cantsin

My bet is: 10bit will only arrive for the masses once the Rec2020-10bit-HEVC standard for UHD television and BluRay disks becomes standard for consumer electronics. Then there will be cheap, small and low-heat encoder/decoder chips for 10bit-Rec2020-HEVC, in any media playing device from smartphones to Smart TVs to cameras. Adding flat log profiles for them will simply be a matter of firmware development. Yes, the Blackmagic Pocket has 10 Bit today, thanks to Blackmagic's in-house recorder chip technology originally developed for the HyperDeck. But for a 1" chip camera (the same sensor size as the RX100), it's a relatively massive camera, as big as an A5100 body and as heavy as an A7 body, despite its simplified functionality as an 2MP video-only camera with comparatively "dumb" electronics. This body bulk was necessary for cooling the camera.

Color palette in the skin tones is rather reduced and has slight green/magenta banding. Must have been a consumer camera with 8bit 4:2:0 h264 video, perhaps a GH2?

I own and love the BMPCC, but would recommend other cameras for classical documentary work. (The setup you propose does not include wide angle lenses, it is hard to use the BMPCC as a handheld cam, and for in-camera sound, without complex rigging, battery life is extremely short, it has issues with moiré and sensor grid patterns, and its sensor isn't a good performer under tungsten light or, especially, "dirty" available light from energy-saving bulbs and neon tubes.) Yet it gives a fantastic image and should be seriously considered for the likes of travel/nature documentaries and music videos.

Indeed, before I suggested the FS100 in the beginning of this thread, I had also seen it offered for about $/EUR 1500 second hand. The fact that it has XLR audio inputs makes it highly recommendable for documentary work. "Citizen Four" was shot on an FS100, btw.

For documentary, consider a used Sony FS100 or a new Canon XC10, maybe in combination with an external recorder like the Ninja Star. I would absolutely not consider the 5D with Magic Lantern Raw for documentary work.

The lesson is simple: Sony designs its stills-oriented cameras according to a principle of cramming the latest technology into the smallest possible bodies. Overheating in video and long-exposure stills mode is the price you pay for that: back in the days of the NEX-5N, now with the RX100-IV and the A7R-II. But Sony also has a consistent record of video-oriented sister models that don't suffer those limitations: the VG series instead of the NEX series in the past, the RX10-II as an alternative to the RX100-IV (using the same sensor and codec), and the A7S instead of the A7 sister models today. For a video-oriented camera, I would either wait for the A7S-II or use the existing A7S.

​Okay, but how good is the 1080p HDMI signal of the GH4? Is it 10bit 4:2:2 with clean downscaling/binning from the sensor's 4K? Would, for example, an Atomos Ninja Star record high quality 1080p video from the GH4?

​Yes, but my strong suspicion is that 10bit external recording really helps with the LOG footage. The material would for sure not grade as well if it had been recorded with the internal 8bit codec.

Without a LUT, just adjusting Lift/Gamma/Gain + removing Green tint via the Offset dial (all in Resolve). Looks excellent, much better than the oversharpened image/unnatural colors of the standard profiles and in-camera codec:

Your math is correct. In fact, the Voigtlander m43 lenses have become a lot less attractive ever since the Speed Boosters came out. If you spend a few more $ for an original Metabones Speed Booster + a Nikon Ai-s 50mm/1.4, you will even end up with a better overall lens/better overall optics than the Voigtlander (which isn't as great as its price suggests).

To warm up an older thread - this latest message from Vimeo indicates that the company is another case of "Singularity" cult. Vimeo used to be the sane, no-nonsense alternative to nutty YouTube, but now it seems to have gone wacky itself:

Very simple wish: a Sigma ART 35-70mm/f1.8 APS-C zoom that complements the existing 18-35mm/f1.8. Those two lenses would cover 98% of all my needs. (The 18-35mm has already obsoleted my Nikon 20mm/24mm/28mm/35mm Ai-s prime kit for video - believe it or not, but the Sigma zoom is optically better than the Nikon primes.)

​Yes. But now comes my "Yehova" cry (remember "The Life of Brian"): The images from the Bolex D16 in your film look like Instagram to me, not like film at all.

Well, Mattias correctly summed up that our viewing habits/preferences are now more tuned to digital cinema images. Conversely, I'd claim that few people still know what chemical film looks like. Most people associate it with an Instagram/retro filter look rather than with the real look of, for example, Kodak Vision3 or Fuji Eterna. (Even the more saturated and crushed reversal stock like Ektachrome and Provia doesn't look like digital retro filters.)

I got my favorite camera right - all the shots I preferred were from the BM Pocket, throughout all scenes. What mostly threw me off was the Bolex and the Panasonic camcorder, maybe because they both have CCD sensors with more limited dynamic range. I couldn't stand their image. But working a lot with BM cameras and Resolve also really teaches you how to technically read an image (and look at it with the eyes of a colorist).

What strikes me in your sample/test footage is that the shadows appear to be somewhat crushed. Is that the general characteristic of the NX1' s video image, or a matter of camera configuration (or color correction in post)?

Well, the point seems to be that one letter is not indicative of the same camera - so camera A in shot 1 is a different camera than camera A in shot 2, etc. Mattias, this is all causing lots of confusion. The test methodology, apparently, hasn't been clear enough to most of us. Can you redeem us and give us the solution of the puzzle?

Also read this: http://www.zeit.de/studium/uni-leben/2015-05/columbia-university-sexual-assault-trial And, apart from this, it strikes me that this forum is falling apart. You can pride yourself of playing a vital role in that, Ed.

Re: part 2 Okay, now we have the definite clue that indeed, you shot the same scene with different cameras. And we can say much more about the actual quality of the cameras because you shot a more detailed scene in daylight. Scene 4: Camera A: Soft image, ugly moiré on the building. Could very well also have been the lens that was soft (like a Russian vintage lens) since the softness of the leaves looks like coma. Pleasing colors. If I were on a TV quiz, then I would say that this is Canon or Sony DSLR/mirrorless footage. (Not A7 though, and not 5D MkIII.) Camera B: Terrible squeaky consumer cam colors, terrible dynamic range with totally crushed shadows, terrible oversharpened image with no real detail/no real resolution, looks like a smartphone or bad consumer camcorder (even Aiptek-class bad...). Resolution is too bad to produce moiré. Camera C: Relatively good detail and dynamic range, probably shot with a flatter profile, looks like something from a more modern mirrorless camera like Panasonic GH/Sony A7/Samsung NX. (Could also be an older GH2/3 or a Nikon 5x00.) Camera D: This is the shot with most genuine detail and resolution, and most natural and differentiated colors. Moiré on the building. I'd say that this has been shot with a Blackmagic Pocket or 2.5K Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Scene 5: Close-up shots with shallow DoF really aren't useful for comparing cameras. Here, your DoF is so shallow that the differences between the shots rather lie in the center of the focus area (which is slightly different in each shot) than the rest of the image. Since the color palette is greatly reduced, too, and there are no memory colors like grass and skin tones, you can't say anything about these shots either, only one thing: Camera C: absolutely terrible, oversharpened, blown-out highlights with false color, must be the same terrible camera as B in Scene 4. Camera D: has clear problems with moiré and false colors (see the blue lower eyelid and rainbow artifacts on the animal's fur).

With all due respect, but for the images to be really comparable, these shots should have been made with identical camera angles/fields of view and identical exposure. (Exposure greatly varies between the shots, yielding different gammas and different color rendering). Using a mixture of daylight and tungsten in the same shot isn't very helpful either, unless you want to show how well a camera can deal with it. Exposure should not be done only on the basis of identical ISO settings for all cameras and identical apertures for all lenses since these won't mean the same thing across different devices. (Unless you have calibrated your cameras to matching ISO values and use lenses with t-stops). That said: Scene 1: B looks best and has the most differentiated skin tone rendition, A is out of focus, C is underexposed, out of focus, and its white balance is off, D looks terrible but is also underexposed and has weird white balance. Scene 2: B looks best, A looks like Instagram but seems to suffer from an overly soft lens, C looks bad, D looks terrible. Scene 3: A looks like Instagram, B has a terrible magenta tint and is underexposed but detailed, C is unsharp mush with a terrible red tint making the talent look more salmon than human, D is strongly underexposed, noisy and with salmon skin colors. - None of them look good. Now my theory: You probably swapped cameras in each shot and tried to grade each of them to look A, look B, look C and look D respectively. So, let's say in 1 you might have had a BM Pocket for scene B to look bright with accurate colors, and you might have used the same camera as cam D in scene 3 graded to the reddish-underexposed look. Which boils down to that fact that postproduction/color grading is more important to whether or not we find a camera looking good than the choice of the camera itself. You could even have used the same camera on all shots just with different lenses and grades - that should have been possible with a Blackmagic Camera, for example. Maybe this is the point that you want to make.

Can we perhaps agree on the following - whatever "Kung Fury" is and what people here think of it, it is highly unlikely to bring down the film industry;highly unlikely to be the kind of film Coppola had in mind. Just to bring the thread back on topic.

It's a bit comparing apples & oranges. A GoPro is a fully automatic no-brainer camera that you can just mount/tape somewhere and remote control via GoPro's smartphone app. Codec quality is decent if you use the more expensive Silver/Black models with ProTune, and if you set it to ProTune log and dial out sharpening. It's very robust and designed in a way that operation and setup errors are very unlikely. However, there's no comparison to the image (and sound) quality of a GH2 with a good lens. The GH2 will require you to be behind the camera and manually focus and expose at least once before you shoot. There's no remote control via smartphone apps, no remote viewfinder, and no possibility to remote control a group of cameras simultaneously. I would make a pragmatic decision. If you really want to use a number of wall-mounted/taped cameras, and if you don't have a crew for controlling them at least once in a while, I'd go for the GoPro as the safer choice. Worse quality footage is still better than no footage from a camera operation error. If you are one-man crew, you need to have your mind free to not be distracted from your a-cam work. Having to deal with a non-robust set-up of unattended cameras on top of your main camera work will be a logistic nightmare, drive you crazy, and in the worst case ruin your material.

​Of course. It's the same program, only a new version with more editing capabilities.

​Sorry, but you gotta be kidding.

But the question really is whether you need the full version at all. Unless you produce 3D content or have a professional multi-CPU/multi-GPU workstation, Resolve Lite gives you the same features. The built-in noise filter might not be worth paying EUR 350. In any case, I recommend to download Resolve Lite first and spend time testing and trying whether it runs well enough on your hardware and whether you feel comfortable in its user interface. Another word of caution: Resolve is demanding on the software side, too. New releases often limit compatibility to recent versions of Mac OS X and Windows. I read that the Windows version of Resolve 12 will not longer run on Windows 7 but require Windows 8.1. In addition, Resolve requires a minimum screen resolution of 1680x1050. For color grading, a second monitor for viewing the scopes is highly recommended. (A cheap old 15" TFT connected to the second port of your graphics card will do the job.)