Highlight Clipping Seems to be the Main Concern

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Why wasn't Cine-V loaded as opposed to Cine-D?

Why wasn't Cine-V loaded as opposed to Cine-D?

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't Panasonic initially load these AF100 test cameras with Cine-V like gamma, particularly if Cine-D is known to have problems with highlights? Wouldn't you want the test shooters to have the best possible filmic conditions to shoot under?

I ask this with the utmost respect to everyone who has been working on/testing on this camera.
 
That scene setting was present. Maybe some of the guys used it, I don't know. In general I have always preferred the look of cine-D over cine-V, which is why I went with it. Cine-V is optimized for display on television sets, whereas cine-D is the rawest of the gammas and delivers the flattest response, and that's what Philip wanted (he shoots "superflat" on his 5D) so I recommended cine-D to him as well. I don't know what anyone else shot with.
 
Hey Barry, I'm just wondering if the EVF was different on the model in Japan, and how it fared against your 75% complete model. Philip mentioned he was still unable to focus with the 95% complete model in Japan. Is this something that will still under go refinement? If I'm recalling correctly, he felt it needed further magnification to be useful in focusing. I really would rather not have to buy a separate EVF from Zacuto or Red Rock Micro. Thanks.
 
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grimepoch said:
Or as I like to say "Once it's gone, it's gone!" :) The editor I work with spent time ingraining this into my shooting method. If you have to err, err on the side of under expose in most of the situations because at least some noise can be removed if needed, but once you blow out the detail, you cannot get that back.

The other problem with most LCD screens is they depend on the environment around you. A shot we did yesterday also had a lot of sun behind us. Since we were shooting on a crane, the LCD setup wasn't fully ideal. I am thinking of using a C stand near the crane in the future when the sunlight is directly behind us and using some sort of throw over fabric. We had to shoot this way as we were shooting across a lake and needed the light to hit the trees right. It was a bunch of 'point and pray' that's for sure. We could use the LCD for framing, but for exposure it was tough.

This is why the meters will be so important. However, I do believe I read that the overlays cannot be sent out the HDMI or HD-SDI, so in this instance, up on the crane, we'd still be in the same boat.

I will repeat, I cannot wait to get those zebras and waveforms! :) While I know my eyes will still play a huge role, I consider this "having more than one opinion" about my chosen settings :) Barry just forgot to use the best 2 of 3 principle :P
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Put up a 4x Floppy on a C-stand as a quick fix. You can rig up a video village tent really easily with a pair of 4x floppies and a few c-stands.
 
f64manray said:
Hey Barry, I'm just wondering if the EVF was different on the model of Japan, and how it fared against your 75% complete model.
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Yes it was different and it blows the old one away.

Philip mentioned he was still unable to focus with the 95% complete model in Japan.
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Yes, and I got to the bottom of that. It has nothing to do with the sharpness or quality of the EVF. It's just that he's become used to the massively oversized finder on the EX3, or the LCD of a 5D/7D with a big ol' ZFinder on it. This isn't that. It's sharper than any of those, but it's a normal size. I compared it to a 2/3" camera's finder off a Varicam 2700, and it's the same size as that.

With that said, Philip doesn't like the size of it; for what he's become used to, he thinks it's small.

I think it's superb as-is; obviously we'd all always like bigger but it's totally great as-is. It looks to be the same viewfinder panel from the HPX300/HPX370 or the GH1, and those are hailed as excellent.

But it's not hugely oversized like what you get with a Z-finder.

Is this something that will still under go refinement?
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I don't know. We asked them if it was possible to put in a stronger magnifier, and they said they'd look into it.

I really would rather not have to buy a separate EVF from Zacuto or Red Rock Micro. Thanks.
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All I can say is -- try it for yourself. I think it's an excellent viewfinder, but I don't trust ANY on-camera LCD or VF for critical focusing -- and that includes the ZFinder on the back of a Canon. There just isn't enough sharpness on the LCD to make it accurate. You're basically trying to judge a 1920x1080 image, off of an 640x480 panel. I'm not comfortable with that, I don't care how much you magnify it, it's still 640x480. So I don't trust it. IMO, you simply *have* to use additional focus tools, such as EVF DTL, or focus-in-red. The 5D's LCD is 920kpix, the AF100's viewfinder is 1.2mpix, so it's already 33% sharper than the 5D's. Even so, I still rely on the focus tools. And I don't think the 5D even offers EVF DTL or focus-in-red, so ... by my accounting, I find it a lot easier to get proper critical focus on the better panel with the focus tools, than on a more-magnified-but-lower-res LCD/Z-Finder combo.

The external LCD on the AF100 is the same 920kpix as the 5D, so you could always put a ZFinder on that if you wanted to, I guess.


The focus-in-red feature can be used in combination with the viewfinder set to black 'n' white (because the red still shows up as red) so it turns it into an extremely accurate focus tool. You see a crisp sharp 1.2-megapixel image, in b&w, with any areas that are in crisp focus showing up in red. If someone can't focus with that, I don't know what to tell 'em. ;) (and with that said, I'm still crying over it not offering pixel-to-pixel... sigh.)

Of course, I didn't discover that EVF/B&W/F.I.R. combination until after we'd been shooting. When they were all editing the footage and I was plinking around with the camera, I found that even with EVF color turned off, the focus assist still shows up in red. Man, I wish I would have known about that during the shooting day!

Anyway -- I say don't even think about spending a nickel on any additional EVF until you try out the built-in one and see how satisfactory you find it.
 
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Thanks Barry for that info! I had another question for you. One of the things I like to do on the 7D is zoom in to 10x and then set focus then zoom out. Is that possible? Don't get me wrong, the focus tools you mention sounds great, but sometimes I do like to zoom in and look closer so I am exceeding the resolution of the LCD.
 
Barry_Green said:
The focus-in-red feature can be used in combination with the viewfinder set to black 'n' white (because the red still shows up as red) so it turns it into an extremely accurate focus tool. You see a super-crisp 1.2-megapixel image, in b&w, with any areas that are in crisp focus showing up in red. If someone can't focus with that, I don't know what to tell 'em. ;)

With that said, I didn't discover that combination until after we'd been shooting. When they were all editing the footage and I was plinking around with the camera, I found that even with EVF color turned off, the focus assist still shows up in red. Man, I wish I would have known about that during the shooting day!

Anyway -- I say don't even think about spending a nickel on any additional EVF until you try out the built-in one and see how satisfactory you find it.
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When the EVF is set up like this, can you still have a color view on the external LCD, waveform, etc?
 
Barry_Green said:
The focus-in-red feature can be used in combination with the viewfinder set to black 'n' white (because the red still shows up as red) so it turns it into an extremely accurate focus tool. You see a super-crisp 1.2-megapixel image, in b&w, with any areas that are in crisp focus showing up in red. If someone can't focus with that, I don't know what to tell 'em. ;)
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That's exactly what I want. I don't know if this is enabled on the LCD, I don't know if there's 3% left for a request but if this available on the LCD screen as well - black and white with RED focus assist - I would be a very happy camper.
 
grimepoch said:
Thanks Barry for that info! I had another question for you. One of the things I like to do on the 7D is zoom in to 10x and then set focus then zoom out. Is that possible? Don't get me wrong, the focus tools you mention sounds great, but sometimes I do like to zoom in and look closer so I am exceeding the resolution of the LCD.
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Not possible, and it's my #1 complaint. Well, it's actually my #1 complaint, and my #2 complaint, and my #3 complaint, and my complaints #4-99. Of my top 100 complaints about the AF100, the lack of magnified focus assist is #'s one through one hundred.
 
Steve Kahn said:
That's exactly what I want. I don't know if this is enabled on the LCD, I don't know if there's 3% left for a request but if this available on the LCD screen as well - black and white with RED focus assist - I would be a very happy camper.
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Not possible on the LCD. The LCD does things the EVF doesn't (such as displaying the waveform and vectorscope) and the EVF does something the LCD doesn't (b&w mode). Both can display focus-in-red, but on the LCD it's on a color screen. I guess you could turn the color saturation down on the LCD, but I doubt you'd get it all the way to B&W, and if you did, the focus-in-red wouldn't be red anymore. Whereas with the EVF, I was shocked to find out that when you put it in B&W mode, the focus-in-red stayed red! I never thought it'd work that way, but was quite delighted when I found that it did.
 
Barry_Green said:
Not possible, and it's my #1 complaint. Well, it's actually my #1 complaint, and my #2 complaint, and my #3 complaint, and my complaints #4-99. Of my top 100 complaints about the AF100, the lack of magnified focus assist is #'s one through one hundred.
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Well given you have given them feedback on this, thank you. :) I hope they can add it as it's pretty much how I have been shooting for the last year and something I like very much (as I like to take a closer look at certain parts of the image at this level before I shoot).
 
That's how I was taught how to focus when I took my first video class in junior high. Pity no way to do it but the red focus assist has got me pretty jazzed especially for run and gun when the zoom focus method would be too slow anyway.
 
Steve Kahn said:
That's how I was taught how to focus when I took my first video class in junior high. Pity no way to do it but the red focus assist has got me pretty jazzed especially for run and gun when the zoom focus method would be too slow anyway.
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with non-servo lenses your focus changes with zoom action. i just can't see using AF100 for run and gun with shallow dof. most likely shots would be out of focus. this cam is supposed to used in "controlled environments"- notice most of real movie sets will have separate focus puller.
 
robertrogoz said:
with non-servo lenses your focus changes with zoom action.
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This is true of many zoom lenses; SLR lenses are just not typically made to do what video requires. However, the 14-140 Lumix lens does hold focus throughout the range.

i just can't see using AF100 for run and gun with shallow dof. most likely shots would be out of focus.
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Agreed, shallow DOF does not lend itself to uncontrolled environments very well. With the 14-140 you can at least get a reasonable simulation of a proper video camera, but you'd be better served for those purposes with a regular video camera that's designed for that purpose.
 
so there is absolutely no type of digital magnification to assist with focus? hmmm. Might be slightly problematic. There must be something beyond the red peaking to help us get focus in check.
 
Well, maybe panasonic should design a nice fast 14-50mm that has great auto focus for this camera and future m4/3 cams. What do you say, Jan?...
 
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