One of the most often misunderstood aspects of the ALEXA menu structure pertains to the camera’s frame rate options. There are four separate places to set a frame rate and they all do something very different. Here I’ll walk you through each one of them and give you tips on how to make sure you end up with the correct frame rate for your shoot.

Project Frame Rate: This can be found by navigating to MENU > PROJECT > Project frame rate. Your options are 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, and 30 and they all represent playback rates. This should be set to your final deliverable’s frame rate. If your show is being broadcast n the States, it might be set to 29.97fps or 23.976 (to emulate a film look). If your show is going to be shown projected on film, you’ll want 24fps, and so on.

Sensor Frame Rate: This can be found by going through the Home Screen on the side of the camera and pressing the FPS Menu button on the top left. Here you’ll see the available Sensor fps list, with an option to create your own ranging from .750fps to 60.000fps. Think of this as your variable frame rate option. If your project is set to 24fps and your sensor is set to 24fps, then what you see is what you get and you’ll be able to record audio. However, if you wanted to shoot 60fps over 24fps for an over-cranked slow motion effect, you would keep your project at 24fps, but set your sensor for 60fps. At this point, your audio will be disabled.

Rec Out Frame Rate: This can be found by navigating to MENU > RECORDING > REC OUT> Frame rate. Your options are 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 48, 50, 59.94, and 60 and they all represent output signals to send to an external recording device. The only way to access frame rates of 48 or higher is by changing your HD-SDI Format to 422 1.5G Dual Link or 422 3G Single Link. You also have the option of using the REC OUT frame rate to set your sensor frame rate. Scroll down to “REC OUT fps sets sensor fps” in the REC OUT menu and turn the option on. This is a good option to have turned on if you’re recording both to an external device and the SxS cards, to make sure both recordings have the same frame rate.

…continue reading ALEXA Frame Rate Safety Guide

Over the years I’ve held a lot of one-on-one camera training sessions with owner-operators of varying skill sets – some who had been working with a particular camera for years and were finally buying their own, all the way to people who had never worked in the industry and were just getting started. I can tell you that the vast majority of them did not know how to load or copy scene files. You can all breathe a sigh of relief, knowing you’re not alone in this world. However, I do have a visual that should help those of you too afraid to ask for help: a simple ladle, some soup and a bowl. Hopefully, this analogy will help you the next time you try to load or copy a scene file from one camera to another, and it applies to both Panasonic & Sony cameras.

…continue reading Loading & Copying Scene Files

Over the past year, the BlackMagic Design HDMI to SDI mini converter box has proved to be extremely popular with clients using the Canon 5D and 7D. It accepts both HD HDMI and SD HDMI signals from the 5D Mark II camera, but as some of you may recall from Andy’s blog back in May, the 5D Mark II outputs HD HDMI until you hit record, and then the signal changes to SD. BlackMagic’s firmware version 1.5 would break the SD conversion, leaving you with a blank monitor while recording. The fix was to downgrade your firmware to 1.4, but Blackmagic has finally addressed the problem in their latest firmware, version 1.6.1. What’s new? Well, now you can see your Canon’s SD signal while recording, but there’s also Closed Captioning support for up/down/cross conversion and overall performance and stability improvements. You can also set your downconversion settings to anamorphic 16:9, center cropped 4:3, or letterboxed 16:9.

To upgrade your converter box, download the 1.6.1 Utility Software for Mac or Windows. After opening the utility, plug your converter into your computer using a USB cable and power it up. The utility will automatically upgrade your firmware if it’s not already at the current version.

(Photo credit: Evin Grant)

Did you ever wonder what creates permanently lit, or what we often refer to as “blown”, pixels in your CCD camera’s imager? Here’s the reason:

Charged-Coupled Devices (CCD’s) are made up of an array of millions of photodiodes, which turn light into voltage. Photodiodes have two leads coming from the bottom, a cathode and an anode. When a photon of energy strikes the diode, it excites an electron, creating a mobile electron and a positively charged electron hole. Holes move toward the anode, and electrons toward the cathode, producing a photocurrent. Because photodiodes use voltage to convey information, they can be susceptible to high-energy particles such as cosmic rays.

…continue reading Lit Pixels: Why Do They Happen?

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Time-lapse refers to a shot that follows a transition in time, like an entire sunset in a matter of seconds, or the flowering of a plant in under a minute. It’s accomplished by taking a few frames over the course of a longer interval, and when shown at a faster frame rate, creates the illusion that the event happened in a much shorter time. It’s different from stop-motion photography, where the frame is manually exposed just once, and then time is taken to change the scene. Here, the interval of time between exposures can vary greatly. With time-lapse photography, the interval remains the same.

…continue reading Time-Lapse Recording