We wanted to shoot a high quality campaign-shoot for Fall/Winter 2011 and I just got my Sony F3 with the S-Log option so I gave it a spin. We took our whole setup including a modified Kessler Shuttlepod (one length cut into half to make it flight-ready), and traveled to Milan. My friend managed to get some professional models for the shoot, which raised the quality significantly I would say.

Shooting with the F3 handheld and on the Shuttlepod was great fun! Grading the S-Log footage is so nice. I’ve been used to DSLR footage in color grading for about two years now and having all these opportunities with log-Footage and 4:2:2 10-bit is simply amazing.

My only concerns were the lack of the S-Log option when shooting in 720p50 (the shot with the slomo doves), and the lack of a viewing LUT when recording onto the KiPro Mini. Everything is so dull and grey until you move the footage into color correction. I hope that my Gemini 444 will arrive soon as this recorder is going to have a monitoring LUT option. In addition to uncompressed 444 recording

Here are some pictures of our shoot in Milan.

Me with the F3 and our Shuttlepod.

The Zacuto EVF makes pulling focus a lot easier.

We wanted to give the production a nice cinematic look so we added our Kessler Shuttle Pod system and the Miller Projib to the gear we used. I was impressed how well things worked out. Especially the combination of the F3, S-Log and the Kessler Shuttle Pod with outrigger feet enabled us to shoot incredible slider-shots in the woods. When talking about latitude and dynamic range – I am satisfied with my S-Log pictures and I don’t need no HDRx.

Here is the director and my first AC working on the camera mounted on our shuttle pod.

As soon I have something ready I’ll post some footage.

I used the Sony PL-Mount kit lenses 35mm and 85mm and the Zacuto EVF. (If you look closely you can see Sandra carry the other lens)

Here is a picture Sandra took of me filming her:

I would like to thank Tools At Work, my local Apple/AJA/Blackmagic/etc. retailer for providing the KiPro Mini.

HDMI in and out for monitoring the 5D stream. As soon as you hit record on the 5D you lose the signal in the Hyperdeck.

So I recorded a color chart via HDMI in uncompressed first and then switched over to 5D internal recording method in h264. After that I imported both clips into after effects and investigated the blue channel. As expected the uncompressed signal was much clearer than the h264 stream.

Blue channel only. You can see the uncompressed signal is much clearer.

Here is another screenshot after a little curve correction was applied. All in all the uncompressed signal holds color correction much better than theh264 clip. The uncompressed clip has been upscaled by 118% to fit the original h264.

h264 vs uncompressed after curves correction

So my conclusion for this test is that there is a clear advantage when shooting in uncompressed even with the 5D. But to justify its drawbacks (need to upscale the footage, enormous amounts of data – 128GB hold 16mins!, handling, etc.) the only scenario where I will shoot this way with the 5D will be in greenscreen shoots. This is where you need this kind of color detail the most.

This is how I will shoot greenscreen with my 5D in the future.

~41 Mbit/s from the 5D + ~44 Mbit/s from the 7D + ~100 Mbit/s from Cineform + ~80 Mbit/s from ProRes LT = 265 Mbit/s or 33,125 MB/s or nearly 2 GB/min

I haven’t seen anyone blogging about his backup workflows, so here is mine: First thing to do when coming home after a shoot is copying the source footage off the CF cards to my local drives (see picture 1)

Picture 1: Downloading source footage off the CF cards.

I have the four drives on my MacPro configured as following: The drive in bay 1 is the system drive. This drive is reserved for the operating system and applications. I am using a fast VelociRaptor HD from Western Digital with 10,000 RPM and 300GB of storage for this.
Bay 2-4 are filled with generic 500GB 7200 RPM drives configured as a striped-RAID for maximum performance. I did the RAID configuration within Apple’s disk utility (see picture 2).

Picture 2: Apple's disk utility configuration of a striped RAID.

After the source footage was copied to the internal drives I start the conversion processes. First to Cineform, then to ProRes LT via MPEG Streamclip. I save all the data in separate directories inside a master directory named after the job. After conversion, editing, exporting, etc. I usually have loads of data to backup.

In the past when I was filming with HDV cameras I used to either burn the whole job directory to spanning DVDs which resulted in a massive amount of burnt DVDs, was time consuming and expensive, or I copied the job directory to external drives connected via Firewire. Due to changing models and types of external HD enclosures I was drowning in different power supplies for different drives – a disaster! Moreover I didn’t want to pay the extra money for HD enclosures (Firewire-enabled enclosures are particularly expensive) when all I needed was the bare storage space. I didn’t plan to take the drive on a voyage!

My perfect backup workflow I found works as following:
I bought a SATA connection dock from Sharkoon called SATA Quickport Duo. (see picture 3)

Picture 3: SATA Quickport Duo for bare SATA drives.

This allows me to plug-in two bare SATA drives at a time, without enclosure. The dock connects to the workstation either with USB 2.0 or with eSATA. With USB both drives share one connection, but with eSATA each drive bay has it’s own connector on the back of the dock. In addition to this, eSATA is about 7x faster than USB. Only problem is that no Mac to this time has eSATA connections built-in.

So I bought a eSATA PCI-Express card from Sonnet, in particular the Tempo SATA E2P (see picture 4).

Picture 4: eSATA PCI-Express card for my MacPro.

When connected via eSATA, the copying performance of the SATA drives is outstanding. I get around 73 MB/s per drive. (see picture 5)

Picture 5: Copy performance of a eSATA connected drive.

So what I do now is after I finished working on a job, I copy the whole job directory including all the source and converted footage onto a fresh and bare SATA drive, catalog the drive’s content with CDFinder and store them encased and labeled in a protective plastic case in a drawer. (see picture 6)

Picture 6: Filled SATA drives, stored in a drawer.

When I need to put a finished project back online, I simply grab the corresponding SATA drive out of the drawer, and plug it in the dock. Voilá back online. It’s simple, it’s cheap (bare SATA drives are getting cheaper every day) and as long as I use this technique – about two years now – I never had a drive failure (knock on wood).

So what I am doing now is set the camera to the built-in “neutral” profile and when done shooting import the native h264 files with Cineform’s NeoScene compressor. The Cineform codec interpolates the 4:2:0 h264 file to a 4:2:2 cineform file.

Chroma Interpolation: 4:2:0 → 4:2:2.
Background: Most HDV and AVCHD camcorders record chroma (color) in a format known as 4:2:0. Without boring you with details, 4:2:0 chroma is half the color resolution of more professional 4:2:2 formats. When Neo Scene detects 4:2:0 chroma it properly interpolates the source chroma to 4:2:2 for more accurate color processing during editing and effects work. And if you ever “key” your material, CineForm’s chroma interpolation will substantially improve your resulting visual fidelity.

In my tests I’ve found out that exporting ProRes files out of the Cineform application gives you an exact copy of the original h264 file – only converted to ProRes. You need to choose to export to a Cineform file. Editing Cineform files in FCP is possible but not as streamlined as editing ProRes (you need to render when applying color-correction filters) so I am converting the Cineform files to ProRes before editing. This is one more step to my workflow than I described some posts earlier but in my opinion this one pays.

Here is some before and after Cineform conversion with the corresponding waveforms. Please note that the images just have been downscaled. No adjustments have been made. Roll over the images with your mouse to see the original h264 images and waveforms.

Shot 1: Canon 7D with 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 IS USM and a polarizing filter. Note how the skin tones have been enhanced by Cineform.

Waveform for shot 1. The histogramm has been smoothed out.

Shot 2: Canon 7D with 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 IS USM and a polarizing filter. The dark areas have been significantly lifted without losing detail and micro-contrast.

Waveform for shot 2. See how the histogram has been compressed. This gives you more headroom for your post color-correction and grading.

Shot 2: Canon 7D with 17-55mm ƒ/2.8 IS USM. Highlights have been reduced and skintone has been enhanced.

Waveform for shot 3. Highlights have been reduced from the limit to a reasonable value. Of course you can reapply contrast to the image in post, but it’s good to have opportunities.

Since shooting with the Canon 7D and because of the lack of audio-controls on the 7D I was forced to find a solution for external audio recording. I ended up buying the Zoom H4n recording device. Now that I have an external audio recorder which doesn’t attach quite well to my 7D or to my XDCAM HD, for me it was clear that I have to delegate someone in my team to operate the Zoom H4n during shooting.

Since operating the H4n during a shoot drills down to just pushing the record and stop button from time to time, the newly designated sound-engineer was capable of doing more. So I decided to give the boom a go. I bought a boompole from Røde and the Røde NTG-3 shotgun mic, which I was told is the best mic for boom swinging.

The first shooting with the new equipment was done with my old setup (Sennheiser G2 attached to my XDCAM) supported by the stand alone setup NTG-3 on a boompole attached to the Zoom H4n.

Here is a side by side comparison of the soundquality. Please note that the audio was not processed in any way.

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Filmed with a Canon EOS 7D and a Canon EF-S 17-55mm ƒ/2.8 lens in Marvels Cinegamma mode. Post in FCP, 3D tracked the last shot in PFHoe and composited in AE.

2D point-tracker and planar trackers can quite easily be adjusted manually so I decided to start with the toughest nut: 3D-tracking.

I used PFHoe (probably the most easy to use 3D tracker) to track my Canon 7D shot. Then I composited the shot in After Effects. I think the output is acceptable – there is some serious amount of wobbling at the end of the shot – but for the first try it is ok. So when you shoot for 3D-tracking on HDSLRs be sure to avoid abrupt motions to keep the rolling shutter effect as minimal as possible.

Filmed with a 17-55mm EF-S ƒ/2.8 lens in Marvels CineGamma mode.

ToolsOnAir Just:In Review from Christoph Tilley on Vimeo.

I filmed myself with my new Canon EOS 7D which on the one hand was a great experience because I could use a super-wide angle lens (17mm) to get my self in the picture without having to place the camera miles away, on the other hand it was a pain in the a** because I was doing this alone and I never knew when I was in focus. So I had to sit at the same spot every time – quite a hard job when you have to stand up and walk to the camera for triggering and stopping the record button, ejecting and reinserting the cf-card and adjusting camera settings. As I said – quite an experience!