Liszon

Sentimental article, and I agree with the principle driving it - but still with just the principle. This camera was the greatest announcement since the 5DmkII but those celebrated details like 12bit RAW ect.. we saw those on paper with a bunch of promising jpg stills. This type of article (showing fingers to big companies) would be much more proper, if we could test the released product already.

Women volleyball? I would suggest a comfortable chair and a cold beer for a low budget setup.. (:

Pff, these prices are outrageous! 15k Cinema 1D, and 25k C500?! The ~16k Red Scarlet-X package is still a better value if you want 4:2:2 + 4k, and it has 16-bit RAW Processing too versus the 8bit MJPEG. I think Canon has dropped the ball in almost all stages, the MKIII is disappointing for me, and I dont think that the t4i will bring anything new in the lower class. Sad.

Greeeeeetings! I never really liked the existing options for serious color grading in video editors - like the almost "industry standard" Magic Bullet Looks, which is not really matching my taste, both in results and interface - so I decided to give it a try in photoshop CS5.1, with the plugin I use often called Exposure (by Alien Skin). Results - choose 1080p if you want to see some real grain: [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jghMw8KHX9g#ws]Color Grading HDSLR footage in Photoshop - Test[/url] The footage was made with a Canon EOS 550D (no ML) + the Meyer Orestor (Preset Pentacon aka the "Bokeh Monster") 135mm f/2.8 lens + some shots with a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. The reason I like Exposure is that the interface is really clean "Windows 98" type, has really useful and tasteful presets of old film stocks, and it has a serious film grain emulation tab (and I think the right amount of grain can cover some h.264 artifacts, and its more "film-like" too), also the other tabs are loaded with curve, tint and other adjustment options, and you can save and export your custom made presets. (Maybe there are similar points with Magic Bullet, but as i said, the interface and the results with Looks seems inferior to me.) So what i did was I simply opened the raw h.264 clips into Photoshop, if you click to import, there is a 500 frame limit - simply open it, and you get a nice full range layer. You should open the animation panel also, so you can make IN-OUT selections etc. If you would like to apply a filter, you should convert the video layer into a smart object first, so the effects will apply to the full video, not just one frame. When you finished, you can render as video. In my experience, if you want to use "cinema worthy" formats, you can export in Avid DNxHD, Uncompressed AVI, and Uncompressed QuickTime. I tried to use Cineform, but the result was an error message every the time, so I decided to stick with DNxHD (1920x1080p - 23.97fps, 10bit, 177Mbps - there is no better options like 220Mbps) - more encode time, smaller size - better method if you make longer sequences - and sometimes I rendered in Uncompressed Avi (in 24bit) too, because it was quick, and Cineform's encoder can handle it versus the Uncompressed QT (file not supported error in HDLink). Encoding time was a bit longer than average but still acceptable, especially if I consider my Intel C2D E7300 based PC's computing power. If you would like to save some time: 1 - you can export smaller clips in Uncompressed AVI (but for me, after 5Gb encoded in one row, the final footage was "corrupted" - at least thats what HDLink said - but files around 2-3Gb was fine.) 2 - you can export a specific range from the clips (Photoshop lets you set the first and the last frame just like Premiere) So if you already edited your footage in Premiere, you can check the final length of the clips to be graded, and use the same IN-OUT points (or last-first frames) in Photoshop. Also you can grab a frame from your footage as bmp/tiff, and make grading plans in Photoshop, save the presets, so you can pre-visualize the final color theme with stills. For comparison, here is four before-after frame grabs (big files!): [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/835/94560427.jpg/][IMG]http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/6903/94560427.th.jpg[/img][/URL] [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85/69870184.jpg/][IMG]http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/5973/69870184.th.jpg[/img][/URL] [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/109/95079495.jpg/][IMG]http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3200/95079495.th.jpg[/img][/URL] [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/840/82555769.jpg/][IMG]http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/2633/82555769.th.jpg[/img][/URL] Thanks for looking, i hope this was useful!

Thanks for saying thanks! (: And good luck with the new video materials! Regards: Artur

@Andrew, can you post uncompressed TIFF still captures from the video made with the MkIII?

I made some grading tests with the sinaCAM footage: [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/40/03sjf.jpg/][IMG]http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1383/03sjf.th.jpg[/img][/URL] [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/694/01sd.jpg/][IMG]http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/6361/01sd.th.jpg[/img][/URL] [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/840/02sg.jpg/][IMG]http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/121/02sg.th.jpg[/img][/URL] Full size: (big files!) [url=http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/1779/95739638.jpg]http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/1779/95739638.jpg[/url] [url=http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4530/49335136.jpg]http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4530/49335136.jpg[/url] [url=http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/5961/73599705.jpg]http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/5961/73599705.jpg[/url] --- Exposure, highlights, shadows, clarity and contrast was adjusted in Lightroom 4. I agree that the shadow detail is impressive (take a look at the trees in full size) but its really hard to squeeze real highlight detail from the footage. Best example for this is the shot with that bright brick. It was overexposured, and remained like that after grading. I also used some local adjustments on the house with the windows, and while its easy to do with stills, its a bit difficult with a moving clip because you need to use motion tracking masks.

I think so, and maybe more. Maybe they are planning to use the same Kodak sensor, and elements from the internal design from the Prosilica. If its true, they dont have to make a camera from scratch, and that summer release date might be right. Its not a bad thing, fine tune and re-design an already existing cam for different needs, but it would be much better and straight to admit and come out with it if thats the scenario.

[img]http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/1788/allied.jpg[/img] seems to be right. if it was a b-cam, why they show it all the time? Or probably they are planning to rebrand Prosilica, modify it a little to make their own cam.

Small garage teams are engineering camera gear for low price? "Hell yeah, way to go!" etc.. i realy like this concept! It is time to develop a real "indie anamorphic lens" for $1000-1200 too! The CineMoprh filter is great, but.. The raised money is incredible btw.

Crap?

Hot, indeed. I dont think that Canon will put this into a DSLR this year (it would almost completely kill the C300) but this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

Im really supriced that i cant see the RED Scarlet at least in the spec. comparison table. The Canon AL mount package cost $15,965, and the features (dynamic range, framerate options etc) are really putting the C300 into shade. Yes, if you want to edit RED RAW 4K, maybe you want a RED Rocket card, but its not necessary, and you going to need a monster computer for serious video editing anyway. Edit: Actually there is no dynamic range column in the comparison table too, and that value is more important in my opinion than the resolution.

Do you find the Manfrotto 701 head's panning smooth enough? I bought it a few days ago, and while the tilt is perfect, the panning is really stiff even if i unlock the latch full, the head almost screws down from my tripod.