Tim Sewell

Imagine how great this camera would be with the FS5 auto ND!
I'm still finding my way with post on this, but my best results so far have been getting it legal manually then applying rec709 looks. Canon log seems to be really really easy to deal with and the results just knock me out - super 16 vibe with enough resolution that you can afford to throw some away. I'm grading it for colour and exposure, then adding a filmconvert layer with the colour dialled to zero but with super 16 grain to 35% or so and it's making me wet my pants.

Got my XC10 this morning. Still playing with it when I really should be working! As promised I slapped an Isco pre36 on it to see if it's usable. Shots below are at 24mm, 80, 240 and 80.



There's slight vignetting at 80mm, which turns to pronounced white vignetting when pointed at a light source. Nevertheless, it's nice to have the option of a stabilised 80-240 anamorphic, even if it is at 5.6 on a 1" sensor.

Imagine how great this camera would be with the FS5 auto ND!
I'm still finding my way with post on this, but my best results so far have been getting it legal manually then applying rec709 looks. Canon log seems to be really really easy to deal with and the results just knock me out - super 16 vibe with enough resolution that you can afford to throw some away. I'm grading it for colour and exposure, then adding a filmconvert layer with the colour dialled to zero but with super 16 grain to 35% or so and it's making me wet my pants.

Yup! I've always liked the underexposed Canon look. The 70% zebra trick is what made me really love the camera. When I first got it, I had it set to 100% and for the life of me, I could not get the highlights down in post. I also made the mistake of leaving the built in ND on a couple times and being utterly confused by the settings... And then I had my duh moment. It's actually a shame the built in NDs don't have more power.
As I said above, I leave it on manual and ride the exposure wheel. In 1080p with the 5-Axis I can walk around, with almost steadicam level of stability, ride the exposure and use Push AF. It's a ton of fun.
With post I have had equally good results with LUTS and just simple saturation and curve adjustments. The Impulz Log to Rec709 LUTS really shine with the C-Log. I've also liked FilmConvert with it as well for a quick turnaround. 

I've got my zebras set to 70%, but I'm actually finding (so far) a more reliable guide is just to ride my variable ND (you *have* to use a variable ND on this camera) to stay just about a stop over. By the same token, I'm also finding C Log on this thing considerably more forgiving than either my GH4 or my FS700. It's also got that Canon trick of maintaining a pleasing image in underexposure. Most of all, I'm just finding myself wanting to take it everywhere with me and wanting to shoot with it all the time - the thing just cries out to be used, it gets the shots and the images delight.
Maybe I can get a bulk deal on external hard drives.

I'm already having very similar thoughts - trying to suppress them until my bank balance recovers.

Why do camera manufacturers put up sample videos of 4K cams in HD?

Just to throw in my two penn'orth: I received my XC10 (its purchase partly inspired by this thread) late last week and gave it a baptism by fire on our family trip (3 kids, aged 20 months to 13 yrs) to Disneyland Paris. I can certainly bear witness to its effectiveness as a 'shot getter' - I was able to get far more footage than I would have done with my GH4. I had an initial play with the files last night and they seem to grade up very nicely so far. The 2 best elements of the camera, for me (and after pure IQ) are the amazing stabilisation and the tracking autofocus. I also found the digital teleconverter in HD mode incredibly useful.
 

Just to throw in my two penn'orth: I received my XC10 (its purchase partly inspired by this thread) late last week and gave it a baptism by fire on our family trip (3 kids, aged 20 months to 13 yrs) to Disneyland Paris. I can certainly bear witness to its effectiveness as a 'shot getter' - I was able to get far more footage than I would have done with my GH4. I had an initial play with the files last night and they seem to grade up very nicely so far. The 2 best elements of the camera, for me (and after pure IQ) are the amazing stabilisation and the tracking autofocus. I also found the digital teleconverter in HD mode incredibly useful.
 

I don't generally watch vlogs, but the above video makes a pretty good case for them.
I think if you go back to Bazin or even look at some of Lévi-Strauss and Sanders Peirce's ideas on semiotics that inform him and the Cahiers, you begin to reexamine what film is uniquely good at and why it became such a popular medium in the first place–and its strengths lie in its ability to record a convincing record of life, a recording of something that actually happened that feels real. Film shares this with audio recording and photography, but film takes it to another level. Unlike literature or painting or animation, it's not a symbol or a drawing, it's a record of something that actually happened in front of a camera. So way before you even worry about lighting or blocking or editing or even storytelling, what film does that's unique and remarkable is that it provides a lifelike and moving record of an event. Modern blockbusters move away from this tendency because they rely so heavily on CGI and animation and compositing that it begins to feel like a video game (which they're imitating; they share a common audience). I think you feel that modern blockbusters are different, and I definitely prefer action movies from before CGI became so commonplace because they feel more physical to me. Mad Max got a good reception because it was a bit more physical. Maybe part of the increasing appeal of MMA fighting (and historically the appeal of sports) is the you get back to that physicality.
Now we're at that stage where the eight year old girl (or whatever Coppola said) finally has the resources to tell a story affordably with film. We'e got dSLRs and iPhones and we're making movies instead of just watching them. And I think two tendencies are emerging from that. One is to imitate what we're watching in theaters, and the other is sort of to break off from it. This website is definitely more for imitators, trying to get something that looks expensive for cheap. And I don't find any of the work I've seen posted on this website to be any more interesting than what it's imitating. Some is more technically adept than the rest, but mostly it's a bunch of music videos and montages meant to showcase a new lens or something and it's basically a bunch of camera tests. Which is cool, that's a cool hobby, and it's fun to engage with and it's good to know what gear is out there so you can do your thing–make art, money whatever with it, once you get bored with camera tests. So the work doesn't interest me, but it's still a worthy topic.
Neither does vlogging interest me, and in fact it interests me less, but I still think it deserves respect because it's doing something new and unique and compelling. Hence the enormous emerging audience... Vlogging goes in the exact opposite direction, back toward cinema verité and away from blockbusters. And verité, unlike direct cinema, acknowledges the camera, which I think is sort of the film step in presenting "reality." Which, if you'd ask Bazin, is the point. Vlogging brings that to the next level. And yeah it's obnoxious like Michael Moore is obnoxious because the filmmaker becomes his own protagonist and you might not like him. But it's cool to watch stuff people are doing and imagine you're doing it. It's even cooler to imagine you're also the filmmaker recording it. And vlogs let you engage with content on both of those levels. Even something like Rocket Jump (which is more in the "imitating mainstream media" category than vloggers are) makes the entire process from funding to production to distribution transparent to the viewer and encourages the viewer to do it, too. So you're watching their content but separate from that you're relating to it as a potential filmmaker. To me, this is really cool. Most kickstarter campaigns are dumb money grabs, but with something like Rocket Jump it becomes an alternative form of financing that's communicating directly with the audience and that's cool. All the BTS elements there are cool. (The photography tutorials and stuff that pollute YouTube aren't–because 99% of them are just promoting horrible information and lowest common denominator aesthetics.) The BTS elements of vlogging remind me of a film nerd sneaking on set and reading Fangoria or American Cinematographer or watching the dvd deleted scenes... except it's going even way further than that. 
YouTube kind of fulfills the promise of verité, and to some extent realizes the potential of cinema itself on a very very basic level–even if the content is generally not my thing and I'd argue usually pretty awful. Snapchat and Vine do, too. More than that, they allow you to be the consumer and the producer, so you get a real community. But most people are boring. And most content is boring. If it's democratized, more of it will be boring. Painting wasn't great during the renaissance because it was cheap, you know? Painting got worse when it was democratized. So while I think your Snapchat or YouTube channel can be really banal and millennial and shitty and most of them are... that's the content, not the medium. The medium itself is really cool and there are some YouTube channels and Vimeo channels I enjoy and to trash the medium because most of it is garbage would make me a hypocrite because I really love some of it.
I think if we feel alienated by these media it's a pretty boring response to just imitate an outdated one instead unless you really commit and say–okay, I'm holding myself to the standard of my heroes. I'm not content shooting with a camera that maybe they used or has the same resolution of one they used, I don't really care about that at all. I'm going to challenge myself to do with my resources better than they could do with them, or if not better than more personal to my vision. And that's the approach successful vloggers are taking. Like it or not, the cutting edge of documentary is YouTube and Snapchat. I'm not going to say vlogging is a better pursuit than shooting a documentary for the festival scene. I will say I think how you evaluate each has more to do with how you feel about its audience than anything else, and at that point it's a social issue, not a technical or theoretical or aesthetic one.
Edit: I think this website produces some good camera tests, however. The "feel" of the image is more than its specs and going out and shooting with a given camera or set of LUTs gives you an interesting window into their potential that specs alone can't.

Didn't they say that about the 5D Mkii?

Didn't they say that about the 5D Mkii?

Love the film. We should also note that Ed is only listed as the DP, which implies that he neither wrote the script nor came up with the hashtag, so maybe we should confine our comments to his cracking camera work.

It's easy to forget sometimes that we're still only living through the very dawn of computing and digital technology. Just like a caveman with a flintlock, our great grandchildren will take things for granted that would seem like magic to us now.

Love the film. We should also note that Ed is only listed as the DP, which implies that he neither wrote the script nor came up with the hashtag, so maybe we should confine our comments to his cracking camera work.

Love the film. We should also note that Ed is only listed as the DP, which implies that he neither wrote the script nor came up with the hashtag, so maybe we should confine our comments to his cracking camera work.

Blackmagic Design have announced a new camera, which they added is already shipping and available in all major retailers from midnight.

(Berlin, September 15): Panasonic today announced that the new GH5 will be completely wireless - no headphone jack or mic jack. A spokesman said "We consulted Swedish video and audio experts, and they all agreed that analog audio ports were a thing of the past. They thought wireless micing was the way to go. Since they know more than anyone about these issues, we at Panasonic decided, given the go-ahead by Apple, to save money and space on the camera with this initiative."  Panasonic will also be coming out with a new line of wireless mics that will have rechargeable batteries. Battery life was not available at this time. Industry enthusiasts who devote a lot of time to on-line forums welcomed this advance.

They do - but there are still plenty of theatres (actual theatres, not cinemas) showing a healthy profit. Some art forms, once invented, do such a good job of capturing the human imagination that they will likely last forever.

It's easy to forget sometimes that we're still only living through the very dawn of computing and digital technology. Just like a caveman with a flintlock, our great grandchildren will take things for granted that would seem like magic to us now.

Another day out learning to use my FS700. First one I've felt even slightly like posting. I missed critical focus at a coupe of points, and Vimeo's borked the movement a bit (although re-uploading as ProRes 422 helped with that), but I'm quite pleased with it, visually.
 

Gorgeous color and look, horrific rolling shutter (yes I'm obsessed with this issue, but it really stands out in this dog clip.)

I believe there's a thing called Instagram that's quite popular with one or two iPhone users. It's popularity is partly due to the "film look" it allows. 

Is it me, or is the motion cadence on that demo reel absolutely horrible?

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. At a time in history when we have pretty much unlimited access to all the world's culture and history people are becoming less and less curious, preferring to spend their time in curated echo chambers.
I'm 52. When I was a kid (here in the UK) there was very limited kids' TV. Even in the long summer holidays, kids' stuff was limited to the morning. So if I found myself allowed to watch TV on a rainy afternoon it was mostly old B&W movies I was watching. There were far fewer books aimed at kids or teenagers, so I went through my mum's bookcases and read everything from Dickens to Len Deighton (how many parents even have bookcases containing anything other than cookbooks and celebrity memoirs now?). So I imbibed from a huge range of culture that spanned decades at least, if not centuries - as did a lot of my peers.
Compare to now, where children have multiple channels devoted to giving them exactly what they want, as a means of advertising to them - no need ever to watch anything outside the comfort zone. Countless 'child-friendly' books - all variations on the same themes - all easy to digest; no need to explore the library or pick a book of the bookshelf to counter rainy-day boredom.
Dumbing down is a fashionable phrase, but that doesn't make it any less real. A dumbed down audience is a lot easier to sell to and to make money out of so, as I say, it really shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.
BTW, Trump isn't a solution to our dumbed down culture - he's a product of it.