Andrew Reid

[attachment=328:dpr poll.jpg]   Interesting results of the poll at DPR. A lot of love for Olympus but not much for Sony and Canon.   Telling.

With the raw format becoming affordable for the first time this year (Blackmagic Cinema Camera, Red One, Ikonoskop) many aspiring filmmakers are considering taking advantage. But to edit raw you need to up the ante on the hardware side. What is the most suitable (and affordable) editing rig for raw - Windows, Mac Pro or Hackintosh?

  They're about the same actually.

  Incorrect. It isn't the size of the sensor but the size of the pixels and the pixel design architecture which matter the most. This is why the FS100 is better than the full frame 5D Mark III in low light.   This is also why the Red Dragon sensor is rated for ISO 2500 native and is better in low light than the MX sensor despite being Super 35mm and yet higher resolution.     Again FS100 far better in low light than the 5D Mark III.   http://vimeo.com/42091083   Also you have the option of a T0.95 aperture if you need it (SLR Magic 50mm HyperPrime) and the fastest aperture on the 5D is F1.2. The EF 50mm F1.0 exists but is not realistic to obtain on the general market.

  If you push the shadows down that is the same as lowering the ISO. So what you mean is that ISO 10,000 is too noisy and you push it down to 6400 to get acceptable results. This is why crushing the blacks works so well at ISO 12,800 on the GH2 in black and white. CMOS sensors have a signal to noise ratio per pixel and if your signal is high enough it masks the noise which is why well exposed bright areas of the image are cleaner even at ISO 12,800. Think of a raw image at the native ISO of 800, it will look noiseless over areas of a shot where the luminosity only requires ISO 200, and where the light is dim you need to adjust the curve to bring up the shadows and that is where you see noise.   The 50mm at F1.4 remark is a bit odd. There's a reason most films are shot stopped down to T5.6 as a default. You need a margin of error and for when something is moving back and forth quickly you certainly can't keep them perfectly in focus 100% of the time at F1.4, not even a ninja focus puller can do that on ALL types of movement. Some movement is random and you cannot account for it. With a locked down shot, of course F1.4 is fine. For most stuff, your actors will be going in and out of focus especially at closer focus distances, which is often not what you want.   I use very fast apertures a lot but only for locked down shots where there's no focus racking.

  Can't feature something I've not shot with regularly. Also there are small things that stopped it from reaching the top 5 like:   - Lens mount isn't as adaptable as Canon (can't use my Contax Zeiss on it for example) - Mild moire & aliasing   Still, I'm tempted to switch.

Starting with number... 5. Sony RX100 http://vimeo.com/45682834

  I'd love to see what your solution is in low light for manageable depth of field. Stop down to F5.6??? I don't think so! Also there are no PL mount adapters on the 5D Mark III. Mirror in the way and sensor too large for most Super35mm lenses.

  The dynamic range is better than the MKII and GH2? Really? I don't see it.   The highlights blow slightly sooner than the MkII and the shadows are horrendously noisy compared to the FS100 at ALL ISOs.   And CineStyle is crap. Horrible colour and banding.   I've used the Mk II for 3 years on and off, Mk III for 1 year and GH2 for 2 years, so to say I am going of paper specs is bullshit my friend.

  Talking about stating the bloody obvious.   But you are missing the point as usual. A great deal many customers use it to shoot video and so the lack of improvement in image quality and functionality relative to much cheaper DSLRs was a let down.   The 60D has an articulated screen and photographers love it. Helpful not just for video on a tripod but for stills too. Almost every good STILLS camera has an articulated screen nowadays.

  You don't wait 3 years inbetween iPhone updates.     How is the codec a huge improvement? Image quality where regards the codec (and the difference it should make) is almost identical to the 5D Mark II.

Aside from being cleaner at high ISOs and having less moire & aliasing, the video quality of the 5D Mark III isn't any different to the 5D Mark II and we waited over 3 years for it. Do you guys really think that is progress? The 5D Mark II and the 5D before it blazed a trail. The first affordable full frame camera, then the first full frame video mode. So I was expecting innovation again. We didn't get it. 720p HDMI output, and not clean. They said the hardware couldn't do it. We now know this isn't true. No articulated screen. They said it would compromise weather proofing. Also not true, since the OM-D and GH3 are weather proof and have articulated screens. No 1080/60p. New codec, but it isn't much of an improvement over the old one. Still a lot of compression noise in the mids and lows, banding, 4:2:0 colour sampling, 8 bit very hard to go back to after you use the Blackmagic. Then there was the price at launch - a good deal higher than the Nikon D800 for less image quality. All the criticism is justified. The argument over whether it is capable of lovely images or not is a different thing. Every camera is capable of that in the right hands.   If it wasn't for the Canon lens mount I'd be a D800 user by now.

The clue is in the term 'LOW light'. You need to test CMOS sensors in situations of under exposure and dim lighting. A well exposed area of the image is much cleaner at, say ISO 12,800, than a shadow area. If the whole frame is well exposed with no shadows, and under strong studio lights, the results aren't accurate.   You can see with the GH2... Set it to ISO 3200 and operate it in day light. Clean as a whistle.

What works and what doesn't. Here it is...   http://www.eoshd.com/blackmagic-cinema-camera-lens-compatibility-list   Feel free to add / edit suggestions below.

The ISO test is insane, but you have to wonder if the lighting was turned down of if the NDs, aperture or shutter was changed to compensate for the ISO increases. Because an ISO test under strong studio lights is the height of bunk.

GH2 is certainly better in low light. F0.95 vs F2.8 for starters!

  Thanks for posting, I am hearing you out but reserve the right to disagree :) That I disagree doesn't mean anything outside of normal debate. No hard feelings (etc.)     I am all for the communal experience....     With the right people.     I absolutely love that. It is how cinema should be and sadly how it mostly isn't today.     The industry is so inflated and spends so much on films that sadly, yes the hyper-commercial realities and need for ever greater profits and marketing spends mean that we need more crowd pleasing bullshit.   However I constantly believe that the industry underestimates people. I want entertainment, sometimes I want it to be simply that. Fun. I don't always want to have to think about what I've seen, and not every film is going to be a masterpiece. But where has the personality and enjoyment gone from these kinds of films? It is all so po-faced at the moment. Even the Bond films are an example of that now. Too serious.   Everything is either too dumb and offensive, or too clever for its own good. Polarised, in other words.     This is truly a shame.     You're right it is a business, a failing one. They've got it all wrong.

No matter what the author or filmmaker says, this story is open to interpretation and therefore is allegory. In the end it is not up to the writer how people interpret their story, not up to the artist how people see their painting, not up to the filmmaker what hidden meanings the audience might read into their film.

I recently picked up the Hero 3 Black Edition. It's a great overall point-of-view camera not just a favourite of sports shooters. The size of a matchbox and it does 2.7K and 4K video all at a pretty high bitrate of around 45Mbit. Since a couple of days ago (Dec 14th) it has a new firmware update and iPhone app which gives you smooth wireless 24fps monitoring on the iPhone so I thought I'd give it a try.

I think you're right Burnet, it is wrong to blame the animators and VFX guys when the overall direction and vision is seriously lacking in creativity.

Caleb there's cinematic gold in everything you describe, instead all of that was handled in a hack like way, giving a roughshod treatment and replaced with 3 hours of waffle and CGI. I've lost faith in Jackson as a good filmmaker. The Lord Of The Rings was obviously some kind of fluke.

Yeah I'm not a big fan of motion capture. Again realism is no good, where is the creative leeway? Suspension of disbelief? I don't want to watch a man in a leotard prance about a virtual environment.

We live in a new world order driven by unthinking godless consumerism, where idiots consume massive amounts and vast industries produce shlock for them.   The idiot industries are incredibly powerful and our future cultural direction will mostly be defined by idiocy, mediocrity and stupidity on a grand scale.   If you look at social changes around the world, the big growth industries are related to serving idiots.

So it is a new processor with a software technique to get smoother colour from 8 bit.   It isn't 10 bit at all.   At a time when Panasonic's pro A/V division should be releasing a 4K cinema camera with global shutter that does AVC Ultra and raw, they come along and do this?? Unacceptable stuff really.

Above: Peter Jackson in the camera department of "The Hobbit" Peter Jackson chose to take a controversial step away from the cinema look and shoot The Hobbit at 48p HFR. I've now seen it in glorious 48 frames per second and that isn't the biggest problem. Jackson is shooting The Hobbit like an epic but the material this time is not of epic proportions, and the action sequences are typical popcorn schlock. The Lord Of The Rings was an allegory tale with the horrors of Word War II echoing throughout, an epic heartfelt piece of art with gravitas (and a huge leap in CGI technology at the time the film was shot). The Hobbit is simply 6 chapters of a thin children's book stretched to 3 hours.