Field Review of FS700 2K Raw and 7Q

K

klk

Well-known member
Wrote up a review on this combo.
karlkimdp.tumblr.com

This is geared towards low budget narrative film-making. Will post a trailer as soon as it's available, but that's likely a couple of months away.
 
Nice write up - I think the 700/7q (or three) is really a clever choice for film making.

The plastic body? - you might be shocked - Ive had my FS100 since whenever they came out (2011?) and with daily use it is still going strong - no dodgy buttons nothing!

Also personally I love the low mass (which is a result of the crappy build) becuase, well you can grip it in odd places and the stresses on a handheld operator are low..

I agree the mount is not really good for swinging any heavy glass off of (neither is canon)

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I was interested in your next post 'ETTR'

Ettr rocks and should be the default exposure methodology shooting raw.

Why? because it allows you to dig cleanly into dark areas in post and means you can light less because you are using the full DR of the camera and avoiding the 'noise floor'

Too clean? Well add some noize in post - that is what stills people shooting raw have been doing for a million years.

ETTR should not be confused with blowing your highlights - which is a direct route to the video look!

S
 
Great report! Whish I could afford even a single 7Q for my one FS700 though ;)

Regarding the accidentally hitting of buttons: the FS700 has a lock feature, but it's called 'HOLD' and it's a dedicated switch on the left side by the middle 'ring' in the body, close to where a base plate would be.
 
morgan_moore said:
ETTR should not be confused with blowing your highlights - which is a direct route to the video look!

S
Click to expand...

Hey Sam, I just recently learned of the acronym ETTR and it did kinda blow my mind. I think we should simply say, "Don't blow your highlights!" and deliver as fat a 'negative' as you can- to be manipulated in post. Having said that I do feel Arri has really tuned the Alexa to underexpose to provide that unique roll off into the highlights.
 
dmitrizigany said:
Regarding the accidentally hitting of buttons: the FS700 has a lock feature, but it's called 'HOLD' and it's a dedicated switch on the left side by the middle 'ring' in the body, close to where a base plate would be.
Click to expand...

Ah, great too know. There is a definite disadvantage to rushing into production with a camera you are not familiar with. To be honest I always work with an AC and all too often let them figure it out- even if I own the thing. Thanks for the tip!
 
klk said:
Ah, great too know. There is a definite disadvantage to rushing into production with a camera you are not familiar with. To be honest I always work with an AC and all too often let them figure it out- even if I own the thing. Thanks for the tip!
Click to expand...

disadvantage of the lock button:
it locks everything. Also some buttons you might need quite often for a change:
aperture, ISO setting, WB preset. I put focus magnifier instead of markers on the
assign button which is locked than too.

I don't use the lock button for this reason. You learn to keep an eye on
WB, GAIN/ISO and SHUTTER SPEED which are most critical from my experience

Thanks for this review, Karl!
 
klk said:
Hey Sam, I just recently learned of the acronym ETTR and it did kinda blow my mind. I think we should simply say, "Don't blow your highlights!" and deliver as fat a 'negative' as you can- to be manipulated in post. Having said that I do feel Arri has really tuned the Alexa to underexpose to provide that unique roll off into the highlights.
Click to expand...

Yep - Fat negative is the word. ETTR comes from stills where one is typically seeing a '709LUT' with 2stops of 'invisible' (until you hit ACR) headroom and a washy image on that 'LUT' crushed in post leads to a clean file.

As for blowing highlights its a funny thing - I think some cams can do it without going ugly - which seems to be a property of big pixels. (alexa not 5/55/red/bmc4k)

This set of stills on my (11mp big pixel) Nikon D3 (which has a chip that would eat an Alexa if it could do more than 8FPS) blows in a way that I find acceptable..

http://www.sammorganmoore.com/photography-highlights/blacker-designs-summer-11

How the LUTS/WFM etc are set up would have a big impact on 'on set exposure choices' - I guess one would want luts that were..
'what I am getting/flat-full range' and some punchy 'Fat' (dark 709) and 'Thin' (light 709) LUTs

Not having used the 07q I dont know what info it is feeding you (this probably needs testing) - certainly I know there is confusion on raw/luts/histos with the F55 (and Red!) personally I think theose cameras are best shot with a lut that is the lowest ISO (500 and 320) then you know that if it is blown you have no chance of recovery

S
 
I am sat looking at my FS700 and 7Q, waiting on a HD-SDI lead of all things. Can't wait to fire this baby up, everything i've seen so far makes me think this is a winning combo and your review seems to back that up further.
 
Nice post. Enjoyed reading it and fully agree on a number of items that I have come across myself.

Using the metabones speed booster works great btw. Only time i don't have it on these days is if I'm shooting something extremely simple and just keep the kit lens on it. But 90% of the time I have it on with my EF lenses.
 
dapoopta said:
how could you use the recorder for focus pulling? there is a good enough lag, or so i feel, to use it
Click to expand...

I wasn't the focus puller- dp and A cam op, so I can't really tell you about the lag for pulling focus. I will say our 1st AC was trained on film, so he pulled via marks and also the monitor.

Using the EVF via HDMI there was definitely a lag for the operator. On fast moves I used the onboard monitor, as lag was much less noticeable. Good operating requires anticipation (and muscle memory) as much as reaction, and I'm sure good focus pulling requires an instinctive amount of anticipation and "feel." But for regular drama the lag isn't a terrible thing. However it certainly isn't like a good old fashioned optical viewfinder...
 
I cant remember the rig exactly but we had some BAD lag issues with the FS700 - using SDI to the monitor - and switched to HDMI direct from the camera

I guess Id run the 7q off the SDI and use another monitor to operate off the HDMI..?
 
Oddly enough, the lag from 4KtoHD or RAW is significantly less than with the camera's 8 bit output - as in, virtually non-existent. At least, that's my experience. I've been using the O7Q for a while now, as a recorder - but last week I used it for the first time purely as a monitor for an AVCHD project and, wow, the lag was really noticeable.
 
Colinelves said:
Oddly enough, the lag from 4KtoHD or RAW is significantly less than with the camera's 8 bit output - as in, virtually non-existent. At least, that's my experience. I've been using the O7Q for a while now, as a recorder - but last week I used it for the first time purely as a monitor for an AVCHD project and, wow, the lag was really noticeable.
Click to expand...

There is enough lag for me to not be able to pan smoothly when recording RAW. because you are watching the screen and your body wants to speed up or slow down based on what you see, and it just confuses me way too much! I have to use the mini screen.
 
Karl, I found your piece quite inspiring. I am an aspiring indy filmmaker. I was a little confused by your workflow, however. I was under the impression that Adobe couldn't work with .DNG files. (Apparently coming in a month or so with Premiere CC). So you use AE? Could you say a little about the workflow? (Or write a blog and direct us to it?) Thanks.
 
Here's a quick test to illustrate the frame delay on different ports.
On the left is a 7Q plugged into the HDMI port.
On the right is a 7Q plugged into the HD-SDI port. FS700 is outputting 2K raw.
The onboard monitor was averaging a 3 frame delay. The other two ports were averaging a 5 frame delay.
After I posted it on Vimeo realized I should have really skinnied the shutter for a more accurate illustration- next time.
 
Jim Ritscher said:
Karl, I found your piece quite inspiring. I am an aspiring indy filmmaker. I was a little confused by your workflow, however. I was under the impression that Adobe couldn't work with .DNG files. (Apparently coming in a month or so with Premiere CC). So you use AE? Could you say a little about the workflow? (Or write a blog and direct us to it?) Thanks.
Click to expand...

Jim, I'm not a post guy so I have to tread lightly here. The DIT (and the director and myself) have earlier versions of PP and AE- not the release that was announced @ NAB. So if you startup AE and import a DNG sequence, Adobe Camera Raw starts up automatically. We make adjustments to the image and from there we bring it into a composition. In Adobe Media Encoder we then grab that composition and transcode it to the preferred format for editing- depends what encoders you have available.

In earlier blog posts I believe I mentioned ACR is not the magic bullet for digital cinema. ACR is a stills product made to work with DNG sequences in AE and other programs, like Photoshop. Having said that ACR was a true eye opener as to what information is available with RAW files with the CURRENT cameras we have available. ACR is not perfect and has a few issues, but the image is so much better than debayering the DNG files in Resolve. The amount of control is refreshing. The amount of time and processing power needed is discouraging, but well worth it if deadlines are not irrevocable. In other words, great for indie work where the one asset you have to compete with is time, as opposed to money.

BTW, Adobe developed DNG as a common raw format I believe. Could be wrong- I'm not post savvy.
 
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Nice to see, that you had the same "ahh, that's a picture" moment, when you saw the Fs700 with the CG7Q for the first time.
It's really a very nice cinematic footage, you're shooting.

But: The Alexa is still another thing at least for me. There's a lot of mojo inside, what's totally different from the Sony cameras.
The Alexa's are able to read out two 14bit pictures at the same time from the sensor. 1 without any gain (for the smooth highlights), one typically elevated for the shadows and medium range of the picture. The two outputs are somehow put into 1 16bit picture before being recorded.
 
Erik Wittbusch said:
But: The Alexa is still another thing at least for me. There's a lot of mojo inside, what's totally different from the Sony cameras.
The Alexa's are able to read out two 14bit pictures at the same time from the sensor. 1 without any gain (for the smooth highlights), one typically elevated for the shadows and medium range of the picture. The two outputs are somehow put into 1 16bit picture before being recorded.
Click to expand...

The Alexa is the hands down digital cinema camera of choice for a very good reason. I have to emphasize the terms "budget, low budget, no budget, gorilla" filmmaking. On the feature I just shot, the fact that we could get great skin tone quickly and easily via ACR was all the excitement. Getting Alexa like DR was all the excitement. If you have the budget to shoot Alexa, especially ArriRAw, or 35mm (and have the time or resources for multiple bodies) there's no reason not to go Alexa. I know this film will not see a seasoned feature film colorist, that post will be rushed and pushed through on a budget- and that is the excitement of FS700 2K RAW- now on the 7Q, with ACR processing, for me.

So yes, agree with you entirely Erik!
 
To be honest:

Never had the chance to use the Alexa for a bigger project. That's why I'm happy with the possibilities that the FS700 + O7Q give us with a smallish budget already.
Much, much better than shooting with those 35mm-Adapter thingies on EB-cams 5 years ago!

The first fiction feature, that we shot last autumn, we used the BMCC - which also produces a very cinematic picture too. But handling is a pain in almost every situation...
 
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