Andrew Reid

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).

Just to be clear, GM1 is separate class of camera to something like the G6. The G6 is designed as a DSLR replacement. The GM1 is a compact replacement.   The size is the main advantage. It makes all sorts of rigging possible or easier and cheaper. Great for multicopters and ariel shoots.   The GM1 has an electronic shutter at full resolution for stills. Important for street photography or gigs where you don't want a constant KERBANG going off in someone's face, especially during a burst mode shot.   In terms of image quality the GM1 is less noisy and has less aliasing than the G6.   And G6 was already one of the best cameras for the price, around $650.   This is $750 with lens. Very reasonable.   But the G6 has advantage of EVF and articulated screen plus 1080/60p.

Raw would need HD-SDI and those would be expensive to do.   And why go to all that effort in putting the BMCC into a tiny pocket form factor... When have it require a chunky external box?   Compressed raw internally to SD cards is a miracle and worth celebrating. In my view it's easier to buy a couple of 64GB cards for $200 and recycle the card via a Macbook Air when it fills up than it is to use an external recorder. This is no problem on a production and even for a one man operator with a backpack taking a break in Starbucks from shooting, it's perfectly easy to do and takes a few minutes via USB 3.0.

The GM1 is a mini GH3 with some rather interesting new technology under the hood (a sensor that does a full pixel 4.5K readout in silent shutter mode) for just $749 (with 12-32mm lens) - but could the unthinkable be true and it actually shoots better video than the GH3? Read the full article here

Blackmagic CEO Grant Petty has revealed he approached camera manufacturers in 2011 with the idea of producing a DSLR-style model with high dynamic range and increased video quality but was turned down. "They don't care about the product. Their only goal is to extract as much from the business as they can. It's incredibly short-termist, and greedy". Read the full article here

They removed it because they can't be seen to endorse anything that isn't arse licking when it comes to the big names in the DSLR community.