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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Questions about Phantom HD Gold

Tom
If you have the Sony color viewfinder it has 1:1 focus check. Superspeeds will work but wide open they are a bit soft. Also for photographing subjects like lizards I dont think they close focus enough.
As a general reference with the Phantom in bright sunlight 1080P @ 1052fps 180 shutter your stop will be around a T5.6.

Best
John
Chater Camera Inc
 
Tom L said:
What if you owned one, or had access to one for like a month or two? Could you learn to operate one yourself? Or is it just too complicated for one person to handle on their own?

Good lord, I love that ramped swimming shot! :emote_happyhappy:
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I shot on a phantom for about 3 months on a Discovery job this summer. You need about a day with it and then you're fine. It's not as complicated as many make it out to be.
 
Tom & I just spoke on the phone, but I just wanted to say here that the information given by others on the Phantom HD Gold is all essentially correct. The cameras are extremely easy to use and quite portable for non-studio applications. The laptop interface is something I like to do at the start of each day just to check certain settings quickly but then don't bother with when shooting. Monitoring, playback and use of standard camera accessories is all straightforward. The Phantom HD Gold can shoot up to 1052fps at 1920x1080 in 14-bit uncompressed RAW.

I don't want to impose on the REDuser forum with lots of spiel on the Phantom HD Gold. If there are additional questions then I'll take that as user interest and happily answer them all. If anyone would like more information privately then they are free to contact me directly. There also is a wealth of information available in the Technical Resources section of our website, abelcine.com.
 
I just had a very helpful and productive talk with Mitch at Abel. I think he might be planning to make a post on this thread. If not, I will try to recap the highlights of our conversion later today.

I guess if I could attach a good-sized 1080p LCD to this for focus, I would already be at 1:1. One thing I worry about is that I am not very good at nailing focus "by eye" on LCDs.

Edit: haha, there you are, Mitch. Beat me by one minute. Thanks again for your time this morning.
 
Pietro Impagliazzo said:
You mean 4 seconds bursts of 1000 FPS?
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The standard internal memory that most Phantom owners purchase is 16G, although 32G is available. With 16G, 1920x1080 at 14-bit color depth will allow 4385 frames in the moemory. At 1,000fps that is a 4.4 second burst. Because the internal memory is a rolling buffer, dropping old frames in favor of new ones, the camera is put into capture mode and then the trigger essentially tells the camera to stop recording. In this way the event is never missed. Any excess frames can be trimmed before the file is then transferred to the CineMag flash memory. All this may sound complicated but it is in fact quite easy to do and takes a matter of seconds.
 
One more thing.
"current session reference" , which if I remember correctly is basically a black balance. You'll find yourself hitting this button a lot (usual right before you trigger). When you're monitoring ( before this is done) there is noise, sometimes banding and weird digital anomalies ... When you do a current session reference it cleans all this up very well.
 
Michael Totten said:
One more thing.
"current session reference" , which if I remember correctly is basically a black balance. You'll find yourself hitting this button a lot (usual right before you trigger). When you're monitoring ( before this is done) there is noise, sometimes banding and weird digital anomalies ... When you do a current session reference it cleans all this up very well.
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When the camera is in a "warm up" phase, before you have really applied the black balance, is it still possible to get the correct exposure and everything for a spontaneous shot?

Example.. I am driving down the road and the camera is off. Sensor is cold. Some amazing shot appears on the side of the road. I jump out, turn on the camera, set up the shot, and roll...... I understand that there are some crazy artifacts and banding and anomalies, but will I be able to get the basic shot done? Mitch told me that I could apply the black balance after the shot, while the sequence is still in the RAM buffer, but my question is, will I be able to get the shot off in the first place? Can I even pull focus off the monitor or EVF, for example?
 
Hey Tom,

just to add to the conversation again, what John was saying is absolutely true. John has spent more hands on alone time with the camera than anyone I know. He goes out with the camera by himself all the time cause he knows all the gotchas and can work just fine without the laptop in the field. In some senses you could treat it like the RED in that sense. That said, having a competent DIT is important. In pressure situations to put the tech part of the job in someone elses hands and allow you to focus on creative. But, after day or two with the camera you will be able to work by yourself pretty well.
I suppose you could run and gun with it if you had to but usually 30 minutes is a good warm up time to get the camera at peak performance. But yes, the camera boots very quickly and you would be able to frame up and shoot.
You should give John a call at Chater Camera in Berkeley. I would suggest, if your serious about shooting for any length of time with the Phantom to do a full test day. Wrap your head around how everything works and see if it will suite your needs. It's really an amazing camera. Wish I had more time on it myself. If you want, I'd be happy to send you a sample .cine file for your post experimentation. You can download the GlueTools Phantom plugin free for a one day trial basis I think.
 
Mike, that would be tremendous if I could get a short .cine file. Thanks, man.
 
Most of the concerns about black shading are coming from the older Phantom cameras. The HD Gold has drastically improved this to the point where you can do a black shade once per power cycle and it looks fine.

I have never heard of black shading after a shot but I will try that the next time I am out with one!
 
Performing a Black Balance or Current Session Reference (CSR) after capturing a shot is one of my favorite tricks. I tell that to seasoned Phantom Techs and always get a "I didn't know it could do that!"

The image from the camera on start-up will be just fine. After a few minutes the blacks may turn a bit magenta and the black levels begin to fluctuate, but on the monitor you will certainly see an image and be able to judge exposure. These changes all go away after 30-60 minutes of the sensor fully coming up to temperature, and then they're rock solid. I don't wish to overstress this because as John and others have mentioned, with the Phantom HD Gold the issue has been so minimized that it really is not a major concern.

It's not for the same reasons, but think of how sensitive the RED One can sometimes be to green/magenta shifts or other certain color issues, but only on the video preview while the RAW files stay fine. Yet everyone quickly gets used to it and they can shoot just fine with the camera.
 
Tom, i'll upload to my FTP. Send me your email.

Brent, in my small amount of experience on the Phantom HD Gold, we always black balanced every time we changed frame rates on the camera as a rule of thumb. It seems tedious and may not be 100% necessary but I think its still good practice to achieve the cleanest image possible and avoid and grid patterns in the footage or other artifacts. That said, Mitch may chime in here and call foul on that as being old practice and not necessary. Just my experience.
 
Tom (and anyone else out there considering a Phantom), we at Abel would certainly be more than happy to share files with you as well as invite you in for a complete demo of the camera and associated workflow. Just let me know.
 
mikeburton said:
Brent, in my small amount of experience on the Phantom HD Gold, we always black balanced every time we changed frame rates on the camera as a rule of thumb. It seems tedious and may not be 100% necessary but I think its still good practice to achieve the cleanest image possible and avoid and grid patterns in the footage or other artifacts. That said, Mitch may chime in here and call foul on that as being old practice and not necessary. Just my experience.
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Mike, that's a good practice. Whenever changing parameters such as frame rate it is smart to reset the Black Balance. It can be done right at the camera and takes less than 10 seconds. I'm a suspenders & belt kinda guy when it comes to something like this, but I've also seen guys successfully change frame rate in the middle of a shot to capture some action and the footage was just fine. Do what you gotta do.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Mike, that's a good practice. Whenever changing parameters such as frame rate it is smart to reset the Black Balance. It can be done right at the camera and takes less than 10 seconds. I'm a suspenders & belt kinda guy when it comes to something like this, but I've also seen guys successfully change frame rate in the middle of a shot to capture some action and the footage was just fine. Do what you gotta do.
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From what I've heard from other tech's and John, the Gold does much better in this area. If you have 10 seconds, BB is the safe way to go.
 
It must have been an older phantom we shot with. everything was controlled by computer. Black balance between every shot.
The "gold" sounds very interesting.

overall I was very impressed with the camera, totally hooked on "reaaaal" slomo. Even though it was hooked up with computer, it seemed quite easy to operate. So if the new one is able to operate independently in the field, sounds like you have a winner.

Question: exposure - is there a way to judge exposure besides the histogram in the computer?
 
Sidney said:
Question: exposure - is there a way to judge exposure besides the histogram in the computer?
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Yes. First off the REC 709 HD-SDI output is very accurate, with just a little bit of additional range on the top and bottom of exposure left in the RAW file. So if you've gotten it right on the monitor, then you've gotten it right. A waveform hooked up to the monitor output is a great tool and an accurate one.

Second the camera has a false color Threshold mode (quick push of the "ZOOM" button) that will note the clip point of the three color channels by showing the offending saturated pixels in red, green or blue (or mixed colors if two or three color channels are saturated). It is a great, simple way to see where your highlights are clipping out so that you can protect for them. Of course if you're dealing with something like a glass of water it might be nice to have some little specular highlights clip, and the camera rolls off highlights in a very pleasing way, not "video-clippy" at all.

Last exposure check is back in the computer software. There's a live image feed at all times and you can pass the cursor over the image and click on any photosite to get its saturation level, which can be interpreted as its IRE level. It's like an electronic spot meter. And there's that histogram, but I've never been the biggest fan of histograms -- just not the way I like to work.
 
Hi Mitch
Correct me if Im wrong here.
The laptop histogram is the only way to monitor the Phantom's RAW data.
The HDSDI Rec 709 signal is tied to the ISO, Gamma and Ped viewing settings you choose. Samewith the Threshold mode.
Therefore it is very important that if you are using the HDSDI or Sony Color Viewfinder to judge exposure that the settings match the RAW data as close as possible.
To determine the ISO setting for the Phantom set up the camera on a luminance chart showing highlights and shadows and adjust iris till the laptop histogram ( RAW ) looks properly exposed. Then adjust the ISO and other viewing settings so the HDSDI monitor matches. Shoot a test and confirm with transcoded footage that everything is accurate. We find 160-200asa to be about right.
This is all reminiscent of the Red in its early days and its my understanding that Abel may be working with VR to get some form of RAW monitoring over HDSDI in the future.

This thread started with Tom asking if he could use the Phantom by himself in remote locations. The answer is absolutely yes. We didnt buy the Phantom until this option was 100% possible. However working with a good Phantom tech who is controlling, monitoring and verifying footage with the Phantom Control Software is the preferred way to work. Its very similar to using the Red. You can use it alone, and many do, but having a good 1st AC and DIT is the only way to go if you can.

Best
John
Chater Camera Inc
 
Does the Phantom have any issues in cold or inclimate weather? Once it is "warmed up" if you briefly power cycled would it be necessary to both black balance and wait for a period of time for it to come up to temperature?
 
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