Phil A

1 hour ago, mercer said:

How effective are gimbals with zoom lenses? I have never used one, but I would assume you would need to rebalance it after every focal length change?

Used an A6300 with the kit zoom on a Zhiyun Crane. It's light enough that even when you zoom the gimbal motors easily compensate the off-balance. You could even motor-zoom from the gimbal itself if you have the connection cable.

So it depends on your setup. Also internal focusing isn't really helping over externally focusing as it will move glas in the lens and change the center of balance.

4 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Not too sure you will be in love with a lens that is 40mm  f1.2 in FF? Not the top of my list in this digital age. On a film camera, well sure.

https://www.flickr.com/groups/4162920@N21/

Great focal length imho, especially combined with the wide aperture. When 35mm is a wee too wide and 50mm a bit too tight, 40 is even more universal.

I'm shooting mostly with GH5 + focal reducer + Sigma 30mm 1.4 because it gives me something like a 42mm f/2 would on film (photography) and I wish it was a stop faster for stronger background separation sometimes. Can totally relate why @jase considers to get a Sony A7 just to use that lens.

3 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

That seems a bit limited compared to this though.. maybe it has a better graphics card, but from where I"m sitting you can do more with the one @BTM_Pix shared earlier in this thread (https://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-aorus-gtx-1070-gaming-box-thunderbolt-3-rgb-graphics-box)

It seems smaller and can run an additional 4 displays. For myself, I like to edit with 3 screens, and the BM would only allow me to do that if I use the MacBook display as one of them. Which is fine I guess, but you can't beat 3 of the same displays all calibrated and coloured in the same way. 

Does anyone know if the BM box is upgradable?

Regarding the bold part, I would imagine BMD intent this to be used for Davinci Resolve and their stance is that you need an I/O box anyway because monitoring via GUI isn't color accurate due to OS drivers/profiles. So they probably expect one to use 2 screens + a grading monitor via the Intensity Shuttle (that conects through Thrunderbolt or USB).

BMD partnered with Apple for an external GPU, it was announced today.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicegpu/

Nevermind. Edited, ignore my post.

3 minutes ago, Dustin said:

Would transcoding my A6500 footage to prores make it easier on “ancient” 2012 i7 with a crappy 650 graphics card?

Tremendously so.

What kind of files do you edit? Is it JPEGs, DNG shot with the mobile device or raw files you transfer to the device?

With JPEGs there's only so much you can do, might be that black/white already clips. DNG shot with the mobile device (e.g. shot with the Lightroom app and set to DNG) are obviously quite a bit better but also don't have too much dynamic range.

With raw files imported to the iPad from my camera I feel like it's more or less identical to editing them on my computer with regards to fixing exposure weaknesses.

If you feel that other apps give you less leeway with raw files, maybe those apps can't actually edit the raw file but use the embedded JPEG preview?

I think Adobe Lightroom Mobile is free if you can live without some of the functionalities.

I have the Adobe Photography subscription and use Adobe Lightroom Mobile a lot for social media activity. I just wish it wouldn't always try to sync all my stuff into the cloud, which I just don't want.

Semi rant: I shoot a lot of photographs with my GH5 and I use auto-focus with eye detection for it. If someone is proper dark skinned and has glasses, you're about to have a bad time.

Heard about that stuff yesterday and I'm very positive, it could be really big for hobbyists and travel/vlogging kinda stuff.

 I have personally two scenarios with the stuff I do:

a) I want to create something nice, will sink quite some time into editing, colouring, etc. and the result is a few minutes long and will go to YouTube
b) I want something for Instagram/Facebook and it will be 15 or 30 seconds long, might go into the InstagramStory and be gone within 24 hours

For a) I have a custom workstation with an I/O card, multiple monitors, etc. where I use DavinciResolve and am happy. But Resolve is imho not ideal for laptops when travelling. My laptop runs it okish when having simple edits + ProRes converted source media (but my laptopt is a 15.6" gaming laptop and weighs 3kg + charger), on my girlfriends MacBook Pro 13" it's just ugh. For scenario b), this will be perfect. Because of the weight/clumsiness of the laptops we have transitioned to LumaFusion on an iPad Pro because you can hack together the material, you can use *.cube LUTs to grade it (you can generate a custom LUT in DavinciResolve so you get really close into the ballpark of your "usual look" with a click, you can even stack multiple LUTs in LumaFusion and adjust their intensity), add your music (Soundstripe can directly put the track I pick into my Dropbox and LumaFusion can directly retrieve it from there). With that you have top notch social media content compared to most channels who shoot video with their iPhone directly in the Instagram app with maybe like 5 or 10 minutes of extra effort.

Adobe Lightroom CC Mobile is great for this when it comes to pictures, so I'm really looking forward to see what this will bring for video. I just hope they won't make you get the 720€/year Premiere Pro subscription just so you can use the Rush mobile app.

The Ronin-S is really humongously big. I'll pass after initial interest. 

Another alternative to using fixed NDs as screw ins (maybe with the overpriced Xume adapters) is to use a filter system like landscape photographers use (e.g. Formatt HiTech, Lee, etc.).

You put the adapter ring on the lens and then the filter holder gets just put on and locked with a screw. The holder can, depending on type, hold multiple square resin/glass filters. You can just slide them in and out and you can combine anything, e.g. NDs, Graduated NDs, BlackProMist, etc.

It's a bit bigger but again you only buy the filters and filter-holder once and then get fitting adapter rings for your different lenses.

I have the SmallHD 501 which is not exactly cheap but pretty much amazing. The used price went down quite a bit since the SmallHD Focus is on the market. Between the two, the choice is 1080p screen vs daylight viewable and to be honest I'm not sure what's the better option. There's a sunhood for the 5series but it's rather big and I think 70$ is a silly price for something that should have been included with a monitor in this price range.

As you want a monitor and not a recorder, I think there won't be big real-world improvements in the foreseeable future so I would rather save up a bit and try to get a used SmallHD over one of the cheap options.

Did exactly what cantsin said. Bought a cheap Spyder when there was a sale on Amazon and use DisplayCal / ArgyllCMS for free.

Have used it to generate profiles for my monitor as well as a LUT for DavinciResolve outputting via a Intensity Pro 4k to a TV. I re-calibrate once a year.

You need good screens tho and different technologies give different results. I tried to use a screen I got for free at work and it was always rubbish, no way to properly calibrate it. Calibration can't fix clouding from bad backlighting or the fact that OLED/Plasma has way deeper blacks than IPS. If a screen only does 90% sRGB, you won't get proper sRGB/Rec709 calibration.

I'd be concerned about latency with some of these recorders, the cheap ones can be pretty bad. No help for pulling focus if it's lagging too much. Clearly an important point for research before buying.

It actually might be the combination with the speed booster. Did you try to adjust the optical element to fix it?

http://www.metabones.com/article/of/infinity-adjustment-speed-booster-only

I also heard that with some focal reducer brand/model + lens combinations, there are issues that it's not possible to get perfect infinity focus.

The marketing material says it can control Panasonic cameras but I couldn't find a single early review video where someone was using it with a GH5 and show if/how the focus wheel works. I saw a bazillion videos with plain A7-something setups (small-ish lens, no cage, etc.) that would have worked with any other one-hand gimbal in the past.

Can anyone point me to one?

1 hour ago, Eric Calabros said:

This is the result of having direct communication with your customers (Japanese should take note), yes its bulky, but in this case bulk is not necessarily a negative thing for me.

With this developments in stabilizer industry I bet camera makers will ditch IBIS eventually. Its costly complicated mechanical thing that also exacerbates the heat issues. 

I absolutely disagree about this. Most of us here are shooting video with photo cameras. I would think 9 out of 10 people buy these cameras for pictures and want the IBIS for shooting handheld in low light (slower shutter speed, lower ISO), no one will buy a gimbal stabilizer to shoot photos. Even nearly all mobile phones implemented optical image stabilization by now.

People shooting video with DSLR/MILC are a minority and out of this group, also not everyone uses a gimbal. Enthusiast forums are never representative of the real world.

https://www.mysterybox.us/blog/2017/12/18/studio-grading-in-hdr-on-the-smallhd-p3x-and-atomos-sumo-19

This was interesting about HDR grading in my opinion, I don't know how the panel in the smaller recorders stacks up against the Sumo though.

I follow the DaVinci Resolve user group on Facebook. While most of the professionals there have probably higher quality standards than people producing for the web, the general opinion on using the Atomos products was "totally not". But if one produces for consumption on phones and tablets, the benchmark is a lot lower in my opinion.

12 hours ago, buggz said:

And it isn't all about the weight. 

Geometry plays a GREAT part, I found this out with a gimbal that could handle the weight, but not the length.

This is the real deal breaker with most setups.

If I put my GH5 into a cage and add a quick release plate, it's impossible to balance on the Crane v1. It's within the weight limits but it simply doesn't allow to adjust the arms far enough to balance it.

Therefore most "will it balance?" questions in the Facebook groups are not properly answered because people just only look at the weight of the setup, not how this weight distributes for the balance (front heavy, too high, etc).

1 hour ago, wolf33d said:

4.1 pounds VS 2.4 for the Moza Air VS 2 lbs for the Aircross. Sorry DJI but that's a NO GO. 

I would think the Ronin-S competes with the Zhiyun Crane 2, not the smaller gimbals (Crane v2, Crane Plus, Moza Air, Moza Aircross, ...) for light cameras. Looking forward to seeing comparison videos between the two. I'm really interested in the possibility to mount a GH5 in a cage via a quick release (no go with the Crane v1).

1 hour ago, kye said:

Could you mount the external monitor on the handle of the gimbal and run a (very flexible) cable to the camera?  I've seen people running cables from fixed microphones or power banks to the camera on a gimbal before and they seem to work.

230g isn't much but every bit counts!

I guess it's not about having more weight balanced by the gimbal (the Crane 2 is strong), it's about holding all of that with only one hand. I would hate to hold 3-4kg in a single hand (considering the bad leverage when you tilt the gimbal in that hand), we're reaching levels where a two-handed gimbal would make more sense for usability.

I'd get a field monitor such as the SmallHD Focus or the soon coming Atomos Ninja V, it'll be better for manual focus than either EVF or LCD.

The LCD screen has worse resolution than the EVF. I tried another loupe but it was quite a bit worse for manual focusing than using the viewfinder.

I hope for Resolve 15 to improve on the titling(titles, lower thirds, etc). That's super weak compared to most other features and doing it in Fusion is total overkill for what I need.

I really hoped for a new camera sized between BMPCC and BMCC but after getting so spoiled with IBIS (and seeing the related backlash for the GH5S) I wonder how much of a market there is still left for such a bare bones smallish cinema camera if the prices would end up 2 to 3k-ish (between a rock [UMP 4.6K, EVA1, C200] and a hard place [GH5, A7 III series]). The people who complain about SD cards for the GH5 won't like the media for a 4k raw small form camera.