F35: How do you expose?

V

VinceinLA

Carbonite Member
Im curious how you guys are judging exposure? Coming off a doc with the F3, I "became one" after so many hours with judging S-log exposure and nailing skin generally at 40 with its built in marker. My EVF had a waveform and I was able to get in sync with that over time for quick reference.

Also, if someone comes to this camera from an F3 or FS7 (which I had more problems with trying to expose properly) what advice would you give in adjusting to the F35? And are you all shooting s-log for the most part?
 
I advise using a light meter. I also highly recommend if you like judging exposure "by eye" to use the monitoring LUT. If you do not, you are quite likely to over-expose scenes, especially daylight outdoors stuff.

You can also use an external waveform, in theory the F3 and F35 have similar dynamic range and the F35 has the benefit of adjustable zebras too so plenty of options.

A classic popular technique for users of Sony's broadcast camera's was to set one waveform to the level you like caucasian skin (used to be 70% but that would not work with S-Log) and one zebra for highlight clipping (about 106%)
 
The F35 viewfinder I have has some pretty great exposure aids that I trust a lot since it's built to interface with the camera - zebras, false color, LUT support.

I also find exposing by eye is not THAT hard once you get used to what to look for - I do that quite a bit with the aid of waveforms to just check where things are falling...

I find exposing right on the money (not ETTR or anything) gives the best results, and if anything underexposing skin slightly (at least to where my gut usually goes, I pull it back a bit from there) gives a very rich digital negative.
 
Let me rephrase it. Does exposing s-log with the F35 follow the same in's and out's as exposing with the F3? The sensors are very different so this is why I ask. Are you landing skin exposure in the same place, for example?
 
Vince - yeah, S-Log didn't technically differ between the two but you have to bear in mind the F3 is a lot more sensitive. Probably twice as much. The trade-off is the F35 has much nicer highlight roll-off and is much higher res in reality. Also just nicer colours.
 
I find the C30WR if properly set works fine to expose by eye when you get used to the camera.

But a light meter is enough. I never felt the need for more advanced tools like waveforms with the F35. It's basically like exposing film. This simplicity in everything is what makes the camera a joy to use. You know you are getting great footage and won't need to slave away in a grading suite. So easy and simple.

Compared to the F3 I worry less about highlights with the F35. The F3 behaves like any other digital camera where it forces you to protect for the highlights. The F35 again is much more like film.
 
Oh I don't own a camera... yet. I continue not to be able to find any other alternative to the F35, unless I want to spend $40K+ so I'm starting to circle sales like a buzzard. I keep getting my hopes up but every demo I go to lets me down. The Cion being the latest, and then the FS7, which I had to shoot with for over 100 hours on a feature doc... but nothing compares to this big chunk of metal with its CCD. I do still have an F3 which I'll hold onto for those well paying short gigs but the F35 would come out when people, or I, really care about the image. I also have some (less run-and-gun) doc material I want to film with it.

I think it has a long life since a simple post up-rez to UHD (for those asking for that) would still look better than most 4K cameras out now.
 
The F35 will survive the "4k fad" very well. Just as it survived the 3d fad.

Try not to overexposure your highlights past 105% IRE and get your skintone expsorue around 40-45 IRE - just like s log on the f3 - or just shoot without a lut and trust your gut. Think Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, a new hope. Just trust yourself and you'll be fine. It's not that scary.

Of course matching between scenes and shots, narrative work - then use a light meter - it works flawlessly with a light meter and you can trust the histogram.

The little poor f35. Forgotten child of many. Well forgotten until MacGregor discovered you could hook the big fat guy up to a little recorder and still get the goodness out of it. If only Sony thought of that one first. But by then, the f65 was out the door. And now the f55 and now the fs7. It's long forgotten. Oh well. Keep her alive Vince.
 
I've gone back to the simple film method & use a light meter to judge exposure. I'm always looking to find a solid F35 alternative, but keep getting sucked back by the F35's great smooth 'tonality' and color, other (lower end) cameras abruptly go from light to dark giving that crunchy video look. The F35 feels like one of the few cameras that have enough latitude in the highlights to truly treat like film.
 
skatajkid said:
The F35 viewfinder I have has some pretty great exposure aids that I trust a lot since it's built to interface with the camera - zebras, false color, LUT support.
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What viewfinder is this? I know C30W can do LUT but false color?
 
You guys know if he is talking of C30W viewfinder? C30W has false color? Or what other viewfinder built to interface with the camera he mean?
 
Film Scientist said:
I've gone back to the simple film method & use a light meter to judge exposure. I'm always looking to find a solid F35 alternative, but keep getting sucked back by the F35's great smooth 'tonality' and color, other (lower end) cameras abruptly go from light to dark giving that crunchy video look. The F35 feels like one of the few cameras that have enough latitude in the highlights to truly treat like film.
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This is exactly the case here too. No matter how much I look and test, I keep getting sucked back by the F35. A “problem” with the F35 is that it truly spoils you. Where to go from here? 99% of the options on the market would be a downgrade. Basically there is the Alexa or the F65. Not because the Alexa is much of a real upgrade. But it wouldn’t be a downgrade and at least it has the commercial appeal. The F65, technically, is an upgrade. But there are still things it won’t do as well as the F35. So truly replacing the F35, with something actually better, or much better, is an easier said than done task.

I made a list with eighteen points I would like a F35 replacement to have. From the twelve cameras I analyzed the highest score was the F65 with 15 points. Perhaps not surprisingly since it was designed to replace the F35. But even this score had to be at the expense of ignoring the F35 best features, because they are unattainable with the current technology or market mentality. For the record the Alexa came in second with 13 points and at the bottom the FS7 with 7 points and the Ursa Mini 4.6K with 9 points. Although this was before we knew the 4.6K no longer has the global shutter. Now it’s down to 8 points.

The perfect F35 replacement in my opinion would be a 3-strip CCD based real 4K camera with decent dynamic range. Basically a real 4K F35 with a few adjustments. As this is not likely, the closest thing would be a F65 type of sensor with a different calibration. Something more like the F35, which tries to emulate film. It should be a sensor which gives preference to pixel quality as opposed to pixel count. I don’t need more than real 4K. So no pixel count increase at the expense of ever smaller photosites.

So basically:

  • Super35 real 4K sensor with a full RBG oriented nature.
  • Global shutter instead of a spinning shutter in order to save weight and get the benefits of wider than 180 shutter. Problem with that is a global shutter on a CMOS doesn't look as good as a global shutter on a CCD. But yes, we will have to let go from CCD, unfortunately.
  • 14-stops + of dynamic range- Test proven.
  • Native ISO 800. But a clean ISO of at least 5000 is a welcome bonus as long as the “native” ISO is no higher than 800.
  • HD and 4K 444 12-bit Log and also 4K raw at no less than 16-bit.
  • At least 120fps without cropping or line skipping.
  • Built-in NDs and Color filters.
  • Body should be no smaller than the Varicam LT but definitely not as large as the F65. Just something large enough to have buttons instead of being menu or touch screen dependent. It should be shorter and taller rather than lower and longer. If built-in raw would mean something as long as the Varicam 35 or Alexa, then it’s better if it’s a “dockable” recorder with options to dock to both the back and top of the camera.
  • Built like a real high end camera. No plastic body parts or flimsy trims.
  • 4K monitor out.
  • Real viewfinder. No LCD screens with a loop.
  • Built-in adjustable shoulder pad.
  • Native PL mount.
  • Preferably made by ARRI, Sony or Panasonic.



I know. Not likely to be seen any time soon. So replacing a F35 without losing much is hard. Without losing anything is impossible. It’s not even a matter of price at this point.
 
Aaveum said:
The perfect F35 replacement in my opinion would be a 3-strip CCD based real 4K camera with decent dynamic range. Basically a real 4K F35 with a few adjustments.
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To play devil's advocate, is 4k really a good thing? It just means having to work harder removing resolution. That is the stock strategy to shoot 4k for a film look: fuzz up the image with diffusion, use old glass, shoot wide open, anything to fight that sharpness. The result is an image resolving at sub-HD levels, all the while carrying a much larger data load. If you don't employ this approach and 'play to the camera's strengths', you end up with something videoey. ...But yeah, I'd take a 4k F35 in a heartbeat too.
 
Most filmmakers are using pro-mist or other filtration on Alexa and F35 as well. Not always to "minimize" fidelity. Filtration is just becoming a desired part of digital workflow...whether to alter highlight clipping characteristics or to smooth out pixel edges (as opposed to negating pixels altogether).

Whether 4k is really a good thing, well, different people are going to have different answers. For me, the more poligons I have in rendering a curve, the smoother that curve will be. Filtering that resolution even further is not about removing detail, but trying to round out square pixel corners.

But hey, I am not a master of image and still have a lot to learn. But I know what I like when I see it and vintage lenses and filtration still can leave you with good resolution...which you can do what you want with in post.

On on a more practical level, for me, in my low budget world, I like 4k because with bayer patterns I can maximize the information on the Red and Blue channels to 50% in a 2k deliverable. And with the F65, it becomes more like 75% blue and red info. It is the only way to get back to the CCD type of 444 sensors with a CMOS sensor.
 
abreu-canedo said:
Whether 4k is really a good thing, well, different people are going to have different answers. For me, the more poligons I have in rendering a curve, the smoother that curve will be. Filtering that resolution even further is not about removing detail, but trying to round out square pixel corners.
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Abreu, all good points. More pixels means better anti aliasing. I haven't had stair-stepping issues on the F35 yet so for me it's not a problem to be solved. But in general you are absolutely right.
 
MikalZ said:
To play devil's advocate, is 4k really a good thing? It just means having to work harder removing resolution. That is the stock strategy to shoot 4k for a film look: fuzz up the image with diffusion, use old glass, shoot wide open, anything to fight that sharpness. The result is an image resolving at sub-HD levels, all the while carrying a much larger data load. If you don't employ this approach and 'play to the camera's strengths', you end up with something videoey. ...But yeah, I'd take a 4k F35 in a heartbeat too.
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I didn't mean 4K itself is better. It's not necessarily better. So many things come before resolution. But it doesn't matter what we think. 4K is here and it's just a matter of time till it's forced on us all. So if we are talking about a F35 replacement, it might as well be 4K. But real 4K, not pseudo 4K. At the moment there are only two real 4K cameras on the market. The F65 and the RED.

On the diffusion and old glass matter, I commented in the other thread. But I don't think diffusion is needed in order to end up with a "filmic" image. Neither the Alexa or the F35 need diffusion for that. People use diffusion on them for several reasons. But clean footage from these camera look pretty "filmic", specially from the F35 because of the grain.
 
Aaveum said:
. But clean footage from these camera look pretty "filmic", specially from the F35 because of the grain.
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I totally agree, which is why I love it! It's the only digital camera I've used where you can put it at a deep stop unfiltered and it still looks like film. Because of the colors, grain, highlight rolloff.

I recently came across the topic of diffusion in a 1970's American Cinematographer. It was hotly contested then, some DP's finding it silly to fuzz away all that natural resolution of the new finer grained Kodak stocks, but this was the trend.
 
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