Information about the CML Camera Evaluations 2018

These evaluations were carried out by Geoff Boyle in early July 2018 at the University of the West of England (UWE)
Coordination was by David Neal of UWE and I was assisted by Sergejs Bozoks who has assisted with the tests for several years now.
Jose del C Martinez joined us from the US to gaffer the tests.
UWE students. Nirmala Valinciute , Cam Sander, Jake Lucas were a huge help.
I'd also like to offer huge thanks to Christian Pedersen of CAAM in Copenhagen and Sam Measure of CVP in London for helping us get cameras that it would appear the manufacturer didn't want us to have :-)
All cameras were tested using Sigma Cine Primes, 50mm for S35 & 75mm for FF, with a 35mm for the Kinefinity Terra. The lenses were loaned to us by Dave Blackham of Esprit Film & Television.

The cameras, where appropriate, were set to whatever resolution came closest to a "standard" S35 or Full Frame image.

Lighting was Blonde's and ARRI 2Kw Fresnel's for the Tungsten tests and ARRI Sky Panels for the comparison with LED's

The reference charts were courtesy of DSClabs and also X-Rite & Kodak ones purchased by CML.

The Cameras were exposed in half stop intervals from T1.5 to T16 with a 180 degree shutter. We added ND 1.2 and then exposed from T4 to T16 to give us a complete range of exposures. ND's used were mainly the built in ones but where these were not available we used Tiffen, no colour correction was made for built in ND's any change is inherent in the camera.

All cameras were set to the manufacturers recommended EI.

Light level was 400 foot candles.

The only objective here is to establish the true ISO of any camera and to find a precise usable dynamic range. I emphasise usable as although more may be measurable it may be too noisy to use or the colour may change too much.

The original raw files from all cameras are available for download as is a H264 version

The H264 version was produced in Resolve in ACEScct where possible.

A timeline correction was used to bring the shot with the nearest to "correct" exposure in "real" Tungsten to a neutral colour balance and then the level was adjusted on a clip by clip basis so that the Kodak Gray read 488 as recommended (as recommended by Kodak just to make it clear for Art Adams). No colour correction was used after the initial timeline one so any variation of colour in the LED setup is purely the lights.

The adjustment differences to get the exposure of the nearest tungsten "correct" exposure to 488 exactly is noted on each camera page along with the difference in adjustment need to get the LED lit series to match. I.E. Tungsten -2 LED -3 a stop of exposure is approximately 7 in this scale.