KirkGaydon
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Posts posted by KirkGaydon
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Well after paying a fortune for a Sony DSR570WSP camera (anyone remember those!) back near the start of the century, then moving to a Sony EX3, I finally jumped on the DSLR bandwagon with the Canon 60D (due to the menu view driven audio levels out of the box). I purchased some nice Canon L lenses expecting to stay with Canon for a while, only to be disappointed with Canon's future progress and price compared to the competition.
In the end I finally sold the Sony EX3 and Canon 60D and switched sides to Panasonic and the GH3's. Love the ease of the GH3 settings and menu's (Andrew was late in the game with a GH3 book, I'd picked most of it up by then - but still got the book). I also very much like the 12-35mm f2.8 Panasonic lens and only attach my Canon lenses with manual aperture adapter when I need the faster glass.
Due to the price of the Panasonic bodies I can upgrade and change more frequently these days, if I went down the Canon Cinema route that would never be the case. I'm still basically spending the same amount of my budget every couple of years on more camera's, its just Canon isn't seeing any of it.
I've already upgraded the GH3's to GH4's. Initially got one and love the added benefits of focus peaking, zebra and timecode (things i missed from my old Sony broadcast cameras). 4K filming looks great. I don't really need it and have never output anything in 4K in the last six months, but love the fact that I have the ability to film in 4K with a great internal codec. It's been handy a couple of times for cropping.
My second GH4 body only cost me £860 inc taxes from China (couldn't get the UK version, as I need cameras that can record more than 30 minutes without stopping). What has Canon really got to compete with a 4K camera that has most of the bells and whistles of a broadcast camera with added benefit of DOF for £860!
I film and edit small corporate films, school shows and wedding films and consider myself a prosumer user. However, I can't see Canon reducing the cost of their products enough any time soon to pull me away from other manufactures, they have set their bar far too high for my liking compared to the competition, maybe they don't want my money? I don't have any intentions of selling my Canon lenses (love the 50mm f1.2), but instead of buying more lenses from Canon I'm getting the Leica 42.5mm f1.2 next for the GH4.
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Nice cinematography, nice use of effects that are not too much. Started grabbing my attention with the what's in the bag shots, then the why is he in the desert issue.
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Some nicely filmed shots in the trailer. Liked the shots on the boat. Not sure what the drugs scenes were all about, seemed a little out of context with the rest of the trailer? Maybe you was trying to keep the trailer disjointed? but as a viewer I'd like to get an idea of the story before spending two hours watching a film. I would of added more of the family to the start, who are they etc, lead the audience in.
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Looking good, love the breakdown of News vs Reviews. Also, it still works in Internet Explorer 8 that I need to use some mornings due to IT companies of certain large organisations holding back on upgrading!
Has anything changed in the way Vimeo links are added in the Screening Forum? I couldn't get it to work properly this morning when sharing a film?
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Purchased and looking forward to reading. This is one hefty book on lenses Andrew, don't know where you find the time to pull it together! I can't justify an A7S and a GH4 this year, so I think the later will win out, but love the knowledge you share, and happy to know i paid considerably less for my lenses than you estimate :-)
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I'm super glad you guys are running the GH4 through its paces; perfect timing, especially with NAB just a week away where it will be interesting to see what the competition have up their sleeve in features, performance and (more importantly) price compared to the 4k beast Panasonic has just presented us with! We also need to consider the point that the GH4 will be in the shops in a little over a month and others are just playing catch-up. Can't wait to read more!
I had a play with a GH4 at BVE last month and loved the added features over my GH3 which I'm very tempted to turn into a B-Cam in favour of the GH4.
In your firmware, do you still need to re-boot the camera to change from Film to PAL to NTSC? the pre-production firmware version I was playing with was a little buggy in that respect?
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The GH3 Shooter's Guide is under development and it is completely new material.
+1 here for a GH3 Shooters Guide, I would buy that hands down. Last bought your Anamorphic Shooters Guide and found it a very interesting read.
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Fantastic short film, I like the way you use the light in your framing! Really love watching work of this quality produced on a £900 camera.
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Not sure what program your editing with, but I had to do the exact same thing last year. I filmed scenes at 50fps and used 5D2RGB to conform to 25fps which basically deleted every other frame. I also output selected scenes as 50% slow-motion using the same program, it didn't output the audio, but gave me perfect slow-motion by spreading out the 50 frames over 2 seconds.
Then after completing the project, I found an easier way in FCPX. Basically, I can now film at 50p, load a project in FCPX set at 25p, import the footage and it works perfectly at 25p (automatically missing out every other frame), then when I want slow-motion I just tell FCPX to conform the speed of the specific clip i want as slow-motion and it spreads the clip out to fully utilise the full number of frames!
Here's a video tutorial on the process...
Conform Frame Rates In FCPX - Macbreak Studio
The process in FCPX works exactly the same with audio (but then most editing programs work in this way). When you import an audio clip it recognises the project frame rate and sets the audio to that frame rate. Then sync the audio with FCPX's 'Synchronise Clips' command.
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I don't perform it as explained on page 69? I just...
1. Connect the iPhone to the WI-FI on the GH3.
2. Enter the LUMIX Link software (it automatically enters into 'Live Control').
3. Click 'Playback'.
4. Select the image you want to transfer (hold down on it for 3 seconds), then a menu around the edge appears.
5. Drag the image to the 'Save to SmartPH' option and it saves the image fine!
Job Done!
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I like the pCAM app, its great if you want to test the DOF relative to the distance of your subject. Exposure relative to FPS and aperture, and even filters. Field of View of lens focal length (great in preview mode. I wouldn't use it in the field while filming, but its a great learning tool to judge all your options when you don't have a camera at hand.
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Grey imports
In: Cameras
I have been importing my cameras for the last few years now ended up selling a Canon 60D for the same price I imported for 2 years earlier with international warranty! I recently got the Panasonic GH3, UK version from a website called 'Onestop Digital', they paid the import duties and it was delivered via DHL in less than a day! The body cost £899 (they've upped the price to £1039 now?) and I paid £40 for a 3 year Mack International warranty and I think that will be sufficient for my purposes. Compare that to most UK companies selling the camera for a little shy of £1200. Onestop Digital used to have an ebay shop for ages, if I never knew that in the first place I wouldn't have bought from them.
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How long does it take before you can shoot another burst? Any test on how long you can shoot bursts, wait and then shoot again in repeated fashion?
That would depend on how fast your SD card is at writing the data. The images will go to the buffer first, then save to the card. As an example, on my Panasonic TZ30 with a Sandisk SDXC 95mbps card it takes 4-5 seconds to write 60 jpeg images at 2560x1440
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For RAW and 4K the Nikon 1 looks superb for tricks and bits. I have a Panasonic TZ30 which is great with the underwater housing. It also films Full HD 1920x1080 @ 24/25/30/50/60fps and is great for what I need from it. It does also produce 60fps burst mode at 2560x1440 in JPG format, clearly not as good as the Nikon 1's RAW/4K, but I did wonder if my Panasonic TZ30 can do 60fps burst at 2560x1440, why haven't Blackmagic added a similar feature into the Cinema Camera?
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On the back of being told from various sellers at BVE the other day, and from the guys on the Blackmagic stand, that the BMCC with MFT mount won't be available until the end of the summer, or at least until all the EF mount back orders have been filled, I have taken the plunge and ordered the GH3.
Thought I'd chime in with my grading test of /P/'s footage. I just graded the Natural clip with FCPX's colour board to see how far I could take it excessively. Wonder if Neat Video would improve the noise?
Your all welcome to download and watch. You can definitely bring a nice image back from the shadow area...
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Which would would be more powerful, and essential for a video shoot? Do the Z96 lights compare to the LED torch bolt?
They are virtually identical IMO, both dim, both support 5600k and 3200k (with tungsten filter on the Z96), both powered by a Sony F970, batteries or mains adapter, , Oh wait, I can get four F&V Z96 lights for the price of one Switronix LED Bolt? No brainer for me!
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I have been looking for some LED lights to invest in for my camera shoots. I am pretty mobile, mainly shooting bands but also screenplays/short films. Through some research I have found these portable ones
I've got 8 of these little F&V Z96 lights, they are great lights and last for ages with a Sony F970 battery attached to the backs instead of inserting 5xAA batteries (which is also an option if your caught short of charged F970 batteries!). They are not the best in build quality though, after about a year's usage, the on/off dial on one of the units is tempremental? but you can dim each light to your required amount. They are great for filming on location where light is required as either fill or back lights, but if your planning on lighting a subject against a white background, a MCU shot would require at least 8 of these units and a MLS shot would probably need 12 units or maybe 16? obviously not as bright as red heads etc, but they are great lights and very portable!
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The question is when should I start selling my L primes and DSLR before nobody will buy them ;). sigh
Ha, I'll take your L primes off your hands cheap if they actually produce a m43 to EF adapter, but you can keep the DSLR body :D
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Some interesting points on building your own Hackintosh, especially the soundcard comments. I've been using a hackintosh for three years now and have never had a problem with updates. I find Gigabyte motherboards to be the best for compatibility. I'm still using a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UDR3 motherboard with an i7 6core processor and 24gb of triple core memory and have never needed to upgrade it. I like this system as its fast and doesn't have the speedstepper issues when updating through Software Update. Whenever Apple release a new update, the only thing I need to do is replace the sound driver with an older 10.6.2 kext, and replace the USB3 kext, then reboot, but multibeast does that for you these days!
If you know someone who already owns a mac, try and persuade them to create an account for you and purchase and download Mountain Lion, then work out how to install this to an 8gb USB stick (many websites show you how to do that).
I've installed a 480GB SSD for the operating system and raided three 3TB hard drives together and get a nice speed from it, All easy to do in Disk Utility.
I've always had problems with Dell systems as they lock their bios down too much. This is much the case also with many laptops, In the end I gave up with hackintoshing laptops and purchased a retina macbook pro!
Kipon Canon EF lens adapter for Micro Four Thirds shows insanely impressive AF performance
In: Cameras
Posted
This is definitely a very interesting adapter. I love my Metabones Speedbooster on the GH4 for the increased field of view and the Image Stabilisation which is great on lenses like the 100mm f2.8 L lens. In camera electronic aperture control is also nice. The statement from Kipon doesn't mention any of these features, instead opting for the autofocus headline (which is amazing that they've pulled it off alone), but this was at the bottom of my request list anyway. I presume it will have aperture control as the adapter doesn't show a manual aperture dial. I hope it has IS, and the price is interestingly affordable compared to the Metabones Speedbooster. Kipon do produce optical adapters so it will be interesting if they can pull of a Speedbooster type of adapter with FULL EF lens functionality before Metabones... Or am I jumping ahead there ?