AF100 ugliness out of the box - what am I doing wrong?
 

Hey guys, we were setting up a shoot today with some new cameras - two AF100's and an AC160.

As we started lighting the set, we fired up the cameras (which were feeding into a Newtek Tricaster for switching).

The AC160 looked great. Crystal clear. The AF100 looked about 4 stops darker, and just crazy noisy. We were shooting at 200 ISO, and it looked like we were shooting with 12dB or 18dB of gain. I had shot a little bit with this camera, but have never set one up from scratch.

Any guesses on what was wrong? It seemed impossibly bad.

We were feeding to the Tricaster from the SDI out.

Any help is appreciated - thanks!

Re: AF100 ugliness out of the box - what am I doing wrong?
 

Barry - you might try these scene files from Andy Shipsides over at Abel Cine might beuseful: AF100 Scene Files Created by AbelCine | CineTechnica

Good luck,

Bill

Re: AF100 ugliness out of the box - what am I doing wrong?
 

Try these settings:

Film Cam
Detail Level -4
V Detail Level -4
Detail Coring -3
Chroma Level -2
Master Pedestal -2
Gamma HD NORM
Knee LOW
Matrix NORM2

This is just a start. These settings match my EX1R and EX3 standard settings (my standard ones that is).

It took me quite a bit of time to get the AF100 to look good. Be very careful not to over expose skin, it will turn ugly yellow. I keep skin highlight at 80 max. You need to experiment yourself. The AF is a great camera but in my opinion quite tricky to set up. I also always end up grading my footage as these settings can look a little flat. But to me this is a good thing noise and banding are quite acceptable imho.

Also it is very hard to focus you really need to use an external EVF or SDI monitor. I think a lot of shooters think the res is low because they were out of focus.

Also make sure you do a black balance.

Re: AF100 ugliness out of the box - what am I doing wrong?
 

Good tips, guys. I'll try again.