Anafi - Video Quality Observations

[Krusty Geeza]

Howdy Folks, just a quick & simple video comparing some frozen frames of video recorded on my Anafi in what I personally have found to be the 2 best capture modes for colour & detail rendition when filming at 4K & at 24 fps. I'll do the same thing for 30 fps over the next couple of weeks too as that will be a frame rate I will use from time to time. This was captured with no ND filters in place, so you are seeing what the Anafi captures & no loss of quality or colour that may possibly be due to an ND filter.

This is not a laboratory test or anything, just my simple observations of difference using a 27" screen that's colour calibrated regularly & has a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels.

I'd be interested to hear what you folks are finding when using this machine for video captured at 4K too. I find a considerably noticeable loss of colour & detail when using HDR, so I don't. Even in Cinema mode there is less detail than when shooting in P-Log or Standard - Natural for some reason, it's still nice, but definitely has less detail to it.

These are the capture modes that I have observed as being better or worse than each other in my ranking from best to worst. I haven't been impressed with the other Standard Style offerings of Vivid or Pastel. I think you'd be better off doing that in post-production with cleaner capture footage for a better output if you wanted a stylised finish.

1. P-Log
2. Standard - Natural
3. Cinema
4. Standard - HDR
5. Standard - Vivid & Pastel

 

[Liger 1956]

Very interesting. Do you think that the same criteria apply when shooting in 2.7k or 1080?
Some of us do not have powerful enough hardware to process 4k in a reasonable time.

 

[Krusty Geeza]

Very interesting. Do you think that the same criteria apply when shooting in 2.7k or 1080?
Some of us do not have powerful enough hardware to process 4k in a reasonable time.

That's a great question & something I shall test out as time goes on. I haven't played with recording in any of the other resolutions yet, but am itching to try the 60 fps & even the 120 fps on some waterfalls in a few months time when they start flowing well again.

 

[ROBANAFI]

I really need to get into video processing. I'm a photographer mainly and i wouldn't think of shooting in anything but RAW. But with Anafi i feel like i'm just using it in "Auto mode". My PC can process a 4K file but the video editing software i'm using(Filmora) will only process them at a bit rate of 80kbps not 100kbps so i'm definitely losing quality already

 

[Liger 1956]

As I do not have any device that will display 4K videos at there true resolution am I better filming in 2.7K or even 1080p which will make editing the final video easier? The lower resolutions will also allow me to save longer videos on an SD card.

 

[Krusty Geeza]

I really need to get into video processing. I'm a photographer mainly and i wouldn't think of shooting in anything but RAW. But with Anafi i feel like i'm just using it in "Auto mode". My PC can process a 4K file but the video editing software i'm using(Filmora) will only process them at a bit rate of 80kbps not 100kbps so i'm definitely losing quality already

Get in the habit of controlling your exposures! Use ND filters to get the shutter rate you want for the fps you are shooting at. You can even get a variable ND filter for the Anafi, so if none of the regular ND 4, 8 16 or 32's do the job you can simply twist it until it gets the exposure you want! Easy to do if you have the zebra's turned on for highlight warnings & you look at your histogram. Make sure to use AE lock though & have a fixed ISO also, I always use 100 for the Anafi as it's such a tiny little sensor & I want to use it to its best potential.

That is a slight step down from the get go. Look at using something else for your video editing that can use the full potential of the original footage. There are free editors available if you search, one open source option I found to be very good was Shotcut. There's a bit of a steep learning curve originally, but once you get your head around how it works, it is a beast (in a good way) for editing!

As I do not have any device that will display 4K videos at there true resolution am I better filming in 2.7K or even 1080p which will make editing the final video easier? The lower resolutions will also allow me to save longer videos on an SD card.

I can't display 4K natively either, but choose to future proof my video captures, rather than working at 2.7K. It's a personal choice of what you want to do in this regard. I look at it this way, GB's are cheap these days to buy, I have a large amount of 3 & 4 TB plug in 3.5" drives for my drive bay, so I just switch them out depending on what I am doing at the moment. I utilise my SSD that the operating system is on when editing, then transfer everything to external drives after export, so that limited space is available again. It's not uncommon for a short 3 minute video to take up 150 GB of space when finished creating the rendered images for it. Whether you would want to keep them or just go through the rendering stage again if you revisited the project again in the future is up to you.

Recording & working at 2.7K will give you great detail when down-sampling to 1080 outputs & allow you more of that lossless digital zoom when recording as compared to recording at 4K!

Your computer will probably process a lot more smoothly & quickly working with 2.7K as you mentioned. Don't be put off by playback when editing having a slight lagging to it, as long as it isn't there on output, there's really nothing to worry about.

My computer is ages old, mid 2011 actually! It also is woefully inadequate for video of the nature that is 4K! It only has 512MB of VRAM, but Final Cut Pro works well with 4K, as long as I understand that playback isn't going to be perfect prior to rendering. With Final Cut Pro there is also the option to work with proxy files, which are lower quality versions of the footage, I tried it out & it made things faster yes, but I lost the view of the final detail I crave. I now don't use them & choose to live with jittery/laggy playback prior to rendering.

It's all a compromise that is dependent on the individuals needs.

 

[ufosaboveus]

I use the portable drives too for storage. Very handy and the price has honestly gotten so cheap that you can afford to have a few on hand for different projects. 4k 25fps is what I like to shoot in with my Anafi. Same thing is happening with the micro SD cards. I just ordered another Samsung 128gb micro sd card and it was only $24. At those prices, its fairly affordable to have a spare so I can just alternate between each trip.

 

[Krusty Geeza]

I use the portable drives too for storage. Very handy and the price has honestly gotten so cheap that you can afford to have a few on hand for different projects. 4k 25fps is what I like to shoot in with my Anafi. Same thing is happening with the micro SD cards. I just ordered another Samsung 128gb micro sd card and it was only $24. At those prices, its fairly affordable to have a spare so I can just alternate between each trip.

My hard drives are not really portable types, they sit in a drive bay. This is the one I use, it has a fan to help keep the drives cool, you just buy the raw hard drives to insert into it which is easier than plugging in & out USB cables I find.

That was a bargain you got there for the 128 GB micro-SD card!

 

[ufosaboveus]

that's a very nice looking setup for those hard drives. I go low tech and just by the western digital portables. I have a few so I can dedicate them for different types of photography I do.

 

[Krusty Geeza]

that's a very nice looking setup for those hard drives. I go low tech and just by the western digital portables. I have a few so I can dedicate them for different types of photography I do.

That was how I started off too, then one day one of them had a major brain-fart & I tried recovering the data from it by taking it out of the casing, which meant I would have had to buy another for it later on & I decided to go this way, as you can get 3 or 4 TB disks for the price of 2 TB ones in cases if you look around online! I also have backups of everything that get switched out periodically & are stored elsewhere, so if we ever had a major calamity here, there are other copies I could get going immediately.

 

[Kdavis2269]

I use the portable drives too for storage. Very handy and the price has honestly gotten so cheap that you can afford to have a few on hand for different projects. 4k 25fps is what I like to shoot in with my Anafi. Same thing is happening with the micro SD cards. I just ordered another Samsung 128gb micro sd card and it was only $24. At those prices, its fairly affordable to have a spare so I can just alternate between each trip.

How are the Samsung Micro SD cards working for you? I didn't see them on the Anafi supported sd card list. I was thinking about picking up a few of these if try will work well.

Samsung 128GB 100MB/s (U3) MicroSD EVO Select

 

[ufosaboveus]

They seem to work fine. I use 4k 25fps and no problems.

 

[Krusty Geeza]

They seem to work fine. I use 4k 25fps and no problems.

Good to know. While you're here, @ufosaboveus , what's your take on the various capture modes? Do you notice any difference between the footage captured in different capture modes, such as Natural, HDR, Vibrant & Pastel?

 

[Rob A]

Get in the habit of controlling your exposures! Use ND filters to get the shutter rate you want for the fps you are shooting at. You can even get a variable ND filter for the Anafi, so if none of the regular ND 4, 8 16 or 32's do the job you can simply twist it until it gets the exposure you want!

Hello,

Sorry about bringing back an old post. I just got an Anafi about a month ago, and I have been looking everywhere for a variable ND filter for it, but I haven't been able to find one. If you have any pointers on where to look for one, I would appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks!

 

[Gipsz Jakab]

Howdy Folks, just a quick & simple video comparing some frozen frames of video recorded on my Anafi in what I personally have found to be the 2 best capture modes for colour & detail rendition when filming at 4K & at 24 fps. I'll do the same thing for 30 fps over the next couple of weeks too as that will be a frame rate I will use from time to time. This was captured with no ND filters in place, so you are seeing what the Anafi captures & no loss of quality or colour that may possibly be due to an ND filter.



I'd be interested to hear what you folks are finding when using this machine for video captured at 4K too. I find a considerably noticeable loss of colour & detail when using HDR, so I don't. Even in Cinema mode there is less detail than when shooting in P-Log or Standard - Natural for some reason, it's still nice, but definitely has less detail to it.

These are the capture modes that I have observed as being better or worse than each other in my ranking from best to worst. I haven't been impressed with the other Standard Style offerings of Vivid or Pastel. I think you'd be better off doing that in post-production with cleaner capture footage for a better output if you wanted a stylised finish.

1. P-Log
2. Standard - Natural
3. Cinema
4. Standard - HDR
5. Standard - Vivid & Pastel

Géza! Hova lett a videó? Törölted?