M Carter

I'm amazed that not one response here has included the word "impedance". Generally, (in the realm of microphones) XLR gear is expecting a low impedance signal; and mini-plug gear is expecting a high impedance signal. I'd at least get a barrel-style XLR to 1/4 transformer adapter, and then add a 1/4 to 1/8 (though these days someone may make an XLR to 1/8?). The other issue is that those three pins each do something. Most camera-in jacks are TR (tip ring) for a mono input, or TRS (tip ring sleeve, three conducters) for a stereo input. I believe most DSLRs have a stereo mic input, but could be mistaken? So you have the potential for grounding problems as well.

The design of the XLR connector is "purely for the stability of the connection" - it's pretty robust - but most XLR mics - and any you'd really want to use on-set - will be XLRs that are using the three pins to carry the standard low impedance signal. You can do low impedance with any three-conducter setup (1/4 TRS is popular) but mics for on-set audio (ecluding lavs) will use the full-sized XLR, will require phantom power, and will be low-z.

Speaking of phantom power - some mics have an internal battery, but if not, you're limited to using dynamic mics which generally aren't used for film sound for a host of reasons.

There's another current thread here dealing with this exact subject. Unless this is just a hobby for the OP, I'd say at the very least get a decent preamp that converts the XLR input to a preamped 1/8 output. And for probably the same money, you could get, say, a Tascam DR60D ($169 if you shop around, and showing up used all over), which has phantom power, mic power, meters, headphone and camera out level controls, minus 6DB safety tracks, low cut, a limiter, slate tone, etc. Far as I know it's about the best budget solution to beginner's audio needs, and the adjustable camera out allows you to stage your gain and at least try to get a clean and strong signal to the camera if you don't want to synch in post (and still have a nice clean recorder track if the camera audio isn't optimal). I imagine it would really up the quality of something like a blade as well.

I know some of the monitor/recorders have audio ins and meters, but you're missing a lot of really necessary features - features that can really save your butt - and you're not talking investing thousand of bucks to get those features. If you're planning to charge money, I'd really recommend a pro solution, even something entry level like the DR - it will outlive your next ten cameras.

If you're indoors, you may have better and more natural sound with a hyper cardioid than a shotgun. Thing is, there aren't a lot of hypers out there.

A budget favorite is the Oktava, but do some research and don't get a counterfeit mic, and learn about their handling issues. The At 4053b is the best "budget" value I'm aware of - but it's six hundred bucks. But if you have a studio, they're fantastic instrument mics as well and great for live sound.

I've gotten good sound when testing a pencil condenser (I have an ADK SD) but I find the 4053 to be pretty amazing for detail and sparkle and presence - and off-axis rejection with a decent sweet spot. If you have a small di condenser, test it against the shotgun in your shooting environment. 

Go to DVXuser.com and poke around - they have one of the best audio-for-picture forums on the net.

I'm still kind of amazed that Rode or someone doesn't do a $300-range hyper - maybe because newbies think any mic used to record audio on set is a "shotgun"? (Or maybe someone does, I haven't seen one).

And an edit: looking at your links, you have two on-camera mount mics and one shotgun. I'd skip anything on-camera unless you're shooting events or just need sound to synch in post. You really want to get your mic as close to the talent as humanly possible. Unless you're shooting everyone with a 20mm and you're right in their faces, you need something off-camera.

And the Rode blimp is really a very nice piece of gear, well designed and a great value for the money.

2 Questions on the micro - 

Is an IR cut totally necessary, or only when doing heavier ND? And at what level of ND does the need for IR come up?

Does the pocket-specific speedbooster work well on the micro, or are there mounting issues? I'd really want to maximize my FOV with that little sensor.

Still very interested in this, particularly for shooting outdoors.

If you need color accuracy, look for a monitor you can calibrate. Even a screen with blue-only will be a big step up in color if the adjustments let you get it close. If you're shooting DSLRs, you'll need a way to get clean bars into the thing via HDMI (by "clean" I mean they bypass computer color settings and send the edit window of your NLE out via HDMI) - but there are pretty affordable solutions like the Intensity card, so you can render up some bars in your NLE and adjust the screen. This is handy for editing as well - bolt a magic arm to your desk and use your on-camera screen to check color when editing.

17 hours ago, sandro said:

I never tried zooming with a non Samsung lens since I don't have one but I don't see why it would do it...

As I posted earlier, no exposure shifts with a constant-aperture Nikkor zoom on the NX1.

2 hours ago, sandro said:

That would explain it.

Would also explain not seeing the shift with a non-samsung zoom on the camera, if the camera - even on manual - is adjusting exposure (or adjusting the iris??) due to data it's getting from the lens. Seems odd to me, but the NX1 is a very computer-heavy camera.

This subject gets weirder by the page...

If you don't get any answers - see if you can track down the user manual. Image flip is pretty common. (I know, you'll need an owner or a good review for the other info.)

A cable that just transfers the wiring scheme to a different jack - there's no transformer in line for starters so the impedance won't change, which should give you lots of problems and potentially ground or shielding trouble. If you're talking a TR 1/8 or  TRS 1/8, you'll get into issue of stereo mics (seen a lot of cheap TRS mini stereo stuff) vs mono vs. is-it-grounded and shielded and so on. There are simply too many variables to give a 100% concrete answer. The knee-jerk answer will be "always, going from XLR to 1/8 with no transformer will drop your quality" - but will you hear it? I've had really different results when plugging a high-quality XLR, phantom powered mic into a recorder, and running the camera out (1/8 TR) to my camera in. Sometimes it's prefect, sometimes it's poor. And that's using a proper signal chain. Everything in the chain is a variable, and you need to test it as you'll use it for a definitive answer.

Your post said you're using "high quality" XLR mics, but you don't mention how you're powering them. Internal battery, phantom power box, or are you using dynamic mics? I can't offhand think of a mic considered "quality" for audio on set that doesn't need power of some sort.

If you're hiring audio guys, do a test with their gear sometime. There's no "obvious" reason you can't test something. 

"I've been in the habit of using XLR microphones lately on Zooms h1s… I am using lots of high quality XLR microphones… I even use XLRs on Canon/Nikon/Panny cameras" - I guess I missed what is "pretty clear" about being unable to test it. But if you want a definitive answer, find a way to test the exact chain you're writing about.

I'll now edit my original reply to "ninety ONE percent"… seriously, not trying to be an ass, there's only one answer and you'll be lucky if someone here can (A) take a wild guess and know exactly the signal chain you're talking about, and (B) have all that same gear, and ( C ) run an A/B test for you. From the list of gear you posted, seems like you have everything you need. (My wild guess: get - at the very least - a preamp made for phantom powering XLR mics and sending them out through a mini TS or TRS and you should hear a noticeable difference - that's kind of the bare minimum that an audio professional would suggest. But for not much more money you can get a Tascam DR60D which has all that and a really good recorder with limiter, bass cut, and -6DB safety tracks as well).

I think the end result would be: you'd become a world-class black & white framer. But you'd still have the same problems when you frame in color.

Framing is a massive part of composition. And color is a massive part of composition.

Here's a super-secret-weapon for all things visual in media - one of the best investments you can make in learning. And hey - it's juts a book, not a college course.

I find this really bizarre. So Samsung still has the engineers that know the firmware. Wish we could find 'em.

2 hours ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

I've been in the habit of using XLR microphones lately on Zooms h1s, I never bought the h4n because I TESTed both the h1 and h4n back in the day and the h1 had betteer sound quality, so  I gave up the h4 XLR inputs and got 4 H1s, now I am using lots of high quality XLR microphones and would like to know: Do XLR-to-3.5mm adapters affect/lose sound quality? They've been working great for me , very well built and strong adapters, I even use XLRs on Canon/Nikon/Panny cameras and satisfied, but can't help wondering if I AM losing quality via using these adapters. 

Just like about 80% of the questions posted here - test it and let us know.

Amazing value in a hyper mic - AT4053b. Yes, it's $600 new, but it's the last mic I'll buy other than specialty needs. It's just simply luscious. Sparkly highs, as much bass as you'd desire for voices, a really great, silky, crisp and "present" sound. Sounds great in a blimp, too (though i often remove the front cell if possible). if you ever see one used for a good deal, don't think twice. Evey time I mix interviews I think "holy crap this sounds great".

OST lavs are pretty spectacular values as well. I got a side-address (801?) which has a high-end bump and use it for hiding mics. Works great in the point of a shirt collar. All three of his mics are pretty highly regarded.

Favorite purchase of 2016? XLR barrel-style adapter that fits my lavs (sennhesier screw-on mini) and converts phantom power to mic power, and converts the mic signal to a balanced signal for a standard XLR cable. Makes it easy to use a lav when you don't actually need wireless but need a lav. Also make me use the lav more often, even when I have a mic on a stand, just to have a 2nd source to play with.

"zooming out will increase the amount of light on the sensor" - I think that's only a function of the setting and what's in the frame. Have you tested against a white wall that's evenly lit?

I'd assume zooming out - or dollying out quickly, while shooting, say a small window in a dark room - that as the frame fills more and more with the dark wall and the bright window gets smaller, you'll perceive an exposure shift since the frame is getting larger and displaying a higher ratio of dark-to-light. It would be easy to test a zoom vs. a move - for instance stick a gray card on a large black card - and eye dropper the center at various focal lengths and distances. The center **should** stay the same RGB value.

I've seen this happen on variable-aperture zooms, just the nature of the beast; and though I haven't tested specifically for it, I haven't noticed it using a constant aperture Nikkor zoom on the NX1. (and that Samsung S is a variable aperture zoom..., just not at the cheap level).

I had expected that when using a variable lens - say a 3.5 - 5.6 18-35 Nikkor - that if I stopped down to 5.6, the lens would stay 5.6 for the entire zoom range. But that wasn't the case with a variable aperture Nikkor for me - I saw very visible exposure changes. Not seeing them with, say, the 28-70 2.8, but again, haven't really tested it.

Man, the Red One has made some pretty footage - but I wouldn't spend much more than for a high-end DSLR setup for one - that's just me, but if at some point it needs some repair and there's no parts or service, you're stuck. And that windowed sensor is crazy limiting in many scenarios.

The "investing in a camera" is a personal thing too. I bought a Panasonic Ac-130 like 6 or 7 years ago (roght when it came out) for an overseas gig. It paid for itself in one weekend. I still use the damn thing when a client says "can you shoot this big event/party/whatever" (I just don't say no to a good client, and hey, my day rate to go shoot a company picnic or ribbon cutting? yeah.). And every time, I think "I forgot how kinda badass this thing is". You get every shot, no dicking around. For a small-chip camera, the footage just looks pretty as hell. Who'd-a-thought that after all these years and 4K and full-frame and 1.8 glass and so on? So yes, it was an insanely good "investment" for $4k or so.

But for the cash you intend to spend - if you just can't rent - I'd stay as modern as possible. 4K is great - for some things. After buying 8 terrabytes of drives and still running out of space, I only use 4K for interviews or reframing and for effects work. But I wouldn't give it up, it's kinda life-changing. I'd keep that on your list. But do you need raw and gobs of DR right now? Are you shooting a lot of well-paying gigs or can you wait a year and get by with something and see what comes to market without a big compromise?

If you have time, I'd see how the Ursa mini matures - BM is notorious for firmware making the stuff useable. On paper the thing looks awesome, and it may mature into something great. (And have you seen the NX1 vs ursa mini comparisons? Gulp…) There's no perfect system out there. 

On May 10, 2016 at 2:56 PM, andrgl said:

You sure you worked with Kinos? Maybe it's been a while and you've forgotten. The mounting plate for their fixtures is literally a baby plate. I mean shit, I even own hinged and 90' plates that look identical to the kino mounts.

Ahh, remedial reading comprehension, I got ya - but this text was actually in that post: "I've rented Kinos but not worth the $$ to own for me, when I can get 4 quads with real, steel yokes for the same price" was, umm, referring to the crap Kino yokes vs. the for-real Chinese yokes, which work just fine. That said, Kino's aren't a home-depot office fixture or whatever - nobody will give you the stinkeye showing up with them.

I don't have weight problems with the quads - a ton of my work is the "CEO interview" and I bring one quad, in the same case as a 400 HMI softbox. Half the time that guy's in a corner office that's all windows and I grab an HMI par from the truck. Yes, 4 duals and 2 quads to light a 20' greenscreen is heavy, but that's a planned studio gig with plenty of help, and a shit-ton more gear than just the biax. You want heavy? Come borrow my space-light rig and ballasts...

I'm glad you're blazing fresh new lighting trails via home depot and meant no offense pointing out that for the same cash, you can get something a little less spit-and-duct tape (and a lot more lumens, too). And I'm sure a good DP can get booked for a gig, show up with a bunch of hardware-store DIY - hell, the client's not likely to just cancel outright - and potentially have the client say "wow, that actually looks really pretty". Hell, tell 'em you've designed a revolutionary new light that isn't available yet. Whatever works, but it's a tough market out there. I had to tell a boom op to stop showing up to corporate gigs in a biker jacket… he was like "but it's my favorite jacket"… just looked kinda weird.

I have a couple quads and a bunch of duals. The duals are mainly used for green screens or filling in something when I need a small light. I do several interviews with the quads every month. They're cheap and easy to pack and a lot easier to deal with than my HMIs for normal room-light scenarios and tight spaces. I get great skin with the things. It's 400 or 575 HMI when the setting is brighter, but I'm always glad when a quad will do the job.

Clients have been paying for shoots with Biax kinos for how many years now? I've rented Kinos but not worth the $$ to own for me, when I can get 4 quads with real, steel yokes for the same price. I shoot for mid-sized media agencies and shoot directly for a couple national brands (food/beverage and retail) and they always pay me.

I really have trouble seeing a client not laughing their asses off when they see a home depot rig with a baby nail plate stuck to it myself. Probably looks great with a PVC-pipe shoulder mount though - to each their own.

8 hours ago, Axel said:

ProRes is a flavour of mpeg2, a very old codec that is not very intelligent/effective in terms of compression. H.264 allows for much smaller file sizes to store the same quality. More so H265. But these codecs fall apart very quickly once you change anything. For delivery, i.e. to upload to Youtube or to stream for broadcast, they may be better. But they are not good for editing, let alone grading or compositing.

I don't think anyone thinks of ProRes as a delivery codec. It may not be the most efficient codec around as far as file size, but I assume it's striking a compromise between file size and efficiency. And it's crazy efficient in the NLE workflow - you can very easily edit 1080 on a pre-intel PPC mac all day.

If it's news to anyone that prores is an editing codec and H264 is a delivery codec, they probably have some studying to do. (And yes, I'm aware people edit with H264, but I don't think it's optimal).

5 hours ago, richg101 said:

I kinda hope they don;t get too easy to acquire.  The more there are, the more they'll be willing to knock down prices and make rental for crap jobs possible.  nothing worse than seeing a golden standard used for menial projects. like when a creative director or dp suggests shooting a walmart advert in anamorphic..  it undermines everything and removes the 'special' option that should only be made available to the true high end jobs like features.

Seriously? Do you think a crap job using high-end gear makes everything else less "special"?

Here's an amazing idea - it's not about the gear. The only way to make a WalMart spot "special" is with great concept, writing, talent, lighting, shooting and editing. 

Another shocking concept: A crap job shot on an Alexa 65 will still look like crap.

A stunning and radical suggestion: amazing and moving stories have been made with really low-end gear, few lights, and tiny crews.

A soul-shattering observation: very few people can discuss at length the cameras and lenses used for "Citizen Kane", "2001", and… well, you get the idea (sheesh, I hope anyway).

An intriguing question: Can you tell me, off the top of your head, the gear used by Wong Kar-wai to shoot "2046"? Does it even matter? (It's, umm, really damn gorgeous if you haven't seen it).

And finally, an earth-shaking idea: many "true high end jobs like features" are crap, even when shot with amazing gear.

I would sit down in a dark room and ponder those ideas and see if they make any sort of sense.

You'd be amazed at how many 4-bank and 6-bank biax Kino knockoffs are out there for $200 or less...

On May 6, 2016 at 0:14 PM, wolf33d said:

Yep but honestly I do not shoot video with ND anymore, it is a hassle for nothing. I think you can achieve great look without the 180 rule. 
Only interest for me in ND for video is to shoot at 1.4 in daylight which I have to agree is a pain on this lens. Other than this, I happily shoot at 1/500s if I need to, with a great look out of it. Guys like Brandon Lee and so on do not use NDs either. Its a pain in travel, and something to always look after (with focus, aperture, ...) 

The lack of ND for a 1.4 lens though.... limits the lens mainly to low light use where it should perform top. 

The "180 - rule" has nothing to do with shutter speed. It's about the visual arc of the setting. It's a framing and blocking and camera-movement convention, not a frame-rate or shutter speed rule.

There are these things called "matte boxes" that allow you to set ND for whatever lens you have, and still be in complete control of f-stop and shutter speed. And they don't rely on "variable ND" (which isn't ND at all but stacked polarizers - the "amateur hour" of image control).

But go ahead and shoot everything at 1/500th and F22 and stack some polarizers on it for good measure. If someone can't see the difference between 1/48th and 1/500th, they probably can't tell the difference between polarizers and ND anyway.

Off my soapbox. (And when you get serious about this, get a matte box and a few 4x4 ND's. They're really very manageable. I still can't imagine Roger Deakins saying "I need to soften up this background - bring me two polarizers, please".)

18 minutes ago, Jeroen de Cloe said:

This could be a solution for mounting ND filters on this lens:
http://www.newsshooter.com/2015/12/21/nisi-make-a-filter-solution-for-the-sigma-20mm-f1-4/

So could this:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=968041&gclid=CMCRpfnEzswCFZY1aQod2bgMaQ&is=REG&ap=y&m=Y&c3api=1876%2C92051678882%2C&Q=&A=details

19 hours ago, Axel said:

 

You probably read the book DV Rebel's Guide by Stu Maschwitz. He said in order to maintain quality you should never recompress. I think it was an own chapter with capital letters:

NO RECOMPRESSION

Therefore he recommended to use DV (an intraframe codec as well) only as acquisition codec and to encode to *uncompressed* immediately before any further changes were made (referring to changes to the pixels, not simple cuts).

That was in 2006. Now ProRes is not uncompressed and it's lossy, though 'visually lossless'. Surely after some generations compression artifacts will show, I don't know when. I don't worry about generations though if I stabilize and denoise my clips and re-import them before making the Resolve-roundtrip (don't have Studio and don't have the Neat plugin for Resolve). 

With interframe codecs, the image is always completely recompressed. So-called 'smart rendering' isn't smart. Depending on the data rates and the profiles, you will *see* compression artifacts not later than in the third generation, sometimes in the second. This could be called 'visually lossy'.

But the OP is talking ProRes. It's awesome that a book from the 480p DV era (1990?? 2000?) says "don't recompress', but I'll tell you from years of working with ProRes, stop worrying. You can compress it again and again and you won't see any artifacts.

Every week I stabilize a ProRes clip, render it, then retime that render at several different speeds. I'll do a couple versions with the variable diffusion plugin, and I'll render a master edit to ProRes. You can run it through your system many times and it holds up like a mofo. 

Show me a third or fourth generation ProRes clip with "artifacts" that aren't caused by pushing the footage too hard (artifacts you'd see in the first go-round). I very, very rarely denoise ProRes (maybe for a night shoot as 1200 iso). The first thing I do is convert whatever camera format comes in the door to ProRes. You can beat the daylights out of it and my system cuts it like butter, 1080 or 4k or whatever you got. 

All of the conjecture on this thread is fine if you're in an H264 world. I run a ProRes shop and I have zero worries about generational loss in a reasonable (or even a "kinda pushing it") workflow.

Thanks guys - yeah, I've seen a zillion tests and benchmarks, many of them suggest there's a lot of areas you'd need to really spend on the pro to beat the iMac, others where the mac pro blows it away.

Not interested in a laptop though. Either way I'll have the same outlay in enclosures and hubs and so on.

I've found some good pricing on Apple Refurb Pros, which have been great purchases for me in the past and you can do three year applecare on them (I've also had 100% success buying applecare from Ebay for about half the list price). I don't see myself delivering 4K anytime soon, so I don't need to leap into a 4 or 5k monitor if I go with a Pro.

I've upgraded my Pro tower with a beefy video card and SSDs and RAID and FCPX runs well on it. But for the hours I put in, it worries me - I get an occasional red light from the RAM riser, and there's plenty that can eventually die - PS, boards, fans, etc. 6 years is a long time for a system. My Pro has been running for over 50,000 hours now. (Impressed as hell though, but I ran a G5 for years and the logic board eventually crapped out. And it's always during a deadline push).

Decisions, decisions… I'm being cautious dollars-wise, as there's always so much to upgrade - I do video, audio, and stills, and I've been sinking some $$ into a fine-arts darkroom project as well. Strobes, tungsten, HMI, lenses, packs, heads, mics, plugins… no freaking end to it. 

At least I don't play golf or collect firearms...

On May 5, 2016 at 0:54 PM, Geoff CB said:

- Electronic aperture mechanisms means you need electronic aperture adapters to use the glass, otherwise you are stuck at f22. No way to shoot with these on the NX1  

I may be missing something here, but there are aperture-control NX1 adapters for Nikkors that don't have aperture rings. They're not as prevalent as the plain adapters but I've seen them, and they're not ridiculously pricey. I may grab a couple (all of my Nikkors for video have rings) just in case - we may see NX1 adapters fall out of production at some point.

This one states "aperture control", though it's not apparent in the photos… fotodiox shows one here with the aperture control visible.

Damn it, I'm almost out of chinese viagra...

I don't even have to think it over - lately almost all my shooting is with the Nikkor 28-70 "beast". Lots of corporate stuff. Sharp wide open, great IQ, out of focus areas get a nice glow. Aperture ring and built like a tank. Wide open you can let it flare in high-key setups to get a nice softness with sharp details, or flag it off for deeper contrast. Very low distortion wide and the 70mm end is lovely. Takes a heck of a focus gear and generally needs a lens support, but very glad I have it. And kind of a steal used, they can be found under $1k, and since many of them had lame focus motors, you can find one needing the motor repair for a steal if you don't need the AF.

The only thing I miss with it is that 80mm Nikkor look for interviews, but having the zoom is really convenient for one-man corporate gigs - makes it much easier to get good framing in a tight office, and then you can grab your b-roll without swapping lenses.