Novim

Lots of love and defense for Panasonic (market segmentation). Not so for Canon's. (Just saying.)

We shoud bear in mind that DaVinci Resolve is also a great education tool (if one has a patience and willingness to learn the intricacies of colouring).

The best discovery since Alfred Einstein's autoexposure. A new life for my dear GX85.

5 hours ago, sandro said:

What's wrong with the rendering?

Does it support proxy editing like premiere pro?

The rendering - that is, the exporting the video - is very slow (on this type of old machine).

Amazing. I've put DaVinci 14 Public beta on my old Macbook Air 3,1 (late 2010, the first version of the small Air 11") just for fun, and it works pretty smoothly (apart from the rendering, of course).

On my GX85 everything OK, both with native and vintage lenses.

21 hours ago, 64mulford said:

This might be bad advice but after using every type of ND filter possible I've decided to not use them and control exposure by cranking up the shutter. Cue the 180 degree purists to unleash on my technique but honestly it works for me and I've been shooting professionally for over a decade. Been doing this for a year and it's so liberating not having to screw on ND's

Do you go between some limits with the shutter? Say 24fps & 1/50 (180º), would you go up to 1/150 or even 1/500?

Ambivalent about it. I had GH4 for about a year, and played a lot with its myriad of settings, so much so that I regularly took C100 or XC10 (later), or BMPCC (and BMPC4K) to get job done. GH5 is 2K$ body, but if the SB is added, and some decent glass, it comes to 3,5-4K$. For that money one can buy BM Ursa mini (or, to double the sum, a new Pro). So, I agree with Laurier, and wait to see some peersuasive videos to decide about GH5. For time being, I'll postpone it.

Panasonic GX85 in 4K has no time limit, and also USB battery charge.

I had luck to buy XC10 last October for some 1600 euros (with a CFast 128 GB), and I am happy to use it for "gun & run", documentary, interviews, travel and similar things. I expect to use it in next 2-3 years at least. Like you, I was struggling with GH4 last year. Even I found that XC10 is not difficult to pair with Blackmagic cameras (Pocket, Micro and Production). Its 4K (with C-log) is, in my opinion, better in quality than FHD.

What would be real-life uses of "raising the iso and waving the camera around" (apart from chasing the ghosts, obviously, and testing the limits of a camera, legitimely)? I find that the XC10 is a very dicent tool for what it has been made.

On 9.12.2016. at 7:52 PM, Justin Bacle said:

Can you post some pictures shot with it ? I don't have this lens, as it is quite rare, but I do love my MD 135/2.8, would love to see a comparison.

I also have MC Tele Rokkor-PF 135mm/2.8, and I use it from time to time on the GX85 (with an adapter); excellent and nice pictures, with space compression. I love it, too.

On 28.11.2016. at 1:38 PM, Vesku said:

5. Depends on scene and subject...

... & camera. But usually I consult my Sekonic 308DC (not that I copy its measures, but I take them avarage values, which I modify here and there according to the task).

This big techno change (mass photo & video using cheap cameras on smartphones, which the photo/video elite - „pros“ - despise) looks similar to the big techno change in the XV-XVI Century, when the Gutenberg press machine enabled that "everybody" could publish a book in large quantity, instead of handwriting/copying them. And than the elite said it would ruin culture. But, not "everybody" started to write and publish books, "everybody" start reading (consuming), and the press broadened from books to magazines and newspapers. Etc.

The analogy is this: like in those times, "everybody" now makes photo/video with smartphones, the culture has changed from verbal texts into pictorial texts (photo & video are texts, too), and this has broaden the audience into the new market. Only some will continue to make movies ("write books"). The former do not need 2000-5000$ ILCs, 2000-5000$ set of lenses, cages, rigs, tripods, gimbals. The later care and will continue to care about quality of the movies, and for it they need better equipment.

Here the analogy should stop. The question (both of Northrup and Reid) is weather the divide between the two camps will grow, and what is the sense of it. It is a big question and I can say only this:

With the massification of video culture, we now have young videomakers (some of them will become moviemakers later) who look less like the the movie directors or producers before when they were almost all alpha males (or had to behave like alpha males to find the funds and put the filmaking chaos into some sort od order); the new generations start to learn photo/video on their smartphones, some of them will move onto higher quality level, but their non-ILC beginnings could give them some experience and sensitivity we from the old times did not get. I wish I had a smartphone 40 years ago to start with.

So, "Do you want them to learn it with crappy smartphones? Thats just bullshit" (Deadalus0506) does not stand, imho.

2 days ago I made shots of the Belgrade October Salon 2016 - it is a biennial expo of mostly conceptual art, nothing especial in itself. I wanted to break a bit with usual „naturalistic“ approach, and to get more in line with conceptual expo objects etc. so I choose to play with WB a lot in shooting and, yesterday, in grading this video. I got some (imho, of course) very interesting results. The video is here (GX85, PanaLeica Summilux 15mm f/1.7, FCPX and DaVinci):

A comparison beetwen GX85 and BMPCC (the same subject, some waters and lights):

GX85:

BMPCC:

On 15.9.2016. at 7:29 PM, Damphousse said:

URSA Mini 4.6K for $5,000.  In a controlled studio setting you can mitigate most of the major caveats the camera has.  You also get 4k raw right out of the box.

My idea, too, with URSA Mini 4.6K, and CinemaDNG raw. Especially since I own BMPCC and BMMCC and know their limits.

The best alternative for this tight budget would be to shoot on 16mm film (analog film tapes), but it would have other problems.

Aside the specific project of mine (I'll do it with a group of my students), the question remains what present video technology can do for shooting testimonies of people so that the shots could be usable 10-20-50 years later.

I'm a long time reader of this excellent site, now my first - perhaps a bit unusual - question.

Suppose during this winter you should shoot a series of interviews (some 20-30 hours with some 30-40 people) and that digital video material would be archived for use by others in the future (in videos, TV. films etc.). Interviews will be shot in improvised studio (mostly, but not always), the sound taken separately. What format - techically speaking - you'd use? What would be your preferences? 10-12 bit, 4-2-2 or better, what DR, etc? What gear you would buy / use for such a project (the gear budget will be 5,000-7,000€)? - Thanks in advance.