Leaderboard

I sold my Tokina/baby Angénieux 28-70 f/2.6-2.8 just a few months ago, I wasn't ever using it after I moved to a pretty much all Zeiss Contax lineup (the 35-70mm f3.4 on a speedbooster is an incredible lens, just amazing, I can't wait to see what it looks like on the new BMPCC). But the Tokina does have very beautiful, filmic rendering. Basically I sold it because I had an EF version (so no way to change the aperture) and that drove me crazy since it is quite soft wide open. Little did I know, if I had just held onto it for a few months... anyway, here's a pic that shows off the Tokina's bokeh and special look for those that are curious:

In this video you can compare Sigma 18-35 and Tokina 28-70. Shot with Ursa Mini 4.6K. Tokina is very filmic (starts at 2:36).

It's all gone a bit focus group. I think consumers want the longer zoom, and to hell with the built in ND or fast aperture. What the slower aperture essentially does is give you a smaller sensor, so not much point of it being 1" in terms of the look now. May as well be small chip. I would have liked a longer zoom but not 200mm at all costs. 24-135mm F2.0-2.8 would have been great. For the money, and 6th model, I'd expect a bit more of an ergonomic flourish of creativity, the old form factor is very tired and the Panasonics are a lot nicer to use especially LX100.

Just ordered the Tokina 28-70 2.6-2.8 from ebay for £130, not bad for that zoom range. Eventually I think ill put together a set of primes to compliment it, maybe Contax Zeiss or Leica R's...

I'm going to use with the new Pocket 4K vintage full frame manual lenses with Metabones Speed Booster XL 0.64x (Nikon to M4/3). 1. Tokina 28-70 f/2.8, with BMPCC4K (crop 1.9) and 0.64x booster it covers 34-85mm f/1.8. 2. Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2. 3. And I would like to get Angenieux 70-210mm f/3.5.

Long and heavy lenses are notoriously harder to balance, no matter the gimbals' maximum payload. If you choose a one-hand-gimbal, you might want to keep it lighter, if possible. Follow my (very personal, wedding videographer owning Ronin M and Zhiyun Crane) reasoning or find your own arguments: 1. The angled roll-motor of the Ronin S doesn't obstruct the cameras' display. Now it seems that this lets you forgo an additional external monitor. But does it? Depends on whether you just need to frame the image - and that's possible even with the considerably lighter Moza or Zhiyun with the motor in front of the screen - or, other story, if you need to focus manually. Because you have no or a poor autofocus. In this case, most camera displays won't be sufficient anyway. Probably. And you needed a free hand (one-hand-gimbal literally) or someone else to pull the focus (watch the promotion video). Heavy gimbal, heavy lens, field monitor, follow focus add up to a total weight not suitable for longer shots and longer shoots. 2. What is it that you expect from gimbal shots? Majestic crane moves or buttery smooth dolly shots through empty architecture? These are possible even with heavier setups (because they run just seconds), but they require more or less the same skills a steadicam operator must have, hashtag ninja walk. Also be aware that the Ronin S also stabilizes just three axis, and that there are more: (these flexible arms can also be added to existing gimbals, see here). 3. But there is another purpose. You can follow a person. If you consider yourself a good handheld operator, you won't need to practice an awful lot with a good gimbal, set up well (see next point). There are roughly two scenarios for a wedding: shooting static telephoto images with very long lenses, from a tripod or handheld with IBIS and OIS, and do the rest (we are talking *hours*, therefore you will learn to hate every unnecessary ounce!) with the gimbal and 24-35 mm full frame equivalent focal lengths. 50% of all footage you see in films and TV shows fall into that latter category. 4. Well set up means the gimbal will ignore little shakes (I think that's called dead zone) and smooth out your big, intentional moves. As of now, there is a limit to the speed of pans and tilts, because if you move too fast, the gimbal will of course follow, but the movement will look robotic (because that's what it is). The Ronin S advertises a 'sports mode', and again, watch the official promo: I think this feature is the most outstanding one of this gimbal. But one has to be aware how it should be used. Shooting a staged breakdance? Fine. Documentary style (like a wedding)? I'm afraid then it was too heavy.

Well I plan on using my old standby Panny14-45mm , and the later G7 kit lens 14-140mm. Both are pretty crazy good copies I will never sell. Both just seem to work when you need something to get the job done. Not the most romantic lenses in the world, but they make stuff happen. But yeah a person needs some fast MF Cine lenses. Wide ones at that. Trouble is all the above lenses are sort of too good for a Cine look. So I have found the cheaper the lens sometimes the better they look. Old Yashica,, Vivitar stuff is interesting, more so than Canon L glass to me. I sort of like to get a lot of character from lenses more than using a LuT, or filters to achieve. Soft edges, distortion, etc. isn't always a bad thing.

I agree that a lot of stills lenses are rubbish to manual focus with. When I first started in my role as an "Olympus Visionary" I told my friends at Olympus the same thing. I actually have met with the optical and lens designers at their R&D facility in Japan and we talked very specifically about this as I mostly use manual focus when I shoot with these cameras. The Olympus PRO lenses now have hard stops when in MF, and you seamlessly transition from focus by wire continuous and then into MF mid shot if you want via the way you pull the clutch back. I love that Olympus have really tried to address this issue. So far the 7-14, 12-40, 12-100 IS, the 40-150, the 17mm, 25mm and the 45mm 1.2 PRO primes all have this manual focus feature. The focus ring itself is all gigantic and actually feels great too, its a true mechanical feel. JB

Hey thanks! I definitely dig the contrast you have added and will take a look at those adjustment layers..suppose it was just a taste thing when i was exporting. Im constantly trying to shape a look for myself ha. As far as the grain goes, i use gorilla grain. For these its at 100% opacity, but i use the hsl qualifier in resolve and key the grain out of the shadows which helps it be less overwhelming and is actually more how true film grain responds.

Yep that camera is really expensive. If they had included a mic input and the fast f/1.8 I would seriously think of spending the cash, but as is , the camera is a hard sell for video. I believe there is still market for large sensor compacts. 1"-m4/3 sensors are quite unique in the sense that they offer the best balance between size & quality. For example an action camera version of the RX100VI with a fixed bright lens would be great as well. LX200 can't arrive fast enough. Add mic input and the new 20MP sensor and it should be enough. I wouldn't even mind if it offered oversampled high bitrate 1080p instead of 4K.

Because I primarily shoot on Samsung NX cameras with dumb adapters, so no electronic control of the aperture is possible. Originally I was hoping to get a Nikon version of the Tokina, which has the physical aperture wheel present on the lens, unlike the EF version, which is electronic only. The 35-70 is absolutely my favorite lens at the moment. It's absurdly sharp and certainly has that special Zeiss "je ne sais quoi." I've been meaning to post a bunch of samples of all my new CZ lenses over in the lens thread, because I've been so thrilled with the quality and character (right now I have the 50 1.7, the 60 2.8, the 85 2.8, and the 35-70, which is on my camera the majority of the time.) The push-pull nature of the lens is actually a huge plus for the type of shooting that I do, which is primarily run and gun corporate, university and wedding stuff. It's really convenient to be able to both zoom and focus with the same hand at the same time, rather than switching between two different rings like a more modern zoom. It is also parfocal, assuming you can zoom without moving the focus ring, which just takes a bit of practice. The focus ring on my copy is buttery smooth, and still has a very long throw which makes nailing focus easy. That's where the 3.4 aperture is also kind of nice (effective 2.4 w/speedbooster) because I have the tendency to always shoot wide-open, I can't help it, so the little bit slower lens means I'm not fighting with crazy shallow depth of field as much as I would with something faster.

Cover area comparison of BMPCC4K with and without speed booster 0.64x.

The robotic movement I think can be squarely blamed on the gimbal. From what I can see, the 90% of basecam gimbals suck at smooth movement. Maybe it's from it's origins as a stabilizer system on drones, but the motion part is very artificial, but the stabilization works. By smooth movement, I mean watch the beginning and end of pans, tilts, or other movement. That's where it looks robotic when it "snaps" into place, or had weird ramping. But you can try zhiyun stuff. I started using zhiyun crane, still using crane v2. I think their custom solution does smooth motion a lot better, so for the average person it's easier to use. But zhiyun lacks the other featueres for useage on vehicles or fast movement, you will notice it reacts to gforces by tilting. You can test by using even 50mm and running forward, you will see the frame tilt down. Even though I'm leaning towards preordering (I just cancelled but thinking of ordering again), I'm dreading the poor robotic movements I'm assuming they haven't tweaked out. In regards to the heavy lenses... It really depends on what camera and why you are using it. I don't think there's much of a point in using the sigma's unless you camera supports AFC with them, otherwise you cant keep anything in focus with shallow dof. If you aren't using it for shallow dof, then there's no point in using a heavy f1.8 lens! You can YouTube videos of moza air and crane 2 showing them working with sigma 18-35mm. I don't think the 50-100 will balance though. I had a faulty tilta g2x and it did balance a7iii and Sony GM 70-200, but because the teles are so heavy you have to rebalance if you switch lenses which I won't do during run and gun. I'm used to gh5 and the Trinity of 7-14, 12-35 and 35-100. You just need to slide the plate back and forth and you're good to go (not perfectly rebalanced but good enough). Unfortunately there's nothing like that for full frame (in terms of similar lens size and easy lens change on gimbal), but hopefully Tamron will make something magical happen with a lightweight 2.8 zoom tele. My suggestion is get a used crane or crane v2 and see if it's your thing, they are so cheap now... Like I'm sure you can find one for like 200. If you find it useful then you can go from there.

Wish they'd gone for a shorter zoom range and faster F stop like the earlier models. And STILL no mic input. Sigh. The RX100 line up would be so perfect as a vlog machine if only it had a mic input to go with a flip up screen

I picked up a C100 again recently, I had dumped it previously after going 4K.. but shifted back after realizing i still deliver just about everything in 1080p and that the C100 gives one of the best 4K downsampled 1080p IQ (especially when externally recording to ProRes). Most TV channels around the globe still broadcast 720p / 1080i. And most hollywood movies today are still shot/projected in DCI 2K i believe. I do appreciate 4K material when i find it worth it ( sci-fi blu-ray or a sports game on a big screen) and of course on monitors for editing but in most viewing cases i find 1080p/2K still perfectly adequate. As for 5D3 ML Raw, it certainly has a great mojo.. let's not forget we're talking 14-bit lossless.. allows for some really good grading/pushing:

Im also thinking about the XL + Tokina 28-70, I (regrettably) sold my copy but might look for another.

And the filter stack.

To say that those Pana/Oly system lenses with very soft fly-by-wire focus (usually ideal for fast and quiet AF) are 'suboptimal' is way too weak. They're completely useless here.

Have you tried Resolve 15 Public Beta? It is slowly becoming more and more like Premiere in terms of the editing interface and features, but without the performance issues. I am highly impressed. The purpose of editing is to trim the fat. Why not start doing some editing and remove those files from the project that you no longer need.

Me too, although I can use it on the cameras I already have, so if it doesn't work for some reason on the p4k, it's not so much of an issue for me. I also have a metabones adapter with no glass, so I image I can also use that on the p4k with no problems. If both adapters work, I'll essentially double my lens collection, giving each lens a little further reach with the non speedbooster. As for lenses, I'll mostly be using the Sigma 18-35 1.8 and Canon 50mm 1.8. They're both great lenses and give me all the focal lengths I need with lots of light. Especially if I keep both adapters with me. When I need something more discreet, I'll more than likely be using my trusty old Sigma 30mm 1.4 with the speedbooter. I find for holidays and more walk about kind of stuff, it's the perfect focal length and looks great, even with the worst lighting you can imagine. Especially since the booster makes it f1.0.

I believe this is a misconception. Certainly RAW gives you the ability to push colors around more after the fact, but it still seems like there's an innate look to each camera. Otherwise no one would ever bother with an Alexa, given RED's RAW capabilities. Even with massive budgets and top colorists, RED footage is not really hitting the same highs as the Alexa by most people's standards. To answer your question with the 5D, for me it's the color science. The colors are just so damn pleasing with everything I see. I can't really dynamic range, because I don't think it's all that outrageous compared to current offerings. Certainly there are sharper cameras out there. The colors though, I definitely dig em'.

Well I think the main reason for ML Raw on the 5D mk III is how sharp it can be. Other than the 1DC most all Canon video footage to me is Way too soft. Now I am not against soft video footage at times at all. I just want to be able to Control how soft it is, not be stuck with it for Everything. I guess the next be thing about Raw is that if you goof up WB you can change it at your will. And I don't know about you but that is one of my hardest areas to really pull of even close let alone perfect. To make it consistent. And there is no noise reduction, no baked in stuff like every manufacturer has. So a clean slate as they say. But if wanted you have killer Canon Color Science, and the AF is not shabby at all. Not DPAF, but.. And there is the 12 bit date rate. Hell that alone is worth the price of admission. Sure it is kind of a data hog but wow what you have the ability to be able to push, and push hard. And I think it is the satisfaction that with Raw the finial output is what you created, your signature, your fingerprints are on all over it if you want to take it that far. You are not trying to Undo what someone else likes, it is what You like if you desire. And with a LuT you can just click on it and grade fast if needed. But it can be totally Your LuT if you want. You can stand out, not just be part of the same crowd as everyone else. And I know I can go on but you are able to buy a camera for not a lot that can look as good or better than a 1DC, Canon C500. No you are not going to get full 4K, even the 1DC is not, not yet, probably Never with the C Fast card data rate, but it can do a easy 2K and more. That is impressive for the money. What the heck FF Cine looking camera can we afford. Eh none. Well the 5D ML can make that happen.

How much would you pay for Digital Bolex...ProRes raw!!!?!?!

I recently found this little trick for WB in post. In the tutorial, Larry Jordan uses FCPX but it can be used with any editor that has a vectorscope. https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcp-x-a-simple-but-amazing-color-correction-trick-video/ Scroll down to see the video.

Very lovely stills!

Great stills from David today; he just got Firecrest NDs, which are the reference choice for full spectrum NDs (how the conversion was done), and shoots All-I 4K to a new Angelbird V90 SD card

Viltrox EF-m2 0.71x Tokina 28-70mm f/2.6 Possibly Sigma 18-35 1.8.

Oh yes; definitely the WB sliders (or eyedropper); it a whole different bit o' code

I still shoot pocket Raw @ 1080p over the GH4 @ 4K. Better image in my opinion.

I was wondering those who have pre-ordered or planning to buy this camera, which lens/lenses have in mind to pair it with bmpcc4k?

Looking back I owe everyone a big thank-you for using the forum and taking an interest in the blog, it is amazing what it has turned into with so little effort on my part I think this place must be the only website on the entire internet without adverts. Long may it continue like that. Got a GX9 arriving tomorrow... about time I did a review of something cheap with the big shift to high-end stuff. Let me know what you'd like to see in the review of it.

Thank you! The more time passes, the more I realize this is my favorite video production related forum. It's got the perfect amount of users. Not too many. A core of regular users that keeps the forum pretty active, with a nice low signal to noise ratio, content wise.

I pretty much shoot 4K for good 1080p content. The short I shot on the Ursa 4.6K I was shot at 4.6K scope 4:2:2 I wish I had shot in 2K 4:4:4 instead. Especially with a 2K DCP delivery. Color and motion over Resolution every time.

A few more stills - this time no print luts...just 16mm grain and a slight curve per Alex's document recommendation. The more I look at these images and watch 16mm films on Vimeo, the more I feel like the color characteristics are really reminiscent of 16mm. Pretty neat! Not to say the images don't model the Alexa well, but the Alexa is also modeling film for the most part. I can't get over how good your highlight roll off is in this lut. My one question would be, do you recommend un-ganging the rgb curve in Resolve and just doing a luma curve, or should I keep it ganged?? I saw this 16mm film this morning:

TLDR; always upload in 4k if you can Basically: if people aren't subscribed to you or have a direct link to your video, how is someone going to find your content? Google needs to assign a score to YouTube content so it can determine what to show people. For your particular niche (niche being the genre of video your viewers are interested in,) you are competing with other videos. It's safe to assume good content does well with viewers and thus your channel and videos get a better ranking. But there's a whole chicken and egg thing at the start. If you don't have many views or videos, how do you get a better score to drive in more views? And then with very competitive niches (fashion, makeup, tech reviews, let's plays, etc) just having amazing content isn't good enough, you need an edge to beat out your competition for views. Uploading in 4K and beyond, creating subtitles, using whatever best practices YouTube outlines for creators, all give your channel and videos just a few more points. And that can make all the difference in getting views. More views, more people see your work, and if you want, more ad revenue.

Thanks everyone, it's great to get such a helpful mixture of technical and more philosophical tips. As @OliKMIA says, it's the creative process, and I am definitely still working it out for myself but I have got a lot of elements down. I shoot a lot, and @mercer and @IronFilm are right that it shouldn't get in the way of the trip, but for me the logic is actually a bit different. I like shooting, the challenge of it, the way that it forces you to actively look, rather than just passively drift through situations. I also use photography if I'm a bit bored too as it's fun to try and challenge yourself about how to have as much variety in your B-roll for example, which is great if you're in-transit between locations. Also, I think I shoot a lot of clips because I want to enjoy my holiday and so in a way I'm shooting while thinking about my holiday instead of shooting trying to think about the final edit. I'm also shooting in-case something happens in much the same way as a street photographer would find a background and then frame and pre-focus and just wait for someone to walk through the scene, but in video you need to be rolling if you want the whole shot. It makes me far less efficient, but in a sense I'm trading off enjoyment of the holiday vs work in the edit suite. Also, I like to be spontaneous and let the holiday dictate what I shoot, rather than pre-visualising or planning as @mercer and @Don Kotlos mentioned and then making the holiday fit more into the shooting. I also don't like to direct, so these trips are mostly fly-on-the-wall (or massive-camera-on-the-wall as the case may be!) On this whole trip I might have asked someone to stand somewhere or to look at the camera only a handful of times. The last thing a family holiday needs is a bossy photographer ordering everyone about all the time I think I've got the technical aspects of editing that @tellure mentioned mostly in place, I use markers, scrub through longer footage, use an editing codec (720p Prores Proxy proxy files are smooth as silk on my MBP), and removing useless clips. I got this editing process from Kraig Adams at Wedding Film School who did a BTS of his whole editing process (10 x 1hr YT videos from nothing to finished films) and what I liked about it is that you don't spend time looking at 'bad' clips again and again, but @Don Kotlos is absolutely right about it being the "brute force" method, and that's definitely what it feels like!! The other approach that @NX1user and @Mark Romero 2 mention is that instead of starting with everything and deliberately taking out the bad stuff to only pull in the good stuff. This makes total sense considering that only a small percentage of the footage makes the final cut. The challenge I have with this approach is that I think I will start off finding some good footage that suggests a particular style of edit but then later on I'll find more footage that suggests a different style of edit, and now I've reviewed a bunch of shots with one style in mind but am now going in a different direction and so many decisions were made incorrectly. I think this would work well for videos that are pretty straight-forward, or for people who can hold a lot of information in their heads and can remember what footage there was and kind of hold multiple edits in their head as they're working. This is absolutely not me!! Breaking it down into bits as @Anaconda_ says is a good idea, and publishing them to keep up motivation is also a good idea - thanks @User. I'm still not sure if I'll end up with just one final video or multiples. In terms of the final output I'm also undecided. I've previously condensed week trips into sub-5 minute videos, but this one had a lot more locations and activities. I've thrashed this out with a couple of friends and we came to the conclusion that the length is irrelevant as long as it stays interesting - I've seen a 25 minute home movie from a 5 week trip through Europe that stayed interesting, so it can be done for home videos, plus there's the "super vlog" format that seems to work really well too. Getting more understanding about what my audience wants would be good. Unfortunately it's mostly relatives and friends that are in other cities / timezones and aren't up for critiquing my film skills so that is likely to be limited. Music is important too, but I don't think that starting with it would work for me. I think my editing process is more 'emergent' where my review of the footage (however tedious that is) gives me a sense of what happened and the vibe, then I can get a bit of a high-level view, which obviously you can't from 1100 clips, and then I bring the music in, and then the structure comes from that, and then the clips kind of conform to the music. It's not a straight relationship between the clips and the music. Perhaps the most crucial part of the whole picture is motivation and creative energy. As @tellure and @jhnkng suggest, it's limited and needs to be managed. I know that procrastinating is a sign to manage my energy - unfortunately I feel half-way to burn out just living normal life (full-on kids, full-on job, full-on family, etc etc) and I will look back on a month gone by and be annoyed that I didn't do any real video stuff (camera tests don't count!) but the truth is that I was just tired for the whole time. I'm trying to improve other parts of my life but it's slow going and I want to still be able to share some of these moments.

Most couples in the UK would be happy with four hours CCTV footage and a few snaps from a mobile phone. A bonus reel containing shots of uncle Alf rolling around drunk in the hotel fountain completes everybody's joy. Never again will I pour my heart into a wedding film.

In addition to the useful (and immature / tasteless) contributions above, another thing would be to shoot a huge amount. Faster cuts means more shots. Think about it like this, if shots are held for 1s instead of 4s each and every one of those 1s shots are the 'right' moment (framing smile etc) and are in a different location then that means you need 4 times as many shots. TBH you're either a genius or you're crazy to try and apply this to a wedding scenario, and I really hope that the couple (and guests) really understand what it involves. If you've got a couple who are having a simple outdoor ceremony and are willing to do lots of location changes and poses etc for an hour or two (or four!) then that's totally cool, but if you're going to try and apply this type of film-making to a traditional wedding then you're either going to get normal shots and not create something like this or you're going to interrupt their wedding day a huge amount, and potentially both. Good luck - it's a beautiful style, although I would have thought that IS of some kind would have kept the hand-held look but cut out the sharper jitters making a nicer final product.