maxotics

You know that question is like "which guitar is best to play rock-n-roll with?" :)  All vintage lenses need adapters, and adapters are relatively cheap.  Grab any vintage lens you can from family and thrift shops.  If you want to buy one, just look at videos on line.  Also, there will be differences between those lenses on difference sensors,, g6 (mft) or APS-C or full-frame, etc.

The best lens is the one that gives you a look you want.  I love the Fujian c-mount 35mm, roughly $30.  

Also, you might buy one of Andrew's guides.  I don't know about the GH3 guide, but his GH2 guide has tons of great lens opinions.  You might start with that.  The lens section is not outdated at all. 

There also seems to be a major disconnect between the video-savvy marketing department at Sony and what their actual engineers deliver...

Exactly, which is why it seems that getting good video quality from DSLRs faces serious obstacles.  Sony was one of the first to offer good video in digital cameras, if I remember correctly.  There foray into translucent mirrors was, to a large part, video driven.  The RX10 seems like a camera built, not to push the envelope in video, but to make the best all-around stills/video camera with best-they-can-do existing technologies.  

If you want "full-frame" quality (I'd say even better) images get a Sigma DP1M, DP2M or DP3M.  The sensors sample all three colors at each pixel location.  For most images you can't see the difference between a Sigma and bayer-fullframe.  But for some, the difference is what you'd see between a medium format and full-frame.  Andrew, when you shoot with a Sigma at 100 ISO you'll see a whole new world.  All that said, Sigma's can't shoot sh__ in anything above 200 ISO in my opinion.  Since most people don't want a camera that only shoots 100 ISO they get one of the other cameras.  My point is that, for what it's worth, I don't think any of these full-frames are desirable for good light shooting against a Sigma (Fovean) or medium format camera.  

I agree with araucaria.  Reducing the size of full-frame bodies is a bit pointless when you consider the size of the lenses.  The last image you showed looked small, but not small enough to put in a pocket.  Those cameras will definitely sell to wealthy corporate types who want to buy a top of the line camera for vacation.  For professionals Sony can't get out of it's own way in the DSLR market--as you've pointed out so well.

That said, I love Sony cameras.  They're just cool.  I want one.  But I'm not going to buy one.  (I want a Nex 6 with the 10-18mm, now that looks like a small sweet setup!).

Didn't realise it was his test. "Crap" was a bit rude in that light. But alas, there's the problem with the internet in a nutshell :)

On another forum, which you'll be able to figure out ;) a member said he didn't want to post his photos (on the forum) because they were meant for large-prints.  The "personal forum expert" kept saying "a good photo is a good photo no matter what it's displayed on."  I said you have to respect the artist's choice of medium, no matter how uptight it might seem to you.  But the expert kept telling this guy he didn't know what he was talking about, all the good photographers he knew said it didn't matter.  The forum has really gone off the deep end.  

An equally unscientific observation: It seems the Sigma is too sharp for my Pocket when stopped down to f3.5 (or so I guess, two stops on the SB): A lot of terrible moire (on brick walls, roof tops and thin lines, all usual suspects, weirdly colored in raw, but also, a little less, in ProRes). This magically disappears once I open the aperture and limit the exposure with the ND fader. 

Absolutely, I want primes for photography, but video (am I crazy?) I can't see as much a difference and, because you're really dealing with so few pixels (compared to photos) the moire risk is not worth the sharpness.  

The only reason to use primes in video, for me, is to maximize the aperture you can shoot at.  But if you have a zoom with metabones, why limit yourself to one focal length?

Anyway, I'm curious about that question, for any lenses?  

Hi lucki,  Andrew is extremely passionate about this stuff and he seems to work 23 hours a day.  Anyone who has spent any time on this forum will, at some point, feel a bit insulted by him.  My guess is he could say the same thing about us ;)  That he answered your post is the highest compliment of all.  He wouldn't if he wasn't interested.  That he said he might do tests to help with your question is another plus.

As far as I'm concerned, Andrew's tests are second-to-none.  They are just phenomenal.  Sorry you got off to a bad start.  Hope you stick around for a bit!

Very nice!  Would it have been too difficult to correct the lens distortion in the copter shots?  Just curious.  

Most LED lights and CFs are not well color balanced--at least the ones you can afford  :(  The problem isn't whether they're warm or cool, but that they don't illuminate parts of the spectrum.  They exhibit color spikes which you can't control through color balance.

Halogens, which Pascal recommends, give the best color fidelity.  Also, getting them used, as he pointed out, is the best way to go.  You get get good bargains because when people want them gone they take up space and there is a small market and expensive to ship.  

All that said, if you use lights like those you need space and help and, well, it gets expensive.

There is nothing like natural light.  The best lighting is knowing how to use what you have :)  That's what I've been working on lately myself.

If Olympus is using sensor focusing the way Canon is then I doubt there will be any firmware fix.  When taking photos, the camera can take a sensor reading for focus (throw out that data), focus, then take a reading for an image.  It all happens fast.  In video, I do not believe this can be done.  What Magic Lantern does for the Canon's is take the RAW sensor reading straight from the sensor (actually only 36MB/S on those cameras worth, between the sensor and LiveView).  On cameras where there is sensor-focus, like the T4i or EOSM, the pixels that are used for focusing appear "hot".  Most of them are in the red channel (sensels) and usually create, after debayering, "pink dots".  

On the Olympus, and all cameras that output compressed videos, focus dots generally don't appear because the compressor probably throws out their information, and a lot more besides.  

Fortunately, I, and others before me, have been able to create software the smartly interpolates around these focus pixels IN RAW because we're dealing with the RAW data.  Unfortunately, cameras can't write 1080 RAW frames using current camera IO and most SD cards.  In other words, the only way I can see fixing this problem is if the Olympus camera could write out the RAW data, which would be about 90 megaBYTES per second.  Then you could fix the phase-detection pixels in post.

While we're also on this subject, I have my suspicions about sensor stabilization.  It's interesting that the GX7 has a max ISO of 3200.  I believe it is possible they achieve stabilization by shorting the read time of each pixel when the camera detects movement.  That is to say, the camera makers may be putting in features that appeal to people who don't know any better.  I'm not surprised you caught them with their pants down :)

The wife will use this camera as well so something with some auto features for her and manual features for me would be a good balance.

 

All I can say is GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! :)  I generally follow the advice with my wife, "never buy them something with a cord or blinking light.  They won't like it."

I went out and took some test shots with my DP2S and GF3/14mm.  I was expecting the DP2S to do better than the GF3.  It didn't do well enough to be worth the headaches of Sigma.  That's good!

I think the camera for you is the GX7.  I'm considering it myself.  It has built in sensor stabilization so can supposedly shoot at 1/10th of a second hand held.  That would be like getting a f1.0 lens for me!  I have suspicions that they achieve this through a hidden increase in ISO, but who knows?

The other benefit of the GX7 is it has a viewfinder.  My old eyes really need that.

About the PEN cameras.  I bought a used 1st generation one and was blown away by how good it was.  So I wouldn't be surprised if what the other posters say about better still quality.  

EPM2 kit is on ebay for $350. Not sure if the Panasonic OIS works on the Pocket.. have heard stories of it not working.

 It works if the lens has an external OIS switch, at least it does on my 14-45 OIS lens. 

It isn't the codec. Try bypassing even crappy AVCHD on the A7R and record with the HDMI output. The image still looks like crap. It's all to do with the crappy sensor output, 

I thought the crappy output was due to getting image data after digital processing.  Could HDMI even handle non-bayered 14-bit sensor data? 

Mirrorless camera sales in the US have slipped because in Japan they have a "smaller is smarter" mentality and love novelty, but in the US it is a "bigger is better" culture and people equate something like a Nikon D4 with quality, because of the heft and substantial size.

 

There may be something deeper and sadder going on with the U.S.  I've noticed that you can't get Sigma DP cameras discount through Amazon from U.S. shippers.  All the sellers ship from Japan.  Also, the Canon EOSM 11-22mm is not sold in the U.S.   Even at the few high-end camera shops here, I don't see Panasonic cameras.  The salesman as Calumet have very little enthusiasm for cameras.

I wouldn't be surprised if import fees are expensive or not worth the effort.  I feel like I'm dreaming, when I look at how far this country's gov't has its head up its a__.  Apparently, one of the fall-outs of the spying/NSA scandal is CISCO is having trouble selling networking equipment over-seas.  Why would Germany buy anything made here when we spy on their gov't in such an obnoxious way?  

In short, American arrogance is killing the camera market here :)  FYI.  It's worse than you think over here, Andrew.

I think I can sum up what many are saying, and which I agree.  

Twelve 8-bit pixels interpolated at 4K WILL NOT equal Three 14-bit pixels interpolated at 1080 in COLOR depth.

Great article, as always.  Let me take this moment to thank you for all that you shared in 2013.   I read EOSHD every day!

You can get GF3 bodies for $100 and use any of your MFT lenses on them.  The camera is nice and small.  I have one.  

I also have a Sigma DP2s.  That's what I want to take out, and do, if light is good.  Some basic things I want to point out.  

1. Larger sensor wins over small sensor

2. Fixed prime lens engineered to sensor wins  (Sigma DPs, Fuji X100S, Sony RX1, Ricohs)

3. Zoom lenses aren't very good until you get over the $1,000 range.

Bottom line, the GF3 is all the camera you need to shoot stills in MFT.  If you want a real "film" like camera you need to spend at least $700 (or find something used) and I'd go with Fuji or Sigma.  I'd also consider the Canon Gx1, used.

To further what Julian said, the "debayering" method you use will give slightly different results.  Amaze instead of bicubic, say.  Also, bayer sensors have alternate rows of red,green, red, green... / green, blue, green, blue... so that's image, where red and blue colors are separated, will create rows of missing red or blue values.  They will be interpolated from neighboring values which will be wrong and will lead to the aliasing.  In short, I believe you're only looking at a rare occurrence of bad aliasing because of the colors, light strength, object, etc.

If you did shoot in MOV the aliasing would be less noticed, but the color a bit smeared.

Very nice review as always.  I would add this:

o. Takes 24 to 30 1920x1080 RAW (DNG) photographs per second.  These images can be post-processed by almost every photo processing software known to man :)

o. Showing 24 fully-realized photos per second is what real film does.

o. If you were on a million dollar movie set and shot side-by-side with the production camera and showed it in a theater most people would not see much of a difference.  Am I wrong?  

o. If the BMPCC shot 720p it would be a fantastic achievement!  I'll argue the camera is already 2nd gen.

o. The BMPCC simply blows away camcorders from a few years ago.

o. Davinci Resolve Lite adds thousands to the value of the camera.

o. H.264 looks like complete crap in low-light.  The BMPCC has a natural grain/noise look.  Sensor size doesn't even come into play.

o. The 5D3 is it's closest competitor and the CF cards are very expensive and ML untrustworthy.  

The only negative about the camera for me is I no longer have ANY EXCUSE whatsoever to film anything creative.   Yes, it's easy to want this and that lens, and rig, and whatever.  Yet what you can do with the BMPCC and a cheap 14-45 IOS lens is, quite simply, STAGGERING.  Seriously, every day I don't use it I feel a bit ashamed.

I spent a ton of time on ML this year, and though I agree the 5D3 with ML is fantastic (and even the EOS-M, which I know too well), my # 1 is the BMPCC.  Everything you tell Canon, NIkon and Panasonic to do, Blackmagic did.  I can understand how the manufacturing delays soured many people on the BMPCC, but now that it's here--WOW!  I ask, what's here today from Canikon or Panny that comes close to what you can get from the BMPCC?  I don't want to sound like a fan-boy, so I'll stop right here.  Just wanted to give my 2-cents.  The BMPCC is a true artist's film/video camera and under $1,000. Of all the 10 things on your list, what would you take to a desert island ;)  It wasn't any easy $1k for me to spend, but now that I have, I haven't regretted it for a second.

Not sure you question, but in general bit-depth is a computer (bits) + photo (depbth) lingo way of saying how wide the range in shading of any given color/brightness sampled be the electronic equipment.  

You can store 256 shades (or depth values) in an 8-bit memory slot (or byte). 

When working with Canon RAW, the camera saves each sensel/pixel as a 14-bit value.  That would give you a range from 1 to 16,384.

Once you save those values in smaller bit values you have to reduce the precision.

I tried to explain the "precision" problem on the ML forum like so:

One can think of it this way.  You have a palette of 14 scales of gray.  You need to convert them into 8 scales for something else.  So 1-2 because 1, 3-4, become 2, 5-6 becomes 3, 7-8, becomes 4; 9-10, 5, 11-12, 6, 13-14, 7 (and we throw out the 8, for example)

Let's say you have two gray colors in what you shot, and they are 2 and 6.  You want to reduce the exposure by 1 (increase contrast).   

They were convered to 1 and 3, so now they become 0 and 2.   You went from a 300% difference (in 14bit) to 200% (in 8bit).  More importantly, you went from some gray 1, in 14bit, to no gray 0, in 8bit.

What people don't understand, especially about H.264, is you can't just take 8 bit values and put them in a 14-bit space, for example, and get that 14bit precision again.  

Does this make sense?  You seem to know your stuff, so maybe you're asking something else?

To be fair, 272 million is probably in Yen, So approximately $2.7 Million. Traditionally, Japanese CEOs are not as overpaid as US CEOs.

And I calculated a few years ago that if you took all CEO pay in excess of $150,000 (including bonuses and stock options) and redistributed it to every working American each of us would get a check for $300--hardly life changing.  

And some of what any camera maker faces when providing technology that isn't completely idiot proof.  The 5th review of the BMPCC on Amazon: (Yes, I left a comment answering all those issues).  

What a total pain in the as*.
It eats through batteries, the video out of the micro-HDMI is progressive, it only uses 62GB 95mb/s SD cards .... then when you go to dump the data, you HAVE to go through Davinci Resolve, color correct, then go to your nle software (yes, Blackmagic thinks that is the proper work flow as if its only natural to want to color correct every frame you shot and not just the frames in your final edit) then you have to re-format the card in the computer utility EVERY TIME or the camera doesn't recognize the card. Yes, great camera for the price, but you need to put in an extra $2000 to get it up to production standards and then there is the extra steps and time in the work flow (which doesn't flow at all).

Yes, thedest, please don't take JGharding's post the wrong way!  I know a musician who was very famous a while ago.  About 30 years ago we were talking about the latest synthesizer, I think it was the Yamaha DX7, or something like that, if memory serves.  Anyway, he made a sarcastic comment about Van Halen doing a song that started with the settings the DX7 played with right out of the box.  His point was, how could they spend so much money for the latest equipment and use the canned/auto setting?  My thought was, 'how cool they were find a way to make a great song with what they had and not overthinking it.'  

There are so many means and goals in using all this equipment.   Even if one method is the best, you have to remember, that if it takes time away from someone's main focus it reduces the quality there; in short, no matter how much time/expertise you have, compromises are a FACT of creative life--always.  I've NEVER read any artist who said, "I love looking at that thing I did 20 years ago, it's perfect."  Actually, they usually sound like what they did was the worst piece of crap ever!

I love your enthusiasm!  I'm so happy you've come to this forum!  Just try to keep in mind that whether some of us are dull in purpose, or just can't help it, we don't want to feel stupid for doing something the wrong way!!! :) :) :)

I could do a screencast of me using Resolve, but I'm fairly sure you'd piss your pants in laughter! :)  Seriously, if you want to do any tutorials I WILL WATCH!  And so would many others!

Here's the video that contains those two shots.  

Here are 2 RAW frames (DNGs) from my BMPCC, using the inexpensive 14mm Panasonic pancake.  Yes, there are not the best videos, but these are SINGLE FRAMES!  I could not get close to this still-image quality from a frame grab from any H.264.  How can anyone not be blown away by this?  All in a camera that fits in any coat/jacket pocket I have?  A camera that is probably better than the video camera used to shoot "Clone Wars" 12 years ago.  I simply cannot get over it.  

Check out all this detail!

Am I the only one scared about how much crappy footage from the BMPCC people are posting? Its insane. 

Sorry, thedest, as one of those people posting crappy footage, I say, relax, have a beer or martini ;)  Of course, i would love to post fantastic looking footage.  Who wouldn't?  Am I trying to learn Resolve?  Yes!  But it won't happen over night?  Good film requires good people, sets, lighting, all that stuff.  In the meantime, I'm going to shoot fire hydrants, store-fronts and my wife walking the dog.  You may think this footage is bad, I don't.  Compared to other cameras, it is awesome.  Maybe you'd call it, at best, marginally less crappy.  And I'd agree.  Yet what all the BMPCC footage I've seen, and the BMCC before it, shows me, is dynamic range, natural colors and lack of artifacts. Certainly someone new to this might not see the difference.  But I believe anyone serious about film can see through the issues you mention.

Anyway, I'm not the least bit frustrated with this camera.  I'm frustrated that I don't have great stuff to shoot.  ABSOLUTELY.  The camera?  Even shooting a tree is thrilling, if I've shot that tree with any other camera before.

Even ungraded ProRes has a low contrast look that simply cannot be duplicated, in my experience, by any H.264 camera.  I'm not saying it should be anyone's final goal.  The camera is new.  We're all learning.  Did I say I love it!? :)

For food photography, my guess would be that the body is the least important piece of equipment.  Lighting would be first.  Glass second.  Also, you'd want to shoot tethered, so PC equipment and a calibrated monitor to think about. As much as I like Panasonic cameras (for video), i would not buy it primarily for stills.  You can get used Canon or Nikon DSLRs with nice lenses and larger sensors.