SGBlade and the 201
 

If anyone was thinking of marrying the SGBlade and the GY-HD201 but needed advice
then don't hesitate to ask. I've got a lot of excellent information from DVinfo and I'd like to pay it forward so to speak.
Some samples of me faffing around can be found here.

-GO- on Vimeo


Cheers

Gavin

Damn good looking stuff, Gavin.

So, break it down for us! What lenses? What scene receipt? What post processing/grading/noise removal?

I shoot the HD250. I love the camera except for the amount of CCD noise, so I end up passing everything through NEAT Video. do you use a similar process? Your images are so clean.

Hi Chad,

I'm with you on the CCD noise issue. The only solution I can think of is lots of light. This camera is light hungry which is a pain for doc work.....If you have the time and space to apply light then the images are stunning.

I'm very pleased with Tim Dashwoods "low light","cine wide" and "DSC CDM28 chart" scene files. The DSC CDM28 is my scene file of choice if I don't plan to grade much after.
I just purchased Cineform Neoscene the other day and it works a dream. You can really see a difference in the process. I recommend it if you do chroma key and lots of grading. 4:2:2 colour space is far easier to play with!

Using it with the SGBlade means more lighting issues. Depending on what Roto Razor (the Imaging Element) you use, you will at least lose another stop or so. Besides that, it a great bit of kit.
When I got the Blade I was a bit broke (still am) so I purchased the only lenses I could afford, a bunch of M42's that where probably made in the 70's. I got 3 lenses for about 100 euro off ebay and after using them, I'm plesantly surprised! One was a Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 that is wonderful. The others are a 135mm 2.8 and a 28mm 2.8. I plan to get a DSLR soon for low light video work soon and I hope to keep on using them.

You know, I played around with the grading software a bit. Magic Bullit looks etc and I found I'm more at home with the great colour correction tools found in Edius. It seemed the more choices I had, the more I messed up. Now, I just cut A/B and grade in Edius. Everything else gets moved over to After effects.

So what about you? I was thinking about getting Neat video for when 35mm adaptor appears a bit too grainy. I tried the trial programme but it seemed heavy on the processor and I thought the image looked a bit fuzzy afterwards......
Do you have any samples of before and after videos using Neat video?

Like I said, I'm looking to move into DSLR territory (or Reds Scarlet if a wealthy estranged aunt leaves everything to me in her will...) but I wouldn't like to give up the JVC just yet. I like it's form. I have been shooting news and docs for the past 13 years or so, so I'm used to the heavier shoulder mount camera. I think we are just a year or so away from the next stage of the evolution in these tools. A fully functional shoulder mount camera with all the trappings of the DSLR sensitivity and lens options.
I hope...
Thanks for praising the work
All the best
Gavin

Thanks, Gavin. Light is definitely the key with this rig. Down side for me is the projects I shoot tend to ask for pools of light surrounded by low light. And, of course, the low light is always noisy. That's where both Cineform and NEAT Video have become so important to my workflow.

I'm a big Cineform fan. Been using it for about 4 years now and will not work without it. That extra color space is so key to cleaning up the image with NEAT. And you're right about how processor intensive it is. It takes time but the results are worth it for me. I'll see if I can find some time to throw up some frames for you to look at.

I just started using cine wide more often. It's nice now that Cineform's First Light is so easy to color grade with. I love the combo. You should give it a try. I think you'll really like it. And it's metadata-based non-destructive grading so no real render time and storage space needs. Very cool. You'll have to upgrade to NeoHD to get it, but the cost is totally worth it.

I'm with you on the JVC form factor. And I'm not yet sold on the DSLR as filmmaking tool yet. The rolling shutter issues would cause me way too many headaches. I'll be sticking with my HD250 for the short term. I've given some thought to the Silicon Image SI-2k. It's got the form factor I like and shoots directly to Cineform RAW. Sweet...

Gavin what do you use to color grade your footage in Edius? The white balance filter? I also use Edius and MB Looks and am looking for a good way to give my footage a better look.