Definition February 2017 - Sampler

NEW NAPOLEON

Major restoration of classic

SSD SAVED MY FILM

The rise of solid state for cameras

YOUR NEXT CAM

See our 2017 new product guide

DR DRONE

From NHS to BBC

THE FUTURE OF VIDEO PRODUCTION TODAY

February 2017

definitionmagazine.com

LOOK, NO CAMERAS! Why drones keep disrupting

£4.99

RED 8K

We shoot with the new EPIC-W

ROYAL WATCH Unwrapping The Crown’s million-dollar look

WHAT A DIVA! NEW KINO FLO’S TWO MILLION COLOURS PAGE 52 cover sample.indd 2

03/01/2017 11:01

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NEWS NEW BATTERY TECHNOLOGY

SUPERCAPACITOR POWER TECH A development of supercapacitors could theoretically increase the capacity of battery-powered devices tenfold at least, but how far off is the first product?

Groundbreaking research from the University of Surrey and Augmented Optics Ltd, in collaboration with the University of Bristol, has developed potentially transformational technology which could revolutionise the capabilities of appliances that rely on battery power to work. This development could translate into high energy density supercapacitors making it possible to recharge your mobile phone, laptop or other mobile devices in just a few seconds.

THE TECHNOLOGY COULD HAVE A SEISMIC IMPACT ACROSS INDUSTRIES

The technology could have a seismic impact across industries including the pro video and audio industry. It could also revolutionise electric cars, allowing the possibility for them to recharge as quickly as it takes for a non-electric car to refuel – shortening a process that can take approximately six to eight hours.

Supercapacitors, an alternative power source to batteries, store energy using electrodes and electrolytes, and charge and deliver energy quickly, unlike conventional batteries. Supercapacitors can charge and discharge rapidly over large numbers of cycles, but because of their poor energy density per kilogram (approximately 1/20 of existing battery technology), they have been unable to compete with conventional battery energy storage.

Jim Heathcote, CEO of Augmented Optics Ltd, said: “The

ABOVE Supercapacitor buses are already being used in China, but they have a very limited range whereas this technology could allow them to travel a lot further between recharges.

test results from the new polymers suggest that extremely high energy density supercapacitors could be constructed in the near future. We are now actively seeking commercial partners to supply our polymers and offer assistance to build these high energy density storage devices.”

The research team was co-led by the principal investigators Dr Ian Hamerton and Dr Brendan Howlin.

Ian continues to collaborate on the project at the University of Bristol, where the electrochemical testing to trial the research findings was carried out by University of Bristol academic, David Fermin.

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22/12/2016 09:17

The movie version of the game of Assassin’s Creed is out now with a thunderous mixture of sword play, science fiction and fantasy. But is it a VFX blockbuster? If you talk to the director Justin Kurzel and star Michael Fassbender they’ll play down the visual effects as the brief was to make them as invisible as possible.

VFX supervisor Christian Irles from Cinesite explains how they achieved it. “There were a lot of stunts and some of them unbelievable like Michael jumping onto a wagon from a cliff. The aim was to make it believable that he can achieve that jump without seeing it as CG.” The irony is that Assassin’s Creed is a very VFX driven film, it’s just that they are mostly mixed with the stunts and aerial shots. There was also a feeling to not make the movie look like a game with the VFX as others have done. They wanted to keep the silhouetted game feel but make it look photo real. “Everything had to be anchored in reality whether it was a set extension like a view of London or part of a chase sequence that was bookended by real stunts.”

A scene at the end of the film included a VFX recreation of London that could have been shot with a drone but there was no permission

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for a low aerial shot. “This was one of the last sequences, called London finale. The camera starts outside of the Freemasons’ Hall and in a single camera move we go from there all the way to the top of a building which is four or five blocks away. They shot outside the Freemasons’ Hall with a crane which doesn’t take you very far away. We then had to take over with a CG camera and recreate London. To do that we had to model simple buildings we could reproject photography that had been shot with a helicopter. So that’s months of cleaning photos, projecting them on buildings, tweaking the timing of the camera to make sure it doesn’t look CG. It had to look like it was shot with a drone, a helicopter couldn’t have done that camera move.

“So it’s trying to add all the irregularities that you would get when you’re shooting with real cameras and putting that back into the CG.” There is a trend to counter the numbness some moviegoers get when exposed to very heavy VFX movies, Christian agrees. “Sometimes you just don’t believe it anymore.

I think we are in a time when we want visuals that are more believable which definitely makes it harder for VFX companies like Cinesite.”

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SHOOT STORY THE CROWN

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22/12/2016 11:21

THE CROWN SHOOT STORY

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THE

Sovereign

S TAT E Already nominated for awards, Netflix’s huge production, The Crown preserves the highest levels of craft while motoring through the life and times of the first family WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES NETFLIX

he Crown could be seen as a hybrid, somewhere between high-end TV and a feature film.

It hasn’t had an air date or a traditional premiere, in fact, Netflix changes episodes after they have gone out to make things better. But the production values are the highest and for season one the look was very different right from the start.

DOP Adriano Goldman knew from the outset what he didn’t want it to look like. “We all agreed to some sort of references that we didn’t want to match to. So we didn’t want to go like Downton Abbey, also we didn’t want to go Hollywood, too Cinderellalike with fake backlights or magic glows – unrealistic lighting designs.

My usual approach on nearly every project I do is to make it realistic, so the light should come from real places. I particularly love the colour contrast between tungsten sources

and daylight sources in the same frame, and I love to enhance that.

“The challenge for this project was the size of the locations, the size of the windows and the fact that we were mostly working on first and second floors. Every time I wanted my lights to come from outside it was an artistic decision with lots of logistics involved. This is the kind of production that can match the challenge. If I want a cherry picker outside, we’d have to block a street.

“I think I step away from realism when I enhance the colour contrast; to the naked eye windows are never that blue and practicals are never that warm. That’s when I think we drift from realism to magic realism or enhanced realism; it’s hard to find a definition for this style.

“Another major challenge was to make the sharp and crispy sensor of the Sony F55 a little more filmic.

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22/12/2016 11:21

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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE VISUAL IMPACT

GEORGE MOORADIAN PLAYING WITH LIGHT George Mooradian ASC is a very experienced Hollywood-based DOP and he recently visited Visual Impact to impart his knowledge of film and TV lighting techniques WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL IMAGES JULIAN MITCHELL It’s always a special experience watching a lighting cinematographer build a scene in front of you with just a small collection of lights and accessories and, of course, his wellearned experience. Recently in the demo rooms of sales, service and rental house Visual Impact, George Mooradian ASC and his wife Visi (a well-known stills photographer) did just that for an invited audience of creatives, hungry for new knowledge from a master of the craft.

Visual Impact is having huge success with its carefully chosen seminars from luminaries like George and the company is planning many other similar gatherings for those who may want to relearn skills or maybe just want more information on a particular subject. The lighting gathering was massively well attended by people who wanted advice on anything from how to light for green screen to how to light a fashion video blog. To attend any future seminar

IMAGES George led Visual Impact’s seminar, creating some lighting magic for attendees.

sign up on the site where you’ll find all the details – www.visuals.co.uk/ eventspage ROUTE TO SUCCESS George climbed his way up the cinematography ladder, learning at the knee of legendary cinematographers like Vittorio Storaro and Vilmos Zsigmond (George was a loader in the classic movie The Deer Hunter). He lensed his first film while still a focus puller and it was based on a story closer to the UK than his LA home.

Prisoner of Rio was the story of Ronnie Biggs, one of the great train robbers.

George’s filmography is on IMDb for all to see and lists his journey from celluloid to digital and movies to TV. But that’s of public record; what you got from Visual Impact’s seminar was invaluable and specialised advice.

For the Visual Impact lighting seminar George used LED lights, exclusively from Litepanels. But before he started using the kit for the

seminar George gave an illuminating synopsis of his style. He admitted that he was a big fan of actors and has become friends with many he has lit and shot. For people who had come to learn about lighting technique this confession of the importance of getting close to the talent was a great place to start. “Middle-aged actresses are very conscious of how they are lit and digital capture plays a part in that. When digital first came in I had to dial out all the detail and defocus it. To make it look good I had to bring my lighting ratios down from four or five or six to one to one and a half to one. It was a commercial look, a network look which ended up being very effective.”

George’s presentation also involved his wife. Visi CanoMooradian is a stills photographer who specialised in rock band photography when she was younger, but now she photographs faces.

George sees this joint approach to

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VISUAL IMPACT ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

teaching the subtleties of lighting as a natural and original idea; as he says, “Photography is the origin of everything.”

LITEPANELS George’s legacy is his knowledge and that includes the knowledge derived from the changes in technology that he has witnessed. Film to digital and the pattern of low ISOs to high ISOs has driven lighting to smaller LED lights. George has had a close relationship with Litepanels for a while and for his teaching seminars he uses a mixture of Astra, Lykos, Sola and Caliber lights with a range of modifiers to set the scene, all of which can be purchased or rented from Visual Impact who are a premier partner for VITEC/ Lightpanels products.

The scene he was lighting was a seated model, actually Ruth Paskins from Vitec, with a painted faux living workshop background. A Panasonic VariCam LT shot the scene rated at 800 ASA. George immediately turned off all the lights and built up his structure from darkness. He had a light shining through a muslin sheet to diffuse the light onto Ruth but then started turning on practical lights

behind her and some spots with gels on. He took his time but you could almost hear his thought processes as he adjusted and developed the depth of the look. Throughout the exercise he was keen to bring in the audience and make it more of an interactive event. “Who wants to adjust this light?” George would say as he challenged his audience to get hands-on.

George built the scene and then asked what people thought: “What do you think of the blue gel light? What would you change?” He was playing with his audience as any reduction in coverage or removal of lights ruined what he’d built up. It was like lighting sorcery right in front of your eyes.

LIGHTING FOR TV He explained the huge change in lighting interior and exterior scenes that faster cameras and LED lights had allowed, where once it was 18Ks, now it was one LED light. “I love the bicolour aspect of LEDs and also being able to dim them.” It was George’s move to episodic television that gave him more discipline. He had to stick to ratios and promote a more commercial look, but that didn’t stop him experimenting with the standard

IMAGES George lit a seated model and asked his audience to get hands on.

IT WAS LIKE LIGHTING SORCERY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES fill light that was the norm in studio work. “I got my crew to turn all the fill lights off. I wanted to create more of a source where light was actually coming in from.”

George’s seminar showed that with half a dozen lights you could create depth and subtlety with back, fill and soft key lights. After the seminar, people were enthused about what was possible. “Visual Impact’s events are always worth attending. They always manage to get great presenters,” was one of many comments. There was also a feeling of great warmth for George himself, who was continually generous with his advice and answers. Here is a guy who has done it all and is still experimenting, even when his session had come to an end. No wonder he has just been nominated for an Emmy.

SIGN UP FOR VISUAL IMPACT’S NEWSLETTERS AND FUTURE CRAFT SEMINARS: www.visuals.co.uk FEBRUARY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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22/12/2016 09:25

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SHOOT STORY THE CIRCLE

DISRUPTIVE DRONES

When an Oscar-winning DOP shoots a film on drones without many aerial shots you know times are changing

WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES DJI t’s only 13 minutes long, well it’s a short, but the way they filmed The Circle could have some lengthier implications for on-set work practices. We didn’t think too much of the shoot until we found out that A-list cinematographer Claudio Miranda was shooting it. Here is an Oscar-winning DOP – he won for Life of Pi – who is well known to be ultra-picky about what he shoots with and absolutely hates small cameras. Inspire 2’s camera, the X5S, has dimensions of 140x98x132mm with a Micro Four Thirds sensor.

The shoot is a DJI production and so like any demo you have to be wary of smoke and mirrors trickery. But the premise was interesting: shoot a narrative-led, end of Depression era story, make it unapologetically cinematic and shoot it only with a drone and its attached camera.

When we talked with Claudio he had already used a DJI Inspire 1 drone on his current movie, Granite Mountain. He also quickly reiterated

his dislike of small-sensored cameras.

“We used one of the original cameras on a movie that I just did, Granite Mountain,” Claudio said.

“Originally I wasn’t looking at using the camera because I don’t like small cameras. There’s no highlight range, there’s no dynamic range, they just clip and look terrible. So I just did a test and I was kind of amazed at how well it looked.

“On Granite Mountain I wanted to get the big drone to carry the big camera but for actors it is also very intimidating to have a huge ‘lawnmower’ above their heads.

Sometimes it’s nicer to be smaller and then you are able to get closer without something that’s so massive and potentially threatening. I actually ended up using the Inspire 2 again recently for Granite Mountain and I did some plates shots.”

A connection was soon made with the powers that be at DJI, mainly because they were fans of a Tom LEFT AND ABOVE

Claudio used the DJI Inspire 2 with the X5S camera to film The Circle.

RIGHT Actors Ryan Phillipe and Noah Schnapp.

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22/12/2016 09:29

THE CIRCLE SHOOT STORY

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WE ARE ALL LEARNING THERE ARE VARIOUS CREATIVE WAYS TO UTILISE A DRONE ON A FILM SET

Cruise film Claudio shot, Oblivion (maybe it was the drones from the future in the movie). But the resultant help allowed Claudio and his Granite Mountain director, Joseph Kosinski to use more of the Inspire 1 for the movie.

“So I did some more camera tests and presented them to Joseph Kosinski, director of Granite Mountain, and we ended up using the camera for some of our aerials,” says Claudio. “We couldn’t afford to have a helicopter all the time and we wanted something that we could carry as we were up in the mountains all the time.

“That was the Inspire 1 and then we had a M600 with the X5R camera on it. We just loved the fact that we could stay in the air for half an hour.”

THE CIRCLE The meeting turned into an offer to shoot The Circle with just DJI’s new Inspire 2 drone and Raw recording enabled X5S camera. This was so new that Claudio was actually working from the Chinese-only menus. But the results he had achieved from the X5R camera, also a Raw enabled product, had piqued his interest.

“You see a lot of movies and everyone is using drones in a certain way, but we didn’t use it too much in a ‘dronie’ way on Granite Mountain which in turn was very similar to The Circle, inasmuch as you read the script and it doesn’t really feel dronie.

When you think drone, you think of James Bond type movies with lots of action; you don’t think of a period piece with a dad who’s an artist.”

As we are all learning there are various creative ways to utilise a drone on a film set that can emulate an establishing chopper shot, or shots that can’t be done otherwise such as getting close to a talent then ending up 400 foot in the air on the same shot.

‘Birds’ like DJI drones can all be programmed with waypoints – it’s almost like aerial motion control.

The ones on the Inspire 2 and the Phantom 4 Pro are pretty good, but when you want centimetre accuracy, you really want to use the real-time kinematic (RTK) satellite navigation device for the M600, according to DJI. MUST BE CINEMATIC If you are one of the 300,000 people who have watched The Circle on YouTube, you’ll know that the quality of the footage is superb and very cinematic. The really cool part is how that is possible. Also with all the hand-off type moves, are we entering a new way of working with drones flying, then being caught and then becoming a stabilised camera with rotors?

“When they pitched me to shoot the movie I said that I’d do it but FEBRUARY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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RECORDING MEDIA IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAMSUNG

SSDS SAVED MY FILM

Indie film producer Dustin Hughes’ latest film could not have been finished if it wasn’t for SSD media. This dramatic but true statement underlines the huge advantage this media offers WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES DUSTIN HUGHES It is only when you start talking to movie producers who use SSD media that you understand the value of having that extended length of recording. Take Dustin Hughes for instance who is in post for his latest film, Flesh and Blood. The movie is a documentary type of production shot on the mean streets of Philadelphia, in true run-and-gun style. SSDs have given him a huge advantage in many different productions that he has shot but it was his movie where they saved him time and time again.

“Where the SSDs really saved us was shooting Flesh and Blood earlier this year. We were the first feature to shoot on the Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K as we had a Beta version.

It was so early that we didn’t have CFast cards. We were an independent feature so the budget wasn’t there for

CFast cards and we were shooting on location in Philadelphia. Our rental house had two 128GB cards and we were shooting Raw; that really wasn’t going to work. I saw the Atoch Kickstarter SSD adapter and got a unit sent over via Fedex. After we received it we went out to Best Buy and bought the Samsung SSDs and we were rolling.”

30 DAYS OF SHOOTING Dustin’s team shot 30 days straight, non-stop with 15-hour days. “We were using the Samsung 850 EVO drives, we bought the 500GB ones meaning with the dual slot we had 1TB of storage available to us.

Because I was shooting, running DIT and producing with our DOP shooting as well as, we didn’t have time for on-set DITs. We were

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAMSUNG RECORDING MEDIA

moving too fast, didn’t have secure locations, and were shooting in rough areas. DIT wrangling didn't happen on-set so it had to happen at night.

“Being able to fill up cards was great, the SSDs at the time were about $200. So we were able to just keep alive and if we needed more storage we would just go to the nearest Best Buy and buy some more until we had time to check over footage on another drive. There’s no way we could have done the film with the CFast cards.

“So if you shoot the 4.6K Raw with at 4:1 compression which is what we shoot, really there’s no reason to shoot higher unless you’re doing VFX. So for the SSDs the time we had was about 62 minutes for each 500GB drive. The Atoch just looks at it like it’s a CFast card, so you don’t have to worry about stopping down before you run out, it just carries on over to the second card. The transfer times are so much faster as technically Samsung SSDs are faster than CFast cards. So that was a huge saving and what we were shooting was 1 or 2TB a day.”

LONG TAKES The feature was being shot in a really ‘real’ way with real actors and people playing themselves; the scenes were therefore quite long. Some of the takes were 20 minutes long. “So we were really racking up footage and it was great to come back at night and throw them into some cradles and retrieve all that data in such a fast way.

“Technically, if you had the time and if you weren’t shooting the next day and would have to back up your footage, having SSDs there is a great way of being able to transcode directly from the cards because they’re so fast.

“When my URSA Mini 4.6K first arrived I was not going to spend $600 for a CFast card when what I really needed was other equipment for the camera so I continued to use SSDs as my media. For instance, when I do a sit-down interview using SSDs, it means I don’t have to interrupt my

WITHOUT THE USE OF THE SSDS WE WOULD HAVE HAD TO CHANGE THE STRUCTURE OF THE ENTIRE SHOOT. IT WOULD HAVE KILLED THE FILM

LEFT Flesh and

Blood was one of the first features shot on the URSA Mini 4.6K.

TOP The team shot in all conditions, including snow.

ABOVE RIGHT Mark Webber plays the lead (and directed the film); the other actor is Madeline Brewer.

subject in the middle of the interview to change cards. I’ve got a full two hours just sitting there on the camera; I can get through an entire interview without having to change cards.”

NO MOVIE WITHOUT SSDS Dustin is in no doubt that SSDs saved his movie. “Without them we would have had to change the structure of the entire shoot. We would have had to compromise on performances, we would have had to set up things more as opposed to letting people be more organic. It would have killed the film because it would have changed it fundamentally and I think we would have ended up shooting it on iPhones instead to give us the long takes.

“Now Samsung is releasing 1 and 2TB SSDs it makes things very interesting for filmmakers like us.

Also CFast card prices haven’t really come down. Our feature was very run-and-gun, the SSDs encouraged that. Sometimes when we needed a more streamlined camera package we taped the SSD drive to the battery pack with just gaffer tape. We were shooting handheld and changing location all the time. So when we were shooting these cards were hanging out the back, inevitably we were bumping

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the camera and I was expecting card eject errors every time that happened.

We shot 30 days straight in all different elements including rain and snow and never once had an error or had to shut down. Also there were no heat issues and we had brutally warm situations.

“The SSD prices will just get cheaper while the storage sizes will go up. But you have to be careful which brand you invest in. When you’re shooting Raw you really need to have rated speeds; some cards do not provide the speeds that they claim. The Samsung ones are always accurate. If you try and skimp on SSDs you run the risk of dropping frames or the drive not working. I have a few other than Samsung that are not any faster than regular spinning drives.”

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2017 CAMERAS IN ASSOCIATION WITH

NEW YEAR, NEW CAMERA

It’s the new year and one of your resolutions might be to buy that camera you’ve had your eye on. Let Definition help with a little reminder of some of the great new products that will be vying for your attention in 2017

NEW MINICAMS When someone at Canon put video in the EOS 5D Mark II it was seen as a finger in the air idea, not much was expected – little did they know.

Fujifilm has now released their X-T2 with a lot more video nous. The company has obviously seen the impact that Sony’s A7R series of cameras has had on the pro and semi-pro market. These cameras are expensive, the Sony A7R II is around £2999, but come with an impressive spec that doesn’t include line skipping or pixel binning.

In fact, the Sony A7S and A7S Mark II (and now the A99 Mark II) are the only cameras in the world that shoot 4K using the full width of the full-frame sensor with no binning or line skipping (Canon does the latter on many of its cameras). Also the Super 35 crop from A7R Mark II is 15 megapixels, which allows for oversampling to 4K. Talking about the new £1399 Fujifilm X-T2 and supersampling, the X-T2 offers this too. This is an APS-C sensor camera with the usual 8-bit H.264 codec, but the fact that the company has incorporated supersampling in it bodes well for Fujifilm’s video future. The X-T2’s 4K is of the 3840x2160 variety at 29.97, 25, 24 and 23.98fps but only at 100Mbps.

It was at Photokina that we heard news of the long-awaited Panasonic GH5. This wasn’t so much a launch as a technology showing, so fine details were hard to find but a 10-bit performance is the headliner: 10-bit at 4:2:2 4K/60p – now we just need to know about the compression and the noise performance. We did subsequently find out that the 10-bit 4:2:2 4K 60p will only be available as an HDMI output option. This is still major news for pros shooting with DSLRs as the now old GH4 is used quite frequently in pro circles.

Also recently announced was the Fujifilm GFX digital medium-format camera. But the camera has no indication of offering video on the dials. More interesting perhaps are the six G Series lenses including a 63mm f/2.8 to go with it, maybe for use with the new RED VistaVision camera or ALEXA 65?

Fujifilm’s 43.8x32.9mm sensor has a 26.7mm back flange distance; RED VistaVision is 40.96x21.6mm, but the PL back flange is 52mm so these lenses won’t work on PL mounts.

Another new camera with an interesting video story is the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II. It has a 237Mbps option and amazing 5-axis stabilisation we are hoping to test.

ARRI ALEXA SXT When we heard about the ARRI SXT it sounded like ARRI fans’ Christmases had all come at once. This new range of ALEXAs was cherry-picking from their other cameras like the ALEXA 65 and the AMIRA. ALEXA SXT got the sensor from ALEXA, the electronics from the 65 and the colour management from AMIRA. The electronics of the mighty ALEXA 65 camera combine the latest generation of FPGA processors with a fast internal backplane and form the basis of a completely overhauled image processing chain, advanced pixel correction and optional noise reduction. This result is a further improvement in image quality.

The creation of new looks has been made possible by using the colour management engine originally developed for the AMIRA camera. A new type of look file, the ALF-2 (ARRI Look File 2), contains an ASC CDL (Color Decision List) as well as a 3D LUT (Look-Up Table).

The new colour management engine can match the look of current ALEXA cameras, but also provides the basis for radically different looks.

ALEXA SXT cameras include three fully independent HD-SDI outputs. This allows, for instance, a Log C image to be used to show the director a pristine image with live grading, a clean Rec. 709 image to be fed to video village, and a Rec. 709 image with status information overlays to be displayed on the camera’s on-board monitor.

ARRI has just announced that the development of the ALEXA SXT cameras is completed. ARRI will now provide upgrades to all ALEXA XT EV, ALEXA XT Plus and ALEXA XT Studio cameras shipped in 2015/16. In addition to the originally promised upgrade programme of an FOC upgrade to SXT in Munich, ARRI has equipped its service stations in London, LA, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong and Mumbai to perform the upgrade.

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2017 CAMERAS

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BLACKMAGIC URSA MINI 4.6K V4

CANON EOS C700

CANON EOS 5D MKIV – PROSUMER

The ‘big’ URSA is big – astonishingly big.

It’s probably one of the heaviest non-film cameras we’ve ever come across. It’s also weird – in a good way. It’s designed for a two- or three-person camera crew, and the thought of putting it on your shoulder would terrify Geoff Capes – if you remember the 1980s strongman.

The URSA Mini has been around – kinda – for some time now, and Blackmagic advertises it as the lightest S35 camera in the world. The greatest thing about the URSA Mini has always been its conventionality. Whereas the rest of Blackmagic’s cameras are quirky, the Mini looks like a video camera. With some options fitted, it sits on your shoulder, has an eye-level viewfinder, a handle on the top and a battery on the back.

The original software, however, was its quirk. To address this, and some of the usability issues levelled at the camera, Blackmagic has now released version 4, which is why it makes this list. We saw v4 as a kind of new start for the camera.

It’s a major redesign – and a very welcome one. From the moment you power the camera up, it looks… well… conventional, with a few great features that some other manufacturers could take notice of, and a few infuriating ones too.

The new software release, however, is a definite plus for this camera – in some ways it beats the more established competition. We love the way it handles off-speed recording, the general look and feel is tasteful and functional, and instant access from the HUD is fantastic.

Much has been made of Blackmagic being unable to release the camera with the promised global shutter – apparently it restricted the dynamic range too much. We measured the rolling shutter to be 4.77x10-4° per pixel per second, which is pretty good. It’s not likely to be unpleasant in most realworld filming, and we would rather have the dynamic range.

Because no one, ever, in the history of journalism, has ever made a joke about Canon’s name – ever – it’s tempting to say that you need big guns to take aim at ARRI’s AMIRA. The announcement of Canon’s EOS C700 can be seen as little else, however, all (terrible) joking aside.

Building on the success, and capabilities, of the C300, Canon has produced a true, high-end, shouldermount camera, with a Super 35mm sensor.

The camera is available in two models, one with a global shutter and one with a rolling shutter – the sensors are different, though they share similar specifications.

Both sensors are, natively, 4.5K capable, and the camera will record internally, to two CFast cards, 4K at up to 60p, 2K at 120p using the whole sensor and 2K at 240p in cropped mode. Canon has worked with CODEX to produce an add-on Raw recorder, which will record 4.5K Raw at up to 100fps and 4K Raw at 120fps. For the first time, Canon has internal recording using Apple’s ProRes codec, and support for anamorphic lenses is built in.

Canon claims a dynamic range of 15 stops for the camera – the same as the C300 Mark II – and the sensor integrates Dual Pixel autofocus functions. This, of course, only works with lenses that have autofocus capabilities, and in this market most camera operators prefer to rack focus manually. Nevertheless, as autofocus goes, this is the best around – it’s good to know that it’s there if you need it, and it would be churlish for Canon to exclude it.

The camera has Canon’s EF lens mount, with PL as an option, and there will also be an adapter for B4 lenses. Other options include a Full HD, OLED eye-level viewfinder (which will also work on the C300 Mark II), a hand grip with zoom rocker, a removable remote control panel and a shoulder pad with rails. The EVF has buttons for false colour and magnification.

If there’s one camera that holds almost legendary status in indie filmmaking, it’s the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. It may not have been the first DSLR to offer movies, but it was the first affordable full-frame camera to do so and accordingly it sparked off a quite remarkable revolution following its release in 2009.

Eight years on and a new EOS 5D, the Mark IV, is here. The camera doesn’t look much different to the old one and if you’re used to Canon handling and button placement, you’ll feel right at home. There are a few tweaks, but nothing major so it’s very easy to get used to. There’s now a locking button on the Mode dial, and a new AF area selection button below the AF area joystick. This new button allows you to select the AF area modes.

Inside the camera is a brand-new sensor with more resolution, up to 30.4 megapixels, and better weather sealing. There’s also a faster 7fps stills shooting rate, the 61-point AF system of the pro-level EOS-1D X Mark II, better connectivity via Wi-Fi and NFC and a 3.2in touchscreen.

The important news for filmmakers, however, is that the new camera comes with some serious improvements aimed at them, such as a new Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus that allows you to refocus while shooting movies, using the LCD touchscreen. Unfortunately the screen does not articulate, which is a real shame as a movable screen can be a real benefit for filmmakers and many of the camera’s mirrorless rivals have them.

The EOS 5D can now record in 4K in the DCI Cinema format at up to 30p, along with half-speed slow motion of 60 frames in 1080p and even 120 frames if you don’t mind dropping down to 720p.

This records onto twin internal memory card slots, one for UHS-I SD cards and the other UDMA-7 CompactFlash cards, which are the same as those used in the Mark III. FEBRUARY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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22/12/2016 11:37

LIGHTING

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SOFTSUN GIVES THE CROWN A SINGLE SOURCE The Crown pared down its lighting design to one huge soft source called SoftSun WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL hen The Crown DOP Adriano Goldman wanted a ‘non-lit’ lighting design he looked for a soft light he could diffuse massively. But he also wanted one light source along with practical lighting. He chose the 100K SoftSun – that’s 100,000W of power.

This is a linear, dimmable soft light and was the huge single source he was after. It gave Adriano and the actors space to ‘breathe’. Having a lot of lights coming from all directions would also make them hard to diffuse.

The SoftSun lights are from Luminys and they also do 50K, 25K and 10K versions. It’s just like a fluorescent tube, very ambient and floods everywhere. You can use a spot on it so you can direct it but a lot of people put diffusion on the front; it depends if you’re looking for output or softness. With the 100K you can easily

light up the side of a stately home or even a train station.

These lights are pretty unique and scarce in lighting rental companies; we think the UK only has two 100K units and they’re at Cirro Lite UK. It’s hardly surprising as each light is nearly 150kg and needs its own generator. But there are no other lights with so much power in one source. It’s a flood light in an eight-foot fixture.

Adriano hadn’t heard of them before but soon found them irreplaceable. “I’m absolutely in love with the 100K SoftSun, it’s fantastic.

You save a lot of time and end up saving money. You move faster. Some days I have one light outside that gives the wide interiors and when I move to mid shots and close-ups I just bring a net and more diffusion layers.”

The SoftSun is now lighting the locations of The Crown season two.

RIGHT: The 100K SoftSun has a whopping 100,000W of power.

BENDABLE LIGHT PANELS

BrightCast’s flexible LED panels are available in daylight or bicolour versions and have, on the face of it, many different applications.

They are also waterproof to a certain standard and can be battery powered.

Described as high intensity, they are fully adjustable and ultra thin.

New accessories include a panel extender cable for daylight or bicolour.

This allows the light panel to be used up to 2.5m away from the control unit.

There’s an inflatable softbox which acts as a diffuser and incorporates a sleeve for coloured gels.

There’s also a spring-loaded lighting stand, with a max height of 2.6m.

FEBRUARY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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USER REVIEW RED 8K IN ASSOCIATION WITH

With some attractive upgrade deals from RED, moving up to 8K with the EPIC-W or HELIUM S35 is within some people’s reach WORDS JONATHAN JONES PICTURES EMBER FILMS s a company, Ember Films always want to be at the forefront of tech; that’s been a big thing for us so whenever something high resolution is announced our ears prick up. We want to at least understand if it’s the right choice for us. If so, we’ll get it, if not then we can justify why we don’t necessarily need it. 8K is a very interesting proposition. It depends on the application and there are some interesting fundamentals of why we would or wouldn’t embrace it.

In the field the overall storage of the resolution is a major

consideration. If you’re on set and you’re doing anything with green screen where resolution is key you want to acquire the largest resolution that you can then you would invest without much hesitation.

The reality is if you want to deliver true 4K images then you should acquire them in 6K because you essentially shrink the image size down and increase the picture quality. We work on a rule of halves, for instance if you want to make really good 1080p pictures then capture in 4K. If 6K is a delivery requirement, then capture it in 8K.

ABOVE The RED

Epic-W camera on location showing its massive 8192 x 4320 px sensor.

The binning of resolution that way, for us, offers really fantastic images because if you look at something in its true native resolution, you are often looking at its imperfections.

EPIC-W REVIEW We were most keen to find out more about this camera and its frame rates were our main focus, as in what frame rate could it do at 8K, 7K and 6K. Our market is vast, anything from commercials to natural history, and because of this we have gone for REDs over the last six years. They are probably the most versatile camera; though some people knock them in terms of their reliability, we think they are workhorses. We’ve never had any failures, not just with our cameras but also the ones we hired in. And we’re talking about multiple locations across the world. In Planet

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RED 8K USER REVIEW

at 4K etc. We wanted to see how this new sensor was going to be affected with 8K; what else frame rate-wise would we get? In reality everything is the same but with increased top-end resolution. Having said that we found the sensor was definitely cleaner.

It’s incredibly clean in 8K but when you get down to 4K I started seeing the familiar kind of noise structure patterns coming in. So when using the 4K at 120fps I saw a similar type of noise, but I would have to do some more testing to confirm it.

So we’re getting the same 6K frame rates as we’re used to. At 7K we got around 46fps, which is remarkable, and at 8K super wide I think we were getting 38fps which is truly amazing. In an ideal world we would want to be at 6K but have a higher frame rate options.

Earth II we went to the most remote, extreme environments where the cameras were exposed to rain, humidity and sand etc. and they have all been rock solid. What you get in their form factor is incredible; the ability to capture 8K in something the size of half a shoebox is mindblowing. It contains the recording media, the battery and the processing.

It’s an incredible piece of engineering.

The whole resolution argument is really interesting and what we don’t want to do is let it get in the way of a good story. That’s our fundamental.

There’s also other massive considerations like lens choices – what lenses are going to cover the sensor on the wide end?

If you’re already a RED owner with a DRAGON for instance, you have frame rates that work at different speeds up to 6K, for instance 120fps

IMAGES Ember Films were testing the Epic-W by shooting a mini film in varied locations.

BIG IMPROVEMENTS One thing I was very impressed with was the offload speed. It was offloading a 512GB card in about 40 minutes which is lightning speed. I think that is around twice as fast as the DRAGON 6K, although we’re still

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using the 1.8in MAGs. The downside of these upgrade processes is that you always keep part of your old gear.

So if someone was investing in the HELIUM WEAPON now they would invest in the MINI-MAGs; we’re still clutching on to what we had. Of course that’s another consideration for someone who is in the upgrade process from DRAGON and doesn’t have the MINI-MAGs. They are going to have to buy new SSD modules and new cards.

When you’re a business you have to account for the spend and you have to ask is this our best investment? Would we use 8K? Yes, I think we would on occasion and maybe when we want to make more use of the width of the lens. What’s interesting is that cameras from RED ONE to RED EPIC were an absolute must; in terms of an upgrade it was absolutely essential. We’ve been in it from the start so we’ve heard all the negatives about the reliability and I’m convinced they were either operator or crew error. Our RED ONE and some of the others that we used were solid as a rock. People must

WE’VE HEARD ALL THE NEGATIVES ABOUT THE RELIABILITY AND I’M CONVINCED THEY WERE EITHER OPERATOR OR CREW ERROR FEBRUARY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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USER REVIEW DIVA-LITE LED

THE DIVA GETS COLOUR!

As digital cinematography has taken over from film, LED lighting is doing the same with traditional location and studio lighting. Kino Flo has just released the new Diva with all that you always loved about her plus two million colours WORDS JUSTIN LONG, EMBER FILMS he Diva-Lite has been around for a long time and been a firm favourite with those who wanted a consistent soft white source for the Divas and a thousand other uses.

Last year Kino Flo showed its new LED light versions at NAB and got everyone excited again as the new versions had a colour mode.

At Ember Films we are a film company who shoot anything from our own films and commercials for

brands like BMW to natural history like Planet Earth II. We were shooting some studio-based commercials for Heineken with loads of glass and chrome involved and thought that this type of shoot would be a good test for the new Kino Flos as it required a soft light that would show the new Heineken products at their best. It was a series of brand films so there would be fast turnarounds as we swapped out the different beer products. It was

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DIVA-LITE LED USER REVIEW

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THERE IS A RULE THAT THE ONE GEL YOU NEED IS THE ONE YOU HAVEN’T GOT important to keep the different beers’ colours as real as possible and also our style used backlighting with some light shaping from the dedolights that we already use, to get some crispness on the edge of the glass.

Separately we also used the lights on a natural history TV programme we’d set up, which couldn’t be more different from the Heineken branding.

OPINION First of all, these lights are fantastic, their form factor is brilliant. The fact that you can dial in all those colours and use them for practical effects turns them into very useful tools. They are very even so using them together is another useful feature. There’s really good colour toning, you can match all the filters with so many combinations and you can also mix them together to get what you want.

You also can’t forget that it is a lovely soft white source. We were using them just as a key light for the grass and the glass on our set without worrying about the new colour modes.

We already had some dedolights and the mixture of Diva and Select 20s and 30s, all with the colour mode installed. The basic difference between the two is that with the Selects you can take the ballast off the back and control it remotely, great for when you’re rigging the light up high or out of reach or if you have a top light inches from the ceiling as we do, sometimes you want to get that light as far away from the product as you can. Our set was quite crowded and so moving grip equipment around isn’t a great choice.

Having the option to dial in what colour temperature we wanted and also going through the gel option that is preset into it is really handy.

LIGHTING PRESETS There are four different lighting modes that you can personalise. The interface is very easy to use. Within those modes you’ve got a 360° colour wheel so instead of having the filters that we’d normally carry around with us, we could instantly programme in what colour we want. It was very liberating

not to be restricted to the colour temperature bicolour light panels that we usually use. There was a lot more flexibility in the colour temperature of the light we could put in.

On the whole the controls were very intuitive. It’s very clear where everything is and how to achieve things like presets.

You could also add in tints which would mean no longer carrying around a big bag of gels. That’s all built into the light. And when we’re on a shoot the flexibility of having four custom modes that we could assign to whatever we wanted allowed us to just tap through them for our lighting set-ups.

This type of working without gels but having a method of accurately replicating them is very creative. You don’t have the hassle of physically doing it; dialling them in seems much

ABOVE The new lights have a great form factor.

LEFT Having pre-sets allows very quick changes of lighting set-ups.

easier and it encourages you to try more things out. So we would light the scene and if we had time we then we would experiment.

There is a rule that the one gel you need is the gel you haven’t got so it’s very useful to know that you haven’t got to bring those consumables.

Obviously if you’re using other light sources you’re going to have to use the gels, but if you have a series of those soft lights it would be fantastic.

Because we were dealing with products we had to change the colour temperature slightly to make sure that they were looking right. Our shoot demanded that we were swapping out various products quite quickly; being able to press one button for one set-up and program 2 for our next product saved us time. You press 2 and it’s there. The way we would have done FEBRUARY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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