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OK, we open a DJI drone shop in one of the Canadian border towns and Americans come across, buy one but only take the controller back with them. As soon as they are over the border they message us and we switch their drone on, put it on the roof of the shop and then they fly the fucker over the border themselves.

They're everywhere, and are often just normal TVs rotated 90 degrees In shopping malls Some are pretty big Some are pretty tall too, presumably for narrower spaces Outdoors Bus stops In shop windows etc.

Don't forget that there is a silent army of people who are making work for clients. I am in a number of private groups with professionals (shooting corporate, advertising/PR, etc) and things like open gate are absolutely critical for those amongst them doing commercial work. I thought that Cams video on open gate was actually really good and explained it well. Basically every camera argument is people saying "I definitely need the things I use, and no-one needs the things I don't use".

Finally someone has done it https://www.benro.com/en/prelaunch/NE1-nd-filter.html It has a nifty bluetooth controller with auto-AE as well. Curious to see how nice it is to use, but no word on pricing yet.

It worths mentioning G9II, a sort of GH7 in a S5 body.

GH5 GH4 EM10iii OM-1 5Dii XPRO2 XT-5 P1100 DSC-RX10 iPhone15 iPhone12 Xiaomi12 Ultra DJI Mavic Pro GoPro Hero All those different cameras were used to make our latest indy documentary on-and-off over the last 3 years. We finally finished post-production (for real this time) last month. Not to mention all the different ridiculous vintage lenses and modern lenses employed along the way. So that happened. My advice? Yeah, don't use so many cameras...and then try to make all that cohere somehow with no legitimate color grading skills... Surprisingly, I found the EM10iii footage the most pleasant looking color-wise when exposed correctly.

This is one of the 485 reasons why I look at all the latest FF cameras and just shrug then go back to my MFT cameras. Life without camera GAS is a very different experience..

I, for one, would like to welcome Zhiyun's marketing team and/or their spam bot to this forum. As to that specific light, if it doesn't come in an ugly leather case and have Cam Mackey's signature all over the light and all of its accessories, is it even worth considering?

I don’t know of anyone in my industry who does not shoot Sony. Except me, call sign Maverick.

Well I just ordered an EM1X, sigma 18-35 and speedbooster off of MPB. Trading in my Nikon Z6 setup so I am almost breaking even. Will update the group on my thoughts on the camera. Seems like a beast.

I’ll write a spirited defence of the X-Half when I’ve got more time but suffice to say that having bought one and actually used it they have exposed themselves yet again as knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

In terms of colour in LOG and rec.2020 the only difference between cameras these days is how easy (or otherwise) they are to grade, for example C-LOG on the old Canon 1D C was so easy, it only needed the addition of contrast and barely any colour grading at all to look cinematic. Now there are massive differences between LUTs compared to between LOG curves and colour. So when you see all these reviews, tests and comparisons you are just seeing a LUT! It's almost comical really, nobody gets under the skin of what the camera is doing - they're just putting their grading skills and LUTs on show. And the codecs are all so good... no more 8bit banding. I compared the Sony a1 SLOG3 H265 8K to Nikon Z9 NRAW 8K and there was nothing in it really, not even in terms of noise and shadow detail. You could do just as big a grade or white balance shift on the H265 footage as you could with NRAW. Now the way I like to think of RAW as useful is as follows: - As a way to bypass poor camera image processing... Hardly needed now... In the old days, light and day difference between something like 5D Mark II compressed H.264 and uncompressed Magic Lantern Raw (in Cinema DNG), even at 1080p it was a different league of image quality. - As a way to increase image quality with drawback of huge file sizes. Now we get if we're lucky a 1-2% increase in image quality for a 1000% increase in file size (over H.265 10bit) - As a way to turn off in-camera sharpening and white balance (do it in post). However image processing has got so flexible you can turn sharpening off in LOG... look how smooth and natural Canon LOG looks on the old 1D C or EOS R6 III 10bit H.265 for example - A file format to show to clients that says you're serious 🙂 And we all know why the majority of videographers are fawning over raw delivery whereas ARRI ALEXA DPs casually go round doing it all in ProRes That is another comparison the YouTube bros refuse to do well... the ALEXA ProRes vs ARRI RAW and Canon LOG vs RAW I haven't seen a single good comparison!

I have the 35/50/75 Saturn in E mount and haven't experienced any focusing issues on the A1, and of course that's with no Desqueeze support. It does have a bit better EVF than the Panasonic cameras, but I haven't found the EVF to be a night and day difference. I own the 35 & 50 Saturn in L mount and have had great results on the S1RII. The 35 isn't quite as well corrected as the longer lenses, so it has a bit of character, especially against the light. Still, none of the Sirui lenses can rival the results I get with my favorite anamorphic adapters, but there is something to be said for simplicity and reliability. Also - I'm not sure if the S5II was included, but the recent update for the S1II/S1RII now provides 1.6x desqueeze. Still attached from the 35 Saturn on S1RII.

I think people see politics these days as a form of show-biz entertainment soap opera drama, what a surprise they are going to get when the frogmen smash their door in next.

I had a play with the Nikon Zr today and quite liked it, it's a capable, good value for money Sigma-Fp style camera with very good autofocus and finally a screen with which you can see what is in focus and what isn't. Well done Japan for going large after 25 years of 3.0 inches. It's the sort of camera that would be very exciting back in the day of the DSLR video revolution to say the least... Nowadays though, I find other stuff more exciting. Also the screen tilting mechanism sucks... I'd far rather they'd drop the YouTube vlog-style swivel screens on a camera like this and have a standard tilt screen that is ON AXIS with the fucking lens, and with it being so large it really feels unbalanced stuck out at the side and blocking the ports. In a way the Zr feels like a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K but done well. But it doesn't feel very high-end, even if the image is. Also I miss the EVF and think the Z6 Mark III is even more bang for buck. So yeah, doesn't set my hair on fire but it's going to be a very decent buy for a lot of people.

The screen is the gateway drug. I am much weaker than @BTM_Pix and after handling one briefly for 15 minutes ordered it 3 days later. It's coming tomorrow. I'm not bothered by the "lackluster" DR results or anything. I also bought it in hopes the firmware updates will add even more value, which is a big no-no but I heard ProRes LT is confirmed coming.

A couple more stills shot with the Sirui 35. Even though I have quite a few other options, this lens usually stays on my S1RII because it’s so versatile.

No more of this slop @zlfan, thanks

I've been away from this forum for a while, since around the time I got my XT3 and thought that was the endgame camera for hybrid shooting. In many ways, I was right, until this summer when it dropped and cracked the screen. The first and hopefully last time I've ever dropped a camera. I sent it away to be repaired, however, after paying the €200 to replace the screen, I went to collect it and was informed by the front desk that they don't actually have the parts for the repair, so they've upgraded me to an XT5 at no extra cost. That's a service I can get behind and they've for sure earned a life-long customer with that! Anyone got any starter tips, or lesser known, but great features to look outfor with this camera?

By the way the collapse in price of the vintage stuff is extraordinary, you can get an Iscorama close to 500 euros now, almost back to 2010 pre-DSLR video prices

Yeah, thanks this shot is exactly what I'm talking about - the muted way it handles the sun is not what a good cinema anamorphic should look like. They don't have the big stretched ovals in the horizontal flare, the fatter flare lines and blooming. All these kids putting down pretty significant $$$$ for all this sterile stuff from China No question is it more practical though.... But better image it ain't 🙂

Nikon ZR vs Arri Alexa Mini Color (R3D NE, N-Log, Log C) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgJGK3YpIx0

I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn how many movie theaters are still projecting in 2K. Movie theater projectors are expensive as hell and overall profits for theaters are down compared with 10 years ago. Exhibitors aren't going to rush out to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on anything that doesn't have a direct positive impact on their profits. Being able to count the pores in the lead actor's skin doesn't put asses in seats or sell more candy.

Here is some completely unbiased coverage of Scotland’s previous meetings with Brazil.

Vimeo is in the process of deleting ALL my videos, due to their new policy of deleting their entire library of content for ALL non-current users without an active Pro paid subscription. Also, about 90% of my Vimeo was nurfed by the copyright music shambles, where Vimeo did the 3-strikes thing and they delete your entire account. So to avoid that, back in the day, I just decided to make these videos private, and unlisted. I have not got round to putting it all on YouTube yet, but perhaps I should?

I'm talking about LOG video, it really does depend on the user more than the camera how the colours come out, especially as the modern range of gear now have a similar high level of codecs. So the Z-LOG = S-LOG = F-LOG they're all very much the same sort of thing. Whenever you see this LOG footage on YouTube, it's been graded by the user, either with a LUT or with their own grading skills in Resolve. Yet all the comments are like this... WOW the camera has great colour science, blah blah blah. And i's the same with RAW... All the sensors are now at a high level, similar dynamic range and so on. If anything they are now too good and are moving AWAY from the look of film. As for colour science... If you shoot JPEG or rec.709 video, then what the camera is doing matters far more. But in LOG they are all using a very similar wide colour gamut, and similar LOG curve, similar white balance, it is only the 8bit side that still has a big variation between Film Simulations, Photo Styles and Creative Looks. So just bear in mind next time you see footage on YouTube that the LUT is doing 99.99% of the colour you're seeing not the camera.

I have a colleague from Kansas that use to do second unit for Malik back in the 70’s and this anecdote is right on target. My buddy’s job was to wander around the set’s region and find shots of bugs.

Especially with so much competition, and smaller cameras.

Well in the newer cameras (S1II and S1RII) it opens up certain data heavy codecs that are not available in SD but I think with the S1R, it was more a case of having a more robust (and cheaper!) card option? I had mine set up writing to both for peace of mind insurance but beyond that, no other needs.

"You reach a level where that 5% more cannot justify the 10, 20x the price." true

As the saying goes it's same as a Leica SL2 inside, so $800 is a real bargain. The S1 / S1R ergonomics are alright, bit too heavy and big. I prefer Sony 4th gen (a7 IV onwards) in that respect, but the S1R really did feel and look like a high-end camera when it came out unlike the new stuff.

Cheap zoom lenses (and especially kit-zooms) are often the BEST lenses. I wrote a whole thread on it here including examples and comparisons, but the summary is: They're cheaper than almost any alternative They're flexible and very fast to use, because zooming is always faster than changing primes They improve your edits because you can get greater coverage and variety of shots in the same amount of time / setups They are in the "sweet spot" between being too sharp and looking clinical and being too vintage, but their aberrations are often actually very aligned with the qualities of vintage lenses people want, just dialled down to a modest amount They have smaller apertures so are easier to focus / less prone to focus errors and don't need as much ND in brighter situations They often have native AF and are kept updated with firmware updates They often have OIS Those with variable apertures are much closer to being constant DOF, where the more you zoom in the smaller the aperture gets, counteracting the effects of the longer focal-length, which makes your footage more consistent They don't get a lot of love online, but that's because most of the discussion online is about the things that are THE MOST of something (the sharpest, the newest, the biggest, the most expensive, etc) and being cheap and good is only really attractive to people who actually shoot in the real world and where a happy middle ground is desirable. My most used lens is a variable aperture zoom lens, despite me owning many much "better" lenses.

Liked the results mine produced on the stills side and the 5k was special. The only thing that annoyed me really was the different ergos to the S1H, especially the position of the on/off switch, but a great bit of kit and exceptional value used as is the S1H!

Made a lowball offer on ebay and scored the “Vintage Lumix” S1R kit for $800 US this week. I have a book project and need to photograph a lot of oversized art in high megapixel raw so i couldn’t pass it up for the money. Been wanting to try out the 5k mode for a while now and have a whole list of vintage lenses to adapt. As much as I wanted the SL2 or the GFX 100s the prices haven’t come down as much as the Lumix stuff and I can always revisit those later. For now the Original S5 with Ninja V for prores raw and the S1R for high res stills and 5k Super 35 Anamorphic. A little S9 for $800 is next and that will round out my 3 camera budget system for under $2,300, Not bad…

The a7 V is quite a predictable upgrade, nevertheless it's excellent. It does however miss a lot of video features that are present on the Panasonic S1 II / S1R II for a similar price, and the cheaper Nikon Zr / Z6 III... No open gate, no anamorphic, 4K is still maximum resolution, no real-time LUT can be baked into footage, and of course Sony still has no internal RAW codec to call their own. Still, this is a $3000 entry level camera so we can't be too greedy can we? Compared to... Sony a7 IV. The previous a7 IV is now even more of a bargain, it will probably go down even further in price used, most likely to region of $1200. Stills quality the same as a7 V and probably more than most people will ever need. Video quality is excellent but the rolling shutter is on high-side, that's one area as well as the Super 35mm 4K/120p where a7 V has an advantage. Sony a9 III. Well, keep an eye on that used price as it's already not a million miles off what a new a7 V costs... Sony a1. Again, the more powerful option vs a7 V albeit with a few of the new features missing, you can pick one up used in the UK for £2700, same price as a new a7 V. Nikon Zr. THE choice if you want fake raw. Nikon Z6 III. Much more price competitive than the new Sony. Panasonic S1R II. The dark horse. It does more. Price is high though and I much prefer the Sony body design and build quality. Panasonic S1 II. Certainly has the edge on the a7 V for video, if not autofocus. More expensive, but again keep an eye on the used market prices. Overall I think the a7 V is predictable - it's good that we have another partially stacked sensor option though.

I've been rocking 2 secondhand S5s all this year, mainly with my Super Takumars (I've got the 20-60 kit for when I'm feeling lazy) and I've yet to touch the edges of their capabilities.

I don't know what people see in new cameras really. Used ones just so much more exciting. A GFX 100 for £1800. You don't need to buy a single medium format lens for it... Bang on a 10 quid adapter and Minolta 50mm F1.4 for 50 quid and it looks like a Leica M11 with Noctilux F0,95. A7 IV for £1300... What a bargain that is. Does everything. If you need the exotic frame rates and codecs... EOS R5, 4K/120p, 8K raw, £1700. Sony a1... You can go to Japan and the flight pays for itself. The list goes on. I will never buy a new camera or pre-order one again.

First time I see the reference to Fake RAw!!! Since when does the ZR has fake raw, in fact it is as RAW as it can be with zero noise reduction etc. I know the ZR does have its quirks, as lacking some good exposure tool for now in software and micro hdmi in hardware. But the RAW and image quality is their.

I also find this quite baffling, this camera in a FX2 body would have been a great move! I don't get it!

I'm of a more ramshackle mentality, but even my loosey-goosey philosophies hit a limit. fyi, this particular doc was about people that are trying to help conserve raptor migration through SoCal. So, lots of bird shots. Which we don't really do, nor have done. The whole thing became kind of a production experiment. We were only answering to ourselves so we could take risks like that. The scope of the project kept changing, but the finances never did. There was very little money in our pockets, and what we did have we needed to save for travel. And being a seriously-non-affluent-filmmaker, it basically came down to a make-do-as-we-can process. Our personal finances, as well as the various situations of the shoot, were all over the place. We were borrowing/renting lenses and gear in a very haphazard way. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it did not. Meanwhile, the stuff we had in our own collection was inferior. For instance we used a POS Vintage Photax 500mm w/2x extender for an entire season to get a lot of the BIF shots. That was an insanely unfortunate thing to do, but it's what we could afford to have on hand. The biggest bitch was not having a real tripod. We truly wished we had friends/colleagues that could have let us use a pro Sacthler or Miller. More than willing to carry some sort of hefty rig into the wild if it would've allowed smooth shots when filming at a +2000mm FF equiv. That FOV reach is f'in hard to control. As a side note, it was pretty wild running around with birders carrying equipment that was so expensive and professional while us "filmmakers" were often using, basically, consumer toys to grab video. At the end of the day, the images are passable by a certain standard, but when you pixel peep you can tell it's all held together with spit, bubblegum, hopes, and prayers. "f8 and be there" was the mantra we had to talk ourselves into and accept. "The best camera is the one you got." ...That sort of thing.

🤷‍♂️ but as with the OG S1R and it’s 47mp sensor (Tower Jazz was the speculation at the time?), that was unique to the brand, the 44mp S1RII sensor is Panasonic’s own apparently and totally unique as far as I am aware? IMO, it has that mojo that the S1R had in that there is something unquantifiably special about it. I think most reviews/reviewers go mainly off the spec sheet and very very few have proper Panasonic full-frame history/experience but those that actually go and shoot the thing properly, know. I’ve shot 8 weddings spread over 24 days, stills and video with it now and can see immediately when I drop the files on a timeline, how much better they are than those of the S5II/S9. And this is no “because I have one” fanboy hallucination, because I have near zero brand loyalty and if I think something else will do a better job, I owe no company or brand anything. Plus have no YouTube channel, have ever received a free piece of kit or anything, so simply user feedback opinion. Define ‘better’. It’s one of those things that is not any single thing but the sum of several smaller things… As above somewhere or perhaps the other Lumix thread, ‘less muddy’, not that the material coming out of the S5II/S9 is muddy, but using words, it’s the best I can do. I’d throw up some sample footage myself for download except I only shoot log with the baked in Phantom conversion LUT for workflow purposes but the comparison with S5II/S9 is the same because that is what I have done with those cameras since I had them. The pricing was a bit too high straight out of the gate, but I picked mine up for £2700 which was acceptable compared with any kind of brand swap which I looked at which would have been anything from 5-10k based on my needs. So did I remain ‘brand loyal’ purely on cost then? Nope; cost + familiarity/continuity + capability, but starting afresh today, I’d go Nikon with adapter E Mount glass.

I'm talking about in cinema, there's no use case for it. Sports yes.

And when he also did a test of standard Vlog vs Arri log, the standard Vlog looked a lot better to me. Someone else and I forget who now (but it was someone UK) also did a side by side between the S1II and S1RII and all though he made a case that the S1II was better, about 90% of the comments including myself, disagreed. I was playing with building a new custom non-log profile based on a download from LUMIX Lab, but heavy rain has stopped play 😒 Agree as it stays on and there is less risk of touching the glass and getting fingerprints on it or having to put it somewhere safe every time. I also had mine flip down rather than up as it looked less crap. I might go back to it now I back to primarily shooting one video designated unit as I could make a VND work better with that, but as above, was working on a non-log profile with an ISO of just 80 which in most scenarios, would remove any need for ND. But ground to a halt thanks to the crap UK weather...

I'd argue it is the MOST important because without the camera, you don't have a picture. It is the small differences between the latest sensors and codecs that's the unimportant thing. In cinematography, our job isn't to worry about the costumes or set pieces, that's the job of someone else. So lighting and camera are the most important for a DP. What has happened is the gap between the top-end i.e. ARRI and the cheap stuff has closed up. This has been going on ever since the start of the DSLR revolution so it's not a new thing but there's never been a smaller gap that exists now, for example between something like the Alexa 35 and a $1000 used Panasonic S1H. By the way although Magellan has beautiful content and really nice camera-work, the sharpness of it and the deep DOF isn't everybody's cup of tea. It does look a bit too soap opera in parts of that trailer, I think. It looks very different to an IMAX shot film. So there's big differences between formats and lenses still... The same cinema focal length for example on 16mm has always looked vastly different to same on IMAX or large format. Also there are big differences in grading style, camera movement style, and so on. I think most relevant for us is that you don't need to make a massive rig any more to get good results. It's horrible having the weight as a one-man DP. Probably why they used such a small camera on this.

For comparison its his ZR test At 0.1 High S/N ratio, DR is 6 stops. In his R6III test its only 3. Not only he is not curious at all why its so low, but doesn't even notice the drastic fall of it (from 8.26 to 3.04). As a reviewer I would dig into the data. I seriously feel he's not interested about what he's doing anymore. He's like "AF is good". What? How you tested that? Where is the evidence that its good? Canon website says its good, what else you know? And good for who? and why people should pay near $3k to have "good AF" when their current camera already has good AF? I assume R6III AF is "better" than R6II, but I need to see the evidence in practical situations. That's the job of someone who reviews gears for living.

I really do think the camera is the least important aspect these days though. Lighting, set pieces, costumes, locations, etc. are so much more important. Magellan could have been shot on pretty much any camera from the last 10 years and looked just as good, because everything else about it looks good and it's clearly made with skill and talent. 28 Years Later was a huge disappointment for me as a film (28 Days Later is one of my favorite films of all time) but it's still a gorgeous looking film that was shot on iPhones. If it was shot on a ARRI Alexa 35 it wouldn't have changed what I disliked about the film. And watching it, I didn't think to myself "jeez, this would've looked so much better if they'd film it on a better camera." A LOT of gear went into making it look as good as it does, but the camera itself was pretty low on the list, I think.

I saw one part when he was saying that it was a little annoying that they did not get exact time remaining for recording. The same guy said that it was totally unacceptable a cine camera did not give exact time remaining on the card. OK, it is written cine, but it is still a 2200 USD camera, and h265 by its nature is variable bit rate. Simple example on a sitting interview with a static background and the bitrate goes a lot lower, while have dynamic shot with lots of movement or movement in the shots and the bitrate goes up drastically. The just couldn't find any thing to say positive at the camera except about Nikon color and his luts, that he sell!!!

A couple of years ago, I was saying on Forums that Arri would fail, and people were calling me stupid. Ohhh its image is so special, etc etc how peasants could understand this. But the problem is you can't sell a lot of 70-100 000 usd cameras, the market is what it is, even more so when you have very capable cameras coming for much less. You reach a level where that 5% more cannot justify the 10, 20x the price. Before you had the highend market where camera cost/rent is peanuts compared to the overall cost, but that secondary market, the people that used to rent those highend cameras, can now buy a camera that will do 90% of what they need, and will rent only 10% of what they used to do. Arri and most US/german companies are going to be eaten by the Chinese ones. They still live in the rental business, for camera and other gears light lighting etc. The principal of the Chinese is that they will produce affordable equipment for the many, that will help them also produce for few highend that they will sell. You will find Aperture/Godox/Nanlight models that will cost less than a hundred dollars, to 4k led light costing more than 10 000 USD. They will sell a thousands of the 300 USD 300 watt cob monolight, for perhaps every 10 000 USD 5000 watt one. But those thousands of 300 USD lights will help them for R&D for those big lights. same for camera, imagine if Arri had repackage the original Arri LF in a more affordable casing, taking out some features of frame rate and sell it for 10K. They would be selling thousands of them, perhaps at the detriment of their higher ends, but those thousands of 10k models would overall bring so much money.

To expand on it, let's take 24 frames or one second at film rate. With film you have 24 full images, motion blur is kept in each image, not smeared netween them. With ML 5D raw, Alexa Pro Res, Red Raw, Blackmagic cameras etc, you have 24 distinct images, individually compressed either losslessly or mildly lossily. Motion blur is kept within each image. With AVCHD and other Long GOP CODECs, the I-frame image is divided into pools of pixels for analysis across time. only some frames are whole, the I frames, the rest refer the different pixel pools to the I frame and usually to a frame in the middle of the group too. In order to remove data the codec only moves what it has to. Your one second may have only two complete images, the rest are created as best can be from the other frames, with huge changes causing pixellation and blocking due to so little data headroom. On top of this, the red-channel resolution is quartered, and the blue channel halved in 4:2:0, so the spatial resolution for movement is cut down, as well as the temporal resolution. In short, the plastic movement you get from many implementations of such long GOP CODECs reflects the methods use in compression. Motion blur is also smudged and blurred by chroma sub-sampling (4:2:0:) and by interframe compression.