odie

who needs a dragon…?

let's show a little love for our founder and friend MR. KODAK…THANK YOU SIR…it doesn't get any better than this… shot on kodak in Venice 2013...
 

More updated rumours from 43rumors.com
 
 
- G4K has focus peaking
- There is an attachable XLR adapter
- H264 codec all intra that give 422 color all intra in 100 mbps. To record this you will need to buy the new P2 Micro card in SD shape made by Panasonic (see image on top)
- it will be switch-able from 4K and 1080P with various frame rates (can shoot 120fps at 1080P for example)

This chart is an overall look at the whole spectrum of video and cinema cameras from the Arri Alexa right down to the Fuji X series of stills cameras.

Read the full article here

The only camera I noticed looked like a classic Rolleiflex TLR, but I couldn't tell for sure which model it actually was, as I got distracted by some other more compelling details. Who cares what gear was used to shoot them.
 
I like the way you made your point, and in this case, point taken. ;-)
At least I believe that's the point you tried to make. Well done. 

GREAT! Wonderful you achieved this with the tiny GH2! You(!) obviously don't need super-expensive gear and lenses and, and, and... 
This is also encouraging for other people. I was recently thinking about buying Canon 5D... I will stick to my GH3 I think :)

please guess which camera's footage  this is????  Andrew what do you think..?
 

 
 
 
 
could be...
gh2
bmcc
bmpc 4k
bmpcc
gh3
red one
red 6k
5d mark ii
5d mark iii raw
sony f100
nikon 800
nikon 5300
super 16mm

Then:
 
Explain to him how he's wrong about the ugly noise texture in all MX footage, especially tungsten-balanced, making the image look cheap and chunky and digital.
 
Explain to him why the shadows get so chunky and blue in any tungsten-balanced Red scene, whereas Alexas can be shot under any lighting condition. And then go on and add why the Alexa's superior low light ability is irrelevant.
 
Explain to him why it's irrelevant that the Alexa has a smoother noise texture, much more like film.
 
Explain to him why, despite the Red's 13.5 stops of DR being is a total lie (in fact the camera has no more DR than the C300, less than the F5, and a magenta-tinted highlight rolloff), it's still better than the 14.5+ stops smoothly handled in the Alexa.
 
Explain why the Alexa's superior midrange tonality isn't significant.
 
Explain why red code botching details in skin and foliage (again, some of the most emotionally resonant subject matter...) is irrelevant, whereas ArriRAW is fine and even prores handles these details well.
 
Explain to him why the color science of the Alexa matches 5219 almost exactly and offers smooth creamy flesh tones and beautiful green foliage, whereas the red totally botches memory colors, but that's ok.
 
Explain to him how he's wrong that the OLPF of the Red offers ugly internal reflections and color cast over highlights, whereas the Alexa rolls off smoothly like film.
 
I'm curious. Explain how an ugly image with good specs looks better than a beautiful one with somewhat lesser specs.
 
Personally I would shoot a C300 or F5 over an Epic; the Epic has a stranglehold on summer blockbusters for the resolution advantage, but the look is just so... ugly and the workflow so damn shitty.
 
Yes there is beautiful content shot on red. But Prometheus, for instance, required a lot of CGI lipstick to dress up that pig.
 
I do find the character of the Monochrome sensor to be superior.

My GH2's continue to get used in the most demanding of environments. I shot this corporate piece using GH2's in minus 20 weather in Edmonton, Canada back in November. Not a single card error or power issue, using Flowmotion 2.02. Cameras were rock solid. The weather made the grease in the takumar lens barrels pretty sluggish but everything held up great for the exterior shots. I continue to use a full minus green gel fixed against the sensor and manually WB for superb balanced colors with zero green cast for all interior and exterior conditions. I used a Kessler pocket dolly for slides and an hd400 glidecam for upping the production value. Lift shots we're from a 60ft Genie we hired out. Interviews were shot with 50mm and 35mm (with speedbooster). Interior interview lighting was with a 1k to a 5x3 bounce and a couple of Lowell pro kickers for hair and background lighting. Edited and coloured in the much improved FCPX 10.1

wow..that's cold…good job!   is flowmotion 2.02 your favorite hack??

are some of the best cameras from 2013 5d mark 3 raw and the bmpcc (pocket camera) now obsolete for 4k??

noted a few films in Sundance…some shot on Arri Alexa…some shot on Super 16mm…after talking to the producers …it seems super 16mm is a cheap way to get that Arri Alexa look…reporting what is said here at the festival..in Sundance 2014

on another note from Sundance 2014  cameras..used so far..noted
 
2 35mm (one arri and one panavision)
3 arri alexa
3 super 16mm
1 sony f3
1 red epic..

for 4k…has the 5d mark 3 become obsolete?

I liked the camera too…but now I want to shoot 4k…so what happens to my 5d mark 3 raw and bmpcc (pocket camera)..?
for 4k are these cameras obsolete now???

It's like some people have skim read the article. I'm clear that any image quality is camera dependant. Taken in a general sense if you are going to get 4x the data off the sensor and onto the card, you will gain a lot of other attributes if the camera's image processor and codec are up to scratch.
 
For DSLRs to move away from line skipping and binning to a 4K video signal from the sensor, that avoids one of the ways so much dynamic range is lost in the first place, the throwing away of lots of pixel data.

It's not yet common.  Some directors insist and have enough juice to pressure production to fork over the substantial budget increase both 4K VFX and DI will cost them.  Prior to the phenomenon of IMAX presentation for non-educational films 4K was more common for anamorphic films where that's considered rather minimal quality for anamorphic. 
 
I would be really surprised if more than 10% of big VFX films are being posted at 4K and certainly less than 20% right now.  That's up from hearing about the one or two films a year requiring 4K post just a few years ago.  The shift to DCP already gave a resolution boost to 2K finish over general release print quality, commonly considered worth about 1K thanks to all the optical steps.  
 
If you've ever seen first-gen prints straight off a neg projected big and beautiful you cry at how much is just gone by the time it hits the multiplex.  This is a big reason why the death of film as an acquisition format is far too premature, regardless of how good any digital camera is, because DCP of analog origination is the best looking digital presentation going.  Similarly, digital origination looks nice® when printed to film and optically projected.  It would be interesting to see experiments with digital origination, print to neg and then scan that negative for DI and eventual DCP. 
 
Anyhow, yes, I was surprised to read someone had busted out the VV.  They must be doing pan/zoom or perhaps some tricky projections where the extra resolution is desirable above working from a 4K 4-perf scan.  It's maybe a little overkill if they're using it for an Alexa section.  
 
CG itself, regardless of standard practice, doesn't need to be rendered to your target, working resolution because we tyipically work at 4x to 8x oversampling.  You have further shading and geometric oversampling if you're using a REYES style micro-polygon renderer (Pixar's Renderman implementation, prman, or SESI's Mantra renderer being the most common) where, nominally, if you were to only do a 1x spatial sample you would still have four micro quads shading beneath each pixel.  
 
Straight raytracers commonly have even more oversampling thrown at them as they're prone to spatial aliasing but there's decades of research into techniques like poisson disc sampling and other stochastic techniques striving to improve results while lowering computation because noise is less distracting and more aesthetically pleasing (and more consistent with motion picture imagery either analog or digital) than hard, jagged lines.

alexa over red
kodak overall

Got there around 3pm yesterday and hung out for about an hour. These are just my personal impressions from a very limited interaction with the camera and brief conversations with Joe and some of the other attendees. Please keep in mind that these are personal opinions and they might not be entirely accurate or reflect the final camera's functionality.
 
Ok, here goes:
 
First let me say that Joe seems like a very passionate and super nice guy, there is a lot to be said about someone who pursued an idea a saw it through realization, kudos to him and his team!
 
I also want to say that the image quality that I saw on the computer (the camera records CDNG files with Aiff audio) was very pleasant and detailed with low noise and good shadows and highlights.
 
Having said that, unfortunately this camera appears to have a classic case of a solution-looking-for-a-problem, starting from the form factor which doesn't lend itself either to traditional mounting solutions nor to newer DSLR rigs. Sure you can mount it on a tripod, but trying to attach it to a rail system with a follow focus gear is going to be...challenging. I was also surprised at the lack of some screw holes in the body which would come in really handy to attach an external monitor or other gadgets. It does have a hot-shoe flash mount, but I personally avoid those with larger and heavier attachments.
 
The pistol grip is a cool idea, but the camera is fairly heavy (heavier than a 5D with a hefty lens) One's arm would likely become sore after about 20 minutes of holding it. The decision was made  to be true to the original and make the record trigger on the handle not latch when pressed to record. While this is the way the original Bolex operated, it would have been nice if a latch option would have been provided. The camera does have a record button on the top which works as expected, but makes one wonder if the pistol grip button will largely be ignored by most operators.
 
The camera features two CF card slots, however all the video is recorded to a non-removable internal SSD 500Gb drive. Why not write directly to easily removable CF cards instead? Methinks if the Blackmagic Pocket Camera can do it, why not the Digital Bolex?
 
The internal drive can hold about an hour-ish and then some worth of video, and the data can then be transferred to the CF cards, or to a computer through a USB 3 slot. Transfer time through USB 3 for about 500Gb worth of data....about an hour. 
 
Lens mount is a C-type. This was another bit of odd choice to me, while once again this mount is true to the original Bolex, why require the end user to buy into yet another type of adapter, particularly one which is not used by anyone else?
 
No removable battery...grrrrr.
 
2K -- The sensor is a super-16mm sized one, shooting at 2K uses the entire sensor, while shooting in 1080p mode crops the sensor down to what Joe described as regular 16mm size. In my opinion, 2K offers neither high enough resolution for re-cropping and enlargement in post, nor is particularly useful as a delivery format for web, festivals, and DVD/Blu Ray where this camera's output is likely going to end up. So why not either stick to 1080 and use the full sensor, or go all the way up to 4K?
 
Last but not least, the price. At over $3k (actually $3600 after the drive upgrade to 500Gb) I am not quite sure how this camera will fare against the Blackmagic Cinema Camera which features a larger sensor, EF or m4/3 mount, higher resolution, swappable media, and already a thriving accessories ecosystem. Will no-rolling shutter and a cool vintage vibe be enough?
 
In closing, I did like the image that I saw quite a bit, and I feel that some of my concerns could be fixed with a firmware update (most notably the gun trigger function and maybe the ability for the camera to write directly to fast CF cards). I'm not quite sure how this camera will do against Blackmagic and whatever else is announced in April, but I wish Joe and his team the best of luck and a great deal of success nonetheless.
 
I applaud Joe for pursuing a dream, and I think this world needs more, and not less guys like him. Despite the potential shortcomings of this camera, I am happy that it exists, and I am happy that people like Joe are able to realize their visions.
 
 
Once again, these are just my opinions based on a very brief encounter with the Digital Bolex, please take everything I just typed with a huge grain of salt and try to test drive this camera for yourself before you come to a decision on whether you want to buy one or not.

And you'd be in the company of a lot of respected DPs that have made the transition to digital.
 
Arri has proven since the introduction of the Alexa that, when it comes to digital, how you fill those rows and columns is ultimately more important than how many rows and columns you're filling.  Higher and higher resolution and more and more DR and wider and wider color gamut are all goals the engineers busy working away at Sony or RED understand.  They're practical problems with practical solutions, overcome by throwing more and faster engineering at them.  These engineers aren't going to create better cameras though.
 
Last night I finally got around to watching Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and immediately thought about where we were going here.  It's almost poetic that this film was released the same year as the first installment of The Hobbit, a shitty looking 4K movie shot on RED.  I'm not anti-RED and there are plenty of good looking RED films, this isn't one of them and this film is a good example of what's missing from RED (and Sony's) path.
  Reading about their workflow, on The Master, it reinforces my feelings that 4K and beyond, with digital cameras, is really a problem for filmmaking, and it's not just about resolution.  Nobody has ever complained that 65mm made actors or sets or props or make up look bad.  The Master was a mixed 65mm (mostly) and 35mm show, graded photochemically with both print and DCP distribution.  They did four separate release finishes for this film, with true photochemical for 70mm and 35mm prints.  It's crazy.  But for their DI they scanned the 5-perf 65mm at 8K and the 4-perf 35mm at 6K for an eventual 4K DCP finish.   More than once I've read, based on DP and colorist commentary, that anamorphic 35mm with a digital 4K finish is considered minimally what you need if you care about preserving most of what's there in the neg, where 2K is an abomination, but 6K for spherical when you're not shooting 8-perf seems excessive by conventional wisdom.  Everything I've read over the years about how obsessive P.T. Anderson is over the photography of his films leads me to believe they weren't assigning film this level of resolution unless it warranted it.  Every aspect of his acquisition and release methodology was thoroughly tested.  My own experience on dozens and dozens of films working with scanned 35mm imagery concurs.   Making 4K actually look good with digital cameras isn't something that seems part of the conversation at these electronics shows and soft lenses is the current bandaid but I think it's just that.  They're not confronting head on a fundamental flaw in how these sensors are recording reality so discretely and unattractively.  Resolution is to blame but film proves this to be false.   For the 35mm portions of The Master  the emphasis was on the sharpest lenses available, so that the footage cut well with the 65mm.  Meanwhile DP after DP are on record choosing reportedly soft lenses, like Cooke S4,  for high resolution digital acquisition, otherwise finding the look is harsh and unappealing.  Moreover, PT Anderson requires his films be shot on the slowest stocks available, ensuring the smallest possible grain.  DP Mihai Malaimare brought his personal 85mm Zeiss Jena for Panavization, the sharpest 85mm he's ever used or seen, and Panavision found a matching set of expanded focal lengths already in their possession.     All this emphasis on resolution didn't make the film less beautiful.  On the contrary, I can't think of the last time I saw close-ups in a motion picture that inspired this much awe.  It was just astounding.  And the color.  Seeing a film, shot on film, with a photochemical grade that looks this amazing also points out just how over-graded a majority of films are, regardless of the origination.  There's a lot of "just because you can doesn't mean you should" sort of observations one could make.   All the criticisms levied against The Hobbit and DP after DP working around and against the "edge" of Ultra-HD (some of which, yes, is preserved even in 2K or 1080P reductions), this was never the case with film, shooting with what we know to be higher resolving power than 4K.  I think we need to be shifting the conversation away from just the simple number of rows and columns and to how they're being filled.  Video engineers did finally get around to giving us the ability to shoot video with film-like gamma curves, finally appreciating that we don't like our movies looking like the nightly news.  Now they need to appreciate that 4K+ for movies needs to be different than 4K+ for covering Formula-1 or football.

I'm of the belief that if greater image quality than what can be had from true fullhd from the black magic pocket, or hacked canon 5dmk3 is required, then it's time to hire a camera for the job.  The jump in image quality that will be had from anything within reach of consumers is going to be null and void in my opinion.  It would take an expert to tell the difference between a hacked 5dmk3 and an Alexa shooting RGB into an external box.  
 
Focus on glass is priority IMO.  A nice set of Contax Zeiss on a hacked 5dmk3 is gonna literally match or ruin anything else within the budgets of most of us.   Full HD cameras are more than good enough nowadays.

can you check out the 5d mark lll on the big screen too…?

I had been a projectionist for a long time (now this profession has died), and from 2000 on I had also been a digital projectionist. Until 2011, when automation finally killed the job, I used to compare my own stuff to the DCPs, side by side on the big screens, in the last two years also as DCPs, when easyDCP and openDCP became available. The largest screen was 78 feet x 32 feet (that's for scope, for 16:9 the width then was 58 feet).
 
First thing I noticed is that resolution doesn't influence sharpness to the expected degree. And it also doesn't influence subjective quality very much. In fact, an upscaled SD DVD ( anamorph pixels with scope-crop, really the worst way to treat a video) could be shown to a big audience, and (back then) nobody complained, the class-A hardware scalers made it look good. I know this is hard to believe, but we once had a festival with student films, ranging from DVD, BD to genuine DCP (a Red!), and the one best looking was a masterfully graded HVX200 short, played from SD DVD.
 
On the other hand, there was a way to know instantaneously what was film and what was video: Colors. 

 
I know this comparison is only 8-bit, but I have to find a way to describe aesthetic subtleties here. With a camera like the GH2 ("Musgo"), for example, one would be well advised to fill the frame with detail, textures (resolution, that's the GH2s strength) and not with skies and other big areas of glorious colors.
 
Right now we grade for 8-bit, so 12-bit raw is *just* a bigger palette for grading. Color depth seems to add a new dimension to our video. It's fun to tear the, er, bloom off the images and to dive through the colors. Would it stand against an Alexa? I can't tell, really, but I'm convinced it would do better than many others.
 
I can't wait to see a DCP with the 12-bit preserved in my old cinema.

I remember watching "Public Enemies" and thinking how a bad camera ruined an excellent movie with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.

a frame from the t.v. series BOARDWALK EMPIRE…or movie BLACK SWAM…and bmpcc matches it..then I'll buy one