MTF/Nikons/HD200 grabs

[Eric Gulbransen]

Been having some fun and thought I'd share. Still haven't gotten the red flare solved. My fault, just haven't made the right sized flange yet. In the mean time though we've had some luck venturing into areas that typically cause problems using the stock lens. Here are a few interesting frame grabs, all shot with Nikon glass:

Mallard duck (shut up Brian) - 80mm f4 24fps 1/200

Snowy Egret - 200mm f4 24fps 1/48

Caterpillar shot at 11 inches with a 105mm micro set at f8, 24fps 1/48

Night Heron - 300mm f2.8 24fps 1/48

Spider the size of a pencil point - shot at 5 inches with a 105mm micro set at f8, 24fps 1/48

Great Heron - 300mm f4 24fps 1/48


It definitely is not ideal having to change lenses instead of simply zooming in or out to find your shot, but holy moses is it worth the effort.

[Jaadgy Akanni]

Beautiful stuff. Love the organic feel of those shots.

[Sean Adair]

Great stuff Eric!
You must have some nice nature footage stock now. Have you thought about working with an HD stock agency? I've dealt with 2 very different places, and it's a tricky business. If you have a sizable, well organized catalog of clips of good HD clips, like I'm sure you are getting, it's worth having a good place to market them for you that deals with the high-end requests.
(worth of a new topic I think).

Meanwhile, also OT... How about that 13x lens! I'm eager to hear how that works for you! I suspect your 16x is going to get dusty somewhere....

and even further OT, have you seen Speed Racer yet? My kid was totally rocking (but he's 1/2 japanese and been following speedracer for awhile and his brain seems to function at the same chaotic pace of that footage).
It was a good shot at trying to represent that visceral feeling of speed with both the mad abstraction of relative motion, and the instinctual and intuitive mental space you have to find on order to survive at that pace.

[Eric Gulbransen]

Something changed in my settings on this forum. Now suddenly I don't get emails about new posts. So, sorry Sean, I hadn't seen your post till tonight.

I love the 13x. It completely fits a mindset that I've had since discovering the limitations of the 16x - if one lens can't do it all, then make three. I tell you what, I'll take some test shots and post them up here tomorrow. I've been sick for the past two days so I'm behind on some other tests I need to make on the subject of red flare.

On the racing and processing information in your head at that pace, you are right, it's a very different process. Some say times slows down at that pace. I know if you asked me to I could write you pages of notes on just one moment in just one turn. Of course I'd bore the crap out of you, but the data gets processed somehow, and the detail is overwhelming. Of course come Monday I can stare at the same measurements for half an hour and still cut a length of crown molding two inches too short... I'm basically an idiot savant

[Mat Thompson]

Hi Eric.

I've been closely studying your grabs but particularly your Night Heron shot and comparing them against some grabs of mine from the HD110 & XL2. At about 250% I start seeing some pretty heavy blocking in your grabs and noise seems excessive in the blue area?

I'm wondering whether these issues are connected to the use of the nikon stills lenses at all. I'm getting my first Nikon lens for the camera this week (55mm Micro) and I'll certainly be doing some more comparisons with that but it would be interesting to know whether you see similar levels of blocking with your x16 and x13 lenses ?

Cheers
Mat

[Steve Phillipps]

Mat, they look pretty decent to me. I think any issues you may be noticing will certainly be down to the camera/codec rather than the lens. The only things the lens will introduce are lack of sharpness and chromatic aberrations (longitudinal CA will result in a general softening, translateral CA is what causes the coloured fringing).
Bear in mind that viewing anything on the web is fraught with issues and I don't think anyone should base any decisions on web views.
Steve

[Mat Thompson]

Hi there Steve
I'm aware any blocking/noise comes from compression but where I compare some of these grabs (250% or more) to some I've taken on my camera with the stock lens I do see more blocking. To be honest I was expecting to see less as the HD200 is a higher range camera of course.

The web (image compression) should have no impact on the viewing of these images. They are tifs after all and thus should only have the cameras compression.

As I said,this is only in blown up images and I really like the images on the whole. However this artifacting is there and even if you don't see it viewed at 100% it does affect the image your seeing of course.

[Steve Phillipps]

It could also have something to do with the way they were grabbed? How big are the TIFFs you're getting, these are only 2.5mb, so maybe yours are bigger?
I really don't think the lens should have anything to do with blockiness. Only way I suppose is to do tests yourself side by side with different lenses.
Steve

[Sean Adair]

You are probably seeing a camera difference.
There are differences in the 100 and 200 series. The super-encoder chain of the 200's has advantages, but does seem to be subject to added grain/noise and subsequent artifacts in SOME cases.
I'm actually editing editing a 2 camera shoot with a 110 and my 200 - I will post some stills from there soon. The 200 is a bit more sensitive to light (maybe 1/2 a stop), but also more susceptible to noise in large area of dark color. It's more of a problem in 60p, but I'm seeing a difference between stills at 24p too. I'm pretty sure this is what you are seeing.
I'd also caution against judging video quality by looking at stills, although it can help isolate things you see from viewing motion. The grain is in both cameras, and heavy grain seems to lead to "mosquito" artifacts or blockiness- which is ugly at motion. These visual problems are exacerbated when mpeg2 compressing again to standard dvd. Dark areas can get real ugly.

I want to try to isolate if this can be minimized in settings, I think our 2 setup gurus own only 100 series cams, although both have definitely spent time with the 200's. I'm even curious to see if a negative gain setting will help....

[Eric Gulbransen]

Steve, the only way I know to do screen grabs in FCP is: export - quicktime conversion - still image - TIFF - best depth - save. If there's a better way please do tell.

By the way, not that it matters in a talk about compression, the long necked freaky looking Great Heron (white) was shot underexposed and brought back up a bit in post. Not a lot mind you, but enough to stay out of trouble. Shooting pure white subjects mid day, for me at least, is a real pain in the iris.

[Steve Phillipps]

Sorry Eric, out of my territory, I don't do any editing at all!
Have you tried different gamma and knee settings to help with contrasty subjects? The BBC has settings for different cams that basically flatten the image (looks very muddy straight out of the cam) and give as much dynamic range as possible. It's then just a question of preserving the whites as much as possible (as you say by "underexposing") and pulling up the shadows in post. Some situations are impossible though of course (like your sunny white heron!)
Steve

[Eric Gulbransen]

Perfect word Steve, "muddy." While chasing these birds around I have sometimes found my images to end up looking like exactly that - mud. All the brilliance of color is gone at times when I stop down to protect those bright whites. If I speed up the shutter while maintaining an aperture @f4 I can get them to looking better but then their sudden and very quick, jerky movements end up looking like a 70's disco dancing scene on Soul Train when you play them back. Without that motion blur it's way too jarring - their head is up in one frame and then a foot away half under the water in the next. I shoot those Herons ( shows my intelligence, they're not even Herons, they're Egrets ) all the time simply because they piss me off so much.

I have left my camera settings at Paolo's True Color for Nikon lenses. Never really thought of adjusting gamma and knee. Real genius. Do you think there is more information stored in the shadowy areas or the brighter areas? Sounds like the shadows if I'm reading you right.

[Steve Phillipps]

Eric, this is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp034.shtml for the BBC settings pages, created by the legend, Alan Roberts! Don't think they've done them for the JVCs unfortunately, but will give an idea of the sort of things they've done. Generally with the pro cameras Alan's settings increase the dynamic range by about 2 stops. Again, you get a flat, muddy-looking image straight out of the camera, but in post you can bring up the shadow areas while leaving the highlights untouched so extending you tonal range. You can also boost general contrast and sharpness plus alter colour balance to taste.
Steve

[Mark Nicholson]

Stills look good. Some CA in there, but they do look good.

[Sean Adair]

Steve & Eric - highly recommend Tim Dashwoods superwide scene file for just this. Looks a bit flat, but has tremendous information when exposed properly.
more here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....48&postcount=3