PXW-X70 Highlight Handling / Dynamic Range / Ergonomics

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Tom Grushka

"All other settings as per default in PP4,"

Tom ~

If you are referring to the footage shot around the marina then the 'All other settings as per default in PP4' refers to yes the Picture Profiles. The only things changed in PP4 are the items listed at the head of clip. I must point out though that these settings were the ones that worked for me at that particular location at that time.

The Black Levels at +4 work fine for me at 0 dB in those really extreme 'soot and whitewash' high contrast lighting situations. The High +7 on the Black Gammas is what stops the mid blacks losing too much detail. Indoors for most situations I bring the Black Level back to '0' but leave the black Gammas at the High +7 setting.

The Knee and Slope settings of 87.5 and -2 are the ones that stop the highlights blowing out on the boats in the sun. This is why I use this location because of the extremes from white to black from high exposure levels to low. It's a good location to test any camera's dynamic range handling capability.

Handheld? No on sticks but it was a very windy day as can be seen on the long zoom shot near the end of the shot sequence. Wish I could hold that steady!

With the settings used on that shoot I just let the peaks just come up to kiss the right side of the histogram and that's it. On a Waveform monitor the majority of peaks won't go past 90 IRE. If you let them go much higher that that then yes you will start to clip the signal at around 1 volt.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Paul Anderegg]

Ugh, these cameras clip SOOOO LOWWW! What is going on with all that 90-108IRE range anyway, does it serve a function. I am not familiar with non broadcast cameras. I like superwhites. :-)

Paul

[Tom Grushka]

Two product reviews were posted by Tested, and were shot with the X70. Apparently they are testing this cam. Would be really sweet if they wind up doing a review.

In the first, the dropped ceilings seem to blow to cyan (maybe they're actually that color?) and there are green auras around the fluorescent lights:

EDIT: Guess the "fluorescent lights" are not fluorescent, as they change color, but some of the auras still look weird.

Aerial Mapping with Quadcopters and Drones - YouTube

Note the yellow reflection of the lamp on the picture frame glass in this one:

Hands-On with the Avegant Glyph Head-Mounted Display - YouTube

The other parts of the shots look really nice, though.

Does anyone think these blown highlights are distracting to the average viewer, or is it just me because I'm "looking" for this problem?

[Paul Anderegg]

Yeah, those are florescent lights, and they most definitely turn cyan/green with the X70. The X70 suffers SEVER color shifts as the colors clip or peak. On the vectorscope, things light blue police LED's, which on my JVC HM790 and HM650 spike directly into the BLUE box, on the X70 hit to the right of the blue box, then curve around the edge to the cyan box. Similarly, RED hits and curves around to yellow. Yellow hits and curves around towards green. If you bring exposure of florescent lighting up and down, you will see the shade and intensity of the cyan change. Also, some picture profiles handle colors very differently, even after being color correction menued similarly.

Paul

[Tom Grushka]

Wow, so those lights ARE fluorescent and they keep fading to different colors due to shutter timing or something?

[Paul Anderegg]

Yeah, you can see the camera irising up and down as it moves in and out on the people and objects. You can see the cyan white clipping when he opens up. That shade of cyan is very indicative of how the X70 shows florescent light.

Look at the clip below to see the same shade on an early color correction PP I was testing with FAW.......the sky and everything lit by it was an ugly shade of cyan.

Ferguson protesters block I-5 in La Jolla - 10News.com KGTV ABC10 San Diego

Paul

[Simon Denny]

Wow, that sky is weird Paul. Whats going on there do you think.

Cheers

[Tom Grushka]

Wow ... looks like the white / silver cars glow in the dark! That's the sky reflecting off the cars? Or is it a strange cyan light from the UFO that is hovering off screen?

This is really concerning. No camera of today (except a kid's toy camera maybe) should have highlights like this out of the box, much less after profile tweaking. It's like the X70 is a CX900 with an XLR handle and fatter handgrip, no still images!!! (why not???), and the same lens and sensor (okay, it has a better codec, which is better able to capture all those crushed highlights!).

I don't get Sony's marketing strategy behind this cam. Didn't anyone test a pre-production model? Didn't anyone see these highlights right away and say, "Yikes!" It's like they ordered a huge production run before testing and then said, "oh crap ... oh well." What good are the 1" sensor and broadcast codec if these problems can't be tamed in the profiles? Both pros like you and semi-pros like me will be discriminating when it comes to image quality. It's great that it's so portable, but if the image is no better than a $200 consumer camera, what gives?

And if the X70's XLR channel 2 is noisy, especially if a clean signal is needed on that channel ...

Might as well just get a cheaper consumer cam with 4K, which will downscale to 10-bit 4:4:4 HD, and then stick my little Sound Devices MixPre on it for audio.

Also thinking about the XF200. More expensive, small sensor, CF cards ... but has three rings, 20X optical zoom, and good in low light.

[Paul Anderegg]

The GREEN channel on this camera is UNCORRECTABLE. You can tweak it a bit, but there is literally no way to use the color correction function to put the green in the green box. It will under all conditions live on the yellow side of the box, and always have a saturation level lower than the other channels.

Yellow has similar issues, because if you place yellow IN THE BOX on the scope, it will have a slight neon or nurf yellow/green hue. The settings for that cyan sky were early night test settings, that was an unexpected daytime overtime story I happened upon, had to use FAW. Adding RED in post brings all the other colors tack on like the helicopter footage, but the cyan still persisted. Red is the opposite of cyan on the scope, and the WB function of this camera will pull the whole scope picture around anywhere it wants. This is why I insist on using manual kelvin WB settings, unless you are shooting in florescent of LED strong light sources as your key, which require something other than YELLOW/BLUE variable to be adjusted.

I think the stock settings are intentionally "off" so that in extreme conditions, the colors will stay dumb instead of insane. Hope that makes sense. Sort of like intentionally aligning a NASCAR for use on a circular track.

Also, if you look closely in the helicopter video, you will see me running around with the live backpack and X70, I can be easily spotted by my bald spot. It makes me cry that my thinning hair can be seen practically from orbit. :(

Paul

[Simon Denny]

"My thinning hair can be seen practically from orbit."

Ahhhh yep, I'm heading that way…… gota love getting older!

[Paul Anderegg]

I wonder if Sony could modify the color correction menu to adjust for all 6 primary colors, instead of just limiting adjustments to a choice of 2? Another "pretty please" request to Sony for future firmware updates.

Paul

[Mike McKay]

I'll just add that with the Tested video it looks like they're shooting in pretty mixed lighting which is always a challenge. I can see some glowing red lights on the drones bouncing off the walls which probably isn't helping.
Just for perspective, this is destined for web delivery, they have 50,000+ views and none of the comments are about clipped colors etc, it's all about the content.

I often find myself falling down a rabbit hole of higher and higher expectations with gear, looking for and focusing on flaws that 99% of viewers are not going to notice. Bottom line, it's a $2,300 camera and it can make a nice sharp image and thanks to some folks here we can learn to work around some of it's shortcomings, but it's never going to be an F5.
Having said all that, I do hope Sony can and will improve this camera via firmware.

[Tom Grushka]

Paul,

Sorry, this is straying a bit, but on the 650:

Image stabilization - is it really that bad? Much worse than the X70? Could it be defective in your unit?
LCD color - is it bad enough that you can't tell proper white balance, or do you get used to it?
Focus peaking - is this mainly a problem at night, or always?

Also, have you used either the HXR-NX5U or the NX3? I know the codec is crap, but ...

Now that the HM600 is down to $3,000, if you had to buy for yourself, would you go with the X70 or the 600, or something else?

[Tom Grushka]

Found more of Tested's X70 videos. Joey is doing a really great job on these, and the exposure looks great 90% of the time. Color really isn't bad at all for a one-chip cam. But its portability is just amazing. I'm torn so guess I'll just have to get it and try it out for myself.

Quadcopter Combat with "Game of Drones" - YouTube

Hands-On: DJI Inspire 1 Mount Handheld Gimbal Camera - YouTube

[Paul Anderegg]

Originally Posted by Tom Grushka

Paul,

Sorry, this is straying a bit, but on the 650:

Image stabilization - is it really that bad? Much worse than the X70? Could it be defective in your unit?
LCD color - is it bad enough that you can't tell proper white balance, or do you get used to it?
Focus peaking - is this mainly a problem at night, or always?

Also, have you used either the HXR-NX5U or the NX3? I know the codec is crap, but ...

Now that the HM600 is down to $3,000, if you had to buy for yourself, would you go with the X70 or the 600, or something else?

HM650 OIS really is that bad. The ones I use have a big aluminum wireless bracket poking out the back, which actually nestles up against the shoulder nicely. All would seem happy, but the OIS has some really bad jerking, and is much less effective than the X70. Best way I can describe it is similar to the gimbal lenses when they hit the end of their range of motion and hit the stop. Seems more of a function to reduce vibration than to stabilize motion, you know, keeps people from being able to measure your pulse on footage.

LCD makes it impossible to really judge white balance. I have to use the EVF for that, but the EVF is way too contrasty. You can have pretty accurate colors. or a usable way to judge exposure, not both at the same time.

I don't find the peaking very useful, it still is nearly impossible to judge focus on the very low res LCD. I like this type of peaking better than the HandyCam style peaking, which is more accurately a focus assist function.

And never used an NX before.

Paul