Information about the CML Camera Evaluations 2018

These evaluations were carried out by Geoff Boyle in early July 2018 at the University of the West of England (UWE).

Coordination was by David Neal of UWE and I was assisted by Sergejs Bozoks and a group of UWE students.

All cameras were tested using Zeiss Supreme Prime Lenses, 50mm for S35 & 75mm for FF.

The cameras, where appropriate, were set to whatever resolution came closest to a “standard” S35 or Full Frame frame.

Lighting was Blondes for the tungsten tests and ARRI Sky Panels for the daylight; in tungsten light the manufacturers preset for 3200 was used, in the daylight tests cameras were auto-balanced. The tungsten tests are labeled “REAL” and the Sky Panel tests are labeled “SUBSTITUTE”.

Several reference charts were courtesy of DSC labs.

The cameras were exposed in half stop intervals from T2 to T16 and then from T4 to T16 with an ND 1.2. All cameras were set to the manufacturers recommeded EI. Light level was 400 foot candles.

The only objective here is to establish the true ISO of any camera and to find a precise usable dynamic range. I emphasise usable as although more may be measurable it may be too noisy to use or the colour may change too much.

H.264 files are available on Vimeo. The Quicktime files that the Vimeo files were created from are also available for download from Vimeo. The Quicktimes were generated from EXR originals. The EXRs were created in the manufacturer’s own software wherever possible; where there is no manufacturer’s software BMD Resolve was used.

Most files for Vimeo were created in ACES space in BMD Resolve with the only adjustments being the application of the relevant IDTs and ODTs. Exposures were matched using offset only to 488 in a 10 bit environment using the Kodak Grey Scale Plus as the reference.

The EVA1’s ProRes raw files were assembled in a Rec.709 Final Cut Pro project, using raw adjustments for ISO and exposure compensation as much as possible and the “highlights” (gain) exposure control in the Color Board as needed for the severely overexposed clips. Where the gray card was clipped the dark-gray background was used as the exposure reference. The raw-to-log conversion and camera LUT were both set to “Panasonic V-Log” and no other adjustments were made.