Tests with production AF100

Dagauss? Is that when I touch the tentacle looking thing attached to the back of a CRT with a suction cup? Can't seem to remember...
 
I think that's all for today, boys and girls. I hope these have been helpful. To repeat, all shots straight from the Final Cut timeline, no grading of any kind. Settings were: Film Like with Detail at -7, V Detail -4, Chroma -2, Coring +2, and Pedestal at -2. All 24fps/180° Shutter. We're working on the Green Screen, which we shot at 60fps/180° shutter.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, so I'll try to get some shots outside; unless Joe Walker get's slammed with "real" work, he will give you some motion clips to review.

I can see no noise in any of the clips. No ghosting. The pictures are pretty, organic, filmic; the one problem is the transition into clip. Perhaps I've simply not found the right settings to avoid it, but slipping even slightly into overexposure is quite abrupt and not pretty on skin tone. Control for that and everything is dandy. Cine D helps, but I'm not sure that's my preferred look. Depending on the relative size of your subject on the LCD, this can be difficult; when in doubt, stop down.

I fully expect to have several settings for various situations, and intend to experiment with the highly maligned DRS. Maybe a setting of 1 will be clean enough to use.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
thanks for the insights, I like what you got out of the cine-D so i think I am going to work from there.

We just got one of ours today and slapped on the Nokton .95 since that was the only lens we had, pretty cool I must say
 
The pictures are pretty, organic, filmic; the one problem is the transition into clip. Perhaps I've simply not found the right settings to avoid it, but slipping even slightly into overexposure is quite abrupt and not pretty on skin tone. Control for that and everything is dandy.
I've always treated my DVX100 the same. As long as I don't see zebra stripes on people's skin, it looks excellent. No doubt the same applies to the AF100.

Thanks for posting these stills. For me, the Cine D is the most pleasing image setting of the bunch by far.
 
Leo,
Not only thanks, but you're to be truly commended for posting any tests after the "Nightmare on Noise Street!"
I hope to have my cam Friday and will start off with Cine D, I believe...
BTW, did you use the in cam Waveform? If so, what did you see, especially on the single light face?
Thanks again!
 
Leo,
Not only thanks, but you're to be truly commended for posting any tests after the "Nightmare on Noise Street!"
I hope to have my cam Friday and will start off with Cine D, I believe...
BTW, did you use the in cam Waveform? If so, what did you see, especially on the single light face?
Thanks again!

Funny you should post this... OK, I won't go further with this thought...

Yes, we did play with the waveform; it's very helpful for things like setting the green screen levels and gives a nice overall look at the exposure for shots in general, but may not help spot the small areas of burn out that can bite you. Zebras help as well. For me, nothing beats looking at a well calibrated monitor.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
Cine D FTW, for me. Look at the yellow bell peppers - on the right side, all washed out and sloppy looking, except in Cine D.
 
Cine D FTW, for me. Look at the yellow bell peppers - on the right side, all washed out and sloppy looking, except in Cine D.

You do realize that you're viewing a jpg file captured from motion, don't you?

I think my work is done here.
 
You do realize that you're viewing a jpg file captured from motion, don't you?

I think my work is done here.

yikes you know Leo's angry when he doesn't post the customary "Good shooting and best regards," it's the equivalent of him storming off the set! lol
 
Thanks for posting your test results, Leo. From the stills, I like Cine-D the most as there's less clipping and it seems to be a more smooth DR and could be easier to do grading with. I'll wait to see your video though before I get set on anything. Plus I'll test with my own AF100 this weekend (arrives on Friday).
 
The irony of Cine D to me is that everything you would do to it in post will end up being the equivalent of Cine V in camera. I'm just saying.....
 
The irony of Cine D to me is that everything you would do to it in post will end up being the equivalent of Cine V in camera. I'm just saying.....

Not necessarily. In post I would just slightly crush darks but preserve the mid and upper ranges that Cine D is good at maintaining.
 
my thoughts exactly regarding cineD.
it's the only one preserving highlights, and I'd give just a bit more bite to the blacks.

as much as I used cineV on my HVX, it was only ever a compromise over cineD as I wanted to kill as much shadow noise when I became one of the B-press crew.

I'd love to be able to draw my own lookup curves though and make the White rolloff of cineD even smoother.
When using Shake in a 16-bit world, that's what I did for my own LogLin conversion.
LogLin in Nuke in float space is a different matter altogether...
 
The irony of Cine D to me is that everything you would do to it in post will end up being the equivalent of Cine V in camera. I'm just saying.....

Not necessarily. In post I would just slightly crush darks but preserve the mid and upper ranges that Cine D is good at maintaining.

my thoughts exactly regarding cineD.
it's the only one preserving highlights, and I'd give just a bit more bite to the blacks.

as much as I used cineV on my HVX, it was only ever a compromise over cineD as I wanted to kill as much shadow noise when I became one of the B-press crew.

I'd rather have the flatter/smoother DR of Cine-D and have more to work with than Cine-V. You have more to work with if the look you're going for is different than what Cine-V gives you.
 
I'd rather have the flatter/smoother DR of Cine-D and have more to work with than Cine-V. You have more to work with if the look you're going for is different than what Cine-V gives you.

I wish there was a curve with Cine-D at the highlights and Cine-V at the shadows. From what I've seen so far, that would be the best of both worlds for me.
 
It really depends on the project.

Many people who claim the 5D looks punchier than some AF-100 tests on vimeo right now, forget the cineV setting is basically what the 5D does.

My favourite on the HVX was B.press for stuff that should look punchy. CineV is ok, but I rather stay at cineD if I am not sure how the exact look will be in post.

HD-Norm is used a lot on my HVX also, especially when shooting for broadcast. It has the most natural look and doesn´t need much post.

I don´t have a AF100 yet but from what I see in all these tests I suggest to play with pedestal a little to get more shadow-detail if needed.

The shot by Leo with the lamp is spectacular IMO. All three settings look good depending on your project. CineV indeed shines when you have a black backdrop. No noise whatsoever. CineD will always introduce noise on Panasonics. It is part of their Mojo. Even their photocameras are known for this, still they sell millions, because they work and it looks good, when you stop pixelpeeping.

The peppers show the characteristics even more: HD-Norm is natural, CineV is ready to go and cineD leaves room in the post-process.p

Thanks Leo, great testshots.
 
I did an off the cuff shot available light shot with my dog as the star the other night. Specs were 800 ISO, cinelike matrix, high gamma, and all zeros across the board for the rest of the scene file as the camera had just come out of the box. The result was actually pretty amazing since Molly was lit by 2 stray sources that I metered afterwards at 1.9 FC and 2.2 FC.

THere was definitely some noise in shot and subsequently I have discovered that the FLOU matrix is much quieter than cine like, and maybe even a shade better than HD Norm.

I was kind of underwhelmed after my first meeting with the AF , but have since come to see that, while it doesn't meet some of my expectations, the AF really does have quite a bit of potential and represents a significant advance in HD cameras.
 
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