FS100 - Shooting in Black and White.

OutlawsDelejos

OutlawsDelejos

Active member
Was just contacted by a Director I know who wants to shoot a short film in B&W.

Just wondering if anyone has shot in B&W on the FS100 before?
And if you either shot in colour with a monitor set to monochrome for reference or created/found a PP for B&W and shot in that?

I'll probably run my own tests prior to shooting, but I'm curious to hear if anyone else has tried it.
 
Hi, thanks for this wonderful idea. Shooting 'in Camera B&W'. Just like the RED EPIC-M ;-)
Well for the moment I shoot with this profile : “CPF-LOG” PICTURE PROFILE (http://crookedpathfilms.com/blog/2012/02/19/cpf-log-picture-profile-for-the-sony-nex-fs100-with-lut/)
And I like this one very much. It give me a good feeling in post.
So what I would do is shoot with this profile and color grade to B&W. If I have time this evening I'll try some footage I shot last week.
But the idea is just great. Creating a B&W picture profile.
Let us know the how you did it...

PS: Have you seen this one : http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?261778-Shooting-Black-and-White-on-FS-100
 
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If you're going to do this then you should consider shooting with strong colours and gelled lights. The reason is that if you shoot images that are basically as mono as you can get, the the 8 bit recordings only have 255 levels. If you use colour to shape with and remove that colour afterwards you can get a much great subtle range of steps. I'm sure you could get some great subtle tones and imagery this way. Obviously the downside is monitoring on set and so you'll need to test ahead of time.

I've considered trying this for a short film, but not had the time to do anything about it.

cheers
paul
 
I've also been wondering whether shooting black and white in-camera would indeed (as put in the other thread on this topic) "lighten the load of the codec" and result in fewer compression artifacts. In theory I can't see how that wouldn't be so, but does anyone have a more concrete idea?

If this was true, it'd be particularly helpful in 60p, where I've too often seen footage of complex scenes suddenly turn to mush.
 
aly324 said:
I've also been wondering whether shooting black and white in-camera would indeed (as put in the other thread on this topic) "lighten the load of the codec" and result in fewer compression artifacts. In theory I can't see how that wouldn't be so, but does anyone have a more concrete idea?

If this was true, it'd be particularly helpful in 60p, where I've too often seen footage of complex scenes suddenly turn to mush.
Click to expand...

Even in B&W I think that if you shoot superflat on everything and then try to bring back the contrast in scenes lit with low contrast you could run into problems with the stressed codec. In B&W, I think you can give yourself some head room with your Knee and slope settings and probably go into super white without the unpleasant colored highlight issue the FS-100 has. I would watch and adjust the black level and make sure that you are using the full DR without clipped blacks. I haven't used it yet, but I think the CPF-LOG guys are on the right path.
 
aly324 said:
I've also been wondering whether shooting black and white in-camera would indeed (as put in the other thread on this topic) "lighten the load of the codec" and result in fewer compression artifacts. In theory I can't see how that wouldn't be so, but does anyone have a more concrete idea?

If this was true, it'd be particularly helpful in 60p, where I've too often seen footage of complex scenes suddenly turn to mush.
Click to expand...

It would have the opposite effect, the codec compresses the colour component more than the luminance, if you removed colour you'd probably see more artefacts.

The limiting factor of these cameras is the output is only 8 bit, 255 levels of luminance in straight black and white, if you shoot flat you'll quickly see gradations. You really should use colour as a way of getting more luminance steps when you do convert to B&W in post. I'm sure you'd get a very good result

cheers
paul
 
Erwin Vanderhoydonks said:
Have a look at this one... https://vimeo.com/groups/fs100/videos/62366891
Click to expand...

I don't think that's a very subtle piece of black and white, the blacks are crushed totally. If that's what you're after then the same process will work. I think the beauty of B&W is the tonality possible, the subtlety. Horses for courses though, it's totally up to you what you're after but you did mention the Epic-M and that's a lovely B&W sensor.

I think an awful lot of this PP work is effort spent changing a tiny % of what the camera can do. Spend that time on lighting and you'd get more out of the camera IMHO

cheers
Paul
 
i read that linked discussion from a while back (two year ago, just after i got my first FS100), and i have changed direction since then.. now i use full range settings as both Paul & David have suggested would be best...

One more thing i think you might want to explore is the creative LUTs packaged in SpeedGrade, there's three B&W LUT's to play with, the "B&W with a red filter" LUT is a good starting point for the classic 40's smooth/creamy look

Although pretty low resoultion (16x16) they are fine in the real world as they are not a technical transform that needs greater accuracy (normaly 64x64) to safely show a transform from say 709 to Vision2 print stock, the low accuracy is not an issue when in useing LUTs in a creative manner before the display transform.

The same LUT's can work in a number of gradeing app's like DS and Resolve so you are not limited to Speedgrade if is not to your taste.

An external recorder and sharp as tack, but low contrast glass like the old Cooke SpeedPancro's would be high on my "to test" list....

here's something i shot 30 years ago with Cooke SpeedPancro's + red filters + TriX in a Arri 35BL (and one set-up on a color film, kinda forget what it was, probaly Fuji 250t) intercut with infrared film in motordrive Nikon F's with Nikkor Fisheye's.. I'm still happy with the creamy skintones.... i love the SpeedPancro's

Could i shoot this over again today with my FS100? Likely i could, TriX didnt have anywhere near the latuide of the newer film stock of 30 years ago, and it is miles behind current filmstocks, so a FS handled carefully might be a good match, i used a fair bit of lamps on that clip just to get base exposure, as i would with a FS set at 500 ISO today...

White makeup was ladeled on with a heavy trowel as i remember (hey it was 30 years ago).;
<font color="#F8F8F8"><span style="font-family: Times">
http://youtu.be/_Q0tZ5fLVrU

 
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Dermot said:
i read that linked discussion from a while back (two year ago, just after i got my first FS100), and i have changed direction since then.. now i use full range settings as both Paul & David have suggested would be best...

One more thing i think you might want to explore is the creative LUTs packaged in SpeedGrade, there's three B&W LUT's to play with, the "B&W with a red filter" LUT is a good starting point for the classic 40's smooth/creamy look

Although pretty low resoultion (16x16) they are fine in the real world as they are not a technical transform that needs greater accuracy (normaly 64x64) to safely show a transform from say 709 to Vision2 print stock, the low accuracy is not an issue when in useing LUTs in a creative manner before the display transform.

The same LUT's can work in a number of gradeing app's like DS and Resolve so you are not limited to Speedgrade if is not to your taste.

An external recorder and sharp as tack, but low contrast glass like the old Cooke SpeedPancro's would be high on my "to test" list....

here's something i shot 30 years ago with Cooke SpeedPancro's + red filters + TriX in a Arri 35BL (and one set-up on a color film, kinda forget what it was, probaly Fuji 250t) intercut with infrared film in motordrive Nikon F's with Nikkor Fisheye's.. I'm still happy with the creamy skintones.... i love the SpeedPancro's

Could i shoot this over again today with my FS100? Likely i could, TriX didnt have anywhere near the latuide of the newer film stock of 30 years ago, and it is miles behind current filmstocks, so a FS handled carefully might be a good match, i used a fair bit of lamps on that clip just to get base exposure, as i would with a FS set at 500 ISO today...

White makeup was ladeled on with a heavy trowel as i remember (hey it was 30 years ago).;
<font color="#F8F8F8"><span style="font-family: Times">
http://youtu.be/_Q0tZ5fLVrU
Click to expand...


Nice. I always liked Skinny Puppy.

Yeah, Black and White comes in many "Flavors", from grainy lower contrast "Available" light shooting like the films of the French New Wave ("Breathless") to the creamy smooth old Hollywood look. The best looking black and white film I have seen in a very long time is "The Man Who Wasn't There". It was photographed, on color negative stock, by Roger Deakins ASC, BSC. It is absolutely gorgeous.

Here is an example of the grainy fast B&W stock, in this case Kodak 4-X reversal stock (Super 8mm), I shot under stage lights 20ish years ago. I loved that stock, but it was discontinued a long time ago.

 
I do have a HyperDeck, I use it less and less because it's V1 and only does Uncompressed so the files sizes are huge. But it might be worth doing a few tests with the native codec and Uncompressed and seeing where it all sits.
 
My all tme fav B&W short is this;
Gale Tattersall DoP, from the film Aria.. a master class in making a short film....
 
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