HockeyFan12

Again, I disagree. Vfx work is far easier and cheaper at lower resolutions. Most houses charge out the nose for 4k, because the required power is so much greater for higher resolutions.

Why would he need raw capture? Just curious. I keep reading people online write about how they need raw, but every Alexa-derived project I work on is shot in ProRes and the footage is always easier to work with in post than raw-derived red, f55, or black magic footage is. Anyhow I agree with what others have written, either try to plug the holes you have (a monitor with peaking if you can't afford to hire an AC or your focus marks are too inaccurate and maybe a speed booster) or sell your current system and spend real money to get a C200 or something that will do the job right. There seem to be some innovations going on with the 5D Mark III and compressed raw from magic lantern, which introduces slow motion. Still no autofocus or peaking, though, so this would be a poor choice I think. Honestly I would hire an AC if possible. This is my approach, even if it's just a friend who's good at video games and can learn to pull focus.

If you only suck at half of it you're way ahead of most of us. I think the advice that you should specialize is mostly given as career advice. It makes sense. If you spend half the time doing something, you won't get as good as if you spent all your time doing that one thing. And it's difficult to market yourself as someone who does two things okay instead of one thing well. (This isn't as true in smaller markets. Outside LA, London, NYC, Vancouver, etc. generalists or people who run their own one-man companies can thrive. It's harder in a big market.) If you're not that worried about supporting yourself in a big market, just do whatever you want! If you're excellent at one technical, often tedious thing and good at networking (say, you learn Avid or Nuke relatively well, which can be done in six months, or you learn to pull focus and join the union) you can make six figures right off the bat, or close to it. And then from there you can support yourself in a big city (well, barely), learn from others, and see and observe how it's done. Then you can either learn more about what you're doing or observe what other people in entirely different departments are doing. David Fincher took this route, not because he wanted to do it all himself, but because he wanted to be able to so he knew no one was slacking on set. Or you can take that same route but find other people to bring onto your projects instead of learning from them! Once you get signed to a major agency like CAA or get a creative director job at a big company (which can take five years or more, admittedly) or get signed to a production company as an advertising director, then your agent or company will put together packages of talent for you when you direct. I worked on a project with a first-time director who had no technical skill, but he did a really good job writing and directing because of the team they put together and that he collaborated with. Another friend of mine was signed to one of CAA's top agents right out of school and he didn't know what an f stop was. Maybe he did, he just didn't care. He was a storyteller with a great crew. Another friend had a similar experience, signed to a major company right out of high school. Again, not technical, but visionary. A LOT of festival winners and Vimeo sensations secretly have major agencies and production companies (think CAA, WME, the Mill, etc.) doing the dirty work. They say if you wear every hat you get judged by the one that first you worst. But if you wear them all well (or even half of them), more power to you. Maybe you will have to pick up the slack for someone some day, maybe it will help you run the set faster. That knowledge will help out every step of the way. But you DEFINITELY don't need it. At all. And the fear that you do can hold you back. If money is not your main consideration, and if you're not struggling to pay the bills in a big city (which can kill your success; it's not always a good idea) just follow your bliss. I think Robert Rodriguez and Steven Soderbergh would do every job on set if they could because they come from a technical and formal background. But a lot of people are simply very passionate about one thing, and that one thing is why they get hired. Most directors aren't super technical, they just have great taste and people skills and management skills and are good storytellers. This is even true of film schools. Some of the best (Columbia, for instance) provide less technical education than a day on this forum would. Some of the best (AFI cinematography) provide more technical experience than you can find on the entire internet. By far. It depends what the student wants! If you can do what you want, do what you want. I wish I had the luxury but I gotta pay rent lol.

I wasn't being snarky before. I'm trying to budget for a 16mm shoot. But the scanning fees are so high and support gear for it and monitoring equipment seems impossible...

There is some truth to the first part but I question the second part. How are you shooting and scanning film affordably? 16mm or 35mm? If I can figure out how to I would love to.

Yep. The very same.

I worked on a feature that was shot on 35mm with a digital b camera and I shot some b camera stuff too, which was a blast. First and only chance to get to use a Fisher dolly. Same (very very expensive) lenses on both cameras, same lighting we're talking nine lights really old school big light set ups. Anyhow we had to match the two. And they did NOT look the same. So in post what I did (way before film convert, this is before the Alexa was even announced it was way back when lol) was to make sure they had shot color checker charts. Then in post I lined up the vector scopes side by side and used the hue v hue line to match the colors on the charts. Made some gamma curves by eye. Applied that as a preset and tweaked from there. And then used a film grain effect, too. (Again, this was before film scans were widely available and the film grain we shot for compositing was too slow to apply across a feature.) Did it work? Not really lol. Tungsten matched but we had an HBO exec at the theatrical screening who called out some shots, probably the daylight ones. They did not feel the same exactly. Skew was one issue (okay, it was a Red One MX lol), blown highlights... a bit less of an issue than you'd expect since everything was lit great and the b cam was picking up close ups with fewer practicals in frame. The crazy part was that the vectors cope on the video was more "diffuse" than the film one, as if the color had way less resolution even at 1080p and the saturation appeared lower even at the same saturation level, which you know you can't push it too high for broadcast, so the Red stuff looked less vivid. That said, it was quick and dirty work. And it matched REALLY closely for the most part. We used older lenses which were sharp but a bit... smooth. So that helped. What worked: lighting exactly the same as you would for film, using expensive support gear, $200,000+ lenses, painstaking grading, super imposing film grain. Shooting film as a reference. What didn't work: Painstaking grading as well as we'd like lol. For us the key was shooting film as a reference and lighting for film and using the same support gear and lenses you'd use. Without that, it wouldn't have been possible. And even then, we only got so close. But hey, it was a cool project and we got really really close. That said, it can be done. Check out Yedlin's Nuke script. Breathtaking work there. If only we could get our hands on it!

Thanks! Feel like I got a good deal at $199.

Yeah I wouldn't use a 416 indoors generally, that's true. The Audix is a good suggestion it's anything like a Schoeps.

I agree. Raw isn't an image. It's data. The data has to be converted to an image at some point. So there's nothing inherently better about waiting to do this until after you've shot. Doing this conversion in camera saves a ton of time. It isn't guaranteed to improve the image. The only substantive difference between raw and raster is that raw requires (or allows, depending on how you look at it) you to convert the footage on a PC. With raster the camera does it for you. In the case of an Alexa, the camera does it 99.9% as well as a PC. But there are still instances where maybe you get more flexibility in the raw developer, like with extreme white balance errors and extreme underexposure. In the case of a 5D Mark III, the camera does it maybe 20% as well lol. The raw video looks great, h264 looks... not that good. Even the JPEG stills from that camera (which many pros, at least sports shooters and photojournalists use, fwiw) look worse than their raw counterparts. For stills I'll take raw. Looks better. Pretty fast to work with. For video, I'd rather have ProRes. I do think this is an issue with this camera. No middle ground. We need to see how good the internal codec is before passing judgement. It would still be my choice at the price point I think. I don't think the raw option will be that popular in use.

I agree! I used to own a 416 back while I was still shooting professionally. I sold it when I quit but decided to pick this up for my YouTube videos and family videos. That said, even at $1000 (much less than the Schoeps) the 416 is not exactly cheap. While it may legitimately be the cheapest "good mic" (I also owned an AT4073a, and I thought that was the closest I could get under $500, the NTG 3 sounded pretty good to me too), I assumed the original poster wanted something even cheaper. $200 for a mic is definitely cheap. The battery power obviating the need for phantom power brings the price way way down, too. But yes, it might not qualify as good. :/ To me it sounds useable at least, but I can clearly hear the difference even here. Very thin. Even worse off-axis sound. And that's at a close distance. Difficult to tell how it rejects sound or what its pickup pattern is, but for a novice the tight pickup pattern of the 416 is problematic imo. Compared with other sub-$200 mics (of which I've used a few) it sounds really great in that video at least. Significantly better than the ME66, which I never cared for at all. Anyhow, perhaps "dramatically better" isn't strong enough a description. But all the same I can't think of anything else that's even usable for $200. But I agree with you. The cheapest good mic is the 416.

Yeah I've seen something like that on old camcorders, never seen it on the newer ones like the F35 or digital bolex. Haha someone should mount the CCD at a 90º angle and call it a feature.

Yes, most companies, even the smallest ones, have an LTO7 these days, but that's still a pretty expensive added cost!

416 is dramatically better sounding but for $200 I'm incredibly impressed.

Yeah I agree with this almost entirely. But there will be niche communities for whom raw is popular. A lot of owner/ops who run production companies and own a Red or are already there. A lot of rich hobbyists. These kinds of cameras will grow that market, which is welcome. But in the commercial and tv world you're still penny pinching and good luck explaining it to a producer who couldn't find the on switch on the camera.

Panasonic is going in the same direction as Canon and differentiating between their consumer and prosumer/professional lines. The GH5 is the consumer A cam.

Isn't this also the case for the F55? Last time I worked with it we had to go straight to DPX from this weird .mxf-wrapped file because Sony's RAW converter did not support ProRes even on the Mac, let alone DNG. However the image was pretty good. I don't see how Canon's raw lite could be much worse than that or Red Raw though lol. Definitely this is a horses for courses situation. However Canon Log never had a problem with the 8 bit wrapper (no banding on C300 except maybe when extremely over exposed on a flat surface, bigger issue was always the compression artifacts when you tried to grade a high contrast underexposed shot, that could be hideous but was due to the old low bitrate codec) and the reason they're including Canon Log 3 instead of 2 is because 2 would have banding in 8 bit and 3 wouldn't. 3's not a true log like Log C, SLOG3, Canon Log 2, etc. It's more a flattish mishmash. To this extent, the importance of bit depth I think is a bit overstated. Yes 8 vs 10 bits matters, but I see posts on Reduser from apparent experts bemoaning a lack of like 16 bit log and I'm like... I have never seen any issue with Alexa Mini prores, even shots with all 15 stops of DR captured (part of a DR test) the tonality is just flawless. Maybe it's on me but this is even judging on Flanders displays (which are 8 bit lol, maybe that's the issue). These cameras will have WAY less DR than the Alexa, and eventually it will be distributed into 8 bits for distribution. I would not worry prematurely about this spec, the bigger trade off is you get Canon Log 3 rather than 2, and it has less DR. Not that you're gonna get banding. Is my guess. 8 bit dSLR footage mostly looks like rubbish because it's dSLR footage lol. When HDR video (which a few engineers who knew canon people told me Canon had in mind with the C300 Mk II, but I haven't talked with anyone about this camera) is taken into account and wide color space then 10 bit acquisition will absolutely be necessary, though, I agree. The real proof of the pudding is in the tasting. The Varicam sensor does seem to have a particularly good look, really nice, I would be more interested in just the subjective difference than the specs. Never cared for Lumix cameras (GH4 is not bad however, GH2 was excellent for its time but the odd ones GH3 GH5 look odd) but the Varicam footage I've worked with so far has a less "video" feel than most and doesn't even seem to have any Lumix DNA not sure why though.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/878340-REG/Sennheiser_MKE_600_Shotgun.html $200 today only. Well I just ordered one.

What's CCD smear? Is that like the vertical lines you get with bright sources? I have never seen it in F35 footage but that's my only experience with a CCD camera. I only worked with a little digital bolex footage but it didn't have any either (I also couldn't figure out how to transcode it lol).

Contrary to this, I have heard really good things about the MKE600. I just sold my 416 and am trying it next. $400 for a mic seems cheap to me, very cheap. Likewise, there are $150 lav kits (not wireless, but with an ADC to iPhone) that are quite competitive with the high end. Below that price, I assume everything is more-or-less terrible, yeah. I bought a $200 Audio Technica and it was... shockingly bad.

A friend of mine recommended the MKE600. I am buying one for myself because I'm getting back into the hobby of shooting. The AT897 is pretty decent! Used to have one. I'm selling an AT4073A on eBay and expect to get like $150 for it even though it's legit competitive with a 416... but it's too directional to be an on-camera mic or even to use indoors, where a hypercardiod would be more appropriate. The 416 is... the classic, but again you'd want a hypercardiod indoors unless you're recording foley or walla. Bring along a c stand and mount the microphone to that following the traditional rules of mic placement if you can't afford a dedicated boom op/mixer. Any mic will be pretty awful on camera, whereas even the AT897 sounded pretty good when placed correctly!

Mumford Brewery (Little Tokyo/Skid Row) and Indie Brewery (Boyle Heights) are doing New England style IPAs nearly as well as New England itself is. I'd know; I've talked at length with the brewmaster in the Berkshires who invented the style and tried his wares and those from Maine Brewing and Trillium and Night Shift. They're all excellent btw and probably still better back east, but there's no need to travel east anymore to get in on the action. :/ LA has basically caught up. And the new Mikkeler pub in DTLA and the Modern Times pub opening in Atwater Village.... how can you resist... Beachwood is pretty good, too. And Russian River still makes the best sours. And I would eat this Thai Food, Armenian Food, Mexican Food, Tonkotsu Ramen, Poke, even the Chinese Food when I make to to Alhambra... even in 720p. Even in 480p... Oh, and In N Out. I'd eat you in 240p. So yeah, no new cameras on the horizon. But hopefully a gym membership. Wasn't Socal supposed to make me thin?

Want. This might be my next camera but I'm spending way too much money on food and beer. :/

Yep, the Alexa can't be beat. For many many many reasons. While its dual ISO mode and film-emulating code produces consistently the best tonality and by far the most dynamic range and flexibility (even in ProRes compared with other Camera's raw, and by far), its ISO is still effectively fixed and locked down, even if it's merged from two (fixed) signals. I don't find it to be a good owner/op camera. Mini has ergonomic problems and is power-hungry. A lot like an Epic. Amira has awkward menus and is rather large. And if you can supervise the entire process yourself from shooting to grading you can get the most out of less capable cameras and get a close enough result. In Mad Max the 5D is constantly intercut with the Alexa, but the crew involved was crazy talented. The iPhone quote is very true but now consumer mirrorless or dSLR cameras can look amazing in the right hands even as an A camera. It's not worth upgrading unless you can afford the crew to support it or are making crazy money renting it out. I'd argue that the C300 Mk II is arguably a better camera for owner/ops who can't afford a full crew (AF and battery life and built in NDs means no need for a minimum of of two ACs and good low light means less need for G&E in normally very costly night exteriors). But it is not quite in the same league in terms of highlight roll off. Nothing is. F35 is confusingly good though. :/ A7SII footage looks good to me but colorists tell me it's still pretty hard to work with. But it's a crazy impressive low light camera. Neither the Panny or Canon will match it in that respect and it simply trounces the high end there.

So far as I know, dual ISO just means that there are two ISO settings that use analogue gain. And the rest are arrived at with digital push/pull. The Alexa, for instance, always has its analogue gain set the same. 400 ISO is cleaner but clips faster because it's the same footage just pulled digitally before being written as ProRes. 1600 ISO, likewise, is noisier but there's a stop more highlight detail. Etc. The same is true of Red cameras. There is no option to boost the ISO except in post. But metadata is recorded and the image you view has the same digital push applied. However, apparently Red's sensors are the most advanced in the industry and are truly ISO invariant, so there would be no advantage to analogue gain if you're shooting raw. In theory. I find their sensors to be quite noisy but rather beautiful around 200-400 ISO. Canon's cinema series has always used analogue gain from 850 ISO to 20,000 ISO. The +/- is the same excepting greater noise in the shadows. 320-800 is digitally pulled from 850 and above 20,000 I think is digitally pushed. I'm not sure about the third stop settings. Sony's F55 has a native ISO of 1250 I think? F5 is 2000 ISO. A7S 3200 ISO. Below that is a digital pull. I believe that above 3200 ISO is analogue gain, at least up to something absurd like 80,000 ISO. Despite Sony sensors being ISO invariant (no substantial read noise), they aren't recording RAW so I suppose this offers an advantage in terms of quickly getting the most tonality out of the camera. I'm not sure. dSLRs have analogue gain (Canon's sensors in particular have a ton of read noise and benefit from it; you all know you can't push a Canon still image too far in post) but I think the 1/3 stop in between whole-stop increments are achieved with digital push/pull, hence the fascination with 160 ISO back in the days... It was cleanest because it was a digital pull. And the issues with highlight tone priority (it was noisy, it's a digital push). So while in practice, Panasonic's two gain settings should provide an advantage over digital push/pull... and from what I've heard they do (the only Varicam footage I've worked with was shot at low gain and it was as clean as you'd expect, very), in theory this is not an advantage over Sony or Canon's cinema cameras, or the Red. But for different reasons... And theory and practice rarely align perfectly. The low light setting is apparently REALLY good! However I would not count on the Panasonic having an ISO advantage over Sony or Canon, only over Arri and Red. The A7S will still be champ, too. Its 5000 ISO setting is really really clean. (And while I like the image from the F55 a lot better than I used to, at least now that they've advanced the SLOG3 matrix and gamma settings and now that I'm working with raw-squired footage, I still can't get into that camera or the F5. The system has improved a lot but I just can't get into the look of it or the gamma curve or ergonomics or workflow and chunky noise. It's capable but I never enjoyed working with it or any footage from it. Definitely doesn't feel like it's true 2000 ISO, either. Lots of shadow noise. Poor midtone tonality. Weird color. Weird menus. Just not a fan. The Kodak film emulation LUTs and the Alexa-like Sat v Lum settings improved the camera massively, but still not enough for it to be my preference. F65 footage is nice, though, same with F35, but I've never shot with them, only worked with them in post. Unless an FS5 Mk II is far far better than the F5 and F55 and FS7, I just couldn't get behind it when there are great looking options like these on the horizon. That's not to say Sony makes a bad product, just that... eh... IMO it's not a fun camera to use.)