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Andrew Reid

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Everything posted by Andrew Reid

  1. Interesting that Sony support it. Is their player exclusive to the PS4 or is there a PC version as well?
  2. My KineMini 4K arrives this week! Just on loan for a review. 4K CineForm. The 2K goes up to 100fps. Interesting about the focal reducer being modified to fit.
  3. Lovely shots Ed. Have you tried it with the Shogun in low light yet? It's better, the noise is much finer.
  4. Thanks for the review Oliver! Any original files to peek at? Motion cadence is a funny thing... I think IPB codecs (long-GOP) have a tendency to look more videoy. ALL-I codecs store every frame so you get a more 'true 24p' look. Examples of ALL-I codecs... Raw (5D 3 Magic Lantern, BMCC, etc.) MJPEG (1D C) GH4 ALL-I modes (but not 4K, which is IPB only) On the FS7, the 4K XAVC codec is H.264 IPB long-GOP, so for every 6th real frame there's likely 5 in-between that are synthesised by the codec, reconstructed. The codec gets a raw stream so the sensor reads every frame off, but then it throws them away after compressing. Usability it seems like a mix bag. How much do you have to dive into the menus, or can they be ignored most of the time? How long is the boot time? Getting a KineMINI 4K camera to play with tomorrow, just a demo unit, not keeping it but will put a review online. I think Sony have issued a firmware update for the Metabones adapter / aperture bug, you may want to check it out. I think News Shooter reported on it last week?
  5. How do you rate the KODI app as a player? Smooth for H.265 playback on your Macbook?
  6. ​Wonderful job Christie! Mind if I credit your forum post if I promote this to the blog front page? Or prefer to remain under the radar a bit?
  7. ​That's totally overkill doing it to ProRes 4444. Use a 1 pass encoding to ProRes LT!
  8. What year of Macbook Pro 15? 2013/14 Retina will work fine. It's CPU dependant and these have not got much faster in the last few years. You'd need to go to a Mac Pro to notice any significant improvement. Download iFFMPEG, grab some H.265 files from the NX1 and give it a go. If it's too slow then remember you'll need a pretty significant desktop workstation to go any faster so don't be too hard on it. I usually transcode over night if I have a lot of material to get through, rather than wait for the progress bar to tick along in front of me!!
  9. I'll do a detailed image comparison between the 1D C and A7S soon on EOSHD so look out for that. Even after owning the 1D C I can't argue with some of the ways the A7S is superior, but most of those relate to it as a 1080p camera. When you rig it up with an external recorder for 4K it becomes something rather different ergonomically. It isn't a small mirrorless camera with EVF any more. In fact you can't use the EVF at all whilst it is outputting 4K. It just didn't deliver what I needed. The screen visibility and battery life of the Shogun became a pretty big issue for me, whilst as a 1080p camera I had neither problem, at least with the battery grip and a few spares! So here I was in a predicament. The Shogun on the one hand was a fantastic piece of technology and I'm going to get some more use out of it for sure, once I solve the issue of seeing the screen outdoors and powering it properly, and the ergonomics of rigging it to such small cameras. But the main predicament was that although I had quite a few beautiful images coming out of the various cameras I owned, they all had practical flaws. I wanted the colour, dynamic range and full frame loveliness I was getting with Magic Lantern raw video on the 5D Mark III, but the file sizes were even larger than the 1D C for plain old 1080p. Reliability also an issue, I found the 1000x komputerbay cards kept going through slow phases (possibly due to file system fragmentation) and especially at higher ISOs the recording would keep stopping. The problem with 1080p is it isn't a future proof format. It will be consigned to the dustbin. Not like Super 8 or 16mm or film which creep back over time for their artistic qualities. 1080p will just go to the grave I feel, like 720 and SD. If it comes back as a retro format it will have a particular look like VHS in the future and so be very niche, not like super 16mm film which is more flexible in the way it looks, so can be used for a broad range of filmmaking even in 2015. The NX1 and GH4 shoot 4K internally but their images are a little too compressed. The NX1 holds onto a lot of fine detail but doesn't have a grain character to speak of in plain shaded areas. However the image isn't so much the issue - it is the lack of active Canon EF adapter to NX mount and the lack of low light performance once you get past ISO 1600. I will still be using my NX1 when I need the smallest file sizes and super 35mm sensor in good light, and the upcoming firmware will be very interesting. Good b-cam. As is the GH4, will be keeping that, just not for low light! The A7S ticked the most boxes overall, great in low light, S-LOG with minimal banding, but the need to shoot at ISO 3200 in bright light using strong filtration, the need to add a lens adapter for Canon EF lenses that still doesn't always work right, the need to add the recorder for 4K on a wobbly HDMI cable... all this weigh heavily against it for my purposes. So to the 1D C, now at around the same price I can sell my GH4, 5D Mk III, 5D Mk II and 7D for which effectively it replaces (although I'll definitely keep the GH4 anyway) it solves a number of problems. First it replaces the 5D Mark III as a stills camera so I can finally get rid of it. It shoots 4K internally and is weather sealed. It has a native mount compatible with my best glass. It works well with the IS on my Canon lenses and no bugs. It is ultra reliable. The image maintains a fine noise grain. It is capable of matching or maybe even exceeding the dynamic range I had from S-LOG2 on the A7S and ML raw on the 5D3. It has colour which is easier to get right from the flat profile (Canon LOG) much like the D750, so takes less work to grade. It especially has better colour in the standard rec.709 picture profiles. It has less moire and aliasing in 4K than the A7S to external recorder, possibly due to stronger OLPF. Yet it resolves the same amount of actual real detail minus the false detail and 4K is enough detail to last me almost forever anyway. It lacks the niceties of the mirrorless cameras though but makes up for it with heft and build quality. No EVF but I've added one without radically changing the form factor or adding too much unbalanced weight. No peaking or focus assists whilst recording but again that is solved by adding the EVF. No mirrorless mount so I can't use my Cooke PLs but these don't cover full frame anyway (so corners would likely be soft in 1.3x). I will use my NX1 for those. Very good internal 1080p in Super 35mm mode and to Ninja Star, but the full frame 1080p isn't as good as the full frame 1080p from the A7S. Those are the things I miss and the banding can rear up sometimes especially at low ISOs in C-LOG but generally I feel there's some logic behind it now at £5k, whereas there wasn't before with so many promising other cameras that I thought would supersede it. They haven't. And the main logic failing of the 1D C was always the price not the image, and the fact they didn't add enough video bells & whistles.
  10. ​Thanks for the rigging ideas sam. Here's one I've come up with, for bare bones shooting with articulated monitor, as small and as light as possible... Monitor is an EVF too with loupe. Kinotechnik. Review of that soon. It's a good screen, boots in less than 1 second. Very quick to get a signal too.
  11. If something is worth watching, and it's exclusively priced at a higher level I will pay for it. The challenge as you rightly put, is finding out about it in the first place. We need better content curators. Obama's recommendation that we all watch The Interview isn't that.
  12. By chance and circumstance The Interview is the first major motion picture to debut on the internet. Shot on a production budget of $40m the film has so far taken $30m at the virtual box office. Also in an interview Michael Lynton of Sony Pictures has talked for the first time about the full scale of the hack. 100 terrabytes of data stolen, wiped and the studio's network is still offline 6 weeks later. http://www.eoshd.com/2015/01/sonys-online-streaming-release-interview-taken-30-million/
  13. I think full frame is also about seeing the edges of the image circle from the lens. With a crop sensor and a lens designed for full frame you shoot through the middle of it and don't see the rendering in the corners. You can miss the curving bokeh and vignetting... little imperfections that will give the image so much character. A smaller sensor is best with glass suited to it, e.g even though the Super 16mm sensor in the Digital Bolex is tiny, you see the edges of your Super 16mm lenses with it and so you get the nice rendering.
  14. Upstream Color, GH2, 10 stops at best. Accept it I say! But it depends on the shot and the way the film is lit.
  15. Thanks Cosmio! I will have a listen.
  16. Hey ed. Are you going to make the video public again? Cheers!
  17. ​Allow me to psychically work that out for you!
  18. The Canon is doing something at a low level straight from the sensor which benefits colour, right through the range to the C500 whereas the A7S and GH4 are not. You can see it in the image, it's obvious without the fiddling around. See - http://learn.usa.canon.com/app/pdfs/white_papers/White_Paper_sensitometric.pdf And - http://learn.usa.canon.com/app/pdfs/white_papers/White_Paper_35mmCMOS.pdf Now if only they'd do the same for as reasonable a price as the A7S.
  19. ​Nope. Full frame will always be more cinematic than 2.3x crop for me, let alone the fact it is smooth at ISO 3200 whereas the GH4 loses a ton of detail and colour info at that sensitivity.
  20. That S-Gamut chart applies to the F35 and F65 top end only not the FS7 or A7S. And in Inazuma's reproduction of my screen grab he seems to think more contrast = less crushed blacks and a flatter image = more crushed blacks when it is the opposite, so make your own view of that people, that's all.
  21. Responsive or what!? Really nice features.
  22. ​Only as good if you have a very steady hand. Olympus in body stabilisation still the leader, but it can be prone to distortion at wide angle.
  23. ​What hotshoe mount is in use there and where does the image come from? Thanks.
  24. Nikon claimed 422. Easy to test, find footage recorded via HDMI with bright red lights in it (road traffic for example) and look at the edges of the red for pixilation. My memory is too hazy of it now to go back into the D5200.
  25. ​The light rope highlights are burnt in one and not the other. C'mon now get a grip.
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