Inazuma

I think you're being a bit overly critical Vesku. It does show exposure value, just not when changing ISO. But its not exactly rocket science to work out what your EV value will be as you change it.
No DSLR-like camera except for the d750 and d810 can change aperture steplessly.
I've never seen problems with the AE/AF lock. What are you talking about?
Its got plenty of button options and saving options. More than most other DSLR-like cameras.
Why are you using AF for video?
OIS is worse than other brands, but still much better than handholding. Lens stabilisation is kind of overrated anyway. Rigging the camera against your chest or shoulder generally gives a more weighty, cinematic feel.
Noise at ISO 200? Who cares really. Real film has noise at that ISO too.

There seems to be a lot of options. I was hoping for a simple MFT Voigtlanders are better or EF glass is better.... never that easy is it lol :-)
Those lenses are available in MFT format, but the 0.95 voigtlanders seem to have better reviews than the Samyang t1.5s. Then again they are more expensive.

The fs7 is on fire.  Especially enjoy Ed David's perspective. (Ed has a recent American Cinematographer interview)
"The whole campaign of "Sony Skintones looks like crap" has been going on since the f900 vs Panasonic Varicam days - back before log recording.
I find Slog 1 and slog3 with sgamut3.cine and sgamut to look really damn good right off the bat.

Canon log - skintones to me look great.
Red log gamma - again skintones look great in daylight lighting - get a little funky in tungsten lighting.

but yes it's good lighting and good exposure.

A7S skintones - I've found using the CINEMA or PRO setting to give the best skintones easily.

anyway the worst things I've found with Canon C300 and C500 is highlight handling - same with the red epic mx and red one mx - you can't overexpose without the highlights looking as crappy as say the af100 or the hvx200 highlight handling - the dark ages of digital cinema on a budget.

The Amira stuff I've seen does have this orange feel.

At first I thought the sony f55 ftg looked bad - including stuff I shot on it but then I started to watch Nate Weaver's and Grugs work on it and I was so impressed I started using it.

The FS7 and Amira are in their infancy - I'm sure once more people like you guys work with it, test it, and color it, we'll see what the cameras are possible of.

And I, who used to hate the look of Red footage, find that dragoncolor and redloggamma graded well can look so incredible.

The Age of Adeline trailer I saw, shot with dragon and anamorphic glass looked so good to me.

Some stuff shot on alexa like that film "The Canyons" was some of the worst looking footage I've ever seen. Same with "They Came Together" and that guy I think shot "Wet Hot American Summer" which looks incredible.

so it doesn't matter what camera it is, it's going to either look like s*%t or good, depending on lighting, lenses, and grade, and exposure of the image and the talent of the DP. "

I started on film ages ago. The last time I shot it was three years ago (See: "Besides Still Waters" in last month's American Cinematographer). We had issues that I rather not revisit. For one, shooting on a remote location, our dailies were not daily. So dirty gate and static issues reared their ugly heads. Also, focus. Today's younger AC's are brought up more with focusing off monitor instead of tape. Problem is, with film camera monitors it's hard to judge critical focus. The more experienced AC's with a film background are older and hence much harder to afford for low budget indies. Should I ever shoot an indie again on film, I'll ask that the focus puller's scale be doubled.
In short, I don't miss medium, but I do miss the efficiency. Andrew, you talk about how shooting on digital is faster and more spontaneous. Perhaps for the lone indie as yourself shooting off the cuff. Unfortunately, that's not the look everyone's looking to pay for in the theaters or watch on TV most the time. Professional shoots are still a multi headed beast. Perhaps the biggest complaint those of us who started in film and now shoot digital have is the endless rolling rehearsals, re-sets and innumerable takes plus the amount of playback that we never experienced with film. It's worse now with commercials as the video village has now become a small country of too many cooks. I defy anyone who works on features, commercials or episodic to say digital  has made work days shorter or more efficient. And now that everyone thinks they need a DIT it's done nothing for labour costs. Then with the amount of footage that now has to be reviewed, transcribed, and noted, compared to film, I wonder if the difference between film / video production is that huge.

The best part of digital has not been with the way I make a living (episodic / commercials) but mostly for my personal projects. For people who already know how to make a film, they know if they literally can grab and go and then make a film for next to nothing. There are a few directors who've taken the immediacy of digital and exploited it. Fincher comes to mind. Several of my colleagues work on House of Cards. It's mostly available light, they work very fast, and have no DIT. I wish everyone else would catch on.
As far as IQ goes, for nights I much prefer digital. For days its a toss up. As a DP for work, the best part I like is being able to see a close to finished image on set. You actually take greater risks when you can see your mediums threshold right there on set instead of waiting for it to return from the lab. 

Regarding storage, anyone with anything worth storing will back up to new digital storage tech as the need comes. I still have scripts that were originated on floppy but living now on SSD. And when you die, it won't matter. You're dead.

Someone really needs to sit people down and explain that a DSLR is not a video camera. Apparently a lot of people still don't seem to understand that.
You don't complain about video cameras taking crappy stills, why do you continue to complain about stills cameras taking poor video?

Super 35 is closest to APS-C, which has a 1.5x crop (or 1.6x for Canon). So to get a 50mm full frame focal length, you must use about a 35mm lens on the s35 or APS-C camera.
The reason super 35 is called that (rather than super 25 or something related to its actual dimensions) is because it uses the same film stock as 35mm SLR's but the image is only captured on a portion of it. This is as opposed to something like 16mm film where the actual film stock is smaller. And Super 16mm uses a wider portion of that film stock (to give a wider aspect ratio) which would otherwise have been reserved for the soundtrack.

Yeh nice work One of the more creative heavy metal music videos Ive seen. What lenses did you use?
Also can you tell me anything about how you create the transitions?

Hi guys

I recently posted my Night time lapse tutorial and got some great responses.

I've just released another photography tutorial based on Hyper Lapse. It got picked up by a few photography blogs which really helped bring in the views.


Last week I went out into Manchester, UK to shoot some long exposure hyper lapse videos and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Whilst I'm definitely no expert I thought I'd share some tips and techniques in this short tutorial to encourage others to shoot hyper lapse.

Let me know what you think

Yep it's really a terrible industry to be in right now, and I'm in it. Luckily I've yet to be laid off but I have countless friends who've had multiple jobs in the time I've been at one place. Problem is movie studios treat VFX houses like dog shit. They ask for bucket loads of work for not much money. And for some reason the VFX houses just keep kneeling down to them when they should be getting together and setting fair prices.
BTW Rhythm & Hues filed almost two years ago - almost immediately after finishing the box office hit Life Of Pi. It's fucking ridiculous.

Hey guys, I just posted my new vid called GO Cuba. It was shot with an A7s in Cine4, Pro colour mode. Hope you like it.
 
PS. How do you embed videos again?
EOSHD replies: Just paste the URL in. If it doesn't work first time, edit the post, remove the hyperlink from the Vimeo URL and paste the URL back in again, then press enter to go onto a new line and the video should show up.

This is a short film I recently made about Doubtful Sound, which is located in Fiordland, in the South West of New Zealand. It is one of the few places where the remote coast of Fiordland has road access, although its not generally accessible for private vehicles and requires an hour boat journey to access the road, which is unsealed over a mountain pass. It is a place of extremes, with a resident human population of 2, a sandfly population of at least 2 million, and an average annual rainfall of 8750mm (344 inches). Aside from the scenery, fishing is a major activity.
I'd appreciate any feedback on the film. Thanks in advance.
https://vimeo.com/117767791
 

If anyone wants to see how the LX100 performs in a theater setting:
 
Trailer for a theater piece for kids and grown up kids.
First shot is cropped from 4K, shot square for the purpose of the shot. All the wide shots are LX100, punched in a bit here and there. Lots of different color temperatures. Intercut with Canon 5D and Canon 600D.
(Colours crushed in post)
-Andrew, let me know if such posts are unwanted-

This is the one I use: http://kamerar.com/products/shoulder-rig-counter-weight
It's pretty much perfect.

Here is a 2015 test comparing different strengths of Ultracon, low con etc... Some of the filters look drastic, but If you open multiple browser windows side x side and pause the test on Clean, Ultracon, lowcon etc.. you can make a better comparison.  Keep in mind small vs large viewing screens and different focal lengths change the strength of a filters look.  I use Schnieder Digicon a bit, as it lowers highlights by adding black specs in the filter.  As you can see in the test, it is almost like an optical log.   I also have used Hollywood Blackmagic to take the digital edge off, but it isn't included in the test.  Curious how it compares to Glimmer Glass?   http://vimeo.com/116316115

Also check out this thread http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/7284-tiffen-ultra-low-contrast-filters/
The filter spreads light more evenly across the image and thus gives it more of a filmic feel.
 

​I really appreciate the opinion. I think the 'neither here or there' is a good assessment. I think some of the shots at f2.8 on the tokina 11-16 really pull you out the filmic look. Def there are things to improve upon on the next shoot. 

On my first shoot with the Sony FS7 - I was very impressed with the image out the camera and the ergonomics, but I was very disappointed with the performance of the firmware. It was slow, glitchy and hard to use. (The video is out Jan 29th - edit this week). 
I chose the FS7 again for another shoot as the client was adamant on 4k and slow motion. I agreed and received a brand new unit from my rental provider. Things were a bit different this time, as the body had the extension unit and battery bolted onto the back, plus a Vocas railing system underneath. I chose ProMist filters to diffuse the skin of our lady pop star with a matte box, locked off on a Satchler tripod. 
I shot the video in XAVC-I 4k 25fps and slow motion in 1080 150fps, SLog3. I had plenty of lighting such as Kino Flo, Arri and Dedolights so I could light the vast location which was a decadent seaside theatre room. 
I have to say, the dynamic range wowed me even more. Lighting the large interior was a smooth process. Detail is very impressive. The zebras and peaking are very good. Noise looks minimal. Motion cadence however does look a little 'video', although I can't judge this fully until the grade. 
Handling the camera was fine on the tripod, as expected. An annoying issue with the extension unit is that it gets in the way of the HDMI port. You have to really force it. We didn't get it to work in the end. May have been an issue elsewhere, so we used the very good LCD throughout. 
Firmware wise - the camera performed better than before. I'm not sure if the unit before was a bit faulty, as it was slow and crashed a lot. Still - it wasn't as responsive as I'd expect. The menus are dreadful and over complicated, it takes so much time just to change the most simple settings. As a user experience - the firmware performance and user experience is very poor. I've got used to it, but it really does need a complete overhaul. 
The button layout on the side of the camera is also slow and fiddly. They really need to come up with a modernised way of button layouts on these types of cameras. Finding where to play a clip was a nightmare, until I found a little button called 'Thumbnail.' Not the best name! 
Another issue was the Speedbooster. Changing aperture on an EF lens was terrible, as the aperture setting would go crazy and go from f2 to f16 with a slight dial. Metabones and Sony need to chat. 
With these issues aside, the camera is great to shoot with and delivers a lovely image. It makes the FS700 look like a toy. For the money, it is fantastic. I much prefer using this camera compared to a RED Epic and Blackmagic CC. I do miss the quicker setup times with a DSLR/DSLM camera, but you gain quality features for a better picture. 
I will definitely use it again and can't wait to edit the 2 music videos I've shot. When they are released, I will share! 
Here is me and the camera: 
 

​Carl Zeiss Jenna 35mm f2.4 is a Flektogon .....its a great cheap lens that everyone should have .....its does the job and edits in well with A helios 58mm f2
 

Are you trying to discredit me because I'm unfamiliar with the terminology? That's really fine. I never claimed to be an expert of any kind. I'm just pointing out what I see. My professional knowledge doesn't play into that.

Brilliant Mr. Farges  Some of your most creative work I think!

You asked why we make a big deal of skin tones. We've taken the time told to break it down for you. Now you seem dismiss it as a luxury too rich for your blood. Not sure why you brought the subject up the first place unless it was to tell us why it doesn't matter to you. Of course writing and directing should take a front seat - at any budget. Not a groundbreaking discovery, but you asked a tech question, hence tech answers. People with 1k + cameras usually won't have the budget to consider complex production design but next to writing / directing your one of strongest cards is how you capture a human face. And there are many a cheap camera in the DSLR / Mirrorless market that can capture great skin tones - if you take the time to figure it out. A little applied knowledge is not above anyone's pay grade. So do we care about seeking the "Holy Grail" of flesh tones? If so, ask away. I've gotten great advice on this forum on how to unlock the A7s color profile.

Most people online are looking to learn something new. At one point I focussed on resolution and detail, then sound, lighting, story and script writing, legal/IP, editing/post, advertising, etc.
This thread is titled,"The Skin Tone Holy Grail". It implies learning about what are great skin tones and how to achieve them.
While it is reasonable to point out that certain cameras have better or worse skin tones, the spirit of the thread is to learn 1) what are great skin tones and 2) how to achieve them for various cameras and conditions.
Many posts are argumentative for the sake of argument and ego and don't contribute anything significant to learning how to achieve great skin tones.
To be more productive, this forum could use moderation. That would start with no more antagonistc posts by the site owner, who leads by example, and by said site owner to maintain etiquette and politely keep threads on topic when they dissolve into unproductive arguments.

I still think for us jack-of-all-trades (masters of none) shooting with >$1k cams, it's okay to put accurate skin tone a bit down on the list of priorities.  If we're close, that's fine.
Should we put skin tone above production design, writing, directing, or editing for example?  
I'd rather take an opportunity to implement an incredible story in a slightly technical flawed way than to implement a flawed idea in a technically incredible way.  That's just my approach at the level I'm at.  As mentioned, some folks have the luxury or inclination to focus on the intricacies. 
You know that ridiculous saying, "It's above my pay grade?"  Well...

I decided to put the Sony A7S and Atomos Shogun to use shooting some of the snow over Christmas. Shot in Derbyshire (North of England) in 4K with family and at Chatsworth House. Music by singer-songwriter Anne Haight of Berlin (hear more on SoundCloud here)
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