Andrew Reid

Adobe have the best debayer for raw around. I still convert my 5D Mark III and Blackmagic Cinema Camera raw files from DNG to an editable format in Adobe After Effects because the end result looks better than DaVinci Resolve. Well as of today Cinema DNG raw video is an editable format, directly in Premiere - dramatically speeding up the workflow for video shot with Magic Lantern on Canon DSLRs and the Blackmagic cameras. [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/11441/raw-goes-mainstream-adobe-premiere-cc-native-cinema-dng-support-tried-tested]Read the full article here[/url]

GH3 is an amazing bargain for $799. The G6 is in the same league for image quality but it's great to have the high quality body and weather sealing. The HDMI out for recording is no better than internal codec but for monitoring works very well.   Did you see this comparison video in terms of the image? There's not a whole bunch of difference.   https://vimeo.com/70855765

D5200 - better than G6 in low light. Better stills. Larger sensor.   G6 - Better all round video features, 1080/60p useful for slow-mo, has electronic viewfinder you can use for video, more fine details in video than the D5200 manages   Do you need AF? I recommend manual focus for video but if you need AF, G6 will do it best for video.   Regardless of the body choice, Nikon AI lenses on eBay are a great choice as they work on almost anything...Canon, Panasonic, Nikon, you name it! The 50mm F1.4 is a good buy and not expensive. The E-series Nikon lenses are extremely sharp for the money. 100mm F2.8 especially.

I've seen the Canon 1D C go for under £5000 on eBay at the moment.   An absolutely terrible depreciation on the used market from the launch price of double that.   It's for that reason I'm unlikely to ever invest more than £5000 in a camera... That and the fact they become obsolete after a year.   The Sony F3 for example - was £12,000... Now £4000 used! It's perfectly good... 10bit codec, lovely low light, FS100 Super35mm sensor, HD-SDI, XLR, ND, you name it.

And yet it has no 720/120fps and 5 axis stabiliser like the lower end Olympus compact, HS50 http://***URL removed***/news/2013/01/08/Olympus-Stylus-Sh-50-iHS-24x-compact-superzoom-with-5-axis-image-stabilization     You've gotta wonder why!

  Moire is an interference pattern, which happens when you take out pixels and move unrelated pixels next to each other in the 1080p after the pixel binning from 36MP or 24MP down to 2MP.

  Those files are interlaced 60i according to my system. VLC has haircombed playback but fine in Premiere.

Used my FS100 again the other day for first time in ages. It was actually very refreshing to have a light camera body, very long battery life, mirrorless lens mount and tiny file sizes after all this Blackmagic and raw shooting.   However I still believe the image quality of raw is a league ahead. The test scene above doesn't really challenge the camera. Take it outside and shoot something with a wide dynamic range, like some landscape in a shadow against a bright skyline - you will notice what happens for sure.

Thanks prism. Appropriate name :)   The aim of this was to test out a concept on whatever I found on the street that day really. It's already fired some ideas off of how it can be used in a planned shoot. I'm planning two music videos for the Berlin band Bunny Suit at the moment so maybe it will turn up again. That's the great thing about testing out different equipment, it can actually generate ideas in itself.   Got the filter thread adapter for X100S so I can use it on that - video is a little better on that at 1080/30p but in 1080/60p moire and aliasing actually get worse. First camera I know that does that between frame rates.

Got to love Luke's response here.     Luke Neumann is a top guy and big supporter of my anamorphic efforts... I highly recommend you check out his YouTube channel and watch the anamorphic video which is the subject of the NFS post.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oar3rXa8fXI

  It's understandable. Most people want something they can quantify, take away and do. The creative posts always sink because you can't steal someone's creativity!   Keep shooting guys! It will find an audience, just not in the camera geek community.

  One way around the playback issue (and yeah - that is a pain) is to record simultaneous proxies in ProRes via HDMI to an Atomos or similar and use those to gimp at the footage.   Magic Lantern does do playback, but it's still B/W and low FPS at present time as far as I know. Haven't tested playback on my latest install yet. Recording is pretty bullet proof now though. Card warm up helps. And camera seems to boot quicker too.

There's a lot you're missing, yes.   The whole image is different to a normal lens.   The flare is the tip of the iceberg... And actually, no you can't do it in post. It will look shit.   The aspect ratio is not the main thing either. The way it is achieved is far superior to cropping. You get a wider lens horizontally. With a normal lens, you need to get further away from your actor's head, to allow for the crop of the top and bottom. By coming further out, you lose the intimacy and the depth compression of the shot changes.   By having a lens that is wider horizontally, you also get more leeway to track a moving body sideways. If you imagine a close up of a face filling the screen in a 4:3 box from top to bottom, you'd have no room at the edges... no safety margin in your pan when the person moves. With anamorphic your pans are more graceful and considered, and you are not 'chasing' the moving actor around - yet still have a close up from top to bottom. You see what I mean?   Then there's the bokeh. We're not just talking oval light points. The whole out of focus parts have a different look. Something much more sublime and cinematic, less obvious. Foreground objects and background objects, anything which isn't directly in focus, you can tell there's anamorphic magic at play there.   The resolution gain is very real too.   If you take a 1920 x 1080 image and crop it, you end up with something like 1920 x 720.   Effectively 720p vertically. Not good.   With an anamorphic you maintain 1080p, and can stretch or upscale the horizontal pixel count to 2.5K.   And an anamorphic lens is the only way to make use of 1280p on the 5D Mark III with raw video without the dopy 3:2 aspect ratio making it look shit.   There's a reason top flight productions still spend $$$ renting anamorphic lenses and a reason the Arri Alexa Studio (with 4:3 mode) exists. That should tell you something about the advantages of real anamorphic shoots.   Django Unchained - also anamorphic.   As for the "everyone's screens are 16:9" argument... so what? For me the wider aspect ratio has nothing to do with historic cinema screen standards or current TV standards. Cinema is wider, because it's more artistic and more immersive and better looking that way. That's really the crux of the argument. Anamorphic is just BETTER.

Android is like a PC or Linux, and I switched to OSX and an Apple computer precisely because I was no longer into tweaking stuff and having full control over the OS. I just wanted to get on and edit video.

  Maybe in future DSLRs will be back with new technology - after going obsolete? Maybe one day, something will make them relevant again. Right now, I feel we're moving into a new era of camera design.   I think the Sony RX1 is pocketable full frame, in terms of jacket, though not so much pants.

http://vimeo.com/77825876 The Sony RX1 has amazing stills but awful video! I began thinking how could I use this otherwise great little camera for video? The answer is to rough up the image beyond comprehension, with trick filters. Here's how I did it. Read the full article here

  Dictation or quality control? Have you seen the quality of the App Store vs your average Android one?   I am hardly not having free reign when it comes to how I use my iPhone or what apps are available to put on it. What's missing exactly, due to it being a closed system?

* not really   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-joFyUcBIqk   :)

  The point about the consumer snappy snap crap holding up the good stuff for movie pros is a good point.   There would be no 4K Super35mm Canon CMOS sensor or Cinema EOS if it wasn't for consumer DSLRs.   If the consumer DSLR market does collapse, the pro stuff may suffer too. Perhaps I should have touched on that in my article.   You can't sell the enthusiast photography stuff in the same quantities as you can a 600D.   Maybe Canon and Nikon will in the future end up like Kodak.   But it doesn't matter. We have Blackmagic :)

  Android is a copy of iOS. Before iOS, Android did not exist. That isn't to say Android doesn't have any merit, and all software stands on the 'shoulders of giants' to some extent. But it was iOS which set the template for the others to follow. Let's not deny it. And I am not an Apple fanboy, just stating a fact!!   Android is not as good as iOS anyway. I can't think of one thing it does better that I really need on my smartphone.

  It may be the Linux of the mobile world but it's still a blatant rip off.  

I'm setting up this post because I am fed up of the camera posts going off topic.   This is a thread to discuss the craft rather than the technical side of filmmaking.   Cinematography, lighting techniques, story and character ideas. It can all go here.   If it gets used regularly I'll make it a sticky.   Enjoy!

Artishock. Further posts like yours will be deleted.   Feel free to set up a separate topic on cinematography skills, lighting, scriptwriting, acting, etc. instead.   I have done one for you - http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/3643-cinematography-skills-and-filmmaking-ideas/

  Yep that era is over.

  That's the perception. This hurts mirrorless and innovation, mainly in the US market. A client doesn't know the difference between a 1000D and a 1D. To the layman they look similar.   But the article is not really about the working DSLR world. It's about the consumer DSLR world. Big difference.