Nordic low winter light at DVinfo.net

Ola Christoffersson · January 18th, 2008, 05:19 AM

Here's a clip I edited together quickly after spending an hour with my EX1 and a tripod in the centre of Stockholm just before dusk. It was overcast, with a little sprinkle and fairly dark. It is filmed at 1080P 25 f/sek. I started out with the shutter at 180 and turned shutter off when it started to get real dark. No gain was used. Edited and color graded a bit in Avid MC and then put a blurred vinjetting on in AE.
I wanted to try out the shot transistion feature, low light capabilities and DOF. What amazed me most was that when coming back and looking at the pictures on a large monitor not a single one was off focus or had wrong exposure. All of this I credit the LCD-viewfinder and the histogram!
Also - this was the shoot when I desided to never ever turn on Focus assist again. I had it on but found that focus was drifting off after I had set it. Especially on the first shot with the tree in the foreground.
Hope this can be useful in some way.

Download the clip in WMV here:

http://www.kamrat.tv/video/Slussen1080p.wmv

/ola

Paul Joy · January 18th, 2008, 05:56 AM

Some lovely shots in there Ola, I especially like the wide shot of the fish stall with the camera low down and the one of the wall with three windows.

Did you use a picture profile for these or shoot default curves etc?

regards

Paul.

Ola Christoffersson · January 18th, 2008, 06:41 AM

Thanks Paul!
Shooting is not my best disciplin, I am more of an editor/producer, so these little practise shoots are very important to me. My goal is to start shooting much more now that I have this little gem of a camera in my possesion. :-)
I did not use any PP. I have been putting off getting into those menues. There is just to much tweeking to be done...
What I did was lower the setup to get the blacks blacker. I find that looking on a wave form monitor there is almost never any information in the lowest part of the graph so I lower it so that the black information begins at the very floor (16). This way I get blacker blacks without loosing detail. I also did some gamma tweaking on some shots, and warmed the image up a bit.

/ola

Sami Sanpakkila · January 18th, 2008, 08:40 AM

Nice footage Ola! Hey did you do the soft unsharp edges that are in some footage in post? Or how was that achieved? Was the music Antony?

I agree about the LCD and histogram as well! And especially Peaking function is amazing as I use the Letus35 Extreme. Its easy to focus to the GG when its dark and you wouldnt othervise see so well.

Sami

Ola Christoffersson · January 18th, 2008, 09:10 AM

Agreed - I used peaking as well. It's great!
The blur and darkened edges I did in After Effects. Just an experiment. And, yes - the music is Anthony and the Johnsons. He´s the best!

Gwynne Williams · January 18th, 2008, 10:04 AM

You have a good eye for composition Ola. I like the way you set a shot up and only pull focus or leave frame once the narrative allows you to. These are really great pictures you've produced which only confirms my wish to change my DSR450 in the next few weeks for this new camera.
Cheers - Gwynne

Michael Stewart · January 19th, 2008, 10:40 AM

Beautiful work, fun to see other parts of the world!

Mike

Daniel Alexander · January 19th, 2008, 11:23 AM

loved it. The composition is very sophisticated and the black detail is extremly clean. Just a side note, your 'Kamrat' logo animation is excellent.

Ronny Hofsoy · January 19th, 2008, 11:48 AM

Nice to see photo from these parts of the world... :-)

Incredible low light performance from this little gem. Was on a roadshow demo yesterday with similar light and its just incredible. I guess it comes of the cost of having some rolling shutter effect when pushing it to the limits for what would be considered normal panning. I must say that when panning quickly i could hardly (could it be just mentally) see this effect even when consentrating specifically to determine the visual impact to the human eye.

I had the chance of taking a closer look at the cine settings that actually enables a wider 'dark to bright' spectrum simulating film to some extent. I wonder if anyone had the chance to play with those in real life scenarios?

Taking into account how subtle the noise appear after gaining up a little it seem very clear that the CMOS EX1 competes with its bigger and much higher priced XDCAM CCD chip brothers.

This clip was actually the drop that convinced me. We will start collecting EX1 right away...problem is, we need at least 4 of them for multicam LIVE productions...

(guess I have to call our bank representative on monday...and determine on a final solution to archive photage)

Ola Christoffersson · January 20th, 2008, 08:38 AM

Thanks everybody for your kind words! As somewhat of a beginner shooting myself I appriciate the encouragement a lot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronny Hofsoy

I had the chance of taking a closer look at the cine settings that actually enables a wider 'dark to bright' spectrum simulating film to some extent. I wonder if anyone had the chance to play with those in real life scenarios?

Hm...this is something I am hoping to start to play with soon.

Like I wrote above, on the waveform monitor in Avid, I cannot see any information in the lower end of the luminance scale. Now - I am not a video technician so I might have gotten it all wrong here but I would like to find a PP-setting that would fill that dark part of the image with information. As it is now I just lower the setup in editing to make the blacks really black. Having the camera do this would be better as long as I don't loose any information in the blacks. Does anyone have a good setting that does this. More black without crushing? Do you understand what I am getting at? Sorry if I am incoherent. English is not my native tounge.

Bo Sundvall · January 21st, 2008, 06:37 AM

Hi

Nice to se some video from another swede on this forum! I have a question about wmv coding. What settings did you use? All my files are getting MUCH larger when I convert them to wmv format. As an example, HDV 1920x1080 converted to WMV 640x480 gives me a file size of about 250MB for 8 minutes. Your video, 1920x1080 3 minutes is about 75MB. What am I doing wrong?

Kind regards,

/Bo

Ola Christoffersson · January 21st, 2008, 08:12 AM

Hej Bosse!

As a matter of fact I used After Effects to do the encoding since I had finished the edit in AE to put a vinjetting effect on it. I let AE render straight out to WMV-format. I was amazed myself at the quality and filesize.

I think the settings were the following (went back and had a look in AE).

Codec video: Windows media 9 advanced profile, Compressed, VBR,1 Pass, VBR Quality: 80,69. Keyframe interval 5 seconds.

Audio: VBR Quality 10, 48 kHz, 2 channel 24 bit VBR.

I hope this helps.

Lycka till!

/ola

Bo Sundvall · January 21st, 2008, 09:05 AM

Hi

Thanks for the info. I'll try this the next time.

Hälsningar,

/Bosse

John Woo · January 21st, 2008, 09:31 PM

Hi Ola, nice footage. I watched it very closely as I intend to buy the EX1 soon. I reliased half way through the footage at about 2 mins 28 secs when the lady came out from the bus, she was walking very fast and somehow her face got distorted. Is this something to do with CMOS rolling shutter effect?

Steven Thomas · January 21st, 2008, 09:49 PM

John, It looks like the codec is failing with movement. This is not the EX1 codec, but the low data rate wmv file (2.47mbps) 1920x1080.
IMO, that's a very low data rate for 1920x1080.

January 18th, 2008, 05:19 AM	#1
Ola Christoffersson Major Player Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 462	Nordic low winter light Here's a clip I edited together quickly after spending an hour with my EX1 and a tripod in the centre of Stockholm just before dusk. It was overcast, with a little sprinkle and fairly dark. It is filmed at 1080P 25 f/sek. I started out with the shutter at 180 and turned shutter off when it started to get real dark. No gain was used. Edited and color graded a bit in Avid MC and then put a blurred vinjetting on in AE. I wanted to try out the shot transistion feature, low light capabilities and DOF. What amazed me most was that when coming back and looking at the pictures on a large monitor not a single one was off focus or had wrong exposure. All of this I credit the LCD-viewfinder and the histogram! Also - this was the shoot when I desided to never ever turn on Focus assist again. I had it on but found that focus was drifting off after I had set it. Especially on the first shot with the tree in the foreground. Hope this can be useful in some way. Download the clip in WMV here: http://www.kamrat.tv/video/Slussen1080p.wmv /ola

January 18th, 2008, 05:56 AM	#2
Paul Joy Major Player Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Norfolk, UK Posts: 627	Some lovely shots in there Ola, I especially like the wide shot of the fish stall with the camera low down and the one of the wall with three windows. Did you use a picture profile for these or shoot default curves etc? regards Paul. __________________ Blog: www.pauljoy.com Company: www.videotrader.co.uk

January 18th, 2008, 06:41 AM	#3
Ola Christoffersson Major Player Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 462	Thanks Paul! Shooting is not my best disciplin, I am more of an editor/producer, so these little practise shoots are very important to me. My goal is to start shooting much more now that I have this little gem of a camera in my possesion. :-) I did not use any PP. I have been putting off getting into those menues. There is just to much tweeking to be done... What I did was lower the setup to get the blacks blacker. I find that looking on a wave form monitor there is almost never any information in the lowest part of the graph so I lower it so that the black information begins at the very floor (16). This way I get blacker blacks without loosing detail. I also did some gamma tweaking on some shots, and warmed the image up a bit. /ola

January 18th, 2008, 08:40 AM	#4
Sami Sanpakkila Major Player Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Finland Posts: 317	Nice footage Ola! Hey did you do the soft unsharp edges that are in some footage in post? Or how was that achieved? Was the music Antony? I agree about the LCD and histogram as well! And especially Peaking function is amazing as I use the Letus35 Extreme. Its easy to focus to the GG when its dark and you wouldnt othervise see so well. Sami

January 18th, 2008, 09:10 AM	#5
Ola Christoffersson Major Player Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 462	Agreed - I used peaking as well. It's great! The blur and darkened edges I did in After Effects. Just an experiment. And, yes - the music is Anthony and the Johnsons. He´s the best!

January 18th, 2008, 10:04 AM	#6
Gwynne Williams New Boot Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Usk, Wales Posts: 5	You have a good eye for composition Ola. I like the way you set a shot up and only pull focus or leave frame once the narrative allows you to. These are really great pictures you've produced which only confirms my wish to change my DSR450 in the next few weeks for this new camera. Cheers - Gwynne

January 19th, 2008, 10:40 AM	#7
Michael Stewart Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Spokane, Wa. Posts: 445	Beautiful work, fun to see other parts of the world! Mike

January 19th, 2008, 11:23 AM	#8
Daniel Alexander Major Player Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: West Midlands, UK Posts: 320	loved it. The composition is very sophisticated and the black detail is extremly clean. Just a side note, your 'Kamrat' logo animation is excellent.

January 19th, 2008, 11:48 AM	#9
Ronny Hofsoy Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Tromsoe Norway Posts: 28	Nice to see photo from these parts of the world... :-) Incredible low light performance from this little gem. Was on a roadshow demo yesterday with similar light and its just incredible. I guess it comes of the cost of having some rolling shutter effect when pushing it to the limits for what would be considered normal panning. I must say that when panning quickly i could hardly (could it be just mentally) see this effect even when consentrating specifically to determine the visual impact to the human eye. I had the chance of taking a closer look at the cine settings that actually enables a wider 'dark to bright' spectrum simulating film to some extent. I wonder if anyone had the chance to play with those in real life scenarios? Taking into account how subtle the noise appear after gaining up a little it seem very clear that the CMOS EX1 competes with its bigger and much higher priced XDCAM CCD chip brothers. This clip was actually the drop that convinced me. We will start collecting EX1 right away...problem is, we need at least 4 of them for multicam LIVE productions... (guess I have to call our bank representative on monday...and determine on a final solution to archive photage)

January 21st, 2008, 06:37 AM	#11
Bo Sundvall Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Sweden Posts: 244	Hi Nice to se some video from another swede on this forum! I have a question about wmv coding. What settings did you use? All my files are getting MUCH larger when I convert them to wmv format. As an example, HDV 1920x1080 converted to WMV 640x480 gives me a file size of about 250MB for 8 minutes. Your video, 1920x1080 3 minutes is about 75MB. What am I doing wrong? Kind regards, /Bo

January 21st, 2008, 08:12 AM	#12
Ola Christoffersson Major Player Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 462	Hej Bosse! As a matter of fact I used After Effects to do the encoding since I had finished the edit in AE to put a vinjetting effect on it. I let AE render straight out to WMV-format. I was amazed myself at the quality and filesize. I think the settings were the following (went back and had a look in AE). Codec video: Windows media 9 advanced profile, Compressed, VBR,1 Pass, VBR Quality: 80,69. Keyframe interval 5 seconds. Audio: VBR Quality 10, 48 kHz, 2 channel 24 bit VBR. I hope this helps. Lycka till! /ola

January 21st, 2008, 09:05 AM	#13
Bo Sundvall Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Sweden Posts: 244	Hi Thanks for the info. I'll try this the next time. Hälsningar, /Bosse

January 21st, 2008, 09:31 PM	#14
John Woo Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Singapore Posts: 160	Hi Ola, nice footage. I watched it very closely as I intend to buy the EX1 soon. I reliased half way through the footage at about 2 mins 28 secs when the lady came out from the bus, she was walking very fast and somehow her face got distorted. Is this something to do with CMOS rolling shutter effect?

January 21st, 2008, 09:49 PM	#15
Steven Thomas Trustee Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Gilbert, AZ Posts: 1,896	John, It looks like the codec is failing with movement. This is not the EX1 codec, but the low data rate wmv file (2.47mbps) 1920x1080. IMO, that's a very low data rate for 1920x1080.