Stanley

On 12/8/2016 at 10:16 PM, martinmcgreal said:

So, I’m looking to make a camera purchase around Feb/March in the £3,000 to £4,000 market, new or used, as an upgrade to my current pocket camera. It will be mainly for narrative work/passion projects, so I want a ‘cinema’ camera as per say .. w/ the following specs;

13+ stops Dynamic Range

4K (2x Anamorphic Friendly)

Solid Colour Science

Minimum 10 bit 4:2:2 (Internal, Ideally)

Good Low-Light

Happy to lose a stop of dynamic range in exchange for good solid low-light. I’ve looked at the popular options, shall we say, and nothing appears to be ticking every box - except say a used MX, which is tempting, but its size, age and miles on the clock makes you think twice .. 

I can’t warm to Sony’s colour science, and Blackmagic’s 4K cameras, excluding the 4.6K, aren’t low-light cameras either. Sadly, the 4.6K is out of my price range too, given it's closer to £6K once fully kitted, right? My taste in Blackmagic’s image has soured somewhat too - these systems produce fantastically clinical/sharp images, however I want an image more on the softer/milkier side straight out of the sensor. I appreciate this can be influenced through choice of glass/filters, but you get my gist .. 

May well be worth me delaying a purchase even longer until NAB or the GH5’s release, though I can’t see the latter ticking the above boxes? Alternatively, perhaps I’m scowling the market for a camera with the above specs that just isn’t available in my price range? 

Cheers

Any chance to see some of your work ?

6 minutes ago, Vesku said:

4k photo records 0-255 video.

99.9% of the worlds population don't know that!!

2 hours ago, jonpais said:

I figured out what I was doing wrong. To keep the blacks from getting crushed, use -2, not +2 in shadow tone setting. Ha. Tomorrow, go out and try again.

Thought the colour and skin tones looked great on my computer.

30 minutes ago, DBounce said:

. Not always does crushed blacks help to drive the story.

Film noir maybe ?

15 minutes ago, DBounce said:

E-M1 II for video. It's one thing making a creative choice to crush the blacks, but all I see from this camera is next to no shadow detail. I personally like to have options. Not always does crushed blacks help to drive the story.

Cool, I was responding @Mat33 and the E-M5 and what JB shot. Did you watch it? 

The EM-1 11 is really a stills camera.

37 minutes ago, Vesku said:

Does the GX85 has less banding and more dynamic range in 0-255 video than in 16-235 video? In theory yes but in practise?

One thing is for sure is that GX85 looks far superior to GH4.

Buy the UM4.6 because it's a brand new camera being used by recognised camera professionals eveywhere, and you get all the software for editing for nothing. It's a no brainer if your talented enough to use BMD. Wish I was cause I'd buy 2 tomorrow.

9 hours ago, SuperSet said:

Not sure if this has been posted but this dude's video shot in Astia Soft looks great. I'm beginning to think that's the best profile to use.

 

Looked great. Can see some serious work getting done with this camera in the right hands. Those colours were spot on with how it really looks, and it handled the rapids on the waterfall quite well.

I didn't want to reveal my prototype slider that's still in developement stage, but seeing as a thief (who I know well) on DVXUser has stolen my idea, maybe I should.

You don't even need a tripod at all, and it's fully mobile being on wheels. It's a 2 rubbish bin slider and for extra stability you can fill the bins with beer and ice.

I'm thinking of getting a kickstarter campaign up and running for 100 shareholders at a bargain $500 a share. I'm calling it The Wheelie Good Slider. I'll even offer $100 cash back up front if you send me your Bank Account and pin details in advance via Western Union, Cairo.

2 minutes ago, DBounce said:

Much to like about this camera, but the crushed blacks are not one of them. There is no detail in there at all.

Which camera, stills or video?

29 minutes ago, mat33 said:

The E-M5 series is meant to be the more video focused of the OMD line than the E-M1, so will be interesting to see what the E-M5 mark iii brings to the table.  Despite this, with the processing power in the E-M1 we could see some nice improvements with video AF, log profile and maybe some higher frame rates with future updates. I'm sure John Brawley is giving Olympus some good feedback on what they need to do from a video perspective. 

 

I really liked what he did with this video. Not sure if it's been posted before.

https://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/

1 hour ago, markr041 said:

Ok, tired of radical in-camera settings and attempts to make Panasonic images look like those from other cameras? Want to see the default images the camera delivers with no adjustments in post, at night, with the Nocticron? No, well happy holidays anyways:

 

Thought some of those skin tones looked a bit plasticy.

Apart from that it looked great.

44 minutes ago, Damphousse said:

Your wife is right.  DVDs are 480i so 480p should look "just as good".  Why is that surprising?

 

Presumption, and technical ignorance on my behalf. And my wife is always right!!

Hi Alex, I have the MVH 502A head and it's a good light weight head, and as long as you don't try and load it up too much, or go too long on the lens it should be good. I don't use it a lot for my needs these days, but I can recommend it.Think you can get flat based verions as well. I tried to remove the half ball on mine once and it wouldn't budge.

Yeah they've actually surprised me these solo sticks considering there's no spreader. 

Might be worth while looking at some used Miller Solo sticks and a 75mm half bowl to mount the slider on. 10 lbs weight at one end of a slider might be a challenge for one tripod.

Good thing about the Solo sticks is they can get down nice and low. 

26 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Cheap sliders slide on tubes, better ones use a belt of some kind. And the even better ones have a heavy flywheel. But it depends on the weight of the camera you are using. You don't need a heavy duty one for a Go Pro. And you can't use a cheap one with a heavy camera. Pure Physics.

Good advice.

5 hours ago, Alex Uzan said:

My main use will be at home.

 

If your main use is at home, I think you've been given some good suggestions above. However if you ever decide to step outside and use some long lenses that require movement, I think you gonna have to consider spending more on sticks and a head and go a bit heavier.

@Tim Sewell.......Have you used the SLR on a long lens, I'm wondering if focus is a problem ? I spent a bit of yesterday practising riding my cheap Variable ND that's only usable on a widish lens. I must say there's a bit of technique/practise involved, and keeping my fingers out of shot would be a good start !

I'm seriously going to look into the SLR magic vari ND to find out if its clickless or can be made to be clickless, and what its like on a long lens (about 300mm @ MFT) 99% of my stuff is shot over the ocean looking south most of the time and quite often panning left to the east and the rising sun. I need to control aperture to get a long depth of focus, and shutter speed to control motion cadence. I work with a couple of DOPs and they reckon the SLR magic vari nd is hard to beat for its price. I reckon riding a descent vari ND might keep me in the sweet spot when I need it. I know fron experience some cheap vari nd's aren't nice on long lenses.

Thanks for explaining it for me Vesku, but it sounds way too complicated and distracting for me to think about whilst I'm framed up and say panning with a shot. If it were to become a feature with the GH5 I'd certainly be turning it off in auto mode if I used it. But thanks for explaining it.

Ok I'm not understanding something here and I don't have aGH4, but if I was recording in shutter priority for say 5 min and aperture, ISO, and maybe white balance values are changing, what do I do with this information whilst I'm recording ? Do I try a remember what the changing values are ? Do I take my eye away from the viewfinder and write down what happened at what moment? Do I fiddle with buttons to try and overide one of the values ? I can fully understand it for stils, but I can't get my head around it for video. 

6 hours ago, Dan Wake said:

please make tests for vertical stripes in your review (and aliasing please). thanks

Yes that would be good especially in 4K. It seems that moire and vertical stairstepping is showing up on G8, GX85 and G7 4K footage. Dr Dave has bought it to attention on some other sites. Seems that the G7 is the lesser of the culprits. This footage by Dr Dave is a good example of it showing up on musical instruments and architecture. 

52 minutes ago, Vesku said:

 He proves that is is possible to achieve good result also with manual exposure. 

I'd say that Mark's results are better than good. No one's perfect but he comes close using a GH4.

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

You picked one of the hardest types of content to shoot, sports. It Ain't easy as you can tell.

Couldn't agree more, I still reckon the lateral ball follow in golf is one of the hardest shots in television to pull off properly. Top notch freelance cameramen in sport are always in high demand.