How many stops? This depends on how you set up the image processing in camera and really requires a laboratory test setup. Using Cinegamma 4 and all standard black gamma and black level it looks like about 10 stops (using exposure meter to measure scene range) which is between 109% highlight and 7% dark (on LCD). But you can push black gamma to lift dark detail, so if your standard is only whether or not there is detail at both ends then more than 10 stops. The caveat is that I can't put this up on a monitor (holidays, as said above, need new laptop) and cannot assess black noise level. Film runs from fog level to saturation and I've not run blacks down to the equivalent of fog level. One might ask does this mean anything without specifying context and requirement? I think, not much.
Incidentally the EX starts "highlight" at less than 100%, so this isn't a demand for another ND filter. If you use cinegamma 2 you cannot over expose, because the gamma curve goes flat at 100%. You just lose all highlight tone discrimination (not very useful, I think!).
Yes, you can use the LCD to assess image settings (black gamma, black level, etc) but I would call this ballpark rather than critical.

I think Serena has hit a few nails on the head. Measuring latitude does seem to be a bit of a vexed question, I've heard one person claim 11 stop and another 8 stops for the same camera, both are pretty knowledgeable people with no shortage of experience. In the latter case though he did say he was talking about 'usable' latitude.

Just going back to custom profiles briefly. One thing I think worth mentioning is that many of them are for studio setups where you have control of the lighting. Using them where you don't could be problematic.

I'm also wondering if we're really a bit in the dark here. Michael is asking a lot of good questions but I'm not too certain about the context he's asking them in. He's said he's shooting wildlife in the deserts and he's worried about details in the shadows and at the same time not blowing out the sky. From my brief experiences in deserts here and elsewhere the natual light can be extremely harsh. With nothing in the air to diffuse the light there's not much of it once you're out of direct sunlight and the light levels when you are are very high. This sounds to me like the most extreme lighting conditions one can encounter one earth, so extreme I think our eyes cannot cope. I don't know how one goes about capturing such a range of light without something being sacrificed. Without the luxury of adding fill or diffusion yourself that is. Perhaps if Michael could provide an example of what he has seen from others working in his field that is what his goal is, we could offer more tailored advice for what he's aiming for.

Bob.

Yes Bob: Harsh light is my problem. Early morning and evening shots are nearly always as I would like. The problem is that here and probably true for your outback too, is that the periods of soft light are short and I am forced to shoot a lot under full high sun and being alone fill with reflection sheets is often to difficult to adjust (can't keep them still in the wind or they blow away). A typical problem I have maybe a small bush as subject that is in shade of some trees but with mountain and cloud backdrop. I want to see the bush family well exposed, see detail in the shadow areas under the trees without blowing out the clouds or loosing too much detail in the mountains. I know I'm asking a lot and don't expect perfection. What I would like to put a handle on is "How much better is the EX1 at this over over my FX1"
EDIT to add this: What I do now in this situation is try to keep the mountains within 100% and let just a little of the sky blow and then attempt to bring up the shadows in Vegas, but when I try I get too much noise in the blacks.

Mike

Sounds like a case of one man's shadows is anothers black hole.

Just outside our building there's a tree. On a sunny day the underside of some of the foliage looks black, on an overcast day you can see it really is green. Even my eyes cannot cope with the contrast. Walk across the road and stand under the tree and then you can see the leaves are green. That suggests one solution, a wide shot to establish the setting and then a tight shot under the tree. I should add that our HDV cameras tend to make the underside of the tree look worse, they seem to give a sudden 'snap' into black and I'd not try to do anything with the image in post. Unfortunately the sky has been overcast for the past few days or I'd try an EX1 at cine4 and other tweaks however the contrast ratio is so extreme I doubt there's much hope of an real gains to be had. You might be looking for an improvement of 10 stops and while the rest of us are overjoyed at getting a couple of stops and for sure that'll help you too but you might have to resort to cheating.

Have you considered doing sky replacement?
If your shots are repeatable there's a number of ways you can cheat by doing 2 passes with the camera at different exposures and compositing in post. Even then though you hit a point where the image does look wierd or fake. There's a not overly expensive security camera that can take shots with a 100,000:1 contrast ratio but not the thing for taking good looking images. It takes two exposures per frame and stacks them, for the purpose great, for yours I doubt it'd work but by being a bit more gentle in the offset between both exposures you might get there.

I should also mention that in very high contrast shots optics start to play a role. Lots of elements in the lens can cause you problems, the light from the bright part of the image bounces around between the lens elements and affects the dark parts of the image. Those 35mm adaptors will also work against you I suspect.

Anyway, give us some more feedback. There's some knowledgeable people here with more practical experience than me who might have some other ideas. Also worthy of a mention is over at DVInfo there's a forum for wildlife shooters, you might find others with your problem there who can offer practical advice.

Bob.

What about a graduated ND filter?

Graded filters, ND filter with cut-out, crossed grads, all are possible solutions to the situations I imagine from Mike's description and I presume all have occurred to Mike. I don't know how much setting up of the shot is possible. A couple of typical frame grabs would clarify things.

Bob mentioned the cavision matte box and I am considering it too but thought I'd ask if you stack screw on filters UNDER the EX1's sunshade or is a matte box absolutely necessary to use stacked filters?

ALSO I read you can turn PP off. Does this mean you can record raw unprocessed data? And if so can you do all the adjustments in post, or do the included gamma controls allow you to do image improvements not possible in Vegas?

To fit a filter under the EX1's shade you need a low profile filter, I think anything more than 2mm think and you'll have a problem. There are some around from Schneider that will do the job. However only 1 filter. In any case stacking too many filters isn't a good idea, moreso with high contrast lighting e.g. in the desert. Same problem as lenses with lots of elements. Not all the light goes through the glass despite what those diagrams you saw in physics classes might imply, a lot of it bounces off and then around inside the lens or around between filters.

Yes, you can use a bog standard curve in the EX1. A vanilla 2.2 curve is the easiest and less prone to error way to unravel the image back for processing in post. However that's NOT uncompressed nor RAW. Recording RAW in the SI-2K or RED gets you bit more leeway to work in post, maybe 2 or 3 stops and that's a lot. Problem is you need more like 10 stops if you want to do in post what you might do in camera to wrangle the dynamic range with grad NDs or curves or controlling the lighting. 10bit log RAW gains us a lot but we still have to light, we still need exposure meters. And wrangle more data too. And pay a lot more for the cameras.

Bob.

Here is an EX1 question looking forward. The EX1 is "the first in a long line of new and exciting EX cameras that write to SxS cards........." so says some Sony blurb so I ask what could follow the EX. In the same price range it seems difficult to improve upon. I can't see this price bracket having the data rate to go 4k.; 10bit maybe 4:2:2? RGB? True SMPTE full res out? Programmable gamma? Bigger sensors 2/3", 35mm! Inter-changeable lenses?

And when will EX2 be? Maybe a cheaper consumer model equivalent to the FX1 over the Z1?

Ah, those are the rhetorical questions that persuade us to wait for the next generation of product which always will be more powerful, faster, and cheaper. But as always we need to ask what do we need now and can that be done by an affordable product. If unfordable then can we manage the job with current gear with just more effort. And we've seen quite a lot of people wanting the EX (or any other "latest thing") to be first with the new, rather than having a job lined up.
The particular scene lighting issues you've mentioned suggest to me that you would get more joy for your money by adding a good matte box and rails to your FX. Then you could employ gels with specific cut outs to control the scene and the FX is a fine camera. Threaded filters don't offer this capability. I keep a UV or polarizer on for protection of the lens, all other filters are in the matte-box.

EDIT: we can be fairly certain there will never be a consumer CineAlta.

Err,
the EXI has almost all the features you've listed.
Programmable Gamma, yes.
True SMPTE out, yes.
RGB, don't even know what you mean by that.
10Bit 4:2:2, got that on HD SDI. Make your own arrangements for recording. Technically it could be done with SxS but you'd probably need to RAID the cards and they would fill up pretty quick.

Thing we'll probably see is a SxS camera with interchangeable glass. Certainly more expensive than the EX1 though. A decent lens mount is expensive. Good HD optics are expensive. The EX1 lens is very good for the money and not having it interchangeable probably saved more than $5K. The camera bit can come down in price, optics just keep costing.

Bob.

Bob: Doesn't Sony declaration that the EX1 is just the beginning of something big imply a lot more changes than you see?

I still disagree that the SDI out is 4;2:2 SMPTE. The salesmen may sort of say so but the manual clearly states that 'SDI output is the SAME as the selected recording format."

Serena: Good advice as ever but I'm getting old now and new toys just for the fun of it is OK with me.

You might be getting old but I think you've still got a lot to learn.

If you supply a SMPTE interconnect such as HD SDI then the output MUST conform to the standard. If it didn't the thing would be completely and utterly useless. Whatever you connected it to would not be able to understand what it was receiving. So you can take an EX1, a Canon G1 and a Thompson Infiniticam's HD SDI output into any piece of broadcast gear and it'll work becuase all the cameras are sending you the exact same signal.

What the manual is saying is that if you set the camera to 25p then the HD SDI will be 50i. If you set the camera to record 30p then the HD SDI will be sent 60i. Of course if you set the camera to some oddball frame rate then nothing goes down the HD SDI.

The manual makes no statement about whether or not the 10bit 4:2:2 1920x1080 is derived from a matching signal or not. There's no question that it's 4:2:2 and full chroma sampled 4:2:2 at that. You can even take a very cheap consummer camera and feed it's HDMI output into a cheap Convergent Designs HDMI -> HD SDI box and get a SMPTE compliant signal. Of course just what the effective chroma sampling would be is another question entirely. Given that the EX1 has full raster HD chips it's got to be doing very nicely compared to any camera around the same price point.

Bob.

Bob:
I know my video knowledge is limited - this isn't my day job, but I'm all for learning and I remember what you told before about how difficult it is to capture the HD-SDI signal, so I'm wondering who would use that signal and for what use? And in what software would it be edited?

This thread is too good to die so I'm attempting some resuscitation.

My EX1 comes Monday so I've been studying the manual and what tutorials I can find (which are few) and I'm thinking about what Serena said to me that there was enough possible adjustment to hang yourself and that sure looks true. A 200 point adjustment, from +99 to -99 in each of these categories:

Matrix Level
Matrix Phase
RGB combos
Color5 Correction (specific area)
*Target Width
*Level
*Phase
WB offsets
Detail level
Detail Frequency (I don't even know what this means)
Detail Crisping
H/V Ratio
White Limiter
Black Limiter
Knee APT Level
Skin Tone Level
Skin Tone Saturation
Skin Tone Phase
Knee Point
Knee Slope
Knee SAT Level
Gamma level
Black level
Black Gamma level
Low Key SAT

In my math that's 25 x 200 shriek which is about 5 followed by 28 zeros of combinations!

No wonder my Vortex Media training DVD says forget all this and stick to CINE4 + High SAT and Black -2. How are you EX1 owners dealing with experimenting with all these PP combos?

Mike

SDI Signal:

I guess the most common use for that would be for Outside Broadcast (OB). Pretty much the standard video signal that runs around TV stations and from cameras to OB vans is SDI, either SD or HD and with the EXI both are covered. There are other things used for OBs such as Triax because that gives you some circuits from the OB van back to the camera for things like tally lights and communications. However that sort of cabling is heavier and more expensive. If you need those they can be run as a separate cable anyway.

Apart from that there's a number of VCRs that record from SDI to Digital Betacam. Either the DVW A500 (big) or DVW250(portapack) can be used to record very nice 4:2:2 10bit. VCRs are expensive, the tapes costs around $1/min.

From HD SDI needless to say Sony can sell you a variety of VCRs, all very expensive and the tape stock is really expensive. But these are industry standards and it's one other way you could get your camera to earn a dollar. Depending where you live if a number of big events clash then the networks are often after any camera they can get, even one that's not upto their normal uber expensive standards although the EX1 would seem to hold its own pretty well against the best of them.

Things that we might be more directly interested in:

Monitors. HD SDI is a pretty standard way to connect a monitor to a camera. Generally better than component and you can loop the HD SDI signal through most monitors. So you can have say a 9"on the camera and the director can have a 24" so he feels important.

Other Not So Standard Recorders. There's a number on offer or coming. Convergent Design have their XDR recorder in the works that records hi bitrate XDCAM to CF cards. Cineform have their rather expensive Wafian HDD based recorder and of course there's a number of ways to capture directly form SDI or HD SDI directly into a computer via Decklink and AJA cards / boxes.

Good thing you reminded me, I gotta Decklink card and I ain't even tried that yet, duh!

Bob.

I've only played around with the skin detail, very easy to use as it shows you what it's working on. Aside from switching to Cine4 for the monent I'm happy to just know all those tweaks are there and that there's a quick way to reset everything. I can only echo what Serena said, way too easy to hang yourself unless you can very clearly see what you're doing, I've been there and done that with another camera.

Bob.

Thanks Bob - great info as always. What a pity there is no way to hook the HD-SDI into a laptop and capture direct to an NLE. 10bit 4:2:2 on the time-line! Someone must be working on this, or would there be little quality difference over the 8bit as down-sampled onto to the SXS cards?

There's almost certainly a way to do what you want BUT you'd need a pretty beefy laptop. By the time you add all the bits you'd probably be left wondering why you didn't just buy the Wafian for $10K.
And when you've got that you might start thinking, hm, this lens isn't really all that good.

Cameras are like cars. You buy a $20K car and keep on swapping bits for better bits and then you need to bump up another bit and then you might realise it would have made more sense to just buy that BMW for $100K.

Bob.

After posting last night I saw an ad for the MOTU V3HD ($2500) says it will take the 10bit HD-SDI directly into Premier Pro using 100 Mbps DVCPro HD codec. Isn't this what I was talking about? I guess you can not use this with 8bit Vegas?

With the right codec, the laptop doesn't have to be so beefy.

DVCPROHD isn't that great, not being full raster is just the first issue.

AJA's IO HD box with a carrying handle is a beautiful solution that has had great reviews. A full raster ProRes codec in hardware makes for great portable performance with a MacBook Pro. It had to be developed with Apple because this type of solution is dependent on having a totally modern codec like Apple's ProRes or Avid's DNxHD.

I wonder when/if Avid will start pulling their thumbs out of wherever their keeping them. They've got a new boss with new ideas, maybe there is hope that they will start working with other companies. There is no reason why they couldn't for example license DNxHD to SCS Madison (or a third party) for use with Vegas.

Can you use AJA's IO with Vegas?

- Ray
www.undergroundplanet.com