Phil A

59 minutes ago, tellure said:

Video explaining in layman's terms how it works (sounds like instead of converting E-mount signals to EF / SA-mount it overrides the firmware on the lens to use E-Mount directly. "Now the lens is no longer using its original firmware.  Instead it uses the MC-11's control application."

That would also explain why they say it is only compatible with the listed Sigma lenses and not all EF lenses.

On 26. Februar 2016 at 11:33 AM, agolex said:

This. Noticed it when I did the comparison R II vs S II in the other thread. Both cameras interpret WB values very differently and are probably both pretty far off.

I noticed that on some comparison videos I've seen. They said both cameras had the same settings but white balance was totally different.

Which one do you think is better? Both far off sounds bad.

On 26. Februar 2016 at 11:27 AM, Oliver Daniel said:

 

I've used the A7S II extensively at the moment, and I'm finding that a lot of these colour issues might come down to white balance. It just doesn't work properly.

You light a scene with 5600k top end lamps for a daylight scene, yet when setting the 5600k on the A7SII, skin looks green-ish. 

When lighting an indoor scene with only 3200k lamps, and setting 3200k on the camera, skin is blue-ish. 

Auto white balance works, but the colour shifts to red in tungsten and magenta in daylight. 

The most accurate I've found for white that is white, is Underwater Auto! However this makes everything that isn't white into purple. 

This is across all picture profiles. 

FS7 and F55 don't do this at all. 

I'd do a proper in-house test but after this post I'm busy for the day!

It seems a similar thing happens with the FS5. Maybe Andrew can feed this through to his contacts? 

I guess there is some function to set a white balance by shooting a neutral grey card. How does that work?

25 minutes ago, Xavier Plágaro Mussard said:

Most brands try to make "be-all for everybody" smartphones. The Panasonic CM1 tried the exact opposite. Let's hope they bring a mkII or some other brand try to make a smartphone for visual people!!!

http://petapixel.com/2016/01/20/panasonic-cm10-is-a-phone-camera-successor-that-drops-the-phone-part/

They dropped the actual phone part but I guess you could use a bluetooth headset or so? But seems more like a cut down CM1 than a successor.

I think Mattias and Ebrahim are right on the money. I've now shot (stills photography) with Canon (5D II, 5D III, 1Ds III), Fuji (X-E1, X100s, X-T1), Nikon (D800, D750) and Samsung (NX1)... and the Canons were probably the technically worst cameras (comparably low dynamic range, shadow banding, marketing cut down features, ...) but the best usability. They just work. Everything is in the right spot, the menus are easy (and you barely need use them), everything is quick and snappy. They sell no matter what and to be honest, as much as I like to bash them for their reluctance/incapability to progress, their products are solid. Plus, hybrid market is such a niche, I'm sure 95% of people buy these cams just for stills.

On the weekend I was seeing an exhibition of the "Wildlife photographer of the year" pictures and it was basically like a Canon exhibition, every second picture was a 5D II or 5D III. In the end, they're still great cameras (the one digit bodies) and forums just focus way too much on the technical feature side (I love gear and features, guilty as charged).

Thanks to the announced Sigma SA to Sony E adapter, you suddenly even have a viable solution to use the Sigma SA lenses on a not still life / landscape camera.

15 hours ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

Picture Profile Off gives me the most Canon-like image. 

I am very surprised actually it's not mentioned much, being the best PP and overall colour science & contrast I can get out of the a7s.

But won't that decrease the dynamic range quite a bit? I mean they're blaring about 14 stops in S-Log3 which is probably less actually usable stops (11-12?), so using PP Off will probably give you the same lattitude as the regular profiles on a Canon EOS or a Nikon. At least that was my understanding so far.

29 minutes ago, AndrewM said:

I hate to be the one to do this, because there is more than enough contention on this thread already, but...

The 16-35 is an APS-C lens. So when you put it on your A7rII, it automatically went into crop mode. So of course the pictures look the same...

 

No it's not... I'm not sure which 16-35mm he means but the Sony FE 16-35mm f/4, Sony ZA 16-35mm f/2.8, the Canon 16-35 2.8 L, Canon 16-35mm f/4, etc. are all Fullframe lenses. I don't think there exist any 16-35mm APS-C lenses.

Well, he's capable to do that in a laboratory probably... with god knows what system connection and active cooling.

24 minutes ago, Zak Forsman said:

yeah, GS is the hold-up for both the URSA Mini 4.6K and the Micro Cinema Camera. I hope that (A) they ship soon and GS can be activated in a firmware update, or (B) both cameras' GS issues are so identical that they can be sorted and implemented at the same time.

But the question is, once the GS issue is solved, will they actually ship out directly or send out to beta testers to make sure it works? That's then at least another one to two months I guess.

I'd be amused if they would actually announce new cameras at NAB, that would be hilarious.

It looks great!

But @DPStewart asked him if he could show global shutter footage on bmcuser and apparently the function is still not activated. I think we're in for a bunch of months more delay or that feature will be completely scrapped (which I could kinda live with, the rolling shutter isn't that bad it seems).

I wonder what the real street price will be. Its MSRP is 1199$ while the 7DII is easily had for 1499$ (MSRP 1799$) coming with a bunch of freebies.

The SAFOX 12 AF sensor module features 33 AF sensors (25 cross-type sensors positioned in the middle). The center sensor and the two sensors located just above and below it are designed to detect the light flux of an F2.8 lens, making it easy to obtain pinpoint focus on a subject when using a large-aperture lens.

The auto focus module sounds underwhelming. I wonder how far into the corners the auto focus points spread, they're probably quite centered judged by the image next to that text snippet. Fullframe DSLRs seem to be kinda sucky when it comes to that issue, I think that's a lot more enjoyable on mirrorless cameras.

I still remember "focus & recompose" with the 5D II. Clearly don't want to go back.

1 hour ago, AaronChicago said:

It's like a faux log profile? This camera would actually be pretty great if it had the same sensor/image as the C100's.

I'm sure it's really safe to say that that won't happen. There's a 99% chance it's the same lowish resolution full HD image as always since the 5D II and there's 0 usability feature for video except for the (grantedly great) video autofocus.

Canon still is the biggest player so even if they do nothing they seem to win, but I wonder when/if they'll bring another surprise. The comments on the Canon related pages are full of the fanboys defending the 80D from people who question the speed of progress. The 1DxII is clearly better than most expected, it's just not the execution people are looking for, combined with the usual withholding of features for reasons of product portfolio segmentation. Looking forward what the C100 III will bring  .

28 minutes ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

Anyone here got tired of having to use sticks for these telephoto lenses? 

50-150mm on s35 is a pretty huge zoom, as is anything over 100mm (150/160mm eq) ehere I find I just cannot uses these lenses anymore except for static/panning shots, where even IS would help dramatically. 

Personally for my type of spontaneous shooting (even on Alexa XT on a high-end commercial used) I 100% prefer a new IS/VR/VC/OS tele vs cine teles or vintage high IQ options.

I am a collector and huge admirer for vintage glass but not higher than 50mm, and the two 85mm/100mm I strictly keep for stills. Vintage tele lenses?

Up to 50mm on S35, no IS is manageable, a small ring or a slight camera heft takes care of the micro jitters, but at 100-200mm, well maybe I am developing Parkinson's, tremors or some sort of excessive vibration due to any neurological disorder, it's inevitable to get more vibration past 60 years-old, medical fact.

(We've been prototyping a new patented optically stabilized dental hand piece (the scary drill as you may call) made by our medical facility, and since the invention/concept was mine and being the head of the facility, and I personally spent a LOT of research in human hand-motion and micro-vibration. I found it fascinating and applicble to videography/cinematography. One discovery I found uncanny was how much higher the vibration frequency value before breakfast/early glucose/carbohydrate consumption and after. Early waking subject without breakfast numbers are through the chart roof. Another unexpected Caffeine consumption which I thought would be important, turned out a semi flat curve. Out of the 25 subjects, only three showed very slight increase in VFV and Seven showed a decreased vibration value. Worthy of notion the 7 subjects turned out regular/daily coffee users while the three were not users) and the rest are a straight curve at 27Hz +-2)

-Can you keep a small, say DSLR/MILC s35 camera + 50mm lens (or equi) on a subject without shot-ruining jitters? 

-If so, what's the maximum you can go, 85mm? 100mm? 150? 

 

I've shot the NX1 with a 85mm lens yesterday morning. In combination with only 4h sleep, 3°C and no gloves, it jitters way more than I hoped.

Does anyone know how effective IBIS (e.g. in the A7 II cameras) is in comparison to IS/VR/OSS?

I'm curious, does anyone know how this is handled when not on a computer but a mobile device? Everything on VIMEO looks decidedly awful on iPhone and iPad and I seem not to be capable to change the resolution as a viewer on these platforms. Is it always ausing the Auto function? Add in that their Amazon Fire TV app doesn't even have a search function but only your stream and WatchLater, I think somehow VIMEO is falling behind when it comes to usability.

I've used the qDslrDashboard application which basically does what you want over a direct USB connection. You connect via WiFi or USB with the OTG cable to your Android device and then you can monitor and control the camera from the device (works for Canon DSLRs, Nikon DSLRs, etc.). I've used it on a Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

It's a perfect solution for landscape photography, timelapse, etc where functions aren't time critical or then can work automated (e.g. bulb ramping). That said, it's completely unusable for video work. I'd estimate you get like 15fps, colors are bad, resolution is not good enough for quick, critical focus and it sucks your battery empty like nothing.

As others have said, there's a reaosn field monitors are that big and have big, exchangeable batteries. I don't see potential to buy a super expensive adapter to get a lackluster low-end monitoring solution.

9 hours ago, ricardo_sousa11 said:

Def. better, however the file is huge and way to big to be uploaded...a 2 min clip got me around 8gb :/

What format exactly did you use? DNxHR is supposed for resolutions above FullHD apparently and always has 4:2:2 color (which you probably don't need).

I think we should make some tests which bitrate is the best DNxHD for VIMEO upload. There's a huge table on wikipedia that shows which version is for which fps, bitrate and color depth. Makes probably no sense to use the high end one with 10bit color to deliver 8bit material. I think DNxHR might be overkill and one of these middle of the line DNxHD the best tradeoff.

I think it's a bit annoying that there's no ProRes on Windows and no DNxHD on Mac. I heard the non native (reverse engineered?) implementation of the Quicktime codecs is why you can get gamma shifts.

10 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Might try RockMountain on my PC. It is PC-only right?

No, there's a Mac version too.

1 hour ago, Phil A said:

I've sent a whole list of clips to my finance minister for her to review and judge. If she prefers one cameras results to the others, we will probably have a winner.

Funny. I showed her 16 clips on VIMEO for a blind test. 8 with the BMPCC, 8 with the Sony. Including landscapes, people, low light. She said all were nicely done but with some of the BMPCC clips she commented on soft image and after giving comments on the movies she was surprised when I told her that her three least favorite looking ones were all with the Blackmagic and her 3 most favorite looking ones all with the Sony. I was quite surprised myself. Gives me a certain drift to go for the "compromise system".

22 hours ago, Jimmy said:

One thing I will add.... If you are travelling to places you will probably not return to, IQ should be top of the "pros" list... There is nothing worse than getting back and looking through some 8 bit, 4:2:0 junk. As someone who traded up their 5DIII for an A7s, I speak from experience... I traded up image quality for tech specs and regretted it.

I know you have ruled out the 5DIII Raw.... But it might be worth a rethink... You will look back at those raw files in years to come and still feel satisfied with the look and quality. Same with Blackmagic.

I love the 5DIII RAW video image but I've read some people have still trouble with stability, there's conflicting info about the HDMI out capabilities (and HDMI out while recording RAW leading to aborting, pink frames, etc.) as well as the humongous storage needs compared to the other options. And for photography I'm happier with everything that I've owned after I had the 5D III because of better dynamic range which helps tremendously with landscape photography and pushing low light shots (even thought he 5D III was already less hideous than the 5D II when it came to banding in shadows). I'd take the BMPCC + Speedbooster over the ML 5DIII.

But it's still a really valid argument that you make. I've even written Gunther Machu on Vimeo to ask him about his feelings about his change from BMPCC to A7s II and he gave me a really interesting answer with food for thought.

21 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Highlight rolloff is not as good, but in my opinion it's only marginally "not as good."  If you're  pixel peeper, then you'll also notice the the EM5II isn't as good as a LUMIX.

I have two other Pany cams and they shoot better video, but I hardly ever film with them anymore. 

Since I like to shoot with the camera, and the stabilizer let's me get fun creative shots while handheld, the "neat-o" use of the camera outweighs the inferior IQ.  But again, like you, I'm sending most of my stuff to web video and that's kind of a IQ equalizer.

I'd suggest giving it a try for a day or so.  You never know.  Sometimes a piece of gear just feels right...or not.

I think you might be on to something with the "IQ equalizer" comment. What good is amazing 14bit RAW if the movie compressed on VIMEO / YouTube will have banding in any case when it's back to 8bit glory? I have made my pro & con list but I think I really have to think about weighing them and not just counting. Slider shot is a slider shot, no matter if viewed on iPhone or 75" UHD TV but sharpness, colors, banding, etc. suffer so much.
Same with aliasing, if people watch the video in a window mode, you will always get bad artifacts no matter how good your material is. Everything I watch on VIMEO looks 10 levels better on my native FullHD Panasonic Plasma than on my work screen (1680x1050) were it has to be downscaled or my home computer screens (2560x1440) where it has to be upscaled. Makes me think directly of the other thread that's ongoing about how you color calibrate your system just so people watch it on their competely random system where it might look totally different.

18 hours ago, The Chris said:

Phil, how much gear do you want to lug? Travel kit means different things to everyone, for some its a RX100, for me everything fits in a messenger bag, so my gear will not slow me down. IBIS/OS is a must for me, I want everything to be stabilized to some degree. For me Sony's E-mount cameras are the best stills/video options at the moment, but there are great lenses at all my favorite FL's. For some Sony's lineup is really lacking, though speedsters and AF adapters open up hundreds of AF lenses if you get the A7rII and the upcoming a6300.

That means 2 bodies, and 4 or 5 lenses tops, along with a Ride Videomic pro for audio and a small LED and reflector for more light or a fill. Right now I have the A7rII, the A7s and a5100 that will soon be replaced by the a6300. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get the new 24-70 GM which will cover about 80% of what I shoot when you include the crop mode on the A7rII, and f/2.8 is a good mix of speed with a decent shallow DOF on the long end. The a5100 usually has the 10-18 as my UWA, so I'm changing lenses less often and they share batteries meaning I'm not carrying chargers for two different cameras. I have the 28/2, 24/1.8 and Batis 85 as fast/light lens options with the B85 being my shallow DOF king. I typically don't carry a tele because that's a lot of weight/space for a lens I'll only use about 5% of the time, but I have the 70-200/4 if needed. I carry a gorilla pod or a small carbon photo tripod for things like timelapses. The tripod (Benro Travel Angel) also has a removable leg to serve as a monopod.

I just picked up the Beholder DS1 and I'm not sure if its something I'll travel with often since that's a couple extra pounds and more batteries/charger I need to lug, but when I'm shooting doc footage it'll be in my bag. If the a6300 is as good as advertised I'm considering going much smaller/lighter for extended travel with 2 bodies and all APS-c lenses. IBIS and a couple 2.8 GM zooms would be nice, but Sony is focused on FF so we probably won't see that for awhile. Anyway.

If you're going 1080p for the web, the A7s is a great HD camera, used about $1400, and something like the a6300 will give you high IQ stills along with 4k and the A7s will be a low light beast that crushes everything once you go above 12800. Sony's photo apps are great, you have time-lapse, sky HDR (replaces gradual ND filters for proper long exposures without blowing out skies and such) and smooth reflection (which replaces standard ND filters for those silky waterfall shots). There are a few other's I've been wanting to try including the live view grading (kind of a LUT while shooting flat), the light painting, star trail and light trail - all can be done in post, but these apps are real time savers as you're not carrying filters, stacking and blending images, just tweaking the raw to get the final look you want. 

M43 will give you a smaller kit with some great fast lens options - and Olympus has the best IBIS around - but stills are really lacking behind Sony's FF sensor. You won't find a wider range of native lens options unless you go Canon or Nikon DSLR.

Anything Blackmagic isn't an option for me since it doesn't shoot stills and also generates some large files. ML raw is out just for storage needs, but also because even with a small lens the 5d3 isn't very compact compared to something like the a5100/10-18 and a 50mm prime. Again I travel small.

I'm going to be taking an extended trip starting later this year - my wife and I will be traveling around the world for a year and shooting a doc about the experience - so I'm trying to whittle everything down to a bare bones/covers as much as possible kit that's not too large/heavy/cumbersome. For me this means IBIS is so valuable since I really won't need anything other than a gorilla pod for support - and that's mostly to get low shots while keeping the camera off the ground.

This got a little longer than intended, lots of options and I'm still working through them myself.

Well, I used to travel with Canon 1DsIII or 5D III with the combination of 17-40 4L, 24-70 2.8L, 35 1.4L and 85 1.2L (later only the two primes) so that was what I considered the maximum of gear that's easily movable without taking a toll on the actual trip (that fits into my camera backpack easily plus accessories), even though I usually left 2 of the 4 lenses in the hotel, depending on what was on the plan (that then did fit into my smaller sling bag). That's the kind of weight/volume I'd like to gravitate around.
With a BMPCC + Speedbooster and then 24 + 50 I would have covered every focal length I need... or respectively A7r II + 35 and 85.
I totally agree on your versatility perspective. The Sonys do a lot of things (even if people say only to 80%) while other systems do les things to a better degree so it's about balancing it. If you split photography and videography into two cameras (e.g. BMPCC + Fuji X-E2) you'd need to make sure you can use the same lenses on both systems or your kit will explode out of proportions.

I've sent a whole list of clips to my finance minister for her to review and judge. If she prefers one cameras results to the others, we will probably have a winner.

11 minutes ago, Gugu said:

Hi, I was looking in example to a D750 for a 18-35 mm 1,8... but for what I undetstand is probably is better to wait for the a6300..

That makes no sense with the D750. The 18-35mm f/1.8 is an APS-C lens and you'd be limited to the APS-C crop mode of the D750 which is quite a bit worse than the fullframe mode. 

8 minutes ago, cantsin said:

Have a look at DisplayCAL, formerly known as dispcalGUI. It's Open Source monitor calibration software, extremely sophisticated, extremely thorough in its measuring, works with most color meters on the market (including devices that no longer have vendor driver support such as the Spyder3), runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux and provides the basis for a fully color-calibrated workflow for operating system and applications. It even supports calibration of external monitors connected to Decklink cards via Resolve. It's vastly superior to the software that comes bundled with color meters on the market.

I've bought the cheapest datacolor Spyder5 on the Amazon BlackFriday sales and use it with dispcalGUI because it's more powerful than the lowest tier datacolor option's software. I'm really happy with it.

Typically when I edit pictures or grade movies I give it cross checks over the computer, my plasma TV and the iPad. If it's in the ballpark on all three, it's good to go.

35 minutes ago, Jonesy Jones said:

I am not knowledgeable enough to know why, but the images here are amazing. I am depressed to learn that they are mostly film, which is above my pay grade. Just fabulous.

There's a reason people try to emulate film look with their digital stills work. I loved shooting 645-format Kodak Portra.Those colors are incredible and the smooth highlights, dayum! Also it's really hard to edit a digital shot to authentically make it look like shot on b&w silver halide film, the grain works just so totally different than digital noise.

A few years ago there was an impressive description of how Sebastião Salgado changed from analog medium format to a DSLR (Canon 1Ds III if I remember correctly when he shot Genesis), got the images developed in RAW, but then exposed to negative film and printed like before. Crazy (and crazy expensive).

3 hours ago, Zach Ashcraft said:

Mostly pictures of people pretending to be happy and eating food 

Go away! 
https://www.instagram.com/drunkadventurers

I also have a personal one but that's just suits and shoes 

15 minutes ago, gsenroc said:

I think the battery drain of BMPCC would make the "fun" factor less. I'm waiting for the Micro and once I get it in my hand my NX1 will become a pure photo camera. I'm not sure whether I'll get the MFT system for photos though, it's so compact and compatible with the Micro, of course the image quality is great as well.

I'd rather have the Micro than the Pocket too, but then I'd like to have it before summer. The BMPCC could stay as a B-cam if the Micro comes out, except for the body and cage everything else would be fully compatible (I anyway have LP-E6 batteries for my monitor). The batteries for the BMPCC are luckily not only small but also dirt cheap.

I've seen an offer for a BMPCC, 5 batteries, speedbooster and cage for 1650 €. So I could add a BMMCC and a Fuji stills camera and would hit the cost of a A7r II with cage and additional battery. Not easy, working on the pro & con list as we speak... also considering just sticking it out with the D750 until the BMMCC is available.