austinchimp

I shot this really quick test with a couple of adapted Canon lenses and a Viltrox EF-FX1 adaptor. Didn't plan any shots so it's all just off the cuff - so please don't critique my skills.

Did a really quick edit just to see how the footage feels. Very pleased with the colour, this was with the Provia standard profile with raised shadows and dropped highlights. Autofocus was the main point of the test. It worked ok at times, and less so at others. When it worked, I was impressed by how the adapted lenses locked on quickly. All shot in 120fps, HEVC.

I've only done very limited testing, but it looks like the 4k H265 is excellent in 400mbps, and I have found Provia to be a great colour profile if you don't want to grade much. I have Highlights -2 and Shadows -2, and sharpness reduced.

Face tracking autofocus seems to work well, if not 100%.

I have had it working on a Mac Pro (Round trash can design), but I recommend converting to Prores for easier editing. I used Editready to convert the H265 files to Prores 422 and it came out great.

I just received my X-T3 yesterday and this is disturbing to hear. Hopefully it was a freak occurrence. I'm mentally debating whether I can sell my GH5 kit and survive with just the Fuji as my main working camera, so reliability is a concern.

@DBounce How did you find the photo quality difference between the 1DX2 and the Fuji? Did you feel confident replacing the Canon with the X-T3 as your main working photo camera? Any more thoughts you could add? Interested to hear others experiences. I'm sure the reliability issue has coloured your experience though. Sorry to hear that.

57 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

 

But my observation that I find weird is that its trendy to bash Canon reviews, canon marketing trips (ignoring Sonys) and in some instances Canon users..
Why do you think that is?

Let me preface this by saying I'm not bashing Canon as a brand, and I do love the image their cameras produce, but there are legitimate reasons why they get criticised.

I agree it's partly because Canon are still the big boys in the market and therefore draw more criticism. However Sony have, in the last few years, released a number of cameras which have pushed the boundaries in technology, giving us new capabilities in Log, slow motion, resolution, size, hybrids etc. They haven't all been a huge success, but you do get the feeling they're pushing their own technology to see how much they can fit in to the cameras and straining at the limits. Remember how much criticism they get for overheating, which is proof they're pushing the tech pretty hard.

Canon, on the other hand, have been proven to deliberately hold back technology, and sit very conservatively in old tech with outdated specs, when we know they're sitting on things that could do better. Given how many people were invested in their systems, it's rubbed people up the wrong way.

lastly I would say that Sony gets loads of criticism for their colour, ergonomics, menus, pricing, some of which isn't really justified, while some of it is. So Canon aren't the only brand which gets bashed.

Very interesting discussion though, and I would say that when you don't pixel peep, the EOS R does produce some lovely video with rich colours and a very nice feel.

Also worth remembering that Tony Northrup's video (which I thought was very well done entertainment) is focusing on raw stills, while compressed video codecs will imprint a definite colour science due to the decisions of the manufacturer. Tony points this out in the video.

I think one of the problems in this discussion (which seems to pop up time and time again) is the fact that while rendition of colour clearly has a lot of scientific and technical elements behind it, what we as creators and educated consumers, are searching for is an emotional reaction. What we discus endlessly as 'colour science' is actually a euphemism for emotional connection to the image, which is far more nebulous and hard to define. Accurate colour does not necessarily equate to emotional connection to the image.

And the truth is, while virtually all modern cameras can deliver good if not great colour under the right circumstances, some cameras are able to hit that emotional sweet spot more easily. Traditionally those have been, for example, F35, D16, Canon, Alexa and more recently Fujifilm. You can get in the ballpark with Sony, but it rarely gives you that satisfying feeling of 'oh yeah'. I know I've spent many hours struggling with Sony and Panasonic footage, when I can grade a clip in a few minutes with my Digital Bolex, and it looks and feels like magic.

It's probably 70% emotional connection to and nostalgia for the look and feel of movies and tv we saw when we were young, and 20% related to modern 'cinematic' trends, and %10 related to actual colour technical accuracy. All in my humble opinion of course.

4 hours ago, androidlad said:

Breathtaking shots! What's the DR setting? Have you touched the shadow/highlight tone, sharpness and NR setting?

Not my clip, I found it on Vimeo. It persuaded me to put in my order for an X-T3. Should get it tomorrow!

Lovely example of the out of camera colour. Personally I much prefer the natural look to the LUTs which have been thrown onto the footage. I'm sick of seeing M31 and Deluts personally. It makes all cameras look the same, which is perhaps the point.

The ease with which you can obtain a pleasing, cinematic yet naturalistic look is what separates the men from the boys, in my personal opinion. It's why we all love Canon colours, Alexa, Blackmagic, and now Fuji.

10 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Why do you say that?

The only "higher up discussion" I feel there might have been is making sure that all three kinda tie in with each other (I guess because they're part of this series) with some referential humor to each other. 

I only watched it once but wasn't there a behind the scenes clip where the camera panned away from the guy filming on an iPhone to show some of the other guys sitting and watching and reacting?

It's not very clear but it suggests they were contributing to it in some sense. To get multiple senior creatives to have any input in a '$1000 video' strikes me as a little unlikely but who knows.

29 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Watch the BTS as well! When they explain what happened. 

The $1K video was mostly one guy by himself and an iPhone. 
 

I did watch it and he obviously had engagement and input from some of the senior creatives in the agency which alone would have pushed the budget over $1000! But anyway as you said it's a fun discussion.

To me what it emphasises is the importance of having an interesting and creative core concept over having all the gear, which is a lesson I personally find it important to remember in my daily work! I guess in this case, the most creative concept, and the real ad here is the '1k, 10k, 100k' idea, rather than the actual product being shown. In that sense it's actually a very creative ad for the agency. We're sitting here watching it and discussing it so it obviously worked!

Interesting concept but I'm not very impressed by the ads creatively. The attempts to be funny got in the way of actually explaining or selling the product in my opinion.

Also a little disingenuous. I doubt you'd get a large video production agency to devote it's whole office, staff, and creative planning, shooting and editing to create a 2 minute video for just $1000.

7 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

He'd have better results if he shot in Slog2 or a cine2 or something. Slog2 was made for these types of cameras not slog3. Just because of this it wasn't a great comparison.

 

They do have amazing dynamic range. Although I've found my Fuji (xt20 and xt3) to have amazing dynamic range, same as the A6300. I can almost always expose for highlights and simply raise shadows and mids and get everything back.

This is my main concern with switching from using a Sony A7Rii as my main photo camera to going all in with Fuji. The dynamic range from the Sonys is unparalleled in photo or video in a camera of this size. I haven't used a Nikon D850 which I hear has exceptional DR in stills though.

The dynamic range of Sony cameras in video is really incredible - so useful in run and gun. The Fujis tend to blow the highlights or crush the shadows a low, perhaps in pursuit of a more contrasty filmic image, while the Sonys have more Alexa-like dynamic range and a more creamy modern look.

Having said that, I've been playing with some downloaded ungraded Fuji X-T3 log footage, and I feel most of the videos we're seeing have been graded in a particular way and crushed. You can actually achieve a more modern low-con look from the Fujis if you grade accordingly, and maybe avoid using the official Eternal LUT.

1 hour ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

Here is a test I made with the XT3. Kind of sloppy shooting. This was shot -4 sharpening
400mbps - Long GOP, 4K, -4 sharpening, -4 noise Reduction, Flog, eterna Lut, no grading, no ND filters, indoor shots were auto WB, handheld

This may be an unpopular opinion but this is one of the first X-T3 videos where I've liked the colour. It seems filmlike but still realistic and relatively subtle.

I've been checking out samples of the footage - I really want to like this camera - but a lot of it just looks like it's been Filmconvert-ed or instagram filtered. I'd love to see some more samples where the colour looks more natural and Alexa-like, if that exists. Not bashing the camera or any of the work posted so far, I love their philosophy and I own a X-T20, just wondering if it's possible to get a more neutral or modern look, while still retaining maximum dynamic range and skin tones.

Just now, Mattias Burling said:

@austinchimp Have you tried grading? My Panasonic or Fuji sure cant deliver an image that I can be so brutal with and still have looking nice and sharp.
But over all, I agree, there isnt any "need" to upgrade from anything made in the last 5 years.

I totally accept that the BMPCC4k image will be more robust and gradable with Prores and Raw than the images from my GH5, but overall - especially with viewing on Youtube and other streaming sites - there's not much between the cameras when it comes to the final product, as long as you know what you're doing.

The Blackmagic colour science is lovely, and much better than the native colour from the GH5 or Sony A7III, but those two can be graded to have a good look too. I've been playing with @Sage's GHa luts and that give the Panasonic a nice feel, and for me, Feel was always the thing that brought me to Blackmagic cameras.

Perhaps it's because when the original Pocket came out the look and feel was so far away from any other small camera, while now it seems to be more of a level playing field.

It's strange - I was expecting to love the images from this camera, I was expecting to have a burning desire to order one, and yet watching the videos so far I feel nothing.

Maybe it shows how much the other camera manufacturers have caught up but I don't see a lot more here over my GH5, or any of the Sony cameras. This is coming from a previous owner/operator of the BMPCC and Ursa Mini 4.6k. I was really hoping for a mini-Mini 4.6k, but I feel it doesn't have the richness of colour.

I'm sure it's a great tool, but I just don't feel much excitement over it, and with the newer hybrid cameras coming out now and in the next few months maybe BMD will find the current market tough for this camera.

Like some of the other guys I've done a lot of shooting from fast moving boats in rough conditions. To be honest sometimes a gimbal is more likely to get in the way. It depends if you absolutely need completely stabilised floaty footage.

I've actually found that a GH5 with a dual IBIS lens does a surprisingly good job, particularly in slow motion - 50fps and above. You can add a bit of warp stabiliser later and it will usually look great. If you're going to be using a long zoom lens then maybe a gimbal might become more useful, but again it will be a bit of a pain. Like Kaylee said, don't underestimate how difficult it can be to be in a moving, unstable environment. Don't put yourself in danger, and be prepared for shifts of gravity or balance that could make you fall into something, or out of something!

I'd also recommend taking a gopro or two to document your experience, attach it inside the heli to record you shooting, and maybe put it on the top of your camera to get a lens shooting perspective. Might not be useful for your project, but will be a great record of your experience up there!

@Sage I've been looking at some videos lately showing the benefits of HLG on the newer Sony full frame cameras, and the colours, particularly on skin, look fantastic with very smooth gradation. Have you had time to take a closer look at HLG on the GH5 and do you still think V-Log is better?

I haven't seen many videos with impressive colour shot on the GH5 in HLG, but I wonder if it has some untapped potential. Apart from GHa, V-Log can have a slightly unnatural look to it compared to HLG footage.

I recently shot a couple of run and gun projects on Cinelike-D and am playing with your conversion to v-log, and it takes a bit of work to get it looking good due to my exposure being a bit consistent, but I love what it does to skin tones.

Looks better than the default Sony S-Log lut, but not as good as @Sage 's work on the GH5. On my screen this video looks rather magenta in the skin tones in a not-very-pleasing way.

If he used it on his piece to camera then I don't think that looks great. The anamorphic stuff looked nice though.

3 hours ago, Ryley K said:

@Sage

With the Ninja V coming out soon, how would you use it with the GH5? You're able to bake in LUTs with the Ninja V. Would you suggest doing that at all to get the look straight out of the camera, or add it later still? If we can shoot like that, we'd be able to get a good look in camera and have a quicker turn around time too.

The ability to bake in luts in camera would transform the GH5, and pretty much any consumer camera, at little or no cost to the manufacturer. I'm surprised nobody has done it in a video targeted camera yet.

It would end any complaints about colour science.

3 minutes ago, Sage said:

A couple inquiries - does the file happen to be wrapped in ProRes? How did it look by eye?

 

GHa Cine-D Red-Magenta Corrective .cube

Thanks. To my eye the cine-d looks pretty accurate. Maybe technically there's a small shift to magenta if you use scopes, but the red jacket was nowhere near hot pink in real life.

It was straight out of the camera, so not transcoded to Prores. I'm still using a pretty old version of premiere - 2017 edition. Not sure if that has any bearing on it. I have found previously that Premiere does have a tendency to do this to red on occasion, where as Resolve will not, even with the same footage and same Lut. Never found an explanation for it.

Hi @Sage

I've had great success with using EC on V-Log footage but I wanted to try it with Cine-D following your recommended settings. I'm having some trouble with the reds, which seem to shift hard to magenta in Premiere.

I shot in Cine-D, with Saturation all the way down, and applied your V2 Cine-D to V-log Pre conversion in the Basic correction Lumetri tab, then used the Soft Lut from your Verde release in the Creative Lumetri tab. I was using a Tiffen Vari ND but I don't think that accounts for the Red distortion. The footage is 8 bit 1080p.

Check out the screen grabs below. First one is straight out of the camera. Second is with the Emotive Color conversion, and third is a quick grade adding contrast and saturation to the Cine-D with no LUT used.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

1 hour ago, Robert Collins said:

Havent tried HLG yet but have some good footage with it. DLog-M is pretty sweet though. The problem I face is that it is in the middle of the rainy season here and the light is overcast and flat so that I havent had some decent light/DR to really test the video yet.

I have been trying the hyperlapse mode but tend to find the camera movement too fast and dont see a way of slowing down the drone - this rather uninspiring hyperlapse was slowed to 40% in post (quite probably user error.)

 

Looks great. Not sure I would risk flying over such a built up area myself.

I've been testing one at work and I find the full frame 4k mode to be quite soft compared to what I was expecting. Apart from that, the drone feels very pro and I'm very impressed with the battery life compared to the version 1.

20 hours ago, leslie said:

 

so i am buying a cheaper cinema camera than the competition  that should be class leading in some regards that is going to take ten hours in post production to make a 1 hour video look spectacular, is your logic off or are black magic are doing something wrong  ?

Btw 10 hours to make a 'spectacular' 1 hour video is extremely conservative. I'd say at least 100 hours depending on what level of sophistication you're going for!

If you're new to production or video editing, some advice is to plan for lots of post-production time, unless you're shooting one long take!