dahlfors

Hey Andrew!

I haven't been active in the forums here for years, just looking in here now and then - mostly because my life has taken many new directions since the phase when I was very much into photography and video.

I've been working from home in isolation for a long time now, it's been 1.5 years ago since I worked in offices. It's a big difference in social life, especially since I've kept my social circle small.

I can't help you in making a decision or finding out a next step. But I thought I'd fill in how I approach times of low motivation, or how I approach it whenever I feel like my life is stuck. Maybe it can inspire, give ideas?

For me, whenever I've felt stuck in life or that there's nothing new in my life, I have often had what I guess could be called an existential crisis. What I have found that I have done to process this, is to evolve myself by trying new things - from learning new computer skills, softwares, and programming languages to running, road biking, kayaking, hiking, winter camping, mountaineering, skiing and rock climbing.

What I have found, is that I enjoy learning new things. I love exploring the wild. I rarely use anything else than phone cameras these days, but through my interests I've found a big interest in GoPro cameras and I recently also picked up a drone - which gives a new dimension when I'm exploring nature. Since I spend my work days in front of computers, I have cut down on the time I spend on computers at home, so the goal I have when I film these days is to do as much as possible when shooting, and as little as possible editing at home.

I feel stuck and bored to death when I sit too long in front of Premiere, Resolve or Lightroom. But, whenever I focus on a hobby like skiing and film that with the Gopro, I try to focus on making a process where I can film myself or friends skiing in one go from top to bottom. I give myself the opportunity to make something with one shot of video, where I don't need to edit, only do some minor adjustments - and that gives me inspiration. The skiing itself is like meditation - but it also gives me an opportunity to make a video, that shows what skiing is all about.

Here's one of my videos. I like that it shows skiing raw just the way it is, and it also makes it an easy process for me to produce videos like this:

So whenever life feels uninspiring, or you feel that you're stuck in one way or the other - find new things to try out, make changes to what you do, whether it is small steps or bigger steps. Keep doing what you get inspired of and what you find fun, and take a break from what you don't enjoy.

I love this forum and the discussions going on here, and I think it's impressive what you've built up over the years. But at some point you need to try new things if you feel stuck. I hope this site lives on, and I hope you can find new inspiration and joy in your life. Cheers!

For right now, I'd look into the option of selling the D700 and replacing it with a D750. Makes sense since the video image from D750 and D800 would match up pretty nicely with the colors, and makes sense considering you're heavily invested in Nikon lenses.

Nikon has a mirrorless camera in the works if you're ready to have a possibly long wait. It might be released in 2018, might be for later in 2019: https://nikonrumors.com/category/nikon-mirrorless-camera/

If you go the GH5 route, you'll probably want to invest in a few more lenses. With a full frame Sony you'd at least be able to match lenses better to the sensor, and there are adapters for matching up with your Nikon G lenses, although you usually lose the smallest apertures with them.

On 04/01/2018 at 6:47 PM, Damphousse said:

And you are basing this on...

I see nothing but confusion and vague statements on the internet.  There is literally a decade worth of processors out there used in all kinds of configurations and applications.  I read a statement that different chips will experience different degrees of impact.  I haven't seen anyone say gaming and video editing on all systems is out of the woods.  Is there an article that clears those areas on all machines?

"How bad will it really be? I asked Linux's creator Linus Torvalds, who said: "There's no one number. It will depend on your hardware and on your load. I think 5 percent for a load with a noticeable kernel component (e.g. a database) is roughly in the right ballpark. But if you do micro-benchmarks that really try to stress it, you might see double-digit performance degradation."

http://www.zdnet.com/article/major-linux-redesign-in-the-works-to-deal-with-intel-chip-security-problem/

"Will these fixes slow down my PC or Mac?

It’s complicated, but if you’re not working on intensive tasks, it’s looking like you won’t take much of a hit. 

More recent Intel processors from the Haswell (4th-gen) era onward have a technology called PCID (Process-Context Identifiers) enabled and are said to suffer less of a performance hit. Plus, some applications—most notably virtualization and data center/cloud workloads—are affected more than others. Intel confirmed that the performance loss will be dependent on workload, and “should not be significant” for average home computer users."

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3245606/security/intel-x86-cpu-kernel-bug-faq-how-it-affects-pc-mac.html

---

Basically, the fix for this bug will introduce a delay on memory reads and writes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_page-table_isolation for a summary of the Linux implementation with links to further reading. Windows/MacOS will most likely implement similar strategies). So, everything that deals with many small (4kB or such) memory reads and writes will have a heavy impact. These kind of memory reads and writes aren't that common with normal application use or gaming. Yes, you will have a performance hit with such applications and gaming too, but likely quite unnoticeable performance hits.

This is bad for hosting, servers, cloud services etc. The nature of this bug and the fix for it won't have any serious speed impact on normal client computer usage, like gaming, video editing etc.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

 

Fingers crossed the D5600 successor doesn't have crop for 4K (and has focus peaking in 4K!). As I'm certainly not buying a D850! But a D5x00 series camera is one I can easily afford if I wish.
 

I hope so too!

I got a D800 - and it's easily enough for all of my photography needs. A smaller DX body with 4k and 1080p at 120 fps and affordable price - yes please!

10 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Old vs new...

Is that progress the Apple way?!

Hah. I have used the new Macbook Pro 15" with touch bar for half a year now, and I hate those arrows SO MUCH.

The short travel keyboard you can get used to over time. I type pretty well on it by now. But those arrow keys are so tiny, and you can't hit them by feel alone like the old ones.

I still miss a real Esc key as well. Touch bar - whatever. I don't use it for anything else than controlling volume/brightness.

17 hours ago, no_connection said:

I have had flash devices just die, but have not powered off any while writing. Not about to test ether.

Any component issue in the storage controller will have the effect that the storage media goes dead. That does not matter if there is wear levelling or not, so there is no way for you as a user to tell if controller just had bad components, or if it would have been something related to wear levelling in the controller that made it die. The component death issue applies to SSDs and traditional hard disks controllers as well. With older hard disks the controller components were fairly large so that people skilled with electronics could exchange the controllers. On SD, that is a very complex task.

Anyway, I had a quick look around. The SD specs do not require the cards to be able to function on power loss at writing. However, while it is not in the specifications, many manufacturers apply methods against it. Which methods they use are unknown, but the methods that would make most sense are either journaled writing or a battery backup that can last for as long it is needed to ensure that power loss doesn't break the wear levelling system. Suffice to say, you are not likely to see these things handled properly on the cheapest of the cheapest cards. I found information that Sandisk had stated that they use some kind of protection against this, but they wouldn't state what methods they apply. I didn't search further for other manufacturers, since Sandisk is the brand that I've kept using.

19 hours ago, no_connection said:

But as with SSD cards now have a controller, a chip or two and more space then used. Then data is handled with wear leveling and whatnot just like an SSD. So if you pull the power you could corrupt that table of wonder and what's left is a garbled unreadable mess, cause it was never linear to begin with. And at this point the card won't let you do anything or at best read some small part of it.

As far as I know, the controllers are all closed source and there is no public detailed information on exactly how the controllers work from different manufacturers. Despite that we can't know how it works for sure, it would not make sense to design the controller so the media itself wouldn't be able to handle power loss or removal. Otherwise the manufacturers would start getting large return rates. Same method as is used on journaling file systems should work perfectly fine for wear leveling of flash memories, at a very small storage cost. This would mean that you would see data corruption (corrupt files, broken partitions / file system), but still keep a working flash card / SSD.

Have you heard of flash media behaving like you describe after power loss on write? 

I read this quote in the locked Lexar memory card topic:

"The card was corrupted so badly that computer/rescue software's only recognized it as 7,60gb drive... Even that it is 128gb card. Tried to format it with panasonic, canon and sony cameras, nothing. With computer and all formatting methods, nothing. So totally destroyed card. Just rubbish."

Since noone else mentioned it in the thread, I thought I'd mention it: THIS IS PERFECTLY NORMAL BEHAVIOUR. (Teemus card most likely wasn't broken at all - it just had garbage data in the middle of the partition which cameras and operating systems interpreted as end of partition - or made them hang).

So, Windows has no builtin partition management if you have broken the partitions (or managed to garbage the data by removing the media mid-writing) on any USB flash media or CF/SD cards. I'm not sure if MacOS has the ability either in this case. However, Linux has tools for fixing these issues (and I've had to turn to Linux a few times to fix my media after experimenting with them too much...).

In case you'd have partitioned a CF/SD card with just 8 GB - then all windows will be able to do is to recognize that 8 GB. However, in Linux you can remove that partition and create a new one spanning the full card, 64 GB, 128 GB or however big it is. After remaking these partitions, you'll be able to format the full card in Windows / MacOS or in camera.

Hope this might help some of you in case you break your flash media partitions...

Bad music videos? I'll warn you, the falsely sung chorus might get stuck in your head...

10 hours ago, Christina Ava said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWPyRSURYFQ

Ok, check some scenes on the cinematography of the 1982 film

What do you see? Well people have actual skin tones. When I saw the first scenes of the new one I was shocked, mainly because I love Deakins.

How can he make something look so bad? It reminds me the starwars second trilogy fail. And how can you praise this 'film" not even shot on film.

Too much CGI! Too much orange/ blue grading. This is not Deakins work, this is the graders film. Not a natural skin tone in sight, not a natural light or color in sight. Every scene looks like a commercial, fake, very proppy, very artificial and lacking in that futuristic reality, everything too clean and new and staged. Poorly designed surroundings no grit no dirt no reality.

Yes. I'm so tired seeing same extreme color schemes in so many films these days. I don't get why whole scenes should be colored in one single color, I don't get why every film needs to rely so heavily on the orange/teal coloring. I think there must be some rule that you are not allowed to release your film to cinemas unless enough orange/teal can be detected...

16 hours ago, studiodc said:

Actually the buzz from my pro photog friends is that Capture One Pro is the best Lightroom replacement (and better at pretty much everything). The raw processing there is astounding and it uses resolve-style colour wheels and HSL qualifiers for grading. Best colour workflow for photos that I've seen yet. I'm switching literally today, as version 10 has really impressed me in demo so far. So, I've found a replacement for everything except After Effects and I'm by no means a strong compositor - shoot, cut, and colour are my focus. As for graphic design and audio, I've already got great tools for those that suit my needs to a T. I've prepaid the year on Adobe so I'll let it run out, but I won't be funnelling any more money their way. Trapcode was tons of fun to play with, but honestly I get way more enjoyment for my hours just shooting and making simpler, more poignant things than trying to create sci-fi or alter reality too far. 

And, I'm a die hard FCPX fan too, but even with great plugins like Colorista IV, I still vastly prefer Resolve's workflow for colour, LUT, and image tweaking. If Resolve 14 edits anywhere near as well as FCPX does, I'll probably be starting some projects there just to see how it goes, rather than finishing only. 

Yes. The one thing darktable has going for it is that it is open source and free. Pretty decent features despite being free.

Haven't used Capture One myself - but they've been around since before Lightroom, so I bet it's a very mature product!

On 25/04/2017 at 10:58 AM, Lintelfilm said:

The one thing I really feel the lack of is a Lightroom alternative. It still boggles my mind that Apple dropped Aperture and replaced it with ... Photos. I bought Cyberlink Photo Director 8 recently to try as a photo library, which seems adequate if rather slow at loading thumbnails. To me it's weird that apple offer an excellent and well supported pro video app but not a pro photo  manager. You'd think the two would go hand in hand.

If I didn't have a CC subscription through work, I'd probably give the open source Darktable a try: http://www.darktable.org

5 hours ago, Jimmy said:

As an all around creative, I find the new macbook to be great. I downgraded from the Mac Pro 2013 (fully spec'd) to the 15" Macbook (fully spec'd)... I can design huge print files in Photoshop, massive UI/UX artboards in Sketch, edit 4K video in Premiere, create complex VFX in After Effects, create 60+ track audio in Reason... I'm struggling to find an example of where the machine chokes and i'm really putting it through it's paces on a day to day basis. The only time I move over to a PC is when we are testing VR stuff on the Vive.

Same. I really enjoy using the new MBP 15". I just wish it would be possible to install 32 GB of RAM. 16 GB being the max in a professional laptop in 2016-2017 is laughable. Also, I wish I still had a physical esc key and not that silly touch bar...

On 20/03/2017 at 2:40 AM, Tito Ferradans said:

The widest you can possibly go is 28mm + Panasonic LA7200. That matches 21mm horizontal FOV.

Jesse's solution on facebook, with the 40mm and B&H, at 2.4:1 equals a 30mm FOV

at 2.66:1 you can use a 40mm and an Iscorama (1.5x) goes to 27mm.

There's lots of variables. You'll probably have fun with my calculator: www.tferradans.com/anacalc/go

What 40mm doesn't vignette on an Iscorama? My 50mm Nikon lenses seem to vignette just a little bit.

2 hours ago, DeesserLord said:

i'm shooting family movies. I want a natural look, i'm not looking for "retro" or "hollywood", i'm looking for natural colors but with a slight film / movie feel. I try to make honest short 5 minutes movies each months, no music, no corny editing, no zoom or much camera moves, just reality, with ups and downs.

 

thanks

Personally I'd advise you to get a Nikon for natural colors. More natural than Canon in fact, they exaggerate the warmth a slight bit. Other than that, for something like family movies I'd probably go with the GX80/85 with stabilisation. Gives life to the shots if you shoot family handheld, and the stabilisation really helps.

@Andrew Reid I registered here in 2012, and was lurking around here since before that. I used to read a lot of the other people & sites like Nofilmschool, Philip Bloom's & Dave Dugdale's blogs. Been reading most of them for years and have since abandoned them, but I've stayed on this site not just because of the excellent forum, but also because I've loved reading your articles.

I get that it takes motivation, time and effort to write your articles. But I for one would be happy if you didn't stop!

My own favourite articles and what gets me really interested is when you review cameras in the 500-3000 euro range. I've learnt a lot about the video quality from those cameras from your articles. 

I visit the other video related sites max once a month these days. EosHD is the only weekly video-related site I can bother with (no click-baity headlines, proper articles instead of the copy-paste type of content that exists on nofilmschool today...).

On 05/03/2017 at 1:03 PM, Bioskop.Inc said:

There are just too many films out there for the term Cinematic to have any real meaning or relevance to filmmaking. Personally, I think the term should really refer to any film that gets shown in a Cinema.

The way the term is thrown about in forums makes me laugh, because every film is different & so the requirements are also different. So, basically if you want your film to have a documentary feel to it, it will be pointless to make it look like a big budget Hollywood blockbuster with fancy lighting etc. & vice versa.

I very much agree. Whenever I see a photo or video that has visuals that I enjoy for one reason or the other, I try to figure out what part of the image that makes me like it. Is it the framing, is it the lighting, is it the colouring, is is the motion, or a combination of those? If I figure out what it is that I like, then I can likely imitate the look one way or the other as long as I know the limitations of my camera. If you learn how to replicate looks that you enjoy, then you won't need to listen to what other people define as "filmic", "cinematic" etc. Make it look the way you think it looks good yourself. You'll probably never satisfy everyone with whatever you make, but at least try to make it look the way you enjoy it yourself.

Another important thing, is to experiment with the cameras you have. Try to push them to the limits, and even over the limit of the camera (like high iso noise, burning out highlights etc - learn where the limits are for when you find the camera acceptable and good enough). If you know what makes the image you want, and if you know the limitations of your cameras - then you better know what possibilities you have whenever you film. Not mattering what project you work on - you will have some kind of limitations. Time, money, camera choice, lens choice, light etc.

I find it important to be able to realise what limitations I have in a project. If I know those, I better know what I can do to make the best choices and produce the best possible considering the limitations. 

It's sad to see the boring corporate structure in Japan struggling. I think there's still plenty of good possibilities for making interesting & big new photo/video products for the big consumer categories, even after the success of the smart phone. You just need to approach it from scratch, from the user perspective. Some products integrating better with phones & computers & Internet - and that can bridge the gap between the more advanced cameras and cameras in phones.

Up until now, camera companies have tried to produce consumer cameras with added on app functionality and sync functions. Instead they should start at the question "what great user experiences can we deliver with camera products, that will make users want to have this in addition to their phone and is something that phones aren't likely to compete with?". Nail those products right, and there will be the same bread & butter category that compact cameras used to be.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of the Japanese camera companies are too traditional to be able to readapt to the market like this themselves. Only chance I see of it happening is if there's some other companies doing it that they can acquire...

On 16/01/2017 at 7:48 PM, Mls02 said:

I have contacted Andrew twice through the website contact. I purchased the EOSHD settings but did not get it downloaded or read before link expired. I can not get another copy sent to me. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do? Thanks

I bet he's busy with something besides the site, since he's usually very helpful with these cases.

Contacting him through the forum or by mail is the correct method. Try again if you haven't gotten any response in a few days.

18 minutes ago, Don Kotlos said:

They also offer "screen" results for the pixel peepers.

Indeed! The issue with the screen results is that I haven't seen any description of their screen setup (but maybe it exists somewhere in their writing / on their site?).

The results of that one will be very dependent on how they do it. The print process is described well enough to deduct the information you need. What I find interesting if you look at screen result is that dynamic range is shown to be less than on the print version, which I assume means that their screen setup limits the information you can pick out of the test in one way or the other.

On 13/01/2017 at 4:04 PM, Andrew Reid said:

Here's what I don't get though - the 5D Mk IV is a noisy as hell camera with 30MP, yet have you seen the ISO score on Bill's chart and at DXOMark?

Makes no sense for it to be so high.

Because of their methodology; They do the noise measurements from prints (if I remember correctly it's around 8-12 Megapixel prints).

Downsize ANY noisy image in Photoshop - and you'll reduce the perceived noise of the image - especially with such a hefty downsizing as 30 MP -> 10 MP. High resolution sensors with fine-grained noise will gain the most in DXO's test.

DXOmarks sensor testing is very well done in an unbiased way. But you need to understand their testing methodology and how it applies to what you do with your photography to understand how the sensor will perform for your use case - or if the use case is covered enough by the DXOmark testing. You shouldn't spend much on the single numbers they present either, but rather look at the graphs! And when you do, always always keep in mind that it isn't a measurement done directly from sensor data, but that it has gone the route through downsizing and printing. If you know how those processes function, you also know how that will impact the test outcome.

If you care about using the full 30 MP images and how the noise pattern from a camera looks like at 100%, DXOmark is definitely NOT the place to look. It's a good estimation of noise performance at print-sized photos in a magazine - or for photos downsized to fit screens / websites. If you want very large size prints or like to export 100% crops of photos, the noise characteristics can't be extrapolated from the DXOmark data - you'll have to find other tests than theirs.

A short summary on how to make use of DXOmark when you're going to buy cameras:

1) Realise that it is only the sensor & processing performance of raw files that get tested

2) Make sure to read and understand the methodology

3) Look at the graphs and compare the cameras that interest you!

4) Due to the downsizing methodology - check elsewhere for sensor and processing performance at different ISOs to get a more complete picture.

5) Now you know a bit about the sensor performance for still photography, which shouldn't really be the main reason for camera choice. Handling, lens choice, video performance etc will have to be tried & tested and read and learnt about elsewhere.

@wolf33d Very nice. I envy your great view on top of the volcano. I went up on a volcano on Tenerife about 2 weeks ago and it was a cloudy, windy & snowy mess. Not much of a view, just freezing cold up there.

I've lugged my share of camera equipment up mountains too. My advice is to NEVER bring only one camera. You really should have one really tiny camera that can shoot high quality shots, that you can keep either around the neck or in an accessible pocket. The larger cameras need to be in backpack, especially on the way up mountains, but certainly on longer hikes too. If you have a camera that is easily accessible, you can get shots that you'd never get with your DSLR - just because you can't be bothered to bring it out of the backpack.

On the way down I tend to use the best I have - which is a Nikon D800 - as long as the terrain isn't too tricky and I'm not roped up in a rope team

Another great tip is to keep something to clean up lenses with in some accessible pockets. Sometimes you get really horrible weather - but interesting light or environment for shooting photos.

Whatever 120 fps camera you pick, or whatever mirrorless / dslr you choose - do bring something very portable and closely accessible to use on the way - or you might regret it. I've regretted not having a portable camera for many great sceneries since I couldn't be bothered about getting the camera from the backpack.

44 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

Not trying to argue or start a discussion or anything, but what was the purpose of telling us that in this thread?

Where did you hope the discussion would go besides the usual mind numbing "film vs digital" (even tough you know very well that one cant replace the other)?

What's the purpose of telling anything technical related in threads on EOSHD?

I've myself learnt a great deal on EOSHD, and I've myself picked up quite a lot of news that I probably would not have, had it not been because someone had made a thread about it. So, in the same sense, since I hadn't seen it mentioned on EOSHD before, I figured that the topic would interest others than myself on EOSHD!

...and for the film vs digital for myself:

I started out shooting stills on film and I really like the look of film. The practical parts of shooting with digital is keeping me in the digital-only camp for now though. But maybe I'll some day venture back to film - and then I'm really happy if there are some good films left. Hence it makes me happy to read news like this.

1 hour ago, josdr said:

It has to do with glass as well. Pop in a good manual lens or a Zeiss lens and you will see the image pop. There is of course a difference in how colour is handled  but Sony is not miles away, although behind when it comes to skin tones. Sony  handles yellow very well on the other hand. In any case we are talking video here which both canon and nikon do half-heartedly. 

I've heard the newest Sony cameras have improved on colours. I hope that's true, since Sony's history is bad, while Canons and Nikons colours are true and tested and have been behaving the same way for a long while.

I've mostly used the NEX series of Sony cameras, which I used due to portability. Even the RAW stills had horrible colours compared to the Nikon cameras. The colour response for colour channels were very unbalanced, and at higher dynamic ranges there was plenty of data loss for colour channels. Which meant that however much effort you put into trying to balance colours for highlights / shadows or anything in between -  something was always off unless you started masking the image and tweaking different areas specifically (basically painting in colours in Photoshop).

There just was no way to reach similar colour results to Nikon cameras (or to what the scenes looked like in real life) just by dragging sliders in Lightroom. Meanwhile, the Nikon cameras have had great colour output for a decade at least. These Sony issues were irrelevant of lenses, it was due to sensor and raw data processing (camera internal) only - lenses could never have made the colour response err that badly.

If we're talking video, it's important that the user uses a camera with a workflow suited to the user, not according to camera specs. In this case it sounds like the user is not too well versed with color correcting / grading, and hence Nikon/Canon which are known for having good colors straight out of the camera should be a great alternative. Rather than having to work with LUTs and colour grading in post for a good result which the Sonys have been known for. Maybe the modern A6300 and A6500 are better and have suitable colour profiles that this specific user would be happy with, maybe not. They won't be the same out of the box as what the user is used to at least.