fuzzynormal

Oly cameras are charming. I have had plenty come and go. I don't like NOT having at least one. Currently own a EM10iii. The intangibles just make them "funner" to use.

In a world where 1+1 no longer equals 2?

And even more than that, stories typically rely on characters almost always being portrayed as somewhat competent, even if they're nefarious. Which I always find amusing because we should all know that's one hell of a myth.

In my experience, distance from screen matters the most.

It is and it isn't. A little history reveals otherwise. Honestly, humanity's default mode seems to welcome oppression. And why not? It's intellectually easy. Many peoples don't like trying to be more smarter.

Of course not, but here we are again.

Egalitarianism is a lost cause in the USA. It would be nice to strive to be on the correct side of that spectrum, as we've done since WWII, but I ain't holding my breath. We're back to our Gilded Age mode, which I fear is the default. Maybe with the way info moves these days we'll speed run it and it'll swing back the other way somehow? Then again, I look at too many of my own family members, see how they think, and just kind of know in my gut that none of this ends well.

I have a colleague from Kansas that use to do second unit for Malik back in the 70’s and this anecdote is right on target. My buddy’s job was to wander around the set’s region and find shots of bugs.

Best footage I ever shot in my life was on a XH-A1. It was the situation and lighting, not the camera. Could it have been better with a new 4K-whatever-camera? Sure! But only marginally so.

Here's the video if anyone wants to learn about hawks and the local people here to track 'em. Also, you can play guess the camera:

Same. On this particular project I found myself reaching for it more than the GH5. Not for the bird shots as that really required good slow-mo, but for the people shots? Looked awesome. It pancakes the highlights though; just loses details that LUMIX cameras hold onto. Other than that, pretty great for a $300 camera.

Oh god. That thing. When online people complain about lousy footage with the cliche "was that shot on a potato"? They're probably talking about the D90's codec.

I'm of a more ramshackle mentality, but even my loosey-goosey philosophies hit a limit. fyi, this particular doc was about people that are trying to help conserve raptor migration through SoCal. So, lots of bird shots. Which we don't really do, nor have done. The whole thing became kind of a production experiment. We were only answering to ourselves so we could take risks like that. The scope of the project kept changing, but the finances never did. There was very little money in our pockets, and what we did have we needed to save for travel. And being a seriously-non-affluent-filmmaker, it basically came down to a make-do-as-we-can process. Our personal finances, as well as the various situations of the shoot, were all over the place. We were borrowing/renting lenses and gear in a very haphazard way. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it did not. Meanwhile, the stuff we had in our own collection was inferior. For instance we used a POS Vintage Photax 500mm w/2x extender for an entire season to get a lot of the BIF shots. That was an insanely unfortunate thing to do, but it's what we could afford to have on hand. The biggest bitch was not having a real tripod. We truly wished we had friends/colleagues that could have let us use a pro Sacthler or Miller. More than willing to carry some sort of hefty rig into the wild if it would've allowed smooth shots when filming at a +2000mm FF equiv. That FOV reach is f'in hard to control. As a side note, it was pretty wild running around with birders carrying equipment that was so expensive and professional while us "filmmakers" were often using, basically, consumer toys to grab video. At the end of the day, the images are passable by a certain standard, but when you pixel peep you can tell it's all held together with spit, bubblegum, hopes, and prayers. "f8 and be there" was the mantra we had to talk ourselves into and accept. "The best camera is the one you got." ...That sort of thing.

GH5 GH4 EM10iii OM-1 5Dii XPRO2 XT-5 P1100 DSC-RX10 iPhone15 iPhone12 Xiaomi12 Ultra DJI Mavic Pro GoPro Hero All those different cameras were used to make our latest indy documentary on-and-off over the last 3 years. We finally finished post-production (for real this time) last month. Not to mention all the different ridiculous vintage lenses and modern lenses employed along the way. So that happened. My advice? Yeah, don't use so many cameras...and then try to make all that cohere somehow with no legitimate color grading skills... Surprisingly, I found the EM10iii footage the most pleasant looking color-wise when exposed correctly.

Just got one in San Diego for $300'ish, so always keep looking, you never know what'll pop up.