hyalinejim

5 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

what PP are you using ? 

I do my colour work in After Effects, 32 bit, Rec709 workspace. My effects order looks something like this:

Ginger HDR Color Temp (correct or add colour cast)

Color Finesse (tweak exposure and saturation)

Look Lut 

Levels (final exposure tweak)

What do you use? I have an old WhiBal card but it's just a little too small and finicky. I've been spoiled by shooting MLRAW for the past few years where I could set WB after the fact. 

I'll pick up a Lastolite Ezybalance tomorrow and check it out. Generally I'm happy with the gradability of 4K 422, but I've been finding the colours to be a bit murky and videoish in some shots. Now I don't expect the level of colour separation I can achieve with RAW, but it would be nice if this was due to a green - magenta cast that can be white balanced away. 

Good stuff, I think that's the way to go.

@kidzrevil What white balance are you shooting at? I've tried the various presets and also dialling in Kelvin. I like my images on the cool side, but have noticed a purple cast in the blues when I do so. 

I agree that Tv Mode is useful, but I'd like to have access to exposure lock and exposure compensation without going into the menu. But maybe I just need to get used to using the joystick.

8 hours ago, jasonmillard81 said:

Question guys:  is there a reason to invest in an XC system over C100 other than price?

As a handheld, run and gun, below the radar camera the XC10 is epic (aside from image ghosting issues which drive me nuts when I see them). It's so small and light that you can walk around all day with it in your hands getting acres and acres of usable footage in a very casual manner. It's so ugly that it looks like a bridge camera from 2004, and this means that people are likely to think you're just another tourist. Just add bum bag [fanny pack] to complete the effect

Yes, but if you do that during a recording the exposure goes wonky with all the switching from manual to Av and back again. So it's a good method for changing exposure between takes but not so good on the fly.

On 14/10/2016 at 10:54 PM, kidzrevil said:

I always catch it at high iso's 3200-4000 or at slow shutter speeds.

On 14/10/2016 at 11:11 PM, mercer said:

Gotcha. Then that's probably why I haven't seen it. I usually keep my ISO at 500 and use the 180 degree shutter.

In this test, I've slowed the video down by 16x so we can see frame by frame what's going on. The settings are:

CLog - 1/50s - f4.8 - ISO500 - all image stabilisation OFF - 4K

I stuck a lut on it to bring back contrast. Ghosting is clearly visible as vertical traces - sometimes as many as two or three from previous frames.

18 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

Hopefully you are right and its just a problem with certain units. If its something hardwired into the code thats gonna be an issue. im gonna run some tests to see if its the stabilizer causing these issues

I don't think it's the stabiliser as the footage above shows. Maybe it is certain units or maybe it is firmware.

18 hours ago, mercer said:

What firmware are you on? ...

Have you tried going back to the original firmware to see if the ghosting appears?

My camera came with the stock firmware and I updated it to 1.0.2.0. I don't know where you might find the original, or if it's even possible to revert to it. Can you do a test similar to above to see if your unit exhibits the same problem? It's most noticeable when a dark area is moving into midtones.

In other news Canon sent me this, so if you guys report the same issue to them they might get on the case and actually do something:

Quote

Thank you for your email and for taking the time and effort to write to us with your suggestion and feedback. We have recorded your comments in our system and have passed them on to the correct department so that they can be reviewed and actioned upon. We, at Canon, really appreciate customer feedback as this is the best way to improve our service and products.Once again, thank you for your comments and loyalty to our brand.

TLDR: XC10 has ghosting at all ISOs and it has nothing to do with image stabilisation.

I'll try to upload a vid or frame grab maybe tomorrow. It's noticeable in areas of high contrast when there is a moderate degree of motion. Maybe it doesn't affect all units. If so, I would gladly return mine for repair / replacement. 

A Letter to Canon

Hi Canon,

Since you've already provided a firmware update for the XC10 I'm assuming you're open to feedback that will seriously improve the camera's image quality and handling. It's a good camera, but it could be great. Here are three major flaws and how to correct them

PROBLEM 1: Image softening at high ISOs and ghosting artifacts.

When the ISO is increased beyond 3200 resolution drops due to in-camera noise reduction. And at all ISOs, ghosting artifacts are visible when high contrast areas are in motion. In the manual it states that ghosting may become visible when certain Image Stabilisation modes are used. However, my tests show that ghosting artifacts exist equally across all IS modes, and even when IS is switched off entirely. The effect increases with ISO which leads me to believe it is a kind of temporal noise reduction which seriously undermines the image and the camera's ability to be used as a "run and gun" hand-held camera.

SOLUTION: Allow the user the option of disabling noise reduction in-camera. Many users who are familiar with post production processes will be comfortable performing their own noise reduction to taste, thus preserving image detail and preventing motion ghosting.

PROBLEM 2: Long throw zoom ring. In manual focus mode, the zoom ring usually has too long a throw, particularly at the telephoto end. At the wide end, focus throw is normal. However at longer focal lengths it takes too long to focus. To do a focus pull from 1 meter to infinity takes many rotations of the zoom ring, farther than the human wrist is capable of turning in a single motion. This slows down manual focus to an unusable level, and introduces unnecessary camera shake when shooting handheld.

SOLUTION: Change the manual focus speed so that all focal lengths focus as quickly and easily as at the wide setting. Currently there are 3 manual focus speed settings, but the fast setting is still far too slow.

PROBLEM 3: Physical exposure controls Full exposure control is accessible from the touch screen menu. However, when shooting handheld it's not convenient to access the touch screen menu while shooting. The joystick control introduces camera shake when pressed and is prone to directional error as it's so small.

SOLUTION: Map more of the exposure controls to the dial wheel and buttons. For example: 1. Assign one of buttons 1, 2, or 3 to Exposure Lock 2. Enable Exposure Compensation on the dial wheel 3. Enable one of buttons 1, 2 or 3 to shift the function of the dial wheel in Manual mode, in the same way that aperture is controlled on the EOS Rebel cameras. Implementing these suggestions would seriously improve the image quality and handheld usability of the XC10. Please consider including them in a firmware upgrade.

[End of Letter to Canon]

That all seems fairly straightforward and reasonable doesn't it? Let them hear your voice:

http://global.canon/en/support/index.html

XC10 is under Camcorders > Cinema EOS

IIRC max selectable is 42.5 or something in 1080p.

There is a crop mode where you can get 1920x800ish that will get 10 to 15 seconds at 60fps. That's 30 seconds when you conform it which may be enough for some applications :

12 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

I expose clog for the midtones. I'll shoot with skintone slightly beneath 100 zebras 

Did you mean 70 zebra? With skintones just under 100 surely half the world would be blown out.

Today I shot a mix of auto exposed clips and manual ETTR. Will be interested to see how they grade.

I set the zebras to 100. If you see them, it's blown 100%. If you set them to 70 parts of the image might be blown, or might not.

If you've exposed without clipping but you still get blown highlights when applying a lut, pull down the highs with curves or levels or something before the lut.

TOP TIP: When shooting C Log set screen backlight to high and drop brightness for a poor man's lut. This helps a bit in judging exposure.

So that's what all those hieroglyphs are: ancient Egyptian pottery rants and fanboyism...

Yes, and very occasionally for me ML tries to record to SD even though CF is inserted and set to "preferred card" in ML menu. You know this is happening if the bit rate in the upper right corner of the screen is lower than 86 to 90.

A reboot solves this one, but it's had me scratching my head more than once.

I think it's quite likely that it's less noticeable on the wide end because there is generally less motion within the frame when shooting wide.

If you were to do a whip pan or have a speeding object move through the frame, you would see ghosting at 24mm.

Canon's spiel is BS. It's not IS related, it's not (directly) focal length related. It's a shitty temporal NR process which can't be switched off. 

Looks incredible. Is the shot with the two wedding rings on the girl's hand S16? And the one after it also looks like film - close up on the girl's eye. If it's S16 then it has amazingly narrow DOF and if it's DSLR then it looks amazingly filmic!

You must by feeling very proud right now

I honestly can't see the difference between the various IS modes and their effect on ghosting. It's just as visible with IS off. 

It's minimised at ISO 500 but detail still seems to get smeared when the camera moves.

Time for a good ol' Lets Petition Canon Party?

52 minutes ago, Lintelfilm said:

 It hasn't destroyed any shots for me as it's fairly well hidden by motion when video is playing.

That's good to know. Doing a real world run and gun shoot tomorrow so will have a chance to delve in more detail into image quality. I bought the XC10 for easy hand held work so it would be a shame if ghosting compromised my ability to wave the camera around like a lunatic! 

I can't compare to the BMPCC as I haven't used it.

5D3 is decent at high ISO but only if you ETTR. The shadows start to become a mess of noise from about 3200, with weird, wavy low frequency noise. So try to stay out of the noise floor (this shown on the RAW histogram) if possible. This noise floor increases with ISO and limits usable dynamic range. You might think you're getting the shot and then come home and have a heart attack when you see the shadow noise.

Incidentally I turn off all NR in ACR (except for 20 colour) so that Neat Video can have a decent crack at it. Have had good results this way.

I can verify that my 1066x 256GB cards are sufficient for 25fps full HD. I did a benchmark at the time and it was 90+ for both cards, as far as I remember.

That idea might date from the time when the large cards were 1200x and the smaller cards were 1000x yet were somehow faster. Then there were 1066x large cards which were faster than the old 1200x. Might be more info here and some other reports that the 256GB 1066x is stable.

http://magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=11428.msg112874#msg112874

I've got 4 KB cards and all work flawlessly, 256 1066x and 64 1000x

Buy direct from KB on Amazon and when you get the card run the ML in-camera benchmark. You're looking for write speeds of 90 plus IIRC. If not, send it back. They know the score. 

If you can afford it get 256GB cards. Changing cards all the time is a pain in the hole.

PS: I get continuous 25p until the cows come home with sound, overlays, zebras, raw histogram and all kinds of good stuff.

Komputerbay offer best bang for buck. Check ML forum for exact specs. I have 2 x 256GB which give around 45min per card. Shoot one, offload the other. Go all day.

4 minutes ago, Django said:

Is this accurate, only 20 seconds MLV + Audio? Take away the audio.. and you get how much raw shooting time?

Maybe garethw is trying for 1920x1080 30p continuous which I don't think is possible but could be wrong. 24/25 should be a breeze.