Andrew Reid

The thing about actually finishing things got a nod and a laugh from me, I can't count how many things I've started and then left in limbo, meaning to come back later but never do. I think I am easily bored. Always looking for next idea. Nucleus nano sounds like a good idea. The S1H is a great cinema camera. It's never going to be a camcorder with AF or an effortless run & gun shot grabber. X-T4 with an 18-135 is better at that. I'd like to settle on one camera too. Would be nice 😂

No the price limit doesn't define the camera concept. The design of the camera does. Z-Cam is totally different in concept to an X-T4.

It's not even worth talking about. There is no comparison. It is not even just about time and dedication. It's about luck and talent, social connections, money, backing and reputation. You will never get to there. I will never get to there. We should focus on what's actually feasible. I'm surprised you ask something like that really. The goal is cinematography. What do you think it is? Scoping out who has the nicest hats? If we must dissect the art... The goal is to create emotion for the audience. Emotional shape... beauty, ugliness, all kinds of mood, and to do this by capturing real life. Of course it always helps if the audience has a sensitivity to what they are seeing. Some, erm.. don't. It's also about sound. The combination of music with moving poetry is really spectacularly moving, if done right and creativity. I it has a point to put across, a theme... It is easy to put some orchestral cliche over a sunset shot - but there is far more to cinematography in terms of poetry than that. It is like writing. Anybody can write, we can all use words and form sentences. But what makes the difference between a sentence by a monkey and one by a great storyteller? I am not frustrated, not lost at all. I have all sorts of ideas. There is a bit of writers block... Since I left Berlin, my life has changed. The issue is implementation. I don't have the energy or motivation. I know that whatever I create, it'll probably go on the internet and be tears in the rain. I also don't have here the connections to musicians and actors that I had in the city. So I am probably going to change what I do. And I have too much gear and a blog to run. It takes up all my time. Although the Berlin days are over where I shot a lot of creative work, the goal now is to travel and try to make emotional images, stuff that has meaning. Not easy in today's environment where everything is so gentrified. There's nothing commercial that attracts me. By not taking jobs, you have to do it all yourself, you're not institutionalised. You're on the outside pretty much all the time. Much harder. Experiments and some documentary style vignettes of life in the city are great but I am bored of them and want to move onto something fresh. It might not be video related at all. Anyway that's my existential crisis. How's yours?

I agree 100%, I love video. A massive buzz and lifelong passion. I'm not saying I don't like the process. I am saying it's just extremely difficult... To make great stuff that is. The post process, perfect music, story... These are the highest of the arts.

Maybe he meant Alexa M6 II Mini? That does have IBIS. But the Canon M6 Mark is not so hot. Pixel binning. Soft 4K. Weak codec. No features. Outgunned by about 12 other similar models. Not even cheap. And X-T4 destroys it. Not an opinion. It's ok but AF is much better on X-T4. OIS is ok. But X-T4 IBIS is better. On the X-T4 you might want to stick to Fuji 18-55

I could put Blackmagic stuff on the list but then you'd argue why Z-Cam, etc. isn't there, and before you know it you've got RED and Arri on it. More simple to keep it to the same class of camera (DSLR / mirrorless / stills), the cameras the blog has always been for.

Yeah. I know exactly the feeling. I just want to do the art bit... The rest of it is truly exausting and haphazards sometimes. Regarding the gear, it gets in the way for video like it doesn't for stills. Gimbals, tripods, it all slows me down too much. I want to strip all that back. I think AF, IBIS, even auto exposure, are all a big help... But then they're all designed for stills and the camera designers don't seem to have much of a 'cinematography brain' when it comes to how they've designed them to work in video mode. Good plan. I find it most enjoyable when the content just unfolds around you, and you're zipping around lightfooted, with just a tripod and a really capable, responsive camera. The natural street shooting, mood pieces, natural light, all amaze me.... But it's so fleeting. You blink and you miss it. I envy that photographers don't need to write a story and script, they can just hire the content and shoot it. Done. Music videos are a lot more my thing.

The trick is to get into his position. The support around him, the budgets, the sheer size of the credits that roll afterwards. It makes his job a lot easier, so he can get on with the art. A musician strikes his instrument and that's the art. A photographer uses his instinct and inner vision, minds-eye, that's his art. A filmmaker - fuck. Where to begin.

So many times I wish I were a photographer instead You can get a beautiful shot with a camera that looks the same whether moving or still... But movement always has to justify itself. If the frame floats or moves with IBIS, shot dead. Mood gone. It's such a fine art. Camera movement is such a fussy thing. It's like colour - There's no point it being there unless the movement is beautiful or has meaning. Otherwise, may as well be still - or black and white. With a photo you can just make a pretty shot and it's job done. It's about timing, framing. With video you have to sustain all that's nice and has meaning for 10x longer. Sometimes 1000x longer. With photos there's the one-man nature of it... with video, you have to rely on others a lot more - actors, writers, and so on. And that's before you've even started the shoot Sometimes I hate video. And think I'd be better off with a Fuji GFX 50R, just enjoying myself. Just one man and his camera. With video, you often have to lug around rigs, tripods and monitors. To anybody who sustains their filmmaking over the years at a high level I salute you. It must be incredibly stressful!

Thanks. I think that's everything now? Time to get that features table done now. Something along the lines of: Crop factor: 1.5 Max "usable, clean" ISO: 6400 4K rolling shutter: 22ms Max codec quality: 10bit, 4:2:0, 400Mbit ALL-I and so on...

Cheaper than an X-T3 at launch. Bargain alert! Much more capable specs than the Pocket 6K. Don't forget the cost of the screen and cage though.

No, because I use it on a proper camera with IBIS

Could be useful for 4K/60p as well, for a more natural motion blur in slow-mo shots. 180 deg shutter is 1/120 for 60p, which eliminates most of the nice 24p look.

When the cinema department and marketing department come together bad things happen. This kind of thing should have been STANDARD 5 years ago and today's version should be sleek as hell, perfect image, no latency, no wires, long battery life and all sorts of refinements. Maybe in another 5 years it'll be usable for day to day shooting?

I can see why it works well for the tommy guns I find it useful in low light - 1/25 means you can use a lower ISO All depends on the shot how it's going to turn out. Quick handheld camera movement looks a bit too blurry. 180 shutter is also too slow for some things... it all depends. Usually it's perfect. I am going to try shooting everything without NDs and using my own shutter speed in post, with the motion blur in Resolve Studio 16 working so well just now... It gives you ability to choose the look in post rather than have motion blur baked into the source material!

Yep. Definitely calms the image and blends away the staccato motion cadence. Maybe it's worth doing one pass on all clips - converting to ProRes from H.265 in the process too.

Excellent stuff guys. I'll give the techniques a go and write a blog about it.

I am experimenting with a few techniques to do this, but looking for suggestions. In VLC Player if you go into the effects panel where is a motion blur slider, and obviously if you put that on high it looks very over the top. However I found if I put it on very low, it really does reproduce the motion blur of 180 degree shutter, with footage shot at a fast shutter speed. The look is very authentic! However what should be easy in Premiere and Resolve never is. The tutorials I've seen all deal with adding motion blur in the Transform panel to moving layers. Not what we want. There is an echo tool, but that doesn't look any good at all - tons of ghosting and takes ages to render, won't play in real-time. So the question is - what plugin for Premiere or Resolve does what VLC Player does!?

CORRECT!! I have made EOSHD Pro Color for it.

Nope

Getting warmer but no!

The Bolex Moller 8/19 covers medium format at 100mm For such a small lens, it's crazy good.

Close but no cigar Nope Nope!

Ah I was thinking of the 16-D! Yes 16-H and 8z are the same. Actually I now prefer the Bolex Moller for the smaller size to my old Kowa... but the Kowa 2x glass is right up there with the Iscorama.

Nope! It is full frame though.