Setting up a Z1E

[MattDavis]

Do any Z1E owners have tips for setting up the camcorder? Any settings to immediately check, alter or disable on a rented unit? Any favourite settings to produce a given effect? (My limited experience with stock Z1Es is that they seem to exhibit excessive edge sharpening and look a little flat in Tungsten lighting.)

I'm trying a Z1E for a week on two shoots where I normally would have taken a PD170. Both are 16:9 shoots, one SD with a PDX-10 as 2nd Unit (so in that case the setups should be close) and the other as a single camera shoot of an open air event (where I'd love to try cine gamma).

Many thanks for your insights!

[Richard Payne]

There is an excellent DVD called HandsON HDV available that goes into lots of setup detail.

I learnt were change the colour of peaking to aid focus and only use the Cineframe mode at 60th Shutter and don't trust the screen for the Cine look - you have to record it and play it back.

There is a review on Creative Cow.

Bob Crabbers has a copy and one day will get round to watching it.

[Mick jenner]

I bought a copy from DVC and can confirm its an excellent product very well produced but more importantly even for the most knowledgeable of cameramen it take you though all the the camera settings and menus in fine detail. Money very well spent 10/10


Regards

Mick

[Gordonjcoe]

Agree the DVD is an excellent product but somewhat overpriced at £60.

[Des]

This sounds a bit negative but I was not impressed overmuch with the DVD. OK it does help on Cineframe but if like me you are still using the camera in SD mode (for which it is totally magic) there is not much that isn't in the instruction manual. I would have really liked an alternative set of profiles for say interviews, landscapes and so on. The profiles that are offered (the same as Sony's defaults) don't even use black stretch or I think Cinetone! I can understand it being easier to look at a DVD instead of the manual but it is £50 plus, more to sit and look as against reading. I've had more tips from Alan Roberts so far - and they're free!

[Alan Roberts]

Thanks for that :D

And much of my opinion and info about the FX1/Z1 was acquired hands on woithout the benefit of the manual (i.e. I first played with it before the manual was available). That was one of the things I did for a living at the Beeb, rummage prototypes before they were ready.

[Unicorn]

So what settings do you recommend :) ?

[MattDavis]

With advance apologies for monster post...

if like me you are still using the camera in SD mode (for which it is totally magic) there is not much that isn't in the instruction manual.

Ah yes, but the manual is written in manualese, and it is to English as Quorn is to Meat: totally content free!

For example, the default DV audio settings are at 32k. 32k!!! Who did that? Who's responisble for that as a DEFAULT?! Ye gods, imagine this beast in the hands of a non-aware stringer or DSR570 lensman forced to work with this trout out of a goldfishbowl. Furthermore, the use of internal mic vs external mic is buried in the menu so you actually physically have to check if your levels are coming from the nostril things or the XLR mic.

For example: sharpness. My first experience of the Z1 was when given a couple of rolls of DVCAM of a talking head in interior light. It was dull, flat, and had a huge ugly edge sharpening artifact around it. The image was a dried dog turd in my book. Now I learn that most of the Picture Profiles have their sharpness (on a scale of 1-15) dialled between 11 and 15 by default. Auntie Beeb's School Of DV says 'Let the lens do the job as best it can, and let £0.25 million worth of S&W Alchemist tweak the sharpness unto a DSR570. Okay; fine; so how do I kill the sharpness of the non-picture-profile (aka Son-of-PD170) setup?

For example: White balance - it's there, and you can see the manual balance tit, but it's upside-down. To the uninitiated, there are two WB settings (day & tungsten) and a manual, just like most Sony gear. In fact, there's one preset WB (set in the menu) and two memory settings that by default are set to the old Sony Daylight and Tungsten. If this were 'My First Prosumer Camcorder', I see the logic in this, but for most PD150 pilots it will require an afternoon of playtime to get used to it. And the manual isn't written for upgraders.

Right now, I'm shooting and cutting together identical "back garden' scenes shot on the same tape between the Z1E and my PDX-10. I've given the Z1E a real beasting and we're finally getting to the point where I can see it to really shine above and beyond its price point. It takes quite a bit of tweaking, and this proves my point: every time I rent one (or two in this case), it will need going over with a long checklist of settings to ensure two cameras really do match beyond shutter, iris, gain and white-balance.

I also have to recant my orignal nastiness about the Z1E because it can deliver the goods. It's just that only those who rummage around in its innards and test, test and test again will see the good quality it can create. It is in my interest to see as many Z1E users as possible get the settings to create good resuts.

Can we make a table of settings, perhaps?

BTW, unfortunately, the DVD couldn't get to me before the shoot happened. It looked - on first view - to be very good. However, having gone through the manual, with a unit to play with, lessons come thick and fast. I'll purchase the DVD because I'm spending company money and its tax deductable, but does it help PAL users? How about the issues about delivering on LCD/Plasma vs CRT?

Oh yes, and how come none of the default cine-gamma modes use black stretch? My tests show that CineGamma with Black Stretch at half a stop more than standard iris gets an interesting rebalance of tone and appears to stretch the dynamic range so whites and blacks roll off rather than clip.

So Z1 set ups may be a good trading point. An excellent third party opportunity, as Apple would say.
:D

[MattDavis]

BTW, a colleague suggested this:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/archive/index.php/t-44165.html

I'll attempt to pull together some settings once I'm done with the two shoots.

In the meantime, I'm so happy I was wrong about the Z1E - results from tests show a better lens than the PD170, and certainly the DVCAM results without CineFrame are faultless when compared to the PDX-10. OTOH, it's all down to the settings. A Z1E is absolutely NOT a simple step up from a PD170. The defaults can really mess things up!

[Des]

That's a very interesting url Matt, thank you.

I'm having some success with black stretch and cinetone plus a half stop extra exposure to get the 8.5 stops of dynamic range that Alan Roberts is talking about. It suits a lot of outdoor scenes and compromises well with figures in the foreground.

I did a number of interviews and reset the skintones (I have the data somewhere) and projected it via a Sony HS20 onto a cinema screen. I think the technical term is bloody gorgeous - it was stunning and would have compared well with film, the brightness and contrast ratio was up partly because the projector was set on the ceiling close up to the screen because of the wide throw. I do agree, when set up properly it is remarkable. Sharing profile data is a must.

[tom hardwick]

I'm a bit surprised that you give the Hands-on HDV DVD 10 out of 10, Mick Jenner. There are many mistakes, but the worst and most obvious is the constant mixing up of shutter speeds and frames per second. The presenter is smooth, polished and well lit, but he has little idea if what he's actually saying is correct. Feeble. A simple proof reading by almost any one of us on this forum would've spotted it and then perhaps it might have been worth the money.

tom.

[Bruce]

I bought the DVD purely because I had a shoot the day after delivery of the camera. I got 100% results first time - so the £50 was paid for instantly. Sony speak needs time to translate - the Yank did well. THe challenge now is to think of a DVD subject that can be sold for £50 a throw!