Jonesy Jones

This film was posted on the P4k FB group earlier. WOW.
 
By DAVE HILL
https://vimeo.com/304999893?fbclid=IwAR2eii51lO2jPHV0mQj1JmhplQRhKhp0YYaO_FHc2jEpYXe8KicJKm53PYo

 

The colour and grade on that video looks terrible but maybe that's the 'organic/filmic' look that people want?
I've got the original BMPCC and I liked it a lot but the P4k is better in every way apart from size. The codec ( esp RAW) is so malleable that you can get any look out of it you want as long as you have the grading skills. If these are just limited to slapping on a 'film LUT' then I can see why it may be a disappointment to some people. 

There are many professional DOPs out there and I believe there is much we can learn from studying their work.
However, it can be difficult to gain insights if you can only study their work when each project has been created in partnership with a different team of people each time - lighting, shot design, camera and lens choices, grading, etc are all aspects that the DOP doesn't have full control over and makes it hard to 'see through' to the commonalities that the DOP provides.
There is one notable exception to this, and that is Philip Bloom, who regularly creates videos as a one-man operation and shares them on YouTube.  I'm not suggesting that he's the best DOP in the world, or that we should copy him, or anything like that, but he is a career professional, and I'm not afraid to admit that he knows more about this stuff than I will ever know, so I believe there is a lot we can learn.  He recently published his annual Best Camera Gear video, and I made a number of interesting observations from watching it.  
Here are a bunch of frame-grabs from the video.
A7RIII with SLR Magic


A7III with Sony 55mm

Parrot Anafi drone

DJI Magic Pro



Fuji X-H1


EOS-R (ungraded)

Insta360 One X

Osmo Pocket (ungraded)


Kinefinity Terra 4K


BMPCC4K


Kinefinity Mavo LF

Here are some observations from the above shots:
There is a look that is relatively consistent across the shots.  It's not applied so heavily that every shot looks the same, but people familiar with his work would have a good chance of recognising that these were shot by him.  
Something that is worth noting is that he's managed to get this consistency from a hugely varied selection of equipment, including different brands, different focal-lengths, different apertures, hugely different price ranges, and from different levels of image quality and codecs, across different locations within different countries, at different times of day, in different seasons, and shooting different things.   He's not able to get that look in all cases.  One notable exception is the Insta One X that doesn't seem to fit the look, everyone has limits on what they can achieve.  Equipment doesn't matter as much as the skill of the operator, but it still matters to a certain degree, and especially if the equipment is below a certain level of quality or capability. The look that he's creating is quite pleasing.  It won't be liked by everyone (no looks are universal) but on the whole he manages to get good looking results from whatever equipment he's using.  Anyone who has picked up an even half-decent camera and not been able to get good results from it knows that this is not something that just happens - you have to know what you're doing. So, what are the ingredients of this look? (note that not every shot includes every ingredient, but the more you can include the more consistent your results will be)
The images have a warm colour balance.
There are two main contributors to this that I see, the first is the grading he does which often warms the images overall, pushing greens towards yellow, pushing blues towards aquas.  The second is that he's very often shooting into the sun in golden hour.  The shots also tend to have fewer hues in each shot - making them more likely to be harmonious and pleasing. The images have a kind of controlled level of contrast to them.  You don't look at them and find them flat looking, but they don't look super contrasty either.  This look probably comes from paying attention to the blacks and almost blacks, which are slightly lifted and don't ever appear to hit absolute black, let alone crushed.  This look seems to come from shooting directly into the light and having camera flare lift the blacks, but is also controlled in grading. His images have a kind of controlled level of saturation to them.  Colours are bold but not electric, skin tones are very well controlled looking soft but not desaturated and are neither too yellow nor too pink.  Considering all the talk about colour science and skin tones, this is noteworthy. His compositions are strong.  I chose nice frames for these frame-grabs but there were no shortage of frames to choose from.  Composition is hugely important and is free with every camera - even with the Insta360 which struggles in most other ways. He uses great lenses.
This is perhaps something that people easily mis-interpret.  Great lenses is a relative term, and is about the combination of the lens, the subject, the conditions, and the desired end result.  It's tempting to think that you'll get great results from super expensive cinema lenses that he often uses, but the smooth rendering and polished look of these lenses is a terrible choice if you want to shoot something that needs a more realistic / edgy / gritty image, and besides, if it was all about cost, then how do we account for the image that he gets out of the Osmo Pocket with its fixed budget lens, or the Parrot and DJI drone shots?  The answer is that he uses high quality glass when he can, and when the glass has limitations he adjusts the subject and the conditions to get the best out of that lens. 
In a sense, these videos are cheating.  He is able to shoot whatever will look good and not include the shots that don't.  If you don't believe me then go have a look at the lovely images he got from the iPhone 5s at 120fps and notice that he only shot images looking straight into the sun near sunset, this is because a camera with bad ISO performance, a small sensor, in HFR modes needs a huge amount of light to get good results, then see that he tended to shoot with things very close to the camera which is the only way to give some defocussing and depth, and shooting into the warm setting sun also makes sure that the colours will be nice and the colour range will be simpler.
He uses great glass by making sure that he only shoots what the available glass is great at. Not visible in the frame-grabs, but he also shoots a lot of slow-motion.  It is totally cheating and is completely over-used, but these shots are about making nice images, so why not. Im sure there is lots more, but this is what stands out to me.  Let me know what I missed.
As there is a graded shot of the BMPCC4K in the video and he posted the RAW file from the same shot earlier in the year, it gives a unique opportunity to try and copy the grade and see what is actually going on, so if I get time I might try and reverse-engineer the grade.  If so, I'll share the results.
Thanks to Philip Bloom for continuing to share with us.

Pleased to announce that my Pocket4K app for Android is now complete and is with beta testers so barring any calamties will be available from the Play store on the 21st of December.

Here is a screen shot with a quick run through of the features from top to bottom :

Across the top we have the controls for Aperture, ISO and shutter angle.
Next up we have the colour temperature and tint controls, the preset white balance selectors, the Auto White Balance button and, of course, the Record button.
Beneath that we have the 8 snapshot memories which you can use to store and instantly recall 8 different custom settings of ISO, Aperture, Shutter Angle and White Balance. To store the preset you long press on the memory slot that you want to use and to recall it just short press. Haptic feedback is given to indicate that the preset has been written and the currently loaded preset is denoted in orange (M1 in the shot above). Presets are stored in non volatile memory so are always available in any session.
Next is the focus controller, which is operated using the slider and/or the fine tune buttons. A long press of the button moves instantly to closest focus and infinity respectively. The AF button in ths row activates the single shot auto focus.
To accompany the focus controls, you then have 6 memory slots (A to F) to store focus points and you can switch instantly between them by simply pressing the required one. In addition, next to these are the controls for A-B-A focus transition and the speed control. Again, all focus points are stored in non volatile memory for use in any session.
Finally we have the controls for applicable MFT power zoom lenses with the same interface as the focus controls (including long press for instant minimum/maximum zoom) and 4 non volatile memory positions for later recall.
There is another function that it can do that I'll let you know about closer to release date and I will put up a little demo video of it in action late next week.
 

My general battery solution has been this....
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XWTY96G/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
ITs looks just like the classic Juicebox battery here but it costs $40 Less. and comes with many adapters.
https://www.amazon.com/Juicebox-Battery-Blackmagic-Cameras-Production/dp/B073BMTFFJ/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1544257154&sr=1-3&keywords=juice+box+battery
I connected it with the P4k Dc cable pack.
it seems to work pretty good I haven't used it till it died yet but Powered my p4k and my SmallHD DP4 together for about an hour and it dropped to around 66% doesn't seem bad considering the DP4 is a power hog in my opinion.
The voltage meter works very well. 

I also came across this
https://www.amazon.com/XTPower-MP-50000-Power-Bank-Notebooks/dp/B00N4XK7RG/ref=lp_9455594011_1_7?srs=9455594011&ie=UTF8&qid=1544257835&sr=8-7
its seems to be the same thing but newer and 60% battery more life than the older ones above.   but at $200 your already flirting with Vmount territory.   

There are awesome resources for colour grading and Resolve techniques out there, but they're scattered around the place, and are hard to find.  Please post anything awesome you find.
(Note: for those that are new to Resolve or colour grading, there are lots of YT "colourists" who have very little actual knowledge.  These people provide a steady stream of bad habits, misleading and flat-out wrong information.  There are exceptions, but on the whole you should be very suspicious of people selling LUTs and pumping out video after video - most of these people are professional LUT salespeople and/or YouTubers and not professional colourists!)
Juan Melara is excellent.  If you watch all the below you'll get a sense of how he uses Resolve, especially the Colour Space Transform plugin and which tools in Resolve are designed to work in which colour spaces.
 

Thanks Jonesy, that's the plan. There is a lot of ground to cover; I am laying the foundation for it now. Just got a new Alexa Classic last week, due to the early demise of the former
Before moving forward, I wanted to make sure the original work was fully defined, and V3 is really there

Great work Sage! I have been using you're luts the last couple of weeks, and it just works perfectly. Im currently shooting on a gh5 with atomos ninja V 
 
Here are some stills. The video can be seen here 
 

 

I know that when the Ninja V and the AtomX SSD were  backordered at B&H, I was able to get them from Texas Media Systems. Had them 3 days after ordering. Might try them.

With all due respect, I think it is a bit harsh referring to people as crying babies who are whining when they are actually raising legitmate concerns about powering this camera.
Read my post above about the difference in heat generation between powering it on mains for 8 or 9 hour stretches versus powering it for 10 or 15 minutes on batteries. That difference in heat is not something to be unconcerned about and neither is the random battery life indicator.
I have literally just had mine shut down on me mid take when it waa showing a quarter full.
Yet, thus far, the only OFFICIAL way to power this camera other than the mains adapter is to use batteries.
Everything else until they actually get that cable kit out is some form of cobbled together solution with dummy batteries and power packs.
Yes,that situation will be resolved over time and won't be a concern for people who get this camera in the future but for people who actually DO have it right now, it is fair comment to be annoyed about the situation.
The price of this camera doesn't always give it a pass regarding criticism as some of the criticisms have got absolutely nothing to do with the price of it or could have been avoided with such a minimal price increase that would have had zero impact on sales or anyone's satisfaction that they were getting more than their money's worth.
Oh and @Jonesy Jones, my advice would be to favour any solution that powers it off the DC port. If they ever ship that cable kit

Two things, the negative and the positive, first I'll go through the negative and then the positive,
The Negative
I'd like to apologize for my behavior on this website. I have a spare EOSHD account and found my name on google and still attached to this website. I looked at the email message and found out it was about caps lock on the lenses section of this website years ago. I should have not used caps lock and also I should not have shouted at everyone on this website. I'd like to return because I have made some discoveries, and I enjoy being around very bright and intelligent along with extremely practical and very informative folks like yourself. May I please be allowed back on this website and blog and comment and speak to other people? And it has been an honor for me to speak to you all on this website. I apologize and wish to undo anything that can lead to me being banned again. I will try my best to not act defensive and not to take things personally. I apologize to the moderator Jon Pais for being rude. I would also like to if I graduate from Film School, have employment from a master's degree and college with my computer science degree as well as my bachelor's in theater with photography as a minor.
The Positive
I have taken a photography class at college and passed it with a D, unfortunately I didn't know how to use my DSLR creatively, but I passed. I know now how to use lighting better. I am almost done with having an associate's degree in college. I am taking proper medication for my hyperactiveness and mood swings and I've been through therapy as well. I also have been discussing a lot about filmmaking on the other site, Reddit under the alias, Zack194a on the filmmakers part of Reddit. I think I'm getting a good idea on how to use lighting for video, and I took some recent photographs I have taken with my T2i after learning from Photography class. I learned new things like metering and sunny 15 rule as well as light distance (distance from light affects the image). My college major at this moment is computer science, which as I searched up I hope will get me jobs at many places. I am taking 4 courses in community college at this moment and two of them are A's and the other two are B's. Thank you for reading this.
 
My previous account is Zach Goodwin
 
Here are some of the photos I have taken They were taken on a Canon T2i with an FD lens: 35-105mm, F/3.5 :

Historically (not that we've made cameras THAT long) we've always converted internally to YUV/YCbCr no matter the codec for SDI output etc. It's then convenient and easier on resources to do image statistics on just luma for zebras/false colour and that has not changed. RGB would be more ideal, yes. Personally I always set zebras to 95% for some slight headroom (even before I worked for the company and learnt how it worked) and after i joined and we added false colour, the "red" (highlight clipping) on false colour is actually at 95% for the same reason.

Today, I managed the impossible! 
Used the Pocket4K as a B Camera to the F5. Shot seven, five minute interviews, all run n gun style,  all handheld with no additional accessories (using Canon 24-105 and Speedbooster XL) plus some B-Roll footage over the coarse of 8 hrs. Went through one and a half Canon LP-E6n batteries, they didn't get stuck, the battery door never flung open, the shots were steady (despite no IBIS!), they were in focus (Despite no AF or Focus Puller!)....and the Director was impressed with the footage despite shooting ProRes422 to SD cards. Must have been a fluke cos I'm constantly hearing that this type of shooting is impossible. ?
Seriously though, Tilta look to be doing great things with accessories for the P4K and I love the integrated NP-F battery and SSD Slot in the grip. The only issue is that it makes the camera too wide. There really isn't any need for a handle on the left side of the camera so I would rather see a solution that has a battery or two in a battery grip that attaches to the bottom of the camera in a similar fashion to a Canon DSLR grip that would allow hot swapping batteries. Can't be too hard right?

I agree that it would be nice to have additional tools but I have to say that I think that with Pocket 4K having false colour available (especially on a hardware switch) it will get a lot of people, myself included, closer to where they want the exposure to be a lot quicker.
The very quick contextual overview it gives you works better - for me at least - than a waveform so I'm going to say that from a purely selfish point of view, BM chose the right option for the initial release
 

Really shows off what Raw can do with the PK4.
 

The Pocket 4K has a lot of interesting features, of course, but somebody needs to do a proper comparison of 8bit, 10bit, ProRes, LOG, RAW, etc. Because the image quality is closer between them than people realise, when it comes to the end-result.
I've had Blackmagic cameras in the past, and it's fun pulling around a raw file in Resolve and seeing all that dynamic range on demand, but then I have also had a lot of enjoyment out of 8bit S-LOG and Canon LOG too. Seeing how silky smooth, noise-less the shadows are in low light from a full frame sensor, being able to fluidly play it back and slap on a LUT over Canon 1D C footage - wow - you wouldn't know THAT was 8bit. Instantly nice colour and dynamic range. Same with Hybrid LOG Gamma from an A7 III, or V-LOG with the GH5 and F-LOG on an X-T3. Even the EOS R, for all its faults, has an amazing ALL-I codec with film-like colour - and it's 8bit.
We are trading a lot of things on the Pocket 4K for that RAW codec. 10bit too, but others offer that now, so it's not unique to Blackmagic. Out goes a large sensor, out goes decent video AF, out goes IBIS, out goes articulated screen, battery life, high quality body, weather sealing and more besides. So it is important not to over hype it, as some have been doing on this thread. I have nothing against the Blackmagic Pocket 4K, but it has to be seen objectively.
I do have a little bit of annoyance pent up at the company, for their lame availability and non-support of EOSHD despite the tons of work I have done over the years to bring people's knowledge up to speed on their cameras and Resolve, but I am not going to let that influence the review once I finally get one.
Still no luck on that front BTW.

There are now 4 more films that have been uploaded to the Official Blackmagic Design Gallery for the Pocket 4K.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera/gallery

Here are the cinema cameras we use all the time from Feature films to run n gun documentaries. I have shot with Epic and Alexa in hot, dusty outback Australia as well as sleet and snow and have not had issues.
Pic1. Red Epic has two large holes with fans on the top. 

Pic2. Alexa mini has it's large holes/fans on the side and back
 

Pic3. Sony F5 has it's large holes/fans on the top

Pic4. Last picture is what we do when it starts to rain

 
A Large plastic bag looks very low tech, but given that these cameras can all be rigged so differently depending on shoot requirements, t's by far the most versatile way and gets the job done.

Happy to report that adding a non glare screen protector to the Pocket has made a huge difference. Much easier to see the screen in direct sun while still being bright and sharp. Still easier to see in the shade obviously but now not unusable in sun.
As others have said, I'm also a big fan of the menu system, add to that the scroll wheel with push action, dedicated ISO, SHUTTER and WB buttons plus three custom buttons and you can change all the most used functions easily with just your right hand on the grip. I have my Function buttons set to 1)False Colour 2) LUT Toggle 3)Focus peaking toggle.
 
 

On day 3 and 4 of Photokina, I collaborated with Dave Altizer of Kinotika to record the first episode of EOSHD TV and an EOSHD Podcast.
We discuss insider topics such as a rumoured on-chip ND filter by Panasonic, Fuji's "super full frame" medium format strategy and round up some of the highlights of Photokina (including the Panasonic S1R).
Read the full article

jonsey, that trailer was AMAZING!! ??? what tha heck!! i had no idea?!! whats the story with the film (Luggage)? can i watch the whole thing online somewhere??
i agree with @mercer, the lovely art direction and cinematography in this trailer perform far beyond how a camera can – you could shoot on potato, jonesy~! what r u up to right now??
*I* need as many bits and Ks as possible for emotional support ? seriously tho, cant believe that was shot on a 7d... awesome
I couldnt agree more, very well said @mercer
thats the story of my life. keep plugging away. if you have to, just keep your head down, and dont look at what other people are doing. chances are, youll wake up one day being the person you once dreamed of being
 

Hi all,  inspired by great results from @Sage and his GH5 to Alexa Conversion I wondered if there are enough GH5S users here who would help out in getting the same for GH5S.
As the prerequisite to get this done is having GH5S camera, the way to do it is to fund a rental for a week. The price is around $100 for three days and $144 for the week. The latter will give him more time to do the work, and that's why I suggested a week of rental. A round trip shipping is around $40.

I will start with a donation of $50, and would kindly ask anyone who is interested to contribute with as much as they feel comfortable with.
In order not to make this an endless loop, everyone who contributes could simply reply here with the amount until we reach $190/200 or if you don't feel confortable posting the amount here you can PM me or we can simply trust @Sage to report us when the fund has been collected.
Now, I might have written too much text, but wanted to make sure there's no scam behind this, just a mutual endeavor of GH5S users.

The PayPal address is emotivecolor@gmail.com
@Sage please confirm this is a valid email address so there are no doubts.

Thanks and cheers!!!

Thanks Christian, I appreciate that
Well spotted; I had a conversation a bit ago with the creator of the video, and he said that he didn't like something about the greens from the conversion, and tried to correct for that. Indeed, a signature quality of Alexa color is slightly cyanish greens, and I think this is probably what he felt must have been a mistake. This is what the greens look like from the current raw conversion:

It will; trying to get this ready as fast as possible. The key for Main/Soft is moderate exposure (avoid over/under)
-5 on sharp/NR is the closest in cam to Arri texture (doesn't affect color though). I prefer no further processing in post (ideally well lit, focused etc)
The only necessary correction for a moderately exposed GHa shot is to set the black level
 
Also, the OLPF setting is simply fantastic for achieving the Alexa texture; the PDF will be updated on this as well (in Premiere, the preview can look a bit softer than actual export; the texture is decidedly improved and smoother)
@PannySVHS He isn't; I found him through a reddit post. I'll see if he might drop by to chat
@Jonesy Jones Impressive work.

@webrunner5 posted it above. I didn’t want to directly embed because I didn’t want any confusion in this GH5 thread since that was shot with a 7D. But my original point stands... if you already have a camera that is really good, in this case the GH5, then don’t worry about what else is available or will be available, just go out and produce work. This is very hard for me sometimes because I want to try all cameras but what I already own is way more than enough.
And in Jonesy’s case the GH5 is also way more than enough. And with Sage’s color, the GH5 is a top notch tool.