Well I have given my new NanoFlash a good workout over the past few days shooting in the heat of the Arizona desert and shooting monsoon thunderstorms. There are a few things I need to sort out to really get the most out of it, in particular mounting it on the camera, but despite that I have to say I am extremely impressed.
In this short review I’m going to concentrate on the Nano’s usability. I will write a separate post with more details on the image quality later in the week. It’s pretty obvious that recording at higher bit rates with improved color space will give better pictures, but there are a few extra functions that really make the NanoFlash a “must have” box.
On un-packing it’s unimpressive. Just a simple, small black box with a few good quality connectors on the bottom, a couple of slots for the Compact Flash cards, a very large LCD display and a few control buttons. On powering it up there is a delay of a few seconds as the unit checks the compact flash cards. You are then presented with a very simple menu that allows you to set up the way the unit works, changing things such as the codec, bit rate, record control, power saving mode and a few other item. I didn’t need to refer to the manual to get the unit up and running, it really is very straight forward to use.
Convergent Design NanoFlash on Sony PMW-350
One trick I was able to do with the Nano was to record timelapse with the XDCAM EX1 camcorder of a developing thunderstorm, recording onto the cameras SxS cards and then use the NanoFlash with pre-record to capture any lightning bolts. Normally this would require 2 cameras!
The unit can be set to go into record whenever it see’s the camera’s timecode running. This worked flawlessly and meant that I could just stick the NanoFlash on the back of the camera and just let it get on with the job, no need for separate remotes or two lots of record buttons to press. If you turn on the NanoFlash’s low power mode, when you turn off the camera and the HDSDi feed disappears the NanoFlash put’s itself it to a very low power standby mode, so there is no need to turn it on and off separately during the course of a typical days shooting. It wakes itself up as soon as it detects the return of a HDSDi signal.
One small point is that to manually make the unit record you press the record button, to stop you press the stop button. When your using a camcorder you get used to pressing the same button to stop and start recording. It’s a very minor point but confused me for a moment.
The NanoFlash LCD gives you an indication of how much space you have left on your cards with a percentage bar graph, there are further level displays for audio levels and it tells you the mode you are recording in. The display is large and very clear.
I have not played with the external audio or remote functions so I cant comment on those. What I will say is that the NanoFlash has exceeded my expectations in every respect. The design is simple and functional, nothing fancy here, but it just works so well, it feels very solid and I am confident it will survive the rough treatment my equipment gets on my expeditions to film some of the worlds most extreme weather. I shall be using it to improve the quality of the footage from my XDCAM EX’s, which is very good anyway. I will also be using it with my HXR-MC1P minicams which currently only use AVCHD, the NanoFlash should really improve the quality of these.
Now I am going to talk about the picture quality and what recording at a higher bit rate offers. I have been using my NanoFlash with both a PDW-700 XDCAM HD camcorder (recording 50Mb/s 4:2:2) and an XDCAM EX1 recording at 35Mb/s 4:2:0. I have recorded from both at 100Mb/s long GoP and from the EX1 at 50Mb/s. I did a brief test with the I frame codec, but have not really gone into any great depths with that because I think the Long GoP (essentially XDCAM but at higher bit rate) is for this type of device the ideal type of codec offering stunning picture quality with reasonable sized files.
So, what do I think. Well the biggest surprise was the fact that I could see the difference between the 4:2:2 50Mb/s from the PDW-700 and the 100Mb/s from the NanoFlash on a 42″ 1920×1080 monitor, before I did anything to the material. The NanoFlash pictures were just a teeny tiny bit “cleaner” with less jitter on pans across areas of high detail. Now I will say that these were shots I chose as I knew they would stress the codec, lots of very fine detail and a medium-slow pan. It’s not a big difference, but there is certainly less mosquito noise in the 100Mb/s pictures. The difference between the EX 35 Mb/s footage and the 100 Mb/s footage is greater still, which was no surprise really, but again it’s not a massive difference, it still amazes me just how good an EX1 or EX3 looks, even at 35Mb/s.
So on to some further tests. Now I will state here that I would be perfectly happy to see my XDCAM EX, 35Mb/s footage being broadcast, and indeed I have supplied many hours of stock footage from my EX’s for broadcast and everyone has been perfectly happy with the quality. BUT the BBC in particular are keen to get all footage shot at, at least 50Mb/s which is one of the main reasons for my NanoFlash purchase. The argument being not so much that there is a big difference at the first generation, but that 50Mb/s and above holds up better in post production and after transmission. So for my tests I decided to take a pair of clips, 35Mb/s from the EX1 and 100Mb/s from the Nanoflash and then do a heavy grade (gamma correction plus color correction) and then render that out to Apple ProResHQ. The frame grab below shows the whole scene, which was a slow pan across some Arizona scrub land with lots of very fine detail including bushes, cactus and gravel with a blue sky that gradually darkens slightly from left to right.
graded XDCAM EX frame grab
When playing the graded and rendered clips back I could see quite a bit more mosquito noise in the 35Mb/s EX clip than the NanoFlash clip, although again I would say that given the rather extreme grade the EX footage still look pretty good. looking more closely at the sky I could see a very noticable difference between the two clips. the 100 Mb/s NanoFlash footage was much cleaner and exhibited less blocking as can be see in these two pixel for pixel grabs from the top right of the full size video frames.
Frame grab from XDCAM EX 35Mb/s clip
Frame Grab from NanoFlash 100Mb/s clip
So clearly there are some clear advantages to using 100Mb/s for projects that are going to require grading or other post production work. Next I took a look at some of the more detailed parts of the image. The extra color bandwidth of the nanoFlash’s 4:2:2 over the EX1′s 4:2:0 was apparent with areas of fine color detail looking less muddy and overall the NanoFlash images appeared sharper. I believe this is down to the reduction in mosquito noise at 100Mb/s as opposed to any actual change in the resolution of the recorded images.
Frame grab from 35Mb/s graded EX footage.
Frame grab from 100Mb/s graded NanoFlash footage.
Conclusions:
Well while there is a small difference in the first generation footage from the EX and the NanoFlash, it is not huge and unless you view the material on a large screen it will not be very apparent. For simpler projects, news and many many applications the raw EX footage will be just fine and I will often shoot that way. However the footage from the NanoFlash is cleaner, has a little better color resolution and is more robust. So for projects that will be graded or go through challenging post production stages as well as chroma key work the NanoFlash will make a big difference. Considering the low cost of both the NanoFlash and it’s readily available compact flash media it really does make a lot of sense to have one in your production kit. I will be using mine with both my EX cameras and my PDW-700. Given that the PDW-700 at 50Mb/s is already regarded as the superior of HDCAM, then the 700 with a NanoFlash is edging towards the realms of HDCAM SR. I now own the tools to produce HD images at a quality level that I never dreamt I would be able to afford myself. Even the EX1 and NanoFlash looks stunning. Well done Convergent Design, I’m sure this product is a winner.
