I took my CINEALTA with Rode NT4 mic to a car show this evening in town. I used Detail Off, CINE1 gamma, Cine matrix and +10 saturation level. Shot 38 minutes in 103 individual clips. Got home, dumped to HDD, threw it all on the Adobe Premiere timeline, trimmed the edges of each clip, dropped in a constant power fade between the audio of each clip, nested that timeline into another and applied unsharp mask, radius 0.4, level 0, amount 100. Rendered out to Apple Quicktime Photo JPEG at 97% quality setting. Fired up the InFocus projector and played it from VLC Media Player to second monitor (the projector on M1-DA DVI input).
The footage looked cleaner than anything I've shot prior, and more amazing because this was shot at dusk (8PM) and we were in the shaded side of some buildings with the sunset sky very bright in the background. Rendering out to Quicktime, I ended up with a 29GB HD video file that plays nicely and doesn't visibly degrade the images. Essentially, it looks better than Blu-ray!
The way CINE1 handles the light is just amazing. There was nothing over or under exposed, despite the absurd contrast. I even shot a sunset, in which all forground detail was clearly and colorfully visible, yet the CINEALTA captured the setting sun, while maintaining the foreground scenery in a believable relative contrast.
The IN82 is 30-bit color, and somewhere along the line, it comes out way ahead of the LCD, because there is no banding anywhere, and the shadow details are breathtaking. The DLP projector produces a far darker black than my LCD, revealing details in the darkest parts of the scene. The freedom from noise becomes more apparent--my LCD was exaggerating any little bit of noise, making it look more contrasty because of the lack of bit depth, whereas the new projector seems to show a more accurate representation of the CINEALTA's recorded images. Everything, from the street lights to the sunset, to the antique automobiles and the motorcycles with the flashing LED lighting, looked stunningly-beautiful. I made a 29-minute video edit and I watched it three times on the projector this evening. I just couldn't get enough of that eye candy!
Then there's the audio aspect of it. A car show is a great event, because there are big bore V8 engines everywhere in sight. An people everywhere, a sea of sounds in all directions. The X-Y configuration makes a great, wide stereo soundfield and the CINEALTA's inputs were silky smooth and free of anything added that was not in the environment. I never use AGC, preferring to use manual levels. I set them for the loudest anticipated sound and leave them alone.
When the show ended, and the cars started up, it was a smorgasbord of deep-throated sounds that rattle yer guts when played back here in the theater. There were some Shelby GT500s and some really customized chopped & dropped dragsters with some low tone mufflers that were just loaded with deep bass sounds. As they rolled by, oh baby!
I went over to a side street where a group of Harley owners were getting ready to take off. So I positioned myself downhill from them and used telephoto to compress the view for a theatrical effect. It was almost twilight now, and their headlamps were on and generally aimed directly into the camera lens. But the rest of the scenery behind them was clearly deliniated as was the faces of the cyclists themselves. Then they took off, heading down the hill past me. A sea of rumbling Harley Davidsons making that big rumbling sound as they passed by. What a sensation!
Overall, the "film" was a joy to watch, and I didn't even have to author a disc to watch it in the theater here. And I had some of the lights on in the room, but had forgotten about it because the projector is so darned bright, given it was intended to fill a 260” screen and mine's only about 154”. The sunset scene was making me squint, in fact.
The footage wasn't perfect.. I really need a steadicam vest, because there is too much side to side wobble and jerk when I walk, but when movement settled down, the view was spectacular. CINE1 all the way! Cine matrix really gave it the color of film, too. Slightly subdued reds, but still very satisfying. And clean at -3dB gain. Absolutely stunning pictures when projected. Sharp, noiseless (to the eye) and with dynamic range approaching the human vision. The camera saw everything I could see, as I saw it, save for the cine matrix subdued reds and the projector displayed it faithfully.
A lot of people would be about to walk into the path of my lens, suddenly notice me, and duck out of the way or hesitate. A middle aged couple actually apologized for walking down the sidewalk that I was filming from. While the CINEALTA is low-key, compared to the 70lb Panavision monsters, I guess a number of people still sense that there's a pro cimematographer at work on the streets there, despite my Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops.
There is no greater pleasure than watching your own production on your own theater!