Dimitris Stasinos

58 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

I see you two are as hard as the most tough Greek philosophy school... LOL : ) 

Lol that was funny  I am always enjoying your choice of words.

They (and by "they" i mean all those giant companies) are always funding and embracing that waiting game. Actually we are all waiting for the next one (whatever this is). The only difference is that some of us can afford every single step while waiting for the next one while others will wait till the end of humanity for a product that will never exist. I am somewhere in the middle with a moderate GAS syndrome.

The whole "mavic" concept was genius and innovative. If we set the Sony RX100's output as a golden standard for 1 inch sensor cameras at this specific time, then Phantom 4 is pretty close and that could be the case with Mavic 2 Pro. But apparently it's not. I bet this has to do with marketing decisions and not overheating problems or the lack of processing power. Sadly, this is the result of modern marketing in the camera manufacturing world: "great sensors being wasted due to marketing decisions for sustainable profit". We finally get this.

Don't get me wrong. It's a great drone. It's very convenient and probably the right tool for many jobs. But it's not what most professional content creators expected. Of course we can't blame DJI for delivering a product that can't satisfy professional content creators in this price range. But it would definitely not be a "miracle" if they decided to do this. The "Lord" has it all: great sensors, blazing fast tiny processors, great developers and a massive audience.

It is almost sure that there will be a Platinum version with more efficient sensor scanning after next Phantom's release. But then with that in mind we are again stuck in the waiting game which is not so efficient...

I will also let this pass. The expected IQ is clearly not there. The old mavic's picture was a total mess, worse than any phantom. This has apparently better low light sensitivity but then again it's not enough. What's the point of being slightly better from something really bad...

I don't say that everything shot with the old mavic is crap, a nice shot is always a night shot. I saw some nice shots ruined by it's crapy codec for sure so this is not a valid argument. As for the new mavic, we have seen wonders from 1 inch sensors so we all know it could have been better than this.

3 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

What player are you using? Any recommendations?

I will miss the vimeo community though, which is by far my favorite and also the best way 2 find talented people.

There are plenty plugins for wordpress and joomla. Elite Video Player can stream videos directly from Google drive, which seems like a nice solution too.

I believe the majority of film makers are interested on a place to build their portfolio collection. So with the same money that Vimeo asks, you can share a dedicated server with 2-3 persons and build your portfolio there. Then you can enjoy many benefits like better speeds, reliability and a player of your choice. At least this what i 'll do. Vimeo sucks anyway and DMCA regulations are here to stay. It will only get worse from here.

Thanks for your input @Stathman

Indeed i used ProRes 422 for my tests and this where the color shift pops up.

Choosing my icc profile in project settings didn't work in first place (i was getting strange results) but i just tried the sRGB 2.1 colorspace

you mentioned and i can say it's the closest thing i can get to the rendered file. Thanks for that man!

This is legit workaround and more reliable than using my own lut.

As for Resolve, the most common solution is what KnightsFan suggested. Making a custom LUT through DisplayCal. 

I just calibrated my monitor again, but this time used DisplayCal as @KnightsFan suggested, instead of iProfiler. Same settings but totally different results. X-rite's app (iProfiler) gives a strange red shift. Many users have mentioned the same thing, so i can definitely confirm this.

As for After Effects, i forced the application to use my icc profile and the results where totally off. I tried the same thing with Premiere by exporting stills which i passed through a simple colorimetry process using Photoshop. I am sure i made a lot of mistakes and this was not a scientific test in any universe but i can say this with confidence: The color management in Adobe video apps on a mac doesn't work in harmony with Colorsync. Even if you force these apps to implement an icc profile you can't trust what you see.

KnightFan said that VLC's color is not accurate and i totally agree. But i was not expecting in any case that i would see the exact color management inside 2 widely used Adobe's apps.

I made a custom lut in Photoshop, then added that on an adjustment layer in AE and exported my files again. That was the quickest way to fix the color shift and it worked as a charm. I think...

Overall i think those are major issues and must be discussed more on the forums. It's funny cause we talk everyday about how disruptive a codec or a compression method could be and i just discovered that every single clip i have exported from AE has been rendered in a slightly shifted colorspace.

Thanks @KnightsFan! This is valuable info.

As far i know FCPX uses the icc profile, specified by the user. Actually i opened a project on FCPX and tried to change my icc profile. The GUI colors changed instantly but the image on the preview window of the editor took a 1 sec delay to adjust so i think this might be indicative. I guess that Quicktime also implements the icc profile because i can see no gamma shift there. 

But indeed, things start to get complicated with apps that don't implement the icc profiles, like Premiere and After Effects. So even if a grade seems fine on Adobe's GUI and even on a player like VLC, the proper reference is Quicktime which uses the icc profile, right? So if the image looks desaturated on Quicktime the solution is to make a custom lut for After Effects which pushes the gamma to higher values. Is this correct?

Scary stuff...:)

Hi guys. I don't know if this has been discussed before but i didn't find a topic about this. I am working with FCPX on a late 2015 27 iMac and i am seeing a red shift while playing back my videos on VLC. I am seeing the exact same gamut with FCPX when using Quicktime. Now, with After Effects i see the exact opposite phenomenon. Videos that are exported from After Effects play fine on VLC, while Quicktime introduces a drastic desaturation on the red channel. After calibrating my monitor using iDisplay Pro last year, this is getting kinda tricky, don't knowing which application to trust. Is there a standalone player that you trust more than these two? Any ideas why this is happening?

There where numerous debates in the late 90s about bit depth & sampling frequency in audio. The majority of professional audio engineers today will agree that a 24 bit, 96 khz audio recording is more than enough for music, except sound design applications where you may want to slow down the recording. With a proper parallelism, a musician will get this. A 1080p video will be totally "fine" for every web application just as 16 bit/44khz will be more than enough for an audio track that will end up in Spotify or Soundcloud in a shitty audio codec.

But if your client/musician are one of those guys who are considering analog equipment as superior due to it's "warmer" sound, or he is trying to justify a 10000 $ investment in a single rack audio unit which magically adds wonderful harmonics on a poorly mastered track, then don't try to explain anything. Just shoot in 4K and make him happy :).

It's kinda strange that Syrp's variable ND hasn't been mentioned yet. Great build quality and IQ. I am pretty happy with it's performance.

25 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Yeah, there's no way you won't be able to reach this one. You could operate it with boxing gloves on and still get it into record

Mmmmm....operating in boxing gloves as a gimbal shock absorber. Now theres a thought !

I just tried the app. The phone connects instantly to the camera (actually faster than Image app...) and it works! This community is a gem, thanks to people like you sir!

@BTM_Pix Thanks man! I will try this as soon as possible. I tried to attach my phone on the gimbal last week but my thumb could not reach the rec button on the lumix app. This seems to solve that problem as the whole screen is a trigger button. Nice!

@BTM_Pix This is a killer project, nice work! How complex would be for me to make a hardware controller with just a big chunky rec button and nothing else? Lol, its a pain in the a$$ to trigger this camera (gx80) for gimbal work...

“A filmmaker is always provoking some reaction from an audience.”

I totally agree Andrew. But the means a filmmaker uses to achieve this can define the quality of his art (at least from my point of view, anyone can disagree). The easiest way to challenge your audience is by serving them scenes with genitals being cut with a pair of scissors or crashed by stones and then calling them puritans based on their totally justified reactions. Is it a bad thing that most people can’t stand sadism & graphic violence in cinema? This doesn’t have to do with a pair of tits being “shown” but with a pair of tits being “cut off” (plus children being shot). And you are calling this an antidote? I don’t get this but who knows, maybe i am a puritan too. But in any case i consider my self as lucky for not enjoying his films.

My only concern about this camera is it's form factor. It's not always a good idea to differentiate a product from the competition in such a way. How will this stretched in length body behave on a gimbal for example? My GH5 is already reaching my a2000's limit when balancing the roll axis and it sits 2-3 mm from the tilt motor. This camera may never get properly balanced on many low budget gimbals like Crane, A2000 and Moza, although we don't know it's weight and center of gravity yet to conclude this.

So we are reaching that freaking point where filmmakers are considering smartphones as tools and vloggers want to record stuff in ProRes or even RAW... Wow.. BM shouldn't have put that rec button above the mount. It's like a beacon for these guys. You know, these guys that when the spec list of this camera showed up the first thing that came on their mind was "dude this is fu**ing ugly!!!". The same guys that would make a Vlog with an Alexa if the price was "right" for them, thank god it isn't...

On 4/17/2018 at 1:56 PM, ooquis said:

Good day. I got the gh5s and this gimbal. I have watched every single video on youtube on how to balance it 100% and for some reason i fail to do so. the tilt balance is great but the role axis is where the problem is. Can you please help me as i have a big job coming up and i need this working 100%?

I just purchased this gimbal and i have the same problem. After balancing the roll axis, the camera doesn't stay in place when you move it in that axis. The camera has to stay in any position after a proper balancing right? The problem is solved by rising the camera on the tilt axis but then you have the tilt balance messed up. Has anyone found a workaround on this?

9 minutes ago, MurtlandPhoto said:

The price will intimidate many GH users. A large chunk of them like to think that their camera is the very best: anything more expensive is stupid overkill and anything equal or less is garbage. This price bracket seems to be where the most fragile egos exist. 

Can i give 2 hearts to this comment please? lol

I really can't see how this camera will disturb the Lumix shooters. Apart from all the good stuff which BM is known for (such as colour science, colour science and maybe colour science too), the lowlight performance is expected to be worse than GH5 and the crop factor is a deal breaker for many shooters. You can't go wide enough with a 1 inch sensor, nor handheld. CFast cards are expensive too and the majority of GH5 users are still bitching for the terrible autofocus performance, oh wait to see this baby  Don't get me wrong, i believe this will be a monster tool for many of us, but it won't be GH5's Nemesis in any case. A better cinema camera? Yeah why not. But don't expect to see this used in weddings & documentaries. 

I have the Syrp variable ND and i am very pleased with it's performance.

16 hours ago, Arikhan said:

Full ACK. But everyone needs to get bread and butter on his table. But not nearly for free, as nowadays the stock portals. Just sell your work directly to customers/people/companies. No need for online parasites.

No clue how to get real customers? OK, then put your work in the hands of parasites and be happy with the 5 cents you get...

Actually the 50% share that Pond5 keeps is quite fair and these are real customers who buy your stuff. The problem with these stock agencies is their low standards in curation. The majority of their collection is garbage so you need a vast amount of clips to get noticed and eventually it all comes down to quantity over quality. But for some people this is the only way to generate income as "real customers" is a hard thing to find these days and especially on remote areas or countries & cities that their economy has sank... If for example you are raised and located in the heart of London and someone else tries to make a living in Sandwick by shooting the sea and selling these clips on platforms, can you really blame him? What we consider as "real customers" in our profession exists only in healthy economies and, believe it or not, in some places content creation is not even considered as a "real job".

Pilotfly has also released a new model (adventurer) which looks quite promising. It weights under a kilogram without sacrificing payload capacity. Pay attention to the unit's weight when considering these things. Both Gravity G2 and Ikan Pivot are quite bulky & heavy at around 1.8 kg, so they are totally unsuitable for run and gun situations.

Is it me or Zoom have dropped the prices on it's low end recorders recently (H series)? I remember checking H5 & H6 last month and the prices have gone almost 100 euros down now.

So, from my understanding, it jams once you press the button and then stays in the internal clock forever right? So, apart from loosing 9 fps every time it sleeps, a drift will introduced after some time. It seems like a possible fix for a firmware update, as all it has to do to stay in sync with the generator is jamming every few seconds once you enable this in the menu. Is this correct?

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

No need for IBIS here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f2b9xsAtnY

 

 

 

You won't see many GH5s in productions like this. This is a showcase, made specifically to promote GH5s. Of course you don't need IBIS if you are using a gimbal and a dolly, but why would you use a GH5 on a shoot like this, where only the daily cost of renting the rig is much more expensive that the camera's price? Why on earth would anyone make a custom set with expensive lighting setups, cranes & remote controlled gimbals to shoot with an MFT camera which hardly delivers 12 stops of DR in a compressed format?