HD200 to EX3 "wildlife" teething pains (with video)

[Buck Forester]

[QUOTE=just for kicks, when your EX1 clipped, did you get proper indications on the monitor/histogram/zebras? That your whites were too hot? Or did the footage look exceptional in the monitor/histogram/no zebras and only when you captured it did it look horrible?[/QUOTE]

Eric, I'm not sure because it was early on but I don't recall seeing zebras or off the charts histogram levels. I'm sure I was using "auto" exposure, I was still learning the camera. Even with "auto" exposure now I don't get clipping although I try and shoot mostly manual. I don't even know what the default settings were, I changed my Profile while watching the Vortex DVD, pausing the video to make the changes as I watched. Even skin tones used to blow out easily in sunlight, like the forehead and cheeks on my boy, but now they're completely fine. I tried one or two other Profiles too that are in the Profile thread but other than that I haven't experimented on my own with Profiles. I really like the one I have so I don't see any need to keep tweaking, at least not yet anyway. I know I have a lot more to learn.

[Perrone Ford]

What gain are you shooting at? And is any auto gain or auto iris being applied. Try with -3 db and repoyt back.

[Alister Chapman]

I'm not surprised to see so much CA and a generally soft picture as you have an extender on the back of the lens and extenders are notorious for producing soft pictures with lots of CA.
CA is primarily a function of the lens, while you may have been able to reduce the effect to some degree with careful camera setup on the HD200 it will still be there, just hidden. Stills lenses are designed to have nothing but air between the rear of the lens and the sensor or film. A video camera has a big glass prism in the way. The larger the sensors the bigger the prism. This added glass will bend different wavelengths of light by different amounts adding to the CA. Video lenses are built to allow for the extra glass but stills lenses are not.

Cinegamma 2 won't allow you to go above 100IRE so if your zebras are set to 100% you may well never see them. Cine 4 goes up to 109IRE (I think). Going by the pictures you have posted I would say that the recorded image looks pretty much like what's shown in the VF. The clipped areas are very very small and only just going in to either clipping or a hard knee, the histogram simply isn't detailed enough to show up such small specular highlights. As the birds head is facing the opposite way in the final grab it's difficult to judge the overall exposure of the white feathers, the VF was indicating 44% which looks to be about right to me.

Overall the scene would be a challenging one for any camera. Brilliant white bird against a dark shadow filled background with bright sunlight overhead.

[Vincent Oliver]

This link may give you some answers

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/f...r-exposure.pdf

[Vincent Oliver]

You might find some other useful information here

Sony | Micro Site - XDCAM EX

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

Cinegamma 2 won't allow you to go above 100IRE so if your zebras are set to 100% you may well never see them. Cine 4 goes up to 109IRE (I think).
Overall the scene would be a challenging one for any camera. Brilliant white bird against a dark shadow filled background with bright sunlight overhead.

I'm not positive, I wasn't there, but I believe the first Zebra setting was 70% and also, this was late afternoon sunshine, not overhead, nearing the Golden Hour, early winter. I would have thought there'd be no clipping and the odd zebra here or there. Eric will have to verify regarding the Zebra setting though.

[Simon Wyndham]

I concur with Alister. Also depending on which gamma setting you had you may be able to bring back some of that highlight detail with care. Especially if you could actually see the detail in question in the LCD.

Having said that though the EX's histogram is not very good. As Alister mentioned it simply isn't detailed enough to show small areas of highlight blowout. As well as this I find that what you see in the EX3 LCD is extremely sensitive to the way that you have set up to the bars. On my 510 I find that although I regularly check the viewfinder setup I rarely have to adjust it. With the EX3 I find that I have to constantly adjust it to bars throughout the day.

This is why I mentioned that my zebra method was a guide too, because knowing the characteristics of the EX I find that it is always best to bring things down a tad from what on most cameras I know I could leave it set.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Alan Roberts settings, when they are made public, recommend setting the black gamma to a certain level even if the cine gammas are used. This way you could bring down the exposure and still have shadow detail (better than bringing up shadows in post by far because it is done pre-compression in camera). I wish there was a straightforward answer to this, but hopefully Alans settings will shed some light on things when they appear.

[Simon Wyndham]

but I believe the first Zebra setting was 70%

The zebra *must* have been turned off, because at 70% he most certainly would have seen zebras in some areas of that picture.

[Ola Christoffersson]

My two cents:

Try Cinegamma 1. I used to use CG4 to avoid highlight clipping, I thought CG1 was dull. But after extensive testing I found that CG1 gives the best result in high contrast situations. CG4 compresses the bright region of the picture too much which sometimes results in banding effects in the highlights.

Also - and this is another topic - I noticed from your footage and also from the still of your LCD that you are using auto/high speed shutter. This is something that I have found many still photographers that move to video do, probably out of habit. Maybe you have a good reason for doing this that I don't understand but my advice is to always shoot at 60 fps (or 30 if you need the light) to avoid the home movie look that fast shutters give.
To me that is an amateur-give away on par with blown out whites. Just a thought...

Otherwise - great footage! Good luch with your work.

[Simon Wyndham]

Try Cinegamma 1. I used to use CG4 to avoid highlight clipping, I thought CG1 was dull. But after extensive testing I found that CG1 gives the best result in high contrast situations. CG4 compresses the bright region of the picture too much which sometimes results in banding effects in the highlights.

Unfortunately this is true of any gamma that compresses tonal range. CG2 should give you the same abilities as CG1 and will also give you added tonal range to play with in post.

that you are using auto/high speed shutter

Eeek! Didn't spot that. That will kill any notion of the idea of manual iris because the camera will be making its own compensations for your exposure adjustment! Always use manual shutter, always. Always, always, always. Always. If you are shooting interlaced turn the shutter off. If you are shooting progressive set the shutter to double the framerate number. So for 24p set it to 1/48th, for 25p set it to 1/50th, for 60p set it to 1/120th. That'll give you the crispest motion without cheapo video like movement blur/smear.

Kill the auto white balance too because that'll give you colour shifts like nobodies business.

[Paul Kellett]

Originally Posted by Buck Forester

I have an EX1 and shoot outside all the time and I'm not running into any clipping problems. In fact I'm surprised it doesn't clip, especially on very white sand under bright sunlight. I am using a PP from the Vortex EX1 Training video, I think the zebras are set at 95% and it's a Cine4 gamma. The default settings that came with my EX1 clipped bad... I couldn't even shoot anyone wearing a white shirt outside, even on a cloudy day, it just blew it out. Once I changed settings I've never had clipping problems since.

Could you post the vortex PP please ?

Thanks.

Paul.

[Alister Chapman]

The gamma curve shouldn't produce any banding. That's more likely due to the monitor.

[Alister Chapman]

It should also be remembered that any zebras operate over a certain window. Say you set the Zebra to 70%. It will start to show at 70% but once you get to around 85% it will stop showing. So if the zebra's were set to 70 it is still possible that they would not have been showing as the clipped areas are above the 70% window.

[Marten Dalfors]

Originally Posted by Eric Gulbransen

7 - C-A. I used to get this under extreme situations with the HD200 also. Once Paolo offered me some time setting my HD200 up with the Nikon lenses, I never had it again. Maybe this is what I need again. I only saw it once, at wide open aperture - again, with the histogram way in the safe zone. I could actually see the CA in the monitor, which is great because I never could see this on the JVC monitor. But it's still there, which kind of sucks for me right now. I do have faith though. If we fixed the JVC, for sure we can help this camera as well.

If you find any solution to the CA, please share it as I have similar problem with my EX3 and Nikon lenses. I have tried several times now in snowy (white) conditions and the footage is unusable if I don't stop down the lens or underexpose a lot. Just yesterday I had some great opportunity but the resulting footage is awful.

I tend to switch to Cine1 when I need to be careful about highlights and it works ok for me so far.

[Steven Thomas]

Something strange is going on there?

The 44% center brightess level indication on the swan certainly appears brighter than in the actual image. Like you mentioned, the histogram does not seem to reflect what you actually shot. Although, as mentioned, it may not work good enough to show small incremental hot areas.

Also agree with everyone here 100%, do not use auto! This may have caused this issue.

I have not seen this with my EX1.
odd.