Grimor

Another year in this great community.
This is my small and modest Christmas card (g80 + leica 12-60):
Greetings to all

I did the film festival / film competition circuit for a while and my takeaway was this.
Content is the only thing that matters.
I've seen barely acceptable videos with out-of-focus shots, shots where the camera got bumped, clipped dialogue, noisy dialogue, car sounds making it difficult to hear people, overexposed shots, and various other problems win competitions outright because they interviewed old people and got them to talk about sex and it was hilarious.  I've seen films win best edit when the editing was clunky because the story was good, etc.
Content is the only thing that matters.
Content is the only thing that matters, content is the only thing that matters...  content is the only thing that matters.

In terms of feelings, the second one of these two makes me feel like you either included it by mistake or you need to sort out that focus peaking ?

Ah yes, the old 'hit it with a hammer' test.
From memory, most lenses do quite poorly with that one...

Indeed @leslie - being a bit more sceptical on who is posting is definitely an up-side.
Plus I always look forward to @BTM_Pix somehow working in a can of processed ham into the thread.  That mans creativity knows no bounds!  

Glory to the G6!!! 

1. Set taking lens out of focus where your subject is and wide open to get nice bokeh. 
2. Make a shiny spot on your subject focus plane so you see the bokeh on the subject. 
3. Turn scope both sides and see how the shape of bokeh change. You need a middle point where bokeh is perfectly round. 
7. Now focus your taking lens as usual. 
8. Remove the shiny spot if you don't want it on the shoot

I remember a master trick I learned from a YT channel (I think it was Erik Ivar Persson) for perfect dual focus on the fly:
If we want to focus on a subject, say 3 meters away, we will put the lens taking lens completely wrong, in this case to infinity in order to get a pronounced bokeh on the subject. I remember lighting a bright object at that point of the subject (keys with a flashlight) and getting the bokeh at the desired focus distance. At that time I played with the anamorphic focus and that bokeh changed from vertical to horizontal, passing through a small intermediate point that was round. That is the desired focus point of the anamorphic block. Once in it, we corrected the taking as if it were single focus. It is an easy and fast method that helped me a lot.
Dou you remember this anamorphic short? What's happened with his channel? 

Well the UK government banning freedom of movement next month will take care of that though, to be fair, if you've ever seen the elderly nude Brits playing beach volleyball there then some of their body parts are enjoying waaaay too much freedom of movement anyway  

While long tracking shots are always incredible, and difficult to physically pull off, here's a shot that is amazing for the way it affects the story. (Start at 3:14 in case the link doesn't automatically).
What I love about this is that there's no complex choreography or VFX, it would be almost trivial to shoot. It's not even a particularly striking composition. Yet this completely ordinary shot both completes Cobb's emotional journey, and simultaneously asks the biggest question of the film to leave an otherwise closed ending completely open. It's worth noting that unlike franchise films, this open ending has no room for a sequel.
If we disregard the cut in to Michael Caine, the shot really begins at 3:06, which makes this the only shot where Cobb is seen together with his children, and also the only shot where it is unclear whether he's in the real world.
 

Fascinating to see how little there was surrounding Vera in those days compared to how it is today.
It looks as naked as the people who now stroll around the beaches there !

r/SneakyBackgroundFeet

Camera test as excuse:
?

I've already posted Alex Proyas' Youtube channel in the Youtube channel thread, but I reckon this latest development deserves its own shout out. Will be very interesting to watch this unfold. It also seems apparent he's going to be talking a lot about cameras, Blackmagic in particular. 
 

Are you Satanic? Yes Sir, and from Carabanchel!! ?

What about this one? 
We are better community than 1500$ (+65$shipping) red isco

My vote is for GH2 and Helios challenge!! 

A commercial for the craft-beer brand, Patanel. A Local brand deeply rooted in the Carabanchel district.

Shot on Gh5s (minus a gopro timelapse)
 

Yeah this guy rocks.
 

Camera test as excuse:
?

That works ? (it seems to need a couple of cycles of handshake and connect button pressing though). Once it's connected, the camera LCD will occasionally say it's not connected to the app, but it carries on working OK i.e. accepting commands from the app.
Basically, on the G9 it looks like the 'mov' equivalents of the 'mp4' settings work, so you can have LPCM audio instead of AAC in the files. Also some high bitrate .mov versions of 1080p work e.g. 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps (but 72 Mbps locked up the camera - had to remove the battery...).
Tried various 10bit, cinema 4k and anamorphic 4k settings - mostly they are ignored when you send them (or they select an AVCHD mode). In one case it did record a file (and Mediainfo said it was 10 bit 4:2:2 AVC1) but the video was just black. So conclusion so far is that the G9 won't do 10 bit, c4k or a4k.

Turn this:

Into this!

I entered two terrible quality cameras in the $200 camera challenge and somehow didn't come last, so here's what I learned.  In case it's useful to someone
Shooting:
Low quality cameras have poor codecs and low bitrates, which typically have trouble with a lot of movement.  Therefore I used a tripod for every shot instead of hand-holding.  This also gives you more options for temporal NR in post too. Go for the 180 shutter by either using an ND or by simply filming in low light.  How can you tell if it's 180 shutter?  Wave your hand in front of it and see how streaky it is.  or alternatively, if your camera is very low resolution and subjects aren't moving too much, then the sheer size of the pixels will completely obscure whatever shutter angle you have!  Win!! In post:
Edit in your desired output resolution, not the one you shot in..  dodgy 4K image?  Output in 8K today! Think about converting to black and white.  This gives you 4 times the effective resolution!! Camera only shoots 30p?  Excellent - conform to 24p in post and get slow motion for free!!  Most NLEs can slow audio slightly too, so if it works for the vibe of your project then go with it. Digital compression is awful and a give-away you're not shooting RAW or film, so is over-sharpening that you can't turn off.  Therefore, blur the image in post.  You might want to consider blurring only the edges of things, and you should experiment with blur size and blur strength too.  I typically find a sharp diagonal line and blur until it looks like a straight line instead of a jaggy digital mess. Use noise reduction, both spatial and temporal.  It will make the image blurry, but that's also what you want because of above, so go nuts.  The image might look smooth, but we'll add grain later, so don't worry about it. My footage had a bunch of compression artefacts that flickered on and off on each alternate frame and was very distracting (and awful).  De-flicker plugins can work wonders.  Just play with the types and presets until it's gone. Colour will probably be awful, so either make it black and white (which also gets around the awful coloured fringing) or desaturate heavily.  You can also do heavy chroma NR to get rid of colour flickering.  Also feel free to use advanced colour controls such as Hue vs Hue to get rid of nasty colours, or use masks to selectively desaturate colours you don't like. Get rid of digital looking clipped highlights by controlling and artificial highlight rolloff via curves.  Someone complimented me on the highlight rolloff, which was totally created in post. Use music, pick your shots well, and try and distract from IQ by using content, composition, lighting, and other 'tricks' ??? Can't afford a nice vintage lens or camera has a fixed lens?  Add halation by masking only the brightest parts of the image, adding a big blur, then put over the top of the image at a low opacity. Add grain to finish it off.  Film has grain and film is awesome, so therefore....  plus, YT kills grain and will put heavy bands on smooth areas so you really should add some.  I recommend doing a grain test video with different strengths so you can see what YT does it various amounts of it.  It takes more than you think to show up in YT, a LOT more. Here is the curve that gives that highlight rolloff and deep shadows....

Here's another before/after image.


and here's my reveal post with the final and SOOC videos:
Hopefully that's useful to someone!  Feel free to ask questions  
and I still think I can make a P4K look like a BMMCC or BMPCCv1 so if you have both and can shoot something with both then let me know.....

Do not forget your spy kit! 

How much more technical?  hahahaha..  just wait!
I liked your video - it looked vintage in both the colours as well as lens.  Interestingly I didn't spot the Helios despite having done lots of lens comparisons and owning two of them myself!
Great stuff!
You absolutely win my vote for Most Off The Wall Choice!!
I am going to claim that I had the thought of a webcam running to a laptop, but not with an anamorphic adapter!  and of course, I only thought about it, you did it, so big credit to you!
If only you'd pummelled the image to death in Resolve like I did!!
You did well on the IQ - fourth place well earned!  Plus you were the only person to include a Dalek, so special bonus points for that!!
I voted for you in the IQ category - excellent choice.  This has great IQ, nice colours and contrast, and getting that SOOC is impressive!
Nice!!  These old cameras are still pretty good!
I like it!
Of course, I don't own a GH2 and wouldn't buy one so would keep my current strategy of using the cheapest camera on ebay and grading it within an inch of its life!
I am hatching plans for how we can do this again in some way.  I have an action camera I don't want, so maybe the rule will be "everyone must enter this competition because if you don't I'll mail you this action camera" ???