shooting Tv Series (250 ser.) on AF 100

U

unborn

New member
Hello to everyone!

i want to say sorry for my english, i will try to write as clear as possible=)
my name is Max and i'm from Moscow. i'm a producer and one of the owners of a production house.
in june we plan to start shooting a long tv series for one of the russian chanels, we shoot simultaneously on the set and the second unit on streets and locations ( we call it mobile unit). Each unit will shoot on 2 cameras, 4 cameras in total. We want to shoot on af100. We plan to use recommended lumix lenses (not zoom) or maybe zeiss photo lenses with adapter. On tuesday we tested the camera and shot some scenes on the street and in the interior. We used a pl adapter and 35mm Elite lenses. Must say that we had our DOP standing behind the camera.
The owner of the camera- the mechanic and the panasonic representative in one person downloaded the original files from the SD card to our hard disk.
Our post production manager tried to transfer the files to Avid but it didn't work.
Ok, we went after final cut. the resulst was very dissapointing, the dark areas were very noise, overall the colors and the quality of the picture was very poor and very ''soft''.
i've seen many beatiful videos on vimeo shot on Af100 and it feels like we shot on a completely different camera.
maybe we did some mistakes in transfering the files? what could go wrong? any advice appreciated!

does someone of you has an experience of shooting tv series on af100? any ideas? comments? is it a good idea?
unfortunately panasonic cameras are not very popular in moscow, people prefer Sony ex3 and now F3 and sure tv cameras xdcam350 and cynealta that is not actual at the moment...(tape problems).

thank you all in advance.
max
 
I infer by 35mm Elite you mean Letus. Are you confident that the back focus on the Letus Elite 35mm was properly dialed? Also, during the test shoot, how well the scenes were lit? Was it day time on the street? This may explain excessive softness and noise. Regarding the inability to load footage in Avid, did the camcorder owner give you source AVCHD files or he transcoded the files to another format on your hard disk?
 
No, we shot on Elite 35mm lenses, with a Pl adapter, not Letus. We shot in the day time it was sunny and we used 6by6 white butterfly and white frost. He gave us the MTS files, the original files from the card.
We watched on an HD professional monitor, not only on my apple laptop and they were still noisy...
i don't know if it's important, we shot on interlace.
maxusa said:
I infer by 35mm Elite you mean Letus. Are you confident that the back focus on the Letus Elite 35mm was properly dialed? Also, during the test shoot, how well the scenes were lit? Was it day time on the street? This may explain excessive softness and noise. Regarding the inability to load footage in Avid, did the camcorder owner give you source AVCHD files or he transcoded the files to another format on your hard disk?
Click to expand...
 
Did you black balance the camera often? Did you black balance the camera at all? Try holding the white balance button in the bottom front of the camera for a few seconds. Some recommend to black balance every time you get a chance. Some say to black balance whenever you change the ISO, and some say to change it every time the camera changes environments, so if you go from a humid exterior to a interior air conditioned room, etc. The general consensus however is just to black balance every chance you get.

Which gamma and color matrix did you use? Some are more noisy than others, also try turning the detail down and the coring up. The Edit Man has some great settings that are wonderful for a clean shot. Abel Cine Tech also has some on their blog. http://blog.abelcine.com/2011/04/06/af100-scene-files-created-by-abelcine/
 
Pardon my ignorance, I do not know the Elite 35mm brand. Is this a Russian (domestic) brand? Can you verify the bitrate of the MTS files?
 
Why not 1080/25p?

If you haven't already try transcoding the footage & watching it. Quicktime can sometimes display MTS poorly, & FCP uses Quicktime's engine.

I got badly spooked one time by the noise in blacks, & swore off Cine-D, but further down the chain it looked fine.

You'll eventually work this out, & the cam will most likely be fine for your production.
 
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maxusa said:
I infer by 35mm Elite you mean Letus. Are you confident that the back focus on the Letus Elite 35mm was properly dialed? Also, during the test shoot, how well the scenes were lit? Was it day time on the street? This may explain excessive softness and noise. Regarding the inability to load footage in Avid, did the camcorder owner give you source AVCHD files or he transcoded the files to another format on your hard disk?
Click to expand...


There shooting af100, you cant use a dof adapter for that cam. It doesn't need it. hence the point of the m4/3rds sensor..
 
I agree this seemed odd, but I had to ask not being aware of another Elite 35mm. I also know several creative and unconventional Russians...
:)
 
maxusa said:
I infer by 35mm Elite you mean Letus. Are you confident that the back focus on the Letus Elite 35mm was properly dialed?
Click to expand...

Elite are a russian / soviet brand of lens. They are copies of the zeiss super speeds. They are actually pretty good, and I've used them a few times on Super 16. Their main downfall was inconsistency and their witness marks weren't quite as good as they could be. Optically they were great and are very good value. I believe you can still buy them new.

jb
 
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