Raw samples of Canon XF300 & Sony EX1R

[Brian Woods]

I think the UK has much higher & more rigid standards than it's US broadcast counterparts. Honestly, you'd be amazed at what can be considered acceptable for broadcast over here; and sometimes the decisions that are made are obviously counter-intuitive and do lead to problematic broadcasts. Then again, sometimes it works, too - the House episode shot entirely on the 5d mark II was a good case of that. They spent as much on post with that episode as they do with their normal 35mm film post, and were really able to subdue the natural DSLR artifacts (color banding, moire, aliasing, etc) while still giving it a pleasing filmic texture.

Going back to the comparison, I think you're right, the color sampling is probably what's at play when viewed so closely, and I would imagine that at the same sampling rate, the EX would not produce the blocking and would still be less noisy.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

Adding noise is strictly taboo in the UK as it messes up the narrow bandwidth transmissions used for Digital TV broadcasts. The broadcasters go to great lengths to filter out any noise prior to compression for broadcast .......

Yes, exactly. I suspect in the case Brian talks about, those who wish to add the noise make all their judgements on footage in the edit suite, where the compression is still relatively light.

It's quite conceivable that adding noise may be felt to give a nicer "look" there - then when it looks bad on transmission it's a case of oh well, the standards of those broadcasters are so low..... It's been said many times that it's not sufficient to judge camera pictures in isolation, straight out of the edit suite - it has to be done as part of a chain.

[Les Wilson]

I remember noticing how the Sony clips from my TRV-900 lacked the pink of human skin tones when I moved off my Sony TRV-900 to a Canon XL1s but I chalked it up to moving to a better camera. Is this just a PP setting or what?

[Ken Hull]

Is it just my imagination, or are these CGI images? They look a lot like a rendering I saw for a Lightwave 3D how-to book a few years ago.

Ken

[Cristian Adrian Olariu]

Well, it's just your imagination. These are frames from actual footage recorded on those camcorders.

[Alister Chapman]

There is a big difference in the lighting, white balance and exposure between the two shots which doesn't help making an accurate assessment. But Sony cameras do tend to have a lot of yellow in them. At the same time Canon's cameras tend to have a little too much red (giving a pink hue to clouds etc). It's easy enough to adjust these out in the Matrix of either camera however.
Sony have always tried to make all their cameras have similar colorimetry from todays latest cameras to early tube cameras and I think this is where the yellow bias comes from. It may also be a bias that favours Asian skin tones.
When I used to have a Canon H1 I used to run with a CP with some -R in the matrix for a more neutral look. With the EX1R I use various PP's for different jobs, but they almost always start off from something like this:

R-G +6, R-B +10, G-R -6, G-B -8, B-R -15, B-G -10

[Peter Moretti]

Originally Posted by Cristian Adrian Olariu

Well, it's just your imagination. These are frames from actual footage recorded on those camcorders.

Those pictures have zero value. I'm surprised Chris hasn't just removed them.

[Andrew Stone]

Haha, those are definately CGI based images. Les, I don't know where you acquired those images but they are certainly not from a video camera. Alister's comments would have been a good analysis if they were in fact real. haha. In point of fact, the CGI photo attributed as the Sony based image has more in common with the idiosyncrasies of Panasonic based output than Sony.

Any discussion on this is completely ridiculous. If it was a Sony camera, as Alister has pointed out obviously it wasn't white balanced. Sony cameras never pushes out this kind of yellow skin on a properly balanced camera or even one that is off and set for daylight but shooting under tungsten. It's just preposterous. haha.

[Les Wilson]

The stills I posted are screen grabs from the clips that are the substance of this thread And were posted in the beginning. . I believe they are from the zip files. I'm not saying they aren't CG just saying where I got them from

[Peter Moretti]

Yes Les, not to shoot the messenger. Thanks for posting the grabs b/c downloading those files can be a PITB.

[Alister Chapman]

The reason they look odd is that they are I believe mannequins not real models.

[Ken Hull]

Now that I have downloaded and examined the video file, it is obvious that they are mannequins. No CGI involved.

Ken

[Peter Moretti]

I realize they are mannequins. I use mannequins sometimes as alternatives for stand-in's. It's not the subjects, it's the conclusions that could be drawn from watching the subjects that would be false.

This side-by-side simply does not accurately reflect the differences in capabilities of both cameras.