Panasonic AF101 Footage

Joe Lawry said:
I'll correct Yves slightly, it wasnt actually a conversation to QT that causes those shifts. Its all about what monitor your viewing on.
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You must be talking about shifts between the original material and the clip at Vimeo. I am not talking about that because I don't have access to the original material let alone that I could observe any differences between that and the online clip. I am talking about color shifts WITHIN the same online clip, and those shifts cannot be caused by a monitor. A monitor will display a full clip in a certain way and not apply different colors to different parts of a video clip or different parts of a still image.

It's just a matter of white balance. I would have used some gray cards and balanced manually. What kind of lights did you use? Fluorescents (like Kinoflo) maybe?

Apart from this little detail the video is great. Nice model too.
 
Which scene are you talking about? There were some white balance issues that we were working through when learning to operate it, but we got down to that confusion pretty quickly. Tell me the shot and I can gladly elaborate. I have been looking at it so closely now, I am observing every detail.
 
Sorry I missed your frame grab on the previous page.

The image on the left was a white balance of 4K which was leaning on the blue side but we decided to go with it. The image on the left is an interior scene with a white balance of 3200, on a different location with a tungsten lighting source.

Yes skin tones are important to everyone but considering the blue setting sky in the wide shots the close up is appropriate for the lighting.

Cheers
 
This is why Jan (and I) are nervous about posting images from a camera that is not fully baked yet. It is like a Master Chef pulling the desert out of the oven early to give you a peek at the golden crust that has formed on top, but telling you that it needs another twenty minutes. And then we quickly forget the beautiful crust and start debating the fact that the base is soggy. Let's let the chef close the oven door, and show us the product when it is fully baked.

Yves and Joe are showing the golden crust that we all hope for, namely the cinematic depth of field, and as you can see from the reviews of those that saw it with their own eyes it looks very very tasty. Remember that this chef (Panasonic) has a pretty good reputation of delivering great deserts and they normally arrive at the table fully baked and on time. I can tell you that other aspects of the footage shot exceeded all my expectations for a camera of this price. Those who have seen the footage for real were universally of the same opinion.

I know that 99.9% of you understand this, and it is great to see such a positive reaction, so let's sit back, pour another fine Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc and wait for our appetites to be satiated in December.
 
Rick thanks for that, upon closer reflection on the past thread regarding skin tones.. this is purely a creative one rather than a technical one, the poster was showing blue hues derived from an exterior daylight shot and comparing it with an interior tungsten shot. I was confused with a nuance of something much more detailed that has been completely overlooked because I never thought in a million years I would get pulled up on that, as to me its obvious.. so apologies for putting everyone off the scent.

Yes one is cold and one is warm, this is why we white balance but aesthetically you may want it blue or you may want it warm. This has nothing to do with the camera, its the DOP, thats me! It may not be to everyone's eye but we make these sort of decisions everyday. I apologize if it has created confusion.

So let me recap. Its a cold image because I made it that way. Its a warm image because I made it that way. The camera, the codec, the monitor and the lens was simply the tools we used to achieve it. A grade could make it better in any direction as all those images are purely legal.

Rick I appreciate this may make you guys nervous but its actually quite easily set right as this forum seems to really understand and the 1% can easily learn from the 99.
Cheers
 
I didn't fully understand why Panasonic were keeping footage close to their chest at first; after seeing the level of analysis (which is totally well-intended), now I do.
 
Rick - how is New Zealand? I remember it with fondess from my cricket playing days - one of the most beautiful countries in the world - shame your team are struggling in Bangladesh.
Hope you guys are going well after the earthquake - Chris Harris almost lost his house ( he plays in my team - Lashings.)

Well done Jan and all at Panasonic - I sure am looking forward to this camera. It looks like a winner. It may just be the best belated Christmas present that my wife never knew she bought me......... he he he he
 
Yves Simard said:
Yes one is cold and one is warm, this is why we white balance but aesthetically you may want it blue or you may want it warm. This has nothing to do with the camera, its the DOP, thats me! It may not be to everyone's eye but we make these sort of decisions everyday.
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When white balance was first addressed in this thread, Joe wrote that you had been shooting with auto WB all the time. So in that case the colors should have been consistent through the full shoot, from beginning to end. In that respect I was curious about why the skin tone changed from nice cool to yellowish (which is something else than "warm"). Also note that where the model looks yellow, the photographer's face looks warm. Which was reason for me to assume you were mixing two different colored light sources here. Also, at Vimeo Joe wrote that you shot with fluorescent lights, which explains a lot too.

I am sure this will be a great cam, I never shoot with auto WB myself for the simple fact that a camera with perfect auto WB does not exist and will never exist probably (auto WB is like auto focus; you can't fully rely on it), so it won't be an issue for me, and otherwise there's always the possibility of grading in post.

Rick and Jan; I wasn't attacking your product, I, a customer who pre-ordered this AF101 and already wired 5299 euro for it, was only asking a question. That's what happens when you show a product to the public; some people will ask questions about that product, especially when they're interested in it. When I go buy a new car I'll ask questions first too! C'est la vie! I can still send you a nice Chablis 88 if that helps a little :-)
 
RieniO said:
When white balance was first addressed in this thread, Joe wrote that you had been shooting with auto WB all the time. So in that case the colors should have been consistent through the full shoot, from beginning to end.
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Quite the opposite. The differing skin tones are because of auto WB. The different color temps are very evident in the footage and could have been balanced to look similar with full control of WB.
 
LoganMackay said:
Quite the opposite. The differing skin tones are because of auto WB. The different color temps are very evident in the footage and could have been balanced to look similar with full control of WB.
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I meant that if auto WB would do what it's supposed to do, the colors should have been consistent. But like I said already, auto WBs never do what they're supposed to do. That's why I never use them, not on still cams and not on movie cams.
 
Auto WB doesn't make color consistent. It tries to guess what color temp you are shooting in, and when you mix sources you get mixed results.
 
Yves and Joe- How was the image monitored mostly? EVF , LCD or some of both? Zebra set up?

And how was focus pulled at 1:16 and 1:30?

And this was really all shot handheld? No tripod at the rear of the restaurant or elsewhere?

I like the new extended version. Perhaps the original should have been released in 1080 not 720? But I love it all! Thanks, gents!
 
Opinion about the footage...

Opinion about the footage...

Hy Jan,

Of course is a not finished product. It looks great.
I´m watching little "errors" at the footage on my unibody mac book pro 17´´, calibrated with spyder 3. Maybe is the vimeo compression. Or maybe they are "errors" of the prototype, to be fixed before December.

In the extended version at http://vimeo.com/15826664, in the close ups (from min 00:57 to 01:00) the whites are crushed on his face. And I feel the footage has too much contrast from 02:01 to the end. Of course this should be just an aestetic choice, and not an "error". I just wanted to mark it.
In the first version, at http://vimeo.com/15765280, at 01:40, I can see compression from the dark to the light, at the wall.
I´m not a professional DoP so, maybe my opinions are not OK. And sorry for my english wich is not very good.

Best,

Paul
 
that's true sometimes it doesn't hold the highilghts of her face that well. as previous poster calls it 'the whites get crushed'. can someone comment on that or explain it?
 
RieniO said:
That's why I never use them, not on still cams and not on movie cams.
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That is horses for courses, every operator has a different approach, in this case we used a preset in the restaurant scene, in the house we actually did a white balance, this was because I was no confident on the exact color temp from the Kino Flo, I was struggling with the amount of magenta. It all seemed fine and in the right ball park.

Regards to the monitoring, Matt used the flip screen, it was good enough to get sharps and the color seemed in the right zone. Of course in a proper shoot we would have had a proper monitor, but this was not the case so you would normally expect this sort of tolerances.

Regards to white and black crushing, I can easily say that that is not in the original, we let it go because it took four hours to download and we didnt want to start again, apparently joe tells me this happens with vimeo. He can comment on that further later, I got off the phone with him and it looks like he is hiring some CP2s for a music video so he is busy.

We only uploaded the 720 clip on the original file to speed up the process and it is in fact as per Vimeo specs. Apparently they display in 720 anyway so it seemed logical, however through our experiment here it is clearly higher quality on 1080 version. I'm glad it worked better.
 
LoganMackay said:
Auto WB doesn't make color consistent. It tries to guess what color temp you are shooting in, and when you mix sources you get mixed results.
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Keeping the same balance keeps color consistent.
White Balancing (also known as auto whilte balance) helps you choose a color temperature

When you get mixed sources you get mixed results no matter what your balance

Auto Tracking Balance ( I think its called) which tracks your white balance while your shooting, should not exist. It is the devil.

We did not shoot using this function, it was in preset. There was some confusion at some point but that was soon rectified, to clarify, the auto tracking white was engaged for the first scene, not sure how that happened, think it was an overlooked setting.. just to give you an idea of my way of thinking, since those two shots had a blue slant, I decided to carry on with that look for the rest of the scene as it looked good and the skin tones although cold looked natural. It was a good test to push the boundaries of the camera and we all agreed. No DOP in their right mind would use this function unless.. well I have no idea.

As far as the yellow vs warm argument, I don't see what you see so it must be you. No seriously, it is so minuscule from what I see here that I would have no idea what part of the chain would have been introduced. It was slightly warm on the yellows at the shoot to the eye and it is simply exaggerated on your laptop through our lovely compression process that has become our lives.

All the focus was pulled by hand by Matt. Was not shot all hand held, some was some was loose head.. don't ask me which I genuinely have no idea.
Man you guys are tough
 
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The highlight behaviour on the face at 1:00 (false magenta tone and then clipping to white) is because of the ITU709 gamma curve. The camera probably has better settings. If it has a CineV curve like the HVX, it will clip a lot better, with less false color. I wouldn't call it filmic, but a lot better than ITU709 in highlight behaviour and also midrange contrast and color.

Alias appers to be reduced or eliminated. I believe the fabric at 1:03 would alias on a typical dSLR. It would be visible on 720p Vimeo.

The rolling shutter looks identical to the still camera. I can tell even on very slow camera motion and vertical panning at any speed. Red One fools me sometimes, but only in some very slow moves.

At one point, I read that the noise in the shadows is because of video compression and was not on the original clip. That's ridiculous. Compression cannot add noise of this type and at this level, it can only change the character of input noise, or exaggerate it to a degree. The camera was on high ISO probably. At 2:45 one can see that Vimeo preserved the camera noise in the hair shadows. It's the typical bayer CMOS through GOP compression look of noise. With so little motion, even Vimeo compression can encode noise if it's high enough.

All in all, I believe the camera preserves the still model image quality in rolling shutter, sensitivity and noise but adds a better codec, antialiasing filter, professional menus, audio, professional inputs/outputs etc. One cannot add all that to a dSLR, but adding half of it will take the cost pretty close to the AF-100 cost. It's definitely a good buy but don't have unrealistic expectations. It solved all other problems, but it will still perform to rolling shutter CMOS, medium pixel size noise/sensitivity, and GOP compression level, because it's an affordable camera.
 
Otis Grapsas said:
The highlight behaviour on the face at 1:00 (false magenta tone and then clipping to white) is because of the ITU709 gamma curve. The camera probably has better settings. If it has a CineV curve like the HVX, it will clip a lot better, with less false color. I wouldn't call it filmic, but a lot better than ITU709 in highlight behaviour and also midrange contrast and color.

Alias appers to be reduced or eliminated. I believe the fabric at 1:03 would alias on a typical dSLR. It would be visible on 720p Vimeo.

The rolling shutter looks identical to the still camera. I can tell even on very slow camera motion and vertical panning at any speed. Red One fools me sometimes, but only in some very slow moves.

At one point, I read that the noise in the shadows is because of video compression and was not on the original clip. That's ridiculous. Compression cannot add noise of this type and at this level, it can only change the character of input noise, or exaggerate it to a degree. The camera was on high ISO probably. At 2:45 one can see that Vimeo preserved the camera noise in the hair shadows. It's the typical bayer CMOS through GOP compression look of noise. With so little motion, even Vimeo compression can encode noise if it's high enough.

All in all, I believe the camera preserves the still model image quality in rolling shutter, sensitivity and noise but adds a better codec, antialiasing filter, professional menus, audio, professional inputs/outputs etc. One cannot add all that to a dSLR, but adding half of it will take the cost pretty close to the AF-100 cost. It's definitely a good buy but don't have unrealistic expectations. It solved all other problems, but it will still perform to rolling shutter CMOS, medium pixel size noise/sensitivity, and GOP compression level, because it's an affordable camera.
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Compared to everyone else here I don't know squat, so forgive me if what I say is just plain naive. But you speak as though this were a finished product. Or is it the case that the things you're describing couldn't possibly be different in the shipping model? Just curious.
 
About white balance; the way I learned it is:
Auto balance = what you describe as tracking balance while shooting. Yes I agree it should not be used unless you really don't have time for preset or balancing manually
preset = choosing from different preprogrammed options like daylight, shadow, cloudy sky, tungsten, fluorescent
manual balance = point camera on white or grey card and adjust white balance like that

About the yellow; I see it on my two Eizo pro LCDs and one Iyama CRT screen. As I wrote before, this must be due to mixing different light sources (fluos and natural light coming in through the window?). The photographer is sitting opposite of her (with his back to the window) and his skin tone looks right. Maybe it's also a matter of taste and usally flash video compression (h264/mp4, this is what Vimeo uses too) changes things a little too especially when you let Vimeo downsize your video as well. I never tried it but maybe it's better to downsize in FCP first and then upload to Vimeo.

Besides all that, skin tones are complicated and difficult, even for the top color correctors in Hollywood. I always give special attention to skin tones when watching a new movie and it now seems fashion to give everybody a bit orange-like skintone, especially for family- or feel-good movies. So even when the movie was shot in Alaska in January, everybody looks like he/she's been sitting in the sun for 3 weeks :-)

That's why I like the cool blueish skintone of the girl in the first part of the video, it looks very natural and healthy.

Sorry for being tough, dude :-)

By the way the final shot is really nice, when the girl changes from looking into the still cam to looking into the video cam. When I get my AF101 I'll try to duplicate that idea with a model then I'll show you the resulting video and then you can criticize me :-)
 
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