Shooting on the AF100

I just finished shooting a music video this past week for directors Alex Takacs and Joe Nankin aka Young Replicant The video is completely narrative, showing the journey of a man traveling his mindscape across all types of geographies. Location and costumes were all epic!

We had the choice of going with the 7D (which we were all familiar with) or trying out the new Panasonic AF100. We did some tests and decided to go with the AF100. Initially we considered the AF100 because we wanted to shoot 60fps at 1080p. Further down the line we realized the video was going to be a bit more run and gun on location, so having the conveniences of a conventional video camera (like built in ND filters) felt like a safer choice for this project.

For anyone unfamiliar with the AF100, you can spend a good deal of time sifting through Phillip Bloom's review, which does a pretty good job covering all the bases in good detail. However, I hadn't come across much feedback from narrative or music video DP's, so I forward to seeing more work and hearing more experiences surface in the next few months.

I think the easiest way to describe this camera is it being a hybrid between an HVX and DSLR. The menus and on-board controls on this camera are very similar to that of Panasonic's previous prosumer HD cameras. The scene files are all still there, white balance and gain selectors in the same place, and XLR inputs. Nothing too crazy or groundbreaking in that regard. What's new about this camera is that it offers HD-SDI and HDMI (and the HDMI doesn't deactivate the on-board LCD!). Certain menu options have changed for the better, like the ability to reformat cards in Record Mode (so you don't have to toggle to Playback when you insert a new card). But unlike the HVX or other cameras shooting on hard drive, the AF100 takes quite a bit longer to format than you would expect. I never clocked it, but formatting lasted several minutes.

The on-board monitor is set up slightly different than before. Possibly one of the biggest let downs is the focus check that used to be on the HVX, that little button that gives you a pixel-for-pixel display to make sure things are nice and sharp. The AF100 offers the EVF detail, which makes for a pretty ugly image, and a Focus Assist that can be programmed as one of the user keys (there are 3 user keys on the camera). The latter option is similar to the focus assist on the RED ONE; it goes off contrast and highlights the sharp areas in red over a B&W image. What's unfortunate about using this feature on the fly is that it can't really account for the motion blur of a moving object, so it's basically useless if you have to do any real focus pulling on your own. For this shoot we had a Marshall 7" that primarily served as a director's monitor, but certain shots it was definitely needed to pull focus off of.

I can say one of the best additions to this camera is the option to add frame guides. This video was shot in 2.35:1, so it was easy to add those guidelines via the Display Setup. So many times I've had to scotch tape the 7D off a framing chart, which is never as easy as it sounds...

The image sensor on this camera is 4/3", which I was pretty disappointed about when I first heard about the AF100. This camera is meant to compete with the DSLR's, but I think it also caters a bit to the live shooters and ENG style cameramen that don't have a perversion for shallow depth of field. This smaller chip size gives an even tighter crop factor than the 7D, which offered a little bit of confusion at first on choosing lenses for the camera. AbelCine has a really helpful tool that helps visualize the difference in sensor size here. So we had to account for crop factor and make we were covered for our wide lenses. We shot Zeiss Superspeeds with a custom PL Mount made to fit Panasonic's AF100 mount. Having the Superspeeds really helped us overcompensate and achieve a film-like DOF. We shot wide open mostly and in certain cases having the extra stop saved us from using too big of a lighting package or shooting later in the day. We shot 200iso and in some cases had to bump up to 400iso which gave us quite a bit more noise than I had hoped for. Unfortunately the AF100 doesn't seem to do too well in low light.

Photo by Tim Suglian

Photo by Julia Chase

I will be sure to post the video when it's released. Overall I think I will be very pleased with the final picture and feel that the AF100 held up to most expectations we had going into the shoot. Check back soon!