Lamplighter55
-
Posts
8 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Reputation Activity
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Brummy in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
My new video, filmed mostly with canon XC10.
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to BenEricson in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
I couldn't take it and had to buy the camera again. So stoked to mess around with this camera again.
I found some cool footage shot with a wide angle today. When zoomed through it looks like you can achieve shallower depth of field as well. Around 4:26 the stuff shot with the Wide Angle.
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Mattias Burling in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
I love it, gorgeous image and colors.
I was taking out some old b-roll for my latest YouTube video the other day. And it wasn't the first time I went, "Wow! Which camera did I shoot this on?" and it turning out to be the XC10.
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Mattias Burling in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
My point exactly!
Accept for the last part.
Your knowledge can definitely protect you from hardware flaws in the same way it protects you from the horrible consequences of using camera A over camera B.
My point is:
The shooter is the key. Learn how to shoot and use light and almost any camera will do.
But learn your cameras pros and cons so you can work with and around them.
Get the camera that suits your needs.
Every camera out there, every single one, has huge deal breaking flaws.
You just have to pick the once you can live with
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Andrew Reid in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
I am slowly getting round to finishing my mammoth XC10 review.... expect it this week!
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to jpfilmz in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
Modified EOS Standard
Sharpness +4
Contrast -4
Color Depth -4
ISO 1600
Lighting = Back light from tv and 1 z96 LED at about half power @ about 3 1/2 feet away.
I did the same shoot with CLOG and visible ghosting appeared.
-
Lamplighter55 got a reaction from kidzrevil in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
The transform from 4K to HD (in camera) basically is a 2x2 sample of the 4K frame pixels going into one HD pixel - so effectively 1/4 the spread of noise. Essentially averaging to the mean each set of 4 pixels in the 4K to create one pixel in HD. The 'neat' thing about this is that you can (canon can) also use this to sharpen (increase luminance contrast) as part of the process as the chrominance noise is variable for each colour channel. So we end up with less noisy but slightly sharper images in HD.
I still think Canon should be able to improve on the 'ghosting' or 'temporal' quantisation/sampling problem - if they are not then they should be using a fast optical flow algorithm to integrate the frames at low frame rates - to get better filmic motion blur. As seen with our examples there is some kind of 'stepping' and 'kneeing' at the transitions from dark to light and visa versa - this is like the effect you get on CRTs when a high key signal drops to base black. Along the edge of the transition you see an over-shoot and undershoot of the image signal. Apart from the scan-line look, this is what gives an old analogue video signal it's characteristic 'Video' look - odd dark lines around things. It is quite possible that the required level of processing is beyond the single Digic chip's spec for the XC10/15 and is only implemented in the higher end cameras (C100/C300/C500/C700 etc.) - can but hope otherwise.
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Tim Sewell in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
Probably could use a bit more work - especially the score - but I quite like the 'thrillery' feel. Cinema EOS standard, HD, colour and contrast balanced then FilmConvert-ed to Fuji Velvia. Soundtrack done in Filmstro.
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to hyalinejim in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
This post is a bit dense, as I've been figuring out ghosting in relation to picture styles, ISO and 4K v HD so skip this if it's not of interest to you. If you are interested, don't take this as gospel - find what works for you!
I went and checked and it looks to me like EOS Standard has the least ghosting. Here's a motion test at ISO 4000, f5/6, 1/50s in 4K. I balanced the contrast between each of them and desaturated so that ghosting becomes more clearly visible and comparable. The area of grey in the middle would be completely clear of horizontal stripes if there were no ghosting in this camera. I'm counting (roughly) the number of times I see the white band repeating before it becomes so indistinguishable as to be unproblematic.
EOS STANDARD ghosts = 4
CINEMA EOS ghosts = 5 or 6
WIDE DR = 6 or 7
C-LOG = 8
Now, whether or not you see the same number of ghosts as me doesn't really matter. The general trend is clear and it looks like EOS Standard has the least ghosting.
This was at 4K and I tried the same test in HD at the same ISO of 4000. All four profiles were equally rubbish here but at lower ISOs the same trend emerged with EOS Standard having the least ghosting.
Interestingly, in 50fps 1/50s the ghosting appeared to be a little better than in 25fps 1/50s because the ghosts were smaller. So you might get better results by switching to 50 or 60fps, as long as you can live with the effectively decreased bitrate.
Also interestingly, in the EBU paper the guy talks about the resolution drop in HD at higher ISOs. I think Canon chose to address this in their last firmware update because now HD looks as if it might have more resolution than 4K at ISO 6400 - even when the 4K is downsized to match it!!! Check it out:
HD on left, downsized 4K on right:
In an individual frame, the HD looks much cleaner. But if I press play on this static scene it's pretty obvious that there is major noise suppression going on in the HD which feels a bit plasticky without added grain - and if there's movement in the scene then noise reduction and compression artifacts are everywhere. Still though, I'm very surprised that HD does so well - I can read the text much more easily than in the 4K. Perhaps the XC10 is now optimised for shooting charts from a tripod
OK, back to ghosting and low light. Since it was the best, I did some more tests using EOS Standard and for me around 1600 to 2000 is a good cut off point in both HD and 4k. Ghosting is beginning to appear at this stage but if you weren't consciously looking for it you probably wouldn't see it. Any higher than that in HD and ghosting gets progressively worse, while the noise stays constant and the image gets smeared. In 4K, on the other hand, ghosting seems to stay about the same as ISO increases, but noise kicks in so much that HD is actually better. So if I ever do need to go 3200 plus - to film the ghost of Elvis or something (as long as he doesn't move too much) - I think I'd use HD rather than 4K as there's less noise and the same or more detail. I was surprised to see today in my HD ISO5000 clip of the girls and skeletons how usable it looked. In 4K it would be a mess of colour noise at that high ISO.
So all in all, I'm fairly happy with EOS Standard as a workaround to mitigate ghosting. I can now utilise the ISO range from 160 to 1600 to help with exposure without worrying about messing up image quality too much. This captures a similar tonal range that you would get in C-Log at 500 - 5000... and that's a hell of a lot higher than I would ever have gone before. If I think back to the first video camera I ever owned, the Canon XM2, that had 3 stops of gain. Part of the reason that I like the XC10 so much is that it reminds me of that camera, shooting handheld when I was first discovering video. And I'm glad that I can now confidently use it in moderately low light.
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Lintelfilm in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
Quick tip: I think there are a few XC10 users here using FCPX? Alex4D's free Unsharp Mask plugin works great. It's default sharpness is far too strong but if yopu apply it and then bring the radius down to about 1.9 and crank the "amount" slider up it really brings the detail out in a nice organic way. If you're using grain remember to stack it under (i.e. apply it before/top of the inspector) so it doesnt sharpen the grain too. This technique with a fine 4K grain (e.g. Film Convert's 35mm) on top of a low-radius unsharp mask gets fantastic results, great with 4K but even with HD footage too.
For best HD results: upscale HD to 4K > add subtle unsharp mask > add a contrasty curve > add 4K grain = HD that looks very much like 4K!
Yeah I really miss not having a waveform on the XC10. I really hope Canon add it with a firmware update.
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to hyalinejim in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
Looks great! You've been having some nice weather in NY. I'm heading to Belfast today and will try to get some shots there.
Why do you prefer CLog and Cinema EOS Standard to the others? I'd be interested in your thoughts on this as I'm slowly working my way through the various picture styles. I agree that CLog is best for recovering highlight and shadow detail, but I found a lot of banding compared to WideDR. But it does have compatibility with a huge selection of luts.
WideDR looks similar to CLog but as sharper roll off into highlights and shadows and the colours are slightly different.
With Cinema EOS Standard and Standard you can drop the ISO to 160 - although I suspect the white clipping point is the same as CLog and WideDR at 500 and shadow noise looks around the same. But people say ghosting is decreased. However, both these profiles have a video-ish saturation burnout in the highlights compared to CLog and WideDR. This can be fixed, a bit, in post by gently desaturating highlights.
Now, they also differ greatly from each other in colour reproduction. Standard seems to me closer to WideDR and CLog. I'm not sure yet what to make of the colours in Cinema EOS Standard.
Basically, all four of those picture styles offer the same clipping points, but they differ in how usable different parts of the dynamic range are: CLog is best for shadows and highlights but suffers from banding if you push it too far. They all give (sometimes dramatically) different colour reproduction. And ghosting is worst on CLog, followed by WideDR, and better on the standard profiles.
Will continue testing!
PS: For sharpness, the EBU paper says 3 is the max before aliasing begins to hit IIRC
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Tim Sewell in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
Unfortunately, this is a camera marketed for handheld use in unpredictable shooting situations - so let's hope for a firmware solution!
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to hyalinejim in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
Interesting! According to this theory, would you expect ghosting to worsen with ISO, as we have seen?
Here's the latest update from Canon:
I guess you could interpret this in a few different ways. I'm going with "they're fixing the firmware" for now.
-
Lamplighter55 got a reaction from hyalinejim in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
... the artefacts are quite characteristic of 'Temporal aliasing' but obviously some processing has been done as it does not seem to be global to each frame and seems to to be more pronounced when there is a pronounced difference in contrast from the preceding frame onto an area with less contrast. There should be a firmware adjustment that can solve the problem. (There's an interesting page on 'Red's site that helps explain temporal aliasing and their solution (hardware) in using an lcd layer between lens and capture chip that controls the light levels at a pixel level across the exposure of each frame.) It is a tricky problem though, that all digital recording devices have to deal with - the question for Canon is were in the image pipeline, can be mitigated.
Assuming this is indeed the problem then in theory we can reduce it by capturing a flat but brightly lit image (reducing contrast but also pushing more of the pixel values towards the mid-point exposure value), running at a higher shutter speed and keeping camera nodal movement to a minimum (to reduce spatial aliasing). I'll also try some tests to see if I'm correct - at least in part ;-)
[Link to Temporal Aliasing on Red's site: http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/cinema-temporal-aliasing]
-
Lamplighter55 reacted to Mattias Burling in Canon XC10 4K camcorder
Ive been using the luts made for the 1DC Log with good results.