UHDjohn

5 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

Nice work @kidzrevil - what delicious filters are you using at the moment?

Yes, I've seen it before... and I'm sure I'll see it again! I've noticed it on single frames only.

 

Thanks for posting - great to see what others are up to! Some great tonality there. I totally hear you about detailed shots becoming mush. Must check out kidzrevil's recommendation to try other picture styles with sharpness whacked up. And please do post your lut @BenEricson

Here's my shots from a weekend break in Belfast - I can sense the mush in lots of them even when downscaled to 1080p. 

Camera: 4K C-Log, ISO500, ETTR where possible, WB Cloudy, Tiffen 1/4 Black Pro Mist.

Post: white balance tweak → levels → my simple curve posted as a lut on previous page.

EDIT: I think my lovely grain did not survive the vimeo compression too well

I like what that filter does to the highlights on top of the very nice looking footage. Did you use any stabilisation in post or do you just have a very steady hand

Sorry yes it's ' look 5' - was looking for C-Log. I got more DR out of it than the other profiles in my tests so will continue to use it. If I get time I'll post some tests.

17 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

On page 11 there's a comparison of DR between Standard and C-Log:

I don't fully understand the DR test, but I interpret this graph as showing that the clipping point at 100 IRE is earlier for Standard than it is for, but that the final maxed out clipping point at 109 is roughly the same for both. So if you're shooting standard with 100% zebras and you're seeing clipping, there could be quite a bit of info still in those superwhites. It just appears that Standard has less DR when you switch back and forth between it and C-Log because the area under the zebras increases.

I think so too, from reading the EBU paper and from my own experience of tinkering with the files.

I shot a lot of 4K C-Log yesterday at 205mbps and noticed a bit of chroma artifacting going on with FilmConvert. So I went back to the old fashioned way of grading and came up with a curve for C-Log that I really like and that doesn't seem to cause as much breaking up of the footage. Here it is if you wanna check it out:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1exEpCRAfgFVzlUaVByczNDR1U/view?usp=sharing

I like this because it's quite contrasty but doesn't really crush shadows at all. Just set your white point and black point with curves or levels before this lut.

I am seeing this as well with C-Log... must do some comparison with other styles with sharpening whacked up.

There is no comparison with C-LOG in at paper.

The scopes on my PIX-E and Shogun don't show super whites but I can see them in Resolve by switching between Data and Video. The EBU paper didn't test the DR in C-LOG and I was comparing C-LOG to the other profiles for DR but I'm prepared to believe all the other non LOG profiles have similar DR. 

2 minutes ago, Lintelfilm said:

Thanks good to know. But in my tests it was actually the red channel that got exposed correctly and the green and blue that got blown. The zebra said the green (if it is the green it's reading) was fine. I wasn't really exposing to the right I was just trying to get as much latitude as possible as it was a very high contrast scene with dark shadows under trees and bright skies so I needed to use as much of the right and left as possible.

I could be wrong and it could be the LUMA channel but I'm assuming it's like their DSLR's which all show the clipping in the green channel only but I'm pretty sure when I had the RGB parade up and was pointing at a 24 patch colour checker I saw how it reacted. In the situation you describe, which is going to be a tough test for any camera, your best approach is to use an external monitor with scopes and make sure you get a custom WB. 

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

Last but not least I am seeing that the in camera sharpening is vital because C-LOG can turn your footage into mush even though it has fantastic DR. I am going to use a diffusion filter to cut down on edge sharpness. All the picture profiles give the same DR but it's just distributed differently and I feel like Cinema EOS is a good middle ground between them all

The XC10 profiles do not all have the same DR - hook up a monitor with some scopes and then point it at a highish contrast scene that can just be captured in C-LOG and then see the data go off the top and bottom when you switch to other profiles. C-LOG doesn't have any sharpening applied and it's designed that way so you can add much better sharpening in post. production where you can do it with more control and sophistication. I just with they did the same for NR and disabled it for the user to apply in post.

1 hour ago, Lintelfilm said:

ARRRGH! More XC10 issues!

I've been using 100% zebras to help meter and of course guard against over exposure for a while now and it's been working great. However all of a sudden it seems to have stopped. Now, if I expose the sky in a landscape shot so that the zebras are a notch under 100% (i.e. no zebras showing but a slight tweak to up the exposure and they start showing), the sky gets completely blown - and I mean completely. No information at all! I've now tested this several times and the 100% zebras are clearly not accurate. Add on top of this there are supposed to be superwhites and I'm very concerned my unit has become defective. It's possible it was always like this but I'm pretty confident it wasn't as I've been exposing like this for a while now.

Can anyone contribute? How do your cameras respond to using 100% zeberas to expose to the right (just before clipping)?

Arghhh!

The Zebras work on the green channel so with blue sky you can be not showing any clipping but be very overexposed. ETTR is not a good idea with any in-camera profile as it's an exposure strategy for shooting RAW. With RAW you get as much info onto the sensor before clipping to maximise DR and keep out of the noise and then apply a tone curve in post production. With non RAW capture the tone curve is 'baked in' to the data so if it's a low contrast scene you will overexpose if you ETTR and you have to pull down the values in post but you are moving values to a different part of the tone curve where with 8bit they can get stretched out and cause banding. Like I said this camera needs scopes ( as they decided to do with the XC15) but more importantly an RGB parade so you can see the individual channels ( not sure if they have done this with the XC15) - or use an external monitor / recorder but this kind of defeats the ergonomics. 

On 11/11/2016 at 7:20 AM, hyalinejim said:

I assume you know about the internal ND, and you're saying it's not enough in bright light. I agree with Tim that a vari ND is great outdoors, giving that elusive level of manual control. Here are my tips.

I like to ETTR  to avoid shadow noise. There are superwhites from 100 to 109 IRE. When shooting manually I set zebras to 100 and go around 2 clicks brighter in C Log and 5 in WideDR. If I'm shooting auto I set EC to plus 1 (but I wish there was an assignable exposure lock on/off button).

You can get a slightly lower base ISO by switching to gain and fine tune.

Update to latest firmware to minimise RS in 4K. It's excellent . 

CLog has more banding in midtones than WideDr, especially in HD but total dynamic range captured is the same.

Consider 200mbps rather than 300 in 4K to give longer recording times. The quality difference is not huge.

Will check out cinema eos based on recommendations here.

I use a Tiffen Vari ND outdoors and combine it with the internal ND to keep it from creating uneven skies at strong settings. I know there are recoverable superwhites but the banding occurs with C-LOG when you pull back the exposure in post so I don't find ETTR to be that useful on this camera.I found C-LOG to have a wider DR than Wide DR  (as seen on my ext monitor scopes) but depending on the scene's contrast range C-LOG may not be ideal low contrast situations. It would be great if it had inbuilt scopes to see the brightness range of a scene and choose the profile which best fits it. I'll check out the gain settting and hope Canon issues a firmware update for some of the obvious issues like baked in NR and the ghosting but I predict they won't bother now the XC15 is out......

Anyone know if the scopes on the XC15 are single channel or can you select the RGB parade?

9 hours ago, tomsemiterrific said:

Yes, this is the XC15. I sold my XC10 to purchase it---I never noticed any issue with the XC10, but perhaps I'm not as skilled or attentive to details as i should be. I do a lot of education videos and the new XLR attachment and audio processing offered on the XC15 is excellent--had to have it, and now the XC15 is complete, at least for my primary purposes.

Note, that a firmware update is coming for the XC10 that will give it the Cps and color space of the XC15--and (I hope) the waveform as well. It is very, very helpful, especially shooting in Log. Could it not be possible that Canon knows about this issue, and has silently addressed the issue in the XC15, and plan to do the same for the XC10 in its next firmware update???

 

How do you know there is a firmware update in the pipeline - it would be normal commercial practice for Canon to abandon the XC10 and push sales of the XC15.

7 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

Yes at 1000 there is a slight smearing of the image in HD, but 4K shouldn't be affected as much.

I didn't notice a difference between the two when it came to noise - both were at ISO500 so not that much noise anyway except for shadow areas.

Yes, that video has very clear ghosting in some shots - like double vision!

43s, back of the man's head - or the lady. Or when the white truck goes past, pause it and you'll see 2 sets of tail lights!

It's not too catastrophic. What' s the shutter speed?

1 hour ago, hyalinejim said:

 

I also find it hard to believe that other people have not spotted the image ghosting and that makes me think it might just be some models. Only way to know for sure is to see footage from other units. It looks like @tomsemiterrific and @mercer are on the case and will post something in the other thread

In other news, more tests today confirm for me that the image is already losing detail at ISO1000 in HD.

Also, WideDR is better than CLog in HD because there's less banding and the colours are nicer.

CLOG:

 

WIDE DR:

It also makes it easier to see the screen. I don't think there's any difference in dynamic range. I also learned that there are superwhites and 100 zebras are not necessarily clipped - I can get that info back in 32bit workspace in After Effects.

It's recoverable in Resolve as well but what I found was that it bands more readily when over exposed this way. The scopes on the ext recorder show C-LOG has more DR than any of the other profiles.

37 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

Even at 1000? Damn ?

How does wide dr compare to clog in terms of noise?

Im testing the cinema eos profile today with +1 sharpness in 4k and +2 sharpness in HD. Its worth a shot to see if that retains detail or affects the NR in any way

@hyalinejim 

The ghosting is as clear as day here

https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=C5ZAcDtAq4s

 

Can't see any ghosting - where is it in the timeline?

19 minutes ago, Lintelfilm said:

 

Yeah the 4K HDMI signal can be sent to a Ninja Star and auto downsampled. There is very little difference as the 4K is intraframe 422 so already most of the way there. I think maybe colours do look slightly better from the Atomos but it could just be the exposure shift I'm seeing (Atomos records slightly darker and therefore colours are more saturated).

I doubt motion will be any different as 4K on the XC10 is intraframe. I was pretty sure the XC10 outputs 10bit - at least from 4K - why do you think it's 8bit?

Anyhow the Ninja Star fares quite nicely with XC10. Small in size. Auto down samples from 4K and does pulldown from the Canon 50i/60i signal. Can be start/stop triggered by the Canon. File sizes are smaller than 4K 305mb but (I believe) better colour depth.

 

Both the Shogun and PIX-E5H display the incoming signal as 8bit. 

I've used it with a Shogun and Pix-e5h. I can't see any quality gain over the internal UHD 305 codec but haven't done any motion tests. I tested it to see if I could eliminate banding in blue skies but it didn't improve. ( HDMI out is 8 bit and not 10 bit)I found ETTR not the best way to expose for C-Log. Firstly the zebras are on the green channel so you can clip other colours ( inc blue skies) and mainly because the image just looks better to me about 1 stop under ETTR and the banding is under control. The banding is a bit of a shame and I don't get it with my A7s S-Log HDMI out which is also 8 bit. One good reason for an external monitor is to have scopes which I hear they have introduced on the new x15. Probably no technical reason they can't do this with a firmware upgrade but I guess they won't for commercial reasons. One thing I hate ( And on the A7s) is the lack of a quick WB set button. I would just like to point it at a grey card or pop on my expodisk and press to set the WB. This camera generated so much hate when it came out but is now gaining a lot of respect  due in no small part to a superb C-Log / 305mbs codec and the now sensible pricing ( the launch price was just ill judged). Couple of tips; don't stop down past f8 in UHD or the resolution drops off due to diffraction. it can't trigger the recording from the camera on the video devices recorder but it can with then Atomos. ( kind of pointless putting a monitor on it anyway as it ruins it's compact point and shoot nature) I'd also like to see user selectable NR and more options for assigning functions to the buttons.

1 hour ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

I wear glasses - if I want things smoothed out, I just take them off.

On a serious note, until TV is properly 1080p, I'm just going to stick with a HD TV - 720p upscaled to 1080p looks fine & Blu-Ray is about as sharp as I can handle. Also, 4K TVs are waaaaaay more expensive than HD TVs.

As far as filming things goes, BM Pocket produces one of the best images that I've seen/used for quite a long while (10yrs or so) - it's not about sharpness, never has been, never will be. Look at what most DPs say - they're trying to soften the image & that's for cinema, which you would've thought needed a bigger/better resolution for the bigger screen. So you can take your sharpness and.......

If you buy a 4K camera to re-frame & then downscale to 1080p - what a complete & utter waste of time. Learn to frame/film properly & appreciate the beauty of a great camera. I'd prefer to rent a proper 4K camera with a decent codec, instead of using something with a crippling 8-bit mess.

Agree on the BMPCC - tiny sensor which shouldnt be 'cinematic' but is better than many 24x36mm sensor based cameras.Nothing wrong with capturing in UHD and down sampling to achieve better HD as lots of 'pro' cameras do this internally. As for cropping then it's just another tool in the box and stills photographers do it all the time. Infact if you look at stills equipment then all cameras are capable of resolutions beyond what most people view the final image on. Arguments that you don't need more than 8mp (which is 4k/UHD) won't get you very far. HD will be the output format for some time to come I think but how you get to that end point has may different paths. Expensive cine cams do it nativity, cheap DSLR/mirrorless need to capture UHD to be converted in the NLE - it's just the state of the current tech. 

28 minutes ago, Eno said:

 My experience with it left me with a bitter taste, the 4K image is very soft (more like 2,5K), DR is BAD, nowhere near 12 stops, the AF is slow and the combination of a small senor and fixed dark lens makes the image very uncinematic, and above all the price is unrealistic + the price of the Cfast cards is very high.

I also can't wait for the GH5.

The image has no in camera sharpening - it's not soft. Also you need to keep your aperture under F8 or diffraction kicks in which softens the image on UHD. DR is as good in C-LOG as my Sony A7s + Shogun. Af is OK for what it is. It's not a cinema camera so not having a cinematic image is hardly surprising. Current prices are good for what it offers - Cfast cards are cheap if you know where to get good deals. I got a 128 gb card for £125 on Ebay last week. I wouldn't consider it as a rival to the GH5 - different kind of camera altogether.

I shoot UHD on my A7s / Shogun and XC10 in order to get superior detail HD output. The lower compression helps a lot (much more than 8bit vs 10 bit) and having the ability to crop in is useful for using warp stabiliser and re-framing without quality loss. So yes UHD is really necessary for me. Colour is another matter but can't see it being relevant to HD vs UHD.

8 minutes ago, Eric Calabros said:

Nikon used a thinner CFA in D5 for achieving higher S/N, yet I haven't seen users noticing its color be inferior to D4 or D3. if there was meaningful difference between A7RII and IQ180, assuming both use same optics (same formula, same coating,..), I'm sure it would be presentable. its not aesthetic, its about numbers. 

What numbers? 

7 minutes ago, Eric Calabros said:

not-good-as-ccd-color mindset is made because usually something is wrong with raw processing. 

here is CCD IQ180 vs. your A7RII tonal range according to DXO

Nothing to do with tonal 'range' - it's the ability to differentiate between tones and colours which is not something that gets measured (or is easily measured).

24 minutes ago, tupp said:

Nope.  I did not say to compare differing formats using identical emulsions.  In fact, I specifically stated "when using film stocks that gave comparable resolution (color depth) from each format," which means using a coarser-grained stock on the larger format.  Doing so makes larger and smaller formats more similar in color depth (or more similar "in colour and tonal 'sophistication,'" as you put it).

 

If you shot a 35mm image with Kodachrome 25 and compared it to a 6x4.5 image shot with Kodacolor 400, you would probably find that the smaller 35mm format has more color depth.  However, you might notice a slight "improvement" in the DOF roll-off and in focal plane solidity on the larger format, given the same quality of optics on both formats and with DOFs of matching mathematical "equivalence," .

 

To me, that optical advantage transcends a difference in color depth, which in a similar digital scenario is also dependent on the resolution (assuming that bit depth and DR is the same on both the larger and smaller sensors).

 

 

Certainly, everyone has a right to their opinion, but the overriding difference in look between larger and smaller formats seems to be of an optical quality, as exemplified by the Kodachrome/Kodacolor scenario above and as demonstrated in the many eCyclops/MiniCyclops images captured with HD, CMOS cameras.

Don't disagree on the optical quality differences but so far in this debate which started out as MF digital vs smaller formats the issue of colour and tonality had not been included. Moreover not everyone shoots in either cinema or stills wide open to create planes of focus with out of focus areas ( bokeh) to drool over. In situations where you are ( and want) maximising DOF there are still qualitative advantages to using medium format backs in stills applications for their ( rather obvious to my eyes) superior colour and tonal reproduction which I would also expect to translate to cinema if the chips could be used in this way.

19 minutes ago, tupp said:

I disagree for two reasons:

1.  The difference was apparent in the analog days on both 35mm and large format cameras when using film stocks that gave comparable resolution (color depth) from each format;

 

 

Nope -  difference in colour and tonal 'sophistication' was apparent between different formats in film days as well - not the range of colours and tones but the subtle differentiation between them using identical emulsions. I stick by my opinion of CFA density (or lack thereof) on modern small sensor cameras and it's effect on colour reproduction compared to MF sensors. CCD vs CMOS - we can argue all day.....

The reason why MF digital is 'better' has nothing to do with DOF or out of focus rendering and everything to do with CMOS vs CCD and the strength of the CFA's over the sensors. SONYCANONIKON etc put in the weakest CFA they can 'get away with' to maximise high ISO performance. MF digi back makers put in the CFA's which create the best colour fidelity and are not too bothered if this limits the high ISO ability. CCD vs COMS  - again CCD can't give you high ISO sensitivity but when it comes to reproducing 'sophisticated' colour it's a different animal.

To get the best out of this when shooting UHD you need to keep your aperture <F8 otherwise you soften the image due to diffraction so set your aperture and use a variable ND filter to control exposure. I accept it has a few handling issues (what camera doesn't) but my only real gripe is the lack of a user selectable AF point which should be easy to do as a firmware update............