HockeyFan12

Well the big take away here is we have NO F ing clue what things will look like in even 15 years from now. Who would have Ever imagined a Smartphone 15 years ago, or half the stuff we just take for granted now. I bet unimaginable stuff will be around by then. AI has the potential to change Everything we know. It can be a LOT smarter than we are capable of ever being. It is going to be interesting to say the least down the road.

Will machine learning algorithms replace forum members? (J/k, based on some of the spam bots they already are.)
Anyone know a good vfx forum? Thinking of downloading the PLE version of Nuke but wouldn't know where to start with a node-based compositor...
I welcome machine learning for vfx. Adobe has the right idea targeting rotoscoping and paint out first. When machine learning makes Twin Peaks I'll be fine submitting to the machine master race, but for now roto would be nice. I suspect ten years from now I'll have one but not the other. We'll see!

Will machine learning algorithms replace forum members? (J/k, based on some of the spam bots they already are.)
Anyone know a good vfx forum? Thinking of downloading the PLE version of Nuke but wouldn't know where to start with a node-based compositor...
I welcome machine learning for vfx. Adobe has the right idea targeting rotoscoping and paint out first. When machine learning makes Twin Peaks I'll be fine submitting to the machine master race, but for now roto would be nice. I suspect ten years from now I'll have one but not the other. We'll see!

To add to that, numerous people are attracted to dick-head personalities.  Just a fact of humanity. 
Adults should know better (yet don't), but kids are particularly susceptible to aggressive earnestness, regardless if it's healthy earnestness.  Any type of self-assuredness is viewed as a positive.
Thus, many personalities that reach broad levels of success are not uplifting and positive, but degrading.  This is not a YT specific issue.  This is an issue with what it means to struggle to be a good person in general.
To point out this theory in practice, I'll not post, but mention this:  That YT Paul asshole kid had the asshole crackpot adult from InfoWars on his channel recently.  A perfect storm of brash stupidity that makes life on this planet slightly worse for happening. 
Now, a few special people can transcend this "be a dick for attention"  scenario and have charisma that's compelling yet compassionate.  It's much harder to do.  The sad reality is evil is alluring.

I do think the mid range has been slowly shrinking. There's tons of work at the bottom, probably more than ever.  And there's still work at the top.
I've learned a few things, finally. Only took almost 9 years! I think a big mistake I made was fretting over and trying to turn cheap people into rich people. Clients who have no money are never gonna pay, no matter how much you convince them of your worth. It's always better to just ignore them and go where the money is.
With the bigger clients, I find they almost need a big dog and pony show to make them feel like they're getting a high end production. Big crews, cameras, lights that they probably don't need, but makes them feel secure. 
There's still really good money in the high end wedding market, if you can stomach it. Just saw a guy in town charging minimum $4500 for a highlight + some multicam ceremony. And he's got hundreds of 5 star reviews. A few days work for $4500!
I suspect location matters tremendously. I've been fortunate to live to two big markets. Vancouver, and now DC. DC in particular seems to have lots of rich people. No way I'd be getting anywhere close to the rates I get here in the town I grew up in. That said, cost of living there was substantially less as well.
Being a specialist is probably the ticket to big money if you're really fucking good, but have general skills can help at least keep the lights on during slow times. I've played DOP, camera op, editor, motion graphics guy, even photographer at times.  
My biggest worry by far is AI and robots. Our industry is going to be absolutely gutted at some point,  I think people have no idea. People talk about the DSLR revolution changing things....that's absolutely compared to what's gonna happen, IMO. 
 

Have you considered the 50mm STM?  (EF, not FD.)
It's... not that bad. 

To do a friend a favor or get a foot in the door. There's an interesting story I heard, not sure if it's true, about this guy who shot a (for charity) calendar with all these A-list celebrities and he did it for free, at a loss. Now he has a portfolio of high end photos with Justin Bieber, etc. That guy was making a shitload of money the next year.
If you're not a professional yet, there's market for lower budget stuff, and sometimes that goes somewhere. I see a lot of AFI grads taking this path rather than going to AC to operator or whatever.
It is not an easy path.
I personally work cheap for friends, sort of a barter economy thing with a little cash thrown in. I will almost always work cheap if I'm doing something I'm not quite professional level at. This has gone wrong at times though.
That said, it's a great question. Full rate jobs are almost always easier than low rate ones because EVERYONE ELSE is doing a good job, making your job easier (if you're semi-competent). You make an extremely good point and anyone who's a working freelancer would do well to take your advice. There are reasons to take low pay work, but competing on the basis of being the cheapest will just make you successful at being the cheapest. Nothing to aspire to imo.

To do a friend a favor or get a foot in the door. There's an interesting story I heard, not sure if it's true, about this guy who shot a (for charity) calendar with all these A-list celebrities and he did it for free, at a loss. Now he has a portfolio of high end photos with Justin Bieber, etc. That guy was making a shitload of money the next year.
If you're not a professional yet, there's market for lower budget stuff, and sometimes that goes somewhere. I see a lot of AFI grads taking this path rather than going to AC to operator or whatever.
It is not an easy path.
I personally work cheap for friends, sort of a barter economy thing with a little cash thrown in. I will almost always work cheap if I'm doing something I'm not quite professional level at. This has gone wrong at times though.
That said, it's a great question. Full rate jobs are almost always easier than low rate ones because EVERYONE ELSE is doing a good job, making your job easier (if you're semi-competent). You make an extremely good point and anyone who's a working freelancer would do well to take your advice. There are reasons to take low pay work, but competing on the basis of being the cheapest will just make you successful at being the cheapest. Nothing to aspire to imo.

To do a friend a favor or get a foot in the door. There's an interesting story I heard, not sure if it's true, about this guy who shot a (for charity) calendar with all these A-list celebrities and he did it for free, at a loss. Now he has a portfolio of high end photos with Justin Bieber, etc. That guy was making a shitload of money the next year.
If you're not a professional yet, there's market for lower budget stuff, and sometimes that goes somewhere. I see a lot of AFI grads taking this path rather than going to AC to operator or whatever.
It is not an easy path.
I personally work cheap for friends, sort of a barter economy thing with a little cash thrown in. I will almost always work cheap if I'm doing something I'm not quite professional level at. This has gone wrong at times though.
That said, it's a great question. Full rate jobs are almost always easier than low rate ones because EVERYONE ELSE is doing a good job, making your job easier (if you're semi-competent). You make an extremely good point and anyone who's a working freelancer would do well to take your advice. There are reasons to take low pay work, but competing on the basis of being the cheapest will just make you successful at being the cheapest. Nothing to aspire to imo.

I bought one used.  it's about 1.5 stops better in the shadows than the c300 ii and same in the highlights (3.5 stops over key) - https://cinematography.net/CineRant/2018/07/30/personal-comments-on-the-2018-cml-camera-evaluations/
which makes it almost as good as any camera - well better than the alexa in shadows but, still alexa is the king in highlights.
it shoots pro res.  it does everything you wish the c300 ii would do.  well not raw light - i don't know why it doesn't do that - maybe I should ask them.
here's some stills with a zeiss 28mm standard speed - doesn't quite have full frame coverage.
i'll post a video soon to show more tests with it.

Zach, are we to assume you are referring to a film in the distant future? Didn’t you say you don’t have a car right now? I would argue that it may be smarter to get a car first and then a $33,000 cinema camera.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a FF camera, did you hear that The Possession of Hannah Grace was shot on an a7sii? 
If you don’t need 4K or IBIS, the original a7s can be had for about $700... so that’s an option as well.

this is a killer feature and its only gonna get better, i was gonna start a thread. if you use it the right way in photoshop its unbelievebly effective and easy, so im really stoked to see where this goes
i love the boom removal usage that @IronFilm mentioned; stuff like that can be HUGE for an indy shoot too...!
the future of vfx is so bright its ridiculous lol. kids in the future will never kno the agony of the stuff we’ve had to learn ?

I'm not sure if you're kidding, but I see nothing wrong with using a C700 for cat videos.
I wonder if Roger Deakins and Janusz secretly shoot cat videos. I'd love to see them. Probably would be their most honest work.
I bet most Red owners/cat owners are shooting cat videos. They'd be crazy not to.

Philip Bloom seems to make a pretty good living shooting Cats. Maybe you need to change direction.

That's really interesting. I remember loving the look of the Revenant (not my favorite movie, but I loved the cinematography), but feeling that a lot of subsequent Alexa 65 shows were a little more clinical and boring. Bandersnatch I thought looked good, but might as well have been Red or something.
There's a rumor that Arri uses a diffusion filter over their OLPF. It's not true. But if you look at this footage carefully (download it):
You can see the C200 has more fine detail and the Arri has more sharpening (unsharp mask) and a "smoother look." (The Arri also has a much nicer noise texture, superior linearity in color over exposure, and 1.5 stops more highlight detail, which this comparison masks.) I'm trying out Tiffen's Digital Diffusion FX 1/2 filter to try to get a similar softening effect, but it's incredibly subtle. Obviously, that smooth/soft effect and the Alexa's "film like" noise texture would be reduced with the larger sensor.
So I think the S35 sensor for whatever reason has this smooth look that the LF and A65 lack. They feel more clinical and more textureless. But I've only worked with the OG S35 and watched footage from the others. Granted, the others still look great and are perfect for as a Venice competitor (or for Netflix), but it's really interesting to read that Deakins prefers the S35. I do agree there's a lot more great cinema glass for S35, even if it's mostly very expensive, and that sensor has an organic "feel." 
But the opposite is sort of true on the affordable end of the spectrum: there's a real dearth of affordable fast wide glass for S35 and tons of it for FF.
The only good options I can think of for S35 at consumer price points are the Sigma 18-35mm for a modern look, or for a vintage look the Olympus 21mm f2. I think there's a Rokinon 16mm f2, too. I found an Olympus 55mm thread wide angle adapter on a swap table... maybe it's a sign that I should get the 21mm and use the adapter on it. 14.7mm f2. :/ And that would look VERY "vintage." I almost see FF making more sense for consumer cameras than for pro cameras due to lens availability. Nikon's 24mm f2 AI is a weird looking lens–I personally love it. But it's neither that fast nor that wide. (Nor that sharp wide open.) On full frame, however, it feels like a decently sharp 16mm f1.2 that's full of character... Canon's new 20mm t1.5 cine lens would be pretty great on FF and is relatively affordable, too.

They did. There wasn't a big announcement over it, but they released a FF version:
Kind of cool. The big external recorder I imagine limits the usefulness... the C700 is already big.
I think the new Arri Mini FF (though worse in low light, I expect) and Venice will be more attractive options. But I'd love to see a FF C300 MK III... can't imagine it would be affordable.
 

I think part of the price difference has to do with economies of scale. At the low end, it's mostly the housings that are different. The Xeens and CP2s I believe are optically identical (or very nearly optically identical) to still lenses that are about 1/4 the price. But the housings are huge and built for use with cinema equipment: big front diameter, big barrel for longer smooth focus throws. The glass is the same. Same deal with Canon's cinema primes and Sigma's, I think.
At the very high end it's another story. Some incredible stuff there, even based on specs alone (24-290mm t2.8, lots of super fast wides). Those are HUGE in terms of glass and housing. Some of the character lenses are amazing in terms of look (Cooke S3s and anamorphics and super speeds in particular–weirdly the Cookes are tiny and old Zeiss lenses are pretty small, too).
But if you're only after image quality, today's Sigma primes, for instance, hold up remarkably well against Master Primes or Angenieux zooms. The difference is there, but it's smaller than the difference between good and bad still lenses in my experience. I compared the 17-55mm Canon and the 15-40mm Angenieux and they could intercut okay, even if the Angenieux is better. But at the same stop, I'm not sure the Angenieux would be that much better than the 18-35mm Sigma.  But the mechanics are very different... which the rehoused Sigmas try to address, but I'm not sure if they have cam focusing or not. 
Zooms have to be parfocal and lenses have to breathe less, too, so that's expensive to implement, sort of having the lens zoom a little as it focuses to counteract breathing, I guess.
And, of course, it's rental gear vs consumer gear so just different markets. But I think the difference is more mechanics than optics. There have been a lot of rehoused still lenses (Nikon and Leica R largely) in use in cinema, even before the current ranges.

I think part of the price difference has to do with economies of scale. At the low end, it's mostly the housings that are different. The Xeens and CP2s I believe are optically identical (or very nearly optically identical) to still lenses that are about 1/4 the price. But the housings are huge and built for use with cinema equipment: big front diameter, big barrel for longer smooth focus throws. The glass is the same. Same deal with Canon's cinema primes and Sigma's, I think.
At the very high end it's another story. Some incredible stuff there, even based on specs alone (24-290mm t2.8, lots of super fast wides). Those are HUGE in terms of glass and housing. Some of the character lenses are amazing in terms of look (Cooke S3s and anamorphics and super speeds in particular–weirdly the Cookes are tiny and old Zeiss lenses are pretty small, too).
But if you're only after image quality, today's Sigma primes, for instance, hold up remarkably well against Master Primes or Angenieux zooms. The difference is there, but it's smaller than the difference between good and bad still lenses in my experience. I compared the 17-55mm Canon and the 15-40mm Angenieux and they could intercut okay, even if the Angenieux is better. But at the same stop, I'm not sure the Angenieux would be that much better than the 18-35mm Sigma.  But the mechanics are very different... which the rehoused Sigmas try to address, but I'm not sure if they have cam focusing or not. 
Zooms have to be parfocal and lenses have to breathe less, too, so that's expensive to implement, sort of having the lens zoom a little as it focuses to counteract breathing, I guess.
And, of course, it's rental gear vs consumer gear so just different markets. But I think the difference is more mechanics than optics. There have been a lot of rehoused still lenses (Nikon and Leica R largely) in use in cinema, even before the current ranges.

I think part of the price difference has to do with economies of scale. At the low end, it's mostly the housings that are different. The Xeens and CP2s I believe are optically identical (or very nearly optically identical) to still lenses that are about 1/4 the price. But the housings are huge and built for use with cinema equipment: big front diameter, big barrel for longer smooth focus throws. The glass is the same. Same deal with Canon's cinema primes and Sigma's, I think.
At the very high end it's another story. Some incredible stuff there, even based on specs alone (24-290mm t2.8, lots of super fast wides). Those are HUGE in terms of glass and housing. Some of the character lenses are amazing in terms of look (Cooke S3s and anamorphics and super speeds in particular–weirdly the Cookes are tiny and old Zeiss lenses are pretty small, too).
But if you're only after image quality, today's Sigma primes, for instance, hold up remarkably well against Master Primes or Angenieux zooms. The difference is there, but it's smaller than the difference between good and bad still lenses in my experience. I compared the 17-55mm Canon and the 15-40mm Angenieux and they could intercut okay, even if the Angenieux is better. But at the same stop, I'm not sure the Angenieux would be that much better than the 18-35mm Sigma.  But the mechanics are very different... which the rehoused Sigmas try to address, but I'm not sure if they have cam focusing or not. 
Zooms have to be parfocal and lenses have to breathe less, too, so that's expensive to implement, sort of having the lens zoom a little as it focuses to counteract breathing, I guess.
And, of course, it's rental gear vs consumer gear so just different markets. But I think the difference is more mechanics than optics. There have been a lot of rehoused still lenses (Nikon and Leica R largely) in use in cinema, even before the current ranges.

@kye, no that's totally applicable to me. "CAT VIDEO MM/DD/YYYY" describes a lot of my "personal work." I think that might be the better naming convention for a lot of my stuff.
Uploading to YouTube like that is a smart idea. The only caveats I can imagine are that you can never truly delete anything that way, or there's that story about Myspace losing 12 years of music. You can't really choose if it gets deleted, I guess.
Still, I do that with a lot of stuff on dropbox, always keeping essential files there, but of course have to pay monthly to keep that data online.
@KnightsFan, tons of great advice, thank you.
Are your tools OS X or Windows? One thing I didn't realize would be helpful but think would be, is including relevant information (client, project name, etc.) in the "comments" section of all the files correlated with a certain project. That way, it's searchable even if it's not in the file name, I believe. Batch modifying comments might be interesting. I'd rather not change file names in some instances, but I wouldn't mind adding comments.
The flip side of me (perhaps) having more projects to organize than you is that most of them are a couple weeks of work from start to finish at most. So I can't relate to most of those concerns about years of footage existing together in one scene; even for longer-term projects, it's a few days of shooting and then pick ups. I did something long-term like that many years ago and it was awesome, though. Despite some continuity errors and changing hairstyles...
What's the two-year project you're working on? If it involves Blender and Fusion it sounds cool...
That might be the best advice of all. I try to archive footage and photos I shoot, but have no idea why I keep most of it. Been shooting a lot of raw video lately and I can fill up a few 256 GB cards in a day. Backing those up is not cheap.

Heh, I taught myself to type at 130wpm to help with essays... I guess I never stopped. I was only a minute late for the appt!
I watched the short since, though. You didn't need my essay at all, I think you answered your own question very well. My apology again for the rant.

Again, my apologies. I'm putting myself on time out for a while.
I should have watched the short first; I ended up writing something more to myself, I think, than to Zach, and that's a disservice to him and to the forum, but I was just trying to share my enthusiasm for some directors who inspired me. 

Thanks, I appreciate it. Next time I'll at least watch the short first.
And next time I write a screenplay I'll go hog wild.... then cut it way down.

@Liam have u considered moving to a place with more... people? just throwing it out there, i kno its not easy, but youre young and durable

I love putting my name on things so I'm excited to have found a Brother label maker on sale at Staples.
I want to label lenses etc. so if I have an assistant or something he or she can identify them, and so things don't get mixed up if I rent equipment. Does anyone have any advice for doing this? Should I include phone number in case someone is extremely honest and I lose something? Label cables, too? Color coding? Should I label the cases? SD cards? This looks fun:
https://www.amazon.com/Unistar-Standard-Laminated-Compatible-Brother/dp/B01FJRURW4/ref=sxbs_sxwds-stvp?keywords=oem+brother+label+tape&pd_rd_i=B01FJRURW4&pd_rd_r=ab02dc4c-fb3e-4597-ac39-5963d91998e9&pd_rd_w=rd5q1&pd_rd_wg=kNil6&pf_rd_p=5c5ea0d7-2437-4d8a-88a7-ea6f32aeac11&pf_rd_r=EK74ADNXKYH35F8X0N57&qid=1552187252&s=gateway
I'm not sure if I'm more interested in this as an art project or because it's practical and will help keep me organized, but at least I found another use for my camera and lenses.