“ A Test Drive of the Panasonic Varicam 24p HD Camera”

April / 2003

Sleepless in Calgary
Test Driving the Panasonic Varicam 24p HD Camera

by Craig Wrobleski csc

After 15 years of shooting almost every type of project imaginable on almost every film and video format available, I came to the conclusion that it was only a matter of time until the separate worlds of film and video got together. After years of promise, that meeting has brought us the 24-frame, progressive-scan, high-definition video cameras everyone is talking about. I have always taken a cinematic approach to my video projects and in turn have brought the “in the trenches” experience gained through video work to bear on my film projects. These new cameras offer a great opportunity to bring all of that experience together and apply it to one medium – 24p HD.

I have shot a number of projects on the Sony HDW-F900 (CineAlta) camcorder and have found that, when properly treated, HD enables the cinematographer to capture images that have a “filmic” quality with much of the speed and efficiency associated with video production. Obviously, as with any format, the “garbage in, garbage out” maxim still applies. HD requires the same (and sometimes more) attention to detail that film demands. This format is not film and it is not tape – it is definitely a format unto itself and I enjoy every opportunity I get to work with it.

It is for this reason that I jumped at the chance to test drive the new Panasonic AJ-HDC27V Varicam 24p HD camera, also known as HD Cinema.

I was invited to a Panasonic presentation on the Varicam by the folks at Cine AudioVisual, a Panasonic dealer in Calgary. I had heard about the camera from an American director I have worked with. He had shot a promo for ESPN on it and had nothing but good things to say.

My interest piqued, I went to the presentation. I am always skeptical about these sorts of presentations because their talks tend to be overly reliant on the technical specifications of the equipment and generally put a pretty heavy “company spin” on the information presented. I am most interested in what the gear can do on the set and how the images look. The presentation fulfilled my expectations of techno-jargon and propaganda but also offered up a camera that actually seemed to deliver on the claims. After the show I talked to Darryl Zubko at Cine AudioVisual about the possibility of getting my hands on a Varicam for a test.

About the same time I was approached by a fellow named Richard Kenyon, an experienced theatre director/actor and first-time filmmaker, about a project called Insomniac. It was a short silent film about a poor guy who, as the title suggests, is unable to sleep. I read the script and thought it not only offered up great visual possibilities, from murky darkness to punishing daylight, but also had an interesting mix of emotions – from sadness to humour and everything in between.

Kenyon and I talked further and found we liked the same films and directors and seemed to agree on an overall approach for the film. We discussed potential formats that would suit the tone, and budget, of the project. Film was our first choice, but cost was a concern and, this being Richard’s first film, he didn’t need to be thinking about the money every time we rolled the camera. I offered up HD as an option and we agreed that the clean and somewhat “antiseptic” feel of HD would suit the tone of the project just fine. Insomniac seemed like the perfect fit for the Varicam when our further discussions of the script brought up the need for shooting at frame rates other than 24 fps. I talked to Cine AudioVisual about bringing in the camera, they said no problem and, after a few scheduling and location glitches, we were all set to go for the two-day shoot of Insomniac.

When camera assistant Brian Shier and I opened the camera cases to prep the gear, the first thing that struck us is the similarity in the design and ergonomics between the Varicam and the Sony F900. Panasonic has wisely adopted Sony’s well-thought-out operator control design, thus taking the guesswork out of where the switches are. Once we got into the menu settings of the camera, we found that Panasonic improved on the menu access features of the Sony.

The Sony menus seem more engineer-oriented and are not structured in an order or language that would appeal to the cinematographer who is not well-versed in the terminology of video cameras. What Panasonic has done is break the menus down into a more user-friendly structure by grouping the menu items of most interest to cinematographers on a “Film User Menu.” This includes master pedestal, detail, and gamma curve settings plus dynamic level, black point and tungsten/daylight sensitivity. There is also a status menu which shows important camera settings (shutter angle, camera speed, etc.) at the touch of a button so you can check your settings quickly and easily.

The Varicam offers a nice, soft image quality
while still having all the resolution inherent in HD

You can work with the camera in “video” or “film” terminology. In the video setting the menus are structured more for operators with video experience and in the film setting the language is geared more for those with a film background (i.e. shutter speed in video mode, frames-per-second and shutter angles in film mode).

In the film mode, Panasonic has built two gamma settings into the camera – Film Rec and Video Rec. Film Rec is intended for use with projects that will ultimately be transferred to film. In its factory setting, Film Rec offers a low-contrast image that is intended to offer more information for the director of photography to access in the film transfer suite (similar, in theory, to overexposing the negative when shooting film). The camera limits operator access to many of the image controls in this setting so it is difficult to set up a look in this mode. It is almost like looking at a one-light film-to-tape transfer knowing that you can change the look in the timing later.

Panasonic claims that this setting lowers the knee sensitivity to increase highlight detail and prevent clipping over 100 IRE while leaving black levels alone. I found that when engaged, the factory setting increased highlight detail and lowered the blacks. It seemed more like the camera was just “stopping down” the image more than extending the latitude. Due to time constraints I couldn’t investigate further but I would like to experiment more with this setting.

Insomniac was going to be finished on video so we explored the Video Rec setting. This setting offers greater access to image controls than the Film Rec setting. Since I was interested partly in comparing the camera to the Sony F900, I left many of the settings in their factory positions. I found that these factory settings, like those on the F900, offered accurate colour reproduction, a broad tonal range and surprising shadow detail. The factory master gamma setting of .45 offered a slightly desaturated, low-contrast look similar to Kodak 5277 film. Richard Kenyon and I agreed that a great deal of the colour would be bled out of the finished film, but since it might be desaturated in stages to match the protagonist’s decline, I felt I should offer him a somewhat saturated image to start with.

With this in mind I upped the master gamma setting to .55. This offered slightly greater colour saturation and slightly deeper blacks. The Varicam offers a nice, soft image quality while still having all the resolution inherent in HD. I switched the detail setting to the “on” position but found the image lost some of its “filmic” appeal. I didn’t feel diffusion filters on the lens would support the somewhat grim nature of the story and turning the detail off enabled us to retain a nice image without resorting to diffusion.

Knowing that we wanted to test the range of this camera fully, the only other settings we adjusted were the knee point and knee slope. By raising the knee point and decreasing the knee slope we were able to gain some highlight detail without affecting the blacks. Overexposure latitude has always been the Achilles heel of video cameras and HD is no different, but these knee settings offered us a little more range to work with. At these settings, the camera rated at an effective ASA of 500. Happy with the look of the camera, we set off to shoot Insomniac.

The project was shot over two days in the basement of art director Robin Swiderski’s house. It was a tiny location but just right for the film. The rest of the crew were assistant Brian Shier, gaffer Martin Keough, key grip Blair Bourque, swing grip Douglas Raines, 1st AD Lorie Gibson, makeup/hair Jaime Majer and still photographer Tomas Kraus. The project was produced by Luanne Morrow and Cheryl Kroeker-Shields.

The cast consisted of Stephano Buoninsegni as our sleepless protagonist, Larry, and Cheryl Kroeker-Shields playing his seemingly oblivious wife, Stacey. The film is essentially seven scenes documenting one man’s struggle with insomnia and his decline into a state of mind where reality and warped visions start to blend and the world around him becomes increasingly difficult.

Due to the constraints of the two-day schedule we had to come up with an efficient plan to shoot the scenes without pushing the limits of the crew’s donated time. One small window served as the principal source of illumination for the majority of the scenes – varying degrees of murky moonlight for the night scene and hot sunlight for the one day scene. The window was tented in for darkness and 1200-watt HMI Pars were placed in the tent and aimed through the window for source illumination. Kino Flo fluorescent fixtures were used for illumination inside the room. In lieu of a scene-by-scene breakdown, I will offer some highlights of the camera’s performance.

The Panasonic is a nice addition to the wealth
of camera choices cinematographers enjoy

The opening credit sequence of the film put the camera’s range to the test. The sequence consisted of six shots starting with the couple going to bed and ending with them getting up at dawn, captured in an overhead lock-off shot that reveals our lead character’s inability to sleep. Throughout this sequence he stares up at the ceiling while she sleeps beside him, blissfully unaware of his torment. We started the scene with varying degrees of underexposure, from one to four stops under, and the camera handled the scene well.

By shot No. 3 in the sequence, the dead of night, the underexposure ranged from two to four stops under. Even with this much underexposure the scene never became murky or muddy. The shadow transitions were natural and the level of detail was impressive with, of course, none of the grain issues you would encounter on film. Colour rendition of the uncorrected HMIs offered nice, clean blue and varying degrees of saturation depending on the amount of underexposure. Shots 4 through 6 showed a gradual increase in brightness and a lowering in colour temperature as dawn approaches, until by shot 6 the bed was being lit with a nice, soft side light reading at one stop over and 4800 degrees Kelvin and a hard slash of sun 2-2½ stops over and 2200 degrees Kelvin. The camera held all of the shadow attributes of the previous scenes but also showed smooth colour transitions and held highlight detail and colour very well in the light coloured bedclothes and the wife’s face even at two stops overexposed.

A scene in which our increasingly agitated hero is trying to light a cigarette also impressed us. We opened the scene in a jib shot over the bed to reveal him sitting in a dark corner. The wall behind him was painted an eggplant colour and even at 3½ stops underexposed you could still read the colour of the wall on our Panasonic HD monitor. When he lights the match we go into a slo-mo, macro photography sequence. We used diopters on our Fujinon zoom lens and set the camera at 60 fps. We discovered that the stop compensation required for off-speed photography correlates exactly to that required for film shooting. That made the math easy when calculating light levels and setting stops.

An extreme close-up of our protagonist’s bleary eye revealed that we could see his hands lighting the match reflected in his eye and that the sensitivity of the camera picked up the burst of warm light on his skin when the match was struck. These resolution and sensitivity attributes used to be the sole domain of film. Unfortunately, due to the equipment leaving our hands before proper frame-converted dubs could be made, I have been unable to gauge the quality of the slow-motion effects, but another sequence we shot at 6, 12 and 18 fps offered real-time viewing of the smear and image blur characteristic of under-cranking (much to the delight of our director). The lone day sequence in the film offered us a chance to test the overexposure latitude capabilities of the camera and once again we were impressed. The scene involves the relatively simple task of making a cup of tea. Due to our poor hero’s sleep-deprived state, this proves to be a chore that descends into chaos, physical injury and signals his final breakdown.

In our pre-production discussions we came to the conclusion that the daylight in this scene should seem to be punishing Larry as he sits at the kitchen table. To accomplish this we put an 85 filter on the camera and used the same HMIs that were our gentle moonlight and, through medium Par lenses and a change of exposure, converted them into pounding sunlight. The lighting plan involved layers of backlight on our protagonist, the kitchen table and the wall beside him. All of that backlight bouncing off the table and the wall created a beautiful soft underlight on his face that accentuated his tired eyes and sallow complexion.

The camera dug into the shadows extremely well and revealed the effects of sleep deprivation on his face. Though his face was lit to the shooting stop, he is surrounded by overexposure ranging from two to five stops over. Though the camera lost highlight detail at around 2½ stops over, it held up very well and didn’t show the usual image flare and “video burn” normally associated with over-exposed video images. Especially impressive was a wide establishing shot that contained a window sitting at 6 1/3 stops over. The imaging chips contained the over-exposure and didn’t let it bleed into other areas of the shot. The Varicam showed some very film-like characteristics in these situations.

All of the scenes shot for Insomniac really pushed the limits of shooting on a video format and the Varicam really proved itself on this challenging project. Panasonic has adopted many of the intelligent features pioneered by the Sony F900 and added many improvements of their own. Though I found the viewfinder on the Varicam to be an improvement over the Sony (this could be due to the fact that the camera was brand new), the black-and-white viewing systems on these cameras are no replacement for a good optical viewfinder. The inability for the DOP and operator to accurately gauge focus, colour, lighting and contrast through the viewfinder on HD cameras continues to be a stumbling block.

As with all video equipment, time will tell how the equipment will stand up to the rigors of film-style production but, like the Sony, the Varicam seems fairly robust and didn’t pose any technical problems on our two-day shoot. The Panasonic is a nice addition to the wealth of camera choices cinematographers enjoy these days. I would like to thank Cine AudioVisual for supplying us with the camera gear, William F. White in Calgary for supplying grip and lighting equipment and Richard Kenyon and the cast and crew of Insomniac for a great shoot.

(In his 15 years behind the camera, Calgary-based director of photography Craig Wrobleski csc has photographed productions of every description in a variety of formats, including 35mm, 16mm and 8mm film, Betacam and, recently, 24p high-definition video. He has shot documentaries on subjects ranging from Catholic missionaries (God’s Explorers) to AIDS (Killing Time) and from Bret “The Hitman” Hart (Wrestling with Shadows) to Preston Manning (CBC’s Life and Times). Other credits include a four-part history of the automobile entitled Chrome Dreams and a documentary on noted Canadian painter Attila Lukacs. Craig has photographed dozens of commercials and music videos and has served as director of photography on over 20 live concert specials aired on CMT, CBC and PBS. His drama credits include The Office, Carpe Diem, and Game Seven. He has won honours at the Yorkton Film Festival, The Alberta Motion Picture Industry Awards and The Iris Awards.)

From : http://www.csc.ca/news/default.asp?aID=1002