FS7: What is the actual base sensitivity of the FS7

Ben Scott said:
I used to be an Avid engineer on the slightly later Quadras in the Mid 90s. Horrible machines that turned me off Apple for years way past the point of it being rational and only touched one again circa 2010.

As for your experience with Reds it's hard to comment I guess as my personal experience as an owner for a few years differed greatly, and we'd probably need to be watching precisely what each other are doing to ascertain what we are each doing 'right/wrong'. But as long as I have blackshaded correctly and exposed correctly I have never ever had a problem with shadows shooting at 800iso. 6:1 was my usual cutoff point for compression, but snuck through several 8:1 shots on a BBC doc I shot as a bit of a test and edit and colour didn't flag it. But you're absolutely right about what is 'acceptable' differs for everyone. Needlessly blown highlights drive me crazy.
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those were the dark years with what's his name holding the reigns.....i still wish i had the cash to buy apple stock then.....
to put things into perspective: i am sitting here editing a little fun thing i shot on my iPhone 6....i am on the iOS 9 beta and somehow the slow-mo only gave me the 720 option....and i am still pretty amazed how good this looks...it's my first time actually bringing iPhone footage into fcpx and honestly now i get it why we have features out now shot on iPhone (5!)...in two years we will have pretty awesome 4k in our pockets...and a note to self: i have to look at filmic pro again:)
 
I'm still very much of the line of thought that all the time you still need a professional lighting setup to have a professional looking film you are much better off also having a professional camera too and to use an iPhone for a feature, or more recently a commercial Burberry advert while still using £50,000 worth of grip gear is a gimmick at best. With that in mind I think it's advances in lighting that really be the next game changers in terms of what the smaller sized shoots can do.

But yes, it's ridiculous what phones can do now. :)
 
Wild topic drift.

Shot a short recently and quite a lot of scenes were natural.. eg miserable kitchen at lunchtime, shot at lunchtime in a miserable kitchen.

For that we put a diffused 2.5kHMI through the window.

Being a short we of course dropped schedule and in my own debrief (to my self) I wondered if we actually needed any light at all.. we did spend time lighting

Same with 'living room, daytime' - again we had a 'flo on the go and various other fiddles.

Did I need light? Im actually not sure!

The 'flo is lifting the ambient and crawling into the shadows, just to lift the DR in effect.. lighting for digital.. now is that needed with a pretty tidy 1200ISO cam like the FS7.. Im not sure.

We did another scene 'party' shot in daytime.. which was a huge hassle and required a lot of light (and blackouts!) and took an age to rig but really this was me fighting inappropriate scheduling rather than improving the 'professionalism' of the film

Mainly I light due to schedule rather than actually making it look good. Obviously with future or period or fantasty lights can become a huge element of the production design.

We also had a hospital bed which had to have two patients.. again I lit to try and 'make it a different room' changing the side of the key. Again with enough locations I would not have had to hide the set

So Im not sure you must light to get a pro look per se.

S
 
Adam_Levins said:
I have been shooting at Ei2000 but a colorist on set yesterday said he did extensive testing and found the least noise in the blacks at Ei1280 and he considered that to be the native sensitivity of the camera.

What do you fine shooters think? Cheers, Adam
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Hi Adam, in CineEI mode there is no NR, so off the bat it will have more noise. But of course rating the camera lower will always help produce "less noise" and a "cleaner" image.

NR in CineEI mode should come to FS7 through firmware hopefully soon, but as far as I know no official word.
 
I just dont see the point of NR in "CINE" mode.

To me Cine means 'will be post produced properly'

Adding NR later (if required) is better as it can be controlled properly.

S
 
In my tests when using Davinci Resolve for NR or Neat Video NR for example, the render rate decreases by 25-50 times. So what use to render at almost real-time 24 fps goes down between 0.5 to 1.0 fps. (macbook i7, 16GB, not fancy video card)

And that's HD. Throw some 4K in there and see how long it takes.

NR in post might be okay for short projects but anything longer it will surely give you headaches.
 
morgan_moore said:
Wild topic drift.

Shot a short recently and quite a lot of scenes were natural.. eg miserable kitchen at lunchtime, shot at lunchtime in a miserable kitchen.

For that we put a diffused 2.5kHMI through the window.

Being a short we of course dropped schedule and in my own debrief (to my self) I wondered if we actually needed any light at all.. we did spend time lighting

Same with 'living room, daytime' - again we had a 'flo on the go and various other fiddles.

Did I need light? Im actually not sure!

The 'flo is lifting the ambient and crawling into the shadows, just to lift the DR in effect.. lighting for digital.. now is that needed with a pretty tidy 1200ISO cam like the FS7.. Im not sure.

We did another scene 'party' shot in daytime.. which was a huge hassle and required a lot of light (and blackouts!) and took an age to rig but really this was me fighting inappropriate scheduling rather than improving the 'professionalism' of the film

Mainly I light due to schedule rather than actually making it look good. Obviously with future or period or fantasty lights can become a huge element of the production design.

We also had a hospital bed which had to have two patients.. again I lit to try and 'make it a different room' changing the side of the key. Again with enough locations I would not have had to hide the set

So Im not sure you must light to get a pro look per se.

S
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Pics or it didn't happen :)

Of course there are scenarios where you want to Barry Lyndon it and light with a candle or a single source or practicals, but nothing beats big light far away if you want your movie to look like a movie.

I'd rather shoot on an A7 with a decent grip truck than on Alexa with just my LEDs. I think high quality lighting+gaffer - both the technical quality and the creative quality - has a far better impact on what your end product looks like than camera/sensor choice or amount of grain in the image.
 
starcentral said:
In my tests when using Davinci Resolve for NR or Neat Video NR for example, the render rate decreases by 25-50 times. So what use to render at almost real-time 24 fps goes down between 0.5 to 1.0 fps. (macbook i7, 16GB, not fancy video card)

And that's HD. Throw some 4K in there and see how long it takes.

NR in post might be okay for short projects but anything longer it will surely give you headaches.
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Not sure I'd be trying to render out a feature on a laptop to be honest, so this would really be the same sort of issue for me. But NR is something I personally prefer on the post side.
 
Definitely not for features Ben, but the point is even for short projects it can be painful to render NR or even "digital filters" in post so you do it in camera or pay for it in post. And if we're talking paid gigs here, not personal projects, my clients at least are not going to pay for that post time and if I offer it FREE (which I have) they will not want to wait an extra day or so. Miss a deadline and you won't work for them again. That' the reality I live in but here in DVX la-la-land talk is very easy without any perspective. (not directed at you)

:cheesy:
 
Agree completely Dennis with that last comment. I think the fact this particular camera is a) so versatile and b) so affordable means it is very difficult to listen to somebody's advice on DVXUSER about a particular subject without first considering the source, the way they work, the type of work they do and whether they are actually any good and know what they're talking about. I've seen so much 'advice' bandied around by people who have never even held an FS7 let alone worked with one. Drives me crazy. I totally get that time is a real factor for the sort of stuff you seem to be doing, but then would that also maybe suggest that Cine-EI is more trouble than it's worth for your particular workflow? Or do you just want to have your cake and eat it too? :)


Nice stuff on that thread Sam. Especially liked the studio performance stuff on that music promo.
 
Personally I think NR means 'operator error' in all but the most extreme cases. One candle religious ceremony in the jungle maybe?

Ben.. thats the FS100 :)

S
 
5 redheads. One over two at each side.

Obviously to build something - be that a party in an empty location or a look on a bloke in a blacked out studio one needs lights. The other lighting I was questioning was basically using lights to lift the existing scene. Cameras will get to a point we we dont need to that beyond reasons of art/production design/continuity.. are we there?

Interestingly the last frame of that vid could have done with NR.. because we filmed at a very specific time of day (last light) and could not get a faster lens easily.. that was my 400/2.8 wide open

That is where NR comes in.. specialist shots.

S
 
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Still can't beat a bit of tungsten, but I've recently bought an Arri L7c but not had a chance to use it in anger yet. Can't wait. It's like the FS7 of lights. Any colour temp. Any hue. Any tint. Fresnel. Equivalent to a 1k tungsten. On the downside it is huge.

I think the option of using slight 'ambient fill' that you'll bring down later in post is always one to go for if given the option/time/budget.
 
morgan_moore said:

Did I need light? Im actually not sure!

The 'flo is lifting the ambient and crawling into the shadows, just to lift the DR in effect.. lighting for digital.. now is that needed with a pretty tidy 1200ISO cam like the FS7.. Im not sure.
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Surely it's either a very obvious technical reason or an aesthetic reason for choice of lighting but your example falls in the grey area between two stools.

One of my pet hates is over lighting to the point where the lighting is so stylised it's obviously fake, many US short film DPs seem to go down this particular route. Being a Brit I suppose I'm more inclined to lean towards the Brit Movie aesthetic of a more naturalistic documentary rendition of lighting for short films.

Like this particular bit of genius,

Blockbusters just take light or to be more accurate re-lighting to the next level with their reliance on green screens and virtual sets. But I do think technology will get us closer with cameras shooting depth passes, low noise sensors with massive DR just around the corner. Most lighting choices will be made in post < 5 years.

I'm pretty sure the next iPhone will be shooting HDR with depth passes from a miniature Kinect style sensor so you can focus in post and if you can great a 3D reconstruction you can begin to do relighting.
 
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There's a gaping chasm of difference and stopping off points between the Life is Sweet/Sightseers/Brit approach and the OTT Peter Jackson/CGI/Marvel one. I don't think they are anywhere near the the only touchstones.

Myself, my particular passions growing up were gritty Hollywood of the 70s, 70s & 80s Spielberg obviously, and a lot of Hong Kong cinema but then also the likes of Gilliam and Jeneut that were world builders as much as they were story tellers. Their work in particular tended to be very quite stylised but not Hollywood shiny. More recently I find a wonderful synthesis of 'technique' and 'serving the narrative' in South Korean cinema of the last decade or so and find it hugely inspirational.

More recently when I was shooting Red-only for few years, the absolute example of perfect organic use of a digital camera (Epic in particular) was Rust and Bone, which was beautiful and warm and naturalistic.
 
Adam_Levins said:
I have been shooting at Ei2000 but a colorist on set yesterday said he did extensive testing and found the least noise in the blacks at Ei1280 and he considered that to be the native sensitivity of the camera. What do you fine shooters think? Cheers, Adam
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Obviously anyone can rate their camera at any ISO they want to. But if you buy into Sony's suggestion that a 90% white target with S-LOG2 should be exposed at 59%, or S-LOG3 at 61%, then the camera's displayed ISO of 2000 in slighly incorrect. I rate the camra at 1600 using a Cine-Xenar 95mm prime, a Leader LV5330 waveform monitor, a dimmable Litepanels Fresnel, the white side of a genuine Kodak gray card, and my Sekonic L-758C lighter meter to check the sensitivity at several different f/stops. I am absolutely certain that 1600 is the correct number.

In my own case, I don't give a crap about the displayed ISO because I'm not normally using a light meter to calculate my exposure. But the interesting thing is that if you expose your whites with zebras or the waveform at 61% for S-LOG3, you are already rating the camera at 1600 instead of 2000 whether you know it or not.
 
Out of interest, on the 'naming the ISO' side of things is it a case of Sony simply sticking what they perceived as a 'closest' ISO figure on the set Gain dB increments that are a more direct legacy of their traditional former camera heritage?
 
No matter the reason, it is sloppy. ISO is an international standard and is supposed to be perfectly accurate. If the display says something it is not, then it is a screw up. Previous Sony cameras I've tested were also wrong, but my F55 (which I retested today) is right on the money. If you really want to see some inaccurate numbers, jump over to the Custom Mode with any of the Sony cameras and check how those displayed ISO's measure in the real world. They are way off. Fortunately, it doesn't matter unless you are using a light meter to set exposure.
 
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