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Michael1

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Posts posted by Michael1

  1. By the way, there is a real need for someone like you with your skills.  There is a dearth of real mentors in the video world bringing information to enthusiasts.  The most memorable post on EOSHD for me was "Kendy Ty and the T2i – one guy doing amazing things with a 5 year old DSLR" back in 2014.  

    https://www.eoshd.com/creative-filmmaking/kendy-ty-t2i-one-guy-amazing-things-5-year-old-dslr/

    This kind of review is so hard to find these days.  It was less about what the gear can do for you, and more about what you can do with the gear. 

  2. I can see you need a change, Andrew, but I am not convinced you need a career change.  First, a huge percentage of people go through a period of depression in their lives.  Second, everyone goes through slumps in their career.  

    I am convinced you need some sort of change, though.  As I recall you live in Berlin.  My suggestion?  Get the hell out of the city.  Humans were never designed to live in cities.  It's absolutely horrible for your mental health.  At the lowest point in my life, I lived in a large city in a metropolitan area.  The further I moved away from the city, the happier I became, both personally, and in my career (and I had the same job).  Cities are dirty, noisy, lonely, and, these days, they are run my dictator wannabees.  Screw that!  With the internet, you don't need to live in the city anymore.  If you have a car, and internet, that's all you need.  Get smart and get out! 

  3. I have been looking at a lot of sample footage online lately trying to get an idea of the gains in video quality by going up the ladder in terms of cameras and video codecs.   I was especially looking at Nikon Z6 and Z7 out of camera, graded flat, graded N-log, and graded ProRes Raw.  I started seeing out of camera material that actually looked better than some of the higher bitrate graded material.  Then I started comparing footage to Blackmagic PCC4K and 6K.  I remember a time when Blackmagic camera material was night and day more cinematic that anything a DSLR could produce, even when viewing highly compressed online material.  With today's cameras, it looks like the gap has closed so much, that unless the cinema camera grading is stellar, the end result doesn't necessarily look better than well shot, properly exposed mirrorless camera material.  In fact, in some cases I preferred the mirrorless camera material.

    Let me know what your thoughts are.

  4. I am either misinterpreting people's comments or everyone has lost their minds.

    If it was their material up on a paid service with no compensation or approval, they would be all up in arms.

    I've not read the safe harbor law, but common sense says it would not give companies the right knowingly leave copyrighted content up on their site, and, even worse, try to make money off of it.  If it doesn't say that, then the people in the EU are on drugs.

  5. Just got the Z7 with the 24-70 S f4.  Size is perfect.  Just big enough to fit all my fingers.  I wouldn't want it any smaller.  It has a quality feel.  Viewfinder is amazing, and rear LCD is surprisingly bright and clear.  It's like a mini monitor.  I'll try it out in the sun tomorrow.  I did a quick IBIS test walking handheld.  It looked pretty steady.  I'll run some more tests.  The Z7 has a lot of features.  This will take a while to get proficient.  I'm looking forward to using their Picture Profile software to create custom profiles, import them into the camera, and shoot video with them.

  6. On 9/4/2018 at 11:13 AM, Danyyyel said:

    They said that all their new lens where design with video in mind. There are only haters that just want to spread all type of fud about Nikon and video. They have put speed setting for the AF in video where you can speed it up or down, this with 10 bit, ibis, Nlog etc. make for a very powerful package for video shooters. They even added a pin in their tripod mount, might seem mundane but try using a dslr or Mirrorless camera a whole day for pro work and you would see how anoying and distracting when your camera is always spinning. If even this they thought about, then they really took video very very seriously.

    I can't believe they added the tripod pin.  That alone is almost worth buying the camera. ?  It's little touches like that make a product so much nicer to use.

    I got confirmation from Nikon USA that the video bitrate is 144 Mbps, the same as the D850, and not 100 Mbps as reported by some media outlets.  That's good news!

  7. 14 hours ago, Simon Young said:

    This infamous dude at least shot portions of this video with the Z7 and the colors look good. The footage not shot on the Nikon is shot with the a7iii and has the trademarked Sony zombie colors, it becomes very apparent.

     

    He also says in the commentaries that the battery life at least seems better than the CIPA rating. Which is a slight relief.

     

    https://youtu.be/X2kcBclF40M

    When I first saw this video, I immediately noticed an improvement in the portion of the video with the colored background.  I was wondering what he did to improve his video quality so much.  It looked so much more professional.  The colors popped.  Then he said he was using the Z7 for that portion of the video.  There's no doubt in my mind your can get truly pro quality video out of the Z7.

  8. 1 hour ago, wolf33d said:

    Come on, I was sold and you come here and depress me. 

    You are true... Sony sucks, most of what constitute their product sucks: reliability, weather sealing, menus, ergonomics, heating, long exposure... 
    In fact usability sucks VS Canikon. 
    Yet they are the only one giving us a well specced line of hybrid video photo FF mirrorless. As of Jan 2018, this out-weights usability issues for me. Pray for no dead pixel or deal with it. Don't put the camera in heavy rain (I would not do it with a 5DIV either), and deal with the menus man. 

    There is nothing on the market competing with A7RIII now. D850 is a 1kg brick. I tried it the other day with a 24-70mm at B&H and the combo was so heavy, I was not confortable after 3min. Others are tiny sensors and/or tiny resolutions or damn expensive (medium format).
    For A7SIII, one could argue that GH5S competes because even if the sensor is small, it has great low light and so on. Yet shitty AF and no IBIS, and no FF for depth of field, so still not exactly comparable. 

    We miss more companies in the FF mirrorless market

    Sorry about that.  I wish I had better news to report myself.  The A7RIII does hold a unique place in the market.  Yes, the D850 is very heavy, but it is built like tank.  The entire body including lens mount area is magnesium for zero flex.  We can hope for more competitors.  Nikon may come out with their full frame mirrorless later this year.  Canon may have something, too.

  9. I was all set to buy an A7RIII.  The technology is amazing, but then the issues starting coming in, and coming in, and coming in.  Then I started seeing people sell their A7RIIIs.  Way too many engineering and quality issues.  It appears Sony rushed this out the door to take away some D850 sales, and beat Christmas.  Things like Sony lenses that would fit an A7RII, but were too tight to mount on an A7RIII were reported by multiple people.  One guy bought an A7RIII, and it had a stuck pixel in the EVF.  He sent it back, got another one, same thing.  Sent that one back, got another, and third one had two stuck pixels.  Game over!  Then we have the reports of EVF and LCD pixels that turn on for no reason when you go into focus magnify mode, similar to stuck pixels  or sensor hot pixels but they are not.  Extended exposures show tons of sensor hot pixels.  This is with Sony still not fixing the star eater issue.  I started looking at video, and people's skin looks like cardboard.  Or check out Sony's so called "weather resistant" body.

    And there is more.  As far as I am concerned the A7RIII is a prototype that got pushed into production on an uncontrolled assembly line.  Now contrast this with the D850 or the GH5.   You have to really dig to find any quality issues.  

  10. It seems like the GH5S is geared more towards production companies, rather than run and gun and hybrid users, which is fine.  My only concern would be that they don't pull features out of the future GH6 just to differentiate it from other models, like many camera manufacturers do.  The hybrid user doesn't want to be compromised in stills or video just because of marketing positioning.  It should have everything they can put in, while keeping it a premiere hybrid camera.

  11. On 1/5/2018 at 2:50 PM, Cinegain said:

    That's exactly what he means..? The G9 is that cheaper and true hybrid option. GH5 is still a video cam first I'd say. I mean it has that V-Log L, HLG, DCI4K, Anamorphic, 10-bit, high bitrate, waveforms or vectorscope overlays, unl. rec time etc and of course the IBIS. So you know. Not that there isn't a space for it... and of course that's exactly what Panasonic needs and wants. But far less people now will be intrigued to get the GH5, because they're bound to lean more one way (consumer: bit of 'casual' stills & video) or the other (high end video production). Especially with a GH5S (supposedly) coming out at 2499,- it's certainly something else.

    I guess it depends on what your minimum level of features is for video.  10 minutes of 4K does not make for a hybrid for me.

    I believe the GH5s will carry on the tradition of the GH5 as a hybrid, based on the leaked specs I've seen.  It will do 14 bit RAW stills.

  12. I saw a post on another forum where someone was lamenting the fact that there was no way to setup custom video profiles that could be uploaded to the camera to bake in prior to video compression in camera, rather than trying to push whatever the camera generates in post.  I happen to be checking out the Nikon Picture Control Utility software program, a free utility that can be downloaded from the Nikon website, and saw where you can create your own custom tone curves.  Not only that, you can add control points to pull the curve around in an infinite number of shapes, and even save the curves for use later.  I don't see why you couldn't create a log curve with this utility if you wanted.  You can change other parameters, too, such as saturation, hue, brightness, contrast, clarity, sharpness, etc.  You can modify existing profiles, such as Flat which is often used for video for grading.  You can save these, and import them into the camera as custom profiles.  You tell you camera to use your custom profile, and you are ready to go.  After checking it out, it appears like this is exactly what the other forum member was looking for.

    Here is the help manual if anyone wants to look at it.

    Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 Help Manual

    Seems like a pretty awesome utility that may even be more useful for video than stills since we don't have RAW output for video.  Has anyone used this?

  13. On 11/1/2015 at 9:55 AM, wolf33d said:

    Who cares about Nikon Log when you have AWESOME - high DR - easy grading Nikon Flat? 
    What is this mania with Log nowadays? What counts is not the name of the thing, what counts is a nicely gradable profile decently flat that retains DR. 

    Who cares if the name is log, HDR, flat, superfustia or mustafa? 
    Lol, seriously... 

    Nikon D810/D750 are absolutely awesome camera, years ahead of Canon ones. Reason why I chose A7RII over those is:
    4K
    high bitrates
    Tilt screen (not on D810)
    EVF
    Nice video functions such as focus peaking, .. ..
    IBIS

    The day Nikon release a FF camera with 4K, I throw the A7R II out of the window ^^. 
    Except if Canon really impresses us with an amazing 4K 5DIV with great codecs, DUAL PIXEL AF, Canon Log, ... I really want them to do that but I feel the worst... 

    I had the Nikon D5500 and honestly it is a pleasure to grade. Low bitrates for wide detailed shots is a deal breaker, lack of details compared to 4K too. It just does not cut it. 
    But they are close. 
    Nikon, give us a D850 with 4K, tilt touch screen (not gonna happen lol), good S35 4K mode, 42mpx BSI sensor, "nikon boosted" DR (compared to Sony for the same sensor) and same Flat profile and color like D810. And that would be a dream camera. Don't even care about IBIS thanks to news good lenses like the Tamron 35mm 1.8.

    Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but here we are in 2017-8, and they Nikon built the D850 with all of these features, and then some.  Funny!

    I wonder if he threw his A7RII out the window.  :grin:

     

     

  14. On 11/11/2017 at 10:22 AM, mercer said:

    Damn Jon, put away that GH5 for a little while and pick up that X-T2. That Acros looks epic. If you throw on a little grain it will look like early press footage from the Vietnam War. Also please test out some 1080p ProRes F-Log with your BlackMagic Video Assist.

    I’ve been looking for a second camera... maybe I should have a second look at the X-T20. Acros and Takumar lenses could be a killer combo. 

    I agree!  Wow!  This is fantastic work.  I also like the snippets of color, which, speaking of color, I am blown away by the Fuji colors plus whatever grading you are doing.  That's crazy good.  Move over Canon and Nikon.  Well, Fuji has been in the film business, so it stands to reason they know something about color science.  Looking forward to what they come up with for the T-H1 with IBIS.

  15. Some quality issues are starting the rear their ugly heads with the A7RIII.  Reports on other forums:

    1) Lens mounts out of tolerance so lenses won't fit.

    2) Stuck pixels in the EVF.

    3) Random pixel noise in both EVF and LCD when using focus magnification.

    4) Glue seeping out of LCD mount.

  16. 8 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

    Man It is pretty scary how far video stuff has come. But the basics are all the same. Even the same type of equipment needed I guess. Trouble is not much of it in this day and age is worth watching on TV.

    When the average person only had a 17' to 19" TV didn't really matter if it was only 480 lines anyways LoL. I never noticed any difference until Beta and S Video came out. That was like 550 lines I guess? But a lot of older TVs would not even show it. Only Mitsubishi and Sony TV's seemed to have enough oomph to use it!

    Panasonic was pushing big time at TV stations to go to S Video. But most all had Sony Beta stuff, was a damn hard sell LoL. I had a Nikon Camcorder and a Mitsubishi VCR, both S Video that I paid a fortune for at home. Everyone that came over was amazed how good it looked on the TV. Exciting times back them between video and computers coming out better and better each year.

    My pocketbook started shrinking big time when I got into buying old Broadcast TV stuff from the station LoL. Man my wife was a saint LoL. I loved that stuff. I still love the look of 3 tube cameras. Ikegami cameras were my favorite!

    How about Sony 3/4" U-matic and U-Matic SP?

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