Jump to content

Hitfabryk

Members
  • Posts

    176
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation Activity

  1. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Andrew Reid in Either I have lost the plot or I am in love with the Fuji X Pro2   
    So I really didn't think I'd end up keeping this camera, especially as it is 1799 euros body only(!!) for just 1080p and no articulated screen.
    BUT this camera is a lesson to all the others...
    1. May seem like a small thing to start but it has the BEST menus I have ever used, end of story. Properly organised. Not too long. Snappy to navigate. It is amazing how many other cameras get this wrong, even Canon which have too many sub-sections / tabs. Then there's a nice big MY menu at the end of the new Fujifilm main menu so you barely have to dig into the other tabs at all. It is such a nice improvement on the previous Fuji cameras. During a shoot the menus can make or break a camera. Ask any FS7 owner
    2. COLOUR and CODEC and DETAIL - it excels at each. The images have an electricity to them, super alive. On most cameras, even with H.265 on the NX1, the codec always pays lipservice to the blacks. Whenever you bring them up they are a mess of banding, compression, blocking. The X Pro 2 codec handles like the D750, super clean in the shadows and LOTS of detail. You can bring so much out of the blacks even when they are crushed in-camera when using Velvia - which by the way, is giving me the most satisfying out of camera non-graded non-fussed with colour yet.
    3. SMOOTH editing, and 60p for slow mo. With 4K i have come to miss my render-less timeline, snappy editing and 60p with small file sizes. The only 4K 60p DSLR is $6k and 800Mbit. Hmm - no thank you.
    4. SOUL. It has as much soul as a Leica but is far cheaper and with a much more versatile feature set and viewfinder. The EVF is super sharp and you don't even have to magnify focus half the time, just go off the EVF or the back screen. Both are superb. To shoot with it is a pleasure. The water sealed body, the build quality, the twin memory card slots, the reassuringly photographic clunk of the mechanical shutter, which by the way is much quieter than a DSLR but no less beefy, the retro good looks - SUPERB looking camera body - it all adds up to something you just want to pick up over anything else. Makes the GH4 and NX1 feel like boring utility tools.
    5. It is FAST and the LENSES are lovely. AF and general speed of operation is a big improvement from the X Pro 1. Then there's the lenses 35mm F2.0 WR, small and affordable. 56mm F1.2, creamy like a Noctilux. I also love the 18-55mm F2.8-4 zoom, it is small and well above average for an APS-C zoom of this kind, 35mm F1.4 is slower to focus and has no OIS but it is a lovely piece of glass, 23mm F1.4 also a stunner.
    OK, I wish it had zero moire, I wish it had 4K and I'd love an articulated screen.
    And yes... This is designed purely as a purist photographer's Leica-style rangefinder, what the hell am I doing shooting video with it?
    Because it FEELS so good to do so and it LOOKS so nice when I playback the results afterwards.
    Two things that are so important - the feel of holding the damn thing and the feel you get from the colour and details afterwards. Vibrant and alive, the whole experience.
    Sony, Canon, Panasonic experience dull by comparison.
    They really need to take a hint from Fujifilm.
  2. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to midloch in Compact hybrid system for travel documentary type fun   
    Hi there,
    I produce expedition documentary movies from very very remote and wild parts of our planet with no help and of course no electricity. Places like Kombai tribes in Papua (Irian Jaya), Amazonia aborigines, Mentawai tribes in Siberut or mountain tribes in Burma and so on... Last time I made a film from Venezuela. It was a 12 days expedition to Salto Angel the highest waterfall in the world falling down from mesa Ayuan Tepui.
    All was shot on Panasonic G6, very reliable camera as you can see here:
    So in my oppinion I think that Panasonic cameras are more resistant than for example Sony A7SII (my friend who did expedition to South Pole with A7SII complainted a lot as it is so fragile camera not made to such tough enviroment). And for travel purposes are more resistant and easy to handle.
    From my point of view I vote for Panasonic GH4 with XL speedbooster + Sigma 18-35mm F/1.8 that is a travel beast :-)
     
     
  3. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Phil A in Compact hybrid system for travel documentary type fun   
    Funny. I showed her 16 clips on VIMEO for a blind test. 8 with the BMPCC, 8 with the Sony. Including landscapes, people, low light. She said all were nicely done but with some of the BMPCC clips she commented on soft image and after giving comments on the movies she was surprised when I told her that her three least favorite looking ones were all with the Blackmagic and her 3 most favorite looking ones all with the Sony. I was quite surprised myself. Gives me a certain drift to go for the "compromise system".
     
  4. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to richg101 in a7r ii nothing but headaches.   
    Please share some material of yours that backs up the counterargument to the one I'm making.  and also read the video description before coming to conclusions.   if you can see blacks and whites in uncorrected flat material then it's serious under or over exposed.  This is correctly exposed, with a overcast sunlight so contrast is naturally low anyway. so there are no whites or blacks   Download the original file and apply a contrast adjustment and the colour looks right.  We're not talking about contrast, blacks or white.  we're discussing colour accuracy.   
    this was shot auto white balance with no adjustments.  If you can;t get a good image from this original file It's your fault not the camera. 
     
  5. Like
  6. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Brother in Three months with Panasonic G7   
    I've had the Panasonic G7 for about three months now and i'm really pleased with it. It's pretty cheap now a days which makes it a great bang for the buck!
     
  7. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Alex Moreán in Glitchy Longboarding in Madrid   
    Hey guys,
    This was my last job with Nikon (D5300) before getting my beloved A7sII
    Filmed mostly with the 18-105 plus Nikon E 50 and Samyang 8 for some shots
    Premiere and Afx for the post work
    Enjoy!
     
     
  8. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to The Chris in Canon 5dm3, thoughts   
    How about a different direction, Speedboosters and an external recorder like the Ninja Assassin to get 4k out of the A7s?
  9. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to IronFilm in Canon 5dm3, thoughts   
    If you're not using it for ML raw (which you're not with those puny cards, and besides I frankly feel BMCC MFT or BMPCC is a better deal for raw) then there is no point wasting money on a 5D mk3 when there are so many better options out there available for less!
  10. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Nicolas MAILLET in Canon 5dm3, thoughts   
    Hey !!!!!
    A little commercial made with a 5DIII RAW with magic lantern : 
     
    I've got an A7SII now... and i use more this last one... Merely the same results as the 5DIII but files with the A7SII are really REALLY less big !!!! And there are other prox with the A7S : High frame rate, high sensitivity... But, there is always a but : colors are not as easy as the 5DIII when you don't have a color meter...
     
    BTW : today my 5DIII is here to take pictures, and my A7SII is here for video.
  11. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Ed_David in Film shot on Olympus E-m5 mark ii   
    thanks guys - the other Olympus pieces are pretty amazing - couldn't believe the look the other filmmakers got out of that camera.
    We used the 1st person rig thingy from some Sweedish person - 3rd Person View camera mount (ALL SPORTS PRO version) - it was pretty good - our thing was making it as far as we could from the person.
    the other olympus video was closer.
    Olympus paid paul the director to make a video - the only catch was we had to use their camera and lenses.
    the idea was all his.
    and funnily enough his idea was my idea at the time too - which latter became my film chatterhead - which is just the thoughts of someone walking thru the city.  I turned mine into a political piece because it was consuming me a lot at the time and i wanted to make a film for bernie.  little did I know the film would make me question him and the entire political situation.
    Oh well.
  12. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Cinegain in Canon 5dm3, thoughts   
    Yup. Seems like March it is! I will wait for final production unit reviews from e.g. The Camera Store TV before I go and get one (dat wordt duimen). Don't want to play guinea pig. And I'm in no rush either.
    Sure there's something to say for the 5DmkIII. Still nice for stills, and equipped with Magic Lantern up for a challenge! A whole other approach to shooting, but it can be worth it just for having the easy going Canon colors alone. It's been used as professional fullframe camera for the longest time now. Just that newer things came out, doesn't mean it isn't still a serious level camera. Be that as it may... it's 2016, about 4 years of technological advancements have taken place since the 5DmkIII came to be and mirrorless features and benefits can no longer be ignored. They can make your life and your work a whole lot more interesting over the next years. But we all have our own paths to follow, so anything goes, really.
  13. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to joema in Canon 5dm3, thoughts   
    I have put 90,000 shots on my 5D3 plus many hours of documentary video. It is a great camera. I also have an A7RII and my group uses the GH4 and AG-DVX200 and we intercut all those. 
    I formerly used the Zacuto Z-Finder on the 5D3 and that was OK, but the Zacuto EVF Pro really transformed it. That's because it has built-in focus and peaking aids, plus on a hot-shoe mount the big eye cup provides a 3rd contact point which helps stabilize the camera. The downside is you must deal with a fragile HDMI cable, and if supported by a brace that adds complexity.
    The Canon L lenses are great and I've hand held many interviews with the 70-200 F/2.8 IS II on the 5D3. 
    Of course there is no continuous AF in video mode which is why the EVF Pro helps so much. Magic Lantern is available for the 5D3 which has lots of video capability like peaking, zebras, etc: http://www.magiclantern.fm/ However I haven't used that since we are now transitioned to the 4k cameras. But with a good lens the 1080p from the 5D3 is excellent quality, and it has great low-light ability. When rolling video, the rear control dial becomes touch sensitive so you can adjust volume and other shooting parameters while shooting.
    The 1080p output of the 5D3 is slightly soft but it's very good on aliasing and moire. You can recover the sharpness in post, whereas aliasing and moire are harder to fix in post.
    I recommend you verify the shutter actuation count before buying it. Unfortunately ExifInfo and other tools won't provide this from a file but the camera must be connected via USB to a computer and run a utility like EOSInfo: http://www.khalids.com/downloads/SOFTWARE/Canon/
    I have tested both IPB and All-I codecs, and I don't see much difference so I usually used IPB which makes smaller files. 
    For H264 video the card speed doesn't matter much but for bursts of raw stills the CF card interface is much faster than SD. I usually use only CF and the SD is for contingency only. Shooting to both cards simultaneously will slow it down to the speed of the slowest card (SD) so I only use CF most of the time, generally Lexar 1000x.
  14. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to BrorSvensson in Canon 5dm3, thoughts   
    amazing allaround camera for stills for lacking for video, very soft image, dr on the low side, no peaking or zebras and no evf. The colour science is beautiful but will probably not match to easily with the panasonic and especially with the sony.
    just my 2 cents though.
  15. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Ed_David in Film shot on Olympus E-m5 mark ii   
    Here it is!
    We recorded hdmi 8-bit 4:2:2 out of it and went to the odyssey
     
     
    skin tones overall are nice!  and stabilization is amazing.
     The camera was interesting to use - especially considering that it's a 200 ASA camera and has moire and dynamic range challenges - sometimes this is interesting to have to maximize something with limitations. It's difficult, but I guess it disciplines you.
  16. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Cinegain in Hail China – or: How the chinese battery grip for the A7 II series costs a third/fourth of the Sony, is better quality and includes a wireless intervalometer   
    AliExpress for example. Today (11.11) is a special day over there too.
    Gotta love China indeed. Even visited the Hong Kong Electronics Fair and Shenzhen around this time last year, because they just amaze me what things are possible for such low prices.
     
    - Though, fair warning, I'd say possibly 90% of the stuff out there is actually that cheap for a reason. Stuff can be good for cheap, if they put in the effort to get it right. Doesn't mean this is always the case. Most of the times it's just something half-assed to look the bizz, but in all actuality is far from it. So you got to know your stuff/read into it or be adventurous and trust your own good judgement. I'm a fan of Chinese brands though. It usually means something if they're willing to put their name on it. But still, for stuff like batteries or so, better buy something legit (don't have to buy original, but you can get a good B-brand (I like Patona for example)) than to fry your expensive gear looking to save a few pennies (almost lost my GH2 on a Chinese DSTE battery).
  17. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to BrorSvensson in Hail China – or: How the chinese battery grip for the A7 II series costs a third/fourth of the Sony, is better quality and includes a wireless intervalometer   
    you find them on ebay, just make sure to buy from china and not some reseller that sell them way overpriced
  18. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Nicolas MAILLET in Shining a light - Sony A7S II first impressions & 4K S-LOG 3 clips for download / grading   
    My sweet fantastic daughter on the beach this morning :
    A7SII SLOG 3 Gammut.cine Tiffen VND 23.976 fps 1/50 1600 isos Sigma 35mm 1.4 Art closed to F/2 to avoid vignetting
    Graded In Resolve in almost 1 minute...
    Some macro blocking due to the VLC grab compression setting
    Don't think we have plastic skin tones right here. Pretty ok with this camera... I have some great results in almost all domains compared to a 5DIII. Maybe not a good enough camera for stills i'm ok. Not enough reactive and too small size (12MP).

     
    In fact i'm very impressed with this camera. It is far from perfect but it is a pleasure to use SLOG3 on a consumer camera like this. It has its limitations with 8 bits but i'm ok with that, i'm not using it as if it were a 12 bits RAW camera... It sure has limitations, as the most annoying is the yellow spots when you push too far the blacks... but anyway, this is a consumer camera, UHD, image stabilisation, fantastic dynamic range, saving data on SD card, and powered by an Anker astro E7 power bank that lasts more than 12 hours for 45 euros... directly connected to the USB port...
     
    WHAT ELSE ?
     
    In serious jobs, with good controlled lights, i'm sure an A7SII or an URSA mini would both do the job right... And nobody would still see a big difference... but in bad conditions, the A7SII is here while others are not... My BMCC and BMPCC are great tools even in the dark as it merely sees what my eye can see, and noise is not really a problem when you don't push blacks... But when i compare BMPCC and BMCC to the A7SII... i feel more comfortable with the A7SII even if its colors are less manageable... In fact i've just done some tests by night and poorly lit places, and if you control every shot by double checking the color temperature and the exposure, the A7SII is fantastic... Just ETTR every time and you have always good results... In post, gamma, lift and contrast have to be well controlled with waveform graphic.
    By now i'm pretty satisfied from what i can get with this camera, tests in the beginning have been hard, coming from 5DIII RAW, but now i can see how Sony functions with this little camera... More tests to come soon as i'll use it as an A-cam for a project Wednesday.
  19. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to jcs in C300 Mark II side-by-side A7S II   
    A very simple and quick test. Details in the YouTube description.
  20. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to jcs in C300 Mark II First Impressions   
    First impressions of the C300 Mark II:
    The Good
    Autofocus and assisted manual focus so far is amazing. The best autofocus I've used. Even more amazing is it works on all Canon (camera-focus-controlled) EF lenses (tested on the 24-105 F4L and 24-70 F2.8 II, will test more soon). It makes a slight sound, similar to IS noise, but quieter. If using an on-camera mic for run & gun, the noise can be picked up (in a quiet room), however I think with a suspended mic mount the noise shouldn't be audible. No issue at all with a boom or lav. Assisted manual focus helps with 4K critical focus. Color is excellent, as expected. Favorite out-of-camera look so far with: Gamma: Canon Log, Color Space: DCI-P3 (or BT.709), Color Matrix: EOS Standard. Adobe CC doesn't have LUTs yet for the C300 II. One of the reasons for using a C300 II is to get excellent color out of camera with minimal work in post- no LUTs need with those settings (just curves, etc.). Audio is excellent with options for 24- as well as 16-bit. So far in the studio (and my desk) the image is very clean, with no visible recording artifacts (even at 50Mbps LGOP 422 10-bit (limited motion)). CFast 2.0 cards copy very fast to the computer over USB3: 300+MB/s to an SSD. Additional Observations
    Compared to DSLR-sized cameras, it's huge and heavy. The top handle, external monitor and mic assembly, and side handle can all be removed to make a smaller package, though it's still relatively heavy compared to DSLRs. 4K is 410Mbps: the files are ALL-I and are huge (compared to the 50Mbps files we're used to with DSLRs, and 24Mbps files from the FS700). There is no long GOP option for smaller files. It appears Canon's processor(s) aren't powerful enough to handle long GOP for 4K. Premiere CC 2015 (latest) can't handle the new Canon XFAVC files very well (4K and 1080p). Playback is slow and choppy, even at 1/2 playback resolution (might also be a 24-bit 4-track audio issue, testing this). Adobe is offering 1 year of Creative Cloud for C300 II owners, perhaps they'll update Premiere soon to fully support C300 II XFAVC files. Note that I found similar issues when writing the Photon app for 10-bit H.264 support: Premiere ran slowly on those files (sometimes with errors decoding). The A7S II with my tweaked settings look pretty good next to the C300 II in 1080p. In 4K the A7S II has lots of macroblocks/artifacts, the C300 II is clean (with 4x larger files). The A7S II makes a nice B/super-low light camera to the C300 II. 1080p60 slomo looks decent, likely as it's supersampled from 4K. 120p is clearly lower resolution being a center crop without the benefit of supersampling (which also helps reduce noise and aliasing). 120p on the A7S II looks better.
  21. Like
    Hitfabryk got a reaction from Zak Forsman in A7SII is it really a "niche" video only camera?   
    Look what this guy did with the imperfect colors of the original A7S:
     
  22. Like
    Hitfabryk got a reaction from austinchimp in A7SII is it really a "niche" video only camera?   
    Look what this guy did with the imperfect colors of the original A7S:
     
  23. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Mattias Burling in Will Nikon ever introduce their own LOG profile?   
    True, but it contains a wider Dynamic Range than 12stop C-Log and is equal in DR to BMCC so making it flater isn't really needed and would risk its quality since its only 8-bit and cant be graded as much.
    Glad Im not the only one  

  24. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to 7 Lakes in GH4 4K / Music video   
    Hello all.
    Here is our new music video, shot on GH4 half a year ago.
     
  25. Like
    Hitfabryk reacted to Oliver Daniel in Sneak peek at my new showreel & website!   
    Well that took a bloody long time! But I've just this minute completed my new reel and site. It's not "announced" until Monday.... social media campaigns etc blah blah. But it's live! Check them here: 
    View my new showreel and website!
    Some info
    Each and every image -  I shot, lit, edited, graded. A little directing. Very involved in creative ideas.  Core crew was mostly 4-5 regular people in these productions (Director, DOP, Production Manager, Spark, Make Up Artist).  For the geeks - cameras used are Sony F55, FS7, FS700, RED Epic, GH3, BM Pocket.  All images are music videos, but going for commercial/corporate work aggressively into the next year. (and still many music videos).  The aim is to have 100% new material for Showreel 2016. Max creativity required.  Anyway, if you like it or don't like it, whatever. Just thought I'd share.
     
×
×
  • Create New...