FS7: This grading thing (or why choose Cine IE or Custom mode)

Grug said:
And will possibly look better through the use of Instagram-type filters...
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Knock Instagram filters at your peril.

Above I alluded to the fact that stills cameras (shooting stills) do pop into looking great while offering more options in post. LR and C1 are loaded full of 'looks' - quickly applied they work, and in the business of post speed is a factor.

In stills (often weddings) commercial operators are churning out huge piles of images based on these looks and getting paid well to do so. The wedding photographer who does not offer 'sepia' puts himself at serious disadvantage.. because that is what the public want.

And will want more of as they become 'au fait' with 'looks' because they roll their own looks every day on their phone.

Clearly video post is seriously behind on this. Flinty should reasonably expect an expensive video camera to be very easy to 'normalise' and look great 'normalised', or add whatever look/filter he wants

The PMW F3 failed (IMO) completely as a camera because Sony gave no hint on how to 'normalise' it, leaving one to hit boards like this to search for home-build LUTs which never really worked.

The fact that we ever even see an Slog image is basically wrong as all that should happen 'under the hood'

Also knock Flinty at your peril. Because he is talking like a member of production or an editor - people who think life is just too short to get lectures off cam ops about complex technical baja and just want a sweet picture.

S
 
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At what point does the skill of the operator have something to do with continuity of images? I find the better the operator the better the riding of the camera in varying circumstances. You can't expect even the world's best hammer to hammer itself.

Also, just for the record, there will always be people who have appalling taste. People that want a white vignette around their awful flat formal wedding shot. You don't necessarily get more work just by catering to the lowest common denominator. I have some amazing wedding photographers as friends and they get hired because of what they bring to the party, not because the couple want to tell them how they want their shots processed. Likewise, I am not interested in doing work where I cannot guarantee by my standards that it will be good.
 
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flinty said:
Inexperienced,i do it for fun true but since 1970,i have hired the big things a few times the footage was good strait off camera,seems like your not allowed reasonable input without put downs.Thanks again Nirv for your good reply
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Absolutely agree, no room for putdowns, insults or aggression.

"Good" straight off the camera is a tricky concept though - the definition of "good" depends on the requirements of the final user (either yourself if its personal work or the person who pays the bills otherwise) and also its final destination and the chain it needs to travel along to get there. In the days of HDV there were endless comments from users about how fantastic the pictures looked straight out of cameras - when played straight out of the camera via HDMI into their HDTVs - and I'm sure they did, don't doubt it one bit - and yet the broadcasters wouldn't accept the material for TV use. This was largely because of the editing and then broadcasting chain that the footage had to go through to get to the screen - things like the codec and lenses started to show massive flaws by the end of it. Same was true of the Canon 5D - BBC R&D didn't even finish their testing but dismissed it very quickly as totally unacceptable, yet I'm sure there are thousands of happy users out there.

Steve
 
steve phillipps said:
Same was true of the Canon 5D - BBC R&D didn't even finish their testing but dismissed it very quickly as totally unacceptable, yet I'm sure there are thousands of happy users out there.

Steve
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It didn't stop BBC using the 5D all over the place when it suited them. Their commitment to quality is largely a charade and their guidelines broken when it suits them. A friend who worked at New Propaganda House for a while told me quite a few stories about their so called commitment to quality and the urination of money up the wall on vanity projects. The license fee is a tax on stupidity.
 
Nirv said:
It didn't stop BBC using the 5D all over the place when it suited them.
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That does fit in quite happily with what I said though - it depends on the requirements of the end user - for certain programmes the 5D would have been acceptable, but definitely not the mainstay of their output.

Steve
 
steve phillipps said:
Absolutely agree, no room for putdowns, insults or aggression.

"Good" straight off the camera is a tricky concept though - the definition of "good" depends on the requirements of the final user (either yourself if its personal work or the person who pays the bills otherwise) and also its final destination and the chain it needs to travel along to get there. In the days of HDV there were endless comments from users about how fantastic the pictures looked straight out of cameras - when played straight out of the camera via HDMI into their HDTVs - and I'm sure they did, don't doubt it one bit - and yet the broadcasters wouldn't accept the material for TV use. This was largely because of the editing and then broadcasting chain that the footage had to go through to get to the screen - things like the codec and lenses started to show massive flaws by the end of it. Same was true of the Canon 5D - BBC R&D didn't even finish their testing but dismissed it very quickly as totally unacceptable, yet I'm sure there are thousands of happy users out there.

Steve
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Steve we had a chat on the Shannon wildlife film,my point was as Morgan moore said to reasonably expect an expensive video camera to be very easy to 'normalise' and look great 'normalised', or add whatever look/filter he wantsn,maybe iam wrong but as i have said i am happy at present with the results from my modest 4K camera.Perhaps we all like different looks to our films,ITV still use programns shot on 16mm film like Doc Martin,personaly i dont like that look at all,everyone with ruddy red faces,all the best Chris
 
Time to haul out my favorite metaphor, the car. Always seems to fit the bill.

You can by a basic Honda with an automatic transmission and it will reliably get you where you want to go. No frills, nothing outlandish, but it will stop at a light, go in reverse when you ask it to, and accelerate appropriately both in heavy traffic and on the highway to keep you out of trouble. If that's what you are looking for out of a car then such a vehicle makes the most sense and you'll be happy with its performance.

But if you are a professional driver you will want a high performance machine, with a specialized engine, a manual transmission that you will need to pay a great deal of attention to in order to keep performance optimized, and a bunch of gauges and displays to tell you how the various parts are performing at all times. Put Mario Andretti in the driver's seat and he can do wonders, performance that the little Honda would explode if it tried to match. Put any of 1000 other pro drivers in there and they can certainly work the machine well and get pro level performance. Put a civilian driver behind the wheel and he probably will stall the engine after 10 feet, or kick into gear and slam into a wall.

No, a professional camera should not give a "good" image straight off the camera. But a professional camera used by someone properly trained should deliver performance well beyond what a consumer device ever could.
 
Well in stills (which I will constantly refer to because the workflow is so far ahead) the pro cameras do both at the same time - jpgs for quick turnaround jobs or client selection and Raw for deep manipulation when time allows.

Those jpgs are good- better than a consumer cam.

A proper stills cam is the best tool for Freds 9th Birthday (driving to the shops) or the Olympics.

S
 
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morgan_moore said:
Well in stills (which I will constantly refer to because the workflow is so far ahead) the pro cameras do both at the same time - jpgs for quick turnaround jobs or client selection and Raw for deep manipulation when time allows.

Those jpgs are good- better than a consumer cam.

A proper stills cam is the best tool for Freds 9th Birthday (driving to the shops) or the Olympics.

S
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Sounds like the new VariCam. ; )
 
It's a hell of a lot easier for a stills camera to do this since it is capturing a single frame at a time. Get into motion picture work and things change very fast.
 
Mitch - I'm well aware that dealing with a few frames a minute is easier cpu wise. It the concept that great images have to 'hurt' that I disagree with. Personally I don't think it is 'hard' (macho) to use complex tools - I just think it detracts from the core job of getting the best for the director and from the talent.

If you have ever worked stills with a cam like the D3 or 1Dx you would get me.. the things are basically an extension of the body they enable concentration on the actual job - I guess the amera is closest to that experience in S35 motion pictures.

R.G The varicam does indeed appear to be well conceived in file management- too heavy for me though - I guess that is the trade off.
 
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Hi Ben,
You are right of course, a forum is not a place to get answers, only opinions. And to judge opinions you need experience. I bought the camera for the specs. The correction/coloring part wasn't part of the marketing. So I have to learn and try.

It is the same with soft cheese like camembert/brie, lots of recepies on the Internet but no one of them complete. One has to find out yourself. And in the end you can make a very nice piece of cheese. :-)

What I do not like is reactions with the tendency to compare this kind of camera's with a F1 car, 'high tech, needs skilled driver/team', the way I want to use a camera is lik a freight truck or a cab, some polish or dutch driver getting lots of goods/passengers from A to B in an easy way.

In the meantime I like and appreciate your comments.
 
I agree with Sam and Publimix, with video cameras there's no reason the technology should be so complex (like a F-1 race car) that it requires some specialized knowledge to operate and get pleasing images out of.

In fact from what I see Sony is the only one with this issue when you compare it to other companies like RED, ARRI, and Canon.

My guess is Sony served (and continues to serve) the broadcast market segment where it makes most of it's money. What money is it going to make off people trying to get video to look like still frames off DSLR which look better?

Maybe they are changing their views however, sgamut3/slog3 is sort of proof of that… and RAW recording capability.
 
starcentral said:
My guess is Sony served (and continues to serve) the broadcast market segment where it makes most of it's money. What money is it going to make off people trying to get video to look like still frames off DSLR which look better?

Maybe they are changing their views however, sgamut3/slog3 is sort of proof of that… and RAW recording capability.
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there's a huge nonbroadcast market that has every bit as much ambition to get the best image out of their cameras. You only have to look at the standard of independent producers work on Vimeo to see they want cameras like the FS7. Sony had a few missteps to get here, the FS100 was not a triumph, the FS700 not much better but with the FS7 Sony was prepared to cannibalise F5 sales to target a much broader market. Sony cannot make the FS7 fast enough to meet current demand, so it appears to be a resounding hit and no doubt due to the sensibly compressed 10 bit SLog output that you really can 'develop' in the grade.
 
Indeed.

And the FS7 is everything us previous F3 owners wanted at the time. So much so that many people were going for that RGB/Slog upgrade for $3300 and an external recorder for it just to get it in 10-bit. One thing Sony did a bit smart was initially release the FS7 with only slog3. I'm not sure if it was on purpose, but fitting into current and existing cineon based gamma curve workflows was smart the way I look at it and also releasing it with sgamut3.cine which still in my opinion is the holy grail as far as Sony goes and leaving that Sony nuclear color look behind itself.
 
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