Andrew Reid

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.

  Proof?

  It depends on what you're interested in as a filmmaker. If you want to leave something behind as an artist, make a statement and make a mark as a filmmaker the 5D Mark III with raw is a good way to do it. The image does justice to talent.   If you want to pick up a cheque at the end of the day the C100 will get you to pay day with minimum of fuss.

True the D5300 isn't great ergonomically. Not being able to change the aperture in live view is a pain. Not many dedicated buttons either. ISO for example requires you to program it to a function key and then press the key AND rotate the dial to change. Archaic. I am sure Nikon stills shooters are used to this kind of thing but I just find it a pain.   Watch out for a shootout on EOSHD tomorrow...   GM1, GH3, G6, D5200, Blackmagic Pocket, RX100M2 all in it head to head. It will surprise you.

It has 24p and 25p in full HD not just 50i.   I have my review coming, it's a pretty special camera and you will see why shortly :)

  Quite true and a fact of life I'm afraid!   Find a set of rules you're most comfortable with, is my advice. I'm not so comfortable with the set of rules at play on other sites. I think they're a bit warped.

  Only when it's degrading the standard

Why don't you go into a store, stick a memory card in a D5300 and see if it is any good?   I did it. Took 10 minutes.   It really ain't that hot. Consider the G6, BMPCC, Speed Booster, GM1, RX10, GH2 and last year's D5200 instead. That's my last advice for this thread. Have fun!

I don't read the site so not sure what's going on there… I do however know we are coming to a point where 99% of the internet is recycled material re-posed and re-posted ad infinitum. My RSS feed this weekend read like the contents of a junk mail folder. One black friday deal after the other, with the occasional cut and pasted news article. Not a good sign for the future of the internet. Censorship? Just the tip of the iceberg my friend :)