nahua

Bruno, you prove my point... talking about what you would like, that you don't want to endorse their business model etc... Then simply don't buy their camera!! They choose what to make, use their business model and I'm pretty sure they knew they had to cut a lot of corners to make the product that cheap... It is their choice. Bringing the most important factor, the video quality, down to a very affordable level is quite an achievement in itself, and should be applauded. It is quite an improvement to the similarly priced DSLRs. All the extras would have cost more for sure...

Good I'm not the only one to react... I'm amazed to see all the moaning, demanding and complaining. WHY didn't they do this, do that, and no global shutter, and why didn't they just make a $3000 Alexa but with raw that doesn't generate huge files, 240 fps in raw.... NOW!
 
I saw a nice video some weeks ago (but unfortunately can't find it again) with a guy strolling around London with an unrigged BMCC and a light tripod, a big battery in his pocket which he plugged into the camera to recharge it from time to time... no nonsense, no moaning and complaining... just getting some nice footage and enjoying shooting... It actually is possible to shoot with the BMCC!

It really amazes me at how people gripe at this camera. It's form factor its lack of features It's weight.
 
I mean you can shoot RAW. The first RAW camera that one person could operate without a crew. Let alone its price. The weight is about the same as most video cameras and yet silly BMC made it heavier than an SLR. It doesn't have F stops in the viewfinder yet..... WHO cares Professionals will use manual anyway. It's battery only lasts two hours it just goes on and on.
 
Are people so spoiled they are incapable of using a camera nowadays. Maybe wait until the camera has legs and can go out and shoot the footage for you..
 
Just a few years ago I was struggling with a 16mm KRASNOGORSK to get a decent film look and then a Letus adapter and now we have a fully functioning BMC that does everything a PRO needs and the moaners doubters and real silliness creeps in and takes it down.
 
The BMC is KING and that is a fact.

I like this!  Very atmospheric, must have had the fog rolling in.  I wonder, I see the lights way far away as ovals, but the streetlamps and headlights are all circular.  Is it a 2x or 1.5x?  I would think all the lights would be ovals.  Anyway, great footage!

Hey!
 
I’m selling my beloved ISCO-Göttingen - Iscorama 36 (1.5x).
 
Here are some shots taken with this exact lens:
 
https://vimeo.com/55304524
 
- comes with the original box (shabby condition)
- Lens optics are clear with no scratches or fungus
- Focusing is firm and smooth in operation
- comes with 3 close-up diopters: +1,+2,+4
 
[attachment=319:IMG_0979n.jpg]
[attachment=320:IMG_0970n.jpg]
 
give me an offer!
 
jonaslodahl@hotmail.com

I have started doing documentary work in China, which requires a small form factor. This is why I am reluctantly parting with my rather nice anamorphic set. 
 
The total price for all components together is £1300, excluding shipping. While the price is negotiable please note that I am only selling the whole set, not the individual components. 
 
Panasonic AG-LA 7200 (£700); in mint condition. For serious buyers I am happy to provide a link to two password protected anamorphic videos which I shot with this set on the GH2 in May 2012.
 
I have attached the Cinetactics Matteblox Anamorphic (£150) onto the AG-LA 7200, it is rock solid and includes the lens shade, carrying case and carabiner.
 
I have used velcro to fit a Panasonic 138mm filter retainer (£50) into the Cinetactics Matteblox. Those familiar with diopter size issues will know that this amazing size is unique and very hard to come by. 
 
It is fairly easy to fit one of the three Tiffen 138mm +0,5, +1, +2 diopters (£400 for all three) into the Panasonic 138mm filter retainer.
 
If I do not find a buyer by the end of December 2012 the whole set will go on offer on ebay in January 2013. 
 
Contact: a_fulda@yahoo.com

Hi, All! This is just some of my "practice footage" from late night (early morning) walks around NYC with my trusty GH2, 37mm Mir, Kowa, Redstan clamps and Tokina 0.4 diopter. Hope you like it. [url="http://vimeo.com/55186577"]http://vimeo.com/55186577[/url]

The "audience" argument is very relative, as it can be great but it can also completely ruin the experience.
 
As for bashing popcorn movies, speaking for myself, even though I'd rather have 10 Moonrise Kingdoms a year than a Battleship as I said before, my problem is not with the popcorn movies, my problem is with BAD popcorn movies.
 
There's something people seem to have forgotten when defending popcorn movies, which is the fact that POCORN MOVIES DON'T HAVE TO BE BAD MOVIES.
 
In order to enjoy a blockbuster movie these days you need to check your brain at the door and not ever question or even think about anything you've seen. You're just expected to drool and go "wow" multiple times and then forget all about it. And repeat. Every single big movie I've watched lately has had massive plot holes, ridiculous characters and silly repetitive stories, and most people act like that's ok "it's just a popcorn movie". Well it's not ok!
 
The first Indiana Jones movies were great, so was Big Trouble in Little China, or Back To The Future...
These were all popcorn movies, good ones too. Back To The Future is extremely clever, I don't see anything like it in present day blockbusters, instead I see the same ideas from the highest grossing films being recycled over and over again, that's what producers want in their movies, the same exact sequences they saw in movies that made a lot of money.
 
Pirates of the Caribbean was a great popcorn movie, a huge surprise to me, but then the sequels were just awful. Why? Because they didn't have anything else to say. They weren't driven by a new idea to advance the saga, they were driven by the money made by the first movie.
 
I just watched the trailer for GI Joe 2, not that I was expecting it to be remotely good, but seriously, why bother? Every single shot in there has been done several times before just in the last few years. You could cut that exact same trailer using only stuff from other recent blockbusters.
 
The case with The Hobbit and so many others nowadays is that it's just a technical showcase, 48fps and 4k were driving the making of the film, the story wasn't. Back in the day, they were inventing new techniques and tools in order to tell the story of Star Wars, these days it's the other way round, story is not driving these movies at all, it probably even gets in their way.

You are talking about the latest FCP X vs. Premiere CS 6?
 
Knowing FCP X and Premiere until CS 5.5, it is quite clear that FCP X is the better editor. But in version 10.7 it still has bugs, and there are some things you just can't do. You can't, for example, change the project settings to cinemascope. Not yet at least. For 300 bucks, it is more than useful, and many find it sufficient. It's strenghts are the organisation of your footage, the speed with which you can edit and how well it responds (granted you have a fast machine and enough RAM).
 
Adobe has the integration of After Effects, Audition and the new Speedgrade on it's side. High price, and the editor is outmoded with it's track-bound timeline, which many experienced cutters prefer nonetheless.
 
 
For Adobe, you can rely on the said Speedgrade, for FCP X you would export XML for the free DaVinci Resolve Lite or buy the Magic Bullet Looks Plugin (there is a high quality color corrector integrated, but it's tools are limited, i.e, you can't keyframe grades, which is a no-go for serious colorists). In any way, buy tutorial DVDs (not books) for the application of your choice!
 
 
Not the cheapest, but the best in this price range is the Sachtler ACE.
 
 
New is the Eclipse as an ND-Fader. You heard, that you need a bigger diameter than your lenses filter mount? Or a set of NDs like 2,4,8. 

Where I disagree with your article is your letting Jackson off the hook.  The Hobbit, like King Kong, like the LOTR trilogy are not the product of corporate film making, whether they foot the bill or not.  There is no influence, no choice, no direction that isn't pure Jackson.  His supervisors, producers, etc. are figure heads even.   He's making the films he wanted to make the way he wanted to make them.  Like Lucas.  Like Cameron. 
 
With this in mind the problems with the action sequences and animated hordes are not the result of any deficiency in the armies of people it took to create them.  Or have we all forgotten all the boring, repetitive chase sequences in King Kong.  110% of this is Peter Jackson.  Just like the self-mutilation of the Star Wars saga by Lucas, this is an "auteur" with total control, no limits and no one telling them "no."  
 
The artists that worked night and day, more often than not seven days a week, for months (or years, in the case of Cameron and Avatar) on end, are execution.  They're doing their job, often at the expense of their own health, their families and any regard for anything other than the film.  In the case of filmmakers like Peter Jackson and James Cameron or George Lucas there's also the masochistic reality of these people pushing themselves even further, allowing themselves to be exploited even more than usual, due to their futile idol worship.  
 
I used to be one of them.
 
These filmmakers learned from the mistake of Francis Ford Copolla who was only compelled to return from the Philipines and eventually complete Apocalypse Now with the threat of the destruction of the negative he'd already shot.  With these guys,  there is no outside influence, no tampering, no limits and like Kurtz going off into Cambodia, no method, only madness.
 
 
edit: re-reading several posts I've made on this subject I'm gonna try to make this one my last.  I just hate the negativity it brings out of me.  You'd think I was talking about the GOP or whalers, lol.  I'm gonna try to concentrate on positive stuff and enjoy the anamorphic discussions which was what brought me to this forum in the first place.

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.

Don't forget beer!

Love the style of the Japanese film Tony.
 
The problem today is extremely simple.
 
In the film industry there are too many technicians and businessmen and not enough artists.

[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvx9kwcREW1qfl94zo1_500.jpg[/img]

Canon Mark 5d3 is less than a year old.  Came out around $3600.  Being sold for as low as $2600.  These are different times.  The 5D2 initially didn't have competition.  The 5D3 does. 
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230892739424

She didn't deserve a harsh response and I take it back as I may have misunderstood her point. Just becoming extremely fed up with some of the comments on here. They are really misinformed. Have some of you guys been reading Planet5D or something!??

This is 1 of the best lights I've seen. For the price, the size, the output, and the fact, that it can be both camera mounted (ring light, around the lens), as well as used otherwise. Also, its extremely bright.
And, for $199, its a Steal. 
 
[url="http://www.fvlighting.com/store/lighting/led/r300.html?acc=c81e728d9d4c2f636f067f89cc14862c"]http://www.fvlighting.com/store/lighting/led/r300.html?acc=c81e728d9d4c2f636f067f89cc14862c[/url]
 
 
And, yes, its Very Dimmable (almost down to glow-worm/ firefly brightness)   :P

Here's the F55 video.
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EYWE6A_p0"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EYWE6A_p0[/url]

I use alot of Canon FD mount lenses by Canon and Sigma they are very sharp and good
Pentax too some of the Takumar lanses are very good ,
The Asahi Pentax 50mm f1.7 is a very very sharp lens ! 

yes you can use many old 35mm camera lenses on the GH3 with an adaptor
I use
 
Contax N Mount
Milnolta M mount
Canon FD mount
Pentax K mount
Contax Yashica mount
Fujinon x mount
ENG B4 Mount
M42 mount
Praktica B Mount
Canon EF Mount
 
etc etc
 
all work on the GH3 in fully manual mode
you set the f stop and focus yourself

Correct, creative modes are point & shoot, no manual control. I don't see a place for them.

These days, the marginal benefit per dollar spent on a lighting set up easily exceeds what you get from incrementally better camera tech.  I like to light things with a three light kit.
 
[url="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/527159-REG/Arri_571979W_650W_Fresnel_Compact_3_Light.html"]http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/527159-REG/Arri_571979W_650W_Fresnel_Compact_3_Light.html[/url]
 
You can always find cheaper generic versions of these too.
 
Most on camera lights these days are LED, and while they give you a nice soft light, they still don't have the best color.
 
I like this for on-camera:
[url="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/185678-REG/Lowel_ID_02_ID_Light_100W_Focus_Flood.html"]http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/185678-REG/Lowel_ID_02_ID_Light_100W_Focus_Flood.html[/url]

I actually think Jim is spot on here, and Dragon looks amazing.
 
That part is such an important differentiating factor in a camera. If you want to see something stupid look at Sony. They gave their best sensor technology to Nikon (D800) and put a lousy moire riddled 24MP chip in their OWN camera (A99, VG900) which isn't as good on the stills side either. It is like they wanted to lose? Canon on the other hand will develop one truly good sensor every 3 years and try to shoehorn it into 10 different products to make as much money as possible. Incredibly boring. Jim is also correct in his reference to Canon's fabrication process - it is old by modern semiconductor standards. Panasonic and Olympus seem happy meanwhile to be also-rans and buy Sony sensors, this despite the fact Panasonic had a cutting edge CMOS program of their own. Baffling. How can they ever hope to overcome Canon, Nikon and Sony if they can't out perform them on image quality? Fuji innovate on the sensor side - but sadly not on the business side. They had the chance to replace their film stock with a digital equivalent and didn't. Happy to let their cinema business die along with Kodak. Again - baffling.
 
The Germans have it right. Leica with CMOSIS and Arri. The Japanese don't seem to have a clue at the moment, maybe it is the economy.

[EDIT: There was a typo before so this was directed at the wrong person.]
 
@endlos You want to know why those apps are not getting the attention the BMCC is? Because with the BMCC you are talking about expanding a segment of the pro philosophy, workflow, paradigm and quality into a much lower price range. It's about asking people to do more with their images, asking prosumers, amateurs and indie people to take advantage of a new opportunity to work like their higher budgeted peers would (or to adopt a variant of that approach) in regards to getting a bit more serious about color, detail and grading. It's about not saying "good enough" in terms of quality.
 
Key components:
- Massive increase in quality available at a given price point.
- Preservation of/refinement of a workflow designed for professionals (in regards to color grading) and emphasis on a tweak-able RAW acquisition format.
- To be crystal clear: the camera is designed to encourage people to really focus on getting good quality. 
 
There are tons of issues that go along with that camera that are more or less important to given people but let's compare that to the Apple Final Cut X Pro (I'll ignore Motion for the moment because I think a smaller community could contribute to the discussion at present).
 
- Final Cut X Pro was not an evolution of the industry standard editing approaches. It could not be seen as Final Cut Pro 8, etc. and it did not encourage a lower income subset of the existing market to think more like their higher paid counterparts had done. Instead it completely restructured the approach taken and asked everyone (professionals included) to adopt it. The fact that certain facets of the approach had been more clearly signaled in earlier consumer products than in the professional ones also left a bad taste in many peoples mouths.
 
- BMCC delivers a product that directly responds to what many indie filmmakers (and would-be filmmakers) had been asking for. The benefits were clearly visible and many parts of the online community felt listened to and respected by the design decisions. Some people wanted to wait for the next evolution (in terms of mount or sensor size) but few people said anything amounting to "this is the wrong direction".
 
- There was no obvious increase in image quality with FCP X. Let me be crystal clear about that: if you spend a similar amount of money on a new or used competing product vs Final Cut X Pro new, you will be able to buy something else that can get you similar quality. You are paying for the workflow approach you prefer. I am not saying that one is better or worse and I know several people that really enjoy FCP X and I'm not trying to bag on the app. But it is not (and never has been) a product that brought higher image quality to a massively lower price point - it just brought Apple's price point down.
 
 
- Final Cut X Pro launched at $300. That's a big cut from ca. $1,000 but less impressive compared to some of the competitors. Premiere Pro and Vegas already occupied a price-point between the two and Premiere Pro currently offers a rental program that the competitors do not. On top of that, the low end variants (such as Sony Vegas HD Movie Studio Platinum) have expanded to included more and more functionality at price points under $100 (not to mention less mainstream efforts such as Lightworks being even more aggressive).
 
- All this doesn't even take into account that Apple already had Final Cut Express available at $200. FCP X represents a price increase for that (discontinued) product.
 - The BMCC represents the addition to the marketplace of a new product without the removal or discontinuation of another. 
- To re-examine the respective differences, the gap in price between FCP 7 Studio (which included more in the way of bundled applications) and FPC X (which costs less but got rid of some of the bundled software) is $600. If we consider the excluded apps as having value of their own, that means we are looking at a proportional difference that is smaller than that. Apple had already reduce the pricing of FCP 7 by $300 compared to a previous edition - so they completely changed functionality but continued with their decreasing pricing strategy.
 
- By comparison, the BMCC arrived into a market that had no RAW movie options under $9,700 - yet it launched for just under $3K, with $1k professional color grading software bundled at no additional cost. While that may look like a similar percentage to the Apple pricing change, that's a price cut of more than $6,500 in the market with no competitors (then or now) available at the same price point for RAW recording (without factoring in the software). If we look at the overall price difference (as it relates to the funds available for the potential consumers) this is a very big deal.
 
And in regards to discussion of Redmatica and Logic: I remember when I was read to switch sequencers to Logic, right as Apple bought EMagic and discontinued the PC version. I remember all the headaches of AU and the discontinuation of VST support - not to mention the frequent Quicktime/AU incompatibility issues that cropped up with subsequent OS upgrades. I also remember that quality did not improve in the plug-ins compared to TDM, VST, MAS, Direct X (etc.) alternatives already in play at the time. 
 
I remember their consolidation of the Logic range, the eventual price cuts and I compare to those to the price cuts by many competing companies on products they were about to discontinue. I do this not as evidence that Apple has any plans to discontinue their audio products, but to refute the argument that they could be used as evidence that Apple will not discontinue those product lines.
 
I remember how one of the first things Apple did after the bought EMagic was to port underlying technology from Logic to Garageband. I also remember that Garageband had very serious limitations in terms of sample rate and bit depth - limits that were exceeded by various freeware applications on the PC that adopted a different workflow. In fact, if you were just recording live players, you could have gotten better samplerates and bit depth with inexpensive shareware like Cool Edit 2000. In other words, Apple bought a company primarily making professional tools and one of the first things they dedicated their resources to was an inescapably consumer/amateur oriented product with some very hardwired limitations. While Apple may use Redmatica to leverage their professional line, they might just as easily emphasize the lower end here.
 
Apple has a history of creating new approaches, discontinuing old ones and forcing their entire customer base to either adopt the new approach or jump ship. Some markets are much more open to this than others. Microsoft, for all their faults, only recently discontinued support for Windows 3.11. Different companies take different approaches and people value one priority over another.

I really like Apple's industrial design. I consider them to be market leaders in that area for good reason. I find their software design to be much more of a mixed bag and I disagree with many choices they've made in the software area. In other words, I feel both positive and negative things towards them and have no desire to see them put on a pedestal or unfairly critiqued.

But I see very little to support your thesis that Apple is doing for video editing software what BMCC is doing for low-priced cinema cameras. To some people it may be just as important, but it is fundamentally different - and to people like myself, it is less helpful.

Gene there are specialist uses of a large sensor (confined spaces) as you rightly point out, and slow mo. But unless your whole film is going to be shot inside a car at 240fps, the Blackmagic is the better choice. I mean look at the history of cinema. How much super slow-mo do you see? Is it really that critical? Don't forget Sigma 8mm will be wide enough for the car shot you're trying. Equivalent to around 18mm on full frame.