The Footage from Leo's shoot...

[dustylense]

Even better, I downloaded the ProRes HQ file and watched that with scaling off. About 12ft back from my plasma, 5ft back from my 17" MBP. Still noisy. It's not a resolution or sharpness issue. It's noise.

I watched this vid on 4 different devices, only noise I see is on my Macs. On my LED, and 73in. DLP, the footage looks fabulous. I even like the noise on the grey backround shots in this clip. Looks like a nice tight grain. I didn't see any of this noise in Blooms vid. Thus it shows me the camera can be set up for looks just like my HVX.

Guys, if you don't like it, don't buy it so I can get mine sooner....

 

[Barry_Green]

I downloaded and watched the footage on my imac and there was a noticeable amount of noise in every shot. Is this a compression thing? Could it be my monitor? At :52 the black top is dancing with noise, it is almost distracting. Is anyone else experiencing this?

It's your monitor, people. We were there with a professionally calibrated monitor, some extremely experienced pros who shoot on VariCam and Red all day long, a professional DIT, and we were staring at the footage like mad pixel peepers, and nobody complained about noise at all.*

Calibrate your monitor and view it again.


* except when we went to ISOs of 2000 or above, then yeah, especially at 3200, sure we saw lots of noise. But the folks there all seemed to think 1600 looked acceptable, 800 looked good, and 400 was where he shot most of the stuff.

 

[mrmoonay]

Even better, I downloaded the ProRes HQ file and watched that with scaling off. About 12ft back from my plasma, 5ft back from my 17" MBP. Still noisy. It's not a resolution or sharpness issue. It's noise.

Right. You can watch 5D footage from 1 foot away at iso 1250 and there's barley any noise. Plus, the H.264 is even a heavier compression... so it should be better. Crazy stuff. Are SLR sensors really that much better? I know bigger photo sites are supposed to be better for noise and DR.. but maybe there really is some huge advantage to down sampling from a 14-20 mega-pixel chip... the dis-advantage obviously being aliasing.

 

[ilauzirika]

Barry do you recommend any specific place to get some good bars to calibrate the monitor?

 

[Barry_Green]

I don't think it's compression causing noise. But something looks a little weird about the compression in the clip I downloaded from vimeo, and am watching on the big Panny plasma. The smoke effect at the top of the video is pretty color banded. Who knows if it's there originally or a result of some compression that could also be effecting the rest of the video. So far I'm the only person to notice the large highlight areas that are reflecting off of foreheads as basically one shade. And look, I know this camera's a great value. I'm in the process of trying to weigh the pros and cons of going with the AF100 or stepping up to the F3. I was totally on board the Af100 as a steal. But when I see the noise, and the large highlight areas, I realize I need to know more about what's going on here. And probably, I need to see a few more tests too. (I have actually already ordered the AF100!)

Tell me what exact shot you're talking about, what timecode areas in the video, and I'll go pull a still and put it up uncompressed and you can see if you still see the issue. If you do still see the issue then there's maybe something to talk about. And if you don't see the issue in the still, then -- that's proof positive that it's either in the way your computer is playing it back, or you have something like a 6-bit LCD panel that's causing banding, or maybe vimeo's recompression 8-bitted the gradients out. Because we sure didn't see anything objectionable while we were there.

 

[Barry_Green]

I watched this vid on 4 different devices, only noise I see is on my Macs. On my LED, and 73in. DLP, the footage looks fabulous. I even like the noise on the grey backround shots in this clip. Looks like a nice tight grain. I didn't see any of this noise in Blooms vid. Thus it shows me the camera can be set up for looks just like my HVX.

And that's what I'm talking about. A computer monitor that is amplifying the darks is going to exaggerate the appearance of noise, while a properly-calibrated monitor is going to make it look fantastic. Not noise-free, as there is always noise in any video signal. But when used on a proper video monitor or television, the noise is just not visible or just barely there.

 

[bhdfield]

Seriously -- run some color bars on your computer screen, and look at the PLUGE in the lower right. There should be three bars, a super-black, a black, and an extremely dark gray. If you can easily discern between them, then your monitor is not properly calibrated for showing video. You shouldn't be able to tell AT ALL between the super-black and black, and you should only just barely be able to detect the extremely dark gray bar. It should be almost invisible to tell it apart from the black and super-black. Set up your monitor right, and then report back, and I think you'll be infinitely happier.

I have downloaded every single piece of test footage I have found for the AF100 in full-res, and placed on a drive through my PS3 for playback to my Panny 50" plasma. I have watched them all in great detail, probably 8 or 9 videos in total. I have also done the same with "Convergence", the short done with the F3. This test is, for whatever reason, showing more noise, in all shots, than any of the other Af100 test samples. I have spent my career in this business, and I know what video noise looks like on a studio monitor, sitting 10 feet away. I own an HVX, so I should know what it looks like. This particular clip is for whatever reason, very noisy compared to the others, in the greys and blacks.

 

[mrmoonay]

Okay, seriously, for the last time (hopefully) -- it is impossible for the GH2 to be cleaner than the AF100. Simply impossible.

How is that impossible? The DSLR's still look 2x as clean. ISO 400 here looks like ISO 1250 on a 7D. Why can't the GH2? Doesn't it have more pixels? Perhaps down sampling + the SLR's noise reduction results in a cleaner image. We're all aware of aliasing problems... but have you looked into Canon's noise reduction tech? It's pretty impressive stuff. Not sure what the AF-100 has in this area, if at all.

Trust me, I want a camera with better compression and less aliasing as much as anyone. I'm ready for a camera like the AF-100... but not at the price of DR and Noise. I know some people really hate aliasing... but it's just not that much of an issue for me as noise and low-light capabilities are.

And I very much, very very much, disagree that 400 ISO here looks like 1250 on the 7D. And if I still had that thing, I'd shoot side-by-side to prove it, but I don't. But I had a 7D, and I would in no wise ever use it beyond ISO 800, and I think most of the folks here would tell you that 640 is about the limit of how high they like to push their 7D's. And I am pretty sure that 640 on the AF100 would look at least as good as 640 on the 7D.

You can push it farther once you start tweaking the custom profiles... Shane Halbut has a great method he was talking about somewhere.

 

[Barry_Green]

Barry do you recommend any specific place to get some good bars to calibrate the monitor?

Premiere and Vegas can generate them, I'd assume any NLE could do so. If your NLE doesn't, your camcorder might be able to, so just generate bars and record them and then import the footage.

 

[Mike@AF]

Premiere and Vegas can generate them, I'd assume any NLE could do so. If your NLE doesn't, your camcorder might be able to, so just generate bars and record them and then import the footage.

FCP has them too. I forget exactly where, but they're there.

 

[Barry_Green]

How is that impossible? The DSLR's still look 2x as clean. ISO 400 here looks like ISO 1250 on a 7D. Why can't the GH2? Doesn't it have more pixels? Perhaps down sampling + noise reduction results in less noise.

Trust me, I want a camera with better compression and less aliasing as much as anyone. I'm ready for a camera like the AF-100... but not at the price of DR and Noise. I know some people really hate aliasing... but it's just not that much of an issue for me as noise and low-light capabilities are.

Can you explain to me, just for a moment, how every one of us who isn't seeing this massive noise problem, is blind? Or is there perhaps some other explanation possible?

I guarantee you that the GH2 and AF100's sensors are going to be of comparable generation technology, since they're both being released at the same time. And that the image processing in the AF100 is superior to what's in the GH2. And therefore, anything the GH2 can do, the AF100 can do at least as well, if not better. If you're seeing differences in the GH2 footage, it's due to one of several things -- either post-processing noise reduction by whoever's posting the footage, or post-processing image manipulation (grading) that's moving the noisy areas deeper down and crushing out the noise, or you're seeing the results of the AF100's codec not mushing out the noise like a lower-bitrate codec would.

 

[Barry_Green]

And I very much, very very much, disagree that 400 ISO here looks like 1250 on the 7D. And if I still had that thing, I'd shoot side-by-side to prove it, but I don't. But I had a 7D, and I would in no wise ever use it beyond ISO 800, and I think most of the folks here would tell you that 640 is about the limit of how high they like to push their 7D's. And I am pretty sure that 640 on the AF100 would look at least as good as 640 on the 7D.

 

[David Saraceno]

I just don't see it.

Both spouse and I have viewed the pro res 422 HQ footage and the vimeo footage.

Both on computer and out HDMI to a Pioneer Eite Plasma 42".

I guess we are the blind ones.

 

[mrmoonay]

Can you explain to me, just for a moment, how every one of us who isn't seeing this massive noise problem, is blind? Or is there perhaps some other explanation possible?

I'm just basing it off of Philip Bloom's London Gala shoot, which was super-clean. He said the ISO was varied between 160 and 3200 I believe? But the point is... none of it was as noisy as the AF-100 appears to be at even 800. Doesn't the GH2 have more pixles to start with? Obviously, that means the noise is going to be less pronounced when the camera down-samples to 1920x1080... that's just common sense.

 

[PerroneFord]

If anybody needs a Pro Res 422 HQ version of this pm me and I'll direct you to an FTP site.

Yes, I'd like to see that. Can we get camera native? Maybe 30 seconds?

 

[Mike@AF]

Seriously -- run some color bars on your computer screen, and look at the PLUGE in the lower right. There should be three bars, a super-black, a black, and an extremely dark gray. If you can easily discern between them, then your monitor is not properly calibrated for showing video. You shouldn't be able to tell AT ALL between the super-black and black, and you should only just barely be able to detect the extremely dark gray bar. It should be almost invisible to tell it apart from the black and super-black. Set up your monitor right, and then report back, and I think you'll be infinitely happier.

I just checked my displays, which were already calibrated, and they're still calibrated properly. I even threw it into FCP real quick and tried 3-way Color Corrector and MB Looks and still see the noise. The problem is that I even see the same noise in the midtone grays on the food shots. Also, and maybe this is part of it, I realized the download file from Vimeo is H.264 and not ProRes HQ.

I'm right there with bhdfield. I've watched all of the AF100 footage I could find that's been thrown on the net so far and this is the noisiest looking of them all. Granted, this is the best looking out of everything, but it's also the noisiest, if that makes sense. So I'm not really concerned because I've seen less noisy footage from the AF100 than this. Heck (and you're not gonna want to hear this) footage I shot with my GH1 has less noise than this. I am strictly talking noise though. The GH1 doesn't compare to the AF100 in any other regard.

Noise aside, it looks fantastic. I'm still getting the camera.

 

[groveChuck]

We experimented a little with detail coring to see how they liked it in context with noise, especially on the shot of the flowers. But after that we took it right back down and it stayed at no more than +2 throughout the rest of the shoot.

Barry- do you know what the Detail and Master Ped settings were?

Very nice looking stuff, love the peppers and flowers, the models too.

THANKS for your efforts, you and Team Ticheli- thanks Leo :thumbup:

 

[derbrocks09]

Could someone please explain how I go about downloading and saving the file so I can watch it on my plasma? I'm a Vimeo newbie and just signed up to "download this video". It doesn't give me an option to save it. Help!



I too see a ton of noise but feel comforted by Barry's comments. I'd just like to see the images with comparable noise to my 7d for myself.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Duke M.]

How is that impossible? The DSLR's still look 2x as clean. ISO 400 here looks like ISO 1250 on a 7D. Why can't the GH2? Doesn't it have more pixels? Perhaps down sampling + the SLR's noise reduction results in a cleaner image. We're all aware of aliasing problems... but have you looked into Canon's noise reduction tech? It's pretty impressive stuff. Not sure what the AF-100 has in this area, if at all.

The noise is in the scenes with the 10 candles, it was pushed up to 3200 ISO. You're always going to get noise that high.

As far as the GH1/2 being a different number of pixels as the AF100, they are all three about 3.4 Megapixels, the same as the F3 and Alexa BTW.

You're probably one of those guys that just needs to test it yourself side by side.

 

[Mike@AF]

Could someone please explain how I go about downloading and saving the file so I can watch it on my plasma? I'm a Vimeo newbie and just signed up to "download this video". It doesn't give me an option to save it. Help!

If you click on "Download this video" it should just start downloading after a moment. That's how it works for me. You could try right clicking on the link and then "Save to", "Download to", or whatever your browser has.