jcs

Pretty cool- especially the smart phone remote control.
Those looking for something right now, $58 for 1500 lumens using NPF batteries (no smart phone remote): http://www.amazon.com/Yongnuo-YN-168-Camcorder-Compatible-Temperature/dp/B00IWT0ZLU/

Just out (Nov 20, 2014).
 
Fixes various issues including some compatibility issues with the Sony A7S.
 
For the update and details see (Windows version):
http://www.metabones.com/article/of/MARK_IV_Firmware_Win
 
For the mac version, see:
http://www.metabones.com/article/of/MARK_IV_Firmware_Mac

I believe you can compare all films.  Agreed, Hollywood films and independents have different audiences, but they use the same material and devices and have the same goal of getting the viewer to say, "I trusted this person to entertain me and they did."
 
I don't get a lot of enjoyment from Wes Anderson's films.  I enjoyed Rushmore because I felt it was my life on screen, even my name! :)  However, I understand what he's trying to do and respect the film-making decisions he makes because they work great for my wife and kids.  They love his films, many of my friends do. If Hmcindie enjoyed Interstellar then who am I to knock it.  I'm glad he did.  Anyway, I can only criticize Wes Anderson about what I don't like, not about his fundamental film-making which is excellent.  Or put another way, I really appreciate Anderson as an artist even if it isn't my cup of tea.
 
The problem with Interstellar is that the director doesn't seem to make choices based on style, but on wrong-headed concepts of what makes a story emotional.  It isn't extremely shallow DOF, or a 3-hour running length, or a father who goes into space without a proper goodbye from his daughter.  As Bioskop said above, Nolan should have focused on what he's good at--the crazy science-fiction time travel stuff.  I wouldn't know how to write a better script than Nolan, but I know there are people out there who do know.  I do know enough about science to have improved the movie, but at my age this isn't bragging or ego.  I WANT to be blown away by mass-market science fiction movies.  My guess is that, despite all his fame and money, Nolan is too insecure to hire people more talented than him in their respective areas.
 
If the spacecraft in Interstellar are going to be able to land and take off from planets with 2-times Earth's gravity then DO NOT show them being put into space by an Apollo era rocket ship.  It's NOT necessary to anything in the movie.  Again, with Anderson, I might not like an effect, but I can't argue that the effect fits into his style.  
 
In the end, I enjoyed Grand Budapest, a type of film I don't normally like, a lot more than Interstellar which is a film I naturally enjoy (so I enjoyed Pacific Rim and didn't care how corny it was).

I noticed Jupiter Ascending used Leica lenses. After a little research I found this: http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2014/03/why-do-we-want-flat-glass/
 
The Cooke has distortion and less pleasing bokeh (only 5 blades), however it just looks better ("3D"). Testing cameras and lenses against each other is a useful exercise. I've been testing the GH4 against the A7S in studio lighting and the GH4 is looking better, especially in skintones. I had tweaked the A7S to look similar to the 5D3 and thought it looked pretty good until I did the same with the GH4. Under studio lighting, the GH4 produces nicer skintones and a cleaner image (+ 4K!). In December the Atomos Shogun will bring 4K to the A7S, however the GH4 will get 10-bit 422 4K at the same time (vs. 8-bit for the A7S).
 

The great thing about Gone Girl is that he made a pretty average novel into a really good film.
The Grand Budapest Hotel out shines both & as a quasi Doc, 20,000 Days on Earth was pretty spot on.

For 2014 my favorite is the The Grand Budapest Hotel. Also a great film to learn about camera work, framing, lighting, color, acting, sound, music, etc.

The SEL18200 is indeed excellent, shot most of our SciFi short with it (FS700 kit lens). The SELP18200 (black, with power zoom) also works well (slow power zoom can be useful).
As an event lens on auto-everything (100% A7S with SEL18200): 

Because they want a small, easy to use camera with the best color science and overall quality for the price and no need to use potentially unreliable adapters for Canon glass. While we enjoyed having the extra features of the FS700, especially slomo, ultimately native Canon EF glass support and superior color science are more valuable in most cases.

Pascal- thanks for the feedback. I can probably fix the green screen shots if I understand what you are seeing as fake. Can you describe in more detail what exactly looks fake? The jump into the pool was real, no green screen. What aspects of the explosion look wrong? I understand there should be major waves on the sea, however that was beyond our budget (this could be done in 3DS Max or AE with a suitable plugin and rendering time). I thought about using a convolution reverb on the outside voices, however no one had an issue with the sound until now. I can take another look at it.
 
Quirky- thanks for the kind words. I recently saw Barbarella for the first time after wrapping Delta. It was entertaining in many ways, though not for the story or acting. The color was amazing, and after researching how it was done, was very interesting (the history of color and Technicolor film). It was also interesting reading about how they did compositing back then, all with film processes (no computers). Jane Fonda looked great, with and without clothes, and the 60's sets had a fun vibe. And interesting to learn the band Duran Duran took their name from Dr. Durand Durand from Barbarella.
 
Our goal with this project, never having done any sort of narrative before, was to get it done in a timely manner. I wrote the first draft script in a couple of hours. We revised it as we shot, and the Planet Dominous scene was written on the drive to the Salton Sea where it was filmed. The original idea was more Zen philosophy and less drama. After showing a rough cut to a few friends and family, we refactored it for more drama. We now have a better idea what we'll need to do in the future for a more engaging story. Moving forward, our primary goal is making sure the story is decent before we begin shooting.

It's unfortunate that Canon isn't upgrading their DSLR video quality to be competitive. Lots of us have many Canon lenses and being able to shoot very high quality stills as well as video with a single camera is very, very useful. If the 5D3 successor had an XAVC 422 10-bit class codec with log encoding and at least 5D3 RAW-level resolution, it would rock. Between the A7S and GH4, 5D3 RAW produces superior color and video quality (except extreme low light and of course no 4K).
 
Good for Nikon and the D810- folks with Nikon lenses can now have an excellent stills camera with autofocus that shoots nice video.
 
Regarding the post down sampling-low pass filter comment to remove moire/aliasing: if that were possible we'd have plugins which remove aliasing in our NLEs. Mathematically, it's necessary to perform low-pass filtering before downsampling to prevent aliasing during downsampling. The only way I'm aware to remove aliasing/moire in post effectively is via super-resolution algorithms, which haven't been commercially available (research stage or only in limited hardware/embedded systems).

That's pseudo science and you know it.The focal reducers may introduce aberrations, but they just modify the trayectory of the rays behind the lens, the lens in front and the real objects don't change.

http://www.pierretoscani.com/echo_focal_length.html
 
Same lens design, twice the size, twice the focal length. If you put a focal reducer behind the second one the focal length will change, the lens and the angles and the entrance pupil will still be the same size.
The look doesn't come from some magical property inside the number 80.

Andrew, while it's relatively easy to get great color and especially skintones from 5D3 RAW, the same cannot be said for the A7S. While the A7S can look great, especially with post work (sometimes a lot of post work), it has a problem with green that can make skintones a challenge. Have also seen examples online where the highlights make skin look like plastic (something I don't recall seeing with 5D3 RAW examples online (certainly not with anything we have shot)).
 
When the A7S can produce something like this:

Canon cameras sell very well because they make people look great by creating very pleasing skintones. Apparently for technical reasons (silicon sensors, etc.), Canon makes skintones look great at the expense of color accuracy. ARRI is the undisputed* King of Color Science and reading about how to make a C300 somewhat match an Alexa may be helpful in setting up new cameras such as the GH4 and A7S to produce more pleasing skintones (at the expense of color accuracy): http://provideocoalition.com/aadams/story/color-matching-a-canon-c300-to-an-arri-alexa
 
Art noted that digital cameras do the best in daylight (~5500K) due to sensor response to blue. While I too have noticed that Sony, for example, does much better in sunlight, I've found that cameras also do well in Tungsten (~3200K). While Tungsten doesn't have much blue, it is a continuous spectrum light, and that I believe is the most important issue.
 
Cameras have the most trouble in mixed light (fluorescent + incandescent + LED, etc.) or light sources with large gaps in the spectrum (some fluorescent and many LED lights). I had no idea what kind of light this was, however AWB with the A7S wasn't too far off (minor WB adjust in post: still a bit magenta but that's the look I wanted):

 
In the Art Adams article above, he had to make custom profiles (mostly the special Color Matrix) for each desired color temperature (two provided). This makes it clear that getting pleasing (and/or accurate) color for a wide variety of color temperatures and light sources is a very challenging technical problem. Face/skintone detection is one way manufacturers try to deal with the problem (regardless of race, all skintones have similar color properties (along the 'skintone' line on the vectorscope: ).
 
It's not likely there's anything we can do to picture profiles on cameras to improve color performance vs. factory settings for general use. If we tweak colors for a particular WB and light source, it won't be correct for another light source with different spectral properties. Thus, if someone posts a tweaked color profile that changes WB colors or general color matrices, keep in mind those tweaks might not work correctly for your particular situation.
 
 
* this is the internet, so the likelihood of disputing is much greater than zero. The Sony F35 and F65 can produce great color, and the new RED Dragon and associated color science is looking very good. The camera system most people prefer in terms of color is the ARRI Alexa (now +Amira).

Thanks Chris! Elena replied: "Aaawww thanks Chris! I think the best part is the space battle action in the back :)


"
For those who haven't seen it, >Sea Bass was shot on the GH4 in 4K, our A-Cam for green screen studio shots.

Andrew, while it's relatively easy to get great color and especially skintones from 5D3 RAW, the same cannot be said for the A7S. While the A7S can look great, especially with post work (sometimes a lot of post work), it has a problem with green that can make skintones a challenge. Have also seen examples online where the highlights make skin look like plastic (something I don't recall seeing with 5D3 RAW examples online (certainly not with anything we have shot)).
 
When the A7S can produce something like this:

Nice tests. I personally felt the 5d3 raw had the richer colors. There seems to be a magenta shift on the A7s. When I tested f55 I noticed this as well which lead to either faces timed nicely to the expense of other colors being off or vice a versa or lots of windowing in the grade.
 
I know good tests are time consuming, but it'd be great to see a similar shoot out with a face and a color chart. Grade to the face and see what happens to your chart and grade to the chart and see what happens to the face. This reveals a lot about a camera's color accuracy. Of all the camera's I've tested, the Alexa by far won this test while the F55 was a fail. I'd love to see how the A7s stacks up in this regard.

Andrew, while it's relatively easy to get great color and especially skintones from 5D3 RAW, the same cannot be said for the A7S. While the A7S can look great, especially with post work (sometimes a lot of post work), it has a problem with green that can make skintones a challenge. Have also seen examples online where the highlights make skin look like plastic (something I don't recall seeing with 5D3 RAW examples online (certainly not with anything we have shot)).
 
When the A7S can produce something like this:

Andrew, while it's relatively easy to get great color and especially skintones from 5D3 RAW, the same cannot be said for the A7S. While the A7S can look great, especially with post work (sometimes a lot of post work), it has a problem with green that can make skintones a challenge. Have also seen examples online where the highlights make skin look like plastic (something I don't recall seeing with 5D3 RAW examples online (certainly not with anything we have shot)).
 
When the A7S can produce something like this:

Our first shoot with the Sony A7S. Shot 1080p60 1/60th shutter with Picture Profile 7 (Slog2), with Color Mode changed to Cinema.
 
Graded in Premiere Pro CC using color curves and saturation, the same setting applied to all clips. The goal was to see how well the A7S handled skintones under very challenging, changing lighting conditions: low light, multicolor spots, etc. NR was only used on the first clip (very very low light).
 
Shot handheld using the Sony SEL18-200mm APS-C lens (FS700 kit lens), AUTO ISO, AWB, AF (center spot focus area), IS, manual zoom, built in mics. With this lens and settings, the A7S makes an excellent low-light live/event camera.
 

Our first shoot with the Sony A7S. Shot 1080p60 1/60th shutter with Picture Profile 7 (Slog2), with Color Mode changed to Cinema.
 
Graded in Premiere Pro CC using color curves and saturation, the same setting applied to all clips. The goal was to see how well the A7S handled skintones under very challenging, changing lighting conditions: low light, multicolor spots, etc. NR was only used on the first clip (very very low light).
 
Shot handheld using the Sony SEL18-200mm APS-C lens (FS700 kit lens), AUTO ISO, AWB, AF (center spot focus area), IS, manual zoom, built in mics. With this lens and settings, the A7S makes an excellent low-light live/event camera.
 

We felt the best way to really learn how to use the GH4 was to shoot a commercial. All the GH4 shots were in 1080p VFR 60fps mode, Natural picture style, Panasonic 12-35 F2.8 lens, gen 1 Fader ND 77mm (+ adapter), and Flycam Nano DSLR steadicam. The pool shots were iPhone 5S 720p 120fps, and underwater shots with GoPro Hero 3 Black.
 
Edited in Premiere Pro CC with heavy use of the new masking tools. Neat Video was used for denoising.
 
Really pleased that WMG (Warner Music Group) and youtube worked out a deal to allow their music to be used (along with an ad). 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc2LXH_MsQQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc2LXH_MsQQ
 
Editing a fashion show shot on the A7S next (will show a wide variety of skintones in low light- shot event style with 'auto everything'- worked pretty well).
 
 

Color science (no greenish-yellow tint and strange color response in different lighting conditions (looks like a 3D color map kind of flaw)).
Rolling shutter.
Still shots with autofocus and Canon lenses.
 
We have 6 cameras for 6 different uses:
 
1. FS700 for slow motion or when pro audio is needed in-camera.
2. 5D3 for stills (and/or RAW video)
3. GH4 for highest quality video (4K and 1080p) in good lighting conditions
4. A7S for low light and/or portable shallow DOF with compressed video (otherwise 5D3 RAW is far better)
5. GoPro for POV and underwater
6. iPhone 5S for pickup shots and getting a shot 'cause that's the camera we have on hand at the time
 
Some day all these features will be in a cell phone, watch, or glasses.

FS700, GH4, or A7S?

Doing lower light tests with the GH4+Voigtlander 25mm @F.95 and the A7S with Canon 50mm F1.4 @ F2 (fairly equivalent in terms of FOV and DOF), the A7S does much better with noise control vs. the GH4 (as expected), however the GH4 does surprisingly well. In lower light shooting, the GH4 noise does go from nice monochromatic to colored, similar to the A7S (which is much less and better controlled). The GH4 is looking more detailed (4K => 1080p) and clear in bright light. The A7S is clearly better in low light; shooting handheld is tricky as rolling shutter is 30.5ms (vs 20.5ms for GH4 in 4K (13.7ms in 1080p)): http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?303559-Measuring-rolling-shutter-put-a-number-on-this-issue!