What Focal Lengths For Interviews

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

Lets morph this thread some more: Nigel, Aaron and others - when do you find 8bit not enough from a nanoFlash/XDR?

I have to try really hard to produce any 8bit related artifacts, in camera, with the nano/XDR recorders. Under just the right circumstances you can probably force some banding with a high contrast scene and a perfectly graduated sky in the scene.

It's rare indeed to see any 8bit artifacts in footage I've shot. Of course, if you don't promote the footage in post, and keep it 8bit as you grade, it's fairly easy to introduce artifacts into footage being graded as 8bit footage. Of course I don't do that though.

[Steve Kalle]

Originally Posted by Aaron Newsome

I have to try really hard to produce any 8bit related artifacts, in camera, with the nano/XDR recorders. Under just the right circumstances you can probably force some banding with a high contrast scene and a perfectly graduated sky in the scene.

It's rare indeed to see any 8bit artifacts in footage I've shot. Of course, if you don't promote the footage in post, and keep it 8bit as you grade, it's fairly easy to introduce artifacts into footage being graded as 8bit footage. Of course I don't do that though.

Aaron,

I should have clarified that I was talking about pushing 8bit in post. So, do you convert to Pro Res or Cineform and do you find those converted files hold up better to heavy grading?

[Aaron Newsome]

That's right Steve. When I record with XDR/nano, I edit the native files right on the FCP timeline. I send the sequence to Color and I set the output type as prores HQ with higher bit depth. So I'm not really transcoding the source files, only working in Color in a bigger depth and outputting higher quality files.