FS7: Monitor or Recorder - Atomos vs SmallHD & Others

jasonbrooks

jasonbrooks

Well-known member
Hi folks,

Fairly simple situation really. I'll be starting production on an indie feature soon, and have recently received a PDMOVIE wireless FFocus system (great performer, and insanely good value BTW - once you've made it through the semi-translated 'manual'). Of course for this to be useful I need a capable monitor. I've 'drawn a line' that it must be at least 1920x1080 native res (or more likely 1920x1200 as most seem to be), to allow confident focus pulling. We'll be shooting in Senegal and Morocco with accompanying bright sunlight too, so it should be as bright as possible within reason. We're planning on shooting XAVC-I at 4K, because there will be a decently high shooting ratio that puts raw out of our capabilities (esp. considering it's marginal benefits on the FS7).

I'm currently weighing up the Atomos Ninja Flame (or possibly the Shogun Flame, if anyone thinks the SDI's would be worth the price difference), vs. a SmallHD 502 bright. It feels like the ability to record takes and review on the 'monitor' alone, leaving the DoP free to fiddle in between takes, could be a valuable time-saver.

I'm really looking for comments/reflections from anyone who's owned/used any of the above, or ideally all of them. Also, anything I might be missing from other places. We're already dropping £2K on the FF and SWIT HMDI wireless transmitter, so keeping this as cheap as possible would be great.

Any thoughts welcome. Cheers,

jason
 
My experience isn't extensive and maybe not enough to take too seriously but I found the Flame to look pretty good both outdoors and indoors and would say SDI is a must because HDMI cables are so so so very dicey. My few experiences with the 502 bright, just as a brief user, not an owner were indoors and it just looked terribly bright & washed out to me and I couldn't judge exposure or color as I could not bring it down no matter what I did to the settings. My friend had one and returned it for that reason.
Ordinarily i would suggest the Odyssey but for all that exterior shooting the Atomos is way better.
 
Let your assistant chime in on the discussion. How do they like to work?
If I'm using a monitor for focus, 7" is the smallest I would consider - and preferably larger.
If you're not recording with the Atomos, my vote would be for SDI. I may be off on this, but it always seems like the delay on the hdmi is worse than it is on SDI. And of course if you're using the monitor to pull to, any delay in monitoring means that when the monitor is sharp, you've already pulled too far and it will go a little soft (or wonky adjusting back). I suppose that's why I'll take good solid marks and use a real tape measure whenever I can, with the monitor as a backup reference.
 
LennyLevy said:
My experience isn't extensive and maybe not enough to take too seriously but I found the Flame to look pretty good both outdoors and indoors and would say SDI is a must because HDMI cables are so so so very dicey. My few experiences with the 502 bright, just as a brief user, not an owner were indoors and it just looked terribly bright & washed out to me and I couldn't judge exposure or color as I could not bring it down no matter what I did to the settings. My friend had one and returned it for that reason.
Ordinarily i would suggest the Odyssey but for all that exterior shooting the Atomos is way better.
Click to expand...

Hmmmmm, interesting. The high-NIT display on the Flames is definitely their major selling point.

Re: HDMI vs. SDI. Not what I was hoping to hear, but valued input nonetheless (or perhaps especially valid!). Unfortunately I think that the price difference between SDI and HDMI wireless transmitters will mean that we're forced to go HDMI for the majority of the shoot. Because I want the DoP to have freedom of movement without worrying about the assistant 'keeping up' with the on-camera monitor, we need the wireless monitor capability, and even using SWIT Tx/Rx system, the SDI adds over £2K to the budget.

I think that as long as we have the Tx mounted snugly on the dumb side of the FS7, with neat HDMI cable run on that end, then we should hopefully be able to mitigate the inherent 'dodginess' of HDMI plugs. What do you think?

Thanks,

jason
 
OnSet said:
Let your assistant chime in on the discussion. How do they like to work?
If I'm using a monitor for focus, 7" is the smallest I would consider - and preferably larger.
If you're not recording with the Atomos, my vote would be for SDI. I may be off on this, but it always seems like the delay on the hdmi is worse than it is on SDI. And of course if you're using the monitor to pull to, any delay in monitoring means that when the monitor is sharp, you've already pulled too far and it will go a little soft (or wonky adjusting back). I suppose that's why I'll take good solid marks and use a real tape measure whenever I can, with the monitor as a backup reference.
Click to expand...

For sure, of course we'd all love to have a 19" monitor on set to pull focus from, but this is going to be a small scale (max 7-person) shoot team, working in a hybrid doc/fiction environment, so I would already consider the 7" Atomos displays as a bit of luxury!

More importantly, I'm not sure about the delay being any worse via HDMI than SDI. I just tested the HDMI outta my FS7 onto my HDMI computer monitor, and couldn't see any delay over the native Sony VF feed. Is there anything else about this delay that you've read anywhere, or is just a hunch?

I also agree re: tape and marks, but again, in this very live doc/fiction context, marks will only be feasible for about 2% of shots. Otherwise the conventional "blocking/marks/camera/lights/action/cut" model will be out of the window, and we'll be running relatively long takes, with freedom of movement for actors, and an accompanying freedom of (mostly handheld) movement from the DoP.

Maybe it sounds like I'm just digging my own grave on this one, but if that's the case, then I at least want to make sure I'm taking several sturdy ladders with me before jumping in!

Thanks again for your input.

Jason
 
Here is my vote for the Shogun - its main strength isn't focus aids though (the peaking is far from great; faint on critical focus edges but polluting low-light areas as if the algorithm is taking grain for sharp edges; especially annoying when peaking color is Red); the 7" form factor is too small IMHO for a dedicated focus-puller - if you can afford one (focus-puller), better look for some larger monitor.

But its recording capabilities are phenomenal; enough to say that if you thought the internal XAVC-I is a good quality codec - just encode in Inferno's Prore, DNxHR or even CDNG simultaneously and do an A-B comparo; you will not believe both come from the same camera!

And why the most expensive (well - Sumo aside) Inferno and not anything cheaper from the Atomos 7" range? Well - you really need SDI, and not "just an SDI" but the RAW SDI output from the FS7! Sure - to get it you need to spend on the XDCA extension and V-lock batteries, but it really is worth it! Not only have Sony officially confirmed HDMI-out is cramped to just 8bit 420 at anything higher than 30fps (I learnt not to always believe what they claim), but this time they are saying the truth: I can see the HDMI only outputs 8 bits indeed as my UHD/4K @ 50p tend to show banding, suspiciously similar to my A7Rii's stuff... Plus, if you're still under the influence of "slow-mo charm", you will appreciate the gorgeous quality of 2K@240fps only the Inferno (again - Sumo aside) can record in tandem with the FS7/XDCA RAW SDI output...

But hey - didn't you ask about a good critical focusing monitor? Well - take all I said above about the Inferno and blow it from 7 up to 19", and you have the winner: the Atomos Sumo. If only I had that much money to spare :(

Piotr
 
moldcad said:
Here is my vote for the Shogun - its main strength isn't focus aids though (the peaking is far from great; faint on critical focus edges but polluting low-light areas as if the algorithm is taking grain for sharp edges; especially annoying when peaking color is Red); the 7" form factor is too small IMHO for a dedicated focus-puller - if you can afford one (focus-puller), better look for some larger monitor. But its recording capabilities are phenomenal; enough to say that if you thought the internal XAVC-I is a good quality codec - just encode in Inferno's Prore, DNxHR or even CDNG simultaneously and do an A-B comparo; you will not believe both come from the same camera! And why the most expensive (well - Sumo aside) Inferno and not anything cheaper from the Atomos 7" range? Well - you really need SDI, and not "just an SDI" but the RAW SDI output from the FS7! Sure - to get it you need to spend on the XDCA extension and V-lock batteries, but it really is worth it! Not only have Sony officially confirmed HDMI-out is cramped to just 8bit 420 at anything higher than 30fps (I learnt not to always believe what they claim), but this time they are saying the truth: I can see the HDMI only outputs 8 bits indeed as my UHD/4K @ 50p tend to show banding, suspiciously similar to my A7Rii's stuff... Plus, if you're still under the influence of "slow-mo charm", you will appreciate the gorgeous quality of 2K@240fps only the Inferno (again - Sumo aside) can record in tandem with the FS7/XDCA RAW SDI output...

But hey - didn't you ask about a good critical focusing monitor? Well - take all I said above about the Inferno and blow it from 7 up to 19", and you have the winner: the Atomos Sumo. If only I had that much money to spare :(

Piotr
Click to expand...

Thanks Piotr, again all valuable input and more perspectives again. Obviously the be-all-and-end-all solution would be a Shogun Inferno. The price difference isn't huge in the abstract, although significant at twice the price of a Ninja Flame. My doubts between the two stem from the fact that we won't be shooting raw, and I wasn't planning to use the XDCA unit (additional rental cost will add up fast for 3x2week shoot trips!).

The above means that the only reason to go for the Shogun Inferno over the Ninja Flame will be 'future proofing' for high-end jobs when I might want to rent an XDCA and use the S/I as a recorder. For now (especially given we can only afford a HDMI transmitter), I'm thinking that the Ninja Flame will still be my best option for the film alone, leaving me to weigh up the intangible benefit of SDI-connectivity as a future-proof measure.

Bugger - this can of worms just keeps gaping wider and wider! To top it all off there's a brand-new Ninja Flame WITH a 1TB SSD caddy finishing on Ebay in about 5hrs. It's currently at £550, and I reckon could end up being a steal. RRP on it would run around £1250 off the shelf in the UK. :-D

Thanks gents,

jason
 
I have not had much success with HDMI wireless transmitters and shooting 4k.

For example I have a nyrius aries HDMI wireless set, works great in a 1080 world and fine on my a7sii - but 4k recording on the fs7 isn't compatible. I believe it has to do with the output settings but I also believe, please correct me if i'm wrong, that it isn't possible? I think the HDMI port only sends a 4k signal, and that is the issue. Which might be fine, but definitely test!!!
 
"More importantly, I'm not sure about the delay being any worse via HDMI than SDI. I just tested the HDMI outta my FS7 onto my HDMI computer monitor, and couldn't see any delay over the native Sony VF feed. Is there anything else about this delay that you've read anywhere, or is just a hunch?"

I've noticed the issue as a continuing problem on the lower cost cameras ever since the FS700. On several occasions I've had to explain to clients sitting in the same room as the camera (in response to their concerned question) that the recorded sound actually will be in sync with the picture, even though they're hearing the audio before they see the corresponding visual on the screen. Sometimes with the FS7s we just put the clients in another room and feed them audio from the monitor (since of course the live audio from the mixer would seem out of sync.)

Set up and shoot with another camera - a 'behind the scenes' style shot - where you see in the same shot a subject being filmed, the camera viewfinder and a monitor plugged into the camera. Have your subject do a slate clap, and check for yourself what kind of cascading motion delay you have when you play back the behind the scenes shot. (Obviously record it once with the monitor plugged into HDMI, and again plugged into HDSDI.)
On the other hand, if it's a lot of hand-held, it may also be a lot of wider shots where you'll have more depth of field, so the focus issue may not be as critical. It seems that audiences are a little more forgiving of slightly missed pulls on handheld stuff than if you're shooting on a dolly with a 180mm or 300mm at 2.8
I don't want to sidetrack the discussion since it is about monitors, but my personal feeling is that monitors are great for determining that something has gone out of focus, but only marginally useful in actually keeping things in focus during a complex move, particularly when zooming combined with camera and actor movenment, shot on the long end of the lens. A great focus puller watches the performer directly to determine how their body shifts and moves, and adjusts accordingly. I've had amazing focus pullers who could work without marks or monitor and have every frame sharp with a 50/1.3 or longer - and others who couldn't keep it together at 50/3.2 even with a monitor.
 
My vote would be to go with the Shogun Flame; it's not much more and better to have the SDI option, which I think gives you a more secure connection and two outputs to choose from. Also, you don't have to deal with this LUT issue. See link below.

Adorama was offering the unit and extra battteries for $1,000. The monitor will handle outdoor lighting and you don't really need a screen shade, except for maybe glare. You do need a couple of extra batteries though because it does burn through them. Atomos does seem to keep up with their firmware upgrades, so you should be relatively future proofed.


https://www.cinema5d.com/lut-slog-problem-fix-sony-a7s-sony-a7s-ii-a7r-ii-a6300-external-recordings/
 
Wes. said:
I have not had much success with HDMI wireless transmitters and shooting 4k. For example I have a nyrius aries HDMI wireless set, works great in a 1080 world and fine on my a7sii - but 4k recording on the fs7 isn't compatible. I believe it has to do with the output settings but I also believe, please correct me if i'm wrong, that it isn't possible? I think the HDMI port only sends a 4k signal, and that is the issue. Which might be fine, but definitely test!!!
Click to expand...

Thanks v. much for the input, much appreciated. Of course you're right about the HDMI output format preventing monitoring in HD whilst shooting in 4K. In fact your comment prompted me to rethink the wisdom of shooting in 4K full stop. I've realised that for the length of takes we're gonna be getting, often also shooting with 2x cameras, 4K (even at 24fps) will be a luxury we can't justify.

I'm particularly interested in your experience using the Nyrius Aries (Pro, I assume). Obviously the price point makes it an appealing alternative to apparently identical hardware from Paralinx and SWIT. The one obvious drawback would be needing to arrange some sort of portable power source for the Tx and Rx. What sort of battery setup(s) do you use?

Also, have you experienced any problems with latency (claimed as zero!), or excessive interference? The majority of our scenes will be quite remote with hardly any other devices to cause interference, but we will be using a radio FFocus setup that could create problems.

Thanks man,

jason
 
P.S. If you have a moment, could you check if the Aries can transmit a 23.98fps 1080 signal from the FS7? Thanks!

jason
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top