Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Given that the C100 is shooting this PF version of 24 and 30p, do we still set, as a rule, the shutter speed at double the frame rate, or because it's a 60i hybrid, we should be setting it at 120???? It seems to work fine for me at 48/50 or 60 but it just crossed my mind today. Thoughts?

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

I changed my shutter in settings to degrees and set it at 180, it should always be correct no matter what frame rate I shoot in that way. Don't think you'd treat the PF modes any differently to true progressive though.

John.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Thanks John. Will do.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

PsF mode is progressive, so yes - sticking to half the frame's duration is still 'safe'.

Setting the shutter to 180 degrees does seem a totally logical solution, but 'a word to the wise':

If you get a monitor in shot, you should be shooting at 1/60th regardless of FPS. Unless of course it's a Samsung, in which case you'll need Electronic Shutter Control (ECS) to fine tune it to remove the flicker. Ditto you need to be careful at 24fps that you use 1/60th under certain types of lighting, and if you're shooting NTSC in Europe, you'll need to use 1/50th - which you CAN do if your shutter increments are set to 1/3 stops rather than 1/4 stops. IIRC, LOL.

The 180 degree rule worked well for film cameras in the 'simple' days of film, but now we have to deal with a lot more Fluoro, LED lighting (not nice stuff - the weird architectural and effect lighting that crops up in our backgrounds), computer monitors, computer monitors from Samsung (:rolleyes:) and off-speed slomo/timelapse effects. Not all of the pitfalls of odd funky lighting are visible on the LCD panel attached to the C100, and a separate good quality monitor is a very reassuring thing.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

more times than not i stick to 1/60 when shooting 24frames, it's not significantly different in motion, but can keep flickering away and also makes it a fraction easier to pull stills from video

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

I always shoot 180 degree shutter, or 1/48 for 24p. Why are you shooting 24 PSF if I may ask? The 24p option will give you native AVCHD 24p, otherwise you'll have to remove the interlacing with 3:2 pulldown remove in After Effects, Cinema Tools, or Compressor. A lot of initial C100 complaints because of people shooting in 24 PSF without realizing they needed to process all their footage (it even bit me the first time out).

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Hi to all, seems like we have some c100 pros here so I want to take advantage with some questions. I just picked up my new c100 last week (I already brought it to Canon for the AF upgrade). I hope these questions don't make me sound too ignorant...... My apologies if this has already been answered somewhere else.

Can someone explain the different frame rates that this camera has (60i, pf30, pf24, 24p) what on earth is the difference between pf24 and 24p? And how does the shutter speed relate to these?

I shoot only weddings. Having said that, does it not seem practical to shoot everything in 60i? For reasons such as slow motion, and doing quick pans, etc. My eyes don't see that "filmic" beauty in shooting 24p that everyone talks about. When I set the camera in 24p I get that strobe effect even if I'm slowly panning. To be honest, I don't do much panning but what happens when I shoot the bride and groom moving around or walking or dancing at the reception, won't this screw the editors up when they try and slow mo it? Is it just me that doesn't grasp the concept of shooting like film?

Also, I'm curious to hear from wedding shooters as to what picture profiles you guys use. For me, so far it's a toss up between Wide DR and EOS standard. Any thoughts on these?

Thanks in advance to all for your help!

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

John, briefly:

Cinema uses 24p, which is also known as the flicks for good reason. Film school 101: pans should take 7 seconds to get object from one side of the screen to the other. You can break that rule for effects. 1/48th is traditional shutter speed, you'll never tell the difference between 1/48th, 1/50th and 1/60th unless you're looking for technical limitations like fluorescent lighting or computer screen issues or filming in Europe. All are legitimate.

24p is true 24p, but the American video systems have interesting issues, so 24p on a video system rather than cinema is actually 23.976 fps - so 24P is 24P, 24PsF is 23.976 frames per second and is actually the safer choice if you think you may go to DVD or BluRay. Taking 23.976 to 24p is absolutely fine for cinemas.

30fps is of course 29.97fps due to the same ever-so-technical 'Connecticut Yankee' clever solution to technical issues. I shoot this for web-only and US stuff. It has just enough extra frames per second to take the edge off the sputtering of uncompromisingly shot 24/25p. If ever there were a 'what's best to shoot for web, video and DVD/BluRay' format, this is it. Unless of course you want to do a European release. LOL.

Then we go through the looking-glass and get into interlaced...

Interlace is a cheat used by 'cathode ray tube' TV sets that required chemicals that glowed when hit by a beam of electrons. Big, hot-running brutes with high voltages, imposing size, and they've pretty much gone the way of the dinosaurs. We all watch by LCD, LED and OLED now, none of which need - or 'do' - interlacing. They sort of interpolate it. They make stuff up.

If you shoot 60i and play it back on a cheap LCD TV, it will look at each frame - it is composed of two fields - and take the first field and make that into a frame. Hold on, that field only used 540 lines. Now it's being displayed at 1080 frames. What happened?

If you're lucky, the TV sort of 'made up' in-between lines, but your original 1080 resolution is actually more like 768 line resolution - sort of like 720p, remember that? If it did the cheap and nasty thing, it just doubled up the 540 lines to make a picture that has less vertical resolution than Standard Definition PAL.

So, although we get 60fps motion from 60i, it looks softer and less oomphy than 'real' 60p.

I only use the interlace modes for slomo - and remember many cameras only do slomo at 720 - which is why they're getting that from the 1080i, downsampled correctly... we see the conspiracy now. HDMI can either do 720p60 or 1080i60 because functionally - they're the same! No free lunch in Engineering. Except lasers. But I digress.

When you split a progressive frame into an interlace signal - which is what PsF is all about - there can be tears before bedtime. Applications like Premiere Pro and FCPX don't see that and may want to interpret your 1080PsF24 or 1080PsF29.97 as if it had to be de-interlaced - which they do for you. Deinterlancing a non-interlaced image is BAD FOR THE PICTURE. So we have to watch out for that. It can be fixed in a few mouse clicks, but you have to know what to look for and when to fix it.

Canon C100 PsF – the fix | Travelling Matt

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Thx all. Superb thread.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Absolutely do not shoot 24PF. Matt is incorrect, there is no 24.00 mode on the C100. The C100 does not shoot 24.00fps like the C300 can. There is native 23.976 (24p) and then there is 23.976 in a 60i container, which is the 24PF option. There is no reason to *ever* shoot with this setting, and if you do you will have to remove 3:2 pulldown via After Effects/Cinema Tools/Compressor. Premiere Pro/FCPX do not remove 3:2 pulldown last time I tried.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Gary, Matt stated that 24P is 24 and 24PF is 23.97, so there is a 24 mode on the C100 which is the true 24P mode.

John.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Yes, I know that Matt stated that. There is no 24.00 on the C100. Both 24p and 24PF are 23.976. 24p is AVCHD 23.976 and 24PF is AVCHD 60i with 23.976 embedded via 3:2 pulldown.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Ahh got it :)

John.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Thank you all but I'm a bit confused. So should I shoot 24p for 24fp?? Again this is just for weddings being edited with Final Cut Pro. I believe the editor still uses slow motion. Would that be a problem.

Thanks again guys!

John

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Thanks Gary - I stand corrected! :-)

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

You should *never* shoot 24PF, there is absolutely no reason to ever do such a thing. Shoot 24p only.

Depends on what you mean by "slow motion." There are two types. The first is just a post slow motion, where the shot being in slow motion was never anticipated. You would have seen this a lot back in the 90s when video cameras had no hope of shooting any framerate other than 60i. It's strobe-y and jerky.

Then there is smoother slow motion, shot at higher framerates. Unless you are specifically shooting entire weddings at, say, 60p, then you would be using option one. But if you specifically plan out your slow motion shots in advance, then you could shoot 24p for everything except the slow motion. Unfortunately, the C100 does not have a 60p mode, so you are left with 60i. And that depends on the editor knowing how to deinterlace 60i to p and then turning that into slow motion (with a resolution hit). In my experience, they often don't know how to do that (I either get interlaced slow motion or, even worse, no slow motion at all, just the full 59.94 motion).

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

No problem, there is a lot of confusion surrounding this! Still seeing the typical 50i to 25p fix posted in my circles that doesn't work for 24p, which is what nearly everyone shoots at. The differences between PAL and NTSC easily escape people.

Plus, not sure why Canon put 24PF in the camera. There is no reason for either 24PF or 30PF and I wish a firmware update would remove it and just shoot 24P 30P and 60i all native.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Thanks Gary. Can I pick your brain a bit more.......?

The current lens I'm using with my c100 is the canon 24-105 f4 is. I've been doing tons of sample shots in my house filming my daughter etc. I can't seem to figure what my ISO safety zone is in terms of when the grain (noise) comes in. I can't really tell on the LCD. What ISO level do you recommend not going over. Also, I can't seem to find where the noise reduction settings are in the cameras menu. If its any consolation, I'm shooting in Wide DR mode.

Thanks again Gary.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Noise reduction setting will be in the Picture Profile option, not the Camera menu. It really depends on what level of noise you find acceptable. The best way to do that is to test shots at different ISOs and see where you feel the NR starts to unacceptable strip out the detail. I have shot as low as 400 and as high as 12,800.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

I also shoot at 1/60 with 24 frames for the reasons Darren explained.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

12,800 is indeed a good marker. while 16K and 20K look respectable for what they are, if you do a lens cap on test, you'll see a pretty significant shift in the image when you go past 12,800, but up until there is rather remarkable.

the manual also suggests a black balance after changing iso, which many find to be a bit excessive to do all the time, but if you do want to use a high iso and want to be sure you're getting as clean as possible, do a black balance.

the in camera noise reduction is also something that's been a debate, since it's a process you can take care of in post, some prefer to handle it themselves instead of having the camera do it. and considering how good it already looks, my preference is indeed to leave off in camera iso reduction, and even so i rarely do noise reduction in post.

But like Gary pointed out, your eye is the one you ultimately have to satisfy, so take some time to set your own personal limits. You mention not being able to tell on the LCD, which is why you should be seeing how what you see on the LCD relates to what you see on the computer. one thing you can do to help judge on set with just the lcd is the 2x focus zoom in. It will help you see the grain structure closer but keep in mind it's a digital punch in, so there's another layer of degradation you're looking at.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

That's exactly what I did last time I was shooting at 10,000 ISO. I punched in, then changed the NR settings until I found the acceptable tradeoff between loss of detail and amount of noise. And that level will change between different people. Some may want less or more NR or less or more detail.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Thank you gentlemen! You guys have helped me out big time with this. I will definitely use the magnification option to see the noise and not go above 12,800iso. I don't want to use a top light if I don't have to. I hate the look of it. Hopefully I'm not being greedy here by asking more questions.....

Workflow Question:

I am not an editor myself and my editor is a bit old school so I want to make things as easy as I can for him... What is the best post production workflow transfer method from the c100's "private" folder directly to Final Cut Pro 7??? I've read that if you don't change the directory structure on the sd card (I don't know why anyone would) then you may be okay to use the log and transfer method in FCP 7. But if you changed the structure then you need to use a 3rd party software (brorsoft) to convert the .mts files to Apply ProRes .mov Did I get this right??? Has canon come out with a plug in for FCP yet?? I just want the easiest way without sacrificing any quality (obviously). Even if it means that I convert the files for my editor on my PC before I give him the project.

Again much appreciated. I love the help I'm receiving from everyone!

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

someone correct me if i'm wrong but i think the best thing to do is to use clipwrap to re-wrap the contents of the 'private' folder in to.. well any codec you want?

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

ClipWrap is a wonderful utility and worth having, but for the same price I would instead recommend 5DtoRGB Batch from the App Store and transcode all of your AVCHD footage to ProRes LT. It will do a better job than just Log and Transfer. L&T has corrupted clips on me before, but 5DtoRGB was solid in the time I used it.

If you want to save time, you can always invest in a used Ninja-2 system and shoot straight to ProRes on SSD drives. That saves you the transcoding step and you get better quality in the end as well. Not something you might particularly need at this point, but keep it in mind in case you ever end up in a time crunch. I shoot plenty of projects with it when AVCHD would be more than good enough for the edit, but the clients love the fact that they can pop the footage right into FCP7 and start editing without having to wait for the transcoded clips.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

As I sit and stare at a bin full of clips 29.97fps of my brand new C100 test footage, I'll admit, I'm a little stunned - at just how stupid 24PF is...I'm glad to have my gut confirmed. Not that big of a deal; that's what testing is all about, but wholly crap, this feels worse than an Amway setup with new "friends"...

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

Whatever you do, don't deinterlace that footage, remove 3:2 pulldown instead. If you deinterlace, it will screw up your footage.

Re: Shutter speed choice for C100 PF
 

I probably won't do anything with it, actually. FCP X will just make the timeline conform to the video; I have already used a sharpie to black out PF24 on the LCD to make sure I never, ever choose that again!

I'm more interested in the mic and wide cinema gamma stuff.

Funny thing about this whole PF24 and 24P nonsense is that the manual is pretty quiet about the whole thing. It simply adds a note "Shooting at 24 frames per second, progressive, recorded as 60i" ... which is probably really helpful. To someone.