Danyyyel

I don't know for people here, but for me I prefer Nikon putting its money in actual film makers than a flurry of techno geek bloggers that don't even have some short movie to their credit. I am actually talking about real short movies, with a story line, actors, props etc not just some random street shot assembled with some copyrighted music. The story style or plot might not appeal to many here but it is a mammoth task compared to some random shots. Nikon Europe also have the Nikon film festival where the winner gets a d810 and a trip to Cannes short film festival. For me I prefer that they put their money in actual film makers like in this film. It might not be to the taste of many, but it is ten time more constructive and creative than flying a bunch of bloggers to some exotic location to shoot some random flicks.

www.cnet.com/news/shoot-a-movie-on-dslr-this-australian-film-shows-how-its-done/ It is sponsored by Nikon.

Yes Canon has been using more and more aggressive noise reduction in its camera. Everytime a new camera comes out (like the 5dmark3) you hear gain of 1.5 stops compared to its predecessor. While in reality it has been only incremental the last 5+ years. The reason being the jpeg engine doing a lot more of NR in camera but at the expense of detail. So take it with a grain of salt until at least you do some side by side images with very fine detail, or wait for Dpreview comparison images.

It is a bit of a lost cause because intangible's things like colour science cannot be measured. So it does not look as sexy on the spec sheet and the hype machine cannot work enough. I have been playing and grading some shots done by my cousin on my D7100 (not really a shooter, more of a special effect and editing coming out of University) when I was shooting beach wedding in very harsh light. If I knew how to upload photos (Every time I try it tells me the image has to be less than 70K, which is ridiculously low to show some 1080p jpeg) I would post some frame grabs. I mean they are much better of what I have seen here and I did not have to lots of correction. Just some saturation and contrast to taste. It is not as if I needed some PHD in colour science to get some proper skin tone in very harsh lighting.

For one you did not gasp/understand the irony of my post. The second thing is that the irony came from the fact that the debate (filmmaking community) is becoming 100% gear centric. As I said in my second post I am for technology advancing our art or more so for the indie/small budget film-makers giving us tool that we could only dream of 5/7 years ago since the start of the dslr revolution. The thing is that people are thinking that when you have a camera that can shoot clean above 6400 ISO you don't need to light, or have any knowledge of lighting. This is the same for DR and resolution. When you will have your scene with people inside and a window. You know the amount of post processing you will need to get proper exposure for both of them. If you just do some global contrast you will end with HDR type of images. Which will make people look shit. The only solution would be to use power windows and tracking in software like Davinci resolve. What a cinematographer would do would be to light the person inside and use some ND on the window. Yes it is more work, but that is the proper way and guaranteed to get better result, that is the skill of a Director of photography or cinematographer. This goes the same way for other example you talked above. The typical example is the hype behind the A7s. What is the importance of all the high ISO/DR etc on the spec list when this camera cannot even do the basic right. What about shooting natural looking people with proper skin tone and not like shooting with some cross process magenta/green look already cook in the profile. You can watch endless dicussion on varoius website about people discussing about how to get at least ok skin look. It seem that you should have a phd in coulour space and gamut correction to get the most basic thing. I am not even talking about other problem as rolling shutter which is close to the Nikon D90 of 7 years ago in full frame look. Just because this camera has XYZ spec on paper.

I prefer to wait for some proper testing like dxomark. Sony said 15 stop for the A7s and DXO showed about 13 stop in RAW. But they are not the only one, RED said dragon 16 to 18, dxomark test at 14.7 if I am not mistaken. One thing to take into account is highlight clipping. RED used to suffer from pink highlight which mean the blue channel has clipped before so it will register on charts which are just gray but in reality it is not true usable DR. The Sony tend to have some clipping with blues that clipped abruptly which is I guess the same phenomenon on some channel clipping before others. The last thing to consider is what 21 stop of DR mean for the users. Everything will have to be graded quite heavily and the use of luts everytime, if else you will never know your exposure. All this will come to the same as the 5d3 raw, whoaw novel, and then in the end it will become such a hassle to use. The geek will always see that the more the better, for me there is always a threshold, 14.5 stop (my D800) is already very very good. Everything above this will now only become incremental. If you can't shoot with a camera with about 14 stop then you just won't with anything.

I think that the days of filmmaking as the base of talking is long gone . It more of a geek/gear talking now with the latest and greatest being the norm and everything else shit. Shooting at 21 stop you wont need to expose at all as you will be able to capture from the deepest shadows to the highest highlight with one shot, with super high ISO you wont need to light because you will able to use available light, with litro technology and infinite DOF no need to focus anymore, we just need some algorithm to be able to frame and compose for us and voila... One push button cinematography, the dream of the geek.

At least when Canon will put 4k on the camera, we will get 1080p video on the Canon dslr.

Now before I let you guys discuss about the A7s color, I will give you my assessment that some of you might find useful. Because I did asses the camera as a contender as everyone was talking about that. This was before I find the colour skin tone issues, rolling shutter issues and blue clipping. My assesment is that the the colour are bias toward green and pink which make it look a lot as when you are shooting low cri fluorescent or led light. It is as if there are some colour spectrum lacking. The best resource I saw about analyzing the different colour profile and S-log is this, I think it is a good starting point The second thing I guess is that a 8 bit file is not sufficient to store enough step for that ultra low contrast 13 or more DR. So some of the rounding off is causing part of colour to merge. As a better explanation, I mean the contrary of colour separation that you normally want, so that if you want to do colour correction etc choosing a colour for qualifiers in Davinci it wont merge with nearby colours. The last thing as this example is that shooting at 3200 you will need very very good ND. Most of the time ND will bring a colour cast. In fact in general ND tend to bring some additional green hue and IR polluting a pinkish hue. So they will tend to reinforce the green and pink tint and that is a big task to get it out of a super flat 8 bit codec.

He has graded the video to the Orange and teal look, It is a question of tast if people like it or not. But even with the grade it looks a lot better than most Sony A7s video that I have seen (he has his website here http://gbvideo.com/wedding-videos where you can see a lot more example) and it is a wedding so guerrilla shooting in sometime harsh lighting. In that video looking at the vegetation I would say south of the USA and not shooting at ideal hours (golden hour) when the contrast is low, I am sure that any camera would blow, If applying a normal S-curve and to expose nicely for the face of the couple. If not you would have to use power windows in davinci reslove to isolate the blown area and us tracking to lower the highlight so that you don't affect the skin of the principal subject, which mean the couple. I don't know many production who would go that far for some blown highlight behind them. To continue on dynamic range, I leave and dye by it because I don't live in a Tropical island with mostly dark skin tone people. If you have someday the opportunity to go shoot in the Caribbean etc you will know what contrasty light mean. I also always joke anout the golden hour because it is more like the golden 20 minutes in my country because you come from full day to knight in the space of 20 minutes as the closest you come to the equator higher is the sun and the curve of entry and exit is much more vertical toward the horizon. When you shoot in those condition dynamic range is more important than resolution and ISO. Part of my job is to do weddings of couple mainly from Europe on the beach and I have to shoot human beings in very harsh light. This is a website a travel agency who sell my services packaged with their flight and hotel accommodation. This is just a very very small sample of my work and some errors in there (One photo with couple with sunset and a big fck ugly boat behind and they are just shinning and ugly red skin........ some over smoothing of the skin done buy the agency ) http://www.danielvilliers.com . But if you take the first one with the bright turquoise sea, you can just barely open your eyes in these condition and I have 3 Flash firing at them as fill light. During those time you can barely shoot continuously more than 1) minute or risk the bride or more rarely the groom to fell unconscious. Most of the time I have to correct the skin for shininess and redness and to people disbelief, most of the time it is the groom because... they don't wear makeup. So next time you lecture someone about dynamic range or any other subject, perhaps it would be good to know his background a bit. If you want I can send you links to load of my complete wedding gallery because I pride myself to a certain level of consistency in my work and in those harsh condition like the first photo. Just as a note most of those photos are done on jpeg because I have very little time of 3 to 5 days before departure of the client. My D800 RAW (best camera in DR) are only used when I have to rescue a shot.

I have downloaded Canon slog and Arri Log and could get very good image just by applying an S -curve. I am used to high dynamic range with my D800, just apply the curve you want to get the contrast level you want, but the colour response more or less the same depending on the colour preset of the camera. I would say the closest two I have seen is Nikon and Alexa. But if we get back to your point the Slog is more or less unusable to 9 out of 10 people, or even more seeing the number of thread popping out on all forums. So what the fuss being made, as one of the supposivelly image quality of the camera cannot be used by the vast majority. This reminds me the story of Arri and Red. While the geeks shooters where talking up Red cameras because of 4k, high speed etc etc, compared to the 2k supposedly lower quality and overprice Alexa. In the end Alexa ruled the Cinema and commercial market and you them talking about the advance in the last Dragon colour science because it comes closer to the Alexa. While they where dismissing the Alexa colour science before as nothing that superior.

I know I will be lambasted here, but I will never understand the hype with this camera. I also will look like a fan boy but what is the fuss about a camera when it cannot to the basic right. If just shooting a human being you need to be some guru in colour correction, whoa. I have been a graphic designer then became a photographer for nearly a decade now. I photography mostly human for commercial, fashion and weddings and I think I am quite good at colour correcting in lightroom, photoshop and now Davinci resolve. But whoa, I am completely lost in the level of setting etc etc that people are going at colour grading the A7s. It is like rocket science with 3d colour luts etc. With my Nikon's it just add or remove some saturation, do a little Scurve and voila, beautiful skin tone. Then if you want to have all types of looks like cross procesing etc. At least the base is here and you can build from it. I think that the Nikons are mature 1080p camera now. My D7100 is already quite good, but I think I will ubgrade to the D750 early next year, for its added low light and 60 fps at 1080p. Very good DR, 1080p resolution, great low light to at least 6400 iso and no one is complaining about horrible Jello (Look at the train in your video, realy distracting). Another mention would be the Black magic 2.5k cinema camera. Great resolution, DR and Codec. I had one concern it was the moire/aliasing, but they just launched a filter that removes it and with a speed booster you are getting Cinema 35mm and another stop for high ISO. Just as an extreme example, the other day I fell on this guy video filming with............. a D600. Must be on one of the worst (because of aliasing and moire) older Nikon model. Look at the skin tone etc. I react much more emotionally to that, than any of those super spec A7s geeky video footage.

Whoaw I have pretty good eyesight and do not wear any glasses and was never able to see pixel. I mean at watch-able viewing distance at movie theater. I have seen numerous article and lectures where the conclusion was that humans being could not see beyond 2k at normal viewing distance.

4k is another marketing strategy to increase price, it won't bring anything to the movie experience. With motion blur, 99% of the time you won't see any difference, if it is even possib to see. What it will do is show all the flaw of set, props etc.

The thing look completely false, as someone is saying it like looking at a video game trailer. One thing that really take a hit for me is the CGI character. They look exactly like game characters and false. They create a disconnect with the story because they have no reality in them. It is a giant step backward for CGI, who has for the most part the last 10 years been to a level that they are believable.

Test of lee powells gama control picture profile shows you how much DR is in the Nikon shadows for video. https://vimeo.com/108015355 https://vimeo.com/108015354

Just google Nikon D800 bbc test. In this test done by the guy who does test for the BBC the D800 is at 11.9 and the D4 at 13 stop. Since then most of the Nikons have been rated at about the same level. You can search for Samul H who does Flaat picture profile and you will see that his conclusion is about the same. The zacuto test also gave the Canon 5d3 about 11 stop in there non raw test. I did a test here http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?311058-Nikon-D7100-12-13-Dynamic-range-test for my D7100 and it was also about 12 stop. This is in video because in photo the Nikon are all about 14 and now Nikon D810 closer to 15 stop. The concept that Canon is considered more reliable than Nikon is a bit ludicrous, both have got some very reliable camera and some duds. But in general I don't see anyone question Nikon vs Canon in terms of reliability at least in the long run as Nikons have been use in space and war zone for decades.

Why should Canon have to change their sensor!!!!!!!!!!. It is known that they have not changed fabrication sensor tech since about 5d2 and 7d compared to Sony who have invested massively in thinner process for its sensors. This is why you find this gap and that the sensor since about the 7d and 5d2 performance have not evolved that much. But since they have the best marketing department in the world with their fan boys, that won't criticize or admit that Canon is lagging behind, because their ego will take some beating. They can just tweak and not invest a cent as the money will still be flowing in.

I prefer to listen to scientific test that to listen to people subjective opinion. DXO has brought peace to the world of digital photography at least to the non Canon fanboys who want to convince themselves that their beloved brand is still at the top to feel well. Look at this comparative done by Canon shooters . I have the a Canon 7d that I bought for video long time ago, I can tell you that it lags behind a lot compared to my D7100 in terms of DR as in the video above (My d7100 somehow does exibit some banding and is the only Nikon selling model now having it). In video it is different, in general the Nikons have been measured about 12 stop (the D4 was 13 stop) and the Canon's at about 10.5 - 11 stop.

It is the same than the Canon 2008-2010 models!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My example was to illustrate gain in the most basic way. But I think that 99.9% do a visual work for it to shown and to get some gratification from it. Be it, just some likes on facebook or on youtube or to be an international recognise artist. But for most of those who are low to no budget one man band shooter, the additional layer of knowledge and how to use it for colour grading is going to break many project. I consider myself a good to very good colorist, in the sense that I have been a photographer/graphic designer the last 15 years and working a lot with RAW for a decade. But my mind boggles when I see those A7s grading threat. If you have to get that much yechnical knowledge to at least get a usable image !!!!!!! How many will fail, will overdo etc etc and there image will look crap. This and 4k (too much detail that it will be difficult for set/props/costume design, make up etc) will be the downfall of many of I guest the geeky indie film-maker community.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?303559-Measuring-rolling-shutter-put-a-number-on-this-issue!/page5 So in full frame it is between 30.5 and 34.5, about Nikon D90 level !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL

I have push the shadows in post a lot and I find virtually no noise at 1600 and 3200 and it is quite low at 6400. You have to push the contrast a lot to see the noise at 1600 or 3200.