Matthew Hartman

7 hours ago, cantsin said:

It matters for issues like banding in gradients (especially in Log footage converted to Rec709 and graded), which are a systemic limitation of 8bit rather than "artifcats that some 8bit cameras produce". Attila's sample images, recorded from a Fuji XT2 as high-quality 8bit 4:2:2 with an external recorder in ProRes, provide excellent examples.

I think you totally misunderstood my question. 

18 hours ago, pablogs86 said:

Hello everyone! I'm somewhat obsessed with getting the most natural looking and close to reality image as I can in camera to save time in post so I'm not comfortable using auto WB and the kelvin option is unusable, I read somehwere that using the WB presets (day, tungsten, etc) and customizing them is the way to go, I've been doing that but I'm finding it hard to adjust and replicate the exact temperature and tint in every shot by eye, I'm getting better at it but I still miss a lot, I was thinking about getting the expo disc and a neutral white balance card so that I can use the custom white balance option, have you tried this? Does WB stay locked in when using the custom WB option or does it shift like when using kelvin? How do you deal with white balance on the NX1? Any tips or ideas are very appreciated. Thank you!!

I also use the custom white balance in the WB settings and snap a photo of something as close to pure white in the scene. A white or 50% gray card would be beneficial to have on hand for this. This technique is not 100%, yet close. I also hold up the same white card in the beginning of the take. (Just the initial take will do if it's the same scene)

Then in Premiere and with my footage loaded, in the Lumetri color panel, I use "WB Selector" eyedropper tool and select on the white card in the beginning of the first take. 

Then I check my RGB parade scope and maker sure the 3 color channels (RED, GREEN, BLUE) are sitting relatively equal around 120-230

You should have pretty reasonable WB at that point. 

5 hours ago, Kisaha said:

The rumor of a rumor, created a possible rumor!

Yep, it's predicated off the original rumor and this particular tech blog site has just gotten wind of it. Look, you guys know me by now, I love the NX1. But I refuse to get worked up in any sense or fashion over this rumor. If Samsung does it, they do it and we all will be pulling out those credit cards, if not, they don't, end of story. 

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The ‘Mirrorless Rumors’ have reported that the company is internally testing on Samsung NX2 cameras which are believed to be the successor of Samsung NX1 that got unleashed in 2014. This could not a believable news to full extent, especially since Samsung, on several occasions, has been thought to have exited the high-end camera business.

This is incorrect. Mirrorless rumors reported that Samsung is testing an retrofitted NX1, which suggests to me even if they have an NX2 slated, it's not anywhere near development as it's own model. 

9 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@cantsin absolutely stunning find ! This makes so much sense ! Neat video works in 32bit rgb and its creating new pixels from neighboring pixels. Downsampling to 1080p AND doing this should take the image even higher ?

question is should we do our NR in 4K or after when downscaling to 1080p where the NR will have way more neighboring pixels ??

 

Not to sound adversarial, but does it really matter? The purpose of more bit depth is to gain quality, meaning visually. If Neat Video is cleaning up the artifacts that some 8bit cameras produce, does it really matter what the end bit depth is if the visual issues are rectified? 

8 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

Would you mind removing that picture?  I would prefer to not have profanity associated with my work for religious and professional reasons. 

I'm unable to remove it myself but have contacted admin to remove it for me, as well as the copied one in the quote. My apologies. Just to be clear, my intent was not to offend you or criticize the actual work and can understand the nature of your request. 

9 minutes ago, anonim said:

@Matthew Hartman

Maybe, we'll see... I'm slowly warming-up Jester with broken English

BTW How nice is your surname - I immediately imagine of whom of to-me-dear creator are you descendant - the Nicolai Hartman, the Heinz Hartman, the Karl Amadeus Hartman...

It's a common German surname (I'm not German, I'm American) but part of my family is descended from south Germany, although on my father's side we've been living here in the States since colonial times. In fact we had some personal conflicts with Thomas Jefferson, as he tried to hang one of my great grandfathers for treason against the United States for his loyalty to the King of England. A lot of ppl don't know that during those times no one trusted anyone, and George Washington wasn't a trusted figure at all either.

Also have relatives that fought in the civil war. 

We are related to Lisa Hartman, the wife of Clint Black. 

Sorry, a bit of a history buff.

18 hours ago, jonpais said:

Announcement - “We’re getting out of the camera business for good.” Even if Samsung had said that on national TV, I would have been the first in line at the camera shop to pick up an NX1, if they were sold here. There was nothing sinister in what they did. 

The "sinister" thing in this which is probably too strong of a word, was they officially towed the line that "No, we're not doing any such thing". (Meaning closing shop) And then turn around and do the exact opposite without an official North American statement, which was an obvious attempt to sell off remaining supplies. It's just your average large corporation dick move.

Personally, I eventually got to the point where I stopped caring (after the petition didn't get the level of response I was hoping for from Samsung) and just enjoy the camera for what it is. And what it is is a dead camera/system that I enjoy using and I don't ask more out of it. One day it will be replaced with something else I also enjoy. 

11 hours ago, Inazuma said:

When I used to shoot with the C100 II in CLOG, I had major problems with macroblocking. In my experience, Neat Video alone was enough to get rid of a lot of it. I don't really think bitdepth upsampling has anything to do with this.

Neat Video is THE defacto industry noise reduction plugin worth every cent they charge for it. I would rather purchase Neat Video than buy another LED light. 

My process is to first run an instance of Neat Video, than grade the footage, then add a very subtle instance of noise to further help with dithering. In most applications, I don't need the noise instance to help smooth out banding and artifacts because Neat Video takes care of most, if not all of it. The noise layer is mostly psychological for me because that's how I took care of business before Neat Video came along. I seriously doubt a manufacture could script a NR algorithm in-cam on the fly with the power the NV delivers. 

7 minutes ago, anonim said:

Nice theme, I think. Simply, I need a more complex language to express - or, better, striving to express - more complex thoughts and feelings.

To be honest, I don't think that photography could be (for Westernian type of mind) in all extensity - repeat: in all extensity - form of art as great literature or classic music. Yes, it has precious dignity of skills and taste and knowledge. Yes there are great photo testaments of compassion and capability to extricate significant moment from banality - and as so, help to better experienced world. (And yes, I little disagree with Susan Sonthag and agree with Walter Benjamin.) Maybe it is similar to haiku poetry.

But it is impossible to express - or, better - to completely involve, as sort of full-senses initiation, other man in haiku as in, say, Beethoven's Eroica.

Further thinking, it seems to me that photography maybe is much more closer to sort of feeling/thinking/expression to Eastern mind? There always existed that wonderful feeling for moment, for profound non-ego encounter with mistery of nature and existence.

Western greek/judeochristian civillization and state of mind always relayed on inner and outer drama, complexity, struggle, personality - and its picks of art and distinctive philosophy are such that can embrace world of turmoil complexity, as in Shakespeare, Dostoyevski, Beethoven-to-Mahler/Shostakovich symphonies...

Probably that's the reason why I'm longing for video/movie as language, greatly respecting type of mind and spirit that stay behind profound photography masters.

When in doubt you can also just throw some more Emulation-Beutness at the problem.

1 minute ago, Axel said:

That's a good approach! With limited resources, one is forced to concentrate. Whenever I see someone take photos in burst mode, I think he/she hasn't understood the first thing about photography. But that's just me. 

Applicable to video as well. Imagine you have an expensive roll of film in your camera, just a few minutes. Imagine you could not immediately check the recording. Wouldn't this sharpen your senses? 

It would make you more self aware of the process for sure. But is also adds a deep sense of anxiety because you know that roll of film is expensive and unforgiving and you have one chance to nail it.

I started out in celluloid film. I'm not one of these guys that holds any nostalgia for the format because I remember that sense of pressure and anxiety to nail it or be very unpopular with the people around you. There's a sense of artistic freedom (but with it comes laziness) that digital gives you. Freedom from the stress of failure. Digital makes it okay to fail. Failure is a huge part of growth.

13 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

This is just a little something I shot on the subway, absolutely nothing special. But it made me think.

I used to shoot a lot of casual video on the streets. But ever since I became passionate about stills, more specifically street photography I never do it. Mostly because when recording video I feel like Im just missing out on great stills. An this was no exception. In fact its 1.5 years since I shot casual video out and about if we don't count "test shots" around the house.

The irony is that I started shooting street photography to become a better videographer. I used to love shooting video. The best part for me was composition and grading. So I started taking Raw stills in order to get to practice bigger quantities of grading. The plan was to eventually make a video about it and recommend all aspiring videographers to shoot a lot of stills. Just like the DP's in the Zacuto shoot out says (forgot which).

But along the way it completely switched on me. I started liking stills more. Specially the challenge. To capture a whole scene, the entire atmosphere, all the feelings in one single frame. Compressing an entire story into one single moment. 
Im not in anyway implying that Im good at it. But I love trying.

Now when I watch vlogging street shooters on youtube, you know the type, Gopro in the hot shoe and a montage to hip-hop beats, I just get annoyed. In the video montages they miss out on so many great images. 
Same thing for me today. In this short video montage of nothingness I see at least 4 potentially great images.

So, thats it. I still recommend all here that are aspiring DP's to shoot more stills. With something like a GRii you can always have it ready. Look for light, composition and story.
 Just be aware that you might switch to the dark side like I have. 
Don’t underestimate its power.

What about you guys? Who shoots stills, why, why not?

(btw, really soft lens in action here. It looked awesome with gorilla grain on my computer but I removed it since youtube always messes it up imo. And therefor its pretty darn soft. A couple of focus misses doesn't help either.)
 

 

Whenever I watch your videos here or on your channel I'm always left feeling melancholy.   Obviously the music selection, but your videos have a sense of "distance" about them that I find quite intriguing. Even videos of Gunmetal. Ruff! 

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The irony is that I started shooting street photography to become a better videographer. I used to love shooting video.

Studying photography teaches you the skill of storytelling inside the constraints of one frame, which forces you to think philosophically about your subject matter, and what message your frame is conveying. It's the highest form of "show don't' tell" and I recommend it to all aspiring videographers and DPs. When I think of a scene I think of it in terms of a single frame and then extrapolate that into motion. I once heard a seasoned cinematographer say, "You know you arrived as a cinematographer when you can pause a single frame in your film and it's a work of art by itself". 

I could never be a street photographer. I would feel like I'm constantly invading people's personal space. I give props to those with the courage and vulnerability to do it. 

7 hours ago, kye said:

Still below the iPhone X 256Gb!

There's a principle I've heard of where you apply the 80/20 rule to product pricing, and it basically says that if you have X customers willing to pay $Y for something, then X/10 of them will be willing to pay $(Y x 10) for something else that's better.  I've been continually surprised that billionaires buy the same phones that the Apple store employees can afford because no-one has designed something way more expensive for them.

Mobiado Grand Touch Executive $3,100.00 USD

Vertu Aster $7,000 USD

Goldvish Eclipse $7,700.00 USD

Ready? 

Savelli Jardin-Secret White Ice $10,000 USD

ARE YOU REALLY READY? 

Aston Martin Racing 808 $24,000 USD

The rich are not using Apple. All these phones run a custom fork of Android. 

2 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

The secret to those images though is in the color grade.  There are very few cameras that will look that good with minimal grading.

I think this is a huge point. For most modern mirrorless cameras that shoot to a distribution codec, regardless of 8 or 10bit, the manufactures designed these systems to produce good colors right out of the box. There isn't a lot of room to push colors around in post. You really have to know your way around qualifiers. 

I think sometimes (I feel a philosphy coming on) we get too caught up associating LOG with "professional" but it isnt neccesarily always true.

If you're getting good color and good exposure in camera, what the hell do you honestly need LOG for when you're probably going to arrive at the same grade (or very close to) you would have gotten in camera anyway. In this situation you just unessecarily doubled your workflow.

Now, before you nutty professor's jump on here I just want to state I know why LOG is preferred in most situations...DR. I'm just making an observation that these cameras are optimized by the factory to deliver the best they have to offer out of the box. When we speak about these systems this needs to be acknowledged more. 

43 minutes ago, TwoScoops said:

Voigtlanders at 0.95-1.4 are good for taking the edge off the sharpness too.

As are Tiffen softening filters, and much less expensive. Step up rings are cheap and even matte box versions of these filters are cheaper than a set of lens. 

9 hours ago, IronFilm said:

But he is still using a boom pole with a blimp and a shotgun in it ;-)

 

 

Yeah...DISQUALIFIED! ?

10 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

I think the akward looking motion is mainly due to compression, which is why the 400mb/sec all-i codec is exciting.  The problem with all that though, is that most of my work ends up on Youtube with terrible compression anyway, so I've kind of given up on good motion for now - until we reach the days of amazing internet speeds and prores Youtube:-) 

Heh, that's currently all of our problem. ? The thought of shooting (equals spending) 12 bit RAW to be distilled down to cheap 8bit compressed 20Mbit h.264 is not exactly inviting.

Rec2020 is going to help with this big time. That being said, adoption for UHD 8bit televisions is STILL not widespread let alone televisions enabled with HDR/10bit UHD. 

Streaming Prores? I doubt Apple is going to give Google a license for that. HEVC isn't too far off though. 

And lastly, this...

3 hours ago, EthanAlexander said:

So where do I claim my prize @Benjamin Hilton? Do I just send you my address or how does this work?

Here you go! You pay ship. 

11 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Nice shots. Colours like that and creamy shadows are an NX1 strength... Yes, it can do low light.

That 45mm F1.8 isn't bad either for $300 is it?!

The 45mm F1.8 is remarkeable for the price. The primes and S lens series in the NX system are hugely underrated. My S 16-50mm is Biblical. ?

13 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Yes I find it handy.. gives you some extra highlight recovery.

Yes, ever since you alerted the community about it I've used it.

The setting truly does increase DR by a stop or two. Samsung did a horrible, horrible job at marketing this feature, which is a pretty big deal when you consider that DR sells cameras. 

5 hours ago, iamoui said:

@Matthew HartmanWhat is the "FLAT" profile? Is this straight from the camera?

Yes, and in combination with a Tiffen Low light contrast filter.

But Keep in mind my objective here was to challenge the "unacceptable noise" comment that some people hold against this camera, and others in the same class in general. 

A little Neat Video goes a long way. Also, by the time you add in more contrast or an s-curve to the footage, a lot of those artifacts perceptually go bye-bye. This isn't anything new. It has to be done on a lot of Alexa, RED and certaintly Blackmagic systems as well. 

Sony set such a high and impractical bar in my opinion. The high ISO capability is literally teaching a generation of how to NOT properly light and expose a dark scene, esstentially stripping away a really good tool that has been succesfully used for many of decade. And now the expectation (bad practice) of using very high ISO gets wrapped up in other systems, like the GH5s. It still comes with other compromises too. 

Darkness IS information in terms of narrative work, and I feel like I'm going to be evangelizing this more and more, and I'm already blue in the face as it is. ? Yes, this emoji is yellow. 

The viewer does not need to see every detail in a scene to comphrehend what the scene is relating. That would fall more into line with documentation. A narrative piece is not a document of antiquity, it's a story, therefore an illusion. The human brain is really good at filling in the blank spaces. All you need to give the viewer are hints, the brain parses the rest. It's pretty remarkable, and testimate to how powerful the mind is.  

Take my profile image of the man sitting in the car. You only see small hints of a car, some seat, some steering wheel, both descending into shadow. But you as the viewer know he's sitting in a car and not a train. Correct? It's what you don't see that's drawling you in. So going back to high ISO, do you really want to see all the details in the scene? I say, shadows are friends, not combatants. 

I learned this actually in my fine art classess in college some 22 years ago, and it was practiced knowledge long, long, long before that, and has been effective for all kinds of mediums within the arts and sciences. 

Just now, Attila Bakos said:

I believe that's the new 120p mode, it looks very bad. I saw the same thing in all the 120p X-H1 videos I could find. There is a reason they left this out from the X-T2 which has the same processor. They kinda had to include it in the X-H1, but it's seems there's a price to it.

I can't wait to see the soon to be announced Samsung S9+ record 120 in UHD HEVC. In good light, it could actually be usable in certain situations. 

22 hours ago, jonpais said:

Have you guys seen examples of stabilized footage yet? The IBIS is without question in a league of its own.

There were parts in the DP Review video that straight up looked like they put the camera on sticks. It was super impressive. 

On 2/16/2018 at 2:02 PM, Mattias Burling said:

You think it will be that fast? Thats only like GH6 and 5Dv away. So in the a6995 or A7xxx then.

It actually might not be too fast. I think we're going to see a coupe technological jumps in two years. 

10 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Well, as my ex would say:

"families that play together stay together"

Wrong on so many unspeakable and unholy levels.  

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How do they hide the people shooting it? Hang it from the ceiling LoL? 

Various ways. But it's more of a first person vantage point with the ability to look either 180 or 360 around the environment. So think of the camera man as basically a stationary tripod in the center of the room. Although I doubt one would be more interested in the pen sitting on the desk in the corner rather than the action that's happening front and center. Eh hem. 

On 2/18/2018 at 12:33 AM, kye said:

I haven't heard of many examples of smartphones coming in above Apples flagship phone, but if someone was going to do it, having a RED branded camera in it would sure be a decent strategy.

Unfortunately Samsung is hell bent on increasing the prices for their flagship year over year. The S9/+ is rumored to have a price tag of $820-$960. 

11 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

Also, all the screenshots are taken from footage shot in 1080P 10 bit, not 4K. 

And that's why it looks softer in a more pleasing way. I have to say, the 10 bits is doing some nice things for those gradients. Are these jpegs in 8bit? If so, I have a 10 bit monitor, I would'nt mind seeing the originals. 

These blind tests always fool people. I think they're eye opening and show us how much psychology plays into our personal biases. 

That being said, though these images undeniably look great as stills, how do they fair in motion? I think if that was part of the guess the camera equation, more ppl would have nailed it, especially those who own a GH5. I could be wrong. 

My favorite guess the camera EVER. 

On 2/17/2018 at 10:16 AM, Benjamin Hilton said:

Does all this pixel peeping over camera nuances really matter on set if you know your camera sensor as a DP?

Probably not. My guess is at the end of the day, no. But some bigger clients care very much what you choose to shoot on and it better be big and impressive, and cost $1-2k per day to rent. Again, psychology.

I imagine as these smaller cams bridge the gap between $3000 and $60,000 it will start mattering less and less to big budget clients. But I can see the speech bubbles now, they see you on your GH5 and one pops up and reads "I can do that too, why did I need him?"

There is nothing in your examples that would suggest "amateur". 

Personally, I'm holding out for this bad boy...

21 minutes ago, bigfried said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnV-fo8Wuk0

Is it me or is there a heck of a lot of moire throughpout this clip, and considerring this is a pro produced marketing hype they must have minimised it.

hair at 0.23

bag at 0.28

camera lens at 0.38

etc etc

The video looked really good playing in a condensed window. Once I went full screen, it was pretty soft with some considerable macroblocking. I can play other compressed 1080 videos/footage full screen on my 2k/10bit monitor and my 8bit 55" UHD 4K television from other cameras and it still holds up.

I'm thinking the h.264/200 Mbit is really crippling the image in this camera. I hope Fuji can address this is a firmware update. 8bit 4:2:0 in h.264 @ 200 Mbits (in 2018 no less) is not going to cut it for larger grades, they should have totally gone with HEVC @ 200 Mbit. Good thing the camera has good color, I would just shoot with the baked in colors. 

Wow, I'm surprised it looks so muddy in 1080. Reminds me of Canon before they went 4k. But man, those colors though. So rich. 

21 minutes ago, Anders Bixbe said:

I used to go to the Cinerama theater in 1962 to watch Ben Hur, Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia and I was kind of frustrated that I could not produce anything like it on my double 8 film camera. Yes, I have made films and videos since 1961 ( amateur, though). Not until 2015 when I got the NX1 I could get a bit closer to that cinematic feeling with the immense detail I saw in the theater 1962. My jaw was on the floor at both events. Now, I know that "cinematic" has different  meanings for us here. I used to be a DVD freak and was tweaking with CRT projectors in my own theater and I know how oversharpening and edge enhancement looks like. Now with most recent blurays that is not a problem anymore. I just can not see any oversharpening  with my NX1 videos in my theater with LVC X7000 projector or my Panasonic DX900 VA panel FALD UHD TV. 

Isn't that because your projecting optically? 

52 minutes ago, sandro said:

The NX1 was amazing until the Samsung marketing department came in and decided to make the image look like their TVs = oversharpening, supercolors and "wow effect" as if this product was the for mass to be sold in stores by people who knew nothing about cameras.

Can you please site some evidence of this? 

15 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

"The sensor readout of this raw Bayer frame is provided as uncompressed, 12 bit log ARRIRAW data" From Alexa website.

I think that Is the secret of Arri, Red, a Blackmagic camera is 12 bit, 14 bit Raw plain and simple. Look how good a ML 5D mk III is. It is the Raw, and at a higher bit rate to boot. And it is not sensor size either, look how good a BMPCC looks. When we get 12,14 bit Raw in one of these 3000 dollar or less DSLR's or Mirrorless cameras than I guess we really may have a mini Alexa for cheap. Now for Color Science in one, well you know and I know that is baked in each manufacturers camera, but with Raw we have a bit more latitude to alter it. And yes we do have cheap Raw, ProRes BM cameras, but not a Sony, or a Panny, or even this Fuji.

None of the above cameras, at least to me, are Razor sharp, they have smooth roll offs and soft edges in a good way, and somewhat muted colors. More Pastel than Kodachrome like.

Now Technicolor was over the top movie film wise. But a little bit of that went a long ways to me. I was more of a B&W movie guy to be honest.

I think you've come a lot closer to unpacking it in words than me. Great breakdown, much appreciated. 

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None of the above cameras, at least to me, are Razor sharp, they have smooth roll offs and soft edges in a good way, and somewhat muted colors. More Pastel than Kodachrome like.

I do some 3D modeling, rendering, animation, etc. There's a parallel to what you just described in rendering as well. When you're going for hyper realism, you employ things like ambient occlusion, global lighting, soft raytraced shadows, etc. These properties give the model a more atmospheric/muted look and feel, smooth gradients, smooth rolloffs, etc. In fact, you often have to crank up your specular highlights for reflective/refractive surfaces with AO.  

Top render is without AO/ Bottom with: