HockeyFan12

3 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

I use V30 as well with no problems in 4k 60p, 4k 24p, and 6k hevc. 

Thanks, what third party batteries do you recommend btw?

Thanks! On the S1H for 400Mbit ALL-I I think V90 is basically a necessity. But I think the 6K HEVC is half the bitrate so I was hoping to cheap out a bit since I only have an S1...

Any recommendations? Do I need V90?

Great image, imo best under $10k at the time. But other cameras are close.

Lack of an EVF is another issue. The LCD is not good. Ergonomics are odd.

I'm not sure it was targeting people stepping up from a GH5 so much as people looking for a Varicam B camera. But it had issues either way (sharing a mount and sensor with neither). But imo the image is very good.

I think at this level you're getting stuff targeted more toward low end pros than high end consumers. C200 is weird since the raw codec is so heavy in post but the h264 is too thin. I think the C300 Mk II and FS7 probably have a worse image than the EVA1 or C200 but for owner/ops they probably make more sense in terms of ergonomics and workflow. I dunno.

Whereas for high end consumers or small companies not handing footage over to other clients but doing things in house, maybe a P6K or even S1H makes sense.

1 hour ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

I hope you can elaborate. I am not sure what the term "skew" means in this instance?

Sorry everyone if that is a noob question.

Rolling shutter. But it's actually probably about the same, I've been using the 3:2 mode which has more.

9 hours ago, BjornT said:

S1/S5/S1H does all have a magenta cast in VLOG to varying degree but if grading in Resolve for example then it's easy to dial out. Alexa LOG C has always a had a green cast for example so not only Panasonic that has a color cast. You can also easily fix it in camera by just adding 9 points of green (or a bit less depending on taste) to each kelvin setting and then save it in custom modes and then you don't have to dial it out in post. In the end I would say magenta cast is a non issue. Two biggest issues except autofocus is moire (on S1/S5) and rolling shutter in full frame mode. Both could be better but in general I am just blown away by how good a camera it is for the money.

 

 

Have you tried shooting 6K HEVC instead of 4K on the S1? A bit more skew but there's less moire imo.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

I feel that the Panasonic Varicam LT is one of the most underrated cinema cameras of the recent era. 

Just the timing and market was bad for it. 

Varicam S35 before it wasn't too successful (too expensive, and too heavy? And late-ish to market), thus even though the Varicam LT was 98% of the Varicam S35 but at a cheaper price and a lower size (addressing the two biggest issues of the Varicam S35), there wasn't the strong success of the Varicam S35 to build upon. 

Plus by the time Varicam LT arrived, it was already too late, ARRI had their claws solidly into the higher end market, and the Varicam LT was still too expensive when the likes of the Sony FS7 / Canon C300mk2 did the job well enough for the low/mid budget and were massively cheaper. The Varicam LT just couldn't find a large enough niche to be a huge hit with.

Agreed re: the Varicam LT/35. It's what made me want an EVA1, which isn't as good, but still the best in class for its price imo. But the Varicam image I felt was way ahead of F55 at the time but it got much less use from what I've seen for whatever reason. 

I still prefer the colors from the C100 (with external recorder)/C300/F3 (with external recorder) to most cameras today. Preferred the C300 Mk 1 to the Mk2 and F3 to F5, but later updates fixed the F5 imo.

I also like the grainier softer look of sub-4K cameras. 😕

But I think that's mostly personal taste...

Today P4k/P6k/S1/fp seem like winners.... but S1 does have a magenta cast on skin.

EVA1 I think is underrated and has better color, but a hard sell given how cheap an S1 or S5 is.

42 minutes ago, barefoot_dp said:

That's the bit I'm struggling with - the further the light is from the cookie, the more spill there is and the more flags are required. This isn't a problem if there's a grip truck on standby but there's a limit to how many c-stands I can take to a shoot as a one-man-band!

If might look too DIY but I'd make a huge cookie out of cardboard, spray paint it black maybe, then bring it as close to the edge of frame and as far from the light as possible. You could probably fold it up for storage and straighten it out by weighting the bottom with spring clips. If the cookie is big enough and the cutout not too big you might be able to use the barn doors on the light to control spill rather than flags. The mirror approach can probably work well too. I always take the DIY approach but sometimes it doesn't look so good or work great, but worth trying on your own IMO to see.

If you do use a cookie, try to move it as far from the light as possible (without it being in frame) and having it be as large as possible. The light is probably sharper at full flood than full spot (if you're using a fresnel lens) and you can use black wrap around the light instead of a flag.... maybe.... I'd just get the projector. 😕 

I suspect that even a Bowens mount COB LED is too soft a source for a modifier right in front of it to cut a sharp-edged shadow.

Short of using a really big cookie just off frame, I suspect the shadow will always be too soft because it's unfocused. Unless you can back it way up. The projector kits let you focus the shadow so distance is less of an issue. Some of the projection kits have chromatic abberation but that's the only way to approach this without going totally crazy imo. The Joleko type light is also SUPER useful because you can cut out a 4x4 piece of foamcore/bead board, angle it however you want on a c-stand or just tape it to the ceiling, and bounce a light into it, cut the edges using the blades in the projector, and use it as a soft light source (assuming no fog in the room). Of course with thin LED flex lights this isn't quite as unique as it once was.

Experiment with making a homemade cookie by cutting holes in an old cardboard box. Forget spill or whatever, just see how big it needs to be and at what distance to make shadows that are sharp enough. Maybe it's possible, not sure.

In HEVC 6K I think the S1 has highlight dynamic range similar to the Venice, but is cleaner in the shadows because it's more compressed. I never got into the Red ecosystem but some people seem to love it. The Dragon image is nice but it has just okay highlight dynamic range and it's also really noisy, but nice texture to the noise and the color has improved.

This guy's channel is pretty spot on I think:

https://www.youtube.com/c/Jsfilmz/playlists

If you're feeling it (and can resell it if you're not feeling it after) go for it. I think for paid work it's not a great (not even a good) choice but that's different for everyone. The Alexa has a weird soft/smooth feeling that is kind of unique, and also probably not much different than just putting a digital diffusion FX filter on another camera.

I was impressed with the Venice, the color, noise texture, skew, etc. is all excellent. ProRes straight from camera, which is nice. But I don't think the dynamic range is significantly better than the S1 necessarily. But I didn't like the F5 and F55 and the Venice to me is a leap ahead of those.

I don't think it's a great idea at all. A Classic with an Odyssey sort of makes sense, you can rig that up to shoot 2.8k ProRes and it's a little smaller than a Plus. Otherwise it's just a huge battery hog with a bit more highlight detail than the competition and it's designed to be used by a crew and you need a huge tripod or dolly to support it and the battery does not last very long even compared with a Red or Amira/Mini. Amira makes sense to me or a Mini if you have the money, but the form factor with the XT, Plus, Classic, etc. is enormous. But I'm so familiar with the Alexa image in post (which is where I spend 99% of my time) that when I had some extra money last year I jumped on it for personal use. If I still shot professionally I'd probably take a P6K or S1 over it. But if you find one cheap enough and have the money why not? Nothing looks so good so effortlessly except maybe shooting film, you just throw a LUT on it and it looks good.

I own an S1 and an Alexa Plus and work with Alexa XT and Amira (and occasionally Alexa LF and Venice) footage for my day job work. Technically the gap is narrow. S1 footage reminds me of cleaner Venice footage... but with more skew.

The Alexa is really grainy but has a nice texture. Some people denoise it some people add noise to it but for whatever reason I like the noise texture as is most of the time too.

Venice has a nice texture, too. Great camera.

Thinking of buying some Zeiss lenses from outside the US, lenses manufactured in Germany. Will I be paying the 25% import tariff imposed by the previous administration if I do?

9 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

It's definitely noisier. Not sure what's going on with HEVC maybe you just lose some noise due to the compression and loss of fine detail? I use emotive colors Alexa lut all the time and it didn't seem to work with Prores RAW. I want to do more testing with it though, maybe I didn't exposure high enough. Just holding off on which recorder to buy. 

I think it's the compression. It still looks good but it's very very clean. I wonder if the braw image is different and if there's highlight recovery. 

16 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

Where do you see em used, can't find any. I noticed in prores RAW the color looks different than in camera VLOG, I wonder how BRAW fares. 

I've been wondering about this too. Which do you prefer? 

Also do you see more noise in ProRes raw? HEVC feels clean to me but almost too clean. 

This is sort of worst case scenario meant to highlight a problem, flat blue sky overexposed then pulled a few stops. Usually the footage looks fine in both. There are a few generations of corrections here too, in practice it's not quite that bad.

4 minutes ago, Dave Del Real said:

How are you transcoding to ProRes? Resolve? 

Finder. (Right Click –> Encode Selected Video Files.)  

Even when working in 32bit float in After Effects I've noticed banding in HEVC S1 files and a darker different gamma compared with the same files transcoded to ProRes 422 in OS X first, where there is virtually no banding to speak of even in overexposed skies.

For instance the most saturated slide films are also the slowest and I believe Phase One's trichromatic back is about a half stop slower than the normal 100MP back and of course the black and white back is fastest.

On 6/12/2021 at 3:08 PM, androidlad said:

FX3

Question about these low light sensors (specifically S1's sensor but I've seen similar things I think in A7S maybe): compared with less light-sensitive cinema cameras, the image seems to wash out to one color quickly. 

If I shoot a very green foliage scene with an S1 or in very late day blue overcast light the image seems to wash out to green or blue more quickly than it would with an Alexa or EVA1 or C300, cameras where I feel more comfortable just leaving it at one of the WB presents. 

Is this something to do with thinner dye layers on the sensor? 

And if fp and S1 have the same sensor, why is the fp's color better/less magenta?

13 hours ago, Grant Boehne said:

I own the 0.5 and 1, and they do their job. I haven’t done a complete test of any image degradation but from seeing how they perform through a viewfinder they do just fine. I agree that their other products aren’t great but these filters seem to be good ones. It just stinks that they seem to be the only ones making 95mm diopters at less than +1 strength.

Thanks, that's encouraging. And yeah it is frustrating. I have a set of 95mm Vivitar diopters that are +1 and strong and that set was $20 I think... but they're not even coated and seem pretty primitive. Are the Vormax lens diopters coated?

Schneider will cut fractional diopters custom to 95mm but you're paying about $400 per diopter in that case. 

Digidiopters are 95mm and optically excellent from what I understand. But they're also large and very very expensive. 

Even though you'd expect it to be, it's not interlaced, it's 24p footage someone put into a 1080/30p timeline from what I can tell.

Is there any fast way to do this with After Effects or Premiere or Compressor?

I have a 30p stock footage clip that looks like it was shot at 24p and then encoded at 30p with repeating frames. Is there any software I can run this through to detect the repeated frames and remove them?