FS7: First Long Walkabout with the Sony FS7

basspig

Veteran
Yesterday, our town had its annual fireworks display. From the town green to the baseball diamond, there lies a spread of 3/4 mile of old time shops and a railroad station.

I traveled on foot with my FS7 and made three trips to the green, each time with a different lens.

I have the Tilta BS-T10 baseplate and the Fotga DP-3000 matte box attached to the FS7. I alternated between the 28-135 and my favorite prime, the Rokinon 16mm Cine. I recorded to the Shogun, mounted via rear shoe on the handle. I also recorded internally to XQD cards.

I used the XAVC-I content to make the videos, so the quality probably isn't up to the level of the Prores coming out of the Shogun, but I wanted the widescreen for these sweeping landscapes and citiscapes.

Ergonomics: Not too bad. The pad that rests on the shoulder could be less slippery, as it tends to slip off the shoulder now and then, but that's easy enough to remedy by gluing some friction pad to the existing rubber pad. Using one hand resting against the back of the mattbox, and the other on the Sony grip, extended frontwards, the rig is pretty manageable, even on foot for longer periods.

My one problem was that my right hand goes numb from holding the grip for more than ten minutes at a time. I soon cannot feel the record and magnify buttons and it becomes near impossible to find them. Fortunately, there's a second big record button on the left side of the camera body, so I use that when the right hand is out of commission.

The weight was manageable and I got some reasonably steady shots. Probably the most strain was incured moving the camera to/from the shoulder, as the wrist twisting angles and then holding the camera's weight out in front of you puts a strain on the back. With the camera loaded up with external attachments, it gets fairly heavy.

Lens changes were easy, done in the car. One BP-U60 lasted all afternoon and into the evening, but the Shogun was on its second battery for the fireworks (video currently uploading to Youtube).

This shoot convinced me that a Duclos 10-16mm lens would be a good investment. For our narrow streets, sometimes you need wider than 16mm to take it all in. The 28-135 was downright claustrophobic. It's good for zooming in on church steeples, but there's no 'wide' angle capability. The Rokinon 16mm is extremely sharp. The XAVC-I CODEC held up much better on this type of imagery than it did on waterfalls and wooded foliage. Not perfect, but good enough for a Youtube video.

Here's the first of two videos (second one is about 15% uploaded at this moment). Bear in mind, I could only do a rough edit, as my machine plays XAVC at about 1-2fps and I can't get a sense of the movement at that rate, so I jog shuttled through the clips and cut the best I could.

 
It took Youtube all night to process this video, after upload, but here it is, finally. Night shooting with the FS7:


I put a hefty amount of bass boost to make up for the deficiency in the mic preamps.
 
I'm not sure why you're offering this up amongst a group of professionals who make a living with the FS7.

Unless, that is, your objective was to make this camera look like a badly operated home DV Handycam.

If that's the case, I think you've done a brilliant job.

Well done.
 
Xavc-I is more than "good enough" for a youtube video ! Re the video I think it shows how frustratingly limited the 28-135 is, not wide, long or fast enough to get an interesting variety of shots off the shoulder. For this kind of video you would be better off with a wider lens and zooming with your feet. That said the 28-135 is a good investment for a general lens for interview work, but to me its a lens best suited to tripod work with a shorter wider zoom better for off the shoulder.
 
You mispelled cinematography in your opening title :)


I missed that. Bad keyboard and no spell checker in the titler. Took all night to upload, and all day for Youtube to 'process' it.

I didn't get a permit from the town (requires a $1M liability policy), so no tripod shots were possible. My Parkinson's is getting gradually worse every year, making it harder to get steady hand held shots. This is practice and to see how the camera handles different lighting situations.

I do appreciate all the frank and honest opinions. Don't hold back. Tell me how you REALLY feel. :-)
 
i don't understand why you need a shogun and matte box to shoot this? or why anyone would stop you from using a tripod?
also: why wouldn't the internal codec be good enough? you are uploading to youtube and this does not seem to be graded in any way...is there an audience for this?
i would use my iPhone for random walk around shots and honestly for anyone watching on youtube it won't be any different...just more stabilized and without the zooming in and out of course...
 
If the subject matter were the point of the video, I could have shot it on an iPhone. Heck, the majority of viewers are watching on an iPhone. But this was a practice shoot to evaluate the FS7, some lenses I was testing, and to compare XAVC-I and Prores quality (the Prores is much sharper while the XAVC needs a LOT of sharpening to appear as sharp, though that comes with artifacts, so Prores wins in the quality faceoff).
I dropped in a couple of different LUTs and shadow and highlight adjustments. I don't go for the blue tint of what most 'graded' indie shots look like. Wanted to see how natural the camera can capture familiar scenes. I was looking at lens sharpness and CA, as well as whether distortions were distracting or not. With the fireworks, I was looking for shadow dynamic range, sensor noise, color saturation in the bright centers of the explosions, etc.
Three years ago, I merrily took a tripod and shot some nice footage downtown, until Mr. Police Officer came over and ask what I was doing and to show him my permit. I had none of course, and cited the First Amendment and pulled out my "photography is not a crime" paper that I printed out just in case, since I almost got arrested in June 2007 by MTA police for filming through the window on a northbound MTA train leaving NYC, but he was not impressed and cited me with a $500 fine. I went to court and got it reduced to $50, plus $37 court fees and 7 hours of my life wasted waiting in the courtroom for my case to come up. It never did. I was directed to see the DA afterwards. It was explained to me that anything where camera support touched the street pavement, it presents a hazard for pedestrians and thus I need a permit and a $1M liability policy posted with the Film Commission. Of course, our town may be extra anal about this because it is the site of many Hollywood films over the past 50 years. Nowadays, I do the best I can, hand held and try not to be noticed by the local constabulary. Other parts of the country may be more tolerant, but not here in New England.
 
Three years ago, I merrily took a tripod and shot some nice footage downtown, until Mr. Police Officer came over and ask what I was doing and to show him my permit. I had none of course, and cited the First Amendment and pulled out my "photography is not a crime" paper that I printed out just in case, since I almost got arrested in June 2007 by MTA police for filming through the window on a northbound MTA train leaving NYC, but he was not impressed and cited me with a $500 fine. I went to court and got it reduced to $50, plus $37 court fees and 7 hours of my life wasted waiting in the courtroom for my case to come up. It never did. I was directed to see the DA afterwards. It was explained to me that anything where camera support touched the street pavement, it presents a hazard for pedestrians and thus I need a permit and a $1M liability policy posted with the Film Commission. Of course, our town may be extra anal about this because it is the site of many Hollywood films over the past 50 years. Nowadays, I do the best I can, hand held and try not to be noticed by the local constabulary. Other parts of the country may be more tolerant, but not here in New England.[/QUOTE]


WOW. Guess I have it pretty good here in my small town in TN. So far I've asked to use the local police station , two schools and the city cemetary as locations and had no trouble at all. And had the local fire dept come out and "spray" my house for a "fire" scene. No permits, fees or hassles (except the cemetary required insurance) . Even in downtown Nashville I've never been approached.
 
2 questions neither of which is about the video :)

Just for Yucks - who the heck is Basspig - Mark or Mary Ann ?

2nd - You obviously know a lot about fireworks. I grew up in the small town of Paramus, New Jersey right near the field where the fireworks happened every year and I am addicted to getting right up to the front rope every year . I've turned a whole bunch of friend's families on to that as well and its a big tradition with us now. However nothing has ever compared to the fireworks I saw when I was a kid. I don't think its just because I was a kid ,but because inouer town in the 50's there were always a bunch of terrific ground displays which alternated with the rockets in the sky. There were cool fiery pinwheels, a replay of a naval battle from 1812 which had 2 ships lobbing incredibly loud bombs at each other and it always ended with giant sparkling American Flag. I've never seen anything like it since and no one else I know remembers anything like that from their youth. Is this tradition alive anymore? If not why?

Lenny
 
I'm not sure why you're offering this up amongst a group of professionals who make a living with the FS7.

Unless, that is, your objective was to make this camera look like a badly operated home DV Handycam.

If that's the case, I think you've done a brilliant job.

Well done.

.is there an audience for this?

i would use my iPhone for random walk around shots and honestly for anyone watching on youtube it won't be any different...just more stabilized and without the zooming in and out of course...

So that's all your criticism, all you have to offer?

''Why are you showing this among professionals?'',
''You're brilliant in making it look like a home DV camera''
''No audience for this''
''I could shoot it better than you with an Iphone''


You guys are enjoying this, aren't you? I can see you. You get a that little rush of egotism and self-grandeur when giving destructive criticism behind your LCDs, like 6 year olds in a school yard.

I'll tell you this, giving constructive criticism gives an even higher sense of well-being.

Be a man and say what he should do to improve it, show us how it's done, point out a hundred mistakes, analyze and critique each single frame, otherwise it's just as I said, destructive to the entire community, it gets people frightened to share.

Please no one be afraid to share his/her work based on such little childish behavior.

Post anything you shoot, absolutely anything, there are thousands of people here who are willing to watch and help you.

_____________________

Anyhow, To OP, thanks for the write-up about usage of the FS7.

My take on the video is that if I had shot this I would get closer to the action and point upwards, gets a burning sky of colors surrounding the camera as opposed to a far away dark look of the sky with few lights going up. I would also use a lower frame rate, I think this is too slow for fireworks and takes the edge off.
 
My screen name.. that's the male member of the family. Got tagged with it in 1989, when a new friend had his first taste of real bass as I played some of his favorite anime music on my big sound system. It's famous and has a web site, basspig.com.

I'm no expert on fireworks, but I did some work for Zambelli Fireworks in 2010:

Fireworks start at 6:52.

What I do know is that due to safety rules, they no longer use 12" mortars. 8" is now the largest mortars in use today. The radius that must be cordoned off is 600' for the 8" mortars. The 2010 fireworks was launched from an airport landing strip. The parked airplanes were 650' away from the launchers. I had my mic array about 60' from the launchers, and three cameras surrounding the launchers at various distances. The audio recording has no compression or enhancement of any kind. It has 86dB of dynamic range, with the noise floor being crickets in the wooded area to the right off camera and the peak SPL being about the 16-minute point in entire show. There are only a handful of sound systems in the US that can play this recording at a realistic volume level.

I miss the old fireworks shows that had the big BOOM! sound. That was up to about 1987, the first time I recorded them on video and not just audio. Prior years saw me recording them on reel to reel with stereo pair of condenser mics.

This video I did on Friday was more of a camera test than anything else. Normally, I like to get right under them and get the full impact. Friday was more of a 'town atmosphere' video, like that which is more commonly seen in fireworks videos.

There are a number of arrogant individuals that hang out on these types of forums. There's one in particular in the Atomos forums who is an obvious troll who tried to argue that 4K is UHD. I even showed him the whitepaper from the DCI group's web site, and, defeated, he switched to criticizing me for wanting to shoot in DCI 4K. The thread was about how Atomos had misrepresented the capabilities of the Shogun recorder, but this troll went to great effort to pollute the thread and ruin any technical value in it. Another forum member told me this person was banned from DVXuser recently for this kind of activity. Trolls are a part of internet freedom of speech, and I am thankful that we have the freedom that they can exist. Because if they can exist, then it means I have freedom of speech too.

I know my camera tests are not "Cecil B. DeMille" quality and I'm not trying to show off my shooting skills or editing skills on a PC that can't even play the footage due to a 7 year old CPU/motherboard and not enough RAM. Frankly, I was surprised I got the damned things to render. The 'out of memory' errors were popping up every few frames as it struggled to play a frame here and there, with 98% of frames dropped. Not a system where one can edit 4K with any flair. As soon as I pay off the 3 credit cards for the FS7 purchase, I'll spend them to the limit again on a dual 18-core PC to edit 4K footage fluidly. Then I can even use things like warp stabilizer to fix hand held footage.

I'm still getting accustomed to using this camera. Coming from an EX3, the controls are in a different place for many things, and I've not yet developed 'muscle memory' for finding them quickly during a shoot. One thing I did discover is that the mic preamps don't have enough attenuation. The bandstand was nearly maxing out the levels with the reference set to -40dB and the fireworks were clipping. The band wasn't very loud at all. I miss the EX3's ability to turn the sensitivity all the way down to -11dB. -40dB is easily overloaded by the sound of nearby traffic on a highway. When I made my ultimate fireworks video, I connected the mics to the line level inputs, not the mic preamp inputs on my 8-channel A/D converter, anticipating the SPLs at such close range to explosions. At extreme levels of sound pressure, condenser mics output voltages in excess of 1 volt, well into line level signal range. It worked out well. I had 6dB of headroom at the top and since the recording was 24-bit, plenty or room to normalize without audible quantizing error.

About the shoulder mount of this camera, it needs a handle on the left side. The grip alone, I find, is not a stable hold. It tends to pivot on the shoulder, as well as the pad being easy to slide. I had the camera slip several times as I was panning. Two handles would give it more lateral stability. Now if people would stop outbidding me on the ARRI rosette handles...
 
It's nothing to do with 'enjoying' but myself and many others take the use of the terms 'cinematographer' or DP very seriously. It look me a long time of working and developing my skills before I ever did a job which I would say I DP'd as opposed to just simply operating or shooting on.

This is is a little camera test Basspig did for himself and that's absolutely fine and we all do them. But if honest I think it should have been left for private consumption as by his own admission it isn't giving the community any new info, it isn't telling a story or anything, it will come up when people look for example vids of this camera ahead of making hiring decisions and, and this is the most salient point for me, it is not, even using the widest definition of the term, cinematography.

Also Basspig, get a manfrotto monopod as you can be stable but have it collapsed and off the ground in a second :)

EDIT: Just to say, I'm not saying this stuff with the intention of being rude or insulting. Just making a couple of points.
 
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It's nothing to do with 'enjoying' but myself and many others take the use of the terms 'cinematographer' or DP very seriously. It look me a long time of working and developing my skills before I ever did a job which I would say I DP'd as opposed to just simply operating or shooting on.
That's the way I feel too. I always use "Filmed & Edited by" for things I do. Even when I operate camera, do lighting, art direction, and directing all in one video I don't feel comfortable using those titles. The day I do something that's on par with Blade Runner is the day where I might be ok with calling myself a cinematographer. I have quite a long way to go still ;)
 
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Sometimes I DP the hell out of something. Controlling the light or controlling the team controlling the light and manipulating and 'authoring' an image to aid a narrative.

A lot of the time I'm just being a camera operator.

Just because you might have MS Word, it doesn't make you Harold Pinter and similarly, having a camera and shooting some stuff doesn't make you a cinematographer.
 
Cinematographer; Film Editor; DoP etc.

These are all titles/honours that should be bestowed on you by your peers - often when you're invited to join the relevant guild/association.

Let others be the judge of your abilities.

One of the perils of online forums is that some voices can be vexatious and loud, before they've earned the right to be.

Someone mentioned community.

One of the basic tenets of community: earn your right to voice an opinion.
 
I know my camera tests are not "Cecil B. DeMille" quality and I'm not trying to show off my shooting skills or editing skills on a PC that can't even play the footage due to a 7 year old CPU/motherboard and not enough RAM. Frankly, I was surprised I got the damned things to render. The 'out of memory' errors were popping up every few frames as it struggled to play a frame here and there, with 98% of frames dropped

Basspig- just wondered if you have looked into a better video card? I just set up an older Mac Pro ( 2009 4 core) for my daughter to color grade our feature, and it's doing a decent job of handling the 4K footage. The video card is a GTX 580.
 
I know my camera tests are not "Cecil B. DeMille" quality and I'm not trying to show off my shooting skills or editing skills on a PC that can't even play the footage due to a 7 year old CPU/motherboard and not enough RAM. Frankly, I was surprised I got the damned things to render. The 'out of memory' errors were popping up every few frames as it struggled to play a frame here and there, with 98% of frames dropped

Basspig- just wondered if you have looked into a better video card? I just set up an older Mac Pro ( 2009 4 core) for my daughter to color grade our feature, and it's doing a decent job of handling the 4K footage. The video card is a GTX 580.

I'd vouch for that Mark (BassPig). The GTX580 is pretty good, but 2Gb VRAM. Could work for you. Perhaps some more RAM too.
I'd agree with what's been said about a monopole to help stabilise your shots, shooting static frame with perhaps varying degrees of perspective, and fast cutting rather than slow long pans. The shooting style is not to most tastes here and I too would have suggested you made the video private access and then shared. But to leave you with something positive, I often find your posts here quite detailed offering a different perspective.

I feel your pain about long uploads. Thankfully today we just had fibre installed (we're in the sticks) and our upload speed went from 600KB/s to 12Mb/s

All the best :)
 
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