FS100 & The Zacuto shootout Part#3

mraaron895 said:
I'm sure most of you have already watched this http://www.zacuto.com/shootout-revenge-2012. But I just wanted to comment on how much I liked the FS100 in the Imperical shots. If you compare it the the F65 you can see where the FS100 get it's colors and grain architecture. It really blows away every camera below it.
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Yep, I thought it gave the C300 a run for its money. F3 was way better than C300 IMO.

Cheesy music and talking heads are so dated.
 
The thing I loved most about the entier shootout was to see how each DP chose to enhance each scene. If you pay attention to the gentelman in the green shirt you'll see that in the Imperical tests he is way underexposed. But when each DP came in and lit him, some did not, they chose varying positions for the "key fill" light. It was interesting to see how fake it looked when the fill was coming off screen on camera left, I wish I had my own sound stage :(
 
The grading of the FS100 was awful IMHO.
They probably set the knee too low and ended up with clipped highlights that they brought down and colored blueisch.

Fail!

Setting the knee to full throttle, letting the highlights blow in grace and recover what's there (usualy there is a lot) would have
give a much better result and more detail.

Frank
 
I agree Frank. You could totally tell the knee was compressing the highlights on the skin tones of the lady who opened the door.
 
I thought the FS100 was really let down by whoever set it up for this shoot out. I've only owned the camera for a couple of weeks and I think even I could have managed not to clip the highlights like that.
 
To me the F65 is number 1
ARRI number2 and the F3 is number 3.
The fs100 does not look that good in this test
 
The hilights were really the thing that tested all the cameras. But I think the fs100 faired quite well against all the other cameras when you take into account how well it held the shadow information in the darks. If you watched all three episodes you would know that the exposure on the outside window was not allowed to be altered. Only the inside parts of the image were allowed to be enhanced.
 
Postmaster said:
The grading of the FS100 was awful IMHO.
They probably set the knee too low and ended up with clipped highlights that they brought down and colored blueisch.

Fail!

Setting the knee to full throttle, letting the highlights blow in grace and recover what's there (usualy there is a lot) would have
give a much better result and more detail.

Frank
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It was your profile wasnt it?
 
Well theres a lot of weird science going down

Im sure I could get an F65 to embarrass and I-phone

They all looked OK - I think that is because the contrast range was actually much tighter than a 'real' situation with the sun not a fake exterior

S
 
I see the clip you are talking about Frank, other clips are no where near so bad. The operator shooting the FS100 could've afforded to under expose a tad more.

The Wall shot the light is blown while retaining more black detail than the C300 so the FS100 had a bit of room to come down compared to the Canon.

There's some ugly ringing around the lamp shade and window panes which I have never seen on my FS100. Presumably sharpening is being engaged around high contrast edges? The C300 has it too. The F3 looks the best bang for buck and a baby Alexa.

7D looks crud.

Is the really Epic that noisy?

It's also interesting to note that the window is not a real window and a painting lit by a strong light which is several orders of magnitude lower in strength than a real window. Please remind the "DPs" who try and recreate this test with a real window and complain of sensor reflection of that fact!
 
morgan_moore said:
They all looked OK - I think that is because the contrast range was actually much tighter than a 'real' situation with the sun not a fake exterior

S
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That is a "real" situation for shooting drama though. You'd never shoot against a real window like that which is a point lost on so called DPs who point a large sensor camera with a wide open aperture in a fast lens towards a bright window then complain of sensor reflections. The Zacuto test is very representative of a high end drama shoot not a low budget guerrilla shoot.
 
I guess it's always easy to be an armchair cinematographer but you never really know what compromises had to be made on the day.

To my eyes, the F65 was a clear winner, with the Alexa and the F3 not too far behind. I wasn't as impressed with the Epic as I thought i would be. I'd have been pretty happy with the outcome as a 7D owner as it looked way better than I expected, but the FS100.... I really hope it can do better than that, otherwise I might have just bought the wrong camera.
 
Nirv said:
That is a "real" situation for shooting drama though. You'd never shoot against a real window like that which is a point lost on so called DPs who point a large sensor camera with a wide open aperture in a fast lens towards a bright window then complain of sensor reflections. The Zacuto test is very representative of a high end drama shoot not a low budget guerrilla shoot.
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That is a fair point

To me its a little deeper than that..
-Fundamentally I think that is a 1990 thought process
-I think it is failing to use the camera/lighting budget properly
-It assumes access to 'infinite' light in your budget rather than trading off an expensive camera for a smaller light package (or vice versa as appropriate)
-It fails to recognise that there is a maximum scene size that even hollywood can light be that a large space or a scene where the camera moves and the lights cannot be hidden

S
 
morgan_moore said:
That is a fair point

To me its a little deeper than that..
-Fundamentally I think that is a 1990 thought process
-I think it is failing to use the camera/lighting budget properly
-It assumes access to 'infinite' light in your budget rather than trading off an expensive camera for a smaller light package (or vice versa as appropriate)
-It fails to recognise that there is a maximum scene size that even hollywood can light be that a large space or a scene where the camera moves and the lights cannot be hidden

S
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No, I think it's a realisation that lighting of drama is an art and not a science. Camera and even the human eye cannot deal with the high dynamic range of the real world in every situation.

We have all the evidence we need when people turn up here and complain about sensor reflections because they've created the Zacuto scene but used a real life window. I began my media career using PD150s and DSR-300s while acceptable in their day you knew you couldn't go anywhere near a backlit scene. WHile the dynamic range of cameras have literally doubled in the last 10 years they'd still need to double again before shooting against a bright window without fill is an acceptable thing to do.

People expect to have a film soundtrack levelled and mixed so it sounds pleasant without jarring sounds at overly loud volumes of the real world, lighting of a set is no different. You're just making sure you fit the dynamic range of your set to match your recording device and then your playback device. If you're shooting in the "real" world on a documentary you compromise and don't shoot where your camera can't.

I think Zacuto did well and of course it's an excellent piece of marketing for their brand as the camera part of the internet will no doubt be talking about it for some time.
 
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