Just a quick update. I’m going to be around Park City today with what I feel is the smallest and most proper compact AF100 hand held configuration.

It’s easy to make a handheld “rig” gigantic, unwieldly and heavy. This configuration is none of those things. It also balance extremely well with lightweight prime lenses. Show in the photos are a Zeiss CP 25mm and a Cooke Panchro/i 25mm. Although this same set-up will work with any small and lightweight lens.

Every piece of this puzzle is currently available as-is, for purchase with one small exception, a slightly modified Zacuto shoulder pad. Now the modification was done in about 30-seconds using a box cutter, so it’s a bit funky. But when you need something immediately, your choices are limited, so I decided to “make it work”.

I’ve been working on a high quality ergonomic shoulder pad solution, but it’s not quite ready to be revealed to the world just yet. I spoke with my friend Steve Weiss of Zacuto about this yesterday, and I don’t think he minds that I did this. It did result in one more sale

I’ve also been working on a counter balance that is unlike what’s currently available on the market. This hand held set-up could use a bit more counter balance, but when you keep the camera small, positioned correctly for center of gravity and your elbows in tight you don’t need much. You also don’t need to put it out behind you a great distance, weight and rod distance has been the two most popular methods of creating counter balance so far, I’m pleased to say there is another way, that I haven’t seen many use up until this point.

Also featured on the handheld rig is the Cineroid EVF. It’s a great way to put the camera in the most comfortable spot possible when shooting. It’s attached by an Ultralight arm, which I’ve got on loan from Blacklist productions, a production/post production and rental company located in the same building as Hot Rod Cameras. Blacklist recently started shooting a series of very comprehensive AF100/lens test in their studio. Here’s a photo from that shoot.

A quick video was posted on the Abel Cine Cinematechnica blog yesterday announcing that the price of the new Panasonic Digital Cinema camera the AF100, will actually be $4995!  That’s about a $1000 less than I last heard.  I got some hands on time with a prototype AF100 camera along with a final (or nearly final) Panasonic GH2 last week in Germany.  This is definitely going to be a cool duo, especially when you consider that the GH2 has LIVE HDMI output while recording, a new 24 Mb compression and has a retail price of less than $1000.

You can see the AF100 complete with the Hot Rod PL and Ultra Prime in the Abel Cine video here.

I.

Illya Friedman

President

Hot Rod Cameras

Just a quick update- The Hot Rod PL graces the m4/3 mount of the AG-AF100 on the preliminary brochure for the much anticipated Panasonic camera. You can see the preliminary brochure here along with a mighty fine Zeiss Ultra Prime. Much more information and updates to come!!

I.

Illya Friedman

President

Hot Rod Cameras

Recently I was contacted by some clients who are shooting a documentary in some pretty exotic locations. That is, places they aren’t allowed to move around very much (small footprint) and they can’t add (or change) the existing light. The solution: GH1 and one of the best zoom lenses ever built (not to mention one of the fastest).

The long record time of the GH1 is a big help, not to mention the low light sensitivity. I’m really excited about this project. The Director and DP are very talented, chances are if you are reading this you’ve probably seen their work in the theater or on TV.

I’ve been after my friend Liam to post the “Low Light” portion of our Collision Conference presentation on his website for a month now, and he’s promised to do it before the end of October. Liam if you are reading this, time is running out- why aren’t you posting it right now?

I’ve gotten a couple emails lately about monitoring with the GH1. In the 25-35 hours of data recorded on REJOUER, something we did probably 6-7 times was to shoot a quick test shot and play back via a HDMI-mini adapter to HDMI to DVI cable, and hook that cable up to a decent DVI PC monitor and we would get a fair understanding of what the 8-bit 4:2:0 YUV is looking like straight from the camera. I would not use this to judge critically, but you definitely get an idea of your ballpark. After a while, you’ll start to learn how the camera will respond- like a film stock. The on-board LCD of VF (plus the histogram both Y and RGB) should give you a good idea of what the shot will look like.

Hope this helps,

I.

BTW, I’ve had really good luck with the products from Monoprice, and the orders usually arrive at my door (in California) the next day with standard shipping- really impressive!

I’m happy to help with advice anywhere I can.  Advice is always free.

I’ve been working with a very talented DP lately using the Hot Rod PL, testing the GH1 in a variety of settings.  Some interesting things we’ve found.

- Setting the white balance manually is your friend.  Using a WB of 5500K sees to produce the best skin tones (in camera)

- The “Smooth” Gamma mode, seems to offer the most pleasing “film like” images

- Even though the camera rating says 100 ISO, you get the best “to eye” image of of what you’re shooting if you actually rate you light meter at 640 (which I think it close to the native ASA of the camea.  To repeate- set camera at ISO 100, and the base exposure of your meter to 640.

- Same thing works with a higher ISO, 400. Instead of placing the GH1 at 100, you’ll set it to 400 and your meter at 2500.  The results of shooting like this have been stunningly good!  I’ll post some images as soon as I can gain permission.

I.

Illya Friedman
Hot Rod Cameras

The Pansonic Lumix GH1 is a remarkable achievement for an inexpensive still/HD camera system (or HDSLR.) However, the GH1 is not without its faults. Over the past several weeks Hot Rod Cameras has compiled some simple rules to help make images shot on the GH1 look as good as possible. Give this blog a quick read, and remember when in doubt “test, test, test” any unusual scenario. As you shoot more with the camera you’ll start to learn instinctively what you can and can’t get away with (just like any other camera system).

1. Always shoot in “Creative Motion Picture Mode” (the little movie camera icon mode.) We could go on and on in regards to why, but trust us, it’s the only completely manual mode (use a manual lens to make everything manual)
2. Turn on the histogram function, and if you don’t know how to read it, test it until you do. You can turn it off instantly by pressing (Display).
3. Turn [I.EXPOSURE] (Intelligent exposure adjustment) to OFF, and be cautious if using it in low light situations. Even when turned off, some modes will automatically use the feature. The only one we’ve found that really keeps it “off” completely is “Creative Motion Picture Mode”.
4. All ISO settings listed in the camera are faster than stated. Consider each to be the most conservative “estimates” of your actual ISO. If you plan to show your project on a truly BIG screen, only work at ISO settings of 500 or below.
5. The AVCHD codec is highly compressed. Extra motion will not help your image quality, use a tripod, dolly, Steadicam™ or other rigid surface to prevent camera shake whenever possible.
6. Working at extreme telephoto focal lengths will make camera shake worse, use a tripod and avoid wild/random pans and tilts.
7. The camera like light, always have enough illumination for a proper base exposure.
8. When working with saturated “warm” colors, underexpose about ½ a stop. The red color channel has more artifacts that either the blue or green, underexposing will help any red/orange and yellow objects on camera appear cleaner (or artifact free), it’s easy to bring up base exposure level up in post ½ stop should you need to.
9. Use an IR/ND combination filtration rather than just ND whenever possible.
10. If highlights are important, keep the brightest parts of the frame underexposed (no clipping), add fill light to your shadows.
11. Light your shadows appropriately; you will not be able to pull up ‘black’ more than about ½ a stop (that’s not much!), the GH1’S AVCHD compression drops all the detail in “black.” So if you dig down too far, you’ll find nothing there but grey muck. You can preview this on the monitor live, or on an external monitor in playback.
12. The “FHD” 1920×1080/24p mode does NOT use a standard 3:2 pulldown. Make sure you remove the pulldown using a method that preserves the real 24p frames and not the interpolated frames. The interpolated frames are of particularly low quality.
13. Shooting with the GH1 is not like a RAW camera, bright highlights and dark, dark blacks are WYSIWYG. If you can’t get those levels to the correct point in-camera (on your monitor/histogram), you won’t be able to get them right in post. However, the GOOD news is that you get a decent amount of contrast with the image in some of the user selectable ‘film modes’ (including “Standard”) up to nearly 10-stops (about 2.5 over, and 7 down) if you can maintain your shadows to highlight contrast ratio- and keep skin tones more or less in the middle, you can keep a lot of detail/information, and then can confidently move those levels around in post.
14. Shooting in (SHD) 720p60 give you a slightly cleaner red channel, than (FHD).
15. Upconverting (SHD) from 720p to 1080p and adding a small amount of sharpening creates an image that will seamlessly intercut with GH1 material acquired at (FHD) 1920×1080.
16. ATW (Auto Tracking White) WB (White Balance) mode may make color correction of flesh tones more difficult.
17. If you have a scene with very high contrast you can lower contrast in the “My Film” mode. The “Smooth” film mode has the lowest starting contrast.

Following these steps does not guarantee that you will have no imaging problems, but it will certainly help you be aware of where things can go wrong. When treating the camera correctly it can produce sublime images that look like they come from cameras costing much, much more. Using proper lenses make getting the shot much easier.

As many people start playing with a GH1, they’ll eventually notice that a whip pan doesn’t look particularly good. However, a whip pan is a case of extreme motion and the camera recovers instantly as it slows down so it’s pretty easy to forgive such a minor fault. But that’s not what we do, we wanted to find a scenario that would really break the image, yet seem more or less “mundane.” Any camera can be brought to it’s knees in one respect or another, if you know how. If you would like to see the “worst case scenario” for the GH1 you should plan on doing the following STRESS TEST. Shoot a fast moving subject traveling quickly and repeatedly from screen left to screen right and vice-versa. If the subject is traveling fast enough particularly close to camera or at a focal length where the subject appears quite large in the frame (to smaller in the frame) it will further makes the picture quality deteriorate. Use the deepest focus (largest depth of field) possible. Watching this shot for an extended period of time, you begin to notice problems affecting motion, detail and color. You’ll then have an easier time spotting these problems in the future. After determining the weak spots of the camera we performed our own GH1 “torture test”.

The Hot Rod Cameras GH1 test: A fair skinned child wearing white/orange on a bright day, near trees with dark-black shadows. The child swings on a swing very SWIFTLY back and forth from a ‘medium shot’ to ‘medium close up’. The playground equipment and green trees in the background are near matches for primary colors (red, blue and green). This scenario pushes the dynamic range, compression codec and color space. We also added in a busy background (extra motion), moved the camera in swift pans/hand held and turned on ATW WB.

To clearly spot the problem areas we then viewed 1080/720p test images on an approximately 30’ Stewart 1.0 gain screen, projected by a Christie CP2000 2K projector, with color correction performed on a Quantel Pablo. 1080 pulldown removed, 720/60p converted to 24p.

What’s particularly interesting- those who only saw the test shots on the big screen for a few seconds; or on a large plasma monitor size screen didn’t notice any of these imaging problems. Those of us who watched closely and repeatedly could see them all.

In the next few weeks there’s going to be a lot more information posted about how to get the best possible images from such an inexpensive camera. Links to sample images, and details on productions using PL mount lenses on the GH1.

This is a fantastic way for micro/low-budget shows to get the best bang for the buck possible, and for bigger budget shows to add an extra/creative angle on a shot/scene for almost no additional cost to the production or manpower.

Some of the initial images I’ve seen from the GH1/Hot Rod PL are remarkably encouraging, I can’t wait to see the completed projects shooting right now.