jgharding

  Yeah that's my preferred tool too! And it's true, though I got there in the end, it was quite hard to profile properly... I also found it didn't respond to sharpening as well as the C300, for example...

  It's different  They all look different and are different to use, the stats alone don't speak. Even when it comes to cameras that are supposed to be something of a blank canvas, like Alexa and Red, they still have an individual feel. There's a lot of software, hardware, firmware, and hugely different implementations of codecs especially in the DSLR arena.   Sony's AVCHD and sensor, for example, has completely different noise pattern and characteristics to Canon's, the footage feels different in motion and in the way you can treat it and the results you get. People can spout numbers til the cows come home but the more cameras you deal with, the more you see each has plus and minus points that become evident in use.   Personally, I'd probably only use a 5D MKii for video with the Mosaic engineering filter, as the moire and aliasing are annoying to me, so I'd factor that into the cost TBH. Though I will buy one when they're cheaper for the awesome stills!   Even though they're soft, I've always liked the look of the Canons more than Sony or Panasonic, especially with Magic Lantern crankey to 2.8x bit rate with the sound recording off, even though I own an RX100 and recently hired the FS700 a few times. That's just my taste, but some people think canon are really fuzzy and nasty. Fair enough! It's just preference, like lenses. I like Canon cameras, but I don't like L-glass, i find it a bit sterile. I like Zeiss and Leica glass, but some people swear by L.   So if you really loved the GH2, why not get one again if you can find one at a good price, or a GH3 (if it has peaking)? You can't beat what you know.    If it's minimum cost/power you're after, T2i and Magic Lantern is pocket change, though again you have the aliasing issues, but before I got the mosaic filter I shot plenty of things people paid for and none of them noticed, so as a cheap body it should help you out til you can buy another.   If you have exotic lenses, Nex 5N looks pretty cool to me for its new-found low price...

That's the biggest frustration: there's some good stuff "available", but none of it seems to be Available, if you catch my drift.    It won't be too long before that changes, I'm sure...

I must admit I'm often a bit "take and no give" with these tests.I shall endeavor to make some soon... though I do keep them on a separate vimeo channel ;)

5D MKii are pretty cheap now (under 1000 second hand)   Nex 5n is also very cheap.   Glass never lets you down, it's true, digital bodies come and go...

It's true of course, there aren't, but I reckon we have to be in the last days of 8-bit in professional cams, surely? :S

I've found that even when you have some banding in the source, one you denoise and add film grain in a 32-bit you're usually eliminating it.   If you keep sky tones closer together when recording, they won't be so banded in the source, then pull them back apart in a 32-bit space and it's making the new values - a 32-bit space does not look at 8-bit source and snap adjustments to 8-bit values - it's making new ones. In AE you are working with a floating point in RGB, it's agood fix.   But enough maths! Those who haven't, try it out.   Even those who have purchased this camera though, can surely agree that 8-bit for so much money is just taking the piss. There's absolutely no technical reason to limit it so much. To be honest, I can't even see the marketing reason...

Interesting results so far, 7 yes and 10 no, with quite an even split between the "all the time" and the "occasionally".   Personally, it all depends on the project. Last thing I shot was in Monaco, I was running and gunning as they say, just using histogram and protecting highlights and trying to fill the range evenly. I had no time to meter or double check.   BUT for setups I think it's useful. Someone else can be fooling with cameras, or you can not even have it set yet, and wandering around putting up lights and metering you can know, before you switch the thing on, that it looks good, as well as the difference in stops between to parts of a frame   No running back and forth between a camera and a light! Pretty handy in the right situation... but it all depends on the project for me.

Aliasing is very visible in the really high-speed modes (400fps) and you can spot some in the others. I've yet to have anyone complain who isn't a cameraman though ;)   The above vid was shot mostly in Cinegamma (number 2 I think) and I shifted the black point up in picture profile setting to make sure less data was captured in the destruction zone (TM) of the codec.   Even pedestalling the black and pulling out saturation and with cinegamma, I could still put a lot back in using After Effects in 32-bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuMjew8TbnE   All FS700 here. The main issues I found were the high-ISO noise is horrendous and not easily removable. Fast lenses are good with the FS700. Noise is primarily low spatial frequency and in the blue channel.   Comparing directly to 550D Magic Lantern hacked bitrate (I benchmark everything against this cheap and cheerful option), the noise pattern on the 550D is amazing for reduction and detail recovery, while the FS700 is hell at high ISO. Could be a lot to do with codec too...   This is problematic, because I would usually under-expose a little to protect highlights, but doing so move more data into the destruction zome of the blacks...

I don't use MC much any more, but does it not convert the ProRes on import into MC? I seem to remember that's one of the reasons I switched to Premiere, no need to transcode.

I think I would have gone for the BMCC if it were actually going to appear any time soon, but the delay is just going on and on and on and on and... you get the picture.   Too many vaporware products that get announced and then don't turn up in reasonable quantities, so I'll just wait and get better at shooting in the meantime.   So as it is this filter means my £250 body can cut with the £15000 C300, so I'm happy.

Ah cheers I'll check out those two. I've also tested the in-camera sharpness with filter VS post sharpness, and the in-camera still looks horrible compared. it's just so coarse and has bad halos. My favorite is the multi-frequency sharpening built into Neat Video, it's pretty smart.

This looks pretty cool! Nice one for shooting it all on GH2s, kudos. I'll be sure to watch the finished picture when it's out and about.   On the subject of things that are discussed on this particular forum...   I found the anamorphic not-quite straight right-skew leaning distracting at 38s, 49s, 1:00s, 1:15s (round the dinner table). Either the camera or lens aren't straight i'd guess, but I'm sure you can skew the image back in after effects easily with a bit of scale up.   The guy at 1:47 talking about the contract comes across as a good actor! There's not a lot of the lead yet in the trailer though, I'd like to see more of him delivering lines in your final trailer, as the current trailer is too vague to make me wanna watch it if I saw it in cinema or online not on a specific interest forum.   Change that bloody font please ;)

It can appear softer out of camera, as it's not got a lot of "false detail". But once you sharpen it up there's more there and it's cleaner. It also responds better to colour correction as the bits aren't wasted on false colour and detail etc...   I've been inter-cutting 550D plus filter with some C300 stuff and it's working fine... delivery of that project is not 1080 though, at 1080 you can tell the difference.   There are no issues with wide angles as far as I've found so far, The change in focus distance appears pretty immaterial.

I used this in Monaco recently for a shoot. The real-time feed to the iPhone app has a huge delay, and keeps dropping out, so it's really just for shot setting. Also it seems to have a range of about a meter! Also the camera crashed a lot, the battery died very quickly and it seemed to have a bit of a mind of its own! We got what we needed, but it did fight us a little...

I've played with these too on the RX100.   I found Portrait at minimum contrast has the greatest dynamic range, then Sunset. I have DRO on all the time at about 3.   Put together, these two things get you pretty close to a Cinestyle type profile.   It seems to me that DRO is just pushing up the blacks, but doesn't pull back highlights.

The SLII series are for Canon and Nikon, but the Nokton's aren't.   They're still making new ones. This is pretty new. In Nikon and Canon mounts, for example:    http://***URL removed***/news/2012/07/16/Cosina-Voigtlander-Color-Skopar-SLII-28mm-F2-8

  Yes you can use Nikon F and Contax Zeiss C/Y glass on T3i. If it's only a temporary camera, you could get a T2i for even less money!   I have the 85mm f1.4, one of my favorites. In fact, all my lenses for the T2i are Carl Zeiss C/Y mount, apart from one Olympus OM.   So you can put M43, Nikon F, Pentax K, C/Y, Olympus... plenty of excellent glass on them. Not as exotic or street cred as old Moscow Leica copies, but they look great! Olympus OM is particularly cheap and cheerful.   I use ebay adaptors, they all focus fine to infinity. I get AF Confirm chips cos I shoot stills too sometimes, and the chip flashes the confirm dot throught the viewfinder when in focus, but peaking with Magic Lantern is better to be honest, so you could probably get away with the adaptors without the chip.   Hope some of this helps you get though the BMD drought ;)

Is it me or is the GH2 out of stock all over the place? There's some on eBay though: http://bit.ly/T2AHx8

Canon are really unpopular now and particularly here, but I love the T2i/T3i. The T4i touch-screen and lack of Magic Lantern I'm not into. Firmware is amazing due to Magic Lantern, it gives the NEX a sound kicking on bit-rate too. I bought a Mosaic engineering filter to go in it too, and coupled with high bitrates from Magic Lantern it looks great.   NEX lets you use more lenses though, and that speed booster will work with it, when it comes out, and if you want to buy it etc etc.   If standard AVCHD will be enough, the NEX cameras look like a good option to me. As far as I know they're pretty similar to EOS in terms of moire and resolution, but I stand to be corrected by someone with more experience.

  I've read through this thread but I still can't see why not? Can anyone outline it simply?

For me the most exciting aspect is M4/3 becoming Super 35. The look and crop of smaller sensors doesn't much appeal to me, but some of the cameras are great, like the GH2 and 3. This solves that.   S35 becoming FF seems pretty niche to me, in comparison!

Hopefully the companies will either go open source or the court battle will happen at some point and prove it's ok to code for a piece of hardware you bought and share the results.   Oh for a world without IP! Imagine, the human race working together ;)

  Sometimes you'll have different types of camera, in this case something like the Sekonic 758, for example, allows you to store multiple dynamic range profiles for different cameras to ensure consistency.   The consensus seems to be that lighting before cameras arrive can be more easily achieved using a good light meter.   Also, in a situation where on-set monitoring is not of the highest quality, one might benefit from the second opinion of a light meter so as to be sure of no nasty surprises in post..   Though good WYSIWYG monitoring and the decent (if not always film-like) latitude of modern digital inspires us with a lot of confidence that things can be rescued in post, total consistency can be achieved by checking the light in reality, so to speak.   Thinking about it, metering is not so useful (in the rawest sense) with Red, Alexa or F65 as the latitude is enormous, and preview monitors using a higher contrast profile can be used to show a rough final result.   However, when recording to a lower dynamic range 4:2:0 8 bit profile, it's arguable that many would benefit from using such metering on set, it's often the case that protecting the highlights from digital clipping will crush the blacks, and It's probably easier to have a meter tell you the range of a scene and how much fill light is appropriate, than it is to guess with the WYSIWYG.