Andrew Reid

(The anamorphic footage starts around 10 seconds in) The new SLR Magic Anamorphot jointly developed with the help of EOSHD is still in my studio and I've shot the above video with it. This should give you an idea of how the flare moves around during a shot and the general anamorphic aesthetic you are able to get with the adapter. Also part of the fun of the adapter is that like the Iscorama it sings with certain lenses, which all have a different look. I've been trying it out with a bunch of them... Read the full article here

I will continue to enjoy Canon through their lenses at least even if not their DSLRs. The 85MM F1.2L is the work of a madman!!

One other point… Canon's CEO took home $272 million in 2011. He's 77 this year I believe.   Do you really think a guy in this position has the same hunger to explore new technology as someone like Grant Petty, who has it all ahead of him?

  Absolutely spot on.   Let's ponder why. They have a top level management whose job it is to deliver ever larger increases in profit, year on year. It's a pressurised business environment in Asia, Japan especially, it makes Europe look quaint. When you are a large company, massive profits are just not enough. Success is relative. If you're only making $2.5bn profit on $40bn sales you need to be making $5bn profit on $80bn sales or better still $40bn profit on $80bn sales!! Where does it end? Canon's management have figured out how to go after this profit and until now figured it out pretty well... in the short term.   In the long term they are a mess because they are ignoring the products, their selling points in a shifting marketplace, rapidly evolving technological progress and the demand of their customers.   Their compacts long ago could have morphed into an online photo sharing experience. Canon could have bought Flickr and YouTube in one stroke and included a one touch share button on all of their compacts. They could have done this if they'd had the future vision and foresight to do so, before Google snapped up YouTube. Canon just didn't see it. Their ageing management mostly didn't even use the internet in 2005. Canon's buck stops with a CEO who is nearly 80 years of age. I am sure with some careful consideration and thought, Canon's combined talent could have come up with something far far more compelling than I just thought of in 5 seconds on a forum post with the benefit of hindsight, but for whatever reason they were content to churn out the same product again and again in tiny incremental steps until the market had shifted completely away from them and onto smartphones.   Sounds familiar?   DSLR video was a golden opportunity. You can't say it was a flash in the pan or inconsequential, a niche. What it did was launch a multi-million dollar business division at Canon which didn't even exist before the 5D Mark II. What's even more incredible is that where Blackmagic purposefully targeted and nurtured a new market, Canon accidentally stepped into it. If it wasn't for live-view on the 5D Mark II, they would not now be in the cinema business. End of story. They would be churning out small chip camcorders or XL1 successors with fixed zoom optics. They'd have been no opportunity to add mark up on their EF lenses by creating Cine versions. No opportunity for a halo effect to spread to their consumer business from Hollywood DPs actively shooting and endorsing their Cinema EOS cameras and DSLRs.   Canon had no video capable CMOS in development planned for cinema cameras. They had live view capable CMOS sensors in stills cameras that just happened to be the same thing.   It's about time Canon actually THANKED the enthusiast DSLR video community for the manner in which we embraced Canon and allowed them to grasp the opportunity to launch Cinema EOS.

Take a look at this...   http://nikonrumors.com/2013/12/08/the-last-d3100-d3200-d5100-d5200-and-p7700-firmware-update-killed-third-party-battery-compatibility.aspx/   - Third party batteries banned for use in D5200 and others - Absolutely no mention in the change log for firmware update   I think that's an absolute disgrace not to mention it in the change log for the firmware update.   Imagine if you had an important shoot coming and then suddenly none of your batteries worked any more.   Again this will upset more customers and turn away more customers from Nikon than it will gain them in profit from genuine battery sales.   And I am sure they will say they did it for safety related reasons, so I must somehow be missing all those horror stories of third party batteries damaging cameras or setting fire to kittens. Bad bad third party batteries.

For me the argument before has nothing to do with Blackmagic's quality control. It's about the contrasting philosophies of Canon and Blackmagic and how well they are serving our specific community of filmmakers. Perhaps the main quality control that should be happening is the one applied to a post before submitting to the forum.

  Actually both are now bankrupt!

Oh man. Who gives a flying fuck about what the target market of the Rebel is.   If I were an accountant at Canon I would care.   I'm a filmmaker. I don't care. I care that Canon started something pretty magical with DSLR video and then proceeded to let their accountant fuck it over for them.   The Cinema EOS story was written by their finance department.   You say if you want excellent video pay more than $300 do you… Hmm… That'll be $15,000 for very good 1080p, $25,000 for okay-ish 4K and $3000 for shitty video on the 5D Mark III, which took Magic Lantern to fix, through reverse engineering, legal threats and all.   So do us all a favour and shut the fuck up when it comes to defending Canon. They are indefensible. Their actions towards this community speak louder than any 'target market'.   PS...   Rebel is also shit as a stills camera. It's just that the soft, undemanding target market hasn't realised it yet.

  That is true, they're not just shit some of the time but shit all of the time.

  With raw it helps, because you can set the WB in post!

  1.5x crop APS-C or even full frame matters less now Speed Booster exists. Arguably the smaller 2x or 2.4x crop sensors even have an advantage, because they tend to have faster read out speeds, better pixel binning methods and more innovative optics attached.   That said, full frame stills looks magical, it's just a shame the A7R's video quality isn't that hot. The 5D Mark III raw on the other hand...   And where does the 70D fit into this picture? It doesn't. Unless you really need AF in video mode, which I wouldn't touch with a barge poll. Manual focus does exactly what you want it to do. Even the best AF racking isn't as reliable or controllable by comparison.

I hardly think a Resolve deck or Resolve 10 is an unpolished beta device!!   Be thankful Blackmagic are giving us interesting cutting edge products, because Canon just isn't. That's the crux of it!   I don't think producing an APS-C sensor version of the BMPCC has to necessarily be expensive like a typical Canon spec APS-C video camera - i.e. $15,000. Why do I think that? Well the Blackmagic Production Camera has an APS-C (Super 35mm) sized sensor, shoots 4K raw with a global shutter and costs $4000.   Canon's strengths are based on their legacy as a leader in optics and a leader in CMOS sensor development.   None of their current products have shown anything like the same amount of innovation or class leading attributes. They all seem to be cynical high margin money spinners or in the case of their DSLRs, barely any different to the old models.

  Well in the shadows on all compressed codecs lurks macro blocking, and with raw the noise grain is finer in the shadows and they look more filmic.   But most of the time with a normal amount of contrast in an image your shadows will crush at some point so you don't notice the crap lurking in them.   I find with the BMPCC that as long as you have fast glass, you can really bring out subtle differences in shade over areas of the night sky for instance, whereas on the GM1 that would be banding of a few tones, or completely crushed black to a duller shade. Disclaimer is... not necessarily... it depends how you expose and what the available light is.   With skin tones, again with a normal amount of light and contrast, and without pulling the tones around too much in post, the GM1 can do a great job.   The difference is when you have skin tones which are backlit, or not optimally lit or in the shade, and you still need them to look great, with raw you have that extra colour information and a more gentle gradation to play with in post.

My theory is as follows... and perhaps Joe can take this opportunity to defend himself, as it's an open forum after all and I haven't deleted his comments as he has done to me on Nofilmschool before!   Most blogs have a business model where they are of service to someone.   Some are at service to their readers, and this is my preferred model of running a blog.   Some are more at service to their advertisers, big names and big companies.   The constructive criticism had to go because it didn't quite gel with Joe's 'advertorial' for Shane.   When something does not look right in an advertorial setting, like a critical comment, it gets pruned.   By the way... Over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend, I lost virtually all faith in the ability of bloggers to resist the temptation to put their economic interests ahead of the product itself. The editorial is the product. The information, a service to the readers. Why f*** this over for the sake of a quick buck???   I honestly felt like turning off my internet connection last weekend. I had 100's of blog posts in my RSS feed which I rely on to keep me informed about the world of DSLRs rammed with deal after deal, discount after discount, affiliate link after affiliate link, on top of being sent numerous emails from US retailers persuading ME to do the same.   Guess what I won't, because it's short sighted.   It seems almost every blog on the internet is shafting their core service to readers in order to make money.   There are better ways to make money, like being of service to your readers rather than purely of service to advertisers. If a blog is subservient to advertisers and big name DPs... the readers will go elsewhere and with no readers you cannot even be of service to advertisers.

  I agree with you there's a lot of bad test footage out there. What we can't have is a second layer on top of that which is misrepresenting itself as something insightful. If the time wasting video wasn't bad enough, he was driving home an agenda that was fundamentally flawed. For years users of this forum have been earnest in their effort to share the truth and seek the truth, then some D.L Watson snake oil salesman comes in out of the blue for weeks has people fooled. To show that all the control you have over a raw image is moot and you can do it with any DSLR. It goes against everything I believe in. The more power and control you have, the more you can execute on your talent.   Sure there are some who don't have the time, or don't have the curiosity to find out if Magic Lantern raw or Blackmagic raw will allow them to expand their skills into grading or inspire them creatively and I am fine with that. Some people just want to point a camera, grab the image and pick up the cash.   Also the old saying 'with more power comes more responsibility' is definitely true here. The pocket form factor does encourage people to shoot without a rig or tripod more often than the other cameras out there, so I agree with you stabilisation is often not done right - either on the day or in post. A bit of slow-mo or Warp Stabiliser can make a difference with footage shot handheld, as can keeping the focal length towards the wide end.

Yes Auto ISO in manual mode and all the others. I find it very useful.

>  He was banned by Andrew for no reason other than Andrew himself fell for it. It was a good Pepsi challenge for us all and illuminated some good points. There was a nice discussion going but the guy was banned and his thread deleted.   Less Pepsi challenge actually, more con trick, and an attempt to bring the forum as a trusted knowledge base into disrepute. If you'd tried the same on a sports field you'd be charged with bring the sport into disrepute. My job on EOSHD is to protect the quality of the resource from outside interference. I'm simply doing my job. If someone is blatantly misleading people and speaking total crap and has everyone fooled, my job is to nuke that kind of bullshit in the butt. I don't care if you call it censorship or wielding an iron fist. It matters to me that this forum does not mislead people.   D.L Watson was attempting to justify his purchase at the expense of the creditability of the whole EOSHD forum. Every poster here who has contributed something useful to the forum, had their combined contribution which was years in their making and of mine, knocked for six by this guy simply because he wanted to prove that 8bit was as good as 10bit because he'd backed the 8bit horse and wanted to be right, and us, wrong.   I endured several pages of misleading bullshit in his thread... him mishandling the Blackmagic footage and claiming it was from the GH3, so we'd all point at the 8bit footage as looking weird, so he could come on several days and pages later to wag the finger at us saying how idiotic we were and that actually it was the GH3 which shot the best looking footage and that we had confirmation bias every time we heard the word "Blackmagic".   In short, a sick joke. You have to protect the truth and one way to do that is to simply delete the bullshit, and ban the bullshit generator so it doesn't keep coming down the pipe.   Thanks!

  Hah good point.

It depends how far you want to grade the footage.

  Nice. Hopefully will be better than their 14mm F2.8. I loved the 35mm F1.4 but the 14 I didn't take to.

  Unlikely but worth trying. You can of course use the standard MFT SB on it. Still a good choice.

  Shane has some tougher words for the C500 in the dynamic range test.   The Alexa went to 4 stops to the right before you had a video clipped look to the highlights.   Epic didn't do as well.   But the C500 started to go bad at 2 stops. "The thing I noticed about the Epic", says Shane, "is that it still feels filmic with the exposure blowout but the C500 doesn't, it starts to look yellow (with the skin tones)".   Personally I prefer the skin tones on the Epic. Bit magenta but looks more attractive, less yellowish than the C500.  

  It's good that Shane has gone to the effort of actually sharing what he does in the 'actually doing films' community. Now you have to look at the motivation of Nofilmschool for their posts to get into the crux of what I have a problem with. Here, they are taking someone else's content and selling advertising around it. It takes 10 minutes to bang out an article like that. It takes determination, effort and skill to put together something more hands-on as Shane has done. Politically, there's another reason why blogs post uncritical glowing articles about Hollywood DPs, and that's because they want the hits and they want to curry favour with the industry's leading lights.   Now if people on the comments are questioning Shane's test, saying it shows a Canon bias, then let them say it... I have a real problem with censorship. And that has nothing to do with Shane... It has to do with the blogs. So many of them brown nose people with a rabid furore and it reads like a PR piece rather than a constructive and objective article. It's unnecessary and unhealthy. Everyone deserves honest feedback even Hollywood cinematographers.   I don't think Shane is paid to say nice things about Canon but some of his statements could benefit from being backed up with some more detail. My honest opinion on the video above is it's compelling but doesn't make clear what part is down to grading and how much of it is purely down to the sensor as a 'digital emulsion'. Could you bring the Alexa to life with more energy from the ProRes or raw? The video and voice over doesn't go there.   Or does the sensor just not respond as well as the C500 to colour in very low light conditions? That part could be clearer. The rest I enjoyed seeing... Much more telling than a chart test!!   As it is taken at face value, what I got from it was the Alexa has more dynamic range but doesn't look as good in low light as the C500 and doesn't have the same punch or contrast to the colours in the naturally lit city nightscape outside the car. So maybe C500 was the best choice for this particular scene. That's why tests are useful.

Those write speeds are very disappointing for such an expensive card. Slower than my KomputerBay 64GB cards.   Get your act together Sandisk.

Currently full frame stuff is a good investment as it covers all the sensors on the market.   Lenses tend to hold their value very well.   At the moment small cameras like the GM1 are more of a niche but yeah, the general trend is towards smaller cameras, even with full frame as we have seen with the A7R.   To directly answer your question I'd say at the moment and for a good few years yet, full frame lenses are a good investment and they don't have to be bulky. Look at the Speed Booster with Contax Zeiss 50mm F1.4 on the GM1, it isn't too big, about same size as Voigtlander 25mm F0.95.   The Speed Booster is shorter than a standard Contax Yashica adapter (same goes for the other mounts of SB).