Wulf

Probably the WB of my camera is not correct anyway. I read somewhere it wasn't neutral, and people kept fiddling with WB shifts deep in the menu. Since it's Easter, let me cite he Bible: you shall know them by their fruits. What they present as the results of their deeds needs further corrections in post in order not to look weird, some scallop it with special luts. 
I use sun, shadow, clouds or bulb, which already is twice as precise as analog photography was with tungsten and daylight film (okay, some used glass conversion filters for in-between values, some welcomed minor casts because they captured the atmosphere of the place, some corrected in the darkroom, does that sound familiar?). People make all their colors look neutral with custom WB. Afterwards they complain that their colors look aseptic and digital and apply a look lut that mimics film. 

keep also in mind that Sony had just released a new fullframe body ...
so, while we could see a tendency, it's more or less PR clickbait atm.

"The popularity of key models including α7RII and α7SII has been paramount to this success."
But I do agree, this is PR in order to inspire confidence to Pros for their upcoming release which I guess will target 1Dxii/D5 users. 

I have to agree with @jcs. If you don't get skin tones right, and  I mean close to dead nuts right, even in dark areas, you might as well scrap the whole project.
We, as humans, look at humans first in any shot, video, photograph. It is an instinctive reaction. "Fight or Flight" syndrome. And men and women look for different things in the scene. Human Nature.

If that were true, why is ARRI considered to be right up there with Canon for color (some argue they have better color)? There is a biological, psychological element with color related to evolution. Human beings are very tuned in to color for skintones, on both conscious and unconscious levels. If the skin tones are off, we tend to notice right away- is the person healthy or sick, friendly or threatening, happy or frightened, etc. The concept of Uncanny Valley is also a factor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley . If something is close to real, but off slightly, we have a strong negative reaction. So color needs to be right on, or very off (cartoon) to work well. Canon (and ARRI) know this, and if colors aren't exact on color charts, the reason is they are biasing for skin tone colors which will have the best positive emotional reaction from humans. Colorists make colors 'off' on purpose for emotional reasons, ScFi/horror etc.

Freudian slip?
The big issue is quality control in my eyes.
They went too cheap in their production like the 600's and the 750's shutter problems and that backfired. Therefore loosing not only margins, but a lot of reputation and customers, too.
edit: But hey, they were nearly dead in 2008, too, before they launched the lowlight king D3. They have allready a chance to come back, it depends all on the next bodies (take the new 7500 not in account)

I have a 70-200mm f2.8 II IS and just got a EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM. The L is nicer, sure, but mostly it's just two stops faster. The plastic STM is much more stable for me. Better IS and much better balanced.
I'm blind to the enormous aesthetic differences you notice, I'll admit. To me it just looks slightly worse (bokeh fringe, cats eye, vignetting) and a lot slower.  No big differences in micro contrast or rendering. But the L is certainly a beast. Beautiful beautiful image, even wide open. 

As far as I'm aware it's only the Canon STMs that support face recognition. I have the 17-55 2.8 (which I'm assuming is the one you mean above) and the AF works great (if a little noisy) and the IS is a treat - but no face AF. I also have both the 18-135 and 55-250 STMs and they work perfectly and near-silently. They're reasonable lenses optically, with all the usual provisos, if a little bland; but if you're looking for something to throw on the camera and forget about while it does the work for you they're hard to gainsay. Obviously not the fastest glass out there, but the C100's (well the mk ii anyway, I haven't used the mk i) low-light performance means that upping your ISO a couple of clicks is a relatively pain-free experience in all but the lowest-light situations.

Hi @hijodeibn - DPAF and IS work great on the 17-55 2.8 but the noise is sufficient to register with the onboard microphones (both the scratch one and the handle ones - I haven't tried it yet with a camera-mounted shotgun) - in fact even the iris changes would be too loud, I think, for critical work. I don't have the 18-55 STM, just the 18-135 and the 55-250. DPAF may be slightly faster on these lenses (and is noticeably excellent on the longer zoom) and face recognition is also very good. They are near-silent in operation. In summation, if image quality/low-light was my priority and I was recording dual system or MOS I would opt for the 17-55 2.8 every time; otherwise it would be the STMs.

Hi,
which lenses are considered for best IS, AF and face recognation?
While I have a ton of vintage, but still very nice AIS Nikkors my most used lens for handheld doc's last year was ... the plastic 18-55, mainly between 18-35 mm. Would love to have 16 mm on the short end. Optically not great, I know, but I really like the auto-everything features as it allows me to concentrate fully on the action instead of technical stuff - everything sharp (enough) and exposed pretty  ok'ish, even if the lighting changes dramatically during the take, what a gift.
So, in short, IS is a must have. Will have to test some candidates, but the list is quite short, mainly the well known STM zooms.
17-50/2.8, 16-35/4 or of course 18-135 STM.
Did I miss someone?
Are Tamron or Tokina etc. serious contenders for working and reliable face recognation (which becomes really important for me)?
 
 

Maybe saying something obvious, known for a century now... But what makes an image cinematic is the image before it and the image after it. It's the arrangement of those moving parts that works in our brains and eyes... and souls.

If it's anything like other blackmagic products the person will have died of natural causes by the time it's delivered 

I will make a comparison, nikon d800 50mm 1.2@1.8 vs mamiya 645 80 1.9@ 2.8 vs mamiya rz67 90mm 3.5@3.5 which is roughly equivalent. I will use some cheap black and white film unless someone wants to buy me some portra 400 or ektar 100 (sharper) for this crap :P
Btw, the equivalences don't have to be exact, because if the difference is so tiny it could be adressed to some minor equivalence differences, then there is no difference between formats. The fact is, I use 6x7 because I can't take the same picture with the nikon, trust me, I fucking hate developing and scanning neither do I like lugging around a gigantic camera plus lenses and attracting views from people, I don't buy the whole romantic point of view about film, I just enjoy the endresult.

Do the experiment properly and you'll find that the perspective is the same.  Surely you must have heard countless times before that perspective depends only on the subject distance.  This is a truth that you shouldn't ignore.  More precisely, perspective depends on the distance from the subject to the entrance pupil of the lens.  For this reason, the entrance pupil is sometimes called the center of perspective.  I suppose you could call it the "point of the wedge" in your language.  FYI, technically, the entrance pupil is the image of the aperture stop as seen from the front of the lens.  So, in your experiment, just put the entrance pupil of both the 24mm and 36mm lenses at 10 feet from the subject, and the perspective will be precisely the same.  There are some easy techniques for finding the entrance pupil location with an accuracy of about +/-1mm that stitched panorama shooters use all the time - if you need help just ask.
The subject-to-image plane distance is not what matters.  Its the subject-to-entrance pupil distance that does.  So, this notion that full frame will be "further inside of the wedge than in the APS-C format" is just another way of saying:  "oops, I goofed, and didn't keep the subject distance constant".

These two are very different cameras. 
If it's low-end doc/interview/corporate work, C100. 
Narrative/music video/commercials... Ursa Mini 4.6k. Although I'd wait a year for it to mature as there are issues. 
Terra looks brilliant too. 

Nice work Edward.
 

Check it out guys - Red loaned me a Red Weapon.  It was amaing.  For director Anh Vu.

Hi Ebrahim. Agree with wither mercer, but just to have fun, I'll argue you're not over-thinking it enough
Is an image a collection of perfect data points?  If each pixel recorded the color and saturation perfectly do you end up with a perfect image?  
I'll argue that the answer is 'no' because no matter how well a pixel records data there is space between each pixel that does NOT record data.  A digital image is really black canvas populated with color dots that never touch each other.  What this means is that if you image a field of tall grass there will be parts of the small grass blades that, when their light makes its way through the optics, fall on dead space on the sensor.  This is true, AFAIK, with every sensor made and it doesn't matter how high the resolution 1K or 4K.  Obviously, the higher the resolution, the less noticeable this problem.
If a blade of grass "breaks apart" so to speak, between the pixels of your 4K image, downscaling cannot create "data" information that isn't there.  Just like when your image processing system (camera or post) must deal with it (aliasing) with the original image, the downscaler must deal with it when combining the larger set of pixels into a smaller.
The chief difference between all these algorithms, AFAIK, is how many pixels around the hypothetical center pixel the software looks at to determine the best value (though much of it is subjective, some will like one algo, others, another).  Take the blade of grass.  If the algo only look at the pixels above, it would never see the disconnect between the pixel to the left.  An algo that looks at 16 pixels, say, to calculate 1 pixel, can often do it better than 4 pixels because it can "see" more of the image and make a good decision about what to create.
The more pixels the algo looks at, the better, in my experience.  Though, like Mercer says, this isn't a problem that yields significant improvement in most footage.
So my answer to your question is that running your footage through the most sophisticated algorithm before you edit in your NLE should deliver the best results.  Most likely, the NLE will be sluggish if running it real time (which is why you would process it before).
For example, Amaze is a great debayering algorithm, but I doubt most PCs can use it rendering RAW in real time.
Hope this makes sense!
 
 

I just sold the GH4 and upgraded to the C100 Mark II. Aside from not having 4k, Im thrilled with the C100 so far. I won't go on about it here but it's freaking amazing (built in nd, dual slot recording proxies, log profile, 60p, small but high DR files, wifi, xlr,)... ill stop now.

​Canon is still the best user experience as far as the Cx00 line goes. That's worth alot in my opinion. Image-wise Sony is really doing a great job and on the cutting edge.

​I was a colourist for 4 years. If you think the Sony colour is as good as any other camera, great... But it is your opinion, not a fact. I know some of the best colourists in London and they all generally dislike Sony... Yes, you might be able to match, more or less, footage from an F55 with an Alexa... But you will spend more time doing it. Their colour science is not their strong point.

My main concern is colour... I don't care what you say about s-log, luts etc... The colour on the a7s just isn't great. For cool colours, it is nice... For natural or warm colours it is a pain

I know people like to poke fun at Canon due to their seemingly underwhelming specs (myself included at times!) but for what its worth, during my 3 months or so with an A7s I found it slow, clunky, unreliable (crashed occasionally) and the battery life was of course terrible. I was always thinking about the camera. During my 6 months or so with a c100, the opposite was definitely true. Theres something to be said for cameras that "just work" and Canon definitely has that figured out.  
Hoping the a7rII brings an improvement in this area as it looks like a slick camera! 

I got a bit inspired by Ed and decided to make a test in order to answer a few questions and was hoping for some help.
What I'm trying to answer is what type of images appeal to what type of people online.
Therefor I'm posting this on various forums and ask my friends and such in order to get everything from fellow producers, to enthusiasts, pro shooters and all the way to people that couldn't care less about cameras.
As a bonus I'm looking to see what type of people notice artifacts, what people think about different grades, lights, movement and so on.
So in Part 1
I'm simply recording a selfie while I'm chewing gum (yes its boring like nothing else).
If you feel like helping out I would appreciate it.
To clarify, I rather know which you liked best in each scene/look than which one you liked best over all.
I will post the result from the votes here in a few days or so.
Thanks, Mattias
 

​Hi Ebrahim:
It's certainly possible to do a 1-stop reducer from medium format to 24x36mm mirrorless, and likely a bit more than 1-stop.  However, the real question is "why"?  After all, if you offered a device that could convert an 80mm f/2.8 lens to a 56mm f/2.0 lens I think most people would not get very excited.  Simply put, medium format optics are too conservative in their specs, and IMO you're better off purchasing native or adapted 35mm SLR optics for the A7.