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Tag Archive - camera

The Cool Red One Camera Package

October 17, 2008 in Filmmaking with 1 Comment

I had a lot of work to do but I got distracted and went to www.red.com and visited their store. I mean it is the camera I so dearly want so I wanted to at least check (and practice) what items would need to be purchased. So; with the help of the many articles that I have read about the Red One and this particular article at IndiesHD, I tried to setup a list of items that I would have to buy when I get my own Red One

Ok, granted, I am not an expert and I probably left out a few items and maybe selected a few that were not necessary. But hey – it was fun. Not that in the screen shot below the ‘cart’ of items was constructed by adding items by deposit only – so the final price below is only 10% of the actual price :-O, man I have expensive taste. (maybe I should start charging for my services so I can raise the money)

Panasonic AG-HPX170P Review by Adam Wilt

September 24, 2008 in Filmmaking with 3 Comments

I came across this review of the Panasonic AG HPX170 via FreshDV:

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/awilt/story/review_panasonic_ag_hpx170p_1_3_3ccd_p2_camcorder/

For me it is very interesting because it is one of the cameras I have wanted – that and a Red One, but the Panasonic is more in my price range (well not right now). The review is by Adam Wilt and makes a few comparisons to the HVX200, would be interesting to find out how different the HPX170 is to the HVX200A.

Every time that there is a need to hire a better camera it seems that everyone is hiring the Panasonic HVX200 and not the Sony EX1. So I have not had a chance to see how the HVX200′s 4:2:2 with 720p helps with my Blue or Green Screen filming. I know that the EX1 produces a cleaner and better picture than the the Panasonic – or so I am told – but the colour decimation is 4:2:0, hmmm. But here is the HPX170 that also has a much better picture but with 4:2:2 colour decimation (noting that that is the case for the HVX200A since they share the same CCDs). So when the HPX170 becomes available for hire then I think I’ll book it 2/3 weeks in advance.

So when did Panasonic add the 6 pin FW400 connector? Man I have been missing out on a few things.

More on RED

July 10, 2008 in Filmmaking with 0 Comments

Delving deeper into the RED site reveals some interesting tidbits.

Here you can download a movie of the discussion and practical demonstration of how to use the 4K Red files in Final Cut Pro, 4K Files people, and 2K Offline, umm does anyone understand that? 4K? Awesome.

Red Recon Feed

feed://www.red.com/rss/recon

Here is to be found the announcement of Monstro, da da da dum, a new sensor to blow our minds away in 2010, nice.

Red + 48Hrs (Creative Cow)

Dylan Reeve and his team won a 48hr competition to write a script,film and edit with a Red One, what a story. Did I already say awesome in this post?

Iris and Aperture

July 2, 2008 in Filmmaking with 6 Comments

I reckon that it is a good idea to compile a set of terms and concepts related video and video editing; being my passion and all. First I will start with a few terms concerning the Digital Video Camera and then move onto editing terms and concepts. Once I have enough, I will add a separate page with all this information that can be accessed independently.

So onto the Iris.

The Iris is a device in the lens of the camera that has an opening allowing light to fall onto the sensor or film. That opening is called the aperture and is adjustable in increments or stops. Each stop or f-number allows half the light in as the previous one. The term f-number or f-stop is used to define the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the aperture. Where focal length in a digital video camera is the distance from the sensor to the rear of the lens. But why the funny numbers? f/2, f/2.8, etc?

f-stop# = ƒ/D

Each f- stop allows half the light of the previous, so to let in all the light through then the aperture would be fully open with a diameter almost equal to the diameter of the lens. Therefor a camera with a 72mm lens diameter would have the aperture open to 72mm for a f-stop of f/1. For half of the light to be let in then the area in the aperture opening would have to be halved. So using πr² to determine the area of the fully open aperture we get 4071.5 and half of that is 2035.75 which is a diameter of 50.9. This then is 1/1.4 of the full diameter of f/1.4, and so on. As you see the D in the equation is a ratio of the Aperture to the Lens Diameter and each stop is a relationship each halved area of the aperture to the full area.

f-stop

Ok the truth is that you don’t need to know all this, but it is certainly nice to understand it. In the end it is really about how you use the iris as a tool to set the exposure correctly, that is to control the amount of light that hits the sensor. Too much light or too little and you will loose detail.

One would either use the eye to gauge the best setting or a light meter, in either case you would want to expose for the subject or object of interest – not the background.

The setting you choose can be influenced by the shutter speed as well. A slower shutter will allow the light to hit the sensor for longer and therefor cause more exposure – meaning that you may have to close the aperture a bit. However this sort of balance is required for more professional camera; video and still.

The f stop does play a role in another area of the camera; the Depth of Field which is the the area that remains in focus, more on that in another article.

Red One, why it’s so Great

June 28, 2008 in Filmmaking with 1 Comment

Ok just to start by throwing some numbers our there; use them don’t use them – whatever.

2k,4k,4:4:4,4:2:2,12 bit RAW 4k, etc

Base Red Camera

Ok so what is so great about that?
Well, if you consider what options you have if you wanted to film with those specifications. If you that the price of $30,000 for a standard package for the Red One; Body, Lens etc, then a comparative Panasonic might be the Panasonic AJ-HDX900 which goes for about $26,000. But hey, we are not comparing apples with apples here because the HDX900 is only 1080p, 2/3 sensors and 4:2:2 colour sampling. Maybe comparing the Red One to a 35mm Film camera would be more accurate, but they are very expensive to buy and the film stock expensive to maintain and work with. Here is an interesting comparison from the Red Site:
Red Comparison
So the question begs: Why would I want it?
Well; besides the really cool camera that it is, I do a lot of Green Screen work and would love to have 4:4:4 colour sampling to work on. Then there is the whole future proof thing of having a 4k camera; on there is no easy distribution media for 4k HD or even 2k, maybe going out to Film from Red One acquisition would be better. Only problem is that I am still waiting for Apple to do something about Blu Ray in the Mac Pros and DVD Studio Pro, come on guys we are waiting.
The is one problem, even though I use manual settings on my camera and am very comfortable with that, the Red One is far more demanding in that regard. It is not like you can take the Red and shoot on the fly with out much planning; it requires decent lighting and accurate focus, it probably requires the same kind of handling as a 35mm film camera.

More Information
Red Site
Red One Forums
My First Red Camera Experience
The Nothing Men,
Dress for Success with RED
RED One Unboxed
Shot on RED
Shooting with RED
Seeing RED in Montreal

The First TenBefore – Keying

May 19, 2008 in Filmmaking with 2 Comments

Hi,

First I want to give a shout out to Morgan, the presenter and organizer of this project; without him I may have been humming and hahhing about how difficult this was going to be and how I could not find someone to present. Just shows you, God’s timing is perfect and God provides.

Secondly to Dylan, who did the TenBefore transition and background, he’s going study at varsity only next year and think that he’s gonna teach them a few things

Also, just to point to the Previous two posts regarding this series:

The First Ten Before - Introduction

The First Ten Before – Camera, Screen and Lights

Ok, now the nitty gritty stuff that Compositing Green Screen footage is made of.

Here is a typical shot I started off with. Morgan delivering some information for one of the segments. This is medium shot that I found much easier to light and most certainly to key.

I ended up choosing the Primatte Keyer over KeyLight and Chroma Key mainly because it produced the most desirable result after much trial and error. Primatte also allowed me to resample differently for foreground, background, spill sponge and matte sponge.

Because of the inherent short comings of colour decimation in PAL, or for that matter; NTSC and HDV, I had to figure out how to blur the UV channels. This was because of PAL’s 4:2:0 colour sub sampling algorithm; which may be ok for saving on space, bit rate or whatever, but ummm, it’s an utter head ache for colour keying. hmmm that is why I would love to try out the RED One . A very useful book that give an all round and easy to understand description of colour decimation along with all things compositing is Steve Wright’s book called Compositing Visual Effects: Essentials for the Aspiring Artist, check it out at Amazon here.

I did try the convert to YUV, blur the UV channels and then return to RGB, but not with much success. Instead I found two useful macros for Shake at highend3d - the FourXXEnhancer and PreprocessDV which can be used together or separately.

I used a small holdout matte and a garbage matte to help the keyer out a little.

Also, maybe as a cheat, I used another keying macro for Shake from hightend3d called Light Wrap, just to sort out the edges of Morgan and to get the effect of actually being in the room. Ok, you would have re-render if you ever had to change the backing, especially if the colour change was huge.

Here is the final result of the matte I was able to produce. The edges were not perfect, but I was quite happy with the edges around Morgan’s head.

$Morgan\'s Alpha Channel$

And here is my Shake node structure:

Next I’ll chat about how I composited and edited the final sequence.

Feel free to offer and comments, suggestion and criticisms, we are planning to make another attempt that will hopefully be much better and every bit of help would be greatly appreciated.

The First Ten Before – Camera, Screen and Lights

May 14, 2008 in Filmmaking with 1 Comment

Most of the Ten Before footage was always going to be footage of someone talking in front of a green screen. The idea was to composite this talker(talent) into a 3D environment or room so that various graphics and text elements could be introduced into the scene as if by magic, well sort of.

So we did a few tests, hmmm, from the onset it was obvious that the camera was introducing a lot of edge sharpening. The camera I used was a Panasonic DVX100BE. After some research on the net I found that this was indeed true and that I was supposed to change the detail levels to a so called sweet spot of -3 (see an brilliant forum discussion at http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/193/868436).

I did set the Panasonic’s edge enhancement to -3 in one of the Scene File settings; that is both the Detail Level and the V Detail Level. But I have to say that I still struggled with a halo effect around the talent when I performed the Keying in Shake 4.1. I’ll explain what I did in a different section, but suffice to say – I did a lot of manipulation of the UV channels to get an ok result (bearing in mind the 4:2:0 limitations in this SD PAL camera).

I must say that the Panasonic DVX 100BE is a cool camera for general shooting and that with decent lighting and proper technique on can get a good enough key, but I dream of the day when I can try Panasonic HVX200A or better the HPX170 – both 4:2:2 colour sub sampling cameras, or ummm the errrr coolest of all RED One with 4:4:4 oh yeah.

The two things I insisted on when this Ten Before was shot was that one; the camera must not move and two; the talent must be as still as possible. Purely to make the keying a simpler process. I shot the segments at either a full body shot or a medium close up; filming all the full body shots on after the other then all the mediums. This was a huge time saver because I was able to apply the same key to all the same shot types – with, of course, slight changes to the rotoscope I used as a garbage matte. This worked well, but most people commented that the lack of movement was boring – well you win some and you loose some.

Here is a still from one of the full body shots, you can see that I did not have enough width to work with – another reason that movement was restricted – next time get more material.

The green screen I used was something I picked up at a material shop; very cheap, very bad. But it was a good try none the less.

As far as lighting goes, I used three 150W dedo lights to light Morgan, and then two 2x4ft KinoFlos to light the screen. With all that lighting I achieved consistency during the shoot but I felt that I could have done with more light, maybe more ambient light. The shadows around the legs became a problem in Shake – I had to roto them quite closely; wasting a bit of time and giving the feet an unnatural look. I suppose I could have used the shadows to create a ‘reflection’ but then I would not have had control of that reflection.

Ok I also realized that the lighting of the green screen was not even, I should have used a vector scope. And yes I did use the one in Final Cut Pro 6.0.3 during testing but for some reason I forgot about it when I did the actual shoot. Too caught up in things you know . Next time I’ll make sure the camera is hooked up to the MBP and FCP has it’s scopes open in the capture window (Non controllable device selected).

Right, well, any comments? Next I’ll explain what I did in Shake and FCP along with a few screen shots

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