All Activity

I'm idly contemplating buying a Metabones Ultra 0.64x speed booster for my GH7. This would take me into the world of EF for the first time. I'm completely familiar with speed boosting and crop factors and all that jazz, with years of experience from my 0.71x M42 to MFT speed booster and (many) M42 lenses. What's the deal with speed boosting to EF? Is the Ultra 0.64x worth it over the normal 0.71x adapter? (they seem to be similarly priced used). Is there a different one I should consider (other than Metabones)? Essentially I'd be getting it to shoot shallow DOF (like I do with my M42 Takumar 50mm F1.4, etc) but with more modern / cleaner results as M42 lenses are quite vintage and far dirtier than fast EF glass, especially when shooting wide open. AF is of little importance to me, so I'd be expecting manual focus.

Like almost everything of value! Seriously though, one of the best reality checks you can do is to find the all-time best examples of whatever you're doing and study them. When I did this it basically took almost every one of my previous references and relegated them to below 5/10, and made the 'most recent' on YT and streaming platforms look like toddlers playing with crayons.

100% - I'd assume that this was the best image that an expert with all the other associated equipment was able to get with a decent travel budget and after a decent period of having it. I've always maintained that there are three useful references for a piece of equipment: The best images that anyone is able to create This shows the upper limit of its potential The images that competent reviewers get This shows the type of images that people of moderate skill are able to get in non-ideal conditions The worst images You never get to see these until you get one yourself, but in theory this would show how fragile/flexible the camera is (for example you can expose an Alexa pretty horribly wrong and still get a half-decent image from it, but try that with a camcorder and it's a complete disaster) The promo is only the first category, and the fact there are only a few shots in there is a statement in itself. I think the 15mm is a lot better than people make out, but of course most discourse online is from people who think that a Zeiss Otus is the ideal lens and that Michael Bay doesn't use large enough apertures. To be honest, when reading / listening to most opinions now I am just hearing that the person hasn't been to the cinema for years, hasn't watched any/much classic cinema, and isn't even familiar with the saying "F8 and be there" let alone thinks that it is the cornerstone of almost all the important photography in the history of the field. I was always interested in the 9mm but as I bought the SLR Magic 8mm F4 as one of the first lenses I bought, then upgraded to the Laowa 7.5mm F2 lens later on, the selection of slow wider pancake lenses was never really justified for me. Right, I guess that makes the moon shot even easier then. If you have enough light then almost any camera will look pretty good. Looking at the mount again, there doesn't appear to be any visible mechanism to attach the lens.. I'm wondering if this might be a magnetic mount of some kind, like MagSafe perhaps. If that's true then it might just be a matter of pulling the lens off and snapping another one on. That would certainly fit with the GoPro ethos of it being a fast no-nonsense experience.

I agree. I've been around computers since the '80s and Resolve just has too much clutter as well as non-intuitive locations for features. If it wasn't free for the non-pro version and wasn't multi-platform it wouldn't be as popular as it is. So many people I know use it only because it's free or they have a PC and can't run Final Cut. They waste so much time trying to do things though. I found it interesting teaching FCPX to people who have edited before compared to those who have never. The ones who knew other NLEs found it spooky. Things seemed to be moving on their own and they didn't understand why. For those with other NLE experience it does take training. But for someone who has never used an NLE they get it very quickly. I've seen people up and editing away after only a half hour of instruction. It's had a renaissance since the initial freak-out when it was first launched. Lots of pros use it now. I've used it on TV series and on feature films. As an assistant editor it's a dream to work on. But the thing is, unlike that past, it's now pretty easy to move a sequence from one NLE to another so it kind of doesn't matter anymore what someone is using, you can manage to hand it off to someone else. You no longer have to use the same stuff as the others on the team. Sounds exciting. I guess that's my main suggestion; being able to appear simple when all you're doing is cutting and only show the detailed options when you need them.

Honestly, if you just re-made a version of FCP circa 1999, but it had good color control, I think that sort of NLE would have a chance at success. For me, and the way I work, I've found that all editing should be holistic and contextual to have a project emerge in a satisfying way. For instance, new-finagled tools like text-based editing with transcribed audio ends up being more of a time-suck than an effective technique. That might seem counter-intuitive, but for me the quick decisions that tool allows often leads to narrative dead-ends; I get cuts that "read well," but don't feel elegant -- so I ultimately end up not using those sorts of choices and going back to re-do stuff. I guess I'm saying there doesn't seem to be short cuts, pardon the pun, to a quality edit, so maybe just keep the NLE tool as elegant and simple as can be?

Hiding all the clutter would go a long way to making stuff like Resolve more usable, it's fine for professionals who actually need and use 1000 features but when you just want to get a quick turnaround done on a piece of video news journalism or a YouTube edit, it's total overkill central and as for newcomers it's totally baffling for them, and creates a sense of dread. FCP's magnetic timeline is the sort of thing you need to learn and read the manual for, it never felt intuitive compared to Premiere. It doesn't work well for soundtracks, sends stuff out of sync, maybe I was using it wrong but I never figured it out myself and gave up on it (like a good proportion of the pro market did). The situation today is we have a few iPad apps that are vaguely decent and a few Mac NLEs that look like Windows XP apps with too much clutter. But if people have constructive design ideas for an alternative solution I'm all ears 🙂 The EOSHD NLE is already under way and basic prototype exists.

Sounds interesting. I would say that FCP's magnetic timeline is what makes it so fast (once you learn it.) Also that you can hide all the clutter and make it look simple. But I don't want to discourage you on this project. Give it a try. For suggestions, I don't have many but I suppose being able to run on old hardware and old OS version. There are plenty old Mac Pro towers out there from 2010 still working away. Mostly places that do videotape digitizing in standard definition and people running old telecines where the software won't run on new computers. Good luck.

i dont really understand you. whether it’s resolve, premiere or avid mc, all you would need for super basic quick edits are 6 hotkeys: in- and out points, insert, overwrite, next and previous clip. if you want to become a decent efficient editor, you learn the hotkeys for scrubbing, extending clips, cutting left and right from the playhead, moving clips x amount of frames. if you just use those, you will never have to use your mouse, nor a menu, and thus will never feel any perceived bloat. pure user error from your part.

I have one. i dont mind it for when i do road trips. The 15mm olympus lens i mean... Can use it like a lens cap, push the lever and away you go. Although i do worry that ultimately dust or dirt is going to find its way into the lens... takes up no room what so ever. You do get a slightly different look, its a simple lens, i guess you like it or you don't . If your camera has peaking that helps with depth of field i find. Would have liked the 9mm as well but that hasn't eventuated yet. Not so sure about the moon shot, the moon is pretty bright, if your using a tele lens of some kind you dont need to venture too far from a normal iso and shutter speed. I can string a lens combo together of about 950mm on a mft mount, and i can tell you that image of the moon thats been supplied is huge. Be interesting to see how they did it, my money's on this new gopro gaffer taped to a telescope of some kind at least. maybe 1200mm as my images of the moon aren't that big. I'm also willing to bet gopro gave their camera to someone who's heavily invested into astrophotography and got all the gear and said, here have a play with this. Its actually a very nice image of the moon all things considered. I am confident that optimum conditions and fair amount of skill were involved in that photo of the moon. Same with all the other images supplied they all look done under optimum "conditions" Gopro might sell a bunch of these, if all you have to do is gaffer tape it to the back of a telescope and can get similar results. There's plenty of enthusiasts out there who would buy one, however if you have the gear already, you probably have a decent camera already as well... I like the little go pros, i think their pretty cool considering what you can do with them. They are a great little action camera, maybe not a great cinema camera but that comes back to the owner and time and effort and money they want to put into it. My "gripe" with gopro is its all digital, digital stab, digital zoom. I dont like the fisheye too much, so i shoot linear , which is a digital zoom i believe. Now i'm not nocking the digital stab or the zoom per se but there's no optical with gopro if you want optical its up to you to supply your own diopters or other type of " kit ". I would be interested if gopro did do some kind of two lens system like a wide angle and a normal lens that you could twist on and off like the front element does, but i fear with the new gp3 there will be just more digital and an Ai moniker 😉.

I've used Luma Fusion on iPad. I edited some vlogs with it a while back before deciding I didn't like editing on the iPad, but the editor itself worked fine and was really simple/straightforward. They released a MacOS version a while back. I haven't tried it, but I'd guess it's also pretty simple/easy. Yes. 🤦‍♂️. I meant to type "3D lut creator." And yeah, it's a little expensive, but it's a lot of features to implement/compete with, especially if you want editing as well. How many hours of your time would you want to burn for $39/seat? Unless it's making editing decisions for me, a simpler editor wouldn't fix the thing that costs me the most time in Resolve. The other things which end up costing me time are things that I should just figure out the hotkey for at some point (like "shift everything on timeline after this point back enough to add this clip"). I take it that the cut page in Resolve is also too bloated for you? I think it's specifically intended for faster turnaround stuff like you describe. I've paid it almost no attention beyond that. The MacOS preview tool allows cropping and resizing. I use it all the time.

Preview can crop and gives you finer controls for the size of the file on export. I think it can be used as a fairly usable, basic and lightweight photo fidgeter. unless you need to straighten your image But a similar type of idea for video seems to be missing. Aside from trimming and rotating individual clips.

What if you want to crop as well? Quick Actions are too limited. Photoshop is too bloated. The in between solutions are all a bit weak.

On Mac, you can do this in finder. Right click you image(s) > Quick Actions > Convert Image. From there you can pick JPEG, PNG or HEIF - and then a few size options. The 'Actual Size' JPEG option just turned my 28mb 5152 x 7728 sample photo into 7.3mb 5152 x 7728. While 'Large' made it 182kb 853 x 1280 It's a slow afternoon, so i tested small too and it went to 26kb 213 x 320. --- The Quick Actions also lets you trim video and a few other things, but obviously no real editing LUTs, cuts or... butts. A lightweight NLE does sound pretty appealing

Also on the image editing side, I might do something there. I use Photoshop basically for resizing JPEGs 99% of the time. It's total overkill.

is the '3d lut editor' this one https://3dlutcreator.com Costs 99 quid? Seems very pricey when Resolve can be used as a lut creator for free. Still, a sledgehammer to crack a nut. And then you have iMovie which is a toy hammer to crack a nut! I'm thinking of something else... Maybe an NLE and LUT Creator all in one for $39 which does away with all the bloatware and speeds up your workflow for 99% of edits. I have used Luma Fusion, a touch screen tablet / phone app - I don't know about you but I hate NLEs on a phone, you just don't have enough screen real-estate.

I see Ironglass have been rehousing Soviet medium format as well they have 8 lenses going from 30mm f3.5 to 150 f2.8

It is a long time since I looked at it but Openshot seemed like a good idea at the time. https://www.openshot.org

Handy material here that has become buried in the archive

Personally, I like simple. These days I fret that features get in the way of artistry. Too often I focus on craft and don't invest enough in the art of it all. So maybe a basic tool is best? I don't know. I can tell you the best film I ever made was with FCP 7.

Indeed, though "Ursa Cine LF" would be a totally fine name. There's just no need to say "12K" on there. For the other? "Ursa Cine 65" since the 65mm sensor is going to be a whole lot more exciting to most people than telling them it has a 17k sensor that they will mostly use in 8K or 4K mode. Just about the only competition on the market, the rental-only Alexa 65, is a 6.5k camera. That is, of course, unless you're selling something to be used for projecting on The Sphere in Vegas. Then I guess there's a single camera that's competing - like literally just one body, as far as I know - that 18K thing with the 75x75mm or so sensor. I've been a bit tempted a few times now to try to rig up something with a medium format ground glass or a 4x5 GG, similar to an old DOF adapter for camcorders. I remember Gale had the Forbes70 which worked that way and there have been some 8x10 projects to do the same, like the FZero from Salazar and the one that Media Division put together. I should probably just go through my pile of project cameras to see if I have a pretty clean GG around and just do it...

At least Red choose some catchy names V-Raptor,Red Raven,Dragon,Helium,Gemini,Monstro,Komodo,Gemini,Red Epic

I'm not sure what "a modern approach" is, but iMovie and Luma Fusion are both pretty straightforward and unbloated from what I remember - and they both run on Mac. I'm not sure if either one has a lut editor, but 3d lut editor has been pretty good for a while now, hasn't it?

It tries to do too much, and dates originally to 2004. A modern approach is needed. New ideas welcome!

Shotcut (a free cross-platform NLE) might give some inspiration -- good clean UI which is intuitive to use if you just keep the dockable panels you really need: https://shotcut.org/

Sometimes it feels as if Resolve is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and as for Adobe... less said the better 🙂 What is missing, I feel, is a quick turnaround NLE for the Mac. My plan is to make a couple of apps: - A Quick NLE, no fuss, no magnetic timeline BS, just works - 8K,4K, ProRes, HEVC support, GPU accelerated, LUT support and a nice built in colour grading tool - A LUT Creator, import a RAW DNG Photo or V-LOG Video, and use colour grading tools to get the perfect look, export this as a Realtime LUT for your Lumix S9 or S1R II, and export as a plain old .cube LUT What features do you think are needed most? Bear in mind we're not throwing the kitchen sink in there like Resolve. My priorities so far are...Apple style UI, quick to use, GPU accelerated, no stuttering, a much more lightweight app than Resolve, Premiere or FCPX which does one thing really well and that's edit really well and without a lot of clutter. Suggestions welcome.