In Broadcast - April 2015 - 28

28

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 4 | April 2015

InForm

'You Wouldn't Choose
A Crescent Wrench When You
Need A Phillips-Head Screwdriver'
Panasonic's Rob Tarrant examines how the
workﬂow capabilities of the VariCam make
it an essential tool in the ﬁlmmakers' kit...

T

he headline above is taken from a
speech by Michael Cioni, the Chief
Exec of Light Iron, when describing the
new Panasonic VariCam to a theatre
full of ﬁlm makers in Hollywood.
It struck me as an interesting way of
looking at the cinematography camera
market. He argues that, the market has
become commoditised, with little to
choose between the cameras. In short,
it's difﬁcult to stand out.
This is something we thought about
long and hard whilst developing the
VariCam, and it's why we talked to
Michael, and many other Hollywood
heavyweights, during development.
We wanted to know what we could
do to make this camera stand out.
How could we improve workﬂow? How
could we help the post house as well as
the DOP?
Cioni argues that while the VariCam
is not the greatest camera ever made,
it is the best at certain jobs. So good
in fact, that it will become an essential
weapon.
Light Work
Shooting in low light is one such
feature. VariCam, like most cameras at
this end of the market, has around 14
sensitivity stops of latitude and a base
ISO rating of 800. However, unlike
other cameras, it has a second native
base of 5000 ISO.

Only a live demonstration really
hits this home, so I will struggle to
do it justice here. But, the native 800
ISO pushed to 4000 ISO produces an
image with relatively high noise levels,
because of the artiﬁcial gain applied.
However, at 5000 ISO, the second
native ISO kicks in and produces an
image which is crystal clear.
This second base makes it possible
to shoot up to 12,800 ISO and opens
up a range of shooting options and
locations that previously would have
been off limits.
Codecs Gains
Another feature is the range of
codecs. Every cinematographer has
been involved with, or heard of stories,
where the hand off between the set
and the post house has been beset by
data problems.
The bigger the ﬁle, the more likely
there are to be problems. Equally, the
bigger the ﬁle, the greater the cost
for storage and the longer the edit
process, by nature of the time it takes
to download and manipulate large
ﬁles.
VariCam allows the use of a number
of codecs, chieﬂy AVC Ultra. The
difference with the AVC Ultra codec is
that it is very efﬁcient at processing
video, in fact it's over 45% more
efﬁcient than Pro-res, the industry de

The ﬁrst showreel for the VariCam is available on Vimeo

Panasonic VariCam on a shoot

facto standard.
This means that the VariCam allows
you to process 4K data more speedily
than you can 3K data, shot in Pro-res
on other cinematography cameras.
This opens up the world of 4K
footage, without the penalties of the
extra cost and time, which is currently
putting much of the industry off.
Essentially, it's 33% more pixels at no
extra cost.
Grading Looks
Additionally, the camera has inbuilt
wireless CDL grading. The camera
works with a PC to feed gamma
corrected images to an on-set monitor,
without any additional hardware or
cabling.
The CDL and LUT corrections aren't
baked in to the data, you simply have
the beneﬁts of shooting V-log but
seeing it gamma corrected on the
monitor.
What's more, inside the camera's P2
folder the CDL and LUT data is saved
within the negative. In the past, this
has been a manual process carried
out by the data manager,

Panasonic
VariCam boasts a
second native ISO
base for low light shoots

making it open to errors.
With VariCam, even if you did
50 different looks on a movie, 50
different LUTs and CDLs will be forever
attached to their hero negative. It's a
game changer for the visual effects
community.
However, I'd argue that it is the
VariCam's ability to simultaneously
record in three different formats,
which will have the greatest impact on
the industry.
It means, for instance that it's
possible to record in 4K, 2K and HD
proxy, edit in proxy, with those edits
being automatically made within the
other formats. You can treat each
stream separately, having it in either
a log or gamma corrected format in
either 17:9 for 4K/2K or 16:9 for UHD/
HD.
This will greatly help production
companies to streamline their
workﬂows, making the camera perfect
for high end episodic productions.
Much of the VariCam talk has
been about the two front ends and
common recorder but, for me, what
is happening inside the camera
is
much
more
impressive.
http://www.inbroadcast.com https://vimeo.com/105522587 https://vimeo.com/105522587 https://vimeo.com/105522587
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