IronFilm

23 hours ago, zlfan said:

I think a lot of gimbal users are actually solo shooters. If work as a team, maybe dolly jib etc are more traditional. 

Steadicam is the "traditional" alternative to a gimbal. (although, they're both slightly different types of tools, and not exact replacements for each other!)

However due to the massively lower costs of a gimbal (both the equipment and the operator), then I do see gimbals being used instead quite often.

23 hours ago, zlfan said:

I suggest post editing time for about 10-15 minutes, now it is about 1 minute. I tried many times to edit typo and add more but it is gone. 

I agree, even a 15minute edit length would be a huge improvement over the only five minutes or so we have now (it's a little longer than 1 minute? But not by much). 

Although I personally feel perhaps an hour or three would be the sweet spot. As that's still waaaaay under the typical time period for when those spammy bots would be posting then returning back to add sneaky links in the edit. 

On 1/6/2024 at 12:10 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Incidentally, I saw a thread on Gearspace recently about the use of the MiniMoog in TV scoring in the early 70s and I would swear that at least one poster involved in it must be on here under different names.

I'm on gearspace too! But I'm very easy to figure out, I keep the same username over there as well 🙂

8 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

This is the million dollar question. Do you have any top contenders?

I think perhaps going back to my old career as a Software Developer. 

(it was a loooong time ago, we were programming on stone tablets with hammer & chisels) 

Maybe them merging is good news?? When we consider all the negative infighting between the pro video and consumer divisions (because they pro division was very jealous of the success of the GH series. I bet for instance that's why we never ever saw a Panasonic EVA1 MFT, even though that made 100% sense!). 

As maybe, just maybe we'll see them now working together?? 

Bring on the Panasonic EVA2 with L Mount!

On 1/5/2024 at 11:58 AM, PannySVHS said:

GH4 was the second dslm/r camera with 4K after the Canon 1DC afaik. And it was the first affordable one and approachable one with its 4K 100mbit codec.  First 4k dslr from Nikon must have been the D500 i think. @sanveer

Yes, Panasonic GH4 was the first non-cinema hybrid camera (as the 1D C was part of Canon's cinema series, although in a hybrid camera form factor). And the Nikon D5/D500 was the first 4K DSLR (as the GH4 was mirrorless). 

2 hours ago, kye said:

My strategy is to draft the post, then re-read it in the editor before posting it.

I try to do this. 

But that is not how my brain works. 

I only see my mistakes immediately AFTER I have pressed the "submit" button! haha

2 hours ago, kye said:

 When I post it and then re-read it I have to frantically make edits until the timer blocks any more edits.  I think it's a 5 minute window.

I also have a vague recollection that it was put into effect because people were making inflammatory posts and then days later were editing them then gaslighting everyone after the evidence had been erased.  It made for very strange reading too because it looked like they made a calm post and then all the following quotes were doctored to make them the asshole.

Yeah, it's a pity. 

I feel that the timer should be longer. Say if it was an hour long. 

Then if you post, then someone else replies at some point in the future, and you then reply back after trying to edit it, welllll..... the hour probably has expired already? (for instance, your reply to me just now, over two hours has passed!) 

But if you're just taking your time to read through the thread, and you get other thoughts you want to add to your post as you read further into the thread, well it's unlikely you'll take longer than a whole hour to read to the end of the thread? 

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Sound is non-negotiable to me these days though. I can’t be invisible and I cannot always be totally silent, but I do practice stealth as much as is practically possible and KER LICK is not part of that equation.

Ahhhh... NOW you are speaking my language! 😉 

I'm all for being quieter when on a production. 

yeah, linear vs log

Plus ARRI can do 12bit prores too

22 minutes ago, kye said:

Any reason I shouldn't buy the Samsung T9 drive?  Pricing is not much more than the T7 and it's faster and more future-proof.

I remember reading there was so sort of compatibility issues with BMD cameras and the newer Samsung drives?

But checking it out quickly shows this post from a couple of days ago, saying T9 is all good:

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=190756 

This post says T7 is bad:

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=165083

But now the SamsungT7 Shield Portable SSD 1TB / 2TB / 4TB is listed as supported:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/faq/59025 

So they found a way?? And updated the firmware. (as the 2nd forum post was a little while ago) 

Thus either would be fine??? If the price difference is only small, get the T9

Edit:

ahhhh... it was about the Shield vs non-Shield versions of the T7:

https://www.reddit.com/r/videography/comments/17kglkn/blackmagic_ursa_mini_pro_46k_g2_samsung_t9_ssd/ 

9 hours ago, zlfan said:

seems to me that u43 will revive due to this bmcc4k g2 and g9 ii. 

And the Panasonic GH7 can't be too far away! I'm betting this year. 

Plus I expect to see another MFT camera from Z Cam too. 

6 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

@zlfan, you don't need to pump out post after pos

I guess it is due to the lack of edit button?? 😞

If only we could still edit posts! (more than a few seconds afterwards) Then we wouldn't see two or three plus posts in a row from the same person. 

7 hours ago, zlfan said:

even though bm cams have af, it is not on par with sony and canon cams, even not on par with red komodo. certainly you can use it for gimbal, but many more dps use sony cams for gimbal work.  

The vast majority of times I'm on shoots with a gimbal they're not using AF. As they have a 1st AC. 

5 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

3. Alister Chapman shown that 10bit Slog2 held no disadvantage on the FS7 compared to its linear 12bit Raw output. Always a great presenter and a good reason to grab some chocolate milk and some cookies and watch a 2.5 hour presentation.

That was more a design flaw of the FS7 itself though

12bit from an ARRI for instance will be great. 

8 hours ago, zlfan said:

i watched his doc before and was very impressed. previously i assumed he used o7q for f35 444 12 bit uncompressed. after reading this article, i am surprised that he used a bm hyperdeck for 1080p 10 bit 422 prores (hq). 422 prores can be thus good in right hands!

Portability likely trumped out and won in the end. A Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q isn't exactly an easy hassle free approach vs a lightweight little Hyperdeck (or perhaps if he was doing it today, an Atomos Ninja Star???? Maybe)

This film was quite famously shot with the Sony F35! Thus was already discussed a lot by folks such as us on various forums. 

7 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

I've been watching the rise of AI and big jumps in smartphone technology closely, and I am wondering how much longer my skill set will be relevant. It may be time for a change soon, though I can't think of anything that I would rather do.

I've been wondering that too, how long until the rise of AI slashes down the relevance of my job by 80%. And what should I move on into instead? 

7 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

Equipment-wise, I bought a second C70, two RF zooms, a Red Scarlet-X, and an M2 Mac Studio + BenQ monitor. I sold about 50 items that I just haven't been using. I probably have another 10 that I can let go of too.

Wow! Fifty items!

That's a lot. (but probably what I should do myself.... )

6 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Not so much AI, as I can't see how that can in any way take over or have any real impact on what I do (weddings/events) 

It isn't unimaginable that in one day in the not so distant future that all the footage gets crowd sourced from guests, that the AI then fixes up (or even totally regenerates from scratch, just using the input sources as guides for it) and spits out cinematic wedding trailers and wedding photos. That's "good enough" to satisfy the low end of the market (as of course AI will massively undercut the humans).

Then another five or ten years later after that? It will have leapt ahead and improved enough to be eating away at the mid market which is the bread and butter of many pros. 

10 hours ago, MrSMW said:

It was awful on the OG S5 and that carried over to the S5ii.

What exactly is wrong with the S5 shutter? And what's right with the S1H shutter?

(sorry, non-pro photographer here, so I'm a bit confused!) 

If you're fine with only the electronic shutter of the 28megapixel sensor of the Sony FX30 when doing photography (some people are not, and insist upon a mechanical shutter for their photography), then I still think that's the way to go for you. 

8 hours ago, zlfan said:

Of note is the fact that our recording medium for the season (after a horrific trial with one of the external 10-bit 4:2:2 recorders) was 50 Mbs XDCAM disc. We never lost a frame and we have hard masters of all of our footage

From this comment I presume they were recording to a Sony PMW-50, or similar. This is what I mean:

https://pro.sony/s3/cms-static-content/file/05/1237490106505.pdf

Although the reference to "disc" makes me wonder if perhaps it was an older/different model than this one. Or maybe it was just a slightly sloppy mistake saying "disc"? 

8 hours ago, zlfan said:

but I didn't learn until we were in post that that is an 8 bit standard. 

It's interesting how even the professional experts can sometimes screw up the basics. 

8 hours ago, zlfan said:

i think he did the whole season 1 on key and peele with f3 s log to 8 bit nano flash 50 mbits mpeg2 long gop.

Correct, they shot one season with the new Sony PMW-F3, but after that they switched over to the brand new ARRI cameras for the later seasons. 

But where did you see evidence they filmed with the Nano Flash? 

And this is why ProRes 10bit 422 is plenty for even quite "high budget" productions to shoot in, and they don't "need" raw at all. 

20 hours ago, kye said:

• Older cameras are much less out-of-date for stills assuming they can shoot RAW stills (which is almost universal now)

Exactly, when it comes to just stills then for 95%+ of us an old body such as the Nikon D750 from eBay could meet 95%+ of our photography needs yet costs merely 10% of what a new Nikon Z9 would cost! 

The progress in tech for photography over the last couple of decades, especially in the past decade is:

1) has greatly exceeded the capabilities of almost all photographers

2) has somewhat stalled out, and is going at a much slower pace than digital photography was improving at in the 1980's / 1990's / 2000's 

20 hours ago, kye said:

• This will give you the ability to have one camera setup for stills and the other for video, with no fiddling around to change modes and adjust any settings that can't be recalled as part of a profile etc

Exactly, if you're on a shoot where you're doing both video and stills, it's much easier to jump between both if they're two different bodies. (especially the more complex it is that it becomes. What if for instance if the FX30 is setup rigged for video monitor + TC + audio etc, while the a6000 is setup to be used controlling external flashes?? You wouldn't want both of those combined into one!)

Plus like you said, all the many benefits of having two bodies to use for BTS / timelapses / second angles / etc 

On 1/1/2024 at 1:11 PM, DanielVranic said:

FX30 is BIG TIME on the radar, but for stills i really don't think it'll cut it. Too much of a compromise in that department 

What do you really need for stills? Could you just get a Sony a6000 on eBay for next to nothing? They'll then be each the back up stills/video camera for the other one! 

On 1/1/2024 at 3:01 PM, herein2020 said:

I think the 24-105mm combined with the speedbooster does something to the contrast and saturation that is hard to recover in post. Also, the slightest bit of direct light and the image washes out very quickly due to the speedbooster; and when I say direct light I don't mean direct sunlight, I'm talking even shooting concerts and music videos the image washes out terribly from DJ or music video lights. Needless to say, my setup is not doing the C70 any favors, but as a OMB my setup times are already long as it is. I am thinking about switching to a native RF lens for the C70 but that would be an expensive endeavor. The Canon RF 24-105mm F2.8 is $3K....insanity, it would probably greatly improve the C70's IQ but do nothing for its reach.

Wouldn't a non-speedboosted (because it is native mount) have greater reach than the speedboosted 24-105?

Maybe switch over to a normally adapted (no speedbooster) 24-105 in EF mount for cheap as standard adapters cost very little? (would give you more reach too!) As that would be less likely to struggle with the image washing out, if you're skipping using the speedbooster. Or is the issue that f4 is too slow for you? Get a secondhand 24-70mm f2.8 then? Could get one of those for EF for just $400 to $700-ish on eBay

5 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Nikon Z9 is very nice, but outside your budget. The Nikon Z6mk2 / Zf is nice too & within your budget, but again it lags behind those three I just listed above. However.... the rumor mill is spinning saying the Z6mk3 is only days away from being announced?

I was amiss not to mention the Nikon Z8 (won the "Mirrorless Camera of The Year" award on Newsshooter for 2023): https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1765622-REG/nikon_z8_mirrorless_camera.html

It's basically a Z9 on a diet, but even at its cheaper price, it's still too expensive for your budget, so I didn't mention it. (but then again, so too is the FX3 "too expensive", yet I mentioned it a lot) 

58 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Hope to try and make 2024 be a similar year. 

I'll still spend money on random little cables / adapters / batteries / consumables / etc that I need. (these can easily get into the low thousands of dollars! As all these little things can easily add up. But I'll try to keep it down more in the hundreds of dollars range) 

My rough gear plans for 2024 that I'm expecting (can't be too sure, I don't have a crystal ball):

1. Sell my Sony FS7 (and try to resist temptation to get another, and thus tell myself to not buy a Sony PMW-F5 and/or FX30 instead)
2. Likewise, resist the temptation to buy a secondhand Nikon D750 / D500 / Panasonic G9mk1 / Pentax 645D (the cheaper these cameras become, the harder it becomes to resist the temptation to get one!)
3. Buy an RF Distro (sadly none exactly match up for what I'm looking for. So I might just get one from Aliexpress on "the cheap" for less than a thousand bucks NZD, while I keep on waiting for the perfect distro. Which might be years away?? There have been in 2023 a few new RF distro announcements and releases, we're been spoiled with how many new ones are coming out, yet sadly none are quite what I want!!!)
4. Buy the Audio Wireless DT-BOOST2 filter (it hasn't started production yet, official specs are not even announced yet, and they haven't even said what the price will be!! https://www.audiowireless.co.uk/online-store/DIGITALLY-TUNED-DUAL-ANTENNA-FILTER-DT-BOOST-2-p481882216 But I've chatted with them directly, it seems that it will be coming out in 2024 I hope, and it seems like they'll have a variable 50MHz bandwidth option, so this seems like the closest to what I could hope that I want. At least in the foreseeable future, could be many years until the perfect product comes out, so for now these seems like the closest there is)
5. Get a Rycote INV-Lite 19 shock mount 
6. Buy another Sennheiser MKH50 and or Sanken CSM1 if I get lucky and see an amazing deal. (resist the temptation to get the new DPA 2017)
7. Maybe get a Sony DWT-P01N, as one of my two plug on Sony transmitters is playing up with a few issues 😞 
8. Buy another couple of channels (maybe even four) of Sony DWX (mainly because I want to be able to max out all 14 ISO tracks I can record on my Sound Devices 833, without needing to use my AJA ADA4 analog to AES convertors. And none of my Lectrosonics do AES output, but my Sony wireless does)
9. Maybe get another couple more Sanken COS11D lavs, and/or Deity W.Lav Pros. 
10. Maybe get another spare 3.5m carbon fibre boom pole. 
11. Maybe jump over to eSmart batteries and the Deity BDS. (maybe, but this would be a rather expensive change up, vs sticking with my Sony BP-U60 batteries to power my bag with)
12. Maybe change over from blk22 to blk20 for my IFBs/IEMs (I'd rather not do this, it would also be a very expensive change, for no real gain? But it might solve some minor issues I'm having, if the Lectrosonics PF25 won't resolve it) On the topic of IFBs, I might splurge out on a few Halter Technical headphones, as a better upgrade from the headphones I give out to people at the moment. 
13. Get a second ISDT charger for my AA batteries (I love my ISDT N24! However, I think my 2nd one will be a smaller 8x or 16x AA charger. As to get a second 24x AA charger would be handy! But slightly overkill too)

Ouch! Once I write it all down like that, it looks like a big long scary list (expensive!).  Even though at another level, it feels like I have "no plans at all to spend money", seriously... it's nothing at all. 

HA! No, I'm a dog person. (although, no dogs here either) 

Still, I'm quite happy with how this year panned out. 

I think this year was by far the least I've spent in any year (or at least, it is the least since I was the "film school level" of filmmaking) 

Hope to try and make 2024 be a similar year. 

I'll still spend money on random little cables / adapters / batteries / consumables / etc that I need. (these can easily get into the low thousands of dollars! As all these little things can easily add up. But I'll try to keep it down more in the hundreds of dollars range) 

I tried to make this year be a year of "not spending money". 

Yet somehow in the final months I got:

Lectrosonics SR dual receiver 

Lectrosonics UCR411 receiver 

Lectrosonics PF25 filters (two of them!)

Lectrosonics IFB T1 transmitter (this was a mistake... I thought it could do other modes than other just IFB, such as Digital Hybrid and Modes 6 & 3, but nope, I was wrong. Oops!)

7artisans 12mm F2.8 lens 

2x Sony ECM-77BC Lavs

And various other little random cables / adapters / consumables. 

I also purchased a Sony DWT-B01 that got stolen in the mail 😞 It breaks my heart!

17 minutes ago, kye said:

MCN?

In their comment, they blamed the videos being deleted on being part of a MCN that they had to leave so as to reenable them. 

"MCN": Multi-Channel Networks 

17 minutes ago, kye said:

like business decisions or people-related stuff.

Excellent, it's not some "random technical glitch" that they're 100% innocent of. 

On 12/14/2023 at 6:31 AM, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

@IronFilm, can you give me a quick advise?

Made some recordings on a music festival with a Panasonic FZ1000 with an Andycine mic (a Rode VideoMic copycat), and looks like that the FZ1000 input is too hot - even bringing down the mic adjustment level in camera to the lowest possible, the sound still clipped.

Starting to look for some signal attenuators, found some passive ones, but saw that adjustable one from Sound Professionals:

https://soundprofessionals.com/product/SP-ATEN-1/

But it is like a headphone volume control, isn't it? Do you know if it can degrades the sound by a large margin?

@Marcio Kabke Pinheiro, yeah you're just chucking a variable resistor inside a cable. 

You could get a similar thing for a dollar on Aliexpress:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004085294844.html 

On 12/14/2023 at 6:23 PM, MrSMW said:

Where exactly do you live in the World where it’s 2024 already?

Must be one of those remote Pacific islands? 🤔

Yup, some of us living in these very remote pacific islands like me are already living in the future by the time you read this 😉

2024 is great!

On 12/16/2023 at 1:39 AM, kye said:

I've been watching fashion influencers on TikTok and I'm pretty sure that's how financial management is done these days.

Girl Math. 
(also "filmmaker math")