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  2. I can't work with LR alone, I also need Photoshop to do any meaningful editing and finishing of photos. 20 years ago Photoshop cost about $700 which in today's money is $1150. If you don't need a new version in five years then the permanent licenses for PS and LR would have been roughly on par with the subscription cost (as the photographer's bundle), but I certainly want key software that I use updated more often than once in five years. And if you occasionally need Illustrator, Acrobat, Premiere etc. but not on a regular basis, the subscription makes access to those much cheaper as well (the full suite as a permanent license cost $2500 which would in today's money probably over $3000). Thousands, in any case. With subscription pricing you could just pay for a month or two and get the work done without having to purchase the lot. Although these programs have a lot features I don't need or use (since it's not only used by photographers but also various kinds of graphic designers and artists), I frequently see Adobe improve the software in ways that are meaningful to me. I obviously do not work for Adobe. My point is just that for me and others that I know, the subscription pricing made Adobe software accessible while previously it was not. My guess is that Adobe likely went with subscription pricing because they had a huge problem with pirated software as a lot of people chose not to pay but used cracked copies of the software, basically stealing. For video editing it makes a lot of sense to use Davinci Resolve since a lot of people prefer it to Premiere on its own merits, but it can be used for free (if you don't need certain features which require the paid version). It also supports Nikon N-RAW. However I suspect that eventually the free version disappears and this software will also become something you have to pay to use since software development is expensive.
  3. I have the S1RII and the S1II. I also still have the old S1 and S5. The S1II is the same than the S5II about video details, even if some youtubers said the details rendering has improved, it's not true at all. Same bad rendering as the S5II. I understand some people are not bothered or can't see the difference and it's nothing wrong about that, but the difference is clear by example if you zoom inside your videos on people faces. Like the S5II, there is a sort of rough detail sharpening and in the same time a lack of very fine details. As always V-log looks better than the 709 profiles but it's still not great in my opinion. The S1RII also has the same detail rendering and I was very disappointed by the 6,4K Open Gate, it was not better than the 6K of the S5II, maybe even worse, like if this mode used a tiny bit of binning like the 5,9K 16:9. The new 7,2K is ok and looks better than the 6,4K. The 8,1K Open Gate is even better but limited to 24fps. Even if the video engine is the same between the S1II, S5II and S1RII, the later has much more resolution in 8K, hence the fine details looks finer even with the bad processing. it's only when the footage is a bit underexposed or overexposed that the S1 6K looks better. I read somewhere something interesting about Real Time Lut, using a burned in lut with a good amount of contrast helps to recover fine details. When recording V-log without Real Time Lut and grading in post, some fine details can't be recovered. I can confirm it's true. So using Real Time Lut V-log on the S1RII in 8,1K Open Gate is the best for details rendering. I'm glad Panasonic has fixed the colored pixels issue in Prores Raw on the S1RII and now the footage looks great, same details rendering than on the S1 or S5. But it's really crazy we must use Prores Raw to get the same good details rendering than on the S1 or S5 H264/265. And the crop is a shame, 1,45x ! When cameras like the Z8 or Z6III offer 6K or 8K 60fps raw video without crop ... About the S1II, Prores Raw only has a minimal crop (about 1,05/1,1x I think) and it was the main reason I bought this camera. Like on the S1RII, Prores Raw is excellent and like it has much less crop, fine details looks even sharper (in a good way). It's really fun finally get a camera with excellent IBIS, excellent detail rendering and good AF without using external recorder, even if Prores raw is a pain for the workflow. The only issue I found is the 240fps 1080p mode, it is clearly not finalised because some horizontal lines appear randomly. I also found the photo raw files of the S1II and S1RII to be slightly less contrasty than the S5 and S1, they have less that punchy looks and I still prefer the rendering of the S5 and S1 with my best lenses like the 50mm S or 24-70mm Pro. it can be because of ACR but the JPEGs out of the cameras also looks slightly less contrasty than on the S5 and S1. Other than that, IBIS is stellar but sometimes more digital than on the G9II or GH7, color science is good but not as good as the GH6 to my eyes. The S1II also has better AF than the S1RII and I can feel the difference. Compared to Nikon, Lumix has several advantages like the IBIS and Open Gate. L-mount also has great "practical" lenses but I think they lack really great lenses with very nice rendering and more pancakes. After using most of the L-mount lenses, only a few looks really fantastic, like the 50mm S Pro (if it has not the coating issue), 24-70mm S Pro, 28-45mm Sigma and the APO Summicron SL. While absolutely great, the APO SL are really too much expensive for most people and it will be hard to attract a lot of people in the system, it is why Lumix try to attract people with smaller lenses and never released again new S Pro lenses since 2019/2020. Nikon has better AF most of the time but also more great lenses. The 50mm f1.8 is much better than the Lumix, the Nikon 35mm/50mm/85mm f1.2 and 135mm f1.8 are some of the best lenses you can buy. You can also adapt Sony FE lenses and there are more interesting "cheap" lenses available from third party manufacturers like Viltrox (mainly the 35mm f1.2 and 35mm f1.8).
  4. Today
  5. It is since many years that I take stills out of the video instead of taking pictures, this is why I’m shooting mostly in 8k RAW. I use Resolve, remapped the F4 key to export still, I first grade for the video, copy the timeline so I can do some tweaking to the grade still by still, if I like the result, I hit F4 and export the jpg, if I want to do a complete different edit I export as a tiff and edit in camera RAW. I normally do a quick pass in camera RAW to do the cropping as in Resolve is a pita as you would need to change the timeline resolution. It would be cool to have an AI tool that finds the good ones especially when I use the 180 rules that finds the one with the no motion blur on the face. Right now, is a bit of a tedious move forward/backward.
  6. Pardon my ignorance, cant you use adobes dng converter to change raw file to dng's ? you can then do anything you want. Well thats how i get my raw files into photoshop cs3 and that has to be older than 2017 lol. I guess there's probably some sort of image loss going on in any conversion however my 58 year old eyes don't notice it.
  7. Well, that's just great in concept! I'd actually prefer smaller with a smaller screen and a c mount, but if the whole thing is open, I'm sure that mods will come fairly quickly. Looking forward to seeing more from the project!
  8. Is the last sentence intended a a joke? Lightroom-only subscriptions are $12/month. That's $144/year. In 2017, Lightroom cost $150 and you could use that copy of Lightroom for as long as you wanted. If Adobe released a new version with features that you didn't want or need, you didn't need to buy it. And this might blow your mind, but... about 95% of the "features" that Adobe have added since going to the subscription model are things I don't need, want or use. https://fstoppers.com/apps/creative-cloud-it-time-ditch-adobe-200441 Unfortunately, the version from 2017 has no chance of opening any files that I take with my modern cameras. Previously, I would have probably bought a new version of Lightroom every 2-3 years, as needed, to support my new camera. Now I have to spend 3 times as much to continue using my photo editing software. And again, many of the features that Adobe add are completely disjointed from what I would want. Making me pay 3x as much to keep using the software to support the development of features that I don't want is not a consumer-friendly practice. I'm not sure what malfunction you're having that makes you think that Adobe wouldn't have developed things like better denoising and debayering algorithms if they released new versions of the software that people had to pay for. In fact, they might have spent more time on those things. And if they released a new version that didn't improve that and only added, for example, AI object insertion, I could punish them by not buying it and continuing to use the software I already had. Now, punishing them is also punishing myself because I have to learn to use entirely new software, transfer 20+ years of images in a catalog, and find new plugins (which sometimes don't even exist, such as SRDx which I use to clean up dust from film scans and only works with Photoshop). Do you work for Adobe? You seem really motivated to say how paying more for their software so that they can develop features that many users don't want is somehow good for the users.
  9. I stumbled on this GitHub project. Not sure what to think about it (and suspect it might not be real). They're using the same sensor as the Digital Bolex and 3D printing a similar shaped body. No mention of an A to D board, just the chip going in to a Raspberry Pi. I remember the original Digital Bolex team took a few years to get the sensor's quadrants aligned and to get the colour science sorted out and these guys' sample images look great after only a short time. Maybe all this stuff is just faster to figure out nowadays. https://github.com/lafauxbolex What do others think? If real this would be great! They're changing some things from the original: A M4/3 mount, a big monitor and compressed DNG files.
  10. Yesterday
  11. So if there was a permanent license available, the grandmothers with 20 or 30 year old licensed software would install old operating systems in virtual boxes to run these outdated software and all the while doing so, make sure that the old OS's notorious security flaws are not attacked by hackers and the computer's security violated? I can see some highly competent technical people doing this (in fact I have a couple of Windows XP laptops for running old software but I don't in practice use them except in emergency if it should happen that there is no other way) but for the majority of regular users of cameras, this isn't really the best option. Instead, updating key software regularly to keep it up to date security and OS compatibility wise, and gaining valuable new features (AI subject selection makes selective edits massively less time consuming than manual drawing of masks, new noise-reduction algorithms and raw conversion algorithms have also improved greatly since Adobe went into the subscription model) and all the while keeping the software industry healthy is the best way to go for most ordinary users. Getting regular software improvements without separate expensive purchasing decisions is a great benefit. And there are tons of alternatives to Adobe software, some are free and some cost a lot of money. IMO Adobe now is among the best value software for still photography, not so much for video. In the perpetual license era most of their software was too expensive to justify financially.
  12. Greeting Fellow Creatives, I have brand new Mp3 tracks to share with the community. Free to download and use with attribution: On my City/Urban 3 page: "THE INSOMNIAC WANDERS" https://soundimage.org/city-urban-3/ On my Funny 8 page: "QUIRKY CONGA" https://soundimage.org/funny-8/ And on my Introspective/Emotions page: "QUIET CONTEMPLATION" https://soundimage.org/introspective/ Ogg MUSIC PACKS Please don't forget about my Ogg Music Packs which enable you to download all of my music tracks at once in my most popular genres...a huge time-saver. Plus Ogg tracks sound more rich and full than Mp3 and loop better in game engines. https://soundimage.org/ogg-game-music-mega-pack/ https://soundimage.org/ogg-music-packs-2/ As always, I hope some of my music is helpful in your projects! 🙂
  13. Surely the main point is that if you can afford to shoot ARRI Alexa 35 you are not quibbling over software licensing fees over the week(s) long duration of a shoot. Whereas with Adobe they scavenge £ from grandmothers and students for years and years.
  14. Your right, you don't understand. Some background for you, i have owned the commodore vic 20 with the datasette, the atari 1040st and a dx2-66 when they came out. when you bought software for them you owned it. No subscriptions back then. so for 40 years, give or take, companies developed software and made money. Some companies lots of money. Having companies give you more options to "pay" for for something you dont own, isn't much different to taking a sharp knife and stabbing yourself and wondering how many more ways can i do this, until i bleed out ? Sure the subscription model works best for Adobe because its based on greed.. sure it may be cheaper to "subscribe" for 6 months or so maybe even a year. But ultimately it will cost you more. What a way to reward your loyal customers. Lets face it none of these companies have their backs against the wall and have kids dying from malnutrition (well not the ceo's or higher anyway) and if they do, its not a funding issue. There's still plenty of software to buy out there that doesn't have a "subscribe" component, probably the vast majority of software, that is still regularly updated. So your argument is baseless. Cars are great.. you know why ? because it keeps the horses of the street. Do you know how much a horse can crap ? although its a biological action, and to be expected from any organic lifeform. It attracts flies, lots of flies, not to mention crap doesn't smell anything like perfume. Less flies, less disease. Simple as that. Mind you, cars are not cheap either. Thats why you see bags of horse crap outside of stables for sale. their trying to recoup some of the money they have spent on feed. If they try to dump it, it will cost them more money to dump at a tip / dump. Personally i'm of the opinion that anything that we involve ourselves in, is in one form or another is a revenue stream. Cars, taxi, buses, even buying a camera. It will cost you for the privilege. Public transport or anything to do with government no longer covers costs. Now it has to make money.
  15. Bingo. If you are a paid up member of the L Mount Alliance, then you use an S5ii for this specific task. Otherwise the rest of this overheating hype is just that, over-excited hype. OK I get the expectation that just because the S5ii or the FX3 can do X then the new Lumix cameras should, but actually maybe not and the S1Rii especially is a photo-centric hybrid that can do excellent video and even the S1ii is not really a ‘cinema’ camera but a hybrid. Just use the right tool for the job!
  16. As much as subscription models suck for us individuals, they are often preferable for businesses, even regarding software like Adobe. Obviously Arri's target market is rental houses, and the comment earlier about a rental house passing those temporary upgrades to customers is quite likely the intent. It's worth spelling out the difference between subscription editing software and camera upgrades, though. With Adobe's product, if you stop paying, you can't open your old projects. In Arri's model, if you stop paying, you can presumably still open files shot with those upgrades. Losing access to the creative work that you've already done is a big difference.
  17. Last week
  18. I thought/assumed that the choice of cameras for f1 were similar to the reason that studios have been using Ronin 4D for a bunch of stuff - and why the last couple of Mission Impossible films used Z Cams for the stunts - because there's no Arri that could possibly fit in the places where they put the custom Sony cameras (just as there's no Arri that can be usable on a gimbal as quickly as the R4D can be ready and because there's no Arri that can fit in a lot of the places that the Z Cam does). It's not to say that the Venice line isn't really good, it certainly seems to be, but on a movie with a budget of $100,000,000, the difference in price between shooting on Alexa and shooting on Venice is basically a rounding error.
  19. Its been a standard practice in telecom industry for decades. You want to provide service to 2x wireless users? You need to upgrade your license: X dollars. But that works pretty well for them because its an enterprise world and the hardware they're selling is not something you could buy an alternative from Amazon. Arri is selling a device that is surrounded by rapidly approaching sharks that already ate its lunch in commercials, music videos, and documentary segments of the market. And I don't buy this cliche of "but studios afford that". Did you see what they used for f1 movie? Studios have a lot of money to spend, but they're not stupid.
  20. Curren Sheldon (documentary filmmaker/DoP) did some testing with the S1 II and the S1R II for overheating. For those of you who are in countries that don't use freedom units for temperature, 80F is about 27C and 92F is about 33C. tl;dw - On a hot day sitting in the shade, neither the S1 II nor S1R II overheated after recording for hours. With the camera sitting in the sun on a hot day, both could overheat after a while with the times being really similar when configured the same. Using a dummy battery and external SSD makes a big difference. If you need to roll long takes (10+ minutes) with the camera sitting in direct sunlight on a hot day, neither is the right camera for you (really, very few cameras are going to work for you here). If you're shooting indoors or are able to put the camera in the shade, both are fully capable of very long recording times without overheating.
  21. I'd like to know too, especially about the S1II and using the Rec709 profiles (Natural specifically). Everyone who's reviewed the S1II has done so using V-Log or Raw. I've read that it's not quite as aggressively digitally sharp as the S5ii/S5iiX but still showing some heavy NR and smoothing of fine details. I might have to get a loan of one for myself to see whats what.
  22. I was with you on "it's OK to have a license as long as there's an option for perpetual," but this is the part where you're losing me. Subscriptions, as currently implemented by companies like Adobe, are actually extremely consumer-hostile. You're right that it's good to have an ongoing source of revenue, but you're completely ignoring that they now have no impetus whatsoever to build features that people actually want. If I have Lightroom 5 and Adobe release Lightroom 6, I can look at the features that were added. If none of them are something I want, I keep using Lightroom 5. If Adobe completely misses the mark with customers, few or no people buy version 6 and they are forced to course correct or go out of business. If they go out of business, the copy of Lightroom 5 that I have keeps working forever. Maybe eventually it won't run on a new computer, but I have virtual machines or my old computer as options still. In a subscription world, I pay Adobe every month to keep using the software that I already have. They can waste as much time and money as they want on shitty new features that I don't want or care about. I still have to pay for them. They want to spend 1000 hours developing an integration between Lightroom and a stock photo site so they can pull extra revenue through a deal with the stock photo company? I don't care and I'll never use it. But I'm still paying for it. The company spends a bunch of time integrating their own cloud service which would charge me even more money to store my files? Don't want it, probably will never use it, still funding the development. If a competitor has different features that I want, I can certainly move to their software, but unless the interface is identical to what I'm used to, now I lose time and effort re-training on how to use the other software. They know that a lot of people aren't going to take that time and effort so the money keeps flowing in. Plus maybe I've spent hundreds of hours in something like the Lightroom catalog rating and tagging things or doing some other activity that isn't necessarily stored in the XMP sidecar (not sure if ratings and tags are) and moving that to another software package would eat a ton of my life. Stop using the software for a while? Sometimes subscriptions are easy to pause or stop, but a lot of times, they are a pain in the ass to stop. Once again, extra money keeps flowing in because people forget the subscription or give up on cancellation because they'll probably need it again sometime in the future. You are arguing against yourself here. If I own the software and it doesn't have to check a central license server every time it starts up, I can open my files in perpetuity. Virtual machines are a thing and allow running older software basically forever. On the other hand, if I had a file created in some version of Adobe's software in a format that isn't supported elsewhere (not sure if this exists) and I don't pay a ransom to Adobe, those files are now dead to me. Also, if Adobe decides to stop supporting that software because not enough people are paying the subscription, those files can never be opened again. Go offline for a month because you're traveling in the middle of nowhere and/or don't want to pay for a local sim? Sucks to be you, you won't be editing anything after a few days because the software can't phone home. This is increasingly a concern in the gaming industry as well - there's even a petition and a movement within Europe about it at https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ Companies intentionally build their games to require an online connection and if it's gone, the game stops working. Meanwhile, eventually most people stop playing and it costs money to run/patch/maintain the servers so the company turns them off. Wanna play that game that you loved a few years ago? Too bad. Even if you have it still installed on your computer, it now serves no purpose other than to waste disk space. Anyway, Adobe announce record profits all the time. I'm still using Lightroom about like I was 10 years ago. I should probably try Capture One again. I have kind of hated it every time I installed it, but at least their model is less offensive - option for a perpetual license or subscription, and if converting from subscription to perpetual, some of the subscription costs are prorated toward the purchase.
  23. In Arri's case they offer (1) Alexa 35 with all features included in the purchase price, (2) Alexa 35 base model with the most commonly used features enabled, and (2a) subscription to optional features that you may need for a specific project, (2b) permanent licensing of those features that you want to keep, so the subscription is just one option and permanent licenses to those features are available if you want them. I don't understand what the issue is. Having more options in how the payment is made is good and means more people/companies will be able to afford the stuff. No one is complaining that leasing or renting cars (or getting a taxi ride) are available in addition to the option of purchasing and owning a car. Public transport tickets are available on a single trip, load value, or pay for use for a period of time basis. Again no one is complaining about the existence of these options. Why then is subscription software or firmware as an option a problem? I think people are complaing about these things because they don't understand that software development costs money and if you want to continue developing a particular piece software in the future you probably need to keep those same people who developed it continuously employed so that you can do it efficiently in the future. If you have to let the people who developed something go, to add features, the cost is multiplied because no one new initially understands the existing code. The subscription model works best for software because it enables continued employment so the knowledge of how the software works internally is not lost. Today since operating systems are continuously changed, the applications software also needs frequent maintenance. So for Adobe the subscription model works best. They are able to maintain broad hardware support and have a huge library of cameras and lenses that are supported in terms of raw processing and lens corrections. The subscription cost is really low for the (still) photography software kit (LR + PS) and while the other stuff is kind of expensive, it was always expensive even in the then-thought-permanent license era. And as there are free or inexpensive options available for the tasks which Adobe prices expensively (Davinci Resolve instead of Premiere Pro), there is something for everyone available in the market. What would be much worse is that people rely on a particular product and have a lot of material made with it and suddenly those files could not be opened or edited as a result of the company making the software ending their operations or support of the product.
  24. maxJ4380

    Lenses

    er, sorry to take you away from your 35-350 big boy toys 😉 however I'm looking for a smaller lens, preferably with a distinct yellowing. which means thorium glass i think. Got my eye on either the takumar 35mm f2 or the 58mm f1.2. However if you know of others let me know. From my research they seem to be guaranteed thorium glass. Of course they are not the only thorium lenses out there. Just easy to get i guess. Although easy to get is relative where ebay is concerned. I kinda like the taks in m42 mount as its easy to adapt to m43 and i already have a few of them. Main reason to get one is i'm thinking of using it for sunsets. I'm hoping the yellowing adds a bit of a kick to a sunset. I could buy a cheap yellow filter, and i probably will for comparisons however that seems like cheating to me and not terribly authentic in the scheme of things. I was liking the 58mm f1.2 for awhile except by the time i mount it to mft it becomes more like a 120mm with the crop and i'm not that interested in a telephoto at the moment. I'd also have to buy a metabones speedbooster 0.64 to bring it back to a more reasonable view and i'd like to wait a little bit longer before i pull the pin on that particular purchase.
  25. Has anyone been able to assess how the fine details are processed here? I'm wondering how the footage looks compared to the original S1 or S5?
  26. Looking after my brothers place for a week, while he goes on holidays with his wife. I decided I'd do some unscientific observations with my assortment of cameras. I did take the e-m1 yesterday however it didn't quite go to plan. So i'll redo that before the end of the week. There's quite a few different animals to "shoot" hopefully you all get a bit of a different perspective for a bit. A frame grab from the iphone 13 pro max. i shot 4k then resized it to hd for convenience. I thought it turned out ok. Frosts tend to kill off the grasses, there's a bit of green around but not much.
  27. I only made it about 5 minutes through the video before I got bored with it so maybe he addresses some of this after that. But I'm not sure why it's news that Arri give people an option to buy the full camera or a base model that disables some features until they're enabled. That's been a thing for a long time. When one buys the base model, there are options to pay to enable those features on a temporary or permanent basis. It's one of the reasons that when you see used Arris for sale, they'll frequently say things like "includes high-speed license" or "includes raw license." Speaking for myself, I kind of hate subscriptions in general for this kind of thing, but that is very much mitigated by having the option for a permanent license. I still don't like it a lot since (in most cases), it's not really reducing the camera price. In the case of things like the GH4/5, it's not like Panasonic would have needed to charge more for the camera if they just threw in vlog-l. In Arri's case, I suspect that the decision was pushed by big rental houses - if I'm a rental house, a reduced cost base model lets me buy more cameras. Add a license to enable certain features and I can just tack that onto the price of the rental. Renting for a week? X dollars. You want raw on that rental? Add Y dollars. Camera reaches end of service life, the buyer can turn on any feature they want on a permanent basis. I don't love it, but it's not terrible.
  28. I have one on the watch list for amazon prime day. Hopefully they come on sale. Even if they don't I'll grab one as they are cheaper new on prime, than buying second hand off ebay.
  29. If I understand correctly what you mean, I think so... I have used stills previously, but not 'matching' stills. What I am proposing going forward is ensuring my video and stills match perfectly in the grade and if frame grabs intended to be used as stills, identical to that exact frame in the video. The primary intention and purpose is to cut back drastically on stills photo capture in the first place and therefore also editing time and move towards a more cohesive and less time intensive approach. So currently I'll do a full capture, cull and edit etc on both photo and video. Going forward, I'd like to capture even more video and reduce the stills capture back to just certain elements, mainly details and family groups. Pics will be captured in raw + Jpeg 3:2 ratio with my LUT baked into the Jpegs (which is the same LUT I bake into my video footage in camera). I normally bin the Jpegs and use the raws, but I am proposing using the Jpegs and simply keeping the raws as backup just in case. Edit the video timeline to the point where it's still in 3:2 open gate format and then pull the frame grabs for use specifically as stills, rather than to insert back into the video. I can then go back into the timeline and put my more 'cinematic' 17:9, or 2:1 or whatever crop on it, and add all the twiddly bits that are video specific such as any text, transitions etc. Et voila, a finished wedding film plus a set of stills that look like frames from a movie. As intended, ie, when someone says, "your photos look like frames from a movie", it will be because most of them are. Anyway, I am going to give it a go as all last year, this year so far and the next 2 jobs, I've been shooting stills on the A7RV and Nikon Zf with 90% of the footage for my wedding films coming from the S9. After these next 2 jobs are in the bag, the A7RV and Zf get replaced with a single S1Rii shooting 7.2k 30p clips and the S9 which was shooting video exclusively at 6k 30p, will be shooting a mix of some stills and some secondary video. Pretty sure it will be a good set up based on the kit I have and some of the trials I have attempted, but as with all these things, it's only when you climb out of the trench and charge the enemy, with bullets flying, you truly know. Or you step on a landmine and it all goes tits up.
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