FS700 First test + couple questions on exposure

A

AlexBlais

Member
Alright guys so I got my FS700 a couple days ago and coming from a 5D3 I am totally blown away by this camera.

The resolution is just amazing and finally meets my expectations from a 1080p camera, the ND implementationnis great, the codec can be pushed much more in post which I like, the kit lens is excellent as its sharp and all the e mount functions that youre getting from the fs700 is a good reason to def get one, obviously the super slowmo mode is fun although 960p is terrible and unusable in my opinion, and finally Im surprised by how well the auto functions are. I would never thought of using them but heck auto focus, aperture, iso etc are really good with the kit lens. Everything is smooth and although I havent used it yet I think when I film some events I might go full auto for walk around stuff.

Good, so that being said, here are my first clips. They are skateboarding in slow motion. Be advised this is not a very interesting video shot wise. Its just the first couple clips I got as ai brought the camera when going out skating with friends, but figured you might like to see how the camera performed in both 480 and 240p.

http://vimeo.com/45393494


Now, on to the important stuff, I need your help on those.

1- 109% whites
I understand how those work and that you have to pull them down in post. But I'm having a hard time in bright days doing my exposure properly. I set my zebra to 100+, and always tried to protect my highlights by keeping everything under 100, so no zebras would show. But then what about the 100 to 110? Should it only act as a security just in case I didnt quite expose properly or should I feel safe seeing a little zebra in my image? Which leads to point number 2.

2- Bright sun behind subject
Obviously the exposure wasn't much a problem on overcast or indoor situations, but when the sun came out and my subject was in front, then I got pretty horrible results. Once again I went the "protect the highlights" way as I knew I could pull up the mids to relight my subject. I didnt want to get a washed out sky. The codec did hold enough dark area info to re-expose, but I could not bring back any good color in at all. In this event are we bound to blowing up our sky or am I missing something?

3- Histogram
Two above questions lead me to wonder how I should go about exposing using histogram. I was concentrating on keeping my highlights under 100 but end up with bad colors in darker tones. Should I rather concentrate on getting my midtones right and then chosing an appropriate picture profile that would bring down my highlights to the level I want?

4- picture profiles
And funally, I know theres another thread about this but its my last question. I was using cine1 but after reading around it seems cine4 is recommended. What are your thoughts?


Oh and to finish, I just remembered a couple things I like less about the fs700. Low light performance is a bit under what I was hoping for, but then again I come from a 5d3 which at 6400 had the same noise level as fs700 at 1600. And the touch screen is great for its spot ocus function, but it does get full of finger prints and these are hard to clean away.

Last note, as I had those questions prior to testing. Vintage lenses have their interest as they are cheap and might provide a special look to your film, but from my perspective it was obvious they didnt perform snywhere as cleanly as my Canon glass and kit lens. I'm talking Minolta 58mm 1.2 here, which was highly recommended as an excellent vintage lens. If it was under 100$ I'd keep it for the creamy look you might want occasionsly, but at 500$ I will sell it back. Get a metabones, they work perfectly.

Thanks everyone!! And sorry for the longest post ever. I am super satisfied of the fs700 and hope some knowledged folks will be able to help me with all my questionings!
 
Ah! And sorry for any spelling mistakes I am french and typing from an iphone hence very annoying so my apologies if the message is wrote poorly.
 
About picture profiles and also question 1 and 2:
When using CG1 you can perfectly use the 100-109 range. The roll off is very very good
Of course in some cases the DR of the camera is not enough so you have to decide what will be gone. Shadows or highlights.

Therefore you should really compare CG1 and CG4. Both have the same dynamic range but differently distibuted. CG 1 has 3,75 stops above middle grey and 7,25 stops below middle grey. It has low noise and as said very good highlight roll off. But in a bright scenario it might be the wrong choice.

CG4 on the other hand has 5 stops above middle grey and only 6 stops below. More like film which has about 9 stops above and 5,5 below (Kodak 5219). Middle grey is identical in CG1 und CG4. I tested this with a 18% greycard. CG4 is also noisier than CG1. I would only use it with ISO 640 (lowest possible) and the roll off is not that good. I´m not sure at the moment if I will use CG4 but look for yourself.

Regarding noise. With Neat Video you can denoise the FS700 footage to FS100 noise levels without any noticeable degradation.
 
AlexBlais said:
Oh and to finish, I just remembered a couple things I like less about the fs700. Low light performance is a bit under what I was hoping for, but then again I come from a 5d3 which at 6400 had the same noise level as fs700 at 1600. And the touch screen is great for its spot ocus function, but it does get full of finger prints and these are hard to clean away.
Click to expand...

I wonder if someone who owns both cameras can do a side by side low light comparison of the FS100 vs. the FS700. I keep hearing mixed things. Abel Cine and Philip Bloom did a side by side, and they both said there is minimal difference between the 2 cameras. But other users are reporting something different.

I wonder if it has to do with the profiles that are being used? Seems like certain profiles on the FS700 would make a big difference for low light. Which one do you guys think would be the best for low light on the FS700?

Still waiting for mine. I'm next on the cue at Samys, so hopefully this week.
 
Thanks a lot Felix. So then in a situation where the sun is behind I have to priorise my subject. I was hoping there would be a way for the DR to take it but I knew that was high hopes. And I also understand I have to make sure my midtones are rightly exposed or else I will lose color information.

And I do use neaat video Thanks for the tips!
 
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I've never used an fs100 but all I can say is that the 700 is def noisier than a 5D. At 1600 it is tops I believe is usable. Compares to Canon 7D.

Edit: And then again that is a very subjective matter as for what is usable. And O am talking straight out of the camera, surely you can use 3200 with some neat video. But in ultra slowmo watch out because noise is much more present.
 
I had the FS100. The FS700 is definitely noisier, but not like a 7D, 60D or the worst...a GH2.
In CG1 with cine color I think ISO 1000 is usable for high class narrative stuff and ISO 2000 is still good for documentary stuff. ISO 2000 on the 700 is about ISO 3200-4000 on the 100 regarding noise. But, big but, on the FS100 the cinetones darkened the whole picture so you had to boost the ISO. On the FS700 Cinegamma 1 is as bright as ITU709 on the FS100 if not brighter.
I will use ISO 640 for everything I can light.
 
FelixGER said:
But, big but, on the FS100 the cinetones darkened the whole picture so you had to boost the ISO. On the FS700 Cinegamma 1 is as bright as ITU709 on the FS100 if not brighter.
I will use ISO 640 for everything I can light.
Click to expand...

This is what I was thinking when comparing the FS700 (which I don't have yet) to the 5D3 and the FS100. The Canon DSLRs hide a lot of noise because the blacks are really crushed. When you use the Technicolor Cinestyle flat profile on the 5D2, the blacks are much noisier than using the default profiles like Neutral.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that since the Cinegammas are attempting to create a flatter image / curve, therefore, it would render more visible noise.

Seems like if you were to compare the 5D3, the FS700 and the FS100, they would all have to tested using a very similar profile; especially the Canons since the blacks are so crushed even when using Neutral which hides the noise.
 
I shot again tonight at ISO 1600 and I stand corrected. It is clean at 1600, and probably usable at higher ISOs but I haven't shot anything higher. Maybe it was my picture profile that was wrong, or because I had mainly shot super slow motion stuff and that surely makes it noisier. I shot Cine1 tonight and it looks great.
 
Is there a chance that some folk are judging noise on the slow mo stuff? It's my understanding that slow mo is noisier in general (probably the sensor being pushed a lot more to get exposure at high frame rates). I noticed the original video was all slow mo.

Perhaps on a like for like basis the 100 and 700 have similar noise performance

cheers
paul
 
paulcurtis said:
Is there a chance that some folk are judging noise on the slow mo stuff? It's my understanding that slow mo is noisier in general (probably the sensor being pushed a lot more to get exposure at high frame rates). I noticed the original video was all slow mo.

Perhaps on a like for like basis the 100 and 700 have similar noise performance

cheers
paul
Click to expand...

I believe it's very safe to say the FS700 is noisier than FS100 even when not used in super slow motion. Slow motion does make it a whole lot worse though.
 
AlexBlais said:
I believe it's very safe to say the FS700 is noisier than FS100 even when not used in super slow motion. Slow motion does make it a whole lot worse though.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see some full frame side by sides. The reason is that whilst the 100 has bigger pixels the 700 is downsampling from the same kind of area overall. Ideally they could be similar in performance depending on the sensitivity of the underlying sensor.

If it is noisier then outboard recording might be even more useful. It would be best to do comparisons between them that way, not via compressed AVCHD

cheers
paul
 
In slowmo, the 700 takes over the control of gain, (actually it cranks it up pretty much, depending on your scene).
Shooting with high ISO - of course - comes with more noise.

Keep in mind, that most folks bring at least two 4k HMIs to high speed shooting for a reason.
With that amount of light, the 700 slowmo footage will be also free of noise.

Frank
 
To give me and everyone else an idea what amount of noise is to be expected, I created a very low key (not lowlight!), high contrast scene. Lighted with 2 x Arri 650 plus, 1 x 800 W and a bouncer. F 5.6.
ISO500, CG1, Prores HQ to x264 35 mbit, graded in colorista 2.

http://www.steinhardtverlag.de/Felix/test1.mp4

The camera is not noisefree even at ISO 500 unlike the FS100 which was completely clean at this sensitivity level.
 
In all honnesty my footage at ISO 1600 has less noise than this example at 500. Obviously I understand it's how the camera acted in your particular low key scene, but I wouldn't advise anyone to expect this amount of noise at ISO500 at all in a regular situation. If I didn't have the camera right now and looked at your example, I would definitely not buy it. Thanks for the example I just wanted to mention that people shouldn't take this as what they will always get from their camera at such low ISO.
 
That´s true. If I put the ISO up to 1600 the whole picture would be brightened and would have less noise. But there is a noticeable amount of noise on the left side of the histogram even at low ISOs. That´s what I wanted to test because that will happen to the camera when used for narrative dramatic films.

Or there´s something wrong with my camera, I don´t know.
 
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