Andrew Reid

Welcome back Andy. I haven't tried v-log yet either, am taking a break. What is the consensus on it?

Good grief. Cleaned up the latest round. It will be the last because now the first posts from new users go into a moderation queue for approval and until the content is approved they can't post anything further.

Not a hack, just a normal spam attack from about 7 robot controlled members. I'm clearing it up in the admin panel as we speak.

Shame the updates are at least 1-2 years too late!

First units of the excitingly promising Blackmagic URSA Mini 4K have just shipped to customers. I just had an email from "Hugo", who has posted the pictures of the cameras you see here. Read the full article

Some interesting new developments from Apple on the new iPhone 6S camera. The phone now shoots 4K video with a new 12MP sensor. A new feature, Live Photos stores multiple 12MP frames with a new compression technology to give movement to still photos. Read the full article

New iPhone launch is today. Thought I'd open a thread about it an hour ahead of the event. Will be interesting to see what the new camera has in store for us. 4K video? 1080p at 240fps?

That Alexa LUT in film convert seems to suit a lot of footage, I use it over the 'proper' camera profiles a lot. I don't mind milky blacks either, because hardly any of the cameras today seem to do proper blacks anyway

Full announcement and press release - http://www.eoshd.com/2015/09/slr-magic-announce-set-of-21-anamorphic-cinema-primes/

Canon today issued an unusual development announcement for two upcoming cameras. The first is a Cinema EOS C500 successor with 8K recording. The second is a 5DS style full frame DSLR featuring 120 megapixel resolution. Read the full article

I think the FS700 is a bargain at $4k One of the nicest 4K images via HDMI you can get. Don't forget it does raw via HD-SDI too. Fantastic slow-mo and built in ND. Very similar sensor to F5. The ergonomics look ugly and it has the Sony fiddly menus & buttons but don't let that put you off because the images with an external recorder are stunning. Just for internal 1080/24p though there are better solutions. So if you plan to go for it, pair it with the Odyssey 7Q+ and factor in that extra $2k. So it is really a $6k package but still a total bargain.

Yep fair price. I guess if people think it's too expensive, they can always go off and buy another 4K internal LOG shooting interchangeable lens cinema camera for $1500. Oh wait...

Perfect in Super 35mm mode. Even covers full frame when extended to 35mm but of course vignettes heavily at 18mm end. AF is pretty good.

Panasonic didn't go all the way with the anamorphic or V-LOG updates. I am sure they are holding back liveview anamorphic desqueeze and LOG view assist for the GH5.

Or even better the X-T1 with 23mm F1.4 prime Much better AF on that lens than with the cheaper Fuji 35mm F1.4 and 18mm F2 AF is very important for stills if you like fast apertures, MF is just too slow to get enough decisive moments unless you stop down to F5.6 The X-T1's ergonomics and EVF feel like a proper camera. Better than A7S and can be made full frame with Speed Booster I tried opening the same raw shot from my A7R II and X-T1 recently by the way... and in Adobe Camera Raw the colours on the Sony shot were really off towards yellow / green, not enough satisfying blue or red tones. So it seems Fuji's superb film like colour rendition does not just apply to their JPEGs but actually the sensor raw data. Otherwise A7S is a superb choice if you can get some decent lenses to go with it. Expensive though!

Panasonic did officially put it out there and sought the publicity. If they are to do that again, some concrete details about release date and pricing might help!

Yet Blackmagic can do 10bit for a quarter of the price of an A7R II with the Pocket Cinema Camera and Micro. Yet GH4 has 10bit 4K HDMI output, albeit seemingly unable to make much noticeable difference to image quality. So I'm not really too appreciative of Sony's excuses. JG is right, they left it out on purpose to segment products. They are free to do that, so just tell us. Don't make silly excuses! As for a GH4 style flip screen making the body too thick - that's a load of tosh. The E-M5 II has one and is a slimmer body with weather sealing. GH4 is not really bigger, not in any meaningful way. Flip screen for selfies is important to consumer market and A7R II is a consumer camera so I hope they change this in future.

It's only a rumour guys.

Interesting suggestion, I'll try that! Both very nice, the A7R II is better in low light especially with the Metabones Speed Booster (which you can't use on the NX1) The NX1 has an incredibly clean image with no noise up to and at ISO 800, then it falls off a cliff from 1600 onward. The A7R II has a bit more dynamic range. Both have similar rolling shutter in S35, but switch to full frame and provided you don't mind a bit of moire you can reduce RS on the A7R II considerably. The codec on the NX1 maintains a sharper image, more detail, but you get a mushy blocking in areas of large colour blocking. More banding in the sky for example. The codec seems to give all the data to the details and leaves nothing for the smooth gradation. On the A7R II the image is softer, not as sharp in 4K, bit mushy but nothing to worry about and it grades pretty well. Prefer ergonomics of the NX1 body and the price is half. A problem with both is - They both have sensors that seem to capture 3x more green than red or blue and it hurts the image vs Fuji and Canon cameras. I've seen it in the raw stills not just video or S-LOG.

Panasonic should have announced their intentions at NAB before they teased us with the beta V-LOG. Just come straight out and said "here is how we're going to do it" instead of letting speculation run rife for 6 months on the internet, because it creates an atmosphere of uncertainty amongst loyal GH4 owners and the temptation to jump to a Sony with S-LOG already must be pretty high. So yeah they have mishandled this but hopeful of positive outcome on September 1st!

By now you might be wondering which to pull the trigger on - the RX10 II or RX100 IV? The good news is I have now finally got round to finishing my review of the RX10 II and have also bought the RX100 IV to compare it with... Read the full article

That's a good article by Noam. For me the lens draws attention to itself when it is wider than 24mm on full frame. He seems to like very deep DOF. I am not a shallow DOF junky but I like a gentle roll off of focus, with the background a little bit back... not completely blurred out. I find deep DOF too 'flat' looking on digital. It's ok on Super 16mm (Digital Bolex for example) if the c-mount lens has a lot of character but it looks a bit sterile with modern lenses. Lenses that give me the gentle focus roll off and a shallower DOF control at wide angle are cinematic and three dimensional. Go too wide & slow and you have a very 'flat' look where infinity focus starts at 3m. On full frame 35mm F2.0 is definitely a sweet spot. 28mm on Super 35mm = 42mm, not too far off. 28mm on the 1D C in 4K is interesting...you get 36mm in APS-H 4K, then can crop to 42mm for the Super 35mm look in post without losing much resolution. You can't really do that with 1080p. Then in stills mode of course it is a 28mm. Like having 3 lenses in one!! The Zeiss Distagon 28mm F2.0 is a lovely lens. They don't call it the "Hollywood" for nothing. Shoot with it wide open. When I was shooting with the GH2 I used to prefer longer lenses. Favourite focal lengths were 35mm and 85mm. 14mm and 50mm didn't do it for me for some reason. On the 1.86x crop sensor 35mm and 85mm were practically telephoto in full frame terms compared to what I use the most now! On Super 35mm, the Zeiss Jena DDR 21mm F2.8 and Canon 24mm F1.4L are a nicer look than a 16mm or 17mm for me. Less flat. By the way the edges of the lens are as important as how they render the field of view. I think a slight vignette wide open is very attractive and also bokeh that curves at the edges slightly makes for a more immersive, dreamy picture, and it doesn't have to be extreme - just subtle. The easiest way to lose the magic is to take a vintage c-mount lens and crop out just the centre. Or take a full frame 24mm F1.4 shot and crop into. It isn't the resolution loss or just the deeper DOF that makes it look bad. You lose the character of the edges of the lens and the overall rendering of field of view that it was designed to do, artistically.

I do the hard work in Resolve then just apply the LUTs and don't fiddle with anything afterwards. That makes for a much quicker edit. It is tempting to tune each shot isn't it? Shouldn't be necessary. A LUT can be consistent and give you the same look for everything. It also helps to use manual white balance. Most shots need tweaking due to the wrong colour temperature rather than the wrong exposure.

"In order for the EditReady file to look “right,” you’d need to apply a LUT or color correction to adjust the signal." When I developed my LOG LUT for the NX1 I had better results in Premiere when the camera was set to 16-235. Trust me 0-255 is asking for trouble, it is a whole host of complexity on top for virtually no gain! Whether 0-255 or 16-235 we are splitting hairs because the NX1 has banding in both modes. As the EditReady blog post said, NLEs expect 16-235 and the ProRes files won't look right in them if you shoot 0-255. They don't explain HOW the LUT should correct for this. Even if you use a LUT in EditReady like my LOG converter, Premiere will still crap it up in 0-255. Is it worth getting confused about? Just shoot 16-235 and be happy! Rocky Mountain probably remaps 0-255 to 16-235 anyway.

LUT will work with 0-255 as well but you might have to do a workaround in post to see more of the shadows. LUT or no LUT it doesn't matter, shoot 16-235 so that when EditReady converts to 16-235 ProRes you see into the shadows.