XF300 Frame Grabs

cowpunk52

cowpunk52

Veteran
Here are a couple of frame graps from my XF300. I haven't had a whole lot of time to get to know it lately, but yesterday I shot a couple of very quick audition scenes for an actor friend of mine to send to a NY production.

These are completely available light setups. I probably overexposed the first one a little. I was shooting completely handheld, and there is some motion blur in the actor's face because he was talking. I used a slightly tweaked version of Alan Roberts' BBC Film-look.

f/2, -6db
1279305182.jpg


f/2 (i think), +6db
1279305278.jpg
 
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Ok this thing blows a lot of stuff out right now out of the water. That image is VERY detailed. I'm absolutely STOKED to see what this thing pulls off with an adapter on it.

I think I found my next camera. Beyond what I know about the camera already, that last screenshot really got me excited. Give us more man!
 
cowpunk52-

tanx for the postings.

quick question, on the first shot-exterior/male/head shot/checkered shirt, approx how far away is the camera located and approx how much were u zoomed in?

i ask because i'm trying to get a sense of the narrowness of the dof of the lens and accompanying 1/3" chip. often w/a smaller chip "everything" is in focus. in the above referenced shot, the gal w/black hair and the green park-like setting of the background were not in focus.

thanks for any info u care to share.

be well

rob
smalltalk productions
 
Last one:

-6 db
1279555138.jpg


Shot with slightly tweaked version of Alan Roberts "BBC Video" preset @ 1080p30
 
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Now that is sharp. Theres a touch of minor mosquito noise in the image. You could probably turn the sharpness down a touch and clean that up a bit without any loss of detail.

What I am seeing - first image - girls black shirt, some lines / blocking. Rhino image under the lowest horizontal bar and right side girls arm in the last - same thing. Wonder if thats due to sharpness level as well?
 
Noel Evans said:
Now that is sharp. Theres a touch of minor mosquito noise in the image. You could probably turn the sharpness down a touch and clean that up a bit without any loss of detail.

What I am seeing - first image - girls black shirt, some lines / blocking. Rhino image under the lowest horizontal bar and right side girls arm in the last - same thing. Wonder if thats due to sharpness level as well?
Click to expand...

Could be - sharpness has been at default on everything I've done so far. Probably turning it down would do some good.
 
This is interesting - I was checking to see if those lines were a VLC-induced artifact. After transcoding the rino clip to ProRes, I get a slightly different gamma:

Here's a 100% crop of the VLC grab & the FCP grab side by side:

1279553958.jpg


You can see that the lines are still barely there in the FCP grab, but mitigated due to the increased contrast. I haven't tested yet whether it's a sharpness issue, which is what it looks like it could be to me.

I'm gonna lower sharpness and try some tests - will post results soon.

As a side note, the grab from ProRes is much closer to the true color of the scene, as I remember it. I thought the VLC grab looked a little washed out, but wasn't sure why.

edit: ***I've switched everything but the first two framegrabs to stills pulled from FCP ProRes files***
 
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ok, I think I found what my be the culprit behind those faint vertical lines & the mosquito noise:

I've been using very slightly tweaked versions of Alan Roberts BBC presets, which do alter sharpness levels; notably by turning up the "h detail freq," "hv detail bal" and "select" settings within the sharpness menu, sometimes by as much as 15 points. I've reset back to the defaults and put the main sharpness level at -3. I would venture to say that's going to clean up most of the artifacts seen here, but some testing is in order. Even as is, with the artifacts from the early BBC settings, the footage looks nothing short of breathtaking on a 60" plasma - I mean, utterly breathtaking... words cannot describe.

There are so many settings and so much custom-ability with this camera I can already tell it's going to take some time to learn how to get the absolute most of out. But the potential is tremendous!
 
Interesting. I think I actually like the look of the +6db shots the most.

Is there a +3db option?
 
agcohn said:
Interesting. I think I actually like the look of the +6db shots the most.

Is there a +3db option?
Click to expand...

Yes, there is a +3db option. One of the best things about this camera is that you can set the gain value in 0.5db increments from -6db up.
 
Ok, I don't have time to post up any frame grabs right now, but after some further testing it looks like the increased sharpness settings as specified in Alan Roberts BBC preferences (specifically "h detail freq" + 8, "hv detail bal" + 2 and "select" + 2, all others default) can introduce some very faint vertical blocks in some shadow areas. Taking all settings back to 0 (default) seems to get rid of them. Go figure.

Also, setting sharpness "level" to -3 results in a much more pleasing noise print than is demonstrated in my earlier frame grabs without any loss of detail.

I kinda feel like I'm talking to myself here... :p
 
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