HockeyFan12

We're thinking about a lot of the same things! Fwiw I tried the plug ins you mentioned before and found neither worked well, which is why I didn't comment on them before. Imo the Red Giant one really misses the mark, even though they have a lot of other good stuff. But the After Effects wiggle expression and tracking tricks work okay for me. I also do a lot of per-channel regraining (separating channels, overlaying grain on each, recombining them) to get color grain and make sure the blue/yellow noise is more prominent, but it still doesn't quite have the integrated look that film has. Curious what your best results are from for "film look." I also like the vibrance plug in. I agree about miniDV. My friend has the new 120fps iPad and says it makes a huge difference with scrolling. Likewise VR is 90-120fps. I think we're gonna see that being the standard pretty soon, but in VR not in film, or at least mostly in VR.

Good question. I'll poke around. Fwiw if this was on like the 24-105mm or something it would be pretty cool. The flicker is the biggest issue. The cheap ergonomics are to be expected and it's not unusable. But it's cheap, not like a real camcorder or power zoom.

Well, it isn't quite what I was looking for. I don't think either of you are the target audience. I wonder if anyone really is? It feels consumer-oriented. I've only tried the lens indoors with poor light so maybe it gets better outside. But it seems to flicker exactly like in the videos above (less than some lenses, more than you want) unless you zoom in wide open, in which case the aperture racks just over a stop between 18mm and 135mm. It doesn't seem like that much, though. This is pretty acceptable. At a consistent f5.6, it flickers noticeably but subtly. Both On my SL1 and C100. Even in auto ISO. I think? Auto ISO pulses for some reason or another. And the C100 doesn't have it. Even if the flicker weren't a problem, the ramp acceleration takes a long time to begin and is difficult to control in both fast and slow speeds. Inadequate to follow action or fast-moving events. It's not all the smooth either. The rocker feels great but doesn't seem analogue but instead very granular. The rocker might have a total of five steps on it. It might have just three (zoom in, don't zoom, zoom out). Slow zoom looks cool, though. Programming a zoom into a wireless FF seems the better option. By far. For the 80D crowd it's nice, though. Great balance, good ergonomics. Weird rocker placement makes sense for C series and dSLRs given the grip placement. Image quality seems okay. Great zoom range and light weight. And despite the adapter's flaws, it approximates the job closely enough to be functional and fun to use. Non-picky consumers will like it. Creative people willing to fix problems in post or who need to shoot a fake newscast or something will have fun with it. I might sell my hvx still! But this thing is a lot of $$$ for a toy/consumer-grade (not that controllable so not professional-level, but intuitive and workable enough to be fun, at least, so not garbage) product. To me it just seems like an immature consumer product. Not particularly good at anything. But not an embarrassment, either, and a cute novelty. But... not very good. What's really crazy... REALLY crazy is that it seems the contacts are only for power and they don't do anything to zoom or focus. They're also exposed all the time unless you attach the adapter and ate kind of unsightly. Strange for such a ubiquitous kit lens to behave that way... The zoom mechanism actually seems to be similar to a wireless FF where a lens gear on a motor catches the gear on the mechanical helical zoom/focus mechanism. It's not internally controlled at all, it's controlled by a gear in the zoom mechanism. The finely notched grip on the zoom ring on the lens catches a fine gear in the PZ-E1, and so that physical might account for the slow acceleration and slightly inconsistent zoom speed and feel. Really weird! So it's not very good. But it sits well on the C100 in terms of size and feel. And if you need that slow Kubrick zoom for the absolute bare bones price, this will be able to communicate that intent. Horribly awkwardly and inartistically and not even consistently, sure, but it does function. That might sound like a dismissal, and I think for most people who want a real zoom rocker a camcorder is the better choice, but it's why I'm keeping it despite not recommending it to anyone.

The old trick is to rip a blu ray of an old 80s film and position track the end credits and loop the keyframes once you have a large enough sample. The poor man's version is using an expression in After Effects. (Wiggle.)

What about the cost of film and, in particular, film scans? The scans always seem to be the "gotcha" to me. I have access to an SRII. What do you mean by hybrid shooting? I agree that it's easy to sneak a little digital into something shot on film but difficult to replicate the look of film for an entire project if that's what you mean.

Not yet. I will report back when I do and have the chance to try it.

It's appropriate that a Kubrick fan would want this. I really suspect that this product isn't going to be very good, but there are times when I want a smooth zoom, too. Another option is doing it the old school way and putting a lens gear on your zoom ring and using a wireless FF. A friend tried this with my 70-200mm and my DJI focus. Mixed results. :/ Felt slightly granular and rough but only slight... it kind of worked. Definitely felt like a motorized zoom. Actually pretty darned good and obviously no aperture racking there. For super great results, renting one of the Canon or Fujinon zooms might be the right way to go. But I'm not after the right way, just the cheap way and the easy way and the portable way.

The absolute cheapest solution I found is the new (the old model is better, but it doesn't accept HDMI correctly from inexpensive cards) Z24X from HP and a Black Magic Intensity card (I don't trust most computers' HDMI out). Total of about $600. Not as good as a Flanders, but the color seems pretty trustworthy. Not a bad set up for a day rate of color. The reflective coating results in a weird poor viewing angle but as a SUPER budget option, this is the very very poor man's Flanders. I'm not saying it's good. But from what I've seen I trust it. Above that, the Flanders is really nice. Same idea, just better. I talked with a talented/experienced colorist (graded an Academy Award winning film) and he said monitor doesn't really matter to him as much as you'd think. He knows his scopes and can grade on a monitor that's fairly inaccurate and still know what he's getting, though he'll check it on a calibrated monitor before final delivery. If you are very experienced with you scopes, you can get by with just a decent monitor. Or your laptop. There are also some monitors out there (the old Sony HDTV CRTs) and the series 9 or 10 I think Panasonic plasmas that need to be calibrated, but can be found used dirt cheap because they're so big. And they are more than good enough, too.

These look awesome. I almost bought a large kit of these alongside a 16mm film camera but my friend has an SRII so I just couldn't justify it. Still don't need them so I probably made the right choice passing on them, but.... wow that bokeh looks cool. I know DPs who shoot Cooke S2/S3s when they can't use anamorphic because it has some texture to it that looks good in motion. Similar rendering to this. Look at the prices of Super Baltars and Cookes. A coveted look.

Same. I can't imagine what kind of shoot would be best covered by multi cam cinematic coverage like that (maybe the Hobbit?). But if it works for him it works for him; there are as many different needs as there are camera systems out there to fill them.

Again, I don't see the issue. If your client is asking for 4k for a web spot your budget is probably at least $300,000 for the spot. You can afford to rent two C200s for that. The cost of 4k post will be the bigger issue. If it's for personal use, then you can buy a more prosumer system and deal with ergonomic and workflow compromises. The image quality will be close enough. It's not like the GH5 is a B camera for the EVA, either. Not remotely. The EVA is the B cam for the Varicam. And that system is even more expensive! To that extent, I see the C200 more as the B cam and the C700 (which doesn't seem so great and the Varicam seems nicer imo but whatever) as the A cam. I think the question of what B cam to use with the C200 is another c200.

I have no self-control lol. Especially after two beers. I'll let you know what I think. Neither my C100 nor SL1 have a hint of decent autofocus but I can put them through their paces.

Guess what I just bought. Yes, both the lens and zoom rocker. If nothing else I have a new travel lens for stills.

In what role? Just curious. Camera department? If so I have a few questions. From what I've seen this is 100% true. Different flavors of raw are different flavors of pain so I try not to generalize that every raw workflow is a nightmare. But I would prefer 10 bit log prores over any other format as well.

Ursa Mini Pro is a big winner but IMO would be competitive as an A cam not a good b cam necessarily.

I think it's pretty irrelevant. Granted it was a few years ago when I was still working in camera department but stories about 7Ds on techno cranes being intercut with Alexa were commonplace. Go Pro is still intercut with Alexa/Film/Red all the time, not that I think it looks good. I would intercut C300, Alexa, and Red all the time and they intercut fine so long as they're well shot and competently graded. Mad Max was largely 5D. For the b camera it doesn't really matter so long as you shoot carefully with it and have good color transforms. There's a reason the ACES workflow was engineered and there are plenty of equivalents on the low end. Look at the long list of cameras used on any feature these days. The Alexa's B camera is an Alexa Mini. But it's intercut with just about everything. So while the lack of a cheap Alexa seems like a problem, it really hasn't been. The 5D Mark IV looks like a great b camera anyway. 4k. Same FOV (well maybe a 10% crop on the 5D compared with the C200). Same gamma/matrix settings (Canon Log). Easy to use. Good stills. Great ergonomics. The XC10 looks okay, too. Switching systems is always expensive when you need to switch both A and B camera, of course. But it seems like a complete non-issue to me.

Ooh yeah that is bad. Not as bad as I get by doing a crash zoom with a similar lens but really ugly. You can see someone using it on a C100 mk II here but the aperture racks when he zooms. That said.... no flicker. I wasn't considering this but given the cheap gray market availability of the lens and second hand market (since it's a kit lens for so many cameras) I might have to sell the old hvx and pick one up. 18-135mm is also the most useful range for video IMO and outdoors I don't need anything faster than f5.6 whereas my prime kit is really heavy.

Yeah the C100 doesn't have auto iso so far as I know. So this might not work with it. :/ Might be flicker. I could actually tolerate it stopping down as you zoom in if it doesn't flicker.

Meeting collaborators is a great first step and the most important thing to do. It's advice I should have taken (when I was your age or thereabouts). I think I probably would have done better skipping college and just jumping right into the industry. But I have friends who went that route and it worked great at first, they were on studio sets around 19 or 20 in key roles, but socially they weren't ready for the pressure and shittiness of the industry. So.... yeah. If you see something you love, reach out to whomever made it. Show interest. That kind of networking is as important on the festival scene as the film itself is in terms of long-term prospects. Maybe you can work on that person's crew some day and when their film gets into Sundance, it will be a leg up for you (though this has not turned out to be the case for me, probably because I'm not the biggest fan of Sundance films in the first place). I know lots of people who jumped at the opportunity for "success" only to burn out from working on the wrong content and not following their passion in their day job. They were successful, but at the wrong thing, so it's a step forward but also a step back. Nothing wrong with day jobs, but compartmentalize and be true to yourself. You'll do better working with those whose work inspires you and their opinions of it will be far more meaningful than the unwashed masses'. I'm told the best thing a festival director can do is attend festivals. Or a Vimeo director's best bet is to watch a lot of Vimeo. I'm not a fan of either, really. :/ But I'm taking my own advice and making a video (calling it a short would be generous) to show a couple Sundace directors who actually did make a feature I liked and who are conveniently friends of a number of my friends since I would like to work on their crew. Hoping my own advice works lol. Luckily I'm working with a lot of people whose work I like currently, but more thorough serendipity than through making a big effort in the first place, which I should have done! It can also be great professionally to network with people whose work you like. Even if you "only" end up on the crew of the next big director and even if it takes five years for that to all play out, that's still gonna be a professional and financial windfall by the time it matters and you're ready for that level of success.

Thanks! That looks not too bad. I've never understood the worry over mechanical noise. Wireless FF units can be loud, too, and no one has a problem using them. It's not like the camera is usually anywhere near the mic anyway. If I set another cheap variable aperture lens to f5.6 and zoom with it there's tons of flickering. Whatever this is doing is basically working to hide almost all of it. I wonder if it interfaces well with the c series, too, or is designed mostly for the 80D, etc. Given the cheap price of the 18-135mm on the gray market, I might have to get one of these.

I'm looking to put it on an old C100, not sure it has auto ISO though. I certainly wouldn't want to use it if it did. Would like to lock it at f5.6 which is fine given the camera's good low light performance. I'd actually be okay with aperture ramping. We had that in the old dvx100 days anyway. Not with flicker though. If you get to try one, let me know how it works out for you.

I'm sure that optically this lens isn't the best. But I would love an EF mount power zoom. And I would also love to spend as little as possible. My question is this: When I use my 70-200mm f2.8 II IS L zoom and zoom in, the aperture stays consistent. When I use my 55-250mm STM zoom, even if I set the lens to f5.6 when I'm at the wide end, I can see the aperture changing in this weird way when zooming in. Sort of a flickering or a correction throughout the zoom range, even if the camera displays a steady f5.6. So... if I use the new 18-135mm Canon USM and PZ-E1 and set the lens to f5.6 on the wide end and zoom in with the PZ-E1, will I notice any similar weird issues with the aperture shifting when zooming in, or will the exposure look clean and consistent, as with a constant aperture zoom? Canon's online demos seem to indicate the latter! Which is cool! But I've learned not to totally trust them. I know the image quality won't be ideal but sometimes you want a power zoom and sometimes you're cheap. In the digital era, f5.6 is not that slower either.

Vimeo and YouTube have grown in visibility in the industry from what I’ve seen, even beyond festivals. But festivals let you pick and choose to whom you’re showing your content. YouTube doesn't. I've recognized that I don't have the talent (or maybe just the desire) to succeed at either. But I think what works well in the long run is submitting your work to venues that exhibit work you love. I have friends who've won big at Sundance but done nothing since, because they broke through with something really innovative and great. So great that it got into a festival despite being better and more groundbreaking than that festivals boring, staid, limited "brand." (Heck, I almost did this myself.) But then when they were signed to CAA, WME, UTA, etc. they had to abide by the confines of that agency's demands. They couldn't. They were artists. It's why they got into Sundance in the first place. It's also why they struggled so much after. So fuck 'em. If your work is great it's great. Show it to your friends. If your friends love video game commentators and you're a video game commentator, awesome, now your friends are most of YouTube. If they're quirky but still kinda safe, awesome, Sundance and Slamdance. If neither, cool, you're an innovator. That's way cooler than I can claim to be. But here's the big question: where do you consume most of the media you consume? Okay. Now submit there. In the short run it might be harder. Long run, more rewarding and a better fit. You think venues you don't like are better fits, because you see the flaws in their content and know that duh you can do way better than that. But what you fail to see are the merits that those venues' viewers see. (Granted, those merits could be stupid. But no one wants to know that they're stupid, either.) If you want to thrive on YouTube or Vimeo or any given festival, study its output and emulate it. If you want to just be you, just be you. I've been through it all. I'm old lol. I finally see that everyone is as insecure and unsure as you are. Festival programmers are the most insecure. Their only output is what films they choose from other people's work. They aren't even making their own work and yet they are the gatekeepers and kingmakers. They're insecure in their opinion. The audience is insecure in its opinion. The social aspects far outweigh the merit. It's like someone posting on Facebook that they like the Smashing Pumpkins vs. Billy Corgan. Billy Corgan seems way more insecure... but why? He's the innovator? The artist is in a difficult situation. Cooler when they're cool. But open to way more criticism. And generally more sensitive to it, too. So what can you do? You can choose to ignore it. Not let it get to you. And do your own thing. You're an artist. You're above YouTube. You're above festival programmers Their brand is what they like. They cannot create it. Your brand is what you make. You create it constantly. They're the slaves. You're the god. Stay the course. Stay confident. Fuck the rest. Michael Bay cowers before critics even if he gets great BO. Lars von Trier cowers before financiers even if his critics love him. You are only asking for bigger problems with more success. Know that. And know you're an artist. You're above them. You're the creator. You're the god. Forget it and you're toast. Act accordingly. Success just means your audience owns you. ("Your possessions possess you" - Fight Club. "If you owe the bank $10 million dollars, they own you. If you owe the bank $10 trillion dollars, you own them" - Someone way smarter than me.) Own you. Own your audience. Never let your audience own you. You don't need their approval. If they showed you their short films you'd just laugh at the pathetic attempts. Stay confident. Stay the course. You are their god. And so what if they get cranky, crucial, and indignant? They can always watch Pewdiepie instead. (And fwiw, I think he's pretty talented, other than the horrific antisemitism.)

It depends on the camera. I don't think raw is ever worse than raster, but in the case of the Alexa it is not better in a meaningful way. And it's often much, much slower to work with. It's worth trying every camera you're considering with every codec available and choosing what works best for you. There are other factors that are WAY more important for green screening, mostly lighting. I'd take a well lit key in AVCHD over a poor one in raw. However, if your content is really really short form and you are doing everything on one computer locally rather than using a server, raw and 4k might present insignificant setbacks. For me, they slow things down way way too much to be worth it. It sounds like you know your needs, though. So if you need 4k and raw, more power to you. I just think everyone should look at their own needs and priorities.

No worries. The myth that raw is a substantively better for video is just a pet peeve of mine because it sets people in the wrong direction or at least emphasize the wrong priorities (the myth that vfx houses want higher resolutions is another; no, they want 1080p/2k or to charge a heck of a lot more for anything else). Of course, there are of course cases where raw is preferable or 4k is great for punching in or doing very careful work. It's really on a camera-by-camera basis how big a difference raw makes (and on a project-by-project basis whether 4k is desirable).