Montana Mountains (AF100 Quick Test)

K

klon

Active member
Needed to get out and shoot something with my AF100 before the sun went down. Here are some excerpts. Pretty random, no real method or theme in mind, just grabbing what was around me before my fingers froze.

I'm pretty impressed with the camera's performance, though the highlights do seem a bit strange looking (most notably when the sun is in frame.)

http://vimeo.com/18984878
 
Some great shots in there. I'm impressed with the camera's performance as well. I haven't see strange highlights like you've got in there. I'll have to test that on mine. What were your settings besides Cinelike-V?
 
those strange highlights will happen. Especially the more colored the highlight.

If you are on Tungsten balanced and you let a tungsten light blowout, it will appear white. If it has even the slightest bit warmer than 3200 K and it blows out, it will appear like a yellow chroma mess. The same goes for the other way around.

So the sun was slightly on it's side, meaning his daylight balanced camera was now capturing a sun that was probably near the 4500k range, making the blowout and transition clip to yellow.
 
I'll take a look at the camera settings and get back to you. I don't think I changed any of the scene file settings beyond that.
 
Very nice stuff! The sun is a little strange, I guess that will be a trial and error situation. I don't imagine a re-WB would change this? Or different gamma?

I have some sun shots that don't blow out yellow (more white), but they're much more stopped down (f/22, near silhouette) and the sun's not so low on the horizon.

The fence/sky shot is Montana awesomeness!
 
groveChuck said:
Very nice stuff! The sun is a little strange, I guess that will be a trial and error situation. I don't imagine a re-WB would change this? Or different gamma?

I have some sun shots that don't blow out yellow (more white), but they're much more stopped down (f/22, near silhouette) and the sun's not so low on the horizon.

The fence/sky shot is Montana awesomeness!
Click to expand...

Not exactly, a white balance will make the blowout less yellow, but it will exhibit the same blowout.
 
Hmm the highlights really do stink on this thing (the camera), and I always figured we'll just have to watch exposure super close, but then I saw this and realized I had disregarded almost all the outdoor photography I would likely do. Bummer :/

Really great stuff in there though. :)
 
KyleProhaska said:
Hmm the highlights really do stink on this thing (the camera), and I always figured we'll just have to watch exposure super close, but then I saw this and realized I had disregarded almost all the outdoor photography I would likely do. Bummer :/

Really great stuff in there though. :)
Click to expand...

I've seen sun shots that look pretty good. I wouldn't discredit all the cameras capabilities with sun/highlights because of a couple bad clips.
 
TheReverend said:
I've seen sun shots that look pretty good. I wouldn't discredit all the cameras capabilities with sun/highlights because of a couple bad clips.
Click to expand...

Right.

It looks like the sun was shooting through a thin layer of clouds creating a mist of over exposed area. Normally with sun it wouldn't look like this, but on a cloudy situation it would.
 
Yeah, for me the strangest part about the highlights is the ring around the sun that's not quite at 100% but nearly there. I'm going to assume that single-step ring is the byproduct of the haze, because in the shot where the sun appears from under a thick cloud it seems much less of an issue. Also, this clip has gone through two compression phases (Compressor and Vimeo), so it does look a hair worse than the raw footage.

I wouldn't discount it either, i believe the highlight stepping was an environmental factor, not the camera itself.
 
That looks like posterization/gradation happening between teh shades of highlights in the mist /fog/cloud between the camera and the sun.
 
KyleProhaska said:
Hmm the highlights really do stink on this thing (the camera), and I always figured we'll just have to watch exposure super close, but then I saw this and realized I had disregarded almost all the outdoor photography I would likely do. Bummer :/

Really great stuff in there though. :)
Click to expand...

I agree with the highlights and it seems to be a real problem that many are ignoring. And I agree with the valid point about outdoor photography. People say it not a problem I say it is when you have material is as nicely shot as this just to be totally wrecked by the horrid highlights. The material is correctly exposed. It is just unrealistic not to expect to have to deal with this problem quite often. Compared to this my Ex1 is an highlight master. I even find the gh2 to not have this problem with the discolored highlights.
look at this example http://vimeo.com/17396764. The highlights are blown but it doesent manifest the same problem as the af100 they are just naturally blown video highlights. Red fixed their channel problems hopefully panasonic will as well in a new firmware update.

The shots were beautiful.To bad that the camera made it worse. Blown highlight on a videocamera looks bad but on the AF100 looks even worse.

One question, does the novoflex adapter give you perfect focus on infinity on alla lenses or are there problems?
 
Maybe I'll go back out on a less hazy sunset to try to give some comparison shots...

And Teodor, the Novoflex looks to give perfect focus on all my lenses, though I haven't shot a chart to verify 100%.
 
Not wanting to sound like a broken record but... if you are worried about highlight clipping, DON'T use Cine-like gamma curves. Either use one of the curves with a shoulder, to tame the highlights, or set the exposure using zebras/waveform so that the signal DOES NOT CLIP, and probably doesn't even come close to clipping.

The Cine-like gammas have no highlight protection at all, and if they clip, they will clip in any old ugly fashion. If you are shooting something with the sun in shot, or very high contrast like sunlit clouds and mountains, switch to one of the curves with highlight protection, or dial down the exposure so it doesn't clip.

Cheers, Hywel.
 
Good to know, I didn't realize the cine-like gamma settings had no highlight protection.

And I'm not sure that keeping highlights from clipping is ever really an option when shooting the sun...
 
No, exactly... the Cine gammas are really there for shooting in controlled lighting conditions. (At least I believe they are, going from the way they work on my HVX200- my AF101 hasn't arrived yet!)

I'd expect the highlight behaviour to be a bit more benign on one of the non-cine gamma curves. The sun is still going to clip, but I'd *hope* that it does so more gracefully than it does in cine-like gamma. That's certainly what I've seen on the HVX.

Cheers, Hywel.
 
Hywel said:
Not wanting to sound like a broken record but... if you are worried about highlight clipping, DON'T use Cine-like gamma curves. Either use one of the curves with a shoulder, to tame the highlights, or set the exposure using zebras/waveform so that the signal DOES NOT CLIP, and probably doesn't even come close to clipping.

The Cine-like gammas have no highlight protection at all, and if they clip, they will clip in any old ugly fashion. If you are shooting something with the sun in shot, or very high contrast like sunlit clouds and mountains, switch to one of the curves with highlight protection, or dial down the exposure so it doesn't clip.

Cheers, Hywel.
Click to expand...

I thought cine-d was the best setting for gentle highlights (atleast it works like that on the ex1 where the cinegammas are the best choice for nice roll off) Are you telling me I have to go in and dial the knee down in normal gamma to get the best highlights ?I find that counter intuitive to have to go in and adjust the normal videogamma on a camera that is clearly geared toward some kind of cinematic asparations be it documentary or fictional. I was under impression that cine D was the flattest setting and that cine v was the harder setting if you wanted the baked in look straight from the camera (I mean if cine means controlled controlled lighting than you could name normal cine as well since all gammas fare well in controlled lighting. I mean you need to be really bad or really stressed not get it right under controlled lighting whatever gamma you use).

Maybe one of the gurus like Barry Green could chime in and tell us what settings are the best for a flat picture with gentler handling of highlights.

Regarding your comment on exposure: if you are outside doing a lowbudget, documentary or some other reality show it just a question of when you will have to prioritize mids and shadows on the cost of highlights. I mean it is not that I want the camera to hold highlights like the Alexa, but it should atleast blow them nicer than a 900$ camcorder (its on par with my pana sd700).
 
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