiles require a higher number in terms of color balance (7500 rather than 5500; 5200 rather than 3200). You can also just balance to taste visually (which is what I did).

I do think a lot of people on this board are red-focused. When we were able to spend time on set tweaking the colors, we got skin tones to look fine. Our only color issues, really, were when we used lighting. HMIs tend to look green while tungsten Kino bulbs look muddy. You can fix it but you need time to tweak.
 
danstone said:
Yeah, the color issue is one of the reasons we decided not to go with the camera. We brought the footage into a DaVinci for grading and found that you have VERY little room to tweak before the footage starts to pull apart. We were able to arrive at natural skin tones and a rich look but at the expense of overall quality.

While this camera has some great benefits (fantastic low light sensitivity, excellent stabilizer, form factor), it has too many downsides for our use. When you're shooting a documentary-style television show the camera op has enough to think about--exposure, focus, color balance, framing--and with this camera we'd be adding 25 more things like sensor reflections, crawling mid-tones, highlight handling, funky colors, and gradient surfaces. In fact, every single time we've shot with this camera we've found some sort of "issue" with the footage in post.

Here are our "deal breakers":
- Sensor reflections - much more than any other camera we tested
- Highlight handling
- Limited color space - this footage is extremely unforgiving and difficult to grade in post. You can dig into the blacks a bit but if you blow highlights, that's it. Any significant color grading yields massive banding and nastiness.
- "Crawling" mid tones - it's a type of compression artifacting on this camera that sometimes makes people's skin look like it's crawling. Also happens to medium-tinted walls.
- Customer support - we tried contacting Sony support about a couple of these to see if our camera might be a dud but Sony just kind of dropped us.

We were talking about it here and came up with a theory that once the FS700 gets a foothold in the marketplace Sony will kill the FS100, chalking it up to a 'market test for the FS700'. Just a theory.

We actually tested several cameras, including the Scarlet, the EX1 and the AF100. The Scarlet had the most beautiful picture by far but was a nightmare in that the operation was buggy (required a reboot almost every half hour), the form factor was obnoxious (you can't touch it without accidentally hitting some button), the fan sounds like a V8, and it ate batteries for lunch. The EX1 was a solid workhorse but the picture is really noisy and the 1/2" sensor makes everything look somewhat flat. The AF100 is probably the camera we're going to go with. It's a cropped sensor but it was a solid camera. Not as 'experimental' as the Scarlet, not as 'what surprises are we going to find when we look at the footage in editing' as the FS100, and a little more 'dramatic' than the EX1.
Click to expand...
Did you use any external recorders such as pix220/240 or nanoflash?
 
danstone said:
Yeah, the color issue is one of the reasons we decided not to go with the camera. We brought the footage into a DaVinci for grading and found that you have VERY little room to tweak before the footage starts to pull apart. We were able to arrive at natural skin tones and a rich look but at the expense of overall quality.
Click to expand...

Can you explain in a bit more detail about what you encountered and when you say 'at the expense of overall quality' what that actually means to you?

It would be wonderful to see some before's and after's for example.

I'm aware that the colour handling of the files that we product is inconsistent to say the least. When i thought i was working on full range files i wasn't and i was scratching my head working out what was going on. There's are negative blacks and super brights to contend with and done wrong it will fall apart easily.

I'm curious as i'm heavily in testing but not really been having mad red issues or horrible clipping. I got around 9 real stops of range out of it earlier (i mean usable range) which i feel is pretty good going. I know you can tweak to 11 but i question what is usable at the top and bottom.

I'm far from finished with my tests but i like what i see so far.

cheers
Paul
 
It really doesn't surprise me you've had grading issues with those Miller presets. Lifting the black level so high to then pull in contrast later is one sure fire way of seeing your footage disintegrate. A better preset would've helped.

I've not seen an issue with red nor do I have an issue with highlight handling. If anyone is having highlight issues set the knee to Auto and shoot with it for a few days. If the camera does a better job of highlight handling then you need to look at your settings again. I leant a lot from testing and emulating what the auto function was doing.

Limited colour space? The camera is no more limited that any other 8 bit rec709 camera but it's up to you to get the best out of the camera with the right preset for the light. It cannot compare to a RAW workflow.

Crawling midtones? No idea what they are and are probably a function of the preset you used or a heavy hand in the grade.

Sensor reflections. Very simply solved by stopping down. Stopping down reduces the light hitting the sensor but it also stops down the reflected light on its way to the rear lens elements. You can't beat the laws of physics and even with the finest anti-reflective coating any sensor is going to reflect light if you shine enough on it. Frank posted some C300 reflections that looked worse than anything I have seen on my FS100.

I don't think the "deal breakers" are necessarily the fault of the camera or maybe your expectations are unreasonably high for an 8 bit highly compressed 420 recording medium and the limitations that imposes.
 
Yeah, what Nirv said.
As long you use the standard or 709 gamma, set your black levels a hair above zero, keep you lights (except chrome reflections and lamps) below 80 IRE and your skintones between 40 and 60 IRE you are golden in post.
Even if you are recording on the cards, it takes a lot, till the codec brakes apart.

Frank
 
danstone said:
Yeah, the color issue is one of the reasons we decided not to go with the camera. We brought the footage into a DaVinci for grading and found that you have VERY little room to tweak before the footage starts to pull apart. We were able to arrive at natural skin tones and a rich look but at the expense of overall quality.

While this camera has some great benefits (fantastic low light sensitivity, excellent stabilizer, form factor), it has too many downsides for our use. When you're shooting a documentary-style television show the camera op has enough to think about--exposure, focus, color balance, framing--and with this camera we'd be adding 25 more things like sensor reflections, crawling mid-tones, highlight handling, funky colors, and gradient surfaces. In fact, every single time we've shot with this camera we've found some sort of "issue" with the footage in post.

Here are our "deal breakers":
- Sensor reflections - much more than any other camera we tested
- Highlight handling
- Limited color space - this footage is extremely unforgiving and difficult to grade in post. You can dig into the blacks a bit but if you blow highlights, that's it. Any significant color grading yields massive banding and nastiness.
- "Crawling" mid tones - it's a type of compression artifacting on this camera that sometimes makes people's skin look like it's crawling. Also happens to medium-tinted walls.
- Customer support - we tried contacting Sony support about a couple of these to see if our camera might be a dud but Sony just kind of dropped us.

We were talking about it here and came up with a theory that once the FS700 gets a foothold in the marketplace Sony will kill the FS100, chalking it up to a 'market test for the FS700'. Just a theory.

We actually tested several cameras, including the Scarlet, the EX1 and the AF100. The Scarlet had the most beautiful picture by far but was a nightmare in that the operation was buggy (required a reboot almost every half hour), the form factor was obnoxious (you can't touch it without accidentally hitting some button), the fan sounds like a V8, and it ate batteries for lunch. The EX1 was a solid workhorse but the picture is really noisy and the 1/2" sensor makes everything look somewhat flat. The AF100 is probably the camera we're going to go with. It's a cropped sensor but it was a solid camera. Not as 'experimental' as the Scarlet, not as 'what surprises are we going to find when we look at the footage in editing' as the FS100, and a little more 'dramatic' than the EX1.
Click to expand...

Great assessment of your experiences, Dan. I found the same exact thing happened when going into Resolve, but partially due to IR contamination (NDing a lot in broad daylight). Still, the image wasn't very flexible, and separating values became a task. All in Resolve, with a colorist from Modern.

I tested a lot of settings, including PP off, and Nirv's REC709 Standard recommendation. Very minor leeway, the image still wouldn't hold tight.

Like you, I've been running tests for a project coming up and although I know I could just shoot Epic... however, for the budget and deadline set the workflow will be too time consuming.

I'm surprised, however, that you ended up at the AF100! I think we're still going to use the FS100 for a very specific kind of camera/aesthetic (video camera footage, super lowlight available light shots) and a GH2 for all of the traditional Narrative material.

Of course, different people see different things and I still think the FS100 is a killer camera/image to be able to access as a filmmaker.
 
Thanks so much, everyone, for the input. I agree on many points.

Like some of you said, I think it comes down to expectations and standards--and both of mine are admittedly too high when it comes to image (my colleagues blame it on the fact that I'm German). Our coloring process is often extremely involved with a solid 3 passes before rendering. We tried just about all picture profiles we could find and the results were similar across the board: excessive banding, loss of resolution, and heavy artifacting. With our EX1 (which is obviously a very different camera) we have some wiggle room to correct slight misjudgements like exposure and color balance in post. With the FS100, fahgetaboutit. By the way, I also love the Glencain profiles!

Like Kholi said, this camera is an amazing tool for low-budget filmmakers and it definitely has its uses in terms of a certain aesthetic. However, I can just see the nightmare right now of trying to explain all the anomalies to the client and trying to get this footage to pass a national station's QC or, worse, finicky DG. Personally, I'll use this camera for low-budget corporate/web stuff and just-for-fun things like the 48 Hr Film Festival (which you all should find and do - it's a blast!).

To answer some questions, we did not use an external recorder (the cost/reward wasn't worth it for us). I'll try to put together some before/after clips and some shots of the crawling mid tones (though I think there's a post on here about it).
 
I grade my footage shot on the FS100 with Resolve also with great results, and the footage holds up very well
I guess it just depends on how your footage was shot. The profiles are a fine starting point, but there is allot more
involved then just shooting with profiles, and each scene is going to be adjusted differently.

I personally would do more research on the adjustments for your highlights and black levels before you give
up on the FS100, and I most certainly would not go with the AF100 and expect better results. I think it would be a
good idea to work with the camera more, your obvioulsy not getting everything it's capable of.

There are many people on here other than me who are getting results that are not similar to your own. Good work on the footage though.
 
Last edited:
Gary W said:
I grade my footage shot on the FS100 with Resolve also with great results, and the footage holds up very well
I guess it just depends on how your footage was shot.
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more.

The footage from the FS100 doesn't hold up any less good to any other 8 bit format. How you use those 8 bits during capture are important but it's much easier to blame the camera than it is to learn to work within the limitations of a format. From HDV to HDCAM 8 bit formats need care at every stage of the pipeline. I can make FS100 footage fall apart in grading in the same way I can make HDCAM footage look like arse.

There's much written about the FS100 highlight handling but watching the BBC at primetime shows identical highlight roll offs. Primetime BBC programmes are not shot on FS100s and at the very least would be a PMW-500, a camera over 3x more expensive producing a comparable image.

Combine the FS100 and a 422 high bit rate recording device and you've got a camera that can compete with any of the top end 8 bit broadcast cameras on image quality for a fraction of the price. Beyond that into the realm of 10 bit and RAW is an unfair comparison as the sky's the limit, but if you bought a camera for about £5000 and expected Cinealta or Alexa performance then is that the fault of the camera or you?

Dan, the fact you relied on downloading other people's picture profiles speak volumes. Miller's profiles suit his way of shooting with an in camera look and he doesn't appear to move the image much in the grade. So if you shoot with his profile and then want to grade the pants off the footage you've gone up a blind alley.

I take issue with the rather disparaging terms like "low budget filmmakers", "low-budget corporate/web stuff" and "just-for-fun" to describe uses for this camera and are just attempts to damn it with faint praise. In competent hands this camera is an excellent tool.

There is a worrying trend where everyone with a matte box considers themselves a Cinematographer and now Resolve is free everyone is a colourist. The label by which you refer to yourself seems to be the most important thing or defining yourself by the equipment you have access to rather than the hard slog of acquiring the skills.

Good luck with the AF100, a step forward or two steps back?
 
+1 to all these comments.

I wonder if those from a stills background are expecting the flexibility of RAW processing? To be honest they should be, just the manufactures protecting their higher end cameras preventing that.

Dodgy highlight handling is everywhere, on TV and films (the Total Recall trailer which overall looks fantastic - very much like the lighting, still has some cyan and yellowing highlights in places but they look great in context. It has some artificially lowered highlights which i think look wrong but that's to draw attention to the faces so again in context it's okay)

I think one of the issues these days is it is too easy to spend too much time looking at pixels and not motion. Looking at the trees and not the forest (story). Anecdotes of compositors sending mattes back to be redone because they don't look good enough are the norm. Yet in motion the mattes look perfect, just not when you stare at them too much. Check out some of those old Raiders matte paintings for impressionist examples.

Plenty of 8 bit films in the wild, from HDCAM to 720p varicam.

With 8 bit i think you have to get within a certain percentage of your look at the time, not try and shoot flat because the container isn't big enough. Contrary to current opinion on here it could be that a lowered knee would open up mid tones quite a bit for indoor scenes. The knee is where we start rolling off highlights, so lower knee, under expose, bring up the shadows and you store a lot of mid range in that container. If you're scene warrants it.

Back to the topic though, i really would love to see befores and afters, because either we can help or you can teach us some pitfalls we've not encountered yet!

cheers
Paul
 
Nirv said:
Couldn't agree more.

The footage from the FS100 doesn't hold up any less good to any other 8 bit format. How you use those 8 bits during capture are important but it's much easier to blame the camera than it is to learn to work within the limitations of a format. From HDV to HDCAM 8 bit formats need care at every stage of the pipeline. I can make FS100 footage fall apart in grading in the same way I can make HDCAM footage look like arse.

There's much written about the FS100 highlight handling but watching the BBC at primetime shows identical highlight roll offs. Primetime BBC programmes are not shot on FS100s and at the very least would be a PMW-500, a camera over 3x more expensive producing a comparable image.

Combine the FS100 and a 422 high bit rate recording device and you've got a camera that can compete with any of the top end 8 bit broadcast cameras on image quality for a fraction of the price. Beyond that into the realm of 10 bit and RAW is an unfair comparison as the sky's the limit, but if you bought a camera for about £5000 and expected Cinealta or Alexa performance then is that the fault of the camera or you?

Dan, the fact you relied on downloading other people's picture profiles speak volumes. Miller's profiles suit his way of shooting with an in camera look and he doesn't appear to move the image much in the grade. So if you shoot with his profile and then want to grade the pants off the footage you've gone up a blind alley.

I take issue with the rather disparaging terms like "low budget filmmakers", "low-budget corporate/web stuff" and "just-for-fun" to describe uses for this camera and are just attempts to damn it with faint praise. In competent hands this camera is an excellent tool.

There is a worrying trend where everyone with a matte box considers themselves a Cinematographer and now Resolve is free everyone is a colourist. The label by which you refer to yourself seems to be the most important thing or defining yourself by the equipment you have access to rather than the hard slog of acquiring the skills.

Good luck with the AF100, a step forward or two steps back?
Click to expand...

This supports my points exactly.

1. The effort vs. outcome is not worth it for us with this camera. Every camera has its downsides and this camera's downsides just don't work for what we need (national broadcast, discerning clients, and an ueber-efficient workflow). When you say, "work within the limitations of a format", that's exactly the point. We can either spend additional time on set diagnosing anomalies and 'working around' the camera's limitations or, being that time is money, we can get a camera that doesn't have these limitations. The AF100, for example, has an entirely different set of problems but it grades slightly better in the way we need it to and the sensor reflections are much milder.

2. What some people consider a great image may not be acceptable to others, and I think that's the case here.

3. I agree on your point about everyone with a Matte box considering themselves a Cinematographer. Not so long ago I started my business by begging people to let me make their corporate videos for free. I used workshop lights and a ducktaped still-camera tripod. It took 10 tries to pan without looking like I was having a seizure. Now, technology has evolved and my budgets have increased to where I can rent gear which has opened up a whole new world. I learned that better gear makes a better production--not only in picture quality, but also in the fact that I could focus less on 'working around the limitations of my gear' and more on the actual performance. It was freedom and endless possibilities. In this case, I'm trying to choose the "limitations" I work within.

If this camera is not best for low budget filmmakers, corporate stuff and just-for-fun projects, what is it for? If you had $50K to shoot a commercial, would you choose to work "within the limitations" of an 8-bit camcorder or would you choose a high-end production camera? Same question for a $1M budget on a film. I don't think Sony had national commercials and medium-to-high budget films in mind when they put this $5,000 camera onto the market.

With the words "low budget" I don't mean to insult the camera or any of you. For what it is, I think it's a fine camera. And I, myself, am a low budget filmmaker. I do a lot of "low-budget corporate/web stuff" and "just for fun" things (like filming my dog tearing across the dog park, plowing over a Shitzu - in 60fps). My last commercial had a six-figure budget and was shot on film; my next job is a corporate piece with a $1,200 budget (which is where the FS100 comes in).
 
A side note: I will say that great glass makes a big difference with this camera. Just for fun we put an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm on the front and you wouldn't believe the difference. For those who don't know, that's a $60K lens that weighs in at about 28 pounds. We rented it for a commercial and thought it'd be funny to try on the Sony. I'll post some pics and videos when I have some time.
 
danstone said:
To answer some questions, we did not use an external recorder (the cost/reward wasn't worth it for us)..
Click to expand...

But yet the issues you mention are minimised or removed by using one...

I find it a strange choice to test, find banding ( 8bit issue) and comression artifacts (28mbs H264 issue) and then say the $600 cost of the BMD is too high, and the rewards are too minimal...

The rewards are not seen until you try to pull secondaries while gradeing, or raise the gamma in a shot with a flat surface the same issues you noted, but with the recorder the issues you noted are much easier to sort, taking the FS into much more workable place in post.. did you even test it with a recorder?

d
 
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