some grabs

PaPa

PaPa

Major Contributor
Heya all.

just felt like posting some grabs from first footage of my new A1

i'm lovin this camera and image control settings.

really sorry about the compression. I also had to resize cause for some reason stupid adobe premier pro 2 cant export a picture in its proper aspect ratio.. anyonw know how to fix this?


Me testing the camerea with my lights and blue gels

a1011bu.jpg


a1020bm.jpg


a1037ca.jpg




Here are setup shots of my set for film production class.


a1041nc.jpg


a1059mq.jpg


a1063ss.jpg
 
the 1st grab is best by far but the others aren't that good imo. Not trying to knock you on that comment it's just that you can get much better grabs from the A1.
 
i find the best kind of comments are those who tell you why :)

please elaborate :)
 
I'd say maybe get some more lighting in there. The darker shots are bit flat and uncontrasty (note: not a real word). Try some color correcting to make em pop.
 
PaPa said:
i find the best kind of comments are those who tell you why :)

please elaborate :)
Click to expand...


Sorry PaPa, I was just responding to your second post real quick as I research some issues that I'm having with my FS. The darker images are very noisey and flat, there's no dimension to the "characters" in the frame. The best tips/advice I can give is to hit up the lighting section of the forum as there's a TON of good threads to learn from. I'm not very savy on the topic so my advice might be totally worded wrong if I tried to give it, lol. What I have done in the past is viewed material from folks around here and if a lighting setup attracted me I would PM the creater and ask some questions. That helped me a ton!
 
lol, i guess this just goes to show different strokes for different folks.

these were all color graded to somethign i liked, mind you i never felt anything spectacular wiht hte framing,

was just a mere, Turn the camera on, take some quick FIRST footage, and post it online like everyone else does.

:)
 
I hear ya.

Have you checked out the presets that other A1 users have pooled together on dvinfo? They're REALLY helpful for the beginning stages of learning the A1 and presets. They helped me alot.
 
yeah, i checked out disjectas, pretty sweet

what im using basically is this

cine 2 on both thingies,

master ped at -5

color gain to 15..black stretched.
 
PaPa said:
lol, i guess this just goes to show different strokes for different folks.

these were all color graded to somethign i liked, mind you i never felt anything spectacular wiht hte framing,

was just a mere, Turn the camera on, take some quick FIRST footage, and post it online like everyone else does.

:)
Click to expand...

Shouldn't expect spectacular comments, then. I have to agree with Coffee, as well. The lighting is flat, saturation and contrast are a bit off as far as overall image goes.

Take the guy sitting in the chair. He could've benefited from defined light source. RIght now, I can't tell where it's coming from. Make that single lamp in the background the source of illumination if you want to do a lighting test.
 
I think Premere Pro can't export the frame as 1920x1080 because the image were captured as 1440 x 1080 and that's their native resolution.
 
jade8472 said:
I think Premere Pro can't export the frame as 1920x1080 because the image were captured as 1440 x 1080 and that's their native resolution.
Click to expand...

Sure it can, after you choose export - but before you hit that save button - you can adjust the output (just like when exporting a vid). Set the frame size to 1920x1080 and the pixel aspect ratio to 1.

That answers the question of if you can. Now do you want to? I did that a few days ago and Premiere put this kind of slightly visible vertical grid over the whole frame. I thought something funky was going on with my footage, but exporting at 1440x1080 with 1.33 pixel ratio worked fine. I think I'll leave my future scaling to After Effects...

If interested, grabs are here:
http://www.philipwilliams.com/XHA1.aspx --> click on "In-Camera color and sharpness comparisons". Depending on your monitor, you may or may not spot the vertical lines.
 
Hi Papa. Not impressed with the lighting and its really because of one simple reason theres no motivation for it. In two of the shots there was an opportunity to simply flick that lamp on and theres your motivation. In the shot with the candles, if the candles were lit you could warm it up in post and would look perfect.

Its not always the best option to just throw your lighting directly at the subject. Sometimes bounce (in the case of the first shot) would give a more natural appearance. In the shot with the candles for example, if its meant to be night, what might look good is, lit candles, with your existing light, then say another light source with some CTB over it, shooting through some slats or something like blinds to give another demension. No one knows where the window would be so its acceptable to have the shadows from the slats above his head, so its not interferring with that part of the image.

I understand why people say the first looks better, its simple, the light does have motivation from the window. In fact the first shot to me looks a little too overlit.
 
i will have to put myself in defense because some of these pictures are completely out of context.

the one of the candles beside the guy in the chair, this was a behind the scenes, making of the set, with the lights on, but not the practicals. (not stills of the film, just caps of the setup)

ill post later on what the set resembles when its fully functional, because it is quite beautiful.

some texture could have been nice, thats a good idea since we cant see exactly the light source direction.

as for the other ones, as i said, these were not 3 point lit stuff, i just flooded some light my way with some ctb gels and recorded it as my First A2 footage ever, no effort went into those.

man, whatever happened to the " Looks good papa, how you liking the A1"

lol, please lower your standards for out of box footage :)

ill be sure to let you guys know if i post carefully shot footage, thus the title, "some grabs" lol.
 
I can see its a setshot, (the one with the candles) you even see the lightcable on the floor -right- I think the set is nicely dressed and I can wait untill I see the final version. It's looking nice in the setshot, the others don't take my interest.

btw: you can shoot cam picts to card with full res.
 
Something different : why using cine 2? Originally it is designed to burn video to film, cine1 is designed to have the film 'latitude feeling' on video. And now I 'm on this subject: the percentage video that is finally distributed as 35mm film is unbelievable small, it's that expensive that it is hard to fund.

If so, why shoot movies on video with artificial characteristics from film? Other than gamma, color and motion? Why not using the cine1?
 
I have a preference for how Cine2 looks, regardless of whether it's an artificial simulation of film characteristics. Cine1 and 2 aren't really that far apart IMHO.

To me, they're only beginning points anyway. I rarely shoot totally flat (for the most CC latitude) as that is completely uninspiring, yet I don't really like to heavily correct the image in-camera as that limits options in post.

I think the Cinegammas and some minor tweaks are a good base for the image. It's what you can achieve with lighting and then final CC that really matters.
 
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