Many cinematographers use warm and cool cards, like the DSCLabs White N’ Warm cards, to create a look in camera. By white balancing your camera on a card with warm (red) color the camera will produce a cooler (blue) balance. The opposite is also true; a cool (blue) card will give a warm (red) white balance. If you white balance off the same card in different lighting environments, then you can consistently achieve the same warm or cool look. What many people don’t know is that this same method can also be achieved in camera through white balance offsets. This option is available in many pro cameras and is simple to set. Depending on the camera, an offset can be applied to the preset, A or B white balance settings. The offset works simply by adjusting the white balance to be cooler or warmer. Just like using the same warm/cool card, the offset will be applied to any white balance that you run. The advantage to using the offset over using the cards is that you can white balance off any white surface and still get the look you are after (of course a nice white card is still advised, if available). Here are a couple examples of how this is set in different cameras.

…continue reading Using White Balance Offsets to Create a Look

With the release of the SxS-1 cards and the MEAD adapters (for Memory stick and SDHC use), Sony announced a firmware update to their XDCAM EX cameras to allow use of these new memory recording options. The Sony UK site has just made this update available, and the good news is that anyone can perform these updates. The EX1 and EX3 require software (for PC & Mac), but the EX1R and EX350 can be upgraded using an SxS Card. A comprehensive PDF is included in each download with upgrade instructions. They have posted some of these upgrades already, but the EX1 firmware may not be available until Monday. Visit the Sony UK site to start downloading. UPDATE: The Sony US site has also posted these updates, and our customers say that they have had better luck using them.

Here is a list of the updates for each camera.

…continue reading XDCAM EX Firmware Updates Now Available

Sony recently announced the MEAD-MS01, a memory stick adapter that works in the EX line of cameras. This is a low-cost alternative to the SxS card and is really handy when in a bind. For sometime now, there have been different SDHC card adapters that work with the EX cameras including the MxR and SxSxSDHC card adapters. Now Sony has come out with their own version – the MEAD-SD01. This will work in very much the same way as those other adapters, but it’s nice to see one officially sanctioned by Sony. The EX1 original and EX3 will require a firmware upgrade to work with the MEAD-MS01 and MEAD-SD01 adapters. Additionally Sony has announced that Class 10 SDHC cards will be supported with their adapter, but ALL EX cameras (EX1, EX1R, EX3, PMW350) will require a firmware upgrade to use Class 10 cards. The SD adapter will be available in mid-March, and you can look for this firmware upgrade earlier that month. Sony has officially tested and sanctioned the following SanDisk Class 10 cards – DSDX3-032G-A31A for 32GB, SDSDX3-016G-A31A for 16GB, SDSDX3-008G-A31A for 8GB.

[View with PicLens]

Recently, Abel hosted a pair of seminars exploring Sony’s new XDCAM EX camera models. The events at Abel’s New York and Burbank facilities showcased the 2/3” CMOS EX350, which joins Sony’s popular XDCAM EX family. Each of the cameras in the line—the EX1R, the EX3 and the EX350—has a different feature set and form factor, which makes it ideally suited to a particular application. You can read more about these applications on abelcine.com.

At each event, Abel’s Andy Shipsides presented an overview of the XDCAM EX format and gave an EX350 camera tour. Filmmaker (and Abel Rental alumn) Ben Bloodwell joined Andy at the New York event to give his impressions of the EX350. He screened footage from a recent documentary on cyclist Lance Armstrong shot with the EX3. Veteran Network News Magazine shooter Dennis Dillon then spoke about combining the EX cameras with nanoFlash recorders and XDCAM optical discs.

Director of Photography Tim Paterson was the special guest at the LA event. He shared his thoughts on the EX350 and discussed his experiences shooting the recent documentary Michael Jackson’s This Is It with the EX1 and EX3.

Browse the image gallery above to see images from both events.

By the way, we are now taking pre-orders on the EX350, which will begin shipping right after the New Year.

Sony recently released a new version of their XDCAM EX Clip Browser with a couple of great new features. If you aren’t familiar with the software, it is Sony’s free tool for working with XDCAM EX clips. It allows users to download, subclip and add metadata to clips. It’s the best tool out there for working with EX material…and it’s free.

In this latest release, Sony added a Flash Band correction function. This will scan your clips and look for banding created by flashes. It is very similar to what the Panasonic HPX300 does in-camera. This is an important function for anyone shooting live events, or anywhere where there’s flash photography.

…continue reading New Features in Sony’s EX Clip Browser 2.6

For the second part of the ENG Essentials – Camera Matching Series, I will be adjusting the gamma settings on the VariCam 3700 (HPX3700) to match the gamma curves on the EX3. The HPX3700 has more gamma adjustability, so I chose to set the EX3 to a setting I liked and then adjust the HPX3700 to match. Every manufacturer has different gamma curves, so my goal is to set the two gamma curves to match as closely as possible using a DSC Labs ChromaDuMonde chart and Leader scope.

…continue reading ENG Essentials: Gamma Matching

This is the first part of the ENG Essentials – Camera Matching series, and the first step to matching two cameras. White Shading is an in-camera process where a lens is matched with a camera’s sensor. Every lens and every sensor have unique characteristics, and the combination will often produce uneven color across your image. White shading corrects for this uneven color by adjusting individual color channels (R,G,B) from top and bottom and from left to right. This is done with a Leader waveform monitor and a white sphere that is designed to produce even white light.

Another important step after white shading a camera is to match white balance values. All pro cameras have preset and user defined white balance values – the P,A,B switch. If you run a white balance on two cameras looking at the same white card, in the same lighting environment, you will get very similar results. But if you plan to use the preset values (3200K,5600K) we need to be sure that both camera actually produce the same color white. Different lenses produce different white values, so even though the camera thinks you are at 3200K, it may be completely wrong. This can be corrected for by adjusting offset values in the camera, and making sure that both cameras have matching white values.

Watch my video below to see how these two steps are done.