majoraxis

AFX Update #14 can be read here:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/afx-autofocus-adapter#/updates/all
My understanding is that all shippable shipments will be collected by the designated shipper by April 21, 2021, except for the few orders that need to have clarification on their shipping information.
If you are an AFX campaign contributor and  have not received a sipping notification, you may wish to check the link above for instructions.
 
@BTM_Pix Thank you for all of your hard work in making this happen!
It is obvious that you are not only an extremely talented designer, prodigy developer and engineering genius, but also a person of integrity, commitment and follow through.
I am glad I invested in AFX and look forward to supporting future CDA-TEK product releases.
Thank you for making my filmmaking technology dreams a reality!
Mark

Waiting for mine, on the way! (E :- )

AFX Update #14 can be read here:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/afx-autofocus-adapter#/updates/all
My understanding is that all shippable shipments will be collected by the designated shipper by April 21, 2021, except for the few orders that need to have clarification on their shipping information.
If you are an AFX campaign contributor and  have not received a sipping notification, you may wish to check the link above for instructions.
 
@BTM_Pix Thank you for all of your hard work in making this happen!
It is obvious that you are not only an extremely talented designer, prodigy developer and engineering genius, but also a person of integrity, commitment and follow through.
I am glad I invested in AFX and look forward to supporting future CDA-TEK product releases.
Thank you for making my filmmaking technology dreams a reality!
Mark

So excited that my AFX showed up today in the US! Just having trouble pairing my BMPCC 4K.🤔 Any tips?

Received notice they are shipping now. Very excited 

I feel perhaps 1 to 4 is only another generation away, perhaps? (a Z Cam E3-M4??)

5. they've already got a touch screen display option
6. 4K I reckon is plenty:
 

The GH5S sensor could already do that speed. 

In fact the Z Cam E2-M4 ("same" sensor) does 4K 160fps 10bit internal!

Wow Panasonic really nailed colour back then. When I look at this and the colour from the 5Dmkii I have to wonder what the hell happened since then? Maybe my negative perception of colour in consumer cams 2014-2020ish mostly comes from Sony dominance and the pandora's box of giving S-Log to the masses.

You are correct, sir.
In another test, another youtuber showed a lot of non-photographers lots of photos, some with a very  shallow depth of field, and some with "normal" depth of field, and overwhelmingly the people preferred the photos with MORE depth of field over the photos with shallow depth of field. 
 
So there we have it.
6K and 8K Resolution??? 
Overrated.
Straight out of camera colors???
Overrated.
Super shallow depth of field (aka, Cinematic Look)???
Overrated.
Oh, and then there is the video by Jordan Drake where he says he has been "living in denial" or something like that because he shot a video and purposely didn't use the 180-degree shutter rule, and no one seemed to notice. (Everyone seemed to notice instead their use of gee-whiz transitions and jump cuts.)

For the Tom Antos tests, I had my prefered list as pretty similar to what everyone else had (except switch around alexa and Red)
1) Ursa Mini Pro
2) BMPCC 6K
3) Red
4) Arri
Mind you, I was looking primarily at skin tones.
Maybe I am losing my mind, but the Arri skin tones just looked so green in that test.

@Sage

any progress with the Z-cam?

Not sure if it's placebo or something in the compression used by consumer cameras these days but I definitely perceive a certain flatness and lack of colour density in many hybrid cameras and camcorders these days, and the common factor in most of them is Sony sensors. Out of all the consumer brands, Canon seems to stand out as being an exception in that regard. They seem to be capable of producing more rich tones straight out of the camera.
I was also never that into the colour from the BMPCC4k with it's Sony sensor, compared to the Ursa image.
It's been said many times on this forum, but I do wish manufacturers would focus less on 8k and more on getting colour right, after all Arri has been showing how to do it right for a decade now!

Yes, as he says in the video, people are just looking at that ONE number to make easy choice as to which camera is better. Maybe this is what separates a real cinematographer from wannabes. The image is what counts, not the megapixels (after you get to the "accepted" amount of detail threshold).

It goes above your budget but I just switched from the Blackmagic Micro to the Panasonic G9. In 4K the Ex Tele Crop mode gives you a 2.8x crop, very close to the 2.88x crop of the original Pocket and Micro. I got one used with Vlog already installed for $900. I'm very thrilled by this camera. You can get a 4K s16 without all the horrible moire and IR pollution. With Vlog and the Panasonic Vlog lut I'm getting great color and dynamic range. Plus with a focal reducer I have s35, and of course the native MFT sensor crop as well. And I can still use all my c-mount lenses. And I have IBIS and good battery life, and more importantly, I don't have to rig it up to make it more usable. A friend of mine still has a Micro, so I may be doing a side by side test soon.

Worth pointing out that f8 or at most f11 is as high as you should go, otherwise you start running into diffraction softening on that small sensor. I lost a lot of footage when I was first starting out with the original BMPCC because I shot it at f16 and didn't realize the image would be affected so badly by diffraction; I've seen it at f11 as well but not as badly. ND filters are essential to ensure you don't have to stop down too much. There's a good tutorial on diffraction and sensor size at https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm

The truth...
For the under $700 camera price range, only the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5k and the Micro Studio Camera look like the Pocket Cinema Camera.
Making your Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera work the way you want it to...
If you keep your BMPCC, add an AFX audio focus system ($415) when for sale again and Tilta Nucleus Nano motor ($150).
If you are in the market for a top of the line gimbal, fly your BMPCC on a Ronin RS2 Pro Combo ($999) and add the DJI 3D auto focus system ($169).
For your price range and feature requirements (mostly)...
You can also look at the Panasonic G9, which goes as low as $700 used on ebay, though they are more likely to be $800.  This will get you a 10 bit depth and 4:2:2 color rendering, but you will not have the highlight roll off, dynamic range or color density of the Blackmagic Fairchild sensor.
 
 
 

I haven't been able to upgrade my A7s earlier as I planned, but now I am almost there. I need for some advice.
Currently I am employed as a content creator (with a salary so I cannot add equipment expenses/rental) and on the side I am freelancing, doing low budget web commercials and corporate videos. I have been filming for a while a personal project- documentary with my a7s, but there is still more to film and I have plans for more docs for broadcast and hopefully a short film soon. I know Netflix wants 4K but my last project which was sold on several networks was shot on good old 5dmkii. 
My budget is around €4000 but I haven't counted the need for lenses. I have canon EF 16-35, 24-105, 70-200, and a couple of primes as well a cheap sony zoom.
I have been trying to decide between the following: a7iii (yes an upgrade for me), a7siii/fx3 or to stretch my budget (go on credit) and go for the c70 or the fx6.
It seems that in order to have decent colours from Sony I'd need to get at least the a7siii, but still I prefer canon colours. Many people bash the c70 for the autofocus, but it seems to me to be working fine. So I almost decided for the c70, which is a stretch for me, but then I figured I'd need to sell all my lenses and get rf mount ones, which seem quite expensive or use an adapter which I don't know how it will affect the still not so great AF of the C70.
And then I had this insight. I don't really need the 4k. Just great colours, reliability, preferably audio inputs, and decent AF -something that dual pixel provides. So why not get a c100 mk ii for €2500?  It is way within reach and I have great glass to mount natively to it instead of spending more on new lenses. It would cost around €6000 to get both the C70 and the adapter!
What do you think about all this. Can you share some ideas? Please ask me if you need any clarification.
 
many thanks!
 
 

Netflix buys non-4K stuff often, and even the stuff they commission is frequently shot on <4K cameras, including 2K Alexas.
Think about image quality not pixel quantity.
To paraphrase a quote from another industry: "If the pixels are sh*t, why would I be happy that there are 4 times more of them?".

C100 mk2 is a great camera. Really good high ISO performance, nice downsampled HD, and very nice Canon color. Plus you get internal ND's and XLR inputs which are quite amazing to have. Also it has great battery life. It makes sense as you won't be able to utilize Sony's amazing auto focus as well using EF lenses. 

Honestly for me the two most important features on a camera are lowlight performance and color science and XLR inputs. I think you'll be making a great choice. 

You're probably a bit more experienced with this sort of thing. The sensor on the pocket is tiny, so at F5.6 or F8, you should have no problem zone focusing and getting really good results. If you want to shoot at F2 while walking backwards and maintaining focus, there are certainly better gimbals and cameras. 
I am more speaking to the fact that the gimbal is tiny, weighs next to nothing, takes me 1 minute to balance, and the batteries last forever. The Ronin is twice the size and more than twice the price.

I haven't heard this talked about much, so a couple of follow-ups if I may:
In Resolve, if someone does a CST to Linear, then adjusts WB, then CST back from Linear, which tool should be used for that WB adjustment?  I'm guessing it should be Offset?  The tools in Resolve all work in different gamma curves so I'm curious which one will work properly in Linear In Resolve 17, they have changed the way the Temp and Tint sliders work so they now work correctly.  I saw this mentioned in passing in the middle of a colourists video, but the release notes don't say what they did, or why it's now correct, and no-one seems to be talking about it.  The colourist suggested that they used to be wrong and created artefacts, and it sounded like they might now work in Linear without you having to do it manually.  Any ideas?

@kye
1. White balance is just linear gain on R G and B channels. I don't know the formulas for deriving Kelvin and Tint values. So after CST to linear, you could adjust gain values until it "looks right" and it should be correct though you don't know the Kelvin/Tint values--(if you're editing footage that doesn't have the original values in metadata, that wouldn't be possible anyway). Personally, I've found Resolve's WB values work as expected after a CST to linear. No idea if it's mathematically sound as proper linear gain at that point, but I did some basic tests comparing to in camera WB and it looked right to me. But now that I have an M4, I can just use WB sliders on the plugin and save some steps in the node graph as well.
2. I haven't heard that and am not sure how/if it changed. I've barely touched a physical camera since Covid broke out, so my Resolve 17 use has been solely for editing animations.

I wanted to add that I am now using the Z CAM Color Correction OFX plugin for Resolve, which allows me to adjust the exposure and transform it to look like REC709.  I assume inside of the plugin, when you change the exposure, it applies the correct LUT based on the new exposure you set.  This fixes what I did not like about using LUTs, which is having them not matched correctly to the exposure and look bad in the under exposed or near over exposed areas.
The Z Cam Color Correction OFX plugin for Resolve as well as a version for FCPX, Z Cam LUTs and ZRAW plugin for Adobe Premiere and Scratch are available here: https://www.z-cam.com/lut/

@majoraxisJust noting for those curious... The color plugin doesn't use LUT's, it uses color transforms. The nice part is it transforms to linear color before applying your adjustment, and then out to whatever you specify. So the white balance and exposure adjustments are actually correct, instead of incorrectly applied to non-linear data. Also by not using LUTs, it has none of the resolution or clipping problems that they would bring. The color plugin is another great reason to use Z Cam--outside of using Blackmagic color in Blackmagic's software, it's one of the best ways to maintain proper color management.
 
(Pro-tip: for any footage, convert to linear for WB adjustments! It's the reason why "raw allows WB adjustments"... really being Raw has nothing to do with it, it's just that it's linear so it's mathematically correct. That and no compression artifacts, in the case of lossless raw.)

Can’t wait for their next gen camera. Literally only need to sort out 2 issues:
- External monitoring: lag, soft image, SDI-out in body.
- E-Mount that doesn’t suck. Viltrox nerfed the first iteration.