SEX EDUCAT ION | DRAMA
It’s like the camera was the unseen member of the group of misfits
have to be approved by and adhere to the uncompromising Netflix standards. Some people bemoan this because it means they can’t use the most ubiquitous digital camera in the world, but I agree with the stance Netflix has taken – it has its eyes on the future, not the past. There were several obvious options available to me. Ben, Sam and I had already started detailed conversations regarding colour, and I knew I needed something able to handle the wide, slightly unusual gamut we were moving towards. This is where Sony stepped in: it offered me an opportunity to extensively test the Venice when there were only about three or four of them in existence! I was slightly sceptical, as I’m not a fan of the F55, but I have been very impressed with everything shot on the F65 – especially Rob Hardy’s work on Ex Machina . Sony was touting the
Venice as an evolution of the F65, so I was keen to try it. Richard Lewis and Pablo Soriano at Sony UK were incredibly generous with their time and knowledge – these guys were pivotal to the camera’s development and let me do everything I could to try and ‘break’ the camera, then I graded the results with Pablo using DaVinci Resolve. Everyone knows Pablo is the absolute master of colour and I was pleasantly surprised by how easily he achieved nice pictures with just basic primaries applied. First impressions are important, right? DEF: Can you explain how you tested the camera? JC: With a bit more time and work, Pablo showed me just how good the dynamic range of the camera is. While still not as good as film, in my tests it proved to be better than other digital systems. Of most interest was the 16-bit colour reproduction, which is far superior to any other system and extremely sensitive to the nuance of the colours we were putting in front of it. Basically, it seemed to be behaving like film transparency with colour, and a bit like film negative with shadow and highlight detail. Although the camera has a 6K Full- Frame sensor, I was more interested in capturing in 4K. The bonus was, in this mode, Venice allows the use of any 35mm lens out there. I didn’t need expensive and scarce large format lenses or unusual mounts. I could pick up anything PL and pop it on. This opened up all the lens options in the world and, using the X-OCN ST codec, kept the data far more manageable than any other system shooting Raw at this resolution. Further testing continued in prep, where
IMAGES References came from American High School classics like The Breakfast Club
MARCH 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 29
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