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Santi Deva

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  1. Like
    Santi Deva reacted to BTM_Pix in Adapter with ND filter to protect Sony A7SII sensor from dust   
    The only thing to bear in mind with the lens throttles are that there is no ND0 setting so you'll always be losing some light. If thats going to be an issue for you (doubtful with the camera you're putting it on!) then you'll need to carry 2 adapters.
    I only have the dumb version for M43 so I don't know about the AF aspect with the smart one you're looking at but the ND performance is very good and its a neat product. 
    As an aside for anyone looking at one of these for M43 mount, its actually an EF to M43 converter and they supply it with the converter to EF of your choice. So when I ordered it as M42 to M43 it actually is two separate pieces which is great because to use it with Contax Zeiss or Nikon lenses, I just take the M43 to EF part off and replace it with the C/Y to EF or Nikon to EF. Without any adapter I can of course use it with EF lenses as well so essentially its 4 adapters in 1 for me.
    Plenty of reviews on YouTube including this very nice one from our very own @Mattias Burling 
     
  2. Like
    Santi Deva reacted to Grim Fandango in Film Piracy, Careers Ruined, Sundance, Worth it?   
    Piracy is a very emotive subject, especially for creators of pirated content, and I have been involved in three industries now which have dealth with piracy in different ways: Music, Video Games and as a Youtube producer.
    I feel because it is such an emotive subject, there is a lot of assumptions made and they can be incorrect, for example, every instance of piracy is a lost sale is a common attitude among publishers and studios in the video game industry, yet it is demonstratably false, and some studios report an increase in sales after a pirated version is released.
    So this is my 2p, and the reason I created an account to stop lurking here: Piracy is a service problem.
    Piracy was rampant in the music industry, it was and still is easy, the file sizes are small and nearly any album can be found and downloaded in 5 minutes flat. At first, the industry cracked down hard on the file sharers and site owners, however the legal system cannot keep pace with the internet and the vast majority of cases were dropped because digital evidence is notoriously expensive to collect, easy to manipulate and rarely is more than circumstantial. Besides which, for every site that gets taken down after a year of work, twenty more spring up, with more sophisticated defences against detection. Why then is the music industry, particularly the indie scene in rude health? Well, simply because it is easier to get digital music legally than it is illegally. People are definately willing to pay for music, and most people with the disposable income will pay for it if they can.
    Now, lets look at the most pirated tv show of 2015 - Game of Thrones. Lets look at how convienient it is to obtain legally in the UK. You can of course buy a DVD set of season 5, watch it "live" on sky or buy a Now TV pass. The most expensive option by far is Sky, costing a minimum of £400, though admittedly, this gets you 2 seasons - 24 month bundle and you get to record it, watch on your tv etc. A DVD is the cheapest option, at £20 for the season, though you have to wait until you can buy it. The middle option is to buy a now TV pass each month that an episode is broadcast, costing £21, if you're smart and you get to watch it live. The problem is, people are already paying for a Netflix subscription, Amazon Prime, Spotify, have a library of steam games, have a library of DVD's, and quite often, they just want to be in the loop. They don't care about game of thrones as much as talking about game of thrones with their friends, so the £20 is not something they're willing to pay. So they don't because it's just not worth the money + hastle of waiting or figuring out Now TV. These are not people who will pay for GoT anyway. If you implimented a perfect piracy prevention system, they would not pay.
    So the question is, if you can, as kaylee wishes, implement a perfect piracy protection system - which you never can - if it displays on a monitor, you can simply set up a dummy software monitor which "displays it" into a memory buffer and records it from there - but if you could and the budget made sense, they why wouldn't you? It's a service problem again. Yes, you may prevent piracy, but at what cost to your legitimate customers, the ones who gave you the full asking cost to watch your content. You make your product much worse for them, and that has proven time and time again to cost you customers. Gametrailers shut down this week, why, because of their insistance on using proprietry video player. The audience doesn't want to deal with "not as good as youtube", and so they just don't. They go elsewhere, even at the expense of missing out on that content. Kaylee, you could introduce some system with timed tokens and whatever, but all you would do is annoy people who gave you their money as halfway through watching your video, you get an error and they have to reload to start watching again, yet I promise you, the pirates who paid nothing, who stripped that system out of your video would be getting a better deal. You know what companies I will no longer buy from? Companies like EA, who's paying customers get a substandard product as a direct result of anti-piracy measures, when the pirates get the product the creaters intended.
    I think you just have to accept the basic premise that piracy happens, it's a cost of doing business over the internet - the business 99% of small content creators wouldn't have if it weren't for the internet. It's worth considering that not every pirate is a lost sale, if the content isn't worth it to them, if they cannot afford your content, then they never were going to give you the money. That they get the content anyway is maybe worth making peace with, and focus your efforts on making better content that appeals to more people, so that the balance shifts, that it becomes worth the asking price for more people, and the evidence suggests that if you do that, more people will pay for your content.
    Finally, it really is worth looking hard at the demographic of pirates. The research by Excipio shows that piracy is most common among the poorest, and youngest in their surveys - correlation is not causality, but can you so easily dismiss the idea that the $3 the Sundance Infographic tosses out as "only" when $2 is more than a days pay for half the worlds population - would you pay a day and a thirds pay for a movie? I wouldn't, because for me, that would, on a bad day be the equivilent of dropping £150. And yes, if you put the cost of access to your movie at £150, yes, I would pirate it.
  3. Like
    Santi Deva reacted to Andrew Reid in 1dx mark ii, 4k 60fps?   
    Speaking from my 1D C experience...
    MJPEG is 500Mbit/s so the data rate for the CPU to handle is insane. Editing off an SSD or RAID 0 like I do the drives aren't a bottle neck, it's the CPU.
    What compounds the problem is that MJPEG doesn't seem to be well supported with hardware acceleration.
    The Mercury Engine in Premiere for instance seems to revert to software rather than hardware accelerated by Open CL or CUDA when it comes to MJPEG.
    H.264 and H.265 may be more complex with the clever compression but it is hardware accelerated.
    You will effectivly be editing MJPEG 4K 60fps at 800Mbit/s in software mode, on the CPU only. The effects will take ages to render too.
    1D C 4K 24p is 500Mbit/s (same on 1D X Mark II)... this is tough enough, you really need to transcode to ProRes.
    Again speaking from direct experience with the files, the H.264 4K from the GH4 and A7S II can be edited natively on my machine in Premiere with smooth playback especially at 1/2 res in the timeline monitor. MJPEG doesn't even play back smoothly when I reduce the playback res, which again points to the lack of proper support of such an old dated codec in a modern NLE.
    Canon have made a mistake.
  4. Like
    Santi Deva reacted to Cinegain in DJI OSMO alternatives - let's list them   
    I've opted for becoming a human stabilizer, so I'm currently enrolled in ninja training and I take salsa class.
  5. Like
    Santi Deva reacted to mkabi in 1dx mark ii, 4k 60fps?   
    I have used the focus peaking feature on an external monitor. And, to be honest, on a run and gun situation.... I would use it over the old method of magnifying and checking focus, but the new PDAF.... It's just simple... I would definitely use it over peaking any day. If you haven't used it... Trust me... You are missing out. Borrow, Rent a 70D... Also, get yourself a 50/1.2. Play around with the touch screen for day... And it will definitely change your opinion of peaking versus PDAF.
  6. Like
    Santi Deva got a reaction from Zach Goodwin in 1dx mark ii, 4k 60fps?   
    The DXmk2 is a dream camera for a breaking news videojournalist like me. Weather sealed and robust as a tank with 4K, 120fps 2K and Dual Pixel AF, it's perfect for shooting riots, sports or any action scenario where a C300mk2 would be too big and obtrusive. With custom picture profiles I don't think CLOG would be missed. But deciding not to include focus peak, when we've been using it in the 5Dmk2/3 for almost three years thanks to the Magic Lantern team, can only be described as one of the biggest GREEDY and I-don't-give-a-f*ck-about-my-customers movements in the history of the camera industry. The could make the best camera in the market for the same money, but they want you to buy 2 cameras or spend more than twice the money in a C300mk2.
  7. Like
    Santi Deva reacted to Hans Punk in Horses through fire - A (very) short documentary I made using RX100's 100fps feature   
    On repeat viewings and clearer thinking through of its intention - it is a powerful piece. But I'm still torn between thinking if its presentation style helps or hinders the intended purpose.
    As a filmmaker: I see beauty,history,trauma in the images - like a moving painting from the napoleonic war. I can appreciate the artistic merit of images separate from the subject matter and its possible controversy. Some beautiful images can be found from very ugly things.  
    As a 'regular' guy: I see pointless trauma being inflicted onto animals but presented in a confusing way that reminds me of a high budget car commercial.
    I guess my only feeling is that I'd prefer to see it as part of a longer documentary that invested time into the people who contribute to the tradition, as well as those who appose it. Having a montage with slow motion 'beauty and wonder' aesthetic is a powerful cinematic tool, my comment regarding this being an unwise choice is subjective.
    As Bioskop said -  'you recoil twice as hard precisely because of the dichotomy of the images (beautiful & grotesque)'. - I partly agree with that, but I think the issue I have is the clash of cinematic visuals next to intended journalistic reportage. It may possible to combine these, but very hard to convey a clear message in short-form without those (sometimes) overpowering aesthetics being noticed. You at least need a balance there.
    In any case Santi - you did a good job in documenting the event, the fact that there is an ambiguity in the presentation style only adds to the impact and help provoke discussion.
    It's an interesting case study on how 'real-life' imagery can be presented in a cinematic style - and what ramifications that may have to the viewer when trying to take a neutral stance from a journalistic/ documentary perspective.
     
    Why could they not be riding Donald Trump through those flames instead?
     
  8. Like
    Santi Deva reacted to Bioskop.Inc in Horses through fire - A (very) short documentary I made using RX100's 100fps feature   
    I thought that this was amazing & achieved exactly what it set out to do - you all seem to have recoiled at the images & knew that it was presenting absolute cruelty towards horses.
    I also felt that the use of slow motion & the soundscape to be an inspired twist to the norm that we associate with their use - as Hans said "Cinematic language has taught most audiences to associate slow motion and ambient soundscapes as depictions of beauty...". The application of this technique was surely to implicate the audience as an accomplice to such acts & by doing so makes their reaction to these "beautiful" images even more intense - you recoil twice as hard precisely because of the dichotomy of the images (beautiful & grotesque).
    Also, the PACMA badge was presented throughout & so wasn't hard to realise that this wasn't a glorification. If you felt that it was, then the filmmaker did his job as he placed you into a position that was contrary to your sensibilities & his manipulation of you was complete. The crucial moment for me was when one of the horses fell over in the middle of the fire & it jerked me back to reality - he made me an accomplice, but allowed me to come to my senses. This is what animal rights is all about and sometimes its best to just show something in order to let the audience decide.
  9. Like
    Santi Deva got a reaction from Axel in Horses through fire - A (very) short documentary I made using RX100's 100fps feature   
    http://vimeo.com/152159680
    For all the slow motion parts I used the RX100 mk4. For the 25fps parts I used a Canon 5D mk2 with prime lenses.
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