Joe Marine

Andrew, I respect your site and what you do at EOSHD, but for some reason every time our site is brought up in conversation you feel the need to express how much you have a problem with it, and how little work we actually do (disregarding the original content we do have and the 20-30 interviews we've done this year alone about a number of different topics). We are asked to share much of the content we do share (just as I'm sure you are), with hundreds of requests per week that we simply don't get to or don't feel is something we should share. 

 

In terms of upsetting advertisers, all of our writers, including me, write whatever we want. We've had relationships with Sony, Canon, and Blackmagic at one point or another, and I've said plenty of unflattering things about all of them when I felt they needed to be said. You can go ahead and explore past posts if you don't believe that. 

 

As far as moderation goes, we do our best with the resources we have. Sometimes we see a situation about to get out of control and we do our best to make sure that doesn't happen. Some of these decisions also come down to our personal schedules.

 

You mentioned that you have a real problem with censorship, but as you know, nothing is ever black and white, and you actually requested it yourself on this post on No FIlm School:

 

I’m disappointed at the lack of moderation and level headed comments here. Why is the site admin seemingly happy to let my name be dragged through the mud without any moderation at all?

 

Trolls.

 

Regardless, anyone who has read NFS knows that we have a problem with how vicious people are for absolutely no reason, and it's something we are working on for the next site design.

 

Regarding the arse licking you mentioned, we respect those working in and around this industry. It has nothing to do with not wanting to upset people, we don't see a need to start trouble for no reason. If someone is going to take the time to share tests or videos they've done free of charge, that's knowledge that helps everyone, and something that literally didn't exist not too long ago.

 

Unless you're a one-man-band in this industry, no one is in this alone. The film industry, as well as any industry related to moving pictures, relies on teams of people, and disrespecting people over little or insignificant things doesn't usually make people want to work with you. We also don't believe this sort of thing benefits our community in any way. There is enough negativity on the internet for us to be adding to it with our posts on NFS.

 

Nothing is easy about any job that involves shooting something in the field, and nothing is easy about running a website, and for that reason we think there should be a certain level of professionalism and respect that goes along with that.

The stated full resolution in the documentation I have seen for the Cinema Camera is 2592 x 2192. The BAE sensor is 2560 x 2160. Why would BAE state a resolution lower than what the sensor is capable of?

You're absolutely right in that it matches very closely, but this discrepancy leads me to believe that they are using a different sensor. ON semiconductor makes a sensor that is 2592 x 2048, so that tells me that it's a common aspect ratio and sensor size (around Micro 4/3s), and it's very possible there is another company that might make a sensor with the exact same pixel resolution.

The resolution of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera sensor has always been 2592 x 2192, I'm not sure where these other resolutions have come from (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/indepth/blackmagic-design/announcements/beautiful-new-blackmagic-cinema-camera). Whether they can actually use that pixel area is another story, but I'm not quite sure where this resolution of 2560 x 2160 is coming from.

As for doing an internal crop to 1820 x 1366, that's a really great idea, and something Blackmagic might be able to implement in a firmware update. But you'd have to take it a little further for many of the 2X anamorphic elements in existence, because most of those were made for an aspect ratio of 1.2, and not 1.33 (or 4:3). That's why the frameline of the Alexa 4:3 sensor is 1.195:1 (and RED's is also 1.2).  (http://resources.abelcine.com/files/2012/02/faq_s_16_ALEXA-sensor-surround-view-and-framelines.jpeg)

I know there are anamorphic elements that are made for 4:3 (like the Panasonic Anamorphic adapter), but most of the 2X anamorphic lenses were made with that 1.2 aspect ratio in mind. It would be be great if they had crops for all of the different types of anamorphics out there - 1.33, 1.5, 1.6 - and then we could get correct aspect ratios with all of them.

For a 2X anamorphic, we need a resolution of 1632 x 1366, which after debayering - say a somewhat worst case scenario of 70% - that would be resolved detail of 1142 x 956. That's going to be about as sharp as those Canon DSLRs we complain about. What would really be exciting though, is if we can get the full resolution of the sensor at some point in the future, because the full resolution of 2592 x 2192 is very close to 1.2, we could use almost the entire sensor for anamorphic, which I know you've stated before.

Either way, cropping internally will reduce resolution greatly, and no anamorphic element can create pixels (unlike film which is an entirely different animal). At 1820 x 1366 (which would work great with the Panasonic LA7200) - let's say 70% after debayering again - you've got 1,274 x 956, which is going to be very soft after scaling up to 1080. It would work great as a nice and sharp 720 image, but it's going to be similar to the Canon DSLRs at 1080 in terms of sharpness, which is not really something a lot of us want.