Hitfabryk

Rodney Charters, highly regarded director and cinematographer, talks about using the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera side-by-side with an Alexa, what 4K acquisition means in "his" world as a high-end cinematographer, and his love for the Alexa, and what it makes this camera special.

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I don't know guys.....mine is gone back but I found this touch screen menu on day one(the arrow at the top of the screen), I did turn auto brightness off there, never did fix anything on my NX1. 

​Yes its a very good lens

​yes get an RJ canon fd to micro m3/4 speedbooster off ebay  - they are superb with Fd lenses

If you want my honest opinion, the IQ your em1 produces in these circumstances looks great. That money you would spend on a c100 or a7s incl lenses would be better spend on some fast glass and a speedbooster, maybe get a video crane as well to make some cool moves or shoot from angles that would be impossible from a tripod.

Was the em1 used to shoot this clip? 

Oh I see what you mean. The EM1's 30 fps video doesn't help either. I would indeed go for another camera if I were you. But then again, Andrew made a really cool music video with the EM1. Although completely different style

I take it since it is your studio you do have control over the lights? That might lead to the question if you need a c100/a7s for their very low-light sensitivity if you can add lights to shoot with a EM1, also how important is shooting handheld or do you always shoot from a tripod?

You are looking at a big investment if you go the Sony or Canon route since you don't have any lenses that would fit either one of them. If very low light is not the primary goal, why don't you get a gh4 instead? Or even a GH3 combined with a lens, they are selling cheap now.

 

What aspect of the video quality do you want to improve? If its resolution and dynamic range then yeah the A7s/c100 will benefit you. If it's low light then I'd be more inclined to suggest you get more lights for the studio

You can also embrace the Sony look if you want, here for example I was filming kids on the countryside playing and having S-Log-y yellow sun and skin was very appropriate to the footage



I could have never achieved this with a Canon/Nikon, not in sharpness, noise, DR, colour and most of all having a bulky pro DSLR would have intimidated people who have never seen such devices, the a7s just looks like a phone or so!

​The C100 does have great image stabilization when coupled with Canon IS lenses, the stabilization is in the lenses not the camera body. So choose an IS lens if you're doing handheld work, helps enormously. 
A starter lens with the C100 I would go with the little plasticy 400$ 18-135mm STM IS, which covers from extreme wide angle to long telephoto, very convenient for one starter lens, and add a Canon 50mm prime for lowlight and extreme shallow depth of field beauty shots, the 50mm 1.8, 1.4 or 1.2 L, all great lenses. I think a C100 with these two lenses can cover everything and they are very sharp for 1080p C100 images. If you want an ultra wide angle for landscape/interior/archeticture work, add a little 300$ Canon 10-18mm, a lovely ultra wide angle lens for practically no cost and even has IS. 

It also depends on your specific needs, because perhaps for example you require to zoom during recording and want a lens with a constant aperture, then the recommendation would change, or if you like shooting with only primes, or if you specifically do landscape work and want an ultra wide angle where 18mm is not enough, or if image sharpness is really really critical for you and want are very sensitive to this aspect,  etc... it depends on what you plan on shooting. 

hey guys just wanted to post some screen shots of the a7s filming in slog2.

just got the camera and waiting for all the gear to arrive before i really put it through its paces, but I wanted to see how it's footage in slog2 handled compared to say r3d files or arri raw.

first, slog2 is really really flat. this is the first dslr i've owned since my 5Dm2 many years ago, and i thought cinestyle was flat for dslrs... this appears much flatter. i grade r3d files a lot and it makes redlogfilm look a bit crunchy by comparison.

here are some pics of my wife hanging out in the living room. as tests go, it wasn't very fair to the a7s. under-exposed, mixed light, non IS lens... (first time i used the camera essentially, just attached a lens and shot what as around me.

the first image is right out the camera. the next has an off-the-shelf kodak 2383 film print LUT applied:

the last two are my attempt at grading a 'natural' look and finally an aggressive 'cinematic' grade:

slog2 is not one of the more easy logs to grade in my opinion. the 'natural' look took me quite a while, and I'm still not 100% with it (but I think it's close enough to know it could get there).

that being said, the log takes a film print LUT really nicely. I'd probably shift the color temp a little bluer, but I wanted to show how it looked pretty much with no work done to it.

the 'cinematic' grade i really just wanted to push contrast and see how crushed and inky the blacks could look, and how high i could push the mids and highs while keeping information.

had I exposed a bit better, I probably could have gotten more out the mids and highs, that being said though, i feel the footage, for not being raw, handled pushing and pulling OK. slog2 at least lets you push it pretty far, but once you've gone too far it let's you know pretty quickly and it's pretty ugly (raw files from red and arri are a bit more composed at you push them beyond what they'd like).

while in my professional career have been starting to shoot more on the F series of sony cameras (fs7, f5) and less with red and arri, i've never actually gotten a chance to grade sony footage, and while I know this isn't the same as grading footage from the F5, it's still I think a good idea of what the image will look like, which is one of the reasons I decided to pick up the a7s.

anyways let me know what you guys think, and if you have any tips or tricks when it comes to slog2 in post.

(btw, nikon 28-70 at a 2.8, graded in speedgrade). 

Great news if somebody missed it:

Canon announced new price reductions and kit options for the cameras below:

Canon C500 EF $15999 Down from 20K!

Canon C300 EF Camera Body $11499

Canon C100 EF Body $3999

Canon C100 Mark II EF Body with 18-135mm EF-S Lens $5699 Jan 31 ETA

I think the Original C100 might be of interest to users here. It's coming down to consumer DSLR price range at 3900$, and it's a very capable pro camcorder that's very respected in the pro video world, gets a lot of work. with a great sharp 4K->HD image, and all the video bells and whistles (C-Log, 12 stops of DR, Xlrs, NDs, EVF, LCD, EF lenses, Audio, Peaking, waveform, great colour, small files to SD cards, etc). This also means you will be able to pick one up on the used market in the 2K range!