I was there to cover the annual Giant’s Causeway Coast Sportive held on the North Coast of Northern Ireland, starting and finishing in the town of Ballycastle.

The event has three routes which cater for most abilities, from beginner to the more experienced cyclist.

For more information visit www.giantscausewaycoastsportive.com

For those of you interested in the technical side of things, the video was shot on a Sony NEX FS700 with Cinegamma4, and graded in FCPX. It was one of my first outings with the camera so I’m still trying to fine tune the settings.

Recently I have been learning DaVinci Resolve 9 and graded a version of this video in it, but for ease of workflow I reverted back to grading in FCPX. Exporting XML from most editing software packages does not maintain retiming information. Since I shot alot of this at 200fps I retimed quite a few of the shots, and since I have not yet figured out a workflow for round-tripping retimed shots, I went for the easier option.

In my opinion the grading in FCPX is quite powerful anyway. Add in some key features like more detailed qualifying, motion tracking, key-framing and pivot controls and I would see no need to leave the program except on the highest-end projects.

What surprised me as well was how much information the FS700 held in highlights and how far the AVCHD codec could be stretched. The Cinegamma 4 picture profile I shot in goes all the way up to 109 IRE, so cloud detail in bright skys was handeled very well. The Cinegamma4 profile does however allocate more dynamic range above the mid grey level, so detail and noise in the darker areas is sacrificed. Once I get more time with the camera I intend to create a picture profile giving a bit more information to the blacks… or just use Cinegamma 1

See below for before and after comparison.