Sony cameras and the "video look".

A while back I was told by an engineer that much of the "filmic quality" of a camera comes from internal processing of the data that comes from the sensor. For example, Panasonic uses licensed technology from FilmLook, the first innovators of 24p and emulating film gamma. Another example is Sony's CineAlta line (just look for the badge on the cameras), which uses yet another proprietary way of processing the image.
 
Kholi said:
I tried to stay out of this conversation but had been reading it to see what other people think, knowing full-well that my name would come up sooner or later.

One thing I am far from is a shill for any company or any product: I have VERY little brand loyalty when it comes to camera manufacturers. You can find posts from me on every camera sub Alexa stating things that are not desirable to me. Canon is far from the company that I would even begin to Shill for, as I don't think many of their products are worth the money they charge for them. Yet, if I had to choose between an FS700 and a 5D3, there are various reasons why it would not be an obvious choice for either camera.

It's been said a few times here that it's basically about the cinematography. Okay, well, people are entitled to think what they want, but great lighting and composition doesn't change the way a sensor renders motion in any given frame. Neither does sharpness, color, so on and so forth. The first issue is that the "video look" and "cheap movie look" are two different things. One is specifically describing footage with odd motion characteristics (30P/60i) and the other is lack of proper care toward a goal that may be achieving cinematic looking images.

You can make almost ANY camera's footage look cinematic if you fight it hard enough, light it well enough, compose it like you know what you're doing. However, there are ONLY so many things you can do to make the subtle differences in the way a digital image represents twenty-four frames in motion look like what we've been used to seeing in various forms or fashions over the last number of decades.

Not all 24P is created equal, this isn't new information.

The FS100/700 are PLENTY capable cameras, but what both represent to me are still a bias toward a more "video" cadance/look and not a "film-like" cadance/look. I've been told that it's just the way Sony engineers prefer things, and it may be because of the eastern content industry. Whatever the reason, every single Sony camera I have ever used (with the exception of the F65 right now, because I haven't really had a chance to shoot anything serious with it) has this look. It's not just Sony, either. I mentioned that RED goes in and out, and I have never been able to pinpoint why. Canon cameras do a mild bit better, Alexa and Gh2 being the closest of them all to my eyes.

Nirv's point about playback is taken, I'm keen to go to every source that I can find, and have watched FS100 footage projected (I said christie before, but it's actually a Barco 2K projector), 60+ Plasma, my own 56" LCD, post color monitors, and even an iPad. I see it everywhere I go, and the likelyhood is just that I am sensitive to it. Sometimes a small shutter tweak can make it better (motion blur change) which is cool. For this reason I won't shoot above 1/45 on Canon DSLRs, or 1/40 on the GH2 (although 1/50th doesn't bother me).

No matter what I did I could not defeat it on the FS100.

Me, personally, I sincerely don't care what the audience notices or does not notice. That's not why I choose a camera. I choose a tool to be comfortable and confident in, one that matches where I consider myself to be at the current time (whether or not someone else agrees with me is neither here nor there) and fits the work.

If it weren't important then we would all still be shooting out 35mm Adapters... since the audience won't care or notice if the movie is great.

I'm STILL going to use the FS100. After shooting with the FS700 I revisited the FS100 and really liked what I saw, but it's for a very specific use to me, not one that I would choose for everyday narrative or commercial work. That shouldn't really matter to others, if you like what you like then use it, show people what you're doing with it.

By the way, Paul, I honestly couldn't show you an example that would be fitting because you'd have to literally shoot the exact same image (frame, speed, everything) to see it. I wouldn't know how to organize something so intricate, and probably wouldn't have the patience for it. That's why I end up at "if you can't see it then it doesn't matter." -- not to be offensive, but because it really doesn't matter if you can't see it.
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VERY well put! I'm in the same boat. I wish I didn't mind it. I wish I didn't notice it. The FS100 is an amazing camera and I would love to scoop one up and shoot away but I'm just not a fan of how it reproduces images. I'm actually doing a bunch of tests with one tomorrow so I'm anxious to see if I can make something to my liking. The FS700 is much better, IMHO, so I may pick one of these up despite not wanting to spend $8K...
 
danstone said:
A while back I was told by an engineer that much of the "filmic quality" of a camera comes from internal processing of the data that comes from the sensor. For example, Panasonic uses licensed technology from FilmLook, the first innovators of 24p and emulating film gamma. Another example is Sony's CineAlta line (just look for the badge on the cameras), which uses yet another proprietary way of processing the image.
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That makes sense. The Filmlook website says that they have licensed there technology to most of the major video camera makers, "... SONY, PANASONIC, ARRI, PANAVISION, IKEGAMI, THOMSON, HITACHI, CANON, JVC, NIKON, PENTAX, and ICONIX".
http://filmlook.com/

I don't know though, losing sleep over the motion characteristics of HD footage from a specific camcorder, and devoting time to an elaborate post process to try and manipulate, just seems to me like trying to pick gnat poop out of pepper! I think that achieving a "Cinematic" look is more about lighting and exposure than most other factors. I second SergeSmArt on "Dark" exposure. IMHO, the digital video footage that looks the most "Videoish", to me, is over lit.
 
I did say, though, that the "cinematic look" is a different topic than what we're discussing here. We're talking about something completely inherent to video, which is the motion aesthetic. You can make any camera's image look cinematic as a base, large sensor or not. Totally different conversation.
 
Kholi said:
I did say, though, that the "cinematic look" is a different topic than what we're discussing here. We're talking about something completely inherent to video, which is the motion aesthetic. You can make any camera's image look cinematic as a base, large sensor or not. Totally different conversation.
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I'm Sorry Kholi, but from the OP, "Anyway, what do you guys think; do Sony cameras suffer from the "video look", or is it more to do with the person behind the camera?"....


What conversation where you referring to?
 
David G. Smith said:
I'm Sorry Kholi, but from the OP, "Anyway, what do you guys think; do Sony cameras suffer from the "video look", or is it more to do with the person behind the camera?"....


What conversation where you referring to?
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The one that we're having now, I'd suppose, for the last three pages. Only a few people keep talking about the cinematic look, as if it were some mystical thing that people didn't actually understand. It's WELL understood that lighting, composition, etc goes into making things look Cinematic. I'm more baffled as to why people constantly need to beat that into the ground.

Form the last heap, my impression of the conversation is strictly technical and hardware related. Why does Sony's most cinematic footage still have a video-like motion/cadence to it to some people?

If the OP was asking "why can't you make Sony cameras look Cinematic" it would be a different conversation. I guess I'm way off base if it's that one.

And, here's the entirety of the post:

Simon Shasha said:
Time and time again, I've heard countless people say that Sony cameras suffer from the "video look". Shane Hurlbut said the same thing to me when I asked him his thoughts on the FS700 via his blog - he said Sony make good news and sports cameras, but not good cinematic cameras (I'd link you guys to the blog, it was the "C300 vs Alexa" blog-post, but he seems to have deleted it?).

Now, I've seen some pretty cinematic looking videos come out of the FS100 (Philip Bloom's 'Portrait of a Boxer' for example), but I have also seen some extremely "home-videoish" looking stuff too - however, I have seen cinematic and "home-videoish" stuff coming from the C300 and RED cameras also.

Of course, the camera isn't everything - lighting and art-direction contribute perhaps more than anything to giving a film a cinematic feel. However, narrowing in strictly of the visual aesthetics of Sony cameras alone, would you guys say that Sony cameras suffer from the "video look", or is it more to do with the person behind the camera? I personally go with the latter - I believe it is the person behind the camera - and I say this with conviction due to recently watching 'Another Earth' (shot on the Sony EX3) and 'Monsters' (also shot on the Sony EX3). Speaking of which, 'Another Earth' had a really cool 16mm vibe to it.

Anyway, what do you guys think; do Sony cameras suffer from the "video look", or is it more to do with the person behind the camera?
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Yeah, I read the OP, and responded to it. I also read the conversation about the motion cadence, and responded to that.
 
It's starting to get humorous, seeing this topic arise in its various incarnations, but always alluding to something that no one can properly describe or provide evidence of. I imagine it will continue to come up again and again over the next couple years, but overall I think we're just in a transitional phase in large sensor video. Improvements are being made constantly day by day in many regards including motion. The most promising camera looks like the BMC in terms of emulating the feel and motion cadence of film. It's kind of similar to the GH2 in a small way and I think it's gonna surprise a few people!

It would be really fun to get an interview with an engineer from panasonic and sony just to get their take on this whole issue.
 
David G. Smith said:
Yeah, I read the OP, and responded to it. I also read the conversation about the motion cadence, and responded to that.
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I do agree, and believe, that it's counter-productive to try and do things to change such a small part of this specific camera. Especially methods that would potentially add a lot of render time in post. You either want the look or you don't, and IMO if you can't stand it then you should probably get a different camera. xD That's me anyway.
 
A lot of the above discussion has revolved around the process of compressing the images from the sensor (tape, pulldown, compression etc,.) through to display.
AFAIK filmlook is about converting fields into frames (pulldown). And we're talking about shooting 24p and watching 24p (aren't we?)

If you take post capture that out of the equation (which we can do, uncompressed out) where are we left? I still struggle understanding what the innate difference is between the way all these sensors are recording motion. Imagine processing is one thing, but motion processing? I'm not aware of any sensor or camera that processes motion.

I do wonder whether we're all watching like for like. Nirv mentioned he's watching 25p on 60Hz, which by itself introducing a certain cadence. That's not the camera that's the display.

I'm not being awkward, i'm really interesting to see whether what's going on can actually be defined. My IMHO is that i think we're seeing differences in how we watch the results, not the capture. The comments about 60i to 24p, that's a process by which the frames are viewed, not captured.

cheers
Paul
 
Kholi said:
I did say, though, that the "cinematic look" is a different topic than what we're discussing here. We're talking about something completely inherent to video, which is the motion aesthetic. You can make any camera's image look cinematic as a base, large sensor or not. Totally different conversation.
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Maybe this motion asthetic is something that NTSC users find odd. I've been shooting everything at 25p for years now and everything shown on national TV here in Finland is 25p. I was a film projectionist for several years and everything there was of course 24p.

But I've NEVER encountered a situation where another cameras 25p looked different than anothers if the shutter speed was the same (rolling shutter not withstanding). Now NTSC might be a different story as there we have all kinds off 23,97/29,97 issues. But PAL is relatively simple.
 
The common monitor frequency of 60Hz has a lot to do with it IMHO.
I don´t see that problem on CRT monitors that run at 100Hz.

As an odd side note: If you make a DVD/Bluray out of it and watch it on the same monitor, but played from that disc, with a DVD player program, it looks better.
There is also no monitor tearing. Heaven nows what voodoo is going o there.
 
Postmaster said:
The common monitor frequency of 60Hz has a lot to do with it IMHO.
I don´t see that problem on CRT monitors that run at 100Hz.

As an odd side note: If you make a DVD/Bluray out of it and watch it on the same monitor, but played from that disc, with a DVD player program, it looks better.
There is also no monitor tearing. Heaven nows what voodoo is going o there.
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Perhaps there is some frame synchronisation that's happening with the player program and not with normal movie playback (i remember the old days of game programming and timing based around vertical blanking - i don't think that happens much these days). Does the player program go full screen? Some change the monitor frequency. Perhaps the player stuffs the data to the video card for decompression. So many variables. But the key is the fact that it's the display method screwing things up, not the source.

But if the bluray looks fine and that's how your end users will be watching it then you'd done!

If you've got stuff at 100Hz then you ought to watch out for those 'built in enhancers' that utterly screw the motion as i'm sure you're well aware already

cheers
paul
 
You mean the "Soap-Opera-Button"?
Yeah, I´m aware of that crap.
I was talking about an "old school" computer CRT, driven at 100Hz refresh rate from the graphic card.

Frank
 
I think the Hz thing is valid in some way, however there's not a single source I can play the footage on and not get the same result. What I have not tried is a CRT, and admittedly it's because I think CRT is pretty much dead and I'm not concerned about how anything looks on that. EVERYTHING looks great on a CRT, haha.

But, perhaps it is possible that it's A. a 24P thing and B. Some combination of viewing sources etc.
 
Would anyone care to do a side by side comparison of, say (says he), one's AppleTV playing back a Vimeo movie on your domestic living-room TV, and then watching it on your laptop? Maybe even your laptop connected to your big screen?

I'm guessing (as in "I thought I noticed this a while back but wasn't going to mention this to anyone because it could be getting the wrong end of the stick - again") that my UK Apple TV experience may look better because all the hardware is working together at doing '720p25 on a 50Hz screen, maybe even at 100Hz' rather than trying to do 720p25 on a screen that quite happily states that its a 60Hz screen, period.

I'll check it out again soon once my son has quit monopolising my TV with Dr Who re-runs.
 
I think what ppl are forgetting is that if you want stuff to look like film shoot film! These are digital cameras they will never look or feel like film! Besides with Cameron and Jackson pushing for 48fps, and others pushing 4K the movie industry might change from 24fps to higher frame rates and higher REZ, and at the end of the day all movies will look like those motion flow 120hrtz tv's just IMO
 
Ruben/Sheri said:
I think what ppl are forgetting is that if you want stuff to look like film shoot film! These are digital cameras they will never look or feel like film! Besides with Cameron and Jackson pushing for 48fps, and others pushing 4K the movie industry might change from 24fps to higher frame rates and higher REZ, and at the end of the day all movies will look like those motion flow 120hrtz tv's just IMO
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Yes, these ARRI Alexas, REDs, Sony F35s and F65s etc. will NEVER look nor feel like "film".

Not in the way that movies actually shot on film - then transferred to a DI - and posted, distributed and shown digitally...look like film.

No sir.

[/SARCASM]
 
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MattDavis said:
Would anyone care to do a side by side comparison of, say (says he), one's AppleTV playing back a Vimeo movie on your domestic living-room TV, and then watching it on your laptop? Maybe even your laptop connected to your big screen?

I'm guessing (as in "I thought I noticed this a while back but wasn't going to mention this to anyone because it could be getting the wrong end of the stick - again") that my UK Apple TV experience may look better because all the hardware is working together at doing '720p25 on a 50Hz screen, maybe even at 100Hz' rather than trying to do 720p25 on a screen that quite happily states that its a 60Hz screen, period.

I'll check it out again soon once my son has quit monopolising my TV with Dr Who re-runs.
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It does look better because it's synchronised properly. Viewing on the laptop i think isn't quite so accurate with frame timing, each frame can be off slightly. I do think that the display sync is an important part of the viewing experience. I suspect that's why a bluray played through the computer looks better.

Don't get me started on the apple tv though - i assume you never watch other frame rates? The last few updates are a bit better but WTF can it not change what it outputs based on source. I ended up with some expensive EDID box between the plasma and apple tv so i could fool the aTV into not outputting a default 50Hz on a UK tv. You can change it manually now but i went through huge numbers of tests with the early boxes working out why it wasn't smooth. (Then also discovered that the way you multiplex audio makes a huge difference and adds it's own stuttering - and this is my generated stuff too)

cheers
paul
 
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