Wit

Composing my ultimate GH3 to go set. Bought the camera, decided on my audio set and now I'm looking for a cheap but good viewfinder for the GH3 (and then the rig and follow focus will follow).

I saw a lot already on the web but has somebody experiences with a good and cheap vieuw finder for the GH3?

Thanxs a lot!

Thanxs so much but for now I settle on this audio package 

- zoom H1 and

- 1 Rode lavalier http://www.thomann.de/nl/rode_lavalier.htm?gclid=CKjcn9LGmLUCFe3KtAodeBkASQ

as my dread lavalier set

- and the senheiser senheiser mke 400 with (i hate that word) deadcat

It's for me this is now the most versatile leight weight affordable kit for on my bicycle travelers. Later on I can add a juice link and a better microphone (and recorder if really needed) for filming @home.

Mister or misses Giant Squid isn't replying to my email. So I guess I won't send money over to the US to buy some. 

Giving myself a present and buying the much more expensive Rode Lavelier.

JCS has it dead on here IMHO. I have DR100 and H4n too, and I'm going to sell both as they're both pretty noisy and harsh sounding when compared to proper pro-audio kit I'm used to in studio. The Beachtek adapters are good for in camera audio.

 

So something like the the H2 should suffice til you wanna jump up quite a way in quality.

 

Things start to get good with the Edirol R44 and up I think. Sound Devices are lovely. Nagra are transcendent and hilariously expensive.

Thanxs but the main question was about the Giant Squid Lavalier. All the sound devices you mention are to big former to take on the road.

@JCS Thank you - very helpful links. Your first link isn't working though. I will buy a better recorder like the H4N but later on. The zoom H1 v2 would function as my cheap light weight lavalier without transmitter kit. 

In my quest to assemble a cheap & light weight versatile documentary one-man handled audio set I'm thinking of this for my (wired) lavalier set up. A zoom H1 recorder with the giant squid mono lavalier, combined with a mono to stereo plug. 

Anybody experiences with the giant squid mono lavalier?

http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com

I did some research on the noise grain in 50Mbit long-gop vs 72Mbit ALL-I

 

Actually the noise grain is the same in 50Mbit 24p and 72Mbit 24p. But it is different between 50Mbit 50/60p and 72mbit 24p especially in motion. Less noise in the 50/60p codec.

 

But the difference is quite small. 50p is on the left versus 25p (I have PAL camera hence EU frame rates).

 

@EOSHD

Thanxs for posting this, Andrew!

What settings would you suggest are best for the GH3 achieving the 'Film' Look?

@Grav...

In dutch the verb used when making moving pictures :rolleyes:  digital or tape is filmen 
If you speak about a video you would use Filmpje or Film 

If you go to a festival or a cinema no matter if it's digital, celluloid or whatever, you say - Ik ga naar de film...... 

Glad my language isn't so confusing!

Now lets go ON TOPIC again!

@Gravi..

I'm sorry not a native english speaker and yeah therefore not getting your point.
The festival was the International Film Festival in Rotterdam....http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/en/
And in the Netherlands that is called FILM. When making a video, you also use filming in dutch. 

But let's refrain from names and words and return to the film/video/making in this forum!

Blanche -
Now a bit confused what to use for what avoiding slapping in faces ...

@Axel thanxs I'm already working with MPG streamclip so I try that setting.

@Gravi... Yesterday I went to a film festival and I bet all those films where digital so ...
I also do use the word film in some cases. Let's not talk words though and stay o the topic, Who cares if we call it video making or filming. Everybody does understand what we're talking about!   ;)

@Zaz and  @Ronjbase Thanxs guys will look into your suggestions this weekend.

I will have a shoot at home situation where I can carry more stuff and one for the road. So my decision is a bit dual. Nobody any thoughts on the Senheiser mke-400? If that works it would be the tool for on the road. And I'm already pretty used shooting my audio close to the subjects and then shooting adjusting B-roll to go with it. It's the way you have to work as a one woman crew.

As an alternative i suggest using a set of binaural microphones (http://www.soundman.de/en). They will give you a nice stereo atmos/ambiance tracks when placed in your ears but they can also be used as personal/lavalier mics for interviews etc. They are small and light, as wound be any wind protection you decide carry with you as well.

 

dan.

@Dan - I never heard of these. Thanxs I will check them.

@Blanche

View some tutorials on color grading with the on-board tools of FCP X (skip the ones that suggest you can do without the scopes or use automatic functions or match colors). I disagree with every single post that says you create one preset and paste it. Why? Because your already good images can be so much improved by thorough grading. Do it as the last step, after editing is finished. It should take a minute or two for every clip.

 

NEVER 'share' your film directly 'for vimeo', because that means, that the inferior Quicktime H.264 encoder is used, and the film is simplified too much. The fade in at the beginning shows 'temporal banding'. You can avoid it completely, if you put a very subtle amount of grain on top of this clip, export as ProRes master and encode an x264 mp4 (for the vimeo upload) with the free x264 encoder from the high quality master.

Thanxs - I have entrance to verry good lynda.com grading tutorials on FCP-X so that's got me going.

I don't really know if I understand the uploading suggestion you suggest. 
- how do I add grain? 

- how do I export as ProRes master

- and encode this precisly to x264. Sorry for being a bit lazy, I haven't got time and access opportunity to try it out with FCP-X right now.

* Panasonic camera (GH3) -   check

* White brim hat -  Check

* Have to safe another couple of years to check the LOMO anamorphic lenses I'm afraid   :rolleyes:

Thanxs for another brilliant article!

Thanxs ZAZ! I'm nearly there! Going for a mke-400 for doing interviews and a recorder + for ambience and lavaliere tracks.  

But I'm not sure if I'm  going for the compact and cheaper ones like Zoom H1 or Tascam DR-08. Or the bigger and more expensive ones like the Tascam DR-40 or Zoom  H4n. And I'm also checking out these laveliers like the he Audio Technica ATR 3350 or Olympus ME-15 dasspeld microfoon voor DS2300/2, WS-300/310/320m. Some more checking up to do this weekend.

Hi Blanche,

 

I think if you are going to be shooting for that long you will come back as a professional and teach us all some tricks.

 

May I make a couple of suggestions.

 

1) You should learn a little about 'in camera editing' techniques.

Basically this is shooting with a rough edit in mind.

So shooting 'establishing shots', 'cutaways', holding shots for 10 seconds.

You will probably learn all this yourself on your trip but a little bit of prior knowledge would help a lot.

It would help you by reducing the amount of footage you shoot and help you decide what would be useful to film.

 

2) Look into 'cloud' based storage. This is where you upload your footage, your data, to remote servers.

I don't really know too much about this but I certainly agree with others that carrying all your footage on external hard drives has 'disaster waiting to happen' written all over it.

Maybe look into some sites like 'dropbox' and 'clesh'

 

- Thanxs for your tips but I know already know scripts  and are using it (except the last Panasonic Trial)  - I followed a short course camera journalism and almost finished the book Directing The Documentary. Besides that I watch documentaries, analyzing the scripting and reading about a lot in my spare time. Lately I'm practicing scripting and storytelling with camera interviews. My latest is about a man who makes glass art made with a canon hf 100.

- Yeah could based storage would be great but I will travel mainly in a region where the internet connections ar not that fast Central Asia, Iran, the Himalaya and parts of China. So uploading will be a pain in the a....  :rolleyes:

- Gravitade. - Yeah I know, and I will create two backups all on solid disks. Thinking of sending one disk home and when it arrives home and a friend mad a back up there, deleting the back up I have on the road. (edit) O I just red some of you also suggested this. 

Next thing on the preparing-for-filming-list = have to find out if I can do a pre -edit and aftherwards save and re wrap my footage into comprimized stuff and reconnect it again at home. I hope it works. 

Great trial @Nahua, thanxs!

who said anything about grading EVERY single clip?

if you have 20 shots under the same lighting or sunlight, and so on, you would create a preset and drop that 1 preset on the 20 other clips.

 

and you would not be hard pressed to notice a difference in avchd, 50 & 72.  I'm doing a test of this right now and there are some obvious differences, mainly compression.  a 1 TB external HD isn't that expensive now day, so to worry about storage space is irrelevant, and to travel on the road, with all your files on the computer and no backup source has BAD NEW written all over it.

Yep I already knew I can copy paste in grading and yep I also know I have to make backups of my footage on my trip. I do this at home as well. I may be a beginner on certain levels but not completely blond   :P

Anyway Gravitatemediagroup wonderful how you helped out and I'm looking forward to your test - hope you'll give me a notice when it's done. Thinking of doing a test myself with all the camera settings. 

Thanxs Matt - you just summed up all the mics there are. I was hoping to bring it back to only one or two for on the road.  ;)

Do you have certain types (names) in your head?

Is the small camera senheiser mic any good? It appeals to me because it is fed by an aaa battery (we always take a aa/aaa recharger) and has long recording life. What xtra mic would you suggest for off camera?

http://www.outletwebstore.nl/electronica/digitale-camera-digitale-fotolijst/sennheiser-mke-400-cameramicrofoon?utm_source=google-shopping&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=products&gclid=COrp-vy-67QCFW7HtAodYxsAKw

Haha not too technical. The more I learn about filming the technical it gets. Now I'm diving into the audio technics. I think you need to understand the technical part too. 

I will do my next project at home flat and dive into the world of color grading. Keep you posted about that. For my trip I will stick to flat AVCHD doing the rough editing parts and sorting on road  and fine tune edit and post at home - but first have to cycle 14 months. Time to start preparing the trip and work out my outline script 

Again thanxs all for the tips!

The built-in EVF is the best. It is even better than the Zacuto EVF, and way better than the EVF of the GH3. But: 

 

> the eyepiece doesn't cover the eye.

> you can't press the camera close enough to the face to get extra stabilization during shooting video.

 

My self-built solutions were:

 

This is a rubber piece you put beneath your bathroom sink and the tube (I didn't know the correct german name, let alone the english name). It costs cents and needs to be cut at the backside to fit over the GH2s eyepiece. However, the rubber is not very soft, so it doesn't feel comfortable. Later I did this:

 

 

This is the eyepiece of an ancient Super 8 camera that was sold on ebay as defect. The camera was 1€, the shipping 3€.

I do hope you remember the correct name of example one because it's brilliant (I do speak german as well, being dutch ;-)) 

i sort of assumed as much, judging by your last video  ;)

 

shotgun mic is probably going to be easier; audio will be with the video track, you won't have to transfer the audio files from the microsd card on the recorder to your storage and it'll probably use up less batteries as well. have a safe trip, looking forward to seeing the video from it

Thanxs @powderbanks but I can plug the recorder straight into the camera. With a recorder with adjustable mics I have also a broad pickup pattern. Not sure yet which setting I will buy though. Do you have any suggestion for a shotgun mic? 

Because nahua is wrong about the colors

And read close, I posted -5 for all, it looked like crap in camera, then did that in post just to show what's possible

I did a single shot everything in -5 and then colored & sharpned it afterwards and it also looks fab. I created a smoot look with it....guess what they called the film look  :rolleyes: 
I guess I will shoot a trial with the different settings and then decide myself. Thanxs 4 helping! I'll switch to the other machine to give screenshots here if I can upload it directly to this website

 

 

I'm not here to start a pissing war.  Blanche doesn't want to do a lot of post, so saturation doesn't have to be down all the way.  Did you even see her video?  Overall she doesn't need to do too much.  I think saturation isn't the question or how "flat" she should go.  She doesn't need to dial everything down to -5.  Just a subtle change is all that's needed.

 

@Nahua Please don't start a war over my question  :D

There's nothing really wrong with the footage you shot.  And the standard settings are just fine.  If you don't want to mess too much with the profiles I would suggest just a minor tweak in the settings.  Maybe Contrast -1/-2, Sharpness -2/-3, Saturation 0, Noise Reduction -2/-3.  I think Portrait or Smooth might be too flat for your shooting.  Keep either with Standard or Vivid.  I actually use Vivid, I think it has the most range in the mid-tones, and then reducing saturation helps to flatten it out a bit.  But if you're too flat, then there might not be enough color information at all.  If I have time I'll try and do some settings with the different profiles, with a before/after post processing sample.

@Nashua With settings I ment which mbit are best to use when I need to shoot AVCHD instead off all I because of storage issues being on the road for a long while

before & after with -5 all the way down

this was done in 30 seconds

@ gravitatemediagroup Brilliant !! - but done in your camera or in post and with what? 

@nahua

 

no.....just no

@gravitatemediagroup - why?

Thanxs! I will 'shoot from the hip' when I'm on the road a lot so nota always time to set things up.

(going on a big self supported bicycle tour and making a film of it)

 

 

4) AVCHD and MOV are of little difference really.  Just that MOV is easier to edit right away with little to no transcoding needed.  AVCHD is actually very efficient and looks almost the same.  I know you need to conserve space, so there's nothing wrong with shooting in AVCHD.  And you can get the same results as MOV files.  So yes you can shoot very flat and get the same results.

 

Good luck and I look forward to seeing your next adventure!!!

@Nahua what setting would you recoment when I have to shoot  AVCHD concerning all the facts we spoke about in this tread?