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Yannick Willox

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  1. Haha
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from sanveer in Take the red pill...   
    I have known for ages literally everyone is running around completely blind on this planet.
    Deaf as well, by the way.
  2. Thanks
    Yannick Willox reacted to PPNS in Nikon buys Red?   
    Now nikon gets to be the patent troll. Red will probably get to pretend to remain a company for 2 years and then nikon will probably fire the entire workforce, and we get to hear about “the constantly changing landscape of media” in some press release justifying the gutting of the company.
  3. Like
    Yannick Willox reacted to kye in OPEN AI VIDEO TECH ONE YEAR LATER...   
    Perhaps the critical concept is that AI is calculators trained with only human input data.
    This whole thing is like when people learned anatomy.  
    At first people thought that we couldn't possibly understand how the body worked because it was made by God.  Over many hundreds of years we've basically worked out more and more of the organic chemistry and various principles etc, and now no-one who is familiar with modern medicine would question our ability to understand the physical body.
    Now comes AI, and we're back to saying that we couldn't possibly understand or replicate what it is to be human, because we're etherial magical special and knowable only to God.  I think that line of thinking will suffer the same fate, and will suffer it at thousands of times the pace.
  4. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from IronFilm in Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4k G2 - now shipping   
    I really do not get it. If it would have bluetooth and the same record/crop modes as P4K they would sell a shitload of these camera's !
    Apparantly it does have Gyro.
     
  5. Thanks
    Yannick Willox reacted to PannySVHS in Panasonic G9 mk2   
    Yikes. G9II needs one ingredient from the GH5 II, a zero sharpened organic image.
  6. Haha
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from kye in Take the red pill...   
    I have known for ages literally everyone is running around completely blind on this planet.
    Deaf as well, by the way.
  7. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from bjohn in Sennheiser Previews MKH 8030 figure-of-eight RF Condenser Microphone   
    Sennheiser promised this mic over 15 years ago when the 8000 series was released, to replace the MKH30.
    It was then delayed, scrapped, rebearthed, scrapped again. 4-5 years ago there was an online poll by Sennheiser (probably the beancounter department) to see if there was intrest.
    Now it will become reality (???) - and suddenly worldwide about 2,5K sound engineers will either buy 1 MKH8030, or - finally - buy into the series and get 4-6 mics.
    IMO some beancounters will faint, and some will be fired instantly, because they have cost Sennheiser a lot of money during those 15 years.
    If it is as durable and even better sounding then the MKH30, it will be the best (full-range) fig8 mic available.
  8. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from IronFilm in Panasonic G9 mk2   
    In defense to the size of the body :
    It has no fan.
    It does not overheat.
    The IBIS is stellar, so you could often get by without the gimbal. This alone makes it actually a lot more compact.
    Anyway, I tend to put everything on sticks, or walk around with it, and I need a new MFT photo camera - this means I am actually happy they release this. Except for the price.
  9. Thanks
    Yannick Willox reacted to kye in The best film-making advice I ever got   
    I've learned a lot about film-making over the years, most of it came through discovery and experimentation, but the best film-making advice I ever got was this...  
    See how much contrast and saturation you can add to your images
    This probably sounds ridiculous to you, and I can understand why it would, but hear me out.  Not only is it deceptively simple, but it's hugely powerful, and will push you to develop lots of really important skills.
    The advice came from a professional colourist on some colour grading forums after I'd asked about colour grading, and as I make happy holiday travel videos it seemed to be a logical but completely obvious piece of advice, but it stuck with me over the years.  The reason I say "over the years" is that the statement is deceptively simple and took me on a journey over many many years.  When I first tried it I failed miserably.  It's harder than it looks...  a lot harder.
    The first thing it taught me was that I didn't know WTF I was doing with colour grading, and especially, colour management.
    Here's a fun experiment - take a clip you've shot that looks awful and make it B&W.  It will get better.  Depending on how badly it was shot, potentially a lot better.
    It took me years to work out colour management and how to deal with the cameras I have that aren't supported by any colour management profiles and where I had to do things myself.  I'm still on a learning curve with this, but I finally feel like I'm able to add as much contrast and saturation as I like without the images making me want to kill myself.  I recently learned how the colour profiles work within colour management pipelines and was surprised at how rudimentary they are - I'm now working on building my own.
    The second thing it taught me was that all cameras are shit when you don't absolutely nail their sweet-spot, and sometimes that sweet-spot isn't large enough to go outside under virtually any conditions, and that sometimes that sweet spot doesn't actually exist in the real-world.
    Here's another fun and scarily familiar experiment - take a shot from any camera and make it B&W.  It makes it way better doesn't it?  Actually, sometimes it's astonishing.  Here's a shot from one of the worst cameras I have ever used:

    We're really only now just starting to get sub-$1000 cameras where you don't have to be super-gentle in pushing the image around without risking it turning to poop.  (Well, with a few notable exceptions anyway...  *cough* OG BMPCC *cough*).  Did you know that cinematographers do latitude tests of cinema cameras when they're released so they know how to expose it to get the best results?  These are cameras with the most amount of latitude available, frequently giving half-a-dozen stops of highlights and shadows, and they do tests to work out if they should bump up or push down the exposure by half a stop or more, because it matters.
    Increasing the contrast and saturation shows all the problems with the compression artefacts, bit-depth, ISO noise, NR and sharpening, etc etc.  Really cranking these up is ruthless on all but the best cameras that money can buy.
    Sure, these things are obvious and not newsworthy, but now the fun begins....
    The third thing it taught me was to actually see images - not just looking at them but really seeing them.
    I could look at an image from a movie or TV show and see that it looked good (or great), and I could definitely see that my images were a long way from either of those things, but I couldn't see why.  The act of adding contrast and saturation, to the point of breaking my images, forced me to pay attention to what was wrong and why it looked wrong.  Then I'd look at professional images and look at what they had.  Every so often you realise your images have THAT awful thing and the pro ones don't, and even less often you realise what they have instead.
    I still feel like I'm at the beginning of my journey, but one thing I've noticed is that I'm seeing more in the images I look at.  I used to see only a few "orange and teal" looks (IIRC they were "blue-ish" "cyan-ish" and "green-ish" shadows) and now I see dozens or hundreds of variations.  I'm starting to contemplate why a film might have different hues from shot-to-shot, and I know enough to know that they could have matched them if they wanted to, so there's a deeper reason.
    I'm noticing things in real-life too.  I am regularly surprised now by noticing what hues are present in the part of a sunset where the sky fades from magenta-orange to yellow and through an assortment of aqua-greens before getting to the blue shades.
    The fourth thing it taught me was what high-end images actually look like.
    This is something that I have spoken about before on these forums.  People make a video and talk about what is cinematic and my impression is completely and utter bewilderment - the images look NOTHING like the images that are actually shown in cinemas.  I wonder how people can watch the same stuff I'm watching and yet be so utterly blind.
    The fifth thing it taught me was how to actually shoot.
    Considering that all cameras have a very narrow sweet spot, you can't just wave the damned thing around and expect to fix it in post, you need to know what the subject of the shot is.  You need to know where to put them in the frame, where to put them in the dynamic range of the camera, how to move the camera, etc.  If you decide that you're going to film a violinist in a low-bitrate 8-bit codec with a flat log profile, and then expose for the sky behind them even though they're standing in shadow, and expect to be able to adjust for the fact they're lit by a 2-storey building with a bright-yellow facade, well... you're going to have a bad time.  Hypothetically, of course.  Cough cough.
    The sixth thing it taught me is what knobs and buttons to push to get the results I want.
    Good luck getting a good looking image if you don't know specifically why some images look good and others don't.  Even then, this still takes a long time to gradually build up a working knowledge of what the various techniques look like across a variety of situations.  I'm at the beginning of this journey.  On the colourist forums every year or so, someone will make a post that describes some combination of tools being used in some colour space that you've never heard of, and the seasoned pros with decades of experience all chime in with thank-you comments and various other reflections on how they would never have thought of doing that.  I spent 3 days analysing a one-sentence post once.  These are the sorts of things that professional colourists have worked out and are often part of their secret-sauce.
    Examples.
    I recently got organised, and I now have a project that contains a bunch of sample images of my own from various cameras, a bunch of sample images from various TV and movies that I've grabbed over the years, and all the template grades I have developed.  I have a set of nodes for each camera to convert them nicely to Davinci Wide Gamma, then a set of default nodes that I use to grade each image, and then a set of nodes that are applied to the whole project and convert to rec709.
    Here's my first attempt at grading those images using the above grades I've developed.  (This contains NO LUTs either)

    The creative brief for the grade was to push the contrast and saturation to give a "punchy" look, but without it looking over-the-top.  They're not graded to match, but they are graded to be context-specific, for example the images from Japan are cooler because it was very cold and the images from India were colourful but the pollution gave the sun a yellow/brown-tint, etc.
    Would I push real projects this far?  Probably not, but the point is that I can push things this far (which is pretty far) without the images breaking or starting to look worse-for-wear.  This means that I can choose how heavy a look to apply - rather than being limited through lack of ability to get the look I want.
    For reference, here are a couple of samples of the sample images I've collected for comparison.
    Hollywood / Blockbuster style images:

    More natural but still high-end images:

    Perhaps the thing that strikes me most is (surprise surprise) the amount of contrast and saturation - it's nothing like the beige haze that passes for "cinematic" on YT these days.  
    So, is that the limits of pushing things?  No!
    Travel images and perhaps some of the most colourful - appropriate considering the emotions and excitement of adventures in exotic and far-off lands:

    I can just imagine the creative brief for the images on the second half of the bottom row...  "Africa is a colourful place - make the images as colourful as the location!".


    In closing, I will leave you with this.  I searched YT for "cinematic film" and took a few screen grabs.  Some of these are from the most lush and colourful places on earth, but..... Behold the beige dullness.  I can just imagine the creative brief for this one too: "make me wonder if you even converted it from log...."

     
  10. Haha
  11. Like
    Yannick Willox reacted to Andrew Reid in Now it is a surprise - DPReview is closing   
    It might not be the right target group for those uninterested in video here.
    Photo Camera Review on the other hand...
    https://www.photocamerareview.com
    🙂
  12. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from M_Williams in Bitrates. Where do you draw the line?   
    Another heads up for BRAW. The quality and flexibility you get (even white balance can be completely changed afterwards, ISO basically does not exist, except for the dual gain choice one has to make, carefully !) is great, while being more data efficient than the comparable prores.
    For me it is most often Q5 for 6-10 cam shoots, which typically are 2x 1.5 hours. That usually gives around 3TB of footage in 4K.
    Q5 BRAW 4K DCI at 25 fps typically gives something between 200 and 300 mbit/s if I am not mistaken. 400 mbit max for wide shots with movement and much detail.
  13. Like
    Yannick Willox reacted to Anaconda_ in DaVinci Resolve On New M2 iPad Pro   
    https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj7LnVcvNLy/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
     
    Braw will be supported and I would have thought from launch, in Q4...
  14. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from IronFilm in An adventure into the Panasonic GX85/80 begins - and a look at the Leica Nocticron for Micro Four Thirds   
    After reading the original article I bought a GX85, and an adapter for my Panaleica 14-50 fourthirds lens. It was my first cam that could do video.
    Years later, I have now shot several concert (live or production) video's, up to 10 cam (mainly P4K), 3 manned cams. I currently have 3 fourthirds lenses (adapted to m43) and 8 mft lenses and 14-15 Samsung T5 ...
    The GX85 still serves (mainly photographs, or as a fourth cam when I am in a pinch).
    So, a big THANK YOU to Andrew.
    Without getting into video for music, the last two years would have been a personal disaster ...
  15. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from Tim Sewell in An adventure into the Panasonic GX85/80 begins - and a look at the Leica Nocticron for Micro Four Thirds   
    After reading the original article I bought a GX85, and an adapter for my Panaleica 14-50 fourthirds lens. It was my first cam that could do video.
    Years later, I have now shot several concert (live or production) video's, up to 10 cam (mainly P4K), 3 manned cams. I currently have 3 fourthirds lenses (adapted to m43) and 8 mft lenses and 14-15 Samsung T5 ...
    The GX85 still serves (mainly photographs, or as a fourth cam when I am in a pinch).
    So, a big THANK YOU to Andrew.
    Without getting into video for music, the last two years would have been a personal disaster ...
  16. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from John Matthews in An adventure into the Panasonic GX85/80 begins - and a look at the Leica Nocticron for Micro Four Thirds   
    After reading the original article I bought a GX85, and an adapter for my Panaleica 14-50 fourthirds lens. It was my first cam that could do video.
    Years later, I have now shot several concert (live or production) video's, up to 10 cam (mainly P4K), 3 manned cams. I currently have 3 fourthirds lenses (adapted to m43) and 8 mft lenses and 14-15 Samsung T5 ...
    The GX85 still serves (mainly photographs, or as a fourth cam when I am in a pinch).
    So, a big THANK YOU to Andrew.
    Without getting into video for music, the last two years would have been a personal disaster ...
  17. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from kye in An adventure into the Panasonic GX85/80 begins - and a look at the Leica Nocticron for Micro Four Thirds   
    After reading the original article I bought a GX85, and an adapter for my Panaleica 14-50 fourthirds lens. It was my first cam that could do video.
    Years later, I have now shot several concert (live or production) video's, up to 10 cam (mainly P4K), 3 manned cams. I currently have 3 fourthirds lenses (adapted to m43) and 8 mft lenses and 14-15 Samsung T5 ...
    The GX85 still serves (mainly photographs, or as a fourth cam when I am in a pinch).
    So, a big THANK YOU to Andrew.
    Without getting into video for music, the last two years would have been a personal disaster ...
  18. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from PannySVHS in An adventure into the Panasonic GX85/80 begins - and a look at the Leica Nocticron for Micro Four Thirds   
    After reading the original article I bought a GX85, and an adapter for my Panaleica 14-50 fourthirds lens. It was my first cam that could do video.
    Years later, I have now shot several concert (live or production) video's, up to 10 cam (mainly P4K), 3 manned cams. I currently have 3 fourthirds lenses (adapted to m43) and 8 mft lenses and 14-15 Samsung T5 ...
    The GX85 still serves (mainly photographs, or as a fourth cam when I am in a pinch).
    So, a big THANK YOU to Andrew.
    Without getting into video for music, the last two years would have been a personal disaster ...
  19. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from Thomas Hill in Monitor for both photo & film   
    I have a proart PA248QV. It is also a lower cost type of this series, 24 inch. It comes "calibrated" out of the factory. Side-by-side to my much more expensive Dell 24", which has been calibrated with a Spider, it looks better/more accurate.
    Getting into the hassle of recalibrating, more expenses for a (used?) calibration device etc. is only worth it if you are in a VERY controlled environment, with a fixed lighting setting.
    I think for REC709 these kind of displays should be quite reliable - although certainly not reference grade ... Benq has a very interesting photo/video series, which can switch between photographic and video modes easily, but at 4x the cost (which is still quite cheap).
    The Asus proart series easily goes to 5K euro, but I think there is not 1 model able to do 24p (natively). If you need that, you need to look at the Benq video series.
  20. Haha
    Yannick Willox reacted to kye in Steve Huff On The Camera Review Game   
    If you're paying retail, $100K isn't a high end system...  it's a very nice turntable, without a preamp!
  21. Haha
    Yannick Willox reacted to BTM_Pix in CanonRumors owner decides to quit   
    Here you go, try it with this thumbnail to tick all the boxes that will get you on the front page.

  22. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from Andres Aguilo in Had an outing with the Panasonic-Leica 10-25mm F1.7 on GH5   
    Can anyone comment on the non-corrected distortion ? My DZOFILM 10-24 almost has none, but is sometimes a bit too soft towards the edges.
  23. Like
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from sjhwilkes in Disappointing Panasonic GH5 Mark II specs leak in Japan – Where is the GH6?   
    What if Panasonic are planning the GH6 ? What if the GH5 still is a viable camera, but due to older parts, difficult to assemble & sell. Hence the GH5 Mk II with a few small improvements ?
    Then the bulk of this thread is moot.
  24. Thanks
    Yannick Willox got a reaction from Alt Shoo in Disappointing Panasonic GH5 Mark II specs leak in Japan – Where is the GH6?   
    What if Panasonic are planning the GH6 ? What if the GH5 still is a viable camera, but due to older parts, difficult to assemble & sell. Hence the GH5 Mk II with a few small improvements ?
    Then the bulk of this thread is moot.
  25. Like
    Yannick Willox reacted to EphraimP in Their.Tube - YouTube completely in bed with QAnon, etc. promoting bullshit for clicks   
    I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm specifically referring to Newfoundmass's post that "their main page basically recommended alt-right and Newsmax pro-Trump videos on my first visit." That's what I have a problem with, not the underlying technology. And saying that the the alt-right (led by the Orange Dumpsterfire in the Whitehouse) is attempting to destroy democracy in America is not "hysterical hyperbole." The huge push to try to invalidate our presidential election through the alt-right media and the courts is having, and will have, long lasting effects on our election system. It's not trivial. And you can add the long-term voter suppression push from the right targeting (mostly) people of color and nakedly partisan gerrymandering of electoral districts to that. No good.
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