Camera Workshop - - 22/09/17

Today we looked at the new camera we have for the course the Panasonic DVX200

Features 

• 4K Shooting
• 120 FPS
• Can Film in V-Log
• 12 Steps of Latitude
• Infrared Shooting
• 13x Zoom Lens
• Able to shoot Bokeh effects
• Hand Shake Stabiliser
• Can Film in 2 formats simultaneously such as filming in 4k with a 1080p duplicate
• Can film in 57 different formats

4K Shooting

Being able to film in 4K gives a lot of freedom in what we can do, for example if we are exporting the file as 1920 x 1080 we can scale the footage without a noticeable loss in quality, this can come in handy in several situations, such as if the framing is slightly off it is likely that we can fix it by moving the footage in the editor. It also allows us to do some effects such as tracking faces and keeping them in a fixed position, which adds a disjointed feel to the footage.

This kind of effect is used by Guy Ritchie in  Sherlock Holmes A game of Shadows.









I also attempted to do a similar effect which I saw in Kingsman, in which the camera tracks a punch. My attempt did not work out as well as i would have liked, in the future I will set a higher shutter speed to avoid any motion blur and if possible set a higher framerate which will make give a better feel and the ability to slow down the footage.

120 FPS

The ability to film at 120 FPS is quite exciting as the use of slow motion in film has been an interest to me ever since I watched 300, whilst thought of as gratuitous I found the slowing down of action added suspense and a thrill to the fight scenes, although 120 is only really 4.5 times slower It can still add to a scene.


I did some testing on the higher frame rate and I am hoping that with a bit of tweaking in post-production Ill be able to slow the footage down even further.






V-Log Footage

Filming in V-Log format gives greater flexiblity when colour grading, as it has a much higher difference in hues, whereas DSLR footage tends to get compressed and can have colour banding occur. Whilst the V-Log footage looks grey and desaturated it still has more contrast between colours.