Aaton Penelope Delta Test

[Josselin Billot]

Hello !

I'm a french Dop and I'm happy to post and share my experience with you, i hope it be useful.

Our little film "Lucy From Paris" is the first independent short film shot with the mysterious Aaton Penelope Delta.

Shot in DNG Raw 3,5K at 25fps with the Arri Masterprime serie, edited in Premiere CS6 and graded in DaVinci Resolve 9.

This delirious film about an English girl landing in Paris is in fact the opportunity to test this camera on a real shooting, to show you what is possible to do with the Aaton when it used by technicians who actually work in fiction.

The video is here : Lucy From Paris EP3 - Test Aaton Penelope Delta

Tell us what you think about it !

A documentary on the footage will be available soon !


Josselin Billot
Director Of Photography
josselinbillot.com

[Craig Chartier]

nice piece, what can you tell us about working with this camera? zI also thought it had been shelved due to the company going broke?

[Bob Hart]

I like the overall look and colour brightness of the images this camera produces. I would hope that it finds its place in the production world, that the finances to settle any technical issues are forthcoming.

[D.J. Ammons]

I enjoyed the film and also thought it had a good look. As someone else mentioned I hope you can post more details on the camera, the settings used, and your observations using it.

Also curious how you came about using this camera!

[Josselin Billot]

Thanks for your posts ;)

My feeling about the camera is pretty good. The camera we use is the final model (not a prototype) and it worked well, no trouble during the 2 days of shooting :

- The color rendering is stunning. I had never seen such a variety of shades and skin tones are very realistic. CCD made good job with the color !
- The texture of the image is superb, very smooth, close to the film
- Dynamic range is correct, below a Alexa or Red in my opinion, around 12 f-stops. However, the rendering of the highlights (clipped) are very ugly and the shadows are very noisy when you need to boost the signal and find informations in the black….
- The sensibility is not amazing…. (ISO 640 natively - impossible to change)
- Shutter system to strip down to 80 iso works well but requires some practice to put it ON (you have to remove the lens…)
- The movement of the sensor for simulating film grain is not convincing …. Not finished in my opinion...
- The ergonomics is pretty good - good to shoulder work !
- The optical viewfinder is fun but sometimes confusing, (specially for the exposure) careful not to take off the eye of it !
- No convincing tools exposure in the camera / should work on oscilloscope ( on a Rec709 improved signal ...) or meter.
- Some flaw in overexposed highlights (aliasing and fringe, and other strange things…)
- NO LUT possible (only imposed kind of REC709 on all SDI OUTPUT)
- NO shutter change possibilities
- NO Slowmotion mode
- ONLY 25P

On the project "Lucy From Paris" we rent the camera to a company named Telline. (French camera rental company). Aaton sold only 6 cameras in France (and in the world I think…) because they have important problems with the sensors. Now Aaton is in a difficult financial situation : they need an investor to survive. So they stopped the commercialization of the Delta for the time being.

Last news are good and fortunately TRANSVIDEO going to help them : Aaton seems to be saved.

My equipment and setting :

ARRI MASTER PRIME serie and Angenieux Zoom 28-76mm / 25P / DNG RAW 7K et 3.5K / shutter 180° / 640 iso and 80 iso

Debayered by Ergon and Resolve 9 (very close rendering), edited in Prores on Premiere CS6, graded on Da Vinci Resolve 9.

I hope I answer to your questions, sorry for my poor english ;)

A behind the scene documentary will be available soon !


Josselin Billot
Directeur de la Photographie

Bande Dmo 2012

[D.J. Ammons]

Thanks for the details! Very interesting.