Sony FS5 Highlight Fringing Artifacts

The video production company I work for just purchased a Sony FS5 as a companion to their venerable FS700. It is perfect for our needs as it is lighter, more ergonomic, matches the look of the FS700 in 2-camera productions, and allows us to move into 4k production. 

There are a lot of little things on the FS5 that add up to a great little camera. But there are also a few things that can drive you crazy. The strange artifacts in UHD recordings at 3200 ISO and above have been well-documented. But another annoying phenomenon has yet to be mentioned on the interwebs: highlight fringing artifacts in 1080p. In the Sony FS5, ugly fringing artifacts appear where bright highlights meet dark areas. In the frame grab below, notice the ugly maroon aliasing lines on the statuette's legs.

This only happens in 1080p recording, and looks worst in the SLOG gammas.
The artifacts appear in internal recording, as well as on external recorders like the Atomos Shogun. SDI and HDMI
outputs both exhibit the problem. These artifacts do not appear in UHD recording.

These shots were recorded to an Atomos Shogun via HDMI.
If you have an external recorder and need 1080p output that avoids this fringing issue, a solution is to set the FS5 recording to UHD, but set its HDMI output to 1080p. That feeds a 1080p signal to the Shogun. But I am pretty sure the output is only 8-bit instead of 10-bit. I hope Sony can address this problem so that users can utilize SLOG2 and SLOG3 in full 10-bit 1080p without getting these ugly highlight artifacts.

Sony FS5 Highlight Fringing from Todd Norris on Vimeo.

It's Going To Be OK

Earlier this week, someone posted this meme on Facebook.

I had seen it before but, for some reason, this time it struck me as particularly distasteful.
Wait, what? Distasteful? Isn't it just a harmless and possibly even inspiring meme that conveys something like "don't freak out if you haven't achieved your full potential by age 23. Relax." Sure.

But there's still something that makes me uncomfortable about this meme and what it implies under the surface. What I write below is subjective, personal and certain to make me seem like a bitter creep at first, but hear me out. It has a happy ending.

Some of my favorite images

After seeing one of your typical "100 Most Memorable Images From Movies" posts, I decided to post some movie images I have shot. Putting them all together like this, I must admit I am proud of these. Some are from my own films, and some are from films I photographed for other talented filmmakers. Enjoy!
And if you have any questions about how these shots were lit, or about the compositional ideas behind them, feel free to ask. I love answering those questions.

GH4, Cinelike-D and the Myth of iDynamic

GH4, Cinelike-D and the Myth of iDynamic

First of all, take a look at the latest video I shot on the GH4. The daylight footage was shot using the Natural profile with Contrast at -3. I wanted to see if I could get good results on something other than Cinelike-D. 


Boulevardia GH4 from Todd Norris on Vimeo.

First Test with the Panasonic GH4

I pre-ordered the Panasonic GH4 on March 10, 2014. I had gotten amazing images from the GH1, 2 and 3, but the addition of 4k video from the latest iteration of the mirrorless hybrid promised to be a huge leap forward in my goal to create images that looked like the Hollywood films I grew up with.

Ink Magazine calls Tiny Horse "Ride" the Best Video of 2013

Tiny Horse "Ride" from Todd Norris on Vimeo.

Kansas City's Ink Magazine named Tiny Horse "Ride" the Best Music Video of 2013. "Ride" was directed by Mitch Brian and Todd Norris of Jetpack Pictures. Additionally, Ink's first runner-up for Best Video is The Grisly Hand's "Country Singles", also directed by Brian and Norris.

The new music video from Jetpack Pictures for The Latenight Callers!

At long last, here is the music video I shot and edited for The Latenight Callers' "Tourniquets". Enjoy!

Tourniquets from Todd Norris on Vimeo.