Tim Sewell

All good points @kye - and thanks for taking the time to watch. I did, in fact, go for a loose shaky style in the actual shooting as I thought it would suit the style and the song - and I made it even looser with some zooms and pans added in post. This was very much an experiment - I was mainly there to do stills (which in part led to my not having prepped as much as I should have done). Overall I'm satisfied that it's worth me doing some more of these but - as you say - I need to do some deep background on the genre as well!

First finished piece using the FS7, first live band video.

This was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest, but it taught me 4 very valuable lessons for next time:

1. Get to the venue before the soundcheck. Set up and crucially...
2. Get the band to do a run-through of the song you're covering, ideally with the stage lighting as it will be later.
3. Get a second static view that you can just leave rolling.
4. During the gig, start rolling and don't stop until the end.

You can probably guess from the above that my major problem wit this piece was lack of coverage, which is why some of the cutaways don't quite fit.

Having said all that, it was a great experience and the band are happy; so on to the next one!

31 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Otherwise, as others have said, I'd guess that Nikon will now roll out compressed raw to a bunch of their bodies and as soon as they can

Will they though? I guess I could see them doing so with a couple of top-end models, but why would they buy a company then dilute one of the major USPs that attract people to that company's products?

7 hours ago, kye said:

Since that 24p argument discussion I've been thinking about frame rates and motion a lot and shot a few tests etc, and eventually got around to thinking about how to view content on the computer properly.  I finally realised that the solution is to set your display to 48Hz (or 120Hz / 240Hz if you can do it) and that will give you proper 24p playback.  

I do all my streaming and YT viewing on my computer via a display that the OS controls, so currently with a 60Hz refresh rate I'm perfectly recreating the 30p (yuk) and 60p videos (double yuk!) but the 24p is jittery.  My current MBP can't do 48Hz but the newest ones from Apple can do 48Hz and 120Hz / 240Hz, so it's on my radar.

I currently edit in Resolve through a UltraStudio 3G box that drives the display directly with whatever the timeline resolution and frame rate is, but that's only for my videos, not for watching anything else unfortunately.

Interesting. The BenQ 4K monitor I generally use (on MBPro M1 Ultra) will give me 24Hz but not 48. Resolve playback at 24 seems smoother, however.

I have an EF to E speedbooster and an EF to E smart adapter. In turn, I have M42 to EF adapters on all my M42 lenses and OM to EF adapters on all my Zuiko lenses and they generally work fine on both. The only issues you might find would generally be with infinity focus due to slight inaccuracies in adapter depth (which can quite often be remedied by shimming with tin-foil!).

A lot of people report issues with Minolta MD/MC adapters and Canon FD adapters, but specialist ones are available.

At the end of the day, it's a case of 'order the kit from somewhere with a good returns policy and see if it works', but the chances are that it will!

14 minutes ago, Ty Harper said:

No technological advancement will ever stop humans from the desire to make art. So what you're saying is 100% true but not really in dispute. This is about the filmmaking economy and who will be able to make a sustainable living off the art of filmmaking.

Quite - but that in turn is dictated by what people want to watch. As I said much earlier, this will become a class signifier. Right now there's a whole lot of cheap, badly-written throwaway tosh that a segment of the population wants (or can afford) to watch. That will continue but with large parts of its creation taken over by AI or AI-aided processes - so yes, some jobs lost etc. But higher end entertainment etc will still be largely human-originated. I don't think anyone is going to pay a Netflix subscription to watch a steady diet of derivative AI-generated content.

I used to do wedding photography. The widespread adoption of smartphones with good-enough cameras ripped out most of the lower end of that market; but mid-market and above weddings? They want real photographers and those photographers generally make a much better living than they ever made on the low end. Things will change, quite a few markets will go, but new ones will emerge and current ones will grow. It's a change, but it's not the end.

And, oh yeah, forgot to say; a talented teenager with a handycam and a few good-looking pals will be able to create art infinitely more compelling than any AI can for far longer than any of us will still live on this planet.

Whatever the dollar cost, the cost in energy is horrifying (see Sam Altman's musings on the need for $7 trillion in energy source developments to cater to AI in wide use). And at the end of the day - for what? There will be some usage in various specialised fields but I don't even buy that this is going to replace stock video. AI can make increasingly realistic simulacrums of the world but it can't make anything artistically compelling because AI can't (and is unlikely to this century) understand art - not even to the extent of 'how do I make this actual real hotel attractive to human customers without adding things that don't exist?'.

I'd also note that the people most vociferously pushing the 'AI will take over the entire creative sector' paradigm are the same people (or types of people) who until very recently were proposing that crypto would replace currency and that NFTs were a really fabulous guaranteed way to make money.

I'd be interested to know what feature or capability Fuji could have included that would have prevented the OP from being beyond disappointed and let down.

Priced quite well also.

I think the kind of content people consume will become even more of a class signifier than it already is. The current low-end, ad-supported market for telenovela/shitty reality etc will increasingly consume AI-generated guff, while the higher-end, subscription content will become more-expensive, but will remain predominantly human-created.

Obviously that's still a lot of lost jobs, sadly.

On 2/16/2024 at 5:04 PM, clcox said:

Just came across these as a potentially cheap Fresnel options:

Nice one! I've ordered the SmallRig as I've always found their stuff to generally do what they say it will! Thanks for the heads-up.

11 hours ago, clcox said:

Need to get some third-pary reflectors, though, these ones are orphanage grade.

Heh yeah. Let me know if you find something suitable. I'm in the UK so the voltage thing isn't a problem. It would be cool if they had a fresnel attachment available, but overall they're a real bargain. Light, for me, skews a tiny bit magenta, but I'm not too bothered by that, especially as COBs tend to lean green as they get older.

Yeah, you have to read very carefully with these things.

And someone sent me a seller offer on EB today for a Jinbei 200W daylight COB for £80. Would have been churlish to refuse. I'm a little intrigued, as I have a feeling they are made by the same outfit. We will see!

(Did I mention that I have something of a cheap light fetish?) 

On 1/24/2024 at 4:25 PM, clcox said:

How've the lights held up so far? Just pulled the trigger on ordering two since I can make a $300 mistake, or just return them if needed. 

Well it took nearly a month to arrive, so I haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet. On first impressions it's very bright and not to noisy. Metal shell, which is good. Surprisingly light weight. I'll be giving it some more extensive testing in around 10 days time so I'll report back, but I'm already considering getting a second, while they're so cheap! I see that they also do a very affordable light mat.

Well this all went a bit stupid for me. After my last post in this thread I got myself a ZV-1F, the fixed focal length version, which would have been pretty ideal for my use case as I described it.

To digress slightly, a friend of mine has her 30th birthday party this weekend, for which she and some other friends have formed a band - just for that one gig - and have been practising their set since August. I had offered to photograph this one-off gig for them, but they had already secured the services of her brother, a photography enthusiast, to do it. Anyway, saw her in the pub on Saturday and she asked if I could do it after all as her brother has - unsurprisingly - decided he'd rather just enjoy the evening.

Fine. Except for the fact that I sold both my stills cameras in December to finance the FS7.

So now I'm selling the ZV and have lashed out on a s/h A6600. Luckily I've got a bunch of stuff on eBay right now, so I can swallow the cost.

I have to say, though, I'm rather liking the A6600. I know it's had a lot of knocks, not leat on this forum, for the dated sensor, RS etc; but bearing those deficiencies in mind it actually works pretty nicely. The AF (even on my adapted Canon lenses) is excellent, the IBIS is great and from the few video clips I've done it seems it will intercut with the FS7 footage just fine, despite only being 8 bit. It will also, obviously, also fulfil my needs for the festival film that first caused me to chime in on the thread.

So much for a no-gear 2024!

I love Panasonic cameras, but I have a cold shard of hatred in my heart for whoever thought up the idea of releasing a camera as capable as the GX80 with terrible internal audio and no mic input.

1 hour ago, zlfan said:

650d/700d are even more robust than 100d and m. bilal started his crop mood from his 700d.

Yes I did look at them. Either would be a very affordable option and would get over the M's relative unusability (non-articulating screen, first and foremost) for my use case in this instance. However the other downvote for a ML based solution is storage. I'll be without the ability to offload cards over a 4-5 day period, which would put something of a strain on my resources!

Taking people's very helpful solutions in turn:

Olympus mirrorless - possible, but a bit too 'pro' looking for the stealth required.

C100 - have owned both M1 and M2 in the past. Great cams but wayyy too big, even stripped down.

XC10 - have also owned in the past and liked - could be a possibility if I could find an ultra-cheap one but in the main over-budget (also to get the best 4K I'd have to buy a bunch of somewhat expensive cards).

RX10 - anything newer than M2 would be outside budget - but M2 doesn't have SLog3. If I'm going to go Sony, I'd like it to be able to double up as a B cam for my FS7.

G1X Mii - it's a contender, but only HD.

Pana G80 - also a contender, but I think I need good AF for this project so I can concentrate on the people-centric aspects without worrying if I'm in focus.

And that leaves the ZV-1. Great AF, mic input (but no headphones), great IBIS, SLog3 (with usual 8 bit caveats), Hypergammas too, so a good B-cam candidate. Super-stealthy.

So my current thought is to grab one from MPB and try it out, trading in my GX80 and my 3 remaining M4/3 lenses.

Unlessssss.... has anyone had their hands on the ZV-E10?
 

Gotta say the ZV-1 is ticking a lot of boxes.

I've been following this thread and now have a related quandary myself.

This summer I'm taking my 15yr old son to the Cambridge Folk Festival - an event I used to attend yearly 'back in the day', but now only manage to visit to coincide with my decade birthdays.

Anyway. Naturally my thoughts have wandered into possibly making some kind of film - it would seem a waste to go somewhere where there'll be loads of colourful, noisy and interesting stuff going on and not, TBH.

Obviously I don't want to take my FS7. Even stripped down (the camera, not me) I wouldn't want to be carrying it around with me the whole time and I'll be camping, so there'll be nowhere secure for it either. Also there's a distinct possibility that the odd tipple might come my way!

The obvious answer would be my GX80, but the sound - as we all know - is abysmal and there's no mic input either, so I'd have to record externally. Will I remember to start recording? Did I mention the tipple situation?

I've had a play about with my EOS m and the newish crop_mood Magic Lantern build. It's an excellent build, but I'm still getting the odd bug-out and since my idea for a film includes vox pops, I just don't feel it's reliable enough.

So option one is GX80 and I'll spend GBP170 on a Zoom F2 for the sound, or I trade in the GX80 for around GBP200, then spend <GBP400 on a different small, interchangeable lens camera that will give me a nice image and an audio input. Question is - what?

All suggestions gratefully received.

On 1/11/2024 at 12:15 AM, kye said:

..and I think you're talking about Mina Rhodes who did a bunch of Urban Symphony style videos like this one?

Absolutely love her stuff.

6 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

That's surprisingly cheap! Let us know how it sounds please, am curious if it is very noisy. 

Will do. I'm expecting it not to be that quiet, but I wouldn't expect to be using a light that powerful close to a mic anyway (hopefully).

On 10/31/2022 at 3:37 AM, scotchtape said:

For the ZSYB light I only tested at undervolt settings and the readings are good, haven't bothered to do a full test at 300W.

I bought the Yinleader 1000W transformer, it's like $60USD on Amazon.  I just plugged it into a wattmeter initially because the output was halved compared to the FS300, I checked with the transformer and it's drawing 300W so all good there.  @j_one I'll update when the other light comes in the mail, might be complete trash.

It's this one (can't even search by name, there is no name in the listings and I couldn't find any others lol):

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003436322681.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.18031802IdPYPY

The photo says QinYue AR-LX0101, tried to search for reviews etc but found nothing except listings in Thailand. It's $120USD on AE. 

The handle mount looks like crap and the remote has no display, but if the light is good it should work in an array for sun fighting power, plus it looks very compact.  Sound might be an issue though since the front looks like the old design where there is airflow through the front (yuck).  At $120USD it's 1/3 the price of Nanlite FS300 which already was the cheapest "good" 300W LED at launch of $350, now $380USD. 

The ZYSB at half price would have been amazing if not for the power issue, I don't know enough about PCB circuits to determine what to replace on the board, if anything.  If anyone is interested in helping that would be appreciated because it would be a killer deal on a light for the price... Quiet, powerful, lightweight, remote, cheap (and cheap build quality) but good quality metrics.

I did test the voltage of the DC leads to the COB and they measured at mains voltage, so I'm not sure what the coil transformer on the PCB does.  But that probably saves weight since there's no need for a transformer to change the mains voltage for the LED.

I have a couple of mini-docs to shoot soon and really wanted to have just one light that can fight daylight. I happened to come across the ZSYB 500w COB on eBay for an astonishing GBP206! At that price it's definitely worth a punt. I'll report back once it gets here.

44 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

After taking over Minolta, Sony took over the AF, mount and IBIS technology but did kind of almost nearly make a spiritual successor to the TC-1 with the Full Frame RX1 series with its Zeiss 35mm F2 lens that is very comparable to a GX80/85 form factor.

Ignore the 64% thicker figure because they obviously measure the RX1R with the fixed lens and the GX80/85 as body only.

It doesn't quite get the target weight of 200g but its still not a heavyweight (again weight is measured without lens on the GX80/85).

Video is only 1080p and Sony don't appear to be interested in following it up with a new model despite the fact that the camera they were going after (the Leica Q) has had two more additional iterations in the meantime.

So I doubt we'll see a new one with uprated video specs, which is a pity as despite its price it was a very nice camera but I'm guessing they can get more mileage out of people buying the A7CR and developing a lens addiction.

 

My mate had one of these when they first came out and, although it was pretty useless for video, the stills it produced were lovely (and way ahead of their time). Extreme jealousy ensued as the price tag (even now, s/h) was eye-watering.