I happened to call up Bill Hogan at Panasonic about P2 CMS, something completely unrelated, and I told him about my shoot, and he said, hold on a second, are you interested in shooting with the new HPX2700 Varicam: we have one in town just for sitting here. Well, how could I pass that up?
So, all of a sudden I have two cameras, but I don’t have any more crew. I thought I'd just try it on a couple of shots, but we ended up shooting a lot with the new Varicam. It shoots to P2 cards, recording 10-bit 4:2:2 AVC-Intra. It can shoot from 1-60fps, either slow motion or quick motion, and it does all kinds of different formats.
It’s a 720 line sensor, so it’s 1280x720. The advantage of the 3000 over the 2700 is that the 3000 does 1920x1080, which is what I want. However, I was interested in seeing these cameras side by side – the 3000 might have more resolution, but I knew I'd lose some going the Compressor route. And the 2700 was making some really great images.
The P2 family
Panasonic has a number of high-end P2 cameras now, and they all do variations on the same thing, so you can pick the right tool for what you're trying to do. The HPX2000 (2100 in Europe) is a 720p camera, and in a sense the HPX2700 is a Varicam version of that. Then there's the HPX3000, which is a 1080p camera, and finally there's the upcoming HPX3700 camera, which is a 1080 Varicam version of the 3000. It’s been interesting to watch Panasonic make the move to solid state in its entire range, because they were the first to really push the data workflow and develop it for the mass market.
The P2 card gives me a lot of flexibility as a cinematographer; it doesn't restrict me to one tape format. DVC Pro HD was a tape format that you couldn't change: all you could do was record one codec on that tape. HDCAM decks only record HDCAM; DVCPro decks only record DVCProHD. A P2 card doesn't care what you throw at it: it's just data. So if Panasonic wants to give me a better compression scheme; they want to give me a better codec such as AVC-Intra, then we don't have to change anything about the card, we just change some software in the camera. So now I get a 10-bit instead of an 8-bit codec, which is 1024 steps of color versus 256 steps.
I think that P2 is very workable; it's just different because there is no longer tape sitting on the shelf. The card gets re-used, so you dump this footage on a hard drive or LTO tape, and that's a bit of a mental leap for a lot of people. 'Erase the footage? We worked so hard to shoot that footage, we put a lot of money into what's on that card!' Well you have to deal with your database workflow and you have to back it up and have a safe environment to store your footage.
The camera
The HPX2700 has a lot of great features. It can house up to five P2 cards, so you can record indefinitely by swapping the cards; however, I like to work with only one P2 card at a time so I don't get confused about what's on each card. But it will span cards no problem. I generally shoot a five-minute scene, then maybe a two-minute scene, so we work in takes and I just swap the card when it's full. I used 32Gb cards, but 64Gb cards will be here shortly. At the top data rate,100Mbit/s at 24fps, the 32Gb card will give you 56 minutes.
The camera shoots variable frame rates, so I can tell it my frame rate is 24fps and I'm going to edit at 24 (or technically 23.98). But if I want it to shoot 60 or 48fps, it will automatically record that as slow motion and play it back instantly for you. You don't have to convert it; you just press play on the thumbnail and it will play it back, so you can see what the shot looks like at that frame rate. If you don't like what you see, you can do it again, right there. Because you can't edit with AVC-Intra natively you have to convert it, and there is a plugin available on Panasonic's website to convert it to ProRes, so you can log and transfer the footage into FCP. Once you've done that, the footage will play back in slow motion; you don't have to do a frame rate conversion in Final Cut. That's really an interesting development with this camera.
They've got this nifty LCD monitor on all the new cameras. It allows you to work with the P2 cards on set, so you can go through your thumbnails and play back shots and control the camera, so you've always got a color reference. The viewfinders are black and white, which drives me nuts about shooting HD, though we are starting to get more color ones. So at least the LCD gives you some sort of color record. It's not ideal, but you can see if you have the right color balance. You can go into system setting or system mode. The other cool thing about this camera is you don't have to do just one frame rate, you can add a frame ramp in-camera. You can go from one frame a second to 60 frames a second during the take, which is really cool. I think they are going to develop a box for the Varicam that does the same with a jog wheel. Other than that, it's a normal HD camera. It has all the features that you'd expect: professional sound and timecode, gain settings, paint settings.
It also has Film Rec, which the 2000 doesn't. The 3000 has Film Rec, which is a gamma mode that enables you to use the maximum amount of latitude of the sensor. You can combine that with a number of other features, such as dynamic range stretch. Say you have a really high contrast situation, such as two guys sitting in a car, with the camera in the back seat looking forward over them. The highlights are all blown out because the light level in the car is very low compared with outside, but when dynamic range stretch is switched on, it looks at the whole scene in blocks and then compares the various blocks. If it sees one that's really hot, it brings it down dynamically, even as you're panning the camera. You might think that could be kind of funny looking, but actually it works pretty well in helping you to maximize dynamic range.
The camera also has the chromatic aberration compensation function Panasonic developed with lens manufacturers Fujinon and Canon. They figured that these lenses are manufactured on machines and so the characteristics are probably pretty predictable, which means that given the characteristics of each lens at different zoom, focus and iris settings, they could map those out with software and compensate for the chromatic aberration of each lens. The lens files are placed online, because they keep updating their files. They've done about 11 or 12 lenses now.
In operation
For my HPX2700 shoot, I was shooting a comedy about a cross-country race, so we wanted to do some slow motion shots to build the dramatic moments to make them funnier. We had a guy breaking a tape at a finish line and we shot that from a couple of different angles. He was actually running backwards – part of the gag is that he runs faster backwards than forwards because he has a deformed back. I shit you not. So we’d catch him beating the other runners who are running forwards while he’s running backwards and getting ahead of them. I love shooting slow motion; it gives you a chance to see things in a different way from reality, like shooting black and white. I like to capture as much detail and latitude as I can, and then color correct later, because if you start crushing blacks or clipping highlights, you can’t bring that back. I think that’s a smart way to work because I often can’t make good color critical decisions on-set; it's not the best viewing environment.
Coinciding with the release of the HPX2700, Panasonic is also launching the HPX3700, the Varicam version of the HPX3000. That's going to be able to do 1-30fps progressively at 1920x1080, as well as 60i. It also has a duel link 4:4:4 output through the HD-SDI .
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Graham FuterfasGraham Futerfas went to USC’s film school and spent several years’ working as a gaffer and electrician, eventually becoming a cinematographer. He has shot features, shorts, music videos and commercials. His narrative credits include the feature film The Beat, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and also The List, starring Wayne Brady. He’s shot music videos for Godsmack, Rock Kills Kid, Tobymac and many others. His work can be found at www.gfuterfas.com |