mkabi

I would complain

Granted the Mac Pro might not be for mass consumers, but there's a much wider market than just filmmakers. And It's not actually a niche product; it's just a high-end version of a product nearly every home and office uses. Any professional who needs a powerful desktop for any reason might consider it. And many more people with more money than sense will go out and buy it simply because they think "it's what professionals use and I want the best". The real genius of Apple products is in the styling and marketing, not in the design or features.

It's worth noting that if Apple put out a cinema camera they would likely not be able to include ProRes raw recording internally - they already challenged Red's patent in court and lost.

And being Apple, they would probably have a proprietary lens mount with very limited, overpriced lenses. You would have to buy an ipad or iphone as the monitor, there would be no headphone jack, the audio inputs would be some new proprietary type, everything would be touchscreen only, and the mounting threads would be 1/2" instead of 1/4" so that you have to buy a special Apple baseplate for $2499 just to put it on a tripod. Plus it would probably have an internal media and an internal battery that cannot be removed and which does not last for a full 10hr production day (and the charger would be sold separately).

Apple are the last company I would want to see release a cinema camera.

I'm sure a lot of us feel the same.
Nikon name is legendary, just as legendary as Canon.
I like the design and look of the Z cams - just the inside don't match the outside. Z6 II & Z7 II should have had more than what they offered - they should've aimed for what the R5 was offering, instead they were offering less than what the S5 was offering.

I think he is using regular Canon EF to RF for the Sigma 18-35; its in the pictures.

Yeah. I don't have patience like you bros. Just thinking about rewatching 300+ clips (from point 1) straight for another 8 hours (or less; from point 4) is making my stomach turn. Each to his/her own...
But, this shows the dedication you need to remain happy in this industry. Do that 15 to 20 times a year, just for weddings.... and you will know if that is what you want to do.... even if its for short term.
Thanks for the heads up; ordered.

I will add one last point from my end.
In the video business - if you are doing it all alone -> There isn't enough talk about editing (well not much talk about it here) - and I'm not talking about editing equipment (monitor, cpu, software, speakers etc. - although that does matter to a degree) - just sitting there, reviewing the footage, transcoding, bringing it on the timeline, stitching it together, adding sound and/or music, adding effects, etc. <- fucken time consuming shit.
Your 1 day shoot, ends up being weeks of editing - nobody talks about that...
I know there are ads on kijiji/craiglist - wedding videographer - $500/$1000 - may be if you're a beginner and you want to build a portfolio to show future clients. But that quickly becomes a nightmare.  
Ask yourself, "What is my worth?" Are you worth $15/hr, $25/hr, $50/hr or more? Then add it all up.
8 to 12 hours of being on set filming.
Then 2 weeks of editing (average of 8 to 10 hours of sitting in front of a computer editing the video per day) <- practice your ass off to get your wedding videos down to 2 weeks of editing. Excluding weekends, we have about 80 to 100 hours. 
So, total time spent its about 88 hours to 112hours - at $15/hr - $1320 to $1680; at $25/hr - $2200 to $2800, and at $50/hr - $4400 to $5600. 
Again - keep in mind - your experience level, who is willing to pay those amounts for your experience level and you are doing this all alone (consider getting help - adding to your crew and the mark up in price). This is just for your labour. I'm not talking about equipment cost, etc.

This is a handy tool for automating that:
https://logger.ambient.de/

 
 

I will add one last point from my end.
In the video business - if you are doing it all alone -> There isn't enough talk about editing (well not much talk about it here) - and I'm not talking about editing equipment (monitor, cpu, software, speakers etc. - although that does matter to a degree) - just sitting there, reviewing the footage, transcoding, bringing it on the timeline, stitching it together, adding sound and/or music, adding effects, etc. <- fucken time consuming shit.
Your 1 day shoot, ends up being weeks of editing - nobody talks about that...
I know there are ads on kijiji/craiglist - wedding videographer - $500/$1000 - may be if you're a beginner and you want to build a portfolio to show future clients. But that quickly becomes a nightmare.  
Ask yourself, "What is my worth?" Are you worth $15/hr, $25/hr, $50/hr or more? Then add it all up.
8 to 12 hours of being on set filming.
Then 2 weeks of editing (average of 8 to 10 hours of sitting in front of a computer editing the video per day) <- practice your ass off to get your wedding videos down to 2 weeks of editing. Excluding weekends, we have about 80 to 100 hours. 
So, total time spent its about 88 hours to 112hours - at $15/hr - $1320 to $1680; at $25/hr - $2200 to $2800, and at $50/hr - $4400 to $5600. 
Again - keep in mind - your experience level, who is willing to pay those amounts for your experience level and you are doing this all alone (consider getting help - adding to your crew and the mark up in price). This is just for your labour. I'm not talking about equipment cost, etc.

And, from what I understand is that this guy wants to start in Wedding videos and move to doc and commercial work.
Blowing it all on just a body.... doesn’t make sense.
Equipment cost < Business Profit
Look at high end equipment later. Start getting customers first... start charging a rate that covers your hours put into it + equipment rental rate (estimate).
If you get enough customers then invest in equipment.

Lets be honest, its not that there aren't "halfway" decent or perfect cameras - its that our expectations are growing. The benchmark is moved slightly or completely every 3 months.
If we look back to 2008 - Canon 5D Mark 2 or even back to 2012 with the Canon 1DC, now if we threw the Fuji X-S10 into the past - imagine the uproar - imagine the type of monkey wrench that would have placed on the industry - for example, if we pulled that out - just 1 day before Canon announced the 1DC, with the same price it is today. I'm just using Fuji X-S10 as opposed to S1H, A7S3 or R5, because it is really a master of none for today's standards, but throw it back..... people would go crazy.

Lets be honest, its not that there aren't "halfway" decent or perfect cameras - its that our expectations are growing. The benchmark is moved slightly or completely every 3 months.
If we look back to 2008 - Canon 5D Mark 2 or even back to 2012 with the Canon 1DC, now if we threw the Fuji X-S10 into the past - imagine the uproar - imagine the type of monkey wrench that would have placed on the industry - for example, if we pulled that out - just 1 day before Canon announced the 1DC, with the same price it is today. I'm just using Fuji X-S10 as opposed to S1H, A7S3 or R5, because it is really a master of none for today's standards, but throw it back..... people would go crazy.

Okay but he's shooting too high ... He just needs a used gh5 ... to start ... lots of objectives and accessories out there cheap ...
Fx6 or c90 will not be cheap and not very far from 10k!

Taking it even further...
A: one body + one lens to practice with until you get close to your first job and then...and only then...
B: buy another identical body (so there is no learning curve) and a second lens so you can do the work.
Then there is the rest of it; audio, lighting, tripod, mono, gimbal if that’s your thing, etc.
But right now, not wishing to discourage anyone, it’s not the best time to be trying to start out in this industry for sure.
 

Indeed. Blowing 10k on just a body for weddings is overkill. By a massive amount.
10k for all bodies and lenses max, but it can easily be done for under 5k.
I’m in the process of new kit from scratch and total budget for video is under 5k and I shoot an average 25-30 of the things per annum with 25 already booked in for 2020.
Especially with the uncertainty in the world right now of the entire industry, blowing 10k on a body with I presume no bookings, is nuts.
Apologies OP if your scenario is anything different to that, but it’s how I read it.
More like it!

And, from what I understand is that this guy wants to start in Wedding videos and move to doc and commercial work.
Blowing it all on just a body.... doesn’t make sense.
Equipment cost < Business Profit
Look at high end equipment later. Start getting customers first... start charging a rate that covers your hours put into it + equipment rental rate (estimate).
If you get enough customers then invest in equipment.

And, from what I understand is that this guy wants to start in Wedding videos and move to doc and commercial work.
Blowing it all on just a body.... doesn’t make sense.
Equipment cost < Business Profit
Look at high end equipment later. Start getting customers first... start charging a rate that covers your hours put into it + equipment rental rate (estimate).
If you get enough customers then invest in equipment.

Don’t waste it on a system. 
You’ll only be mad with yourself later on for choosing that system.
Buy a body with 1 native lens (that way when it is time to ditch and move on to another system it isn’t hard to let go...)
Invest in PL lenses and learn to manual focus. You won’t regret it!!! Trust me.
My current suggestions:
Either get two Panasonic S5s or two Fuji X-T4s. With a workhorse lens for both cameras.
Go for the Ironglass 3 lens set. 
Bonus: Get a Blackmagic 2.5K camera with mft mount from EBay.
Also, buy a bunch of LED lights. Six 900 LED would be pretty decent. 
You might want to get cages, matte box, external monitor, tripods, slider, gimbal.... anything I’m missing?

I've been working with the GH5 for the past few years and the fastest lenses I could get were F0.95 MFT which translates into F2.8, so these lenses look great to me. I do wish they had a 14mm or 16mm prime on the way for real estate work, but other than that, the 24mm for video and the 50mm for portraits might pull me further into the "alliance".  If the 24mm outperforms my current Canon EF 24mm for sharpness and usability then I may go for it.
  
I tested the Canon EF-S 10-22mm; and holy sh*t I stand corrected @Lux Shots, the Sigma 18-35mm EF-S lens does work on the S5, but not the Canon EF-S 10-22mm. I also tested the Canon EF-S 18-135 F3.5-F5.6 and it worked also.  Maybe the EF-S 10-22mm does not report that it is a crop sensor lens and the rest of them do which is a real bummer because that 10-22mm would have become my real estate video lens. I'm still not sure why manually selecting APS-C mode does not make the EF-S 10-22mm work unless its a crop factor thing that gets adjusted when the lens reports its crop factor to the Sigma EF adapter.
This little camera just never ceases to amaze me; Panasonic has got to be the best kept secret out there. All YouTubbers will ever talk about is the AF, there's so many more important things to a camera system than just AF. 

Unbiased. And, I've used a few different media boxes. Sony, IPTV box, even the Samsung TVs internally built system - they even have apple TV built into the TV (but I still resort to the standalone box).
Now.... I've used Sony before moving to Apple TV Box - its just easy to use, hassle free - intuitive. Funny thing is, even if the apple TV is built into the Samsung TVs that I have.... I don't use it simply because the remote (Samsung Remote vs. Apple TV remote) isn't there.... 
The whole experience of it being so simple - idiot proofing - is what draws me in...
Only complaints I have about the Apple remote - sometimes its overly sensitive (the touch portion of it) and its so small.... you can lose it often... 
Editted to add: I have a lot of non-tech savvy people in my household - I can take the time to learn a system, but I don't have patience to baby and/or teach every single person that is in my household nor those that visits my household and starts asking me how do you use this thing.... 

Here is another tip..... at no point....  should you have an uncle come up to you and say.... "Hey, I own the same camera as you... you think you can do a better job than me?"
Do you know how to avoid that?
Gaffer tape the labels, and build the shit out of it.... put a cage, matte box, focus gear, external monitor, mic it up. Make it look like a $50,000 camera instead of a $3000 camera.... people need to physically see where the money is going.... small and deinty can be operated by small and non-professional people.
Going back to the camera jib - thats the difference... a gimbal... everyone seems to have a gimbal nowadays (even the regular joe - that ends up being an enthusiast) and its so friggin small.... its not obtrusive.... so everyone can bother with a gimbal. Nobody can bother with a jib... its too big to use on the regular.... but its in everyone's face <- people see value in that....
Whats the difference between a Toyota and a Rolls-Royce? Figure it out and show the people why you're a Rolls-Royce.

Those of you guys doing wedding videos... don’t take this the wrong way.... but you are doing something wrong. I don’t know what you’re doing, but I know it’s not right.
There are venues that are going as high as $50 or $100 per person. The average cost of a wedding as per google search is $33,900... are you telling me that couples are willing to forego the cost properly capturing those moments? 
Your telling me that people are not willing to spend at least 10% of their budget on properly capturing the event itself???
May be they don’t see value in it.... at which point skip those people.... 
But, you need to lean in on those that do see value in video and lean in hard!!! Which means.... package it properly.... and throw in a crap load of marketing behind it.
Let me be honest here... I got married in 2010.... I hired pretty much a nobody... barely had a portfolio to show... he was fresh out of film school and he was recommended by the photographer. But, from the small portfolio that he did have, I was super impressed - my now wife... I had to convince. He charged $3800 (Canadian)... my mom complained stating exactly what you guys are saying.... “videography shouldn’t cost more than photography” - He made her eat her words by the end of it. BTW, photography cost $3200....this was at the cusp of the DSLR revolution.... he was running around with a 7D and 50mm.... But at the end of the day.... this guy came full guns blazing. He filmed with us for about 12 to 14 days... (that alone is going the extra mile) and created a 20 minute short for the wedding. At the wedding itself, he came with a 12 foot crane/jib (4 extra guys); had posters of the 20 minute short (all over the place) and a 2 minute trailer of the short (full video was shown at the reception). When he finished that day alone... FYI -there were 700+ people at my wedding (I’m Hindu)... 8 people signed up and he charged $5200 per person. Thereafter he signed way more by showing people the final cinematic cut of the wedding itself. And, he even packaged the tangible products properly - from the Blu-Ray/DVD menu to the cover and housing of the disc. I got the original disc in a leather case, and regular DVDs (however many I wanted) in a custom plastic case. 
Owning a camera and knowing how to edit the footage is not enough. Ask yourself how many steps ahead are you from the regular joe (owning the same or similar camera)??? It has to be visible differences though. If you’re going to talk about DR and noise reduction.... people don’t see that.... do you know why photography is more expensive??? And people are willing to spend money on it?? There are physical - tangible products at the end of it - a physical and custom album and custom framed pictures or canvas pictures <- people see that.... it’s visible... a DVD or USB stick.... sure it’s something... but it’s not framed on the wall or anything. 
Im hoping that you guys are seeing the visible products that pretty much acted as a marketing campaign for the guy that I hired. If you don’t see it, let me list it out: Camera jib (that’s something the regular guy doesn’t own), movie posters, trailer, 20-short, 45 minute cinematic cut (final product) and leather casing.
Sure that seems like a lot of work.... and it is... but then ask yourself again how many steps ahead are you from a regular joe who owns the same or similar equipment that can do it for free?
 
 

Here is another tip..... at no point....  should you have an uncle come up to you and say.... "Hey, I own the same camera as you... you think you can do a better job than me?"
Do you know how to avoid that?
Gaffer tape the labels, and build the shit out of it.... put a cage, matte box, focus gear, external monitor, mic it up. Make it look like a $50,000 camera instead of a $3000 camera.... people need to physically see where the money is going.... small and deinty can be operated by small and non-professional people.
Going back to the camera jib - thats the difference... a gimbal... everyone seems to have a gimbal nowadays (even the regular joe - that ends up being an enthusiast) and its so friggin small.... its not obtrusive.... so everyone can bother with a gimbal. Nobody can bother with a jib... its too big to use on the regular.... but its in everyone's face <- people see value in that....
Whats the difference between a Toyota and a Rolls-Royce? Figure it out and show the people why you're a Rolls-Royce.

Those of you guys doing wedding videos... don’t take this the wrong way.... but you are doing something wrong. I don’t know what you’re doing, but I know it’s not right.
There are venues that are going as high as $50 or $100 per person. The average cost of a wedding as per google search is $33,900... are you telling me that couples are willing to forego the cost properly capturing those moments? 
Your telling me that people are not willing to spend at least 10% of their budget on properly capturing the event itself???
May be they don’t see value in it.... at which point skip those people.... 
But, you need to lean in on those that do see value in video and lean in hard!!! Which means.... package it properly.... and throw in a crap load of marketing behind it.
Let me be honest here... I got married in 2010.... I hired pretty much a nobody... barely had a portfolio to show... he was fresh out of film school and he was recommended by the photographer. But, from the small portfolio that he did have, I was super impressed - my now wife... I had to convince. He charged $3800 (Canadian)... my mom complained stating exactly what you guys are saying.... “videography shouldn’t cost more than photography” - He made her eat her words by the end of it. BTW, photography cost $3200....this was at the cusp of the DSLR revolution.... he was running around with a 7D and 50mm.... But at the end of the day.... this guy came full guns blazing. He filmed with us for about 12 to 14 days... (that alone is going the extra mile) and created a 20 minute short for the wedding. At the wedding itself, he came with a 12 foot crane/jib (4 extra guys); had posters of the 20 minute short (all over the place) and a 2 minute trailer of the short (full video was shown at the reception). When he finished that day alone... FYI -there were 700+ people at my wedding (I’m Hindu)... 8 people signed up and he charged $5200 per person. Thereafter he signed way more by showing people the final cinematic cut of the wedding itself. And, he even packaged the tangible products properly - from the Blu-Ray/DVD menu to the cover and housing of the disc. I got the original disc in a leather case, and regular DVDs (however many I wanted) in a custom plastic case. 
Owning a camera and knowing how to edit the footage is not enough. Ask yourself how many steps ahead are you from the regular joe (owning the same or similar camera)??? It has to be visible differences though. If you’re going to talk about DR and noise reduction.... people don’t see that.... do you know why photography is more expensive??? And people are willing to spend money on it?? There are physical - tangible products at the end of it - a physical and custom album and custom framed pictures or canvas pictures <- people see that.... it’s visible... a DVD or USB stick.... sure it’s something... but it’s not framed on the wall or anything. 
Im hoping that you guys are seeing the visible products that pretty much acted as a marketing campaign for the guy that I hired. If you don’t see it, let me list it out: Camera jib (that’s something the regular guy doesn’t own), movie posters, trailer, 20-short, 45 minute cinematic cut (final product) and leather casing.
Sure that seems like a lot of work.... and it is... but then ask yourself again how many steps ahead are you from a regular joe who owns the same or similar equipment that can do it for free?
 
 

Hit that nail for sure. I felt that way with Touch AF since the 70D. 
I don’t know.... there is something to be said about those eureka moments that comes with setting it up (WB, ISO, Shutter, Aperture and yes manual focus, flags, reflectors and lights) - framing and composing - getting that perfect B-roll... sometimes takes patience and luck. But, when you do get it right... it’s like you did that.... not the camera... the camera just captured what you did.
 
If you leave it up to the camera.... feels like you don’t care anymore. Just my thoughts, but I understand for those that want AF like wedding guys. In my opinion.... charge enough for the gig to have multiple cameras (and operators) and angles... and if all fails then fake it. Missed the shot where the groom kisses the bride? Take them out later and ask them to do a mock kiss the bride, in the garden, under the twilight sun or something ... stitch it all together in post... 

Hit that nail for sure. I felt that way with Touch AF since the 70D. 
I don’t know.... there is something to be said about those eureka moments that comes with setting it up (WB, ISO, Shutter, Aperture and yes manual focus, flags, reflectors and lights) - framing and composing - getting that perfect B-roll... sometimes takes patience and luck. But, when you do get it right... it’s like you did that.... not the camera... the camera just captured what you did.
 
If you leave it up to the camera.... feels like you don’t care anymore. Just my thoughts, but I understand for those that want AF like wedding guys. In my opinion.... charge enough for the gig to have multiple cameras (and operators) and angles... and if all fails then fake it. Missed the shot where the groom kisses the bride? Take them out later and ask them to do a mock kiss the bride, in the garden, under the twilight sun or something ... stitch it all together in post...