Michael Ma

The 5D series is probably Canon's biggest money maker.  They got to get it right.  With that said, it needs C-Log.  Whoever suggested that C-Log is only for cameras with the C emblem needs to be fired from Canon.  Terrible decisions like this probably cost Canon millions of dollars.  But if Canon released the 5D4c for people that want it, it would say that they are listening to their customers.

Low light performance as good as A7R II.

V-Log (13 stops of usable dynamic range)

120fps~1000fps similar to RX100M4

In-body 10bit 1080p (external 4K 10bit)

I think I'm being realistic with the demands with the technology that's available, especially now that we have faster SD cards.

The reason I love Panasonic is the battery life, the UI, the flip out screen, and the reliability.  I hope that never changes.

I think 5-axis IBIS is coming whether you need it or not.  And RAW is certainly a possibility now that the Zenmuse X5R is being sold.

On 4/15/2016 at 2:00 AM, Fredrik Lyhne said:

Sorry guys but I'm cutting my losses and sending it back. I tried to load Yoshihide PID settings and Pilotfly's settings that they posted on facebook yesterday and it just keeps freaking out. I had to unscrew the handle back and forth to change settings and switching between different USB cables, sometimes bluetooth works and sometimes not. I've been getting a lot of error messages. But I assume all gimbal manufacturers buy boards from BaseCam Electronics and uses their software, so I'm not sure who to blame, Pilotfly, BaseCam or myself. 

Maybe I just got a bad one, who knows. This gimbal might be easy to balance, but if you want your footage to look like Dave's or Yoshihide's you better start learning PID and spend a lot of time learning to walk. The H2 sure has plenty of potential and the 2-hand handle is really nice, but for my needs I rather get a GX85 for now and wait for the GH5. 

A lot of people are having great results with DS1, H1+ and a few with H2 so far, but unfortunately I'm not one of them. Cinegain stated in an earlier post that he wanted something idiot proof, and in my experience the H2 is not. 

My question is is the gyro calibrated?  From reading the description of your problem, this could very well be it.  After you balance it, you have to calibrate the gyro or it's gonna freak out.  They should really emphasize that the gimbal will not work properly unless it is.  I'm just going to guess that the H2 needs calibration as well.  And even calibrating properly requires some digging into Pilotfly's youtube channel.  

I think the gimbal manufacturers need to get off of the idea that a gimbal should work out of the box.  I just really can't see how they can come up with a device that's going to support the whole spectrum of bodies of lenses with just 3 preconfigured profiles.  It's just not going to happen.  I think that's the problem with the Came TV Single.  There's are some people who got really lucky and it actually worked out of the box, then there are a lot of people running around with terribly unbalanced and uncalibrated gimbals and they are relying on the batteries to compensate (thus the really poor battery life for some), and there are just people who return them because it just doesn't work for the configuration.

In my experience, PID settings really don't seem to change much of anything unless they are grossly miscalibrated.  The buzzing and the freaking out from my experience is from the lack of gyro calibration and improper  balancing.

Here's what would be a game changer for me:

A temporary lock trigger/button for the roll axis (by the way of a friction brake or a locking pin) so that I can use the zoom ring for quick zoom in's and out's while recording.  Maybe locking all the axes would work better.  But this is just one thing that we can't do right how with the 3-axis gimbal turned on and would be a major upgrade.  Would love to see this on the Pilotfly H3, Came TV Single 2, Beholder DS2, etc.

Thoughts?

I'm gonna guess all that money saved from having to shoot something very quickly and minimizing re-shoots is going to be spent on having to work with all that more data on special equipment.

1 hour ago, Cinegain said:

Yup. And more... hai!

 

I think it's 90% technique and 10% improvements to the gimbal (in terms of motion).  Dave Dugdale has always been trying to stabilize his vertical motion with a pistol grip gimbal, and this video shows you his technique that lets him run with smoothness.  I think people watching these videos thinking they will be getting a huge improvement for vertical stabilization will be disappointed.   There essentially is no improvement for vertical stabilization except improved holding options with the new attachments. The battery and balancing when you switch lenses and cameras issue is no joke though on the H1+ and the improvements on the H2 are very welcome.

Maybe shot in RAW.  The shadows are pushed towards the mids.  Luminance is pushed for orange giving people a very pale look.  Definitely something very hard to do in 8 bit. 

Lots of saturation.  The movie is very warm in the highlights.  Some blues in the shadows.

5 hours ago, Flaaandeeers said:

F*CK! I really wanted to love this camera. 

I've just cancelled my A6300 pre-order. I can live with the awful RS since I'm mainly a tripod or gimbal man. I was also willing to tolerate the overheating if it was a long recording time issue. But I've read SO many cases of overheating appearing also in other circumstances that I'm finally giving up. I shoot mostly guerrilla narrative stuff, some music videos and run n gun docs, plus some occasional stills. Best image quality in a hybrid package is what I'm always looking for, but with some degree of reliability... 

So my choices for now are NX1, D750 or A7S. Or wait...

I was already abandoning the idea of having to ever use MFT/Panasonic again.  I may have even said that Panasonic will be desperately in trouble after the a6300.  Now.....I'm eagerly awaiting to see what the GH5 has to offer.  I'm hoping for a big jump in low light performance.  I want to be able to use LOG indoors and at night.

6 hours ago, Cinegain said:

2nd batch has -10% discount. International on: http://copter-rc.com and within the EU: http://pilotfly.de .

At least for the H1+, for the entire time, it has had 10% discount.

On 3/20/2016 at 11:08 PM, jase said:

Looks good, but stil you got those slight vertical bounces (watch the fence at 1:27)

A 3 axis gimbal will not stabilize the vertical axis.  You can try to walk more level which isn't too hard to do compared to trying to stabilize the pitch or roll axis by hand.  But if you're looking for a slider on rails effect, it'll probably never look as good as a shot done on a slider/rails/dolly.

Just a built-in fan and maybe a 3x larger battery, at very little cost to Sony, this would have been an amazing camera.  Is this bad engineering?  I think so.  After all the engineering, it looks like they didn't do any product testing, at which they would have discovered they needed to stop the release and engineer out the issues.  Because the reliability, it's a toy/gadget that can produce professional results at times or in small increments, but it is not a professional tool that can be relied on.

27 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

I'd be all over a version 2, if it had a faster lens and used the C300 II sensor tech.... Everyone I have chatted to that actually uses the XC10 loves the thing.

I heard that people were saying the kit lens was soft, but having another look it looks pretty sharp.  Maybe it's just not good wide open?  In either case, they just need to put an EF-S mount on that thing.  The fact that they don't so they can upsell you is what's so off-putting.

The XC10 was Canon's surprise last year at NAB.  And surprise it did.  

On 11/6/2015 at 6:29 AM, Cinegain said:

Certainly looks alright. But take a cheapo table dolly (let's say 15 bucks)..

... and then imagine something DIY to make it motorized... 199 then sounds quite the up in price.

I have the pico dolly and a push cart dolly (kinda shaky unless you have very fresh alkaline batteries), and the articulating arm, I think I paid about $125 total.  I would still buy the hercules for the portability if it did everything it set out to do.

Still thinking about the a6300 but yesterday, I went traveling my GH3 out on my Pilotfly H1+.  Just shot for 7 hours continuously without hiccup on 2 batteries with plenty to spare.  I could have shot 3 hours more.  Gotta love Panasonic's robustness.

Sony should start making their cameras with optional heatsink+quiet fan attachments accessories.  Seriously, we would rather have that than an unpredictable camera.  And maybe the processing unit can be clocked faster for less rolling shutter.

5 hours ago, dahlfors said:

I wouldn't care at all about rolling shutter in 4k, if the 1080p mode didn't seem to be so soft in the tests that are circulating online. Also, according to Brandon Li it seems like the camera has moire/aliasing in 1080p:

"A6300 has really bad rolling shutter and worse lowlight than a7rii and a7sii. A6300 autofocus is better; 1080p has moire and aliasing but good rolling shutter."

That just about closes the door for me on this camera until Sony can find a way to address these issues with a firmware update.  I'm fine with shooting 1080p if it's a little soft.  But moire issues on top of that, I think it's clear I'll be taking a big hit 1080p that I could get with any other camera.  

Also, the skin tones are concerning me.  I know this is not shot with S-Log and yes it could be better with S-Log, but I'm noticing a pattern of blown out (fully yellow) skin tones specifically with samples for this camera.  And they are unrecoverable when this happens, only can be covered up by shifting all yellows.

I wonder when we will get 14 stops of DR and LUT previews on smartphones.  Maybe with QuantumFilm.

It's interesting to see the progression of this thread.  The camera hit the ground running, but in a matter of a week, it has lost all steam due to overheating and rolling shutter issues.  I think if Sony wasn't so ambitious with trying to go from 6K to 4K, maybe we wouldn't have these issues and it would have been the camera that everyone that everyone was hoping for.

YouTube's business model the work of genius.  YouTube, advertisers, content creators all benefit with money going into their pockets.

Vimeo's business model seems like a business model of year 2000 where people are still trying to figure out how to make money online.  Trying to make money by selling premium hosting to often struggling artists when there is a great free solution out there.

The dynamic range and low light performance is amazing.  Rolling shutter is as bad as it gets.  Maybe the worst yet?  Still a buy for the price, but coupled with a overheating issues, I'm already dreaming of the a6300 successor.

I'm just gonna guess that rolling shutter and overheating are not issues in 1080p.  And since I shoot in 1080p on the gimbal because I'm actively framing my shots, and only in 4K when I'm doing a slow zoom effect in post on a still shot or a reframe to break up the monotony of a long still shot, I think I can still make this my A camera.

I wonder if it's the processor, sensor, or the memory card?

Is it only in 4K?  Was face detection on?  What card were you using?  Were you shooting with S-Log 2/3?  What was the bitrate?  Did you have a LUT enabled?

Dpreview has a new article out.  http://***URL removed***/news/7832469254/keeping-up-with-the-action-shooting-the-sony-a6300-in-miami

And was surprised to find this quote.

Quote

One easily overlooked improvement on the a6300 is the ease of selecting one's AF point. I like to shoot using the flexible spot. Previously, on the a6000, to move my spot around I needed to first hit the center button on the back click wheel, before hitting any of the direction keys. On the a6300, the center button functions as a toggle. By default a press of one of the direction keys brings up its assigned function. But hit the center button once and the direction keys function as your AF point selector. Whichever function you have the direction keys set to, your choice is sticky (unlike on the a6000), so even if you turn off the camera or pop into the menu, it will default to the last function set (unless you change the mode).

So maybe selecting the autofocus point is not a big issue, and the ability to do so on the a6300 (compared to the a6000) is even praised by some.

About the skin tone, The Camera Store's video was shot on the a6300.  Skin tones looked mostly OK to good.  Except for a few cuts that were really bad (around the 6:12 mark).  

The face looked pinkish and very unhuman-like.  I think the problem was either operator error or the problem can be avoided with proper exposure to the face.  Can be corrected with Colorista.  I'm willing to overlook occasional skin tone correction.

On 2/24/2016 at 3:35 AM, DPStewart said:

And here is balancing a lighter camera like maybe the LX100.
Also - there is a 4th mode that applies lower powered motor settings for lighter cameras - you press the little silver metal "calibration" button on the camera platform 3-times quickly to enter it. 
It is basically a second set of PID values that are reduced in power for lightweight cameras.

Oh, I was under the impression by your previous comments that the beholder did not require PID tuning like the CameTV Single.  TBH, the beholder looks like it is about the same level of difficulty as the Pilotfly for PID tuning.

2 hours ago, SR said:

That's exactly what you wanna hear about a device. God knows there are enough things that could go wrong in the field (with no electricity, no laptop, etc), and you don't want the stabilizer to be added to that list.

It's unfortunate that there wasn't coverage of the beholder from the likes of Dave Dugdale.  I think he got a preproduction model and he's shrugged it off ever since and seemed pretty fed up with it.  I bought the H1+ because of his recommendation.  But maybe Beholder is nicer.  But, DPStewart said that be prepared to spend zero hours balancing it.  But in the video, it looks like you gotta balance it.  I can balance the H1+ in a few minutes.  Requires a tool.  PID settings....especially with a different lens and/or body, well that's another story.