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What ML has done with Canon cameras is simply amazing - they've taken a camera with great colour science, a really shitty delivery codec & given it a greatly needed shot in the arm! But, and it is a big but, RAW can be a real pain in the arse - with my set up, I need to transcode the DNG files with RPP (it's great as it can batch stuff, has 3 different LOG settings & loads of JPEG/TIFF settings), then I need to wrap them in a QT PR .mov file & then i can edit them. Personally, H264 is dead to me & all i want is a sturdy codec with which to play with in post - PR422 HQ or above is more than good enough for most things. RAW is only useful when you come across a difficult scene that needs some extra care/attention in post - DR to you guys. However, if I was given the choice between the 5D3's internal codec & RAW (regardless of bits), then I'd certainly choose RAW everytime - so some of the ML flavours might not have as much DR, but come on, you don't or won't need that amount of DR all the time. I know it might be a bit old fashioned, but the rule of thumb should be to get it right, as close as possible, in-camera & then all you'll need to do is tweek in later - personally if you're spending more time in post than actually filming, you're doing it wrong. What Andrew shot (see vid above) really shows the strengths of what ML has brought to the 5D3 table - if you can't see it, then i feel really sorry for you. It isn't an ideal situation, but if you have a 5D3 you should be jumping up & down with joy - so many choices are now available to you! If you're still using a camera with an H264 delivery mode, I'd be pulling what's left of my hair out!

This is a "Shit happens & Bad Luck Comes in Threes" story: So it's my 2nd day working on a big external production at the BBC (we're filming in the Ballroom of a hotel - lovely wooden floor etc..) & the Director is going through the Health & Safety speech. Just as she is getting to "What to do in case of a fire..." someone shouts FIRE! Everyone laughs, but the guy who shouted isn't & is wildly pointing to an alcove where a light transformer is actually on fire & has started to set the curtains a blaze. He proceeds to run around like a headless chicken - looking for a fire extinguisher, which has been carefully placed behind the transformer that has gone up in flames. Everyone is rooted to the spot - well we hadn't been told what to do in case of a fire yet! The fire alarm goes off, the hotel's fuses blow & someone does arrive with an extinguisher to put the transformer out of it's misery. It's 7:30 am on a Sunday morning & the whole hotel has to be evacuated - none of the paying guests are too pleased! Well the damage is minimal, we get back in & filming is delayed. The production is one where people bring their treasures in to be valued (not the Antiques Roadshow) & we are expecting about 1000+ people to turn up during the day (final figure was just over 1600). Normally, we'd get them to queue up in the road & into the venue. Well the heavens open up & it's starts to rain like its the monsoon season! We get people indoors & snake them aroung every available inch of the hotel - they're soaked (to the skin), not happy at all but we get them teas/coffees & that helps a little (well more like applying a plaster to a gapping wound). Well, bad luck comes in threes & about halfway through the day a riot breaks out! People are wet, cold & not really happy that they have to wait for 3hrs in a queue - so about 300 people decide to charge up the main stairs, in an attempt to get seen quicker. All I remember is standing at the top of the stairs with my arm stretched out - in the universal language of a portable stop sign. I close my eyes & expect to get trampled under foot. When I reopen my eyes, I'm alive & surveying the angry hoard in front of me - they aren't happy, not one little bit. Some quick talking & the offer of free Teas/Coffees & Cake seems to do the trick - British people really are a sucker for Tea/Coffee & cake, especially if it's free! There's something about mentioning Tea that changes things in people, like it's a magical healing potion. Well it's not really - they're still cold, wet through & will have to wait 3hrs. But hey! They're here & might get on TV - well maybe...probably not...& if they do it'll be very brief! The day started at 6am & filming didn't finish until 8pm.... Anyway, shit happens & all you need to survive is to keep a cool head and have lots of tea on hand, maybe!

He's a good cheat sheet for DCP sizes http://unravel.com.au/files/Unravel_Resolution_CheatSheet.pdf You should be able to make a custom sized timeline - if you don't want black bars in a box. Also, if you've been looking at squeezed footage it can look a bit weird when you de-squeeze. But more importantly, as someone has mentioned, the stretch factor can change slightly, since the x2 is taken from when the lens is at infinity - this tends to be a real problem with x2 anamorphics rather than say x1.5 etc. The best way to know what you've got is to film a circle (on a piece of paper) and then de-squeeze it to your taste. Doesn't matter how you filmed it, 16:9, 4:3 or 6:5 - you'll still end up de-squeezing it by the same factor.

Thanks, that's exactly what i wanted to hear & from what I've seen, the Mamiya's look amazing!

Those shots look really nice! I've been on the fence for so long about completing my ai-s set, but it was the short focus throw that was putting me off. However, if the non-ai lenses have a longer focus throw & by the looks of your shots, think I might be going in this direction - longer focus throw will be useful for some of the anamorphics i've got. The only other consideration might be to go the Medium Format lens route & I've been really impressed by some of these lenses recently - anyone have experience with MF lenses? (Looking for budget conscious lenses btw)

PC madness or Comedy? Think I'll take Comedy.... Think most people who go on the internet these days are just trying so hard to be .....

I tried asking for 4:3 on the BMPCC ages ago & the best that we got was the 4:3 Frame Guide. I just end up using this & then squeezing the footage into 2K DCP - 2.39 @ 2048x858. But recently i've gone for 2.66 @ 2048x770. The good thing about this is that you're slightly downscaling, in a way, & with FCP the sides that aren't visible are still there and can be used for subtle panning shots - so a little bonus when losing the original resolution.

I'm with you all the way on this one - I've had the Marantz PMD661 for many years now, it's hands down excellent & still is. One option people haven't thought of, if you're on a budget, is to get an old analogue field amp & then plug it into a small digital recorder - you'll get the the benfit of professional grade Limiters, Pre-amps etc... & you'll be recording to digital. Also, when/if you ever get to use a camera with XLR sockets, you can just plug straight into the camera & get perfect sound for editing. Personally I'd think long & hard about getting something from ZOOM or TASCAM - you're buying into a name & not quality. SONY doesn't appear anywhere here but they do some good small recorders, but probably not as cheap as Z or T. Sound Devices have been at the top for some time & it doesn't look as if anyone will ever catch them - if you can afford it, don't look anywhere else. On a budget, you can get your hands on their analogue 2 channel field mixer (about £200-300), it'll be small & then you can get a small digital recorder to go with it - professional grade at a really decent price! As far as mics go, old doesn't mean bad: you can pick up a Sennheiser K3 or K6 power module & then add an ME series Mic capsule (£200-300 for both) - again professional quality. I've recorded plenty of sound from an analogue field mixer into the apparently hopeless Mic input of BM Pocket & got excellent results - everything is handled by the field mixer & then the camera just acts as a digital recorder.

These LOG problems/misunderstandings seem to be appearing a lot recently. I've read through most of the thread & there has been some really useful information put forward, some useful links (more or less). The main point that keeps coming to mind is, Has anyone actually tested the DR of their camera with & without the LOG profile? I know this might seem such a basic thing, & might be insulting to some, but it is the thing that is screaming out to me if you want to know how a LOG profile bahaves. You read time & time again how professional DPs test cameras, so perhaps this is what you need to do to understand how the LOG profile behaves & so understand how to use the LOG profile. Simply put, the easiest way to do this is to test the DR of the camera with & without the LOG profile. The following quote came from another forum & was suggested by David Mullen (a professional DP) as a simple way to do this: "Put a white card and a black card on each side of an 18% gray card -- under and overexpose in whatever increments you want until you can't see a difference between the white and gray card at the overexposed end and between the gray and black card at the underexposed end. Make sure you shoot at whatever is the widest dynamic range recording format the camera offers (raw, log, cine gamma, hypergamma, etc.) but also test it in the narrower Rec.709 display gamma range just for comparison." You can, of course, do this anyway you want & test all sorts of different aspects of the camera - you can test how different ISO/ASA behave, how different F stops behave etc... I'd suggest that you use a Histogram & Peeking (make notes of the values at which the camera over exposes/under exposes - all of them). You can use ND filters, but make sure if you use a Vari-ND that it has markings. You can, and considering the topic at hand, should add a colour chart to the test - but if you do this White Balance the camera to the white piece of card (with BM cameras you'll need to test the various WB presets). You should also try to make sure the Black card is as black as possible - "The black card should be as black as possible, some people create a recessed box lined in black velvet". Just remember that not all recording formats are equal e.g. 8bit vs.10bit or H264 vs. ProRes (do the test with what you'll be using). And do the test using your equipment & how you intend to shoot. Having done this simple DR test you should now know how the LOG profile of your specific camera behaves, compared to the preset profiles (Rec.709). If you make careful notes then you'll know what to do with your camera in a variety of situations. Finally, please remember LOG isn't RAW & you don't need/have to use either of these recording profiles to get great images! Oh, and sometimes you might have to make a choice & crush blacks or blow highlights.....

The only M42 35mm lens I use now is the Mir 24m 35mm f2 (there is a nikon mount one & is listed as 24N) - just perfect for anamorphic. I've used it with great success with Iscorama 54, Kowa for B&H & Isco Widescreen 2000.

You really need to start reading people's posts properly & perhaps between the lines a little. Some of us actually have genuine experience filming for proper production companies & have learnt a lot over the years. I'll repeat myself, Zebras should not be completely trusted & I wouldn't ever advocate someone using them at 100% - i've been filming for 15 odd years & I still don't put them at 100%. And we aren't allergic to scopes etc...it's just that sometimes you do need to trust yourself, rather than a computer, which might not always be right. In all frankness, a light meter is the way to go - always has been, always will be. Oh, and you can only properly use or get good results using ETTR with RAW! Not going to change my experience/opinion on this. Also, if people cared about image quality, why are there so many high profile TV dramas & Films that are loaded with Moire/Aliasing? And don't get me started on the Soft image vs. the Super Sharp..... Sound & Image are completely different animals - please don't confuse the two or use one as an example for the other. Amazon & Netfilx are really shaping up to producing some great content - watched OJKA last night & it was amazing (on Netflix now!). Good Grief, sometimes its like slamming your head in the fridge door & realising you should be using the oven.....

This is great news for anyone that is interested in getting into highend editing - big tv drama, film or natural history places won't ask if you have Premiere, FCPX or Resolve experience, they'll ask if you can use Avid & now your answer will be yes!!!!!!! Learning Resolve for colouring will also be an advantage, as i recently found out. But Avid is a must learn NLE & now you can for FREE!!!!!

What i found with [ML] RAW is that ETTR only needs to be used to help clean up the noise in an image when filming in dark situations & a complete waste of time in well lit places - but that's obvious, right? There is too much misunderstanding about how or when to use this technique & I've had so many DOH! moments when watching footage of people using it in nice daylight! I'm with you, I expose to what my eye likes & then peep a little at the zebras. When I first started out, a seasoned cameraman told me that to begin with I should set the zebras to around 70-80% & then as I got used to exposure, move up to a max of 90% - he said never set at 100%, because it'll only show the hotspots that are really blown & mask other areas of the image that won't look blown, but can very easily be unrecoverable. This is mainly because zebras aren't 100% accurate & should always be treated as such - they put you in the right ball park, but never tell you the whole story. The only thing that will be accurate is a light meter. Is that because you're using a Black Pro Mist filter & the result has a more pleasant rendering for blown highlights - to my eyes they really bloom softly & become a lot more pleasing to the eye.

That T&O phase was just horrible - was Transformers to blame?! The Cinestyle PS was probably the worst thing to happen to DSLRs & I really do think that people haven't really learnt about LOG profiles properly either. I shoot LOG (Film mode) with the BMPCC, but view in Video mode & I shoot as I see it in ProRes HQ, then tweek later. I would never use ETTR for anything else than RAW recording, there are no benefits of using this technique for any other codec as it simply can't cope. Can't believe there's a thread on this forum advocating using ETTR on a camera that doesn't shoot RAW - it's wrong, pure & simple, and leading people down a rabbit whole where nothing good can be found. A lot of people are obsessed with DR & think it means that you have to have a uniform picture - no noise in Blacks or blown Highlights. I have always tried to get it right in-camera & then just tweek in post - ProRes HQ is 100% ok to use & I see RAW as completely pointless, it is only useful for special effects shots. Finally, Perfection doesn't exist! As soon as you learn this & embrace filming, the better off you'll be. Filming & Experimentation go hand-in-hand - so the more you fail, the better you'll get.

If shooting a Doc, always roll the camera when speaking to a subject/contributor, even if it's just to run through what they're going to say - people come up with moments of clarity when they don't think they're being recorded, which they won't be able to recreate later. Also, have loads of cutaways so you can splice up an interview, which leads to the next point of making sure the sound is as even as possible throughout & get some room tone (the sound of the room with no one talking etc..). I really like the David Fincher approach of splicing up different takes to make a perfect take - he uses this when he has 2 characters on screen together & makes sure that there is space between them so he can use Take 2 of Character 1 & Take 7 of Character 2.

Remember when the trend was to leave Alexa footage all milky/washed out - it was like they used LOG, couldn't make a grading decision & so just left it (or that's how it seemed). And here we have someone who has actually put some contrast/colour into his images & people call foul - it's a real shame & a very boring position to take. Would hate to see the comments if these people ever watched an old Film Noir.... Yes, the OP is correct - this piece doesn't look like video. Really thought you'd nailed it with the shot when the woman is moving in front of the shops. The only comment would be that there is a slight colouring inconsistency between the wide & the close up shots with the opening dancing sequence (the close ups are slightly less contrasty, but not much).

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick......

Oh Yes, I remember those days! I do use FCPX & know all about transcoding in the background etc... It is a great NLE now, bit clunky to begin with, but now it has become better & better! Must mention that Motion is well worth a look too, especially since you can make your own Plugins for FCPX.... I'm very interested in getting back into AVID, which I believe has now become free for 1080p editing/exports - it is one of the professional standards & would really like to see how it stands up to FCPX (also really useful if you are serious about getting good/highend paid jobs). @joema Really useful info here - really annoying that there doesn't seem to be a standard for 4K H264. Does 4K ProRes suffer from being slow or is it just the inferior codecs? Lots to think about - the last piece of the puzzle is going to be which graphics card (always a week link down the line with Macs).

This is all very interesting & it reminds me of when everything changed from SD to HD, the render times on FCP or AVID were very very long - the offset of this was that the BBC had a bar & as an edit asst you'd check in every pint to see how the final render/export was going. The whole idea of having to transcode footage reminds me of those days - importing took hours & so did the final export. I still wonder whether we are just expecting too much from computers, and NLEs, with the advent of 4K? Or is it down to us & have we just become a "Now" culture, where the idea of having to wait for something has become intolerable and completely unrealistic? It also leads to the question of whether people have got into bad habits with their workflows or never really learnt good workflow practices? Ask yourself this, when you import your footage, have you already selected your shots or do you simply import all the footage? Anyway, the good news, according to iFixit, is that the new iMacs can be opened & the important parts (processor, graphics card etc...) are no longer soldered into place - so we can now upgrade the new iMacs...

This transcoding issue is exactly the question I've been asking myself. False info? FCPX can transcode footage to a low quality proxy ProRes when you import it, furthermore you should down grade the editing quality of your footage. If you are editing H264, there isn't much point transcoding to proxy or using optimized media option - they can help with the GPU, but lots of debate about how much it speeds things up. You need to try different things for yourself. If you're not using FCPX on your iMac - WTF! As far as Neat Video is concerned, this has always been notorious for being very very slow to transcode - there are tweeks you can do to make it quicker (think this has to do with how many frames it matches up in order to clean up footage). Also, Neat Video has one of the best Sharpening Tools out there, which if i remember rightly you can turn off or on - is it on by default? can't remember. I stopped using it because it took ages to render & just learnt to shoot within the limits of the camera or added lighting. Multi-Cam editing can be slow (really slow), but again you can lower the playback quality of your footage whilst editing. I have found it is better to use the multi-Cam function for smaller, really complex sequences. I'm on a mac a lot older than you guys & I create a seperate timeline, then just export the final sequence. I don't think that I would ever edit a whole piece with the Multi-Cam feature, but that's mainly because I can edit just as quickly in the old fashioned way. And yes, I am looking to buy a new iMac, but not the Pro version. Would be really interesting to hear from someone what specs you actually need for the normal iMacs....

What I do, with FCPX, is create a timeline with the desired stretch format (2048x858 - 2k 2.39:1) & then stretch the footage - as i'm shooting on 16:9, the edges do fall outside the timeline's borders. It all depends on what your NLE will let you do - some might not let you make custom timeline sizes & then you'll just have to adjust the height of anamorphic footage, so you end up with black bars on the top/bottom. If you still have to transcode your footage to an editable format, then yes, your best option is to do the stretch/squeeze then. I stick to Cinema DCP standards: http://unravel.com.au/files/Unravel_Resolution_CheatSheet.pdf

I got you. She & others have money, so why not use that? I read somewhere, that Kristen Stewart said she was amazed at how much money she was given to make a short film - she's a multi-millionaire FFS, why didn't she use her own money rather than taking the resources out of the hands of others that really need it?

Yes, but if people are stupid enough to donate their money to rich people then that's their problem - they're idiots, but its their money. What also annoys me is when a film crowd sources & instead of saying they'll get a return on their investment, they get offered free tickets to the premiere or a walk on part - that's worse. However, the real thing that gets my goat is when you hear all these stars saying that there aren't enough female directors. Yes it is true for film & it is a problem, but the solution isn't to give money to movie stars who haven't spent years learning their craft (no, acting in a film is not the same thing) & the end result is an average film - just compare the films of Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsey or Kelly Reichardt to say Angelina Jolie or Elizabeth banks. I know which ones i'll be watching! Now the flip side, is that there are a lot of female directors working in TV dramas (not shit ones, but really good shows), so why don't they get a chance at films? The most recent example is Reed Morano, who directed the first few episodes of The Handmaid's Tale & consequently set the visual & narrative tone for the whole series - it's well worth a watch. But, you just got to suck it up & realise that this industry isn't about what's fair....it's about who you know & how much money can be made.

Should have bought one of these too - still kicking myself! If flares are your thing, then look for vintage lenses with a golden coating. Also, check out http://forum.mflenses.com/ The only place to get great ideas for vintage lenses! Heres a Bokeh thread (some truely amazing stuff in it): http://forum.mflenses.com/bokeh-only-t69142.html

As far as the Meyer Optik lenses go - I've seen the new ones & they really come at a price! All their old lenses had that Soap Bubble Bokeh effect, it's just the Trioplan got all the attention. The good news is that they are cheap & really good lenses - made in the same place that made Zeiss lenses. My personal favourites & the pick of the bunch are: Lydith 30mm f3.5 - has a preset (fluid stepless) aperture ring at the front & loads of blades. Orestor 100mm f2.8 - aperture ring at front (not stepless) & loads of blades (there are 2 versions, so get the one as described - the other has aperture ring at back). Orestor 135mm f2.5 - nicknamed the Bokeh Monster, enough said! You can pick up a Lydith for £30, but the Orestor is harder to find. Also, the original Trioplan is coming down in price now, due to these new versions. Make sure they are M42 mount & not Exakta