U.S. corporations tend to be very slow in adopting new technology.

I'm starting to push the issue myself, now that I have the Z5, but not one customer has asked me for 16:9 or HD.

Two days ago, a bride watched my demo DVDs, all shot with VX2100, but it wasn't until I showed her footage from the FX1000 that she went wow. That was the first time that happened.

The way it filled up the screen knocked her out.

Then yesterday, for the first time, a bride asked me if I shoot in widescreen. When I said yes, she booked.

So, it is starting to happen.

That's good to hear Jeff. That's what I'm counting on.

Hey Jeff, I bet it won't be long until we're being asked about blu!

Actually Tim, I dread it in a way. Rendering in BluRay takes forever!

Rendering a Bluray MPEG2 compliant file from Vegas HDV timeline for DVD Architect for me is faster than rendering an SD MPEG2 for DVD. IF you just want to put up to 2 hours and 30 mins on a BLuray stay with MPEG2 rather than AVC. Quality is just like my HDV original as the encode is really just changing CBR HDV to VBR MPEG2 and Vegas does this with Smart encode and reduces the file size a little. To squeeze the max time I have reduced average to 21mbps with max at 30 and min at 15mbps. 2 pass encode for SD DVD using TMPGenc Xpress usually takes about twice realtime whereas MPEG2 for Bluray is under realtime on my Q9450.
I edit with Edius but go to Vegas for final audio, set markers for chapters etc and encode for Bluray.
Ron Evans

Thanks for the Primer Ron, I'll come back to this when I'm ready to render BluRay!

Don't be surprised. Up here in Thailand, it's all 4:3 SD. Some people have tried selling unprotected 16:9 videos to the local free and cable networks with some successes. The networks have then put those in a few of their off-prime-time programs with letterboxing. As far as I know, most of the audience who watched these few letterboxed program either were wondering why there had to be black bars that took up 1/3 of their screens or just didn't care.

All prime time news and other programs have so far been 4:3 and it looks likely to be remain so for years to come.

You can have all the killer equipment in the world but at the end of the day it's just PAL 4:3 SD on CRT screens. Some more sophisticated or well-off audience may watch broadcast programs on their fancy LCDs and plasmas. The sad truth is the broadcast programs look invariably worse on these flat panel screens than on their old CRTs due to the combination of the scaling of the low SD resolution and the conversion of the broadcast interlaced signal into progressive. One positive aspect is that the industry's infrastructure has made such good level playing field for the program suppliers who own anywhere from Sony DSR-450s down to the TRV-900, or Panasonic GS-400 class. On the progressive look front, you can have one of the new decent AVCHD or HDV cheap compact cams and compete reasonably well with far less investments against the folks who have the Sony HD XDCams or Panasonic HPXs or other DVCPro HD cams. It's all just the content. The broadcast signal is the Great Leveler!

Wacharapong

Most if not all 4:3 CRTs show 16:9 footage letterboxed, and theoretically they'd have exactly 25% of the screen blacked out (12.5% top and bottom) when showing 16:9.

But in reality a 4:3 CRT will only overscan the left and right sides, so that when 16:9 is shown they see the full height of the image - ie, it's overerscanned in the horizontal direction only. As such only about 15% of the screen is black bars which is much more acceptable.

Of course the image isn't 16:9 any more, it's now 16:9.5.

tom.

Yeah - lots of enquiries for blu movies ;-)

Let's hope she remains equally ecstatic when she sees the rolling shutter effects everytime the photographer's flash goes off next to you.

I really wanted this camera. But with weddings as my main job, it's just not practical.

So then I wanted the HMC150, but I'm hearing too many stories about screwed up audio to want to get it.

Looks like I'll just have to wait for something else, and in the meantime, keep shooting with my VX2100's.

What - in 4:3? Even with the FX rolling shutter and the 150 audio quibbles (must say I haven't heard of this), both these cameras will handsomely outperform the wonderful VX in 16:9. And you can't tell me a bride wants to see herself stretched sideways to fill her new plasma screen. As she will be; most people have no idea how to alter their TV's aspect ratio via the remote.


tom.

4:3 yuk.
 

You are on the money Tom. I am doing a wedding edit for a friend and the FX1000 rolling Shutter isn't bothering me. It pops up here and there but gee 16:9 is just so much better.

Throw in the more natural looking images than the VX's and well the FX/Z5 just wins.

TIP: Make sure you assign steady shot to one of the 6 buttons. I got caught just on Sunday doing a sports presentation all hand held and the front end heavy FX was not the best. Steady shot would have helped and I think I will look at getting some sort of support/shoulder brace and have it in my kit for when I need it.

An L Bracket would have been handy. Maybe that's all I need.

Yeah, right.

"What's with all that funky white banding??? It's giving me a headache!", says the bride.

"It's just rolling shutter. It's nothing to worry about. Besides, your wedding is in WIDESCREEN, so you have nothing to complain about", replied the delusional videographer.

I'm seeing more and more of this banding on TV these days DRG, as news reporters use CMOS camcorders. Of course little of this footage is slowed down for transmission, but it will become the norm I guess and clients will become aclimatised.

I often like to finish a firework display at the end of a wedding film by putting the last and biggest firework into my variable slo-mo program. The rocket tales off at mormal speed but slows gracefully to a still frame at its peak. You won't be doing that with a CMOS chip.

tom.

For the most part, you're right. Rolling shutter won't be a problem for some people.

The trouble is, wedding videographers are second only to red carpet movie premieres in the amount of flash they have to deal with. Not only from the pro photographer, but all the guests with their point and shoots.

If I didn't have to deal with flashes, I'd be more than happy getting an FX1000.

Since I've yet to hear on any website, any bride or customer complain or even notice the rolling shutter effect, I'm sure she'll remain ecstatic. ;)

Same here Ken. I haven't heart of any bride to complain about "flashes, rolling shatter" name it what you want, but I bet you they will complain if they find out that they can not watch their wedding video properly on their new flat TV because it was shot in 4:3 mode.

Stelios

Tom, I couldn't agree more. I have two daughters (24 and 21) and my wife, that have watched every video I have made since I've been using the FX1000's. They have never mentioned a word about the odd flashes, but can't believe how much better the quality of the images are compared to the VX2100 images on our 50" WS. I'm shooting in HD, editing in HD and final output is SD DVD.

Do you guys ever shoot paying projects at 12db gain. I do not set my gain over 6db even on my EX1 most of the time its set at 3, 0 and -3

Hi Brian,

I have shot in 12 dB in the past, but I'm backing it off to 9dB. You can certainly get by with using less gain on the EX1. It's just one of the benefits of spending that much money on a camera.

I try to avoid using 12 db gain at all costs. My gain settings are -6, 0 and 6 on my Z7.

-6 DB, thats interesting. When would u really use that?

Martin, when you have adaquate lighting, using -6 db gain allows you to open the iris more without using as much ND filter to get the correct exposure. ND filters reduce contrast so using -6 db gain instead of additional ND can be a real benifit.

So Greg, next time the ND indicator is flashing I could try to reduce gain in the negative range instead of using ND filter and expect better contrast?

That is the way it is supposed to work. The image just seems to have a little more punch to it.

Thanks, I really don't care for images using the ND filters. Great new tool to try!

I don't know what this means Jeff. You 'don't care for images shot through the internal NDs'? You'll have to explain further, but it sounds like you may have a faulty filter in there.

I haven't done a controlled experiment but I don't think this is true at all. The whole point of an ND is that it is "Neutral," that is, all frequencies of light are reduced equally, which should not have any effect on contrast. I'm guessing the placebo effect is at work here...

Be interesting to do a side by side and post screen grabs.

I think the images look a tad flat when I use the ND filter. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm open to trying something different. It doesn't cost anything.

Yes, it could be a placebo effect since ND filters are supposed to be neutral. When I first started video taping many years ago, one of the best shooters I have ever known told me that ND filters reduced the overall contrast of a scene. But he didn't provide any documentation to prove it to me. According to one technical source, "most ND filters are only specified over the visible region of the spectrum, and do not proportionally block all wavelengths of ultraviolet or infrared radiation." It has been well documented that some current camcorders images are affected by IR contamination. I don't know all of the answers. But maybe that could have something to do with why the images seem to look a little better to my eye, with -6db gain.
for the image?

I might be mistaken but I seem to remember on a training dvd I watched a while ago it talked about ways of dealing with situations where you would use various settings to avoid using the ND, but I can't remember the details.

When you switch an ND (or two) into the light path you're adding extra elements to the lineup of 15 or so you already have. Extra elements always up the flare levels by tiny amounts and in some cases can alter critical focus at the film plane. The NDs are way out of focus though, so even if they collect dust and debris it's not a problem

But it's a hit worth taking rather than screwing them onto the front of the lens, where their failings and effects become far more obvious on film.

tom.

Hmm... Interesting discussion but I think you guys are missing something pretty fundamental here:

Less light = less contrast

whichever method you use for reducing the light level you can't change the physics.

Black = no light - that doesn't change regardless of any other settings.

So, the contrast ratio is between 0 (black) and whatever your maximum light output/input is. When you reduce the amount of light (whether it be via ND filters or electronically, you are reducing the maximum amount of light - but the minimum amount of light (0) remains the same. Ergo, you are reducing the contrast. That's why night shots (using natural light) are always less contrasty than normal daylight - regardless of how much gain you use.

I could see where that might be true at the extreme ends of the spectrum, like when shooting day for night, but in the middle of the exposure range, when your iris and/or shutter speed would be adjusted to maintain the same overall levels, I doubt that would be the case. At the extreme upper end of the intensity spectrum -- i.e. everything blown out -- I would suspect that adding an ND would actually *increase* the contrast.

But as I said I haven't done a controlled experiment and put it on scopes.

It's also the reason lights are used when shooting in poor lighting situations. You can compensate by increasing exposure but it doesn't give the same oomph as adding additional lighting - thereby increasing the contrast and colour saturation.

A (very) simplistic illustration follows:

If you take normal daylight on a cloudy day at, say, 10,000 lux (direct sunlight being approximately 100,000 lux - but this gets filtered to varying degrees as it travels through our atmosphere) then, if your subject includes an object which reflects no light (say black velvet) and an object which is pure white (reflecting the 10,000 lux) your total contrast will be 10,000 to 1.

However, if you move indoors where the illumination is, say, 1000 lux - using your same objects - the black is still reflecting no light, but the white object is now only reflecting 1,000 lux (it can't still be reflecting 10,000 lux because there is no longer 10,000 lux available) so the contrast is now only 1,000 to 1 and the colours are less saturated as a result. However, the super circuitry in modern cameras tries to compensate for that, and to some extent succeed. If we really want to get the contrast back up and get better colour saturation and basically more overall "punch" we add artificial lighting to try to get back up to as near to daylight levels of illumination as we can. That's why professional outfits spend thousands on big lighting setups.

If you're shooting in moonlight (typically 0.25 - 1 lux - we'll say 1 lux for the purposes of illustration) then your contrast is only 1 to 1 - which is why everything looks grey (assuming you have a sensor that works as low as 1 Lux). However, it is possible to artificially increase contrast in post (as well as what the camera tries to do) to some extent but the colour saturation still suffers to some degree and will never look as good as footage which has been optimally exposed in the first place. It's basically the same effect as decreasing exposure and increasing gain (ignoring the other elements that rear their ugly head due to the electronic nature of the light capture such as system noise)

So, getting back to the original issue, if your daylight is stopped down from 10,000 lux to 5,000 lux through your ND1 filter, you have effectively reduced your contrast to 5,000 to 1 but the camera circuitry can compensate quite admirably for that by opening the iris more and/or adding gain to increase the exposure for the white object and artificially increasing contrast. However, as the light levels drop further, it gets increasingly difficult for the camera circuitry to compensate for the reducing contrast and the picture starts to look more and more "washed out" as it struggles to produce a true black and a true white.

Steve, I may be wrong, but isn't the typical dynamic range of the CMOS/electronics combination in cameras like the Z5, well below the kind of contrast ratios you're talking about?

I would think that white would be clipped significantly if you didn't use some form of ND filter or gain reduction. So, in effect, you would never really see or appreciate a greater contrast ratio if you avoided the use of ND filtration. But again, I may be wrong.

Indeed Ken, but the point I was making is that anything that reduces the amount (not the colour) of light effectively reduces the available contrast levels. Within "normal" ranges, it can be hardly noticeable - if at all. However, as we get towards really low light levels, the contrast inevitably starts to get that "washed-out" look (regardless of the very excellent compensating software built-in to the modern systems we're using. Because different wavelengths (colours) of light have different levels of luminence at different light levels (amount of light) even the excellent compensation circuits, whilst stretching the black/white ratio to increase the contrast artificially, can't cut it when trying to deal with the full colour spectrum at different rates of luminence. Hence that "washed-out" look with the colours - even though you may have regained reasonable black/white levels.

It really depends on the capabilities of the sensors. If the ilumination is too high for the sensors to cope with (exposure latitude) then, yes, we need to reduce the light level by whatever means (turn the lights down, ND filter or gain/exposure controls). The problem of lack of contrast, in the manner I was referring to, only really arises in lower light levels because, as the total amount of light available decreases, the contrast decreases and when it gets very low, it becomes much more difficult to re-introduce contrast without it looking manufactured. Even with a camera with such excellent low-light capabilities as the Z5 (for example), it's still a fact that a well-lit scene is going to be much punchier (higher contrast) than a scene shot with low available light levels and stretched contrast from the compensation circuits. (Even if we could ignore the noise factor).

Steve

xlr's?
 

I think the z5 has xrlrs also