FS7: New Sony F7 XDCAM 4K Super 35mm Camcorder

morgan_moore said:
(Ive just seen a F3 job I did - a 'hand off' - and it looks terrible!
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I think that happens to all of us every once in a while regardless of camera. I remember once being hauled into an edit suite by an exec producer and asked why my footage was soft. I lent over his editor and switched the correct input on his monitor, all was sharp and pristine - they we're looking at the wrong output from their own edit suite! Numpties...
 
Sure everyone can be numpties but a simple workflow could at least point people in the right direction

1) view footage in Sony Catalyst
2) Colour Tab
3) Drop down 'delog'
4) top-n-tail
5) export as prores

im shooting BMC4k right now and the 'flow is no brain.

1) footy in resolve
2) apply BMC4k LUt

The footage then instantly looks pretty

I guess similar with Arri.

S
 
morgan_moore said:
Sure everyone can be numpties but a simple workflow could at least point people in the right direction

1) view footage in Sony Catalyst
2) Colour Tab
3) Drop down 'delog'
4) top-n-tail
5) export as prores

im shooting BMC4k right now and the 'flow is no brain.

1) footy in resolve
2) apply BMC4k LUt

The footage then instantly looks pretty

I guess similar with Arri.

S
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I agree with you Sam, it should be simple. I work native codec as much as possible. I just drop a little home made S-curve on the footage add some saturation and move-on. It's not rocket science.
 
Liam Hall said:
I agree with you Sam, it should be simple. I work native codec as much as possible. I just drop a little home made S-curve on the footage add some saturation and move-on. It's not rocket science.
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hmmm...well, I think you've put the spotlight on a very fundamental problem. I'm continually amazed at the lack of knowledge about the right workflow, from "experienced" editors. On one handoff job, I mentioned to the editor that he might want to check his levels before rendering the final version. His reply was, "grading is best left to the experts". Even the local news broadcast routinely air footage that is not deinterlaced properly. I mean, to me, these are basic skills, yes? On the positive side, the technical skills needed for adequate delivery may well put production back in the hands of an experienced professional; and, take it out of the garage. The missing ingredient is a technically critical client who won't accept anything less than the best that can be had out of the footage.
 
Kind of. But in stills (which leads the way in retouching and flexible files) basically I do jobs of two types..

a) one look to all frames (typical corporate portraits et al)

b) deep post. maybe interiors with secondary added ext views perspective correction et al.

2) does not currently present easily..
 
I started off editing with 1" machines and on each roll I had to calibrate from bars and adjust tracking. Editors born into NLE doesn't know much of the basics in video and hardly know how to read a waveform.
 
Osslund said:
I started off editing with 1" machines and on each roll I had to calibrate from bars and adjust tracking. Editors born into NLE doesn't know much of the basics in video and hardly know how to read a waveform.
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VPR3s. Those were the days...
 
Well, I learned to shoot and edit with the Sony 1/2" "portapack". Was producing in the 1" days and then only really resumed editing starting with Hi8 on Premiere 1.0 with a Radius VideoVision. Now THAT'S OLD. And CoSA After Effects.

But bragging about our aging joints notwithstanding, this has been an interesting thread.

In the coming weeks we'll be seeing some production FS7's or at the very least nearly-complete implementations. We can then begin a more realistic assessment of footage, as has been noted. But I will add that I placed my order the moment Abel had an actual SKU.

I dare say I'll receive a review camera from Sony long before my actual purchased unit arrives. In that event, I'll put out an open invite to anyone in the NYC area who wants to shoot it with me on project of your choice.

Ned
 
Good to see so many old dogs continually learning new tricks...

Ned, I've been told cameras are arriving in high numbers, so you won't have to wait long for yours. Two or three weeks... ...hopefully.
 
nsoltz said:
I dare say I'll receive a review camera from Sony long before my actual purchased unit arrives. In that event, I'll put out an open invite to anyone in the NYC area who wants to shoot it with me on project of your choice.

Ned
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I would take you up on that, Ned. I'm in Westchester Co, NY
 
morgan_moore said:
Are these people of the same race?

View attachment 92012
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This easily looks like HG7, maybe not even that good, perhaps a standard gamma. If it was log then poorly graded.

Regarding official Sony workflow I'm not sure anything has even been published other than "log gives an excellent point for starting a grade by preserving the maximum information from the sensor". However earlier this year a series of official LUTs were published on the Sony forum and they indicated that the slog2->cine LUT is the best one to use as a point for grading.

I agree with Nate that at least two of these are not bad as starting points but actually I really like the F65 beta LUT that I first started using 18 months ago when the F's started shipping (it's called slog2->rec709v1). I also have no idea where I got this LUT from but the Slog to ACES emulation LUT is also pretty good. It gives a better saturation and vibrance of colors.

Working with the Sony's I've been spending more and more time in Resolve trying just a slew of techniques, LUTs, tricks, and also working offline with Sam, Grug and others to see if there just isn't some simple way of getting a really good "filmic" or decent image to start working with but no matter what it never boils down to "simple". Sure all the in-camera lens filters and on-set tricks will work, like shooting on an overcast day and strictly avoiding highlights and maybe adding a light diffusion filter, but I'm determined to keep trying to crack this nut and hope it will happen sooner or later.. . or F35/Alexa maybe here I come.
 
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starcentral said:
This easily looks like HG7, maybe not even that good, perhaps a standard gamma. If it was log then poorly graded.
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Slog3 and graded to client brief, according to Den's comments on Vimeo. The skin tone isn't helped by the heavy LED fill light which always renders skin poorly, especially when it's a touch shiny.
 
Put diffusion on the LED - can help a lot. I recently had a shot where no matter how I tried gelling an LED the talent (who was shiny ) he looked bad. Then I decided to try throwing diffusion on the LED and it cleared up like magic. One reason I like LED's with barn doors. Makes sense if you think of all those LED's as individual hard lights and each one with some dicey spikes perhaps coming out the sides.
 
quick mess about in resolve. really flat skin in those videos, but easy to see the possibilities.

beforeAfter_zpse99f67ca.png
 
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starcentral said:
quick mess about in resolve. really flat skin in those videos, but easy to see the possibilities.

beforeAfter_zpsa2ecd1e8.png
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I apologize in advance if I come off sounding arrogant or behaving like a know it all. So take all of what I am going to say with a huge grain of salt. However, I do a lot of color correcting for other people's projects as well as my own, and this is what I think without pulling any punches:

The grade for the skin is kind of interesting if you want to emphasize the blemishes and texture, however the image is breaking everywhere in the background and the cyan highlights aren't helping. You also have huge posterization problems on the shoulder and side of the face. You can achieve a much smoother set of transitions if you pick up the skin in the secondaries/qualifiers or by adding a tracked oval. You can then create an outside node (which inverses the selection) to darken the background seperately from the face. The above left corner also has major issues because you are pulling apart the cyan/red relationship to such an extreme as well as playing with the contrast. It appears to me as if you are color correcting before you have equalized out the contrast properly. You need to do the latter first by really paying a lot of attention to your scopes and then color correct. There is no reason why you cannot achieve a lot of what you are looking for here without having broken transitions. It's a great codec, it doesn't need to break like this.
 
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starcentral said:
you know his was from a screen grab of the video on vimeo right?
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Then you have no bit depth to work from and it's practically a moot point in terms of proving whether or not the camera is providing a good working image compared to other ones. However, even with a screen grab from the net you could still achieve better transitions while maintaining the spirit of what you are after. The posterization that I am seeing would be a HUGE issue on a moving image and my guess is that the spikes below zero on your scopes would definitely reveal that you have crushed the blacks so considerably that you are now seeing very poor transitions in the mids>lower end values. That upper left corner is also artifacting so strongly that it would be unacceptable as a clip to most people in my opinion.

However, like I said take my opinion with a grain of salt. To each his own.
 
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Ok I've reuploaded my "quick grade" with improved qualifier. I was mainly after showing a better contrast on the skin than the white-flat-mud that was posted in Sony's entire video.

This wasn't a grading contest, the point was for illustrative purposes only.

What a tough crowd, no wonder people are afraid to post anything...
 
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