TheRenaissanceMan

AF performance differs radically based on lighting. A flatly lit face will track much better than a moodily lit one. Contrasty lighting bit me hard on a C700 shoot, and wasted 5 minutes of valuable setup time wrestling with AF settings. I'm sure it works well for many people and many projects; personally, I'm not ready to give up the level of control I have with a wireless puller.

The professional production world never stopped using MF. They just transitioned to wireless transmitters/follow focuses.

Fabulous shots, Geoff! Those colors are TASTY. What was your lighting and grading process for these?

Canon and Nikon were long seen as the only reliable options for professional photojournalism. This may not make a difference to you, but it is a HUGE shift in the market.

I wasn't saying you should fix IR in post as a rule--just that this specific instance didn't seem to lose much. My experience with Canon has been mostly good, especially in regards to pleasing color. However, the extended ND settings on the C200 invariably needed an IR cut to decontaminate the shadows. On the 2 commercial projects I've shot with newer Canons, I've run into issues with cycs lit by blue LEDs turning purple. Turns out I'm not the only one--there's a whole topic about it on DVX User (the answer from Canon: "the camera is operating within spec" lmao). And while rather pleasing at first glance, the color isn't what you'd call accurate. It took a ton of secondary work in post to get the company colors dead on without fucking up everything else. All I'm really driving at is that every camera (and brand) has its issues to mitigate, be it form factor, color accuracy, IR, codec, sensitivity, etc. In the scheme of things, considering what the 12K offers, remembering to use some IR cut is pretty damn manageable. At least for my kind of work. Ymmv.

Fair enough! Glad they came through for you. Hopefully, that bodes well for owner-ops/rental houses who embrace this new camera. 🙂

It's RAW. You don't lose any information pulling color casts out of shadows. That's the entire point of the format. Alexa skews green out of the box. Canon has issues with blue-ish grass, inaccurate reds, and blue fringing around bright highlights (depending which matrix you use). RED has had heavily documented color issues since they've been around, including massive IR problems with all their pre-Dragon sensors. "Perfect color out of the box" is a myth perpetuated by pretentious gearheads; every camera (and many a lens) has quirks that must be managed. Try using the heaviest internal ND settings on a C200 and not seeing IR pollution! I understand that you were unable to screw an IR filter on some BM cameras in the past, which bit you in post. That's unfortunate; however, the issue is easily managed with skilled workers who do their homework.

Repair/replacement is very different for a $500 camera versus a $10K camera

Thanks Penny. Looks like I'm in the clear for now. This footage is all ProRes 422 recorded through the BMVA 5". Mostly short clips, 30 seconds on average.

+1

I remember that topic! Didn't see a lot of difference between his samples though, so I dismissed it as a placebo effect. I'll have to add a couple picture profile clips to the folder for comparison. EDIT: Clips 18-20, shot in Picture Profile SLOG, have been uploaded to the drive folder.

Interesting...I've heard the opposite--that the picture profile version of SLOG is inferior and has "incorrect" color compared to the "proper" SLOG out. I've never noticed a big difference in my (admittedly brief) tests, so I use the latter option for the ability to toggle LUT on and off in the onboard monitor. The clips I posted above use the non-picture profile version of SLOG.

Hey y'all! Sorry I wasn't able to get footage up sooner. I've been feeling under the weather this week, which has been understandably stressful given COVID. Still waiting for my test results, but I'm improving steadily, so hopefully everything comes back negative. But enough about me--let's get to the fun part. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nYFylo03zFn2W-P5OtZ08xvZEuQrscGh?usp=sharing These shots are just casual off-the-cuff clips taken around my apartment complex, but hopefully they still prove useful to those interested in how the F3 grades. I tried to get a variety of lighting scenarios, shot sizes, and color temps. The cookbook shot is ISO 1600, and the one under the bed is maxed out at 6400. Everything else is at the F3's base ISO of 800. At @mercer's request, I've included some cats this time. 😁 Keep in mind that I sometimes adjusted/bracketed focus or exposure during shots, so be sure and scrub through to find the most useful frames. Let me know if y'all have any other questions!

I prefer the SLR Magic APOs for overall look, but this is an AMAZING deal for technically excellent (if sterile) cinema lenses

It's not as heavy as it looks. Besides, between the top handle and the side grip it's infinitely more comfortable to handhold than a DSLR/mirrorless imo. I'm tied up this weekend, but Monday or Tuesday I'll try and get some Protest HQ test clips up for y'all to mess with.

I use a Sachtler "Doctor Bag" for mine.

Unfortunately, those stills are from a project I no longer have access to--just the raw clips I'm grading for my reel. If anyone wants some ungraded stills/clips, I can post a few for y'all to play with.

The P6K handles noise reduction in the shadows much better than the UM46, which struggles with patterns and ugly color shift even after generous NR.

A6300 battery life would necessitate re-balancing the gimbal every half hour to 45 minutes, which makes it suboptimal as a dedicated gimbal cam imo. Are the Fujis neutral enough to match the F3, or would you have to grade down the F3 to match?

If you're on a budget, definitely consider getting a smaller camera for glidecam/gimbal shots. I use an A7III for that on smaller jobs, and it cuts pretty well after a quick tweak in Resolve. The Pocket 4K is a better match for dynamic range and grade-ability, but tougher to match in skin tones and much clumsier as a camera body. The 6K is a GREAT match, but at that point you're spending twice as much as you did on the F3 and may as well make the 6K your A-cam. Haven't used all the newer DSLR/mirrorless bodies to know how well they'd line up, but all of them will take some secondary work to cut in a 2-camera setup.

A few more for the road. Damn does the F3 grade well.

Stills from some past F3 projects, all with Leica R's and the 5" Video Assist. Such a remarkable camera: lovely to use, easy to grade, solid in low light, lots of dynamic range...for the money I paid, it's earned its keep 50 times over.

17-40 is totally okay on a budget, especially at the current used prices. Very useful set of focal lengths in a car! Versatile for run and gun/handheld work, too. It's just slow and optically middling.

Color-wise, I like to shoot in SLOG2 and SGamut3.cine, then use the color space transform tool on my second node in Resolve to translate that into r.709. Grade normally from there. Using the second node is key, because you can do all your white balance and highlight/shadow recovery on the first node, pre-transform, without clipping any data or creating tricky color balance issues.

For a 2K/1080 deliver, I like to shoot 4K. For a 4k delivery, 5-6k is ideal. Yes, in an ideal world all your shots are rock solid, noise-free, and perfectly framed, but in the real world, having room to crop (or safety area around your frame), stabilize, and downscale to kill noise really helps. Besides, having more options in post is good. I'm experienced, but that's not gonna stop me from covering my ass.