HV20 Experiment 1: Film Setup, No Gain, No Cell Phone Trick

Today I ran an experiment to push the HV20 to give me optimal film settings with the narrowest depth of field without a lens adapter. In other words, I wanted to see what I could get using just the camera itself.

After reading an excellent post by the author (handle: Aramis) of the Canon Elura guide (elurauser.com) over at the hv20 boards I decided to forego Barry Green's "cell phone trick" (with all respect intact) and thus CineMode, and instead lock the shutter speed at 1/48th using TVMode instead.

Here is the reasoning Aramis provides:

“I find Barry's article unnecessary complex and convoluted. I believe that there is no reason of pointing to light source. What for? Need to read current aperture? Press the photo button. Need to set aperture? Select Tv mode, choose shutter speed, then lock exposure and adjust to your liking, checking current aperture with photo button. Not enough EV range? Well, in this case you can point to a dark area or, conversely, to a bright light source just to set a different baseline for built-in light meter, then lock exposure. Then you can adjust exposure and the range will be different, but what is the point of shifting the range, say, to smaller apertures if you shoot in low light? You won't see anything.”

I locked the exposure to give me as open an iris as possible without adding electronic gain - in this case - 2.4 (-8 EXP). Anything above that setting showed a redundant 2.4 on the display and thus I assumed I was moving into digital gain territory (ie. -9 gave me 2.6, -8 gave me 2.4, -7 and above also showed 2.4). I based this on a diagram which displays that the largest aperture at full zoom for HV20 is is f/3.0. (Fig. 1.1)

Taking this into consideration, I decided to attempt an optical zoom that was at neither extreme. Most discussions thus far have concerning locking the exposure and shutter involve the camera being zoom all the way in or all the way out. A little restrictive by any definition.

(Fig. 1.1) Demonstrating aperture/gain relationship of the HV20 where the red area is the electronic gain zone
Copyright © 2007 elurauser.com

By playing with the optical zoom to compress the foreground and background I was able to blur the background more while keeping the foreground in sharp focus and vice versa; using nothing more than the fidgety little focus ring, I got some excellent rack focus going between the distant foreground and background. The results are terrific. I got a very narrow depth of field, 1/48th shutter, a nice wide open iris at 2.4 and no electronic gain (ie.as little noise as possible).

The scene is lit with various "practicals"; (an upright halogen light from K-Mart, 40-watt energy saver bulb in a glass brick from IKEA, and, most importantly, a 500W Lowel V Light bouncing off the ceiling. I also used a gold reflector to balance out the dark side of my face. Without enough light this shot would have been impossible.

The experiment proved that I can control my shutter, exposure and focus, achieving a very narrow depth of field with just a few simple steps and nothing more than the Canon HV20 and in this case the Canon wide angle lens attached (and lots of light!)

Shutter 1/48th (TVMode 48)
Exp: 2.4 (-9 gain, exp lock)
Manual Focus
HD 24p

Pics and vi(m)deo coming soon!

Can the HV20 Shoot For (feature) Film?

In considering the HV20 workflow and its viability as a viable platform for shooting for film (by this I mean both film transfers and feature-length films), I spoke with my longtime friend Emanuel Pereira who handles post supervision for Brightlight Pictures based in Vancouver. An early adopter of HDTV, he spent much of the late 1990’s working in Los Angeles in the production of high-definition content for ABC and Digital Intermediate development with Samuel Goldwyn and Technicolor.

I expressed my enthusiasm for the versatility of the handheld Canon HV20 along with my intent to shoot a feature length film, and checked in with him concerning what to look out for to ensure that I could conform to spec for outputting product that could at least compete in the marketplace. Here was his response:

“If you're wanting to mimic the cinematic look of film, beyond the lenses are granular control of shutter speed (for that Saving Private Ryan stop motion look at the beginning also seen in Hard Candy action sequences) and aperture for depth of field, (although those [35mm lens] adapters you were raving about before seemed to afford you crazy depth of field):

“Film has a logarithmic curve from black to white which provides detailed steps in those extremes. I read that this camera has a cine mode for light/color but I wonder if it's mimicking a film stock or what it's really doing, and can you hack the camera to reproduce a film logarithmic curve?

“Do you have the (Blackmagic) Intensity (Pro card) or how are you getting footage into the comp? (In fact I am just using a Firewire cable - ed).

“Doing 3:2 pulldown removal via software on dailies for something feature length is a grueling chore and only necessary if you need to film out or go 24 video somewhere down the line. Otherwise, outside of a vfx comp you can work 59.94 easily if you just want the 24 film look and constrain to North America broadcast.

“The current industry standard on a film release from an HD DI is a bare minimum 4:4:4 color space via HDCam SR format. I'm sure others are attempting to fall short of that, however Film Finances wouldn't endorse without distributors' waiver and Tortilla Soup and Blair Witch are the exception not the norm.

“So I guess the assumption is this camera should work okay for broadcast or a no budget feature if you're careful and time is at leisure, but would become tedious if you have hours of dailies coming in every day on a standard 24 workflow and a schedule to adhere to.
“

I then read the HV20 thread at indieclub.com:

“James:

But isn't it true that all 24p cameras (or at least all pro-sumer models) do a 3:2 pulldown in camera then output an NTSC (or PAL) standard video which is 60i (or 50i)? I am under the impression that if you want to edit 24p then you have to record with a camera that shoots 24pA then use editing software that can extract the original 24p frames.

JDWalley

Posted: 10/11/2007 9:08:21 AM

That's correct -- the HV20, like the DVX100, outputs 60i. The difference is that, with the DVX, you get the option of 24pA which is a lot easier for the NLE's capture module to parse and turn into a pure 24p clip. The Canon has its own variant, which is not as easy to convert, and doesn't have flags in the stream to indicate which are the progressive frames. Therefore, only a few NLEs (the only one I know for sure is FCP5+) will be able to make the conversion in-capture; for everyone else, you have to use one or more utilities to process all your clips after capturing them.

The other difference is that you need to be able to set up the NLE for an HDV 1080/24p project. To this date, only Vegas on the PC side seems to have this capability -- all of Premiere's presets appear to be for interlaced HDV. Now, you can set up these project options manually, but you might find yourself having to use a different codec than HDV's variant of MPEG-2. How that will affect your final product, and outputting it to one device or another, remains to be seen. FWIW, most of those on the HV20 forums seem to use Vegas. Too bad I find it a massive pain in the posterior...”

Mr. Pereira’s reply to the above:

“Avid has been able to edit 24p natively since inception. However the bridge from Hv20 to Avid to do 3:2 pulldown removal during capture is unknown to me, outside of software conversion.”

I have since purchased a copy of Cineform’s Neo HD converter that does reverse 3:2 pulldown while capturing along with Red Giant’s Instant HD (MSRP US$99)for up-scaling my old SD footage, and perhaps even the Hv20’s output (from 1440x1080 to 1920x1080 should the need arise to do a transfer to film.) Both are very effective in their respective ways. I look forward to uploading some samples soon. Incidentally, Red Giant’s Magic Bullet also performs reverse pulldown, and de-artifacting to spit out very nice looking true 24p. (Another option is Digital Anarchy’s Resizer. MSRP US$149)

The above image shows the relative sizes of HD/SD so you can get some perspective on where you may be starting and where you may be going when upscaling.

Production tips with the HV20:

In order for the HV20 to better reproduce the true look of film I ensure that I always use the Barry Green “cell phone trick” to lock the camera’s shutter speed at 1/48 while shooting 24P with Cinemode on. I now know that this almost always produces a very dark image that requires additional lighting, even in daylight! And I will never trust my HV20 to loiter around in that underexposure area because it is simply awful with low light.

Having said all this – the resultant output is pure cinema! Now, short of outputting 1920x1080p HD or even 2K for eventual film transfer as a digital intermediate, I know that I can create cinematic footage that will look fantastic for HD broadcast and conform to spec, which is all I wanted – the confidence that all the hard work I put into shooting isn’t going to invariably land me in a compromise.

Additionally, I am in the process of converting my 45 minute sci-fi pilot shot in SD to 24fps progressive so I can further upscale it with Instant HD to HDTV (1280x720). I will let you know how it goes!