pablogrollan

As much as I agree with all of your points, asking these questions is simply useless. You're questions are not really questions, but you are just trying to make the same point with every question:
 
"Look how far behind you are when it comes to video & technical advances compared to your competitors". Don't you see it?"
 
It is rhetorical. Of course they know. They don't care. And you don't need to ask, you can see it from their current line up and releases. They are focussing on the photo market and gave up to compete on video.
 
The only question you should ask is: "Why?"
 
To make more money for a couple of years and then stop the business? A principal? Thinking they will appeal more to photographers if they don't have good video modes? To protect their C-line? (and thus be stupid?)
 
For the rest I would save my breath. You're not going to change them. But we as buyers will.

It seems very interesting to be able to use this metadata for 3d tracking and adding models inside shots!

I am not sure why you can't import native 4k mp4/mov into premier cs6. I do it all the time. Either on the Mac or PC

I'll have full films on the portfolio page of my site. The reel is for the homepage so that people can get a quick idea of what I can do. It makes the potential client's life easier. If they like what they see they can dig deeper. If they don't then they haven't wasted too much time.

Well, as an owner of both 7D a a6000, I believe the video functions of the a6000 would make your life much easier.
 
- 60D has a mic input but no headphone jack, which renders the mic input useless (recording without monitoring??) unless you install ML and use a miniUSB to jack adapter to monitor through the AVout of the 60D. For paid work I personally would never use a hacked camera, and the 60D is not the most recommendable ML camera for raw video, not to mention the hassle of raw file mangement and workflow.
 
- Exposure is hard to judge with the good ol' Canon DSLRs. The meter is just a reference that won't tell you if part of the frame is overexposed. Zebras on the a6000 make it easier. The AVCHD is not the best codec, but keep in mind not all implementations of the codec are the same (Sony FS700 vs. Olympus EM-10, for example). The AVCHD footage from the a6000 is at least as gradeable as the quicktime h.264 from the 60D.
 
- I use legacy Nikon and Tamron glass + Samyang Cine Lenses on the a6000 and they are much easier to adapt to the Sony e-mount via speedbooster than to the EOS mount. I can't speak about AF speed beacuase I hardly use it, but I can tell you that having focus peaking is a must for video (in the Canon you have to either measure exposure and focus distance first or eyeball everything).
 
As for the a6000 EVF, I like it for stills but for video is not so comfortable and I still prefer to use a kinotehnik loupe (120 €) on the lcd screen (which you would also need on the 60D).
 
Canon batteries last longer, but Sony's are smaller and you can easily fit 3 in your pocket
 
So unless you really go the ML way (which is not my cup of tea), the only advantage of the Canon is body sturdiness. Though the a6000 is well built, it is so tiny that it doesn't feel nearly as robust as a Canon body with its large grip and big buttons, but I guess that's a matter of taste. Fully rigged with separate audio recording or on a tripod the difference is not so noticeable.

It seems we'll know soon enough is Canon is ready to respond.
 
http://www.canonrumors.com/2014/07/canon-to-make-a-big-splash-at-photokina-cr2/
 
Depending on whether or not the announcements are a disappointment and if that new sensor tech is really "revolutionary" we may see Canon repeating the cycle again... or not.

Turns out a lot of stuff I have was shot on an Alexa, so I thought I'd post two very different shows, 3 examples, to show how a wide range of final skin tone grades is typical. I think the main thing with the Alexa is it's flexibility, due in large part to how close they've come to a 2k film master in dynamic range, log-c profile, motion blur, sensor noise etc. In some cases all the stuff about pleasing skin tones is gone in favor of a dark, colder and often noisy look. In #1 you can see the softness of the 2k image - not just color science - helps with softening skin, concealing lines and make-up. In #2 you can see how grainy and dark the image can look - the cold fill light - the camera sensor isn't too dense. #3 almost no skin tone left in final grade. The motion blur overall looks like a film shutter. I have lots of examples of chase scenes, fights or explosions where this is really apparent. It's the opposite of the high density and sharp, but smaller sensor of the GH4, or the 4k with low bit depth, more compression of the A7s. Making an "Alexa-ish" LUT for the A7s couldn't hurt, but the image is still going to be totally different, especially with motion. But it doesn't really matter because soon we're all gonna be dead from Ebola, was just informed, have not yet verified. 
 

 

 
look at how blown out the neon sign is.. and no banding in the shadows.

Why not just a Windows machine? You will have more hardware choices and it will be simpler i suppose..
My advices:
- don't use Administrator account. Create restricted user for everyday work (you will have much more stable and secure system)
- don't install any software you don't trust.

The hardware:
Latest generation core i5 CPU (desktop CPU-s are much faster than mobile CPU-s. i5 desktop is like i7 mobile)
- get the cheapest from:
http://ark.intel.com/pl/products/family/75024/4th-Generation-Intel-Core-i5-Processors#@Desktop
1x16GB RAM (leave other banks for later upgrade)
Cheap motherboard and case (best would be ATX format, but if You like smaller cases: micro-ATX)
Well known brand (not no-name) but not expensive PSU
SSD Drive (note that bigger capacity means usually also faster speed, but you will be ok with 128GB+)
The best GPU you have the money for
(optional) If you use software like DaVinci Resolve, You would need second GPU just for UI (cheap card mounted in PCI-Express x1 slot)

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How is this shot dull? It's well lit, well graded, and well composed.
Even though it's only an insert, there's variation and texture in BG to make it interesting and shallow depth of field to lead your eyes exactly where they want you to look.

An interesting shot doesn't need to be a crazy MTV kind of shot.
The Man Who Wasn't There is filled with extremely interesting shots and they're mostly lock offs.

If Jeunet had shot that insert with flat lighting, texture and DOF, then yes, it could have been dull... this is anything but.

Well, if you pull that kind of data from the sensor it will heat up considerably.
And the 5-axis in-body stabilization will not allow for methods to disperse of this excessive heat.
So, for me 4K on the EM-1 is a nice fairytale, but nothing more.
You can't just provide 4K as a FW-upgrade. It's impossible.
Besides, they've never shown any care about us videopeople before.
 
I don't even really need them to throw out 4K footage out of the E-M1 and onto my storage medium.
I just need a proper videomode, with a broader selection of just about everything (especially 25fps!) and maybe a little tweaked bitrate or something like that.
If they trained their pet into learning new tricks, that's cool. I want to see it. If they drugged it with stereoids and implanted it with a chip I'm afraid something horrible will come of this.
 
But so far, for photography it's really awesome. Although I had a few issues with false exposure readings now and then.

sorry to butt in, but I keep seeing people talking about problems with colour science, yellow tint and other garbage.  here's what i got with the a7s using awb: 
 

 
no grading.
 
correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any colour issues here.

Hi there,
 
I understand that I can achieve the same result just using fast cc (adjusting the whites/blacks etc), I just preferred doing it in 2 steps with slog (luma step for the major, fast cc for the minor tweaks) I actually found I got a better image that way, but I think it might of just been a placebo effect.
 
This was more for the crowd that was just sticking a LUT on it and calling it a day. If you understand the concept behind this, then you can grade anything to your specific preference/look.
 
What's most important to me, is that I can nearly get the quality of 5d mk3 raw with out the all of the converting. The a7s really does seem to have the dynamic range its marketed to have.

That video is fake.

BMCC is 4:4:4. I have keyed 4:2:0 footage successfully ( 5D2 H264 ), but it takes me about 3x times longer, plus some shots got spoilt because my DOF was too shallow and the edges of actors were too blurry. With BMCC, the sensor is much smaller and your actors' contours will always be very sharp. You can always add DOF in post, but taking it out is impossible. Plus, with 4:4:4 you will be able to adjust exposure and the 2.5k will provide a better pixel sensitivity for your keyer. 
 
In fact, if you absolutely, definitively want the best key in the world, shoot your actor in portrait mode...that should give you an equivalent of a 4K RAW 4:4:4 vertical resolution...the absolute top notch image for keying and compositing into something else.

I believe your view on a DP's job is oversimplified. Yes, they do care -a lot- about DOF and bokeh, because those are also composition tools. To think they just worry about camera placement and framing is like saying an actor only has to memorize some text.
 
When you shoot a closeup, sometimes you want the character blended in the environment, but many times you want to isolate the face with very shallow DOF to center the attention on his/her expresion. And the bokeh orbs that you see in the background are often lights or elements placed on purpose to serve as defocused background, and have nothing to do with the real background or what you see in the wide shot.
 
For wide shots such as establishing shots (descriptive) deep focus is usually desirable, since you want to show a general impression of the setting and not focus the attention on a specific point. The problem comes when some unseasoned or untrained filmmaker decides to shoot every establishing shot with an 18mm @ T1.5, just to "show off" shallow DOF. The same could be applied to many closeups: you do not always need the background that blurred.
 
DOF is not an aesthetic element that looks "cool", but a narrative element to tell a story. And composition is probably the last thing a DP worries about. Composition is relatively easy. Its rules are common knowledge. Camera placement and lens choice pretty much define it. It has already been agreed in preproduction and any decent camera operator would be able to frame properly. DPs are more concerned with lighting. If you are looking for that cinematic look, you need proper lighting and lenses, and the extra stop of light provided by the Speedbooster becomes irrelevant (though may come in handy in docu).

first not fake GH4 vs a7S:

Not my video but some of the best A6000 footage I have seen yet. I'm convinced they left XAVC S codec out of this camera purposely "just my theory". It would have been too much camera for the asking price. Very organic image, I did spot moire on one of the guys shirt but hell the images still look quite good. 

I'd say GH4, the DOF is really deep and the girl looks a little oversharpened...

To me it looks like a combination of a terrible image stabilisation (especially when she walks @0:24) and slow shutter speed. So when the camera is handheld, every second you get a smooth motion followed by a hard drop - not very pleasant.

I disagree. I think his videos wouldn't look substantially worse without RAW. I think it is indeed Canon that should be mainly credited for making a hardware product that allows you complete freedom in almost any lighting environment due to low light sensor, battery life that simply lets you work and not miss shots, ruggedness of body and a stable of lenses that can achieve any look without breaking your bank.
 
The best tool is the one you don't notice. Canon achieved this better than anybody else so far. I may hate their marketing department, but God bless their engineers for giving us an amazing creative new cinema tool and jump-starting the DSLR Cinema industry.

For stills, the 5D Mark III might be better due to color science (and for sure higher resolution) even though the A7S has more DR. For video, the A7S is looking to be a worthy replacement for the 5D3, including RAW. To clarify, 14-bit RAW from the 5D3 will likely provide a better color image, however when factoring in recording time, disk space, in-camera low-light NR, and processing time, 50Mbit/s XAVC-S will be more detailed and cleaner than 5D3 RAW with a lot less work and disk usage. The A7 & A7R are clearly better for stills vs. the A7S.
 
It's looking like the A7S sensor isn't the real magic*: it appears to be the trick NR processor for video. If reports regarding lower than normal battery performance are accurate for the A7S, this could be from the hardware NR processing. This could also explain why they couldn't do 4K internally: they're at their thermal and CPU limit just doing 4K = > 1080p + NR + H.264.
 
 
 
* If the sensor was truly lower noise from (gapless) bigger pixels, still images should be cleaner on the A7S vs. the A7 & A7R. However, downsampling higher resolution to lower resolution also reduces noise (requires more computing power- an issue with video).

fav? it has to be the Chicken stabilization Camera
 

Right, it's not an all-sum proposition, which is how most inter web discussions seem to go.  Finding legitimate flaws in the production doesn't mean that an actual movie isn't worthwhile on other levels.
 
If you're not a discriminating viewer of movies, fine.  But if you want to be something of a film maker you should at least try to be so.  Knowing why Kurosawa is superior to a contemporary studio guy like Bay matters.  As an aspiring film maker of any legitimate level you gotta try to know why, understand why, and appreciate why.
 
This particular BatMan movie production was a beast of logistics and it does look like some chaos and unwieldiness of the production ended up on screen.
 
Or maybe it's just me...  Establishing the "geography" of a scene and allowing for coherent action is out of favor these days with a-list films.  Bombast trumps cohesion.  I'll take a 3 minute single pan wide shot of 2,000 extras and horses ransacking Aqaba in real time rather than 300 .5 second edits with 2 dozen explosions.   

jcs-
 
Yes but, as per the title of this thread, people are confused at to whether or not you can convert 4k 8bit 4:2:0 to 2k 10bit 4:4:4 and get the grading and smoothness of detail that 10bit acquisition can give. They "want to get to the bottom of it", which I appreciate. By bringing up adding noise to reduce banding, algorithms for dither, the limitation of what we see with 8bit monitors (which makes it seem irrelevant for anyone to want anything higher than 8bit unless you're viewing on a 10bit monitor) and the fact that the chromatic channels don't add up to 10bit 4:4:4, although I don't doubt you mean well, you've helped to confuse the issue even more. Andrew is now posting an article on how to "cure banding", almost within minutes of learning that the technique exists. 
 
We should really just stay focused on the flaws in the bits to pixels = depth workflow. I think you understand it's fundamental flaw, that it does not represent the scene more accurately or improve stops that you can push before you see artifacts. 
 
Can we just agree that all the conversion from 4k to 2k does is anti-alias and shrink?
 
Then the discussion about dithering algos and 8bit monitors can be an aside. 
 
I have my thoughts about all that but I don't want to get off topic. 

In touch with Sony about a A7S demo unit so wait to see if it turns the world's number 1 GH4 fanboy onto it :)