Hello everyone, David Leitner here. I'm in Las Vegas at NAB. I just got in from
New York City. I had an opportunity before I left to shoot some tests with a
pre-production model of the FS-700, and I didn't have time to prepare anything
fancier than this. I just wanted to share a few notes about how this test was
shot. It was shot the Sunday before NAB on the High Line in New York City, which
is the elevated railroad which has been turned into one of the most popular
tourist attractions in New York, and it was inevitable that I would find drama
there. I am a longtime DP and documentary filmmaker as well as dramatic, but I've
done a lot of cinema verite because I love observing people and natural
behavior. So I wondered how the high speed capabilities of the FS-700 would
render the way people behave, the way they interact on a sunny day on the
High Line in New York. So that's what you're about to see. I shot some of the
material at 24 frames a second and some of the material at 240 frames a second,
10 times slower. Now when I shot at 240 frames a second, which is one of the
features of the new 700 that I think is going to make this an extremely popular
camera, I experimented with autofocus. And the autofocus that I experimented with
is the one made available when you use the Alpha lenses, Sony's Alpha lenses
from their still Alpha camera line. If you you you can use these lenses with
the FS-700 with an adapter, the, I forget the name of it, the LA-EA2, which
has a thin film beam splitter inside, which allows the use of a type of
autofocus that's almost foolproof. It's called phase detection, phase
detection, and it's available with the Alpha lens series. The reason I'm
spelling this out is because there's another kind of autofocus called phase
detection, and it sounds like exactly the same thing, but the difference is that
you get phase detection with the E-mount lenses that work with the E-mount on the
FS-700. But if you use the adapter for the Alpha lenses, you get phase detection.
Sounds exactly the same, but it's extremely different because phase
detection does something unique. With conventional autofocus, what's
being compared is the contrast of fine detail, and the camera's looking at that
contrast and focusing back and forth very fast to see if it can find where fine
detail looks the sharpest, and then it settles on that. Now if you have a moving
object, the camera is hunting and pecking. It's very fast, but it's still
constantly seeking the focus. With phase detection, the one spelled with a P, which
is available with the Alpha lenses, this beam splitter that's in the lens adapter
is looking at two images that are slightly offset. It works just like a
pentaprism SLR, you know where you look through it and you focus it and you see
the two images come together. With phase detection with a P and you see the
camera focusing using phase detection, this is an FS-700 that's filming me now
with autofocus and phase detection through an Alpha lens. With phase
detection with a P, when the two images are brought together because there are
two of them formed by this beam splitter, the camera then knows whether the focus
is behind or in front of the object that it wants to focus on. It then locks the
focus and keeps the focus locked so that a person walking towards the camera
will be tracked properly. It's remarkable and it's really a breakthrough. So I
wanted to explain the difference between phase detection, which you find with
E-mount lenses, and phase detection, which you find with Alpha lenses, both
available on this camera, but what you're going to see in the test that follows
is phase detection with a P. So let's take a look at the highlight on a sunny
windy afternoon in New York City.
In this footage everything shot 24 frames was shot on a tripod. Everything
shot 240 frames was shot handheld.
240 frames a second makes me look like the steadiest handheld camera person on
the planet.
All of these scenes were shot using Cine Gamma 1. The FS 700 has four
Cine Gammas, Cine Gamma 1, 2, 3, and 4, which are identical to the high-end Cine
Gammas found on CineAlta cameras. I used Cine Gamma 1 here because Cine Gamma 1
protects highlights. This was important because I was shooting at the end of
the day with the Sun almost on the horizon. With Cine Gamma 1, highlights
don't clip in that video way that just looks harsh. They taper slowly, much like
film, especially on skin tones, which you'll see repeatedly through these
clips. The previous scenes were shot with manual focus. This scene was shot with
continuous phase detection autofocus. Watch the focus track the person who
moves in front. You'll notice the detail in the hair and the detail in the jacket.
This scene is also shot with autofocus. As you'll discover it, Slow Mo could
really reveal the drama and facial expression. But she's actually a very
pretty girl, watch her here. As she turns and the camera detects her, the autofocus
is going to pull forward. Again, the autofocus will pull from the man to the
right to our lovely subject on the left. Even the most mundane activities look
dramatic in Slow Mo. Look at the contrast range in this shot. The skin tones are not
burnt out, although I'm shooting in extreme light. Cine Gamma 1 does a
beautiful job of highlight skin tone rendering. It's quite an improvement over
the Cinema Tone 1 and Cinema Tone 2 of the FS100.
Now, watch this guy going in for a kiss. Sometimes the guy doesn't get the girl.
Slow Mo has a way of opening up the smallest moment to reveal the drama
that's contained inside. The way people smile, the way they walk, the gestures
they make, the way they hold each other, what they feel for each other.
Look at the dark detail under the bridge and the specular highlight detail. In
many of these shots, I've emphasized the Highline's origins as an elevated
railroad track, so you'll see tracks running through many of these scenes. If
you're a New Yorker, you know that a former mayor of New York wanted to tear
down the Highline as an eyesore. This is the highlighted dusk. I'm cheating a
little here to dramatize the blacks. Instead of Cine Gamma 1, I'm using the
still gamma that's included because the FS700 is also a still camera. Now, there's
an incredible contrast range in this scene. Yes, I've used Gain, but there's no
color clipping in the highlights, meaning that white highlights are white. I find
this scene stunning. And that's it for my brief afternoon outing with the FS700
on the eve of N.E.B. Thanks for watching!
you
