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I'm back from Guangzhou China, and starting to evaluate the footage, especially my modified Takumar 50mm F1.4 with the custom "insert" made from post-it notes and sticky tape. I managed to get out and shoot with it on a couple of nights. One in Beijing Road and the other in Yong Qing Fang. Some images from Beijing Road... these are all wide open, and lightly graded with Resolve and Film Look Creator. Overall, I'm really liking the aesthetic, which reminds me of mid-budget Hong Kong cinema, which I have a soft spot for. I mostly exposed to protect the highlights and then adjusted exposure in post under the FLC, and the GH7 has just enough DR for this, despite the scenes being quite challenging. The lens has a shallow enough DOF to be able to direct the viewers attention by choosing what is in focus, and the FOV (equivalent to a 71mm F2.0 on FF) is great for these type of scenes where the scenes would mostly overwhelm a wide lens with pure chaos. Some images from Yong Qing Fang.. same as above but with a touch of sharpening. This was a lot darker and I needed to push the ISO to get more levels in some scenes. It was also a lot higher DR, so some shots will be limited in post for how I grade them and I'll probably reach for NR in places. The lens is actually quite sharp in the middle, but the sides are more distortion than I'd like with quite a bit of bokeh distortion and coma from bright sources. The experiment with this "insert" was how strong a look it would be and I think it's probably too strong because the bokeh shapes are too distracting due to the sharp corners. It's distracting on frames with a clear subject (where you want the background to get out of the way) and on other shots its pure chaos and completely negates the idea of directing where the viewer will look. Getting DOF this shallow on MFT isn't easy, so I'll have to think about it more for future trips.

For sure, and I'd be excited to give it a try! I was a Kickstarter backer of the Z Cam E1 and I've bought a few Ribcage kits/cameras over the years. I was disappointed by all of them, but I'm still hoping for that magical/usable tiny sensor camera! I have a little bag full of D-mount and C-mount lenses just waiting to go on something! (I still wish there were a way to get a decent/non-laggy video feed from the Insta360 One R/RS series - I have a Ribcage-modded 1" module and the quality is really decent - but focus is hard, given the only options for monitoring are the camera's tiny screen or laggy wifi)

I found an interview with the person who shot the under-water sections of a GoPro promo video (IIRC it was for the Hero 3 or 3+), and the level of effort they put into it was simply incredible. He had a team of about 5, three crew and two cast, and they had a week for production. He was an independent DOP and had done some pre-production as part of his 'pitch' to GoPro to get the gig, but I think they did detailed pre during the week as well as camera tests and lots and lots of shooting. This was only for the underwater shots (the bikini girl diving beneath the waves). If we assume that each of the (maybe half a dozen?) locations each got 5 people for a week, then that's ~7500 hours just to film the 1-2 minute promo video. The level of cherry-picking is extreme - professional DOPs pitching projects, travel to the most exotic locations, testing of all modes with all manner of equipment, everyone in cast and crew are professionals, long shooting days at the best times (golden hour, etc), dozens of hours of footage just to make a short promo. Then people set it to auto, hold the tiny camera in their hand and film their family at the beach with whatever lighting and weather happens to be there at the time and then we wonder why it doesn't look like the promo videos... Having said all that, if GoPro make an interchangeable lens camera with a half-decent bitrate and a colour-managed LOG profile then it might be the tiny camera we've been wanting!

The difference is not huge. When wide open on very fast lenses, you're more likely to see some speed booster artifacts with the 0.64x. Whether those artifacts are acceptable is personal taste. If the prices weren't similar, I'd just take the cheaper one. I was also surprised to find that the 0.64x covers the slightly small S35 sensor in my Z Cam E2-S6G. Anyway, as far as other brands, I think that Kipon's focal reducers are well-regarded. Otherwise, most of the third-party ones are skippable/don't seem to be too good. FWIW, you can also have your cake and eat it with a focal reducer, if you want. Pentax K, Nikon F, Leica R, Olympus OM, and M42 lenses (including your Takumar) can all be adapted to EF mount. I've also thought about building a recessed M39 adapter since it would be theoretically possible on any camera without a mirror assembly (M39 is 28.8mm and EF is 44mm, but I have several M39 lenses with controls near the front and that are skinny enough that they could just sit further back in the EF mount). Anyway, for EF lenses otherwise, do you know which you're considering?

I've used Metabones Ultra 0.64x speed booster with my Blackmagic Pocket 4K. Compared to 0.71x is moves your crop factor a tad closer to FF 0.64x -> 1.28x vs 0.71 -> 1.42x and gives you a little bit more light (1/3 stops) and a little bit more DOF. You can use it not only with Canon EF but all lenses which have flange distance > than Canon EF. Like Contax Yashica, Nikon, m42, Pentax. Biggest issues for me is the weird crop factor. x2x0.64 = x1.28. Now I want an angle of view equivalent to 35mm in FF. Which lens should I use ? 28mm as 28x1.28=35.84 And so on. That's why I moved to FF. 35mm is 35mm no matter if lens is vintage or modern, plus I can use Minolta MD, and a bunch or other brands and bayonets. No need for speed boosters. Lens is used exactly as it was intended by the manufacturer. Sensor if big and has no problem with low light. For vintage lenses and in general for lenses alone FF is the way to go for me. I was tiered to calculate crop factors and deal with speed boosters.

We're all talking about aesthetics. We're talking about aesthetics when we talk about the "look", but we're talking about it when we talk about specifications too. A debate rages about what is "enough" resolution, "enough" sharpness, "nicer" bokeh... what is "cinematic"... what is "visible"... what is "practical". This thread is a reality check against the warped concepts that stills photographers and their camera-club specifications-obsessions have given us. Because, for the most part, better objective measurements are mostly worse subjectively. It's our imperfections that creates our humanity, and it's analog imperfection that creates emotional images. Baseline First, let's establish a baseline. Here are some test images from ARRI that are designed to showcase the technology, not a creative aesthetic. Note the super-clean image, lack of almost all lens-distortions (except wide angle distortion on the wide lens, which is actually super-wide at 12mm). If you were there, this might be what it actually looked like. Those were grabs from a 4K YouTube upload, but lots of trailers aren't uploaded in 4K, so here is a still from 1080p Youtube video that ARRI uploaded in 2010. Now, without further ado.... The Aesthetic - The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina These are obviously very distorted, and I chose frames that were especially so. This should instantly disavow you of the idea that somehow Netflix demands "pristine" images - these are filthy as hell, but this is appropriate to the subject matter, which is about witchcraft, the occult, demons, and literally, hell. Whenever I hear someone say "oh I can't believe how terrible that lens is - look at the edge softness" I just laugh. The person may as well be saying "not only don't I have a clue about film-making, but my eyes also don't work either.. please ignore everything else I say from now on". The Aesthetic - Sex Education A show with a deliberately vintage vibe, the look is suitably vintage, with some pretty wicked CA. One thing that's interesting is the last shot, which was either a drone with a vintage lens on it, or it was doctored in post, because it has pretty severe CA - look at the bottom right of the frame above the Netflix logo. Also note how nothing looks sharp - the first image should have had something in-focus, but softness of this level is deliberate because once again, the last shot is a deep-focus shot with a stopped-down aperture and should be super-sharp but isn't. The Aesthetic - No Time To Die Some shots are softer than others, but note the amazing barrel distortion and edge softness on the middle two shots. In case you missed it, here's the star of this $400M movie in a pivotal scene from the movie: Are there lenses that could have made this shot more "accurate"? Sure - just scroll up to the ARRI shots which look pristine (and they're ZOOMS!). This was deliberate and is consistent with the emotion and narrative. The Aesthetic. The Aesthetic - The Witcher Sharp when it wants to be, oversharp too - see the second image, but with anamorphic bokeh for the look. Ironically, a fantasy story of witchcraft and monsters, using cleaner more modern looking glass. The complete opposite approach of Sabrina. Note on the second-last image the vertical anamorphic bokeh, and then look at the last image and note the "swirl" in the bokeh. I doubt this was accidental. The Aesthetic - You Sharp and clean when it wants to be, and other times, really not. Appropriate for the subject matter. The Aesthetic - Squid Game Clean, sharp but not too sharp, neutral colour palette, but note the vertical lines on the edges of the frame aren't straight? Subtle, and perhaps not deliberate, but picture it in your mind if they didn't flare out.. it makes a difference, deliberate or not. The Aesthetic - Bridgerton Clean, spherical, basically distortion free, but sharp? No. Go look at that Witcher closeup again for some contrast. The Aesthetic - The Crown Clean and relatively distortion free, but lots of diffusion, haze, and low-contrast when required. The Crown is a masterpiece of the visuals matching the emotional narrative of the story, which is made extra difficult as the story is set in reality, and the emotional tone is so muted that had lesser people been involved in making it any subtleties may well have simply been bland rather than subtle but deep. The Aesthetic - Mindhunter Perhaps the most interesting example here. After looking at the previous images the above might seem completely unremarkable, except that this look was created in post. and I mean, completely in post: More here: https://filmmakermagazine.com/103768-dp-erik-messerschmidt-on-shooting-netflixs-mindhunter-with-a-custom-red-xenograph/#.YftoaC8RrOQ and here: https://thefincheranalyst.com/tag/red-xenomorph/ (there's a great video outlining the lens emulations in post in this one). That's enough for now. Hopefully now you can appreciate that "perfectly clean" optically is actually only perfect for "perfectly clean" moments in your videos. Sure, if you're out there doing corporate day in and day out then it might seem like "clean" is the right way, or if you're in advertising or travel where neutral reigns, but when it comes to emotion, it's about choosing the best imperfections to suit the desired aesthetic.

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.

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 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 😉.

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.

Not a very good interview but the short and curly of it is The URSA Cine 17K 65 retails for approximately US$29,995. In contrast, the Arri Alexa 65 is unavailable for purchase and must be rented, with high-end productions often spending hundreds of thousands on camera packages.

Handy material here that has become buried in the archive

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 really wish BMD would stop putting the maximum resolution in the product name! I make these jokes too about my own UC 12K ("finally, something for you to play on your 12K TV!), but in reality, it's just a really nice 8K/4K camera which has a bonus 12K mode for... mostly VFX shots. 😅

At this point Blackmagic should just buy ARRI and take over 🙂

That’s a lot of the (my) reason for sure and because you need to often be right up in people’s grills, and then there is the distortion and massive hands… 18mm on full-frame is the widest I have and go for all of these reasons plus, I just don’t like the look. Never have. But when used for ‘artistic purposes’, ie, ‘intent’ that is a whole other thing.

Sure, slow zone focusing lenses are definitely a possibility. I used that exact lens for part of my YouTube review of the Z Cam E2c if I remember right, pushing the compact-ness of the body/setup. It's a potato, but it's alright in the context of "it's a body cap you can use to make photos." You could also go the route of MS Optics-style designs. I have their 21/4.5 triplet and there are most definitely compromises to get it as small as it is, but it's also a really fun lens with better quality than the Olympus cap (and full frame-ish coverage). A design like that one or their 24/4, but stopped down to f/8 could be interesting. Indeed - and I don't think they've said that the images are SOOC. It's hard to know how much editing was done with the moon shot. It's also not out of the question that an auxiliary lens was used to make it more telephoto. This is the importance of waiting until devices are in the hand of real consumers before getting too hyped. There aren't many things that I'll preorder and the number gets smaller every year, getting replaced by the number of things that I'll wait are available used for at least a 20-30% discount. X-M5 for $900? Shrug. X-M5 for $824-874 on mpb? Get bent, mpb. X-M5 for $781 on adorama? Starting to move in the right direction... Yes. And the close-up stuff could, theoretically, be done with some of the nicer existing action cameras with a diopter.

Could do, I guess there are options. One thing that comes to mind for the vlogger crowd is having a small manual focus that goes between two useful focal distances, like vlogging distance and normal infinity focus. This is how the Olympus 15mm F8 MFT pancake lens works, and it's surprisingly functional. It sort of sits in that middle-ground where you need to adjust focus because you can't get 30cm to infinity in focus at the same time (like a normal GoPro), but the DOF is still deep enough that you don't really need to have much control over it. In practice it's sort of like a switch where you're either at one end or the other. Looking at those GoPro sample shots, both the shallow DOF shots are relatively macro, so that doesn't need a large sensor or super-fast lens, but the moon shot might actually be the more difficult one requiring both a long focal length and also a larger aperture to get enough light. I don't really do astro-photography but the moon is approaching higher-ISOs I would imagine. Seriously though, there are probably 5-year-old android phones that could replicate both those images, so I'd suggest that most of what we're seeing is the hype and that GoPro shares the same definition of cinema that most YouTubers do.

Oh yeah, they absolutely do. And as the article you linked said, they look like optical shallow DOF instead of simulated! Another possibility is that they release two versions, one with a small sensor for the traditional action sports use case - and one with a bigger sensor for the vlogger crowd. If they DID release something like the Z Cam E1, but with a modern SOC supporting 10-bit, a flat profile, and a decent H.265 implementation, I'd be excited for a GoPro for the first time in years.

All true, but the sample images from the promo video all have shallow DOF, so that means another kettle of fish entirely with AF and/or focus guides (peaking etc). I'd question if it might have lidar rather than PDAF etc, but it's a GoPro, so let's just assume it's 95% marketing and only 5% actual specs, like almost everything else about their cameras (no proper log profile, barely-passable bitrates, etc).

It reminds me of how the people that do rug cleaning videos name their cleaning equipment. My favourite is this:

Wides are a completely different thing depending on the circumstances. If you're hand-holding and moving around for video it's a completely different beast than doing stills or doing video but on a tripod with very careful camera placement and subject movement etc. I also think it's pretty difficult to make wide angle lenses look professional - that demo from ARRI showcasing their ultra-wide zoom had more "amateur with an action camera" vibes than a shallow-DOF 85mm portrait shot from the standard video mode on a 5DII. This is the elephant in the room for amateurs - the pros choose equipment in support of the vision of the project whereas amateurs choose an aesthetic and then use it for completely inappropriate projects.

It sounds like an off-Road vacuum cleaner.

Do I need to use a VPN and a private tab to Google ‘Hardcore Henry’?

I'm making films with it. I was recently offered enough for an upcoming feature that it would more than pay for the camera, but it would have also been like half their budget. I suggested a percentage instead - which will almost certainly yield less money, but allow that money to be spent to improve the parts of the film which are more important than my camera, which is most of them. 😅 Just footage in general? The most recent couple of shorts on my YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/eatstoomuchjam) were with the UC12K. Otherwise, most of what I've shot is in short films that are still in festival rotation. Between the UC12K and the GFX 100 II, I'm happy enough with both. If I'm on set, I'm most likely to bring the Ursa, Ronin 4D, R5, and Pocket 3. If I'm taking photos or traveling, the GFX or R5, maybe with the Pocket 3. If I need to travel lighter or be more inconspicuous, the Komodo-X and/or Komodo, probably with the Pocket 3. I'm thinking about taking the train to Chicago to do a 48 in a couple of weeks. If I do, I'll most likely bring the Komodo-X and Pocket 3 with my DJI Mini 3 Pro - that's an entire shooting setup that easily can fit in a backpack, more or less - and with EF lenses, I can use the Canon VND adapter when outside and the Canon focal reducer when inside.

It’s only a matter of time before some big movie is shot exclusively on a Go Pro or DJI…

Like with anything, it's best not to get too revved up over the hype and wait until there are actual cameras around to check out. GoPro are, of course, hiring professionals and cherry picking the very best footage/images that any of them captured. Otherwise, the concept of using an action camera ASIC in a cinema camera isn't new - it was exactly the strategy with the Z Cam E1. Since then, action cameras have advanced a lot, thankfully. Similarly, the Z Cam E2 series used/uses an off the shelf Hisense board, though that one was intended for higher-end security cams/consumer cameras and not action cameras.

My archive on gh2 patches 1 GOP Intra 'moon' T7 - Top Grading - Best Motion - Best Setting Ever 1-SpanMyBitchUp patch is good quality for spanning with long record times 2-AQuamotion v2 is medium-high quality with decent spanning recording times + 80% slowdown / EX TELE 3 GOP 'Spizz' - Hi-Quality - Pro Motion 3-TerrAQuake is seAQuake but less quality frame sizes for poorer type 10 cards 4-SeAQuake is Very High Quality for hi-end SD cards 6 GOP - Middle Earth 'Nebula' 7 GH2 Flow Motion v2 - 100Mbps Fast Action Performance & Reliability 8 T9-gh4 like 9 12/15 GOP 'DREWnet' T9 - Traditional Long GOP 12 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/blop84zqvmgob2qiab07v/ACl0mBKWCsMcidxL5qUcqgA?rlkey=3gb5igu910uyw5sipalzlovp2&st=1vsslgjs&dl=0

I'll have a dig and host them here if I find the mother lode

Train Dreams on Netflix I don't know how many of you have already seen it, but I still wanted to recommend a film that I watched a few nights ago on Netflix that hit me right in the heart. It was presented at the last Sundance Film Festival but then went directly to Netflix without going through movie theaters. And it's a real shame because the cinematography is stunning. Shot in 3:2 in the Idaho forests with an almost documentarian feel. The story is infinitely sad and very slow. The reviews are almost all enthusiastic, and it has become one of the most viewed films on the platform in recent weeks. The negative reviews accuse it of being truly slow, but in my opinion and that of others, the beauty lies precisely in the film's slowness. If you manage to get into the mood, it hits you right in the heart. I don't want to spoil too much about the story, but the ending truly moved me. The DoP says that the film was shot almost entirely using natural light (à la Lubezky), and many scenes are set at dawn, sunset, and nighttime using real candlelight. The chiaroscuro is a delight for the eyes. https://filmmakermagazine.com/129137-interview-cinematographer-adolpho-veloso-train-dreams-sundance-2025/