Give your camera an Alexa 65 sized sensor – Crazy experiment tutorial 12K footage – Epic Episode #4

If you like crazy experiments then you're in for a treat because we are building an Alexa 65 sized sensor from any camera. Large format or LF image acquisition has been around for a long time and it made its way into modern times with "The Hateful Eight" parts of "The Dark Knight" and "Dunkirk" and of course in its digital form using the Alexa 65 like in "Rogue One", "Solo, Netflix's "Dark" and "The Revenant"… and it truly looks gorgeous so tell me Leonardo how would my camera loo, if it had sensor as large as the Alexa 65s… …and, is it worth it? We are going to do a little math and build a crazy rig that will allow us to reposition a smaller sensor behind a medium format lens. We will then compare the large sensor against the same framing with the original sensor size. So it's a crazy project and if you're interested in that… come along! Large format or LF, why do we want it why do we need it... well, the resolution get's higher and higher and higher and it seems like the real resting point for the delivery is going to be 8k the industry is already there and it's more or less a done deal now we don't want to cramp more and more and more pixels on the same sensor size because our effective image quality would drop we would like to keep the sensor size about the same the best solution is just to make the sensor a bit bigger and this is where the large format or LF comes in many of the bigger players already have cameras out there like the Alexa 65 for example or the brand new Alexa LF and of course the red monstro and keen affinity now brings out the LF but which is only a full format sensor but according to the definition of it you could call it LF because it's a larger format than the standard s 35 for cinematic position let's focus an area for one second because every did something very is interesting and it's quite similar to what we do today area didn't develop a real new sensor they took the old sense of the lf3 that has been in the Alexa since the Alexa 4 to 3 and they put it on the side and doubled it and put together we have a larger sensor with a larger field of view in case of the LX 265 they take three to each other to cover say something that is close to sixty five millimeters which again is very close to the 65 millimeter camps that films like 2001 Lawrence of Arabia or the hateful hateful eight were shot on unfortunately I don't own an Alexa so we take the next best thing that I have and reach the pinna sonic evo 1 instead of an Eva we could have used this C 200 C 300 FS 5 F a 7 F 5 are so many me why you name it the same rules apply most common today is ace PC or super 35 sensor that has a 16 to 9 or wider DCI aspect so we will need to turn that sensor vertically and move it in a very controlled fashion horizontally so we can cover almost the same area as not excess xt5 sensor now we're gonna have to do some math the eva one has a quite high resolution to start with so let me read that off please otherwise I gonna get crazy it's 5760 times 3000 72 pixels quite a bit it's very close to a 6k image and we're gonna put this like I said upside down and we're gonna put it four times next to each other and as the math shows we are very very close to something like wolf Kate actually you don't need to have an EVA or even a super 35 image sensor you could for example use a gh 5 with a speed booster that will give you a super 35 sensor with a 4 to 3 aspect which is actually pretty cool because you won't need for like we need with the eva but only three portions of the or doublings of the of the sensor to get the same effect just like the RS sixty-five does or you could take a full-frame camera like for example the sony a7s or the upcoming Illume acceso on this will allow you just to double the frame to get the exact same effect the 12 k image that we produce is going to be down scaled to 8k and this whole thing this whole episode is uploaded in 8k to give you the best possibility to watch the content to match with the other things all the other parts of this episode are recorded in the eva 15.7 pro res raw and upscale to 8k i don't expect you to have an 8k screen or anything like it but I still hope it's worth it to get the best possible view and quality for you please tell me in the comment if it was worth it or not so let's start with a rig we are going to need something that let us reposition the sensor with micrometer precision a cheap macro mount will do the job but it's important that it's a 2x system that not only allows adjustment in a distance but also along the focal plane we are going to attach our camera in the most convenient way that will allow for attica shooting now we are going to need a lens that has a large enough image cycle to cover a sixty five millimeter sensor the obvious choice on a budget is a vintage medium format lens I'm going to use the Mamiya C Corsi and with an aperture of f11 it's one of the fastest medium format lenses ever built you would usually use it with an adapter but we need the camera to be able to move relative to the lens so we will do some fun else I own an auto Bello systems for Mamiya and with some minor modification we can get ourselves a free-floating mount that we will throw on an arm one thing is to say about the Mamiya lenses these are manufactured in the 70s and you shouldn't expect an optical performance that you are used from like a modern lens from Sigma or from Canon or from whatever you have to close it down to four - to prevent strong chromatic aberrations but we do so and I think it's quite a charming image that you get out of these vintage lenses let's try it we know that the lens should cover the whole travel distance of the sled but to be sure let's build a little cool framing checker cut out some cardboard now draw the desired frames with the exact measurements on a bit of diffusion paper and glue that to the cardboard when we point the lens toward a bright background like a window and set it to infinity we can put our frame checker to a distance where the image behind the lens appears and focus as it was to be expected the lens covers the huge six four five image cycle and offers lots of headroom for a 65 millimeter frame we assemble everything on a heavy duty rail system for stability and position the lens accordingly so this is obviously no way to shoot your next feature movie this is absolutely designed to be shot on the lab condition and if you want to shoot something that is in movement it should be a movement that is looped in itself and repeats itself if so if you have an object that crosses the different segments it can be synchronized anyhow for this test we're going to use a 16 millimeter projector and you will see that works quite well and I even taken it a bit of a risk by adding some haze now we are ready to shoot so let's do it as we can't be precise as a pixel we are going to cheat in just to five segments that are overlapping also I made some markers on gaffer tape to tell me the sensor size and the desire traveling with after we shot all the segments we need we are going to throw the footage into After Effects we simply spread the segments of the places they belong add some feathered masks to disguise the transitions in apply a grade so let's see what came out of this besides the pixel peeping and the technical aspects of grain and resolution and benefits being able to crop in does it have a real-life emotional quality to it and for me I would say like yes it gives the image some extra dimensionality that gives it something very cinematic that is beyond the lighting and ana-grade which I didn't really do in this this this test just by itself it has a perspective on things that just by itself at a poetic nuance to the image that I find very appealing I would like to hear what do you think about it and if LF sensor is actually worth the pressure costs that it will have of course there are many applications where a larger sense it doesn't make sense for example if you're in a broadcast studio talk shows or and if you do sports because a larger sensor will always make it difficult to focus but I could see that the larger formats gain some contraction even in areas where you wouldn't think about it right now for example like wedding for filming videography or events etc because the focus assist and out-of-focus features may improve in the future I hope you found this interesting and if you like this please give me a like give me some comments on how you use this technique and of course subscribe to my channel I really appreciate your support see you around next time you

Channel: Media Division

Views: 428,612

Rating: 4.8966446 out of 5

Keywords: Large Format, LF, Alexa 65, Alexa LF, kinefinity mavo lf, Mavo LF, Experiment, Tutorial, large format sensor, large format look, EVA65, Panasonic EVA 65, 65mm large format, 65mm, crazy experiment, medium format filming, medium format video, 8k sample footage, 5.7K ProRes RAW, ProRes RAW HQ, mamiya sekor c 80mm f/1.9, Panasonic AU-EVA1, EVA1, large formate film look, Alexa large format, EVA2, Arri65, alexa65, EVA 65, EVA 2, large format filming, 645 filming, large format video, 12K

Id: HN29l3ouR64

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Strottman]

I haven't seen anybody describe how a larger sensor looks better in quantifiable terms. It's always more "cinematic" or "nuanced", but why? I don't doubt there's something to it, but I want to know what it is.

[u/Restlesstonight]

Thanks for posting this Primo... much appreciated

[u/KhoaSV]

Very cool experiment, it's basically a moving panorama.

[u/RandoRando66]

Still ... $200 to $300 a month from your craft is alot better then the 0 a month I'm making

[u/thebullmoosesociety]

I don't understand. Whats the point of having a camera that can only film still objects or objects that make looping motions? Why would this guy go through all this time and effort?

[u/PrimoNando]

Please watch the whole experiment. Samples begin at 9 min. Mind frekin blown!

[u/ChronicBurnout3]

Very cool test. My takeaway after watching and thinking about all this is that you've basically gained a ton of resolution, but without gaining dynamic range and color depth? But it makes me wonder, because the Alexa 65 is basically the same (several stitched smaller sensors), it probably has the same flaws?

Essentially you're making video panoramas. But, the same way that I dont gain the dynamic range or color depth of a full frame sensor by stitching two micro 4/3 photos together into a pano, I dont think you (or Arri) are getting the complete benefits of the larger format. Maybe I'm wrong, would like to hear others thoughts.