UncleBobsPhotography

10 minutes ago, Django said:

The tech itself isn't really anything "new". The last VR project my production unit worked on was around 2018 and we used an Insta360Pro which was already 8K/3D capable:

It's far from new, but getting the performance to a satisfactory level is still something VR is struggling with. It's one of the few areas where hardware still makes a big difference.

1 minute ago, BTM_Pix said:

I think Canon being Canon, they want you to buy the R5c to get the 8K60p.

I'm just wondering how anyone will be able to play it back. Stuttering is not acceptable in VR, and I doubt there are many systems able to play back 8k60p with high refresh rate headtracking properly. However, with the de-fisheying of the VR lens, I guess it's not necessary to have the final delivery in 8k even though the initial recording is. A significant portion of the original recording is black anyway. Perhaps recording in 8k60p and delivering in 4k60p or 6k60p would be better.

57 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

But yes, renderings for VR make a lot more sense to me than a fixed-location image or video, I'd really rather just have a normal 3D screen for that, rather than have it "glued" to my head.

Rendered VR obviously has a lot more potential since it can be interactive, but one advantage of VR-video is the turn-around time. It should be possible to produce something decent in 1-2 days with VR-video, while rendered projects can get very expensive as soon as it's anything more than a walk-through of an existing 3D model or a 3D-scan.

57 minutes ago, kye said:

Interesting about rotation being an issue.  I've experienced a number of videos where the camera moved, and even went from being stationary to moving and back to stationary and those were mostly ok, although I have gotten the sensation of losing my balance on a few of those transitions.  Maybe the rotation has been implemented too jarringly?

I recal Walter Murch talking about how in the early days of cinema there was a debate about if you could edit film, because people don't teleport in real-life so perhaps couldn't handle a hard cut.  Similar questions were debated around the time that cars started going faster than a horse (and thus faster than any human had ever gone before) about what the limits of human capability are.
It turns out that cutting film is fine, and the mechanism Walter cited was that we teleport in dreams all the time, so it's not a foreign cognitive experience.

As someone who gets motion sick quite easily, I understand the source is a discrepancy between the motion perceived by the visual system and that perceived by the body (inner ear, and some other senses in the body too I think?) which is a sign that you've been poisoned and are now hallucinating, so the response is to reject whatever you ate/drank that is poisoning you.

Good points. There are so many things that can give you motion sickness in VR and I don't think we fully understand all of it yet, and at least don't have the solutions for all the problems. The more problems we are able to solve, the more we'll be able to do in VR before we get motion sickness.

I've done a couple of VR/3D projects with just 2 regular cameras (2xGH5 or 2xGoPro) and the editing process was a nauseating experience. A small alignment mistake in Premiere and I ended up feeling sick for the next 3 hours. My hope is that this Canon lens will make that a rarer occurrence...

8 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

What is the deal with the rear filter ?

On the Canon site it looks like you cut slivers of ND gel to mount in a frame that slides in, is that right ?

And if so do you get more than one frame.

I don't think there is any removable frame. You simply cut out a piece of ND gel and slide it in. There is a small track to stop it from falling out, and since the exit pupils are rather small, the gel will cover them even if your cutting is not very accurate. The solution is a bit crude, but I don't see why it wouldn't work as long as you've got high quality gels.

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

3D porn is last decade, we're way beyond that haha

That was definitely one of the first adopters, but VR has grown quite a lot in the real estate industry. I've got clients using it for visualizing unbuilt homes and for visualizing outdoor city-scapes. Admittedly, most of this is based on renderings. VR videos are mostly used for placing new objects into the scene as a substitute for AR.

One of my clients has even got a large 3D 180 CAVE so that you can use cinema style 3D glasses instead of VR glasses. I haven't figured out how to run VR videos on it yet though. So far it's only for renders.

I've got the lens, but just received it last week so haven't had time to edit anything from it yet.

A few notes:

- the lens is much smaller than I first thought it would be. I take this as a plus as it's very easy to bring with me.

- the R5 firmware actually has quite a lot of features specifically for this lens. You get the framing for each eye, and instead of a box, it's rounded, accounting for the fisheyedness. When you zoom in you'll zoom in on a single eye and use the "Info" button to switch between the eyes. The eyes are also labeled "R" and "L" on the screen, with R being to the left and L to the right because of how lenses flips everything.

- the manual focus is smooth and seems quite easy to work with with the manual focus assist. Some zooming in to make sure it hits is of course still useful

- because of the bulging front elements, it feels like it's very easy to scratch the lens. I never use lens caps for my lenses (just permanent lens hoods), but with this lens I am hesitant to let anyone else touch it without the lens cap on as I feel it's a gamble if it will be handed back to me without fingerprints on the lens.

If anyone has any specific questions/things I should test with it, feel free to let me know

If they wanted to do the test a bit more seriously, they should have at least tried to find lenses with the same design for the different formats. Finding a Double-Gauss design lens with a similar angle of view for all formats shouldn't be too hard.

I should preface this by saying that most of my experience with medium and large format cameras are from analog cameras. I don't own any medium format digital cameras, but I've got 4 medium format analog cameras and 2 large format.

4 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

What do you mean when you say "magical"?

More surface area makes it easier to put in more/better electronics than on a smaller surface area. If it can be explained it isn't magical?

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Likewise, put the vintage Canon Dream Lens 50mm F0.95 on Micro Four Thirds and the magical look is lost.

Lenses are perhaps even more important than the sensor, and adapting a lens to a smaller format than it's intended to will cripple its potential. This combined with the point above is the advange of larger formats.

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More light gathering abilities per exposure

I guess this discussion is the one I dislike the most. The light gathering mostly comes from the lens. My fastest 6x9 lens is a Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 105mm 3.5. My Canon f/1.2 lenses gathers more light on a full frame sensor than any of my 6x9 lenses. However, I don't really care as both of them gathers enough light for my uses.

My Kodak Ektar 152mm f/4.5 might challenge my Canon glass... if I only had a digital back for it.

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GFX for me is magical, it has a different look with ALL of my lenses compared to full frame. Of course I have more lenses designed for full frame but the fun is in trying these on an even larger sensor, and capturing images with a look I've simply not been able to do before.

And now to the admission that you might be right. Every time I've taken photos with my GH5, I've been disappointed with the look. It's hard to explain why, but the photos simply looks boring compared with my full-frame photos. It's almost like the magic is missing. Maybe my full-frame cameras would feel the same if I owned a medium format digital.

I find sensor format discussion to be the least fruitfull discussion in the video/photo community.

But I'll join it anyway with my opinion:

- There isn't anything magical about any certain sensor sizes

- "Full-frame" is the best choice in most situation simply because it's the most adopted format with a large selection og good lens and up-to-date image sensor and focusing technology

- I enjoy shooting 6x9 and 4x5, but 4x5 is too impractical for everyday use

I got to try the R5c at a Canon event just now. The camera was much bigger  than my impressions from the videos. It also seems like the camera reboots completely when you switch between photo and video mode. This makes the switch take longer than on the R5, but you get completely new interface with shutter angle and so on. I am also pleased so see that it can handle 4 audio channels. My impression is that this is not a hybrid camera, but a cinema camera.

6 minutes ago, independent said:

CVP shows that the dual iso also occurs in the R5. Strangely, the R5c has noticeable more chroma noise. Maybe they didn’t black balance.

I stand corrected. Looking at the DXOMark graph, it seems like the dual gain is at 100/400 ISO. Good to know!

12 minutes ago, gt3rs said:

It has dual iso.

Any source on that one? The R5 does not have dual ISO, and they use the same sensor.

11 minutes ago, JordanWright said:

A weird camera - Surely photographers will use the R5 that's smaller, lighter and has IBIS. Filmmakers will use the C70 that has NDs, XLR, Full HDMI and Clog2 

If it's designed for Photographers that occasionally shoot a bit of video surely the R5 is way more than they need. I really don't see a market for this camera. Although I have the same thoughts about the FX3 and people seem to use that. 

The R5c is a perfect match to the 5.2mm VR lens, especially since this lens doesn't support IBIS.

I've got the 5.2mm on preorder since it was released, and is one of the reasons why I was looking forward to this announcement. However, with the current shortcomings, I would want to find out how the the 5.2 mm lens works on my R5 before making any more decisions.

It's been confirmed that it has micro-HDMI and no IBIS (see video below).

I shoot more photos than video, and therefore it's not a good replacement for my R5. Even though it makes sense to remove IBIS for heat management, it means it cannot replace my R5 and I won't pre-order it. For the second point, the micro-HDMI is currently broken on my R5, which just demonstrates what an odd (read bad) decision it was to not go for full-sized HDMI on the R5c.

Source:

Shutting down a factory isn't necessarily a bad sign for Canon. The camera market is obviously a shrinking market, and to make money in a shrinking market it's necessary to downsize long before you have to downsize from a financial perspective. It makes perfect sense for Canon to cut back on the manufacturing capabilities for lower end cameras and focus on the high end units. I would have worried more if Canon didn't close factories.

A bit of a thread resurrection, but I don't mind. I'm actually doing these lessons these days as well. I learned Premiere by trying and failing and really wish Adobe provided something similar back then. It's easy to miss some key feature when learning a tool by oneself.

On 12/14/2021 at 11:27 AM, NiniBuba said:

I talk with guy from Rental and they stop using dummy battery because they fried one a7ii. But on Power USB they record few hours on a7siii. 
 

I would guess that they either powered both the camera and a monitor with the same power source or that they had a faulty power source that gave the wrong voltage. Using an NP-F battery connected to a dummy battery shouldn't be able to fry a camera since it's the exact same chemistry as the cameras own battery, just removed from the body.

That said, I would have been a bit sceptical of letting other people use dummy batteries with my cameras. I've seen 12v connectors which are suspiciously similar to the connector for my 7.4v dummy battery. When I use dummy batteries I want to be 100% sure of what I'm feeding my camear.

USB-power may require extra voltage boosting/step down which can generate heat. Using a dummy batteri is usually a better solution since it moves the heat outside of the camera. If the camera accepts both normal 5v usb and USB Power Delivery (up to 20v), you might get better results with the latter.

Not trying to defend Sony, just a general tip.

On 11/15/2021 at 8:14 PM, Miha said:

This week, however, I also tested the ef 24-70 / 2.8 L, which does not have an IS system, and noticed that the first shot in the series is almost always out of focus or shifted, and the next shots are sharp. I noticed the same problem with ef 85 / 1.8, ef 50 / 1.8 and ef 35/2 lenses, which do not have an IS system. The problem occurs if I have IS mode on / Still photo IS / Only for shot set on the camera. The shifted image appears both at long times, e.g. 1/15 second, as short, e.g. 1/1000 second. Apparently, IBIS starts too late, only during the first shot, when the shutter of the camera is already open, and in the initial start-up moves the sensor so that the image is blurred or. shaken. When it starts working, the following shots are sharp.

Have you updated to the latest firmware? There was an issue where there was some problems with the first photo taken after turning on the camera that has been fixed in a firmware update. Not sure if it's the same problem, but it's worth updating the firmware if you havent just in case

On 11/12/2021 at 12:11 PM, barefoot_dp said:

I'm yet to find an affordable LED panel that offers the same size source/softness as a 4x4 diffusion frame (let alone a larger butterfly!).

LED panels are generally not soft enough by themselves, but an LED panel with a 4x4 diffusion frame will be softer and quieter than a COB/fresnel with the same output.

A COB light which interchangable fresnel and softbox gives you as much flexibility as possible. I've got a couple of COBs/fresnels and a couple of panels and both have their prefered use cases.

It's also worth noting that not all fresnels have the same focusability. Old-school fresnels typically have a larger lens and larger minumin focus area than specialized COB fresnels that can focus very tightly. Some fresnels will also lose more light than others. A bowens mount attachment fresnel might not be as effective as an all-in-one COB and lens since there is more space and the lens has to handle more than one lightsource.

I like fresnels, they are in my opinion the most flexible type of lighting. However, if you want soft light, an LED panel will usually be more quiet and softer. You can do some nice bounce lighting with fresnels which are impossible with LED panels. Pointing it at a white ceiling or white wall basically produces a light source anywhere, even if it's rather far away. Fresnels are also much better at making hard light. For learning how light properly and to be able to experiment with light, nothing really beats a fresnel light.

Conclusion: fresnels are a lot of fun

On 10/27/2021 at 4:28 AM, kye said:

I don't know about your role in shooting, but there are two kinds of shooting situations.  The first is where you shoot what you shoot and you get what you get and you enjoy that.  The second is that you must capture what happens.  I would imagine that if you're shooting sports in any systematic way, then each player will want a selection of shots of them doing cool things, and it's not acceptable to deliver spectacular shots of some players and crappy shots of other players, regardless of where they were standing.  Nice shallow DOF looks great, but if it comes at the expense of the composition or coverage you get of the other players, or that great moment that happened, then it's too high a price to pay.

This is a great comment. I prefer to do the first type of shooting, and when the goal is to get the best photos without caring about documenting the event, I will almost always chose a 50mm prime. From my experience, my photos simply turn out better with a 50mm than a 35mm or zoom, but I have to admit that a 35mm is considerably more versatile and a zoom even more so. When it comes to video, the argument becomes even more important.

On 10/17/2021 at 9:50 PM, Khenu said:

I don’t well understand this all, but am wondering if a ground loop could also be an issue if trying to power my camera and a follow focus system off the same V mount battery. 

To create a loop you would need a wire from the follow focus to the camera. I assume the follow focus is controlling a motor attached to the lens? In such a case there is no loop. If you for some reason had a follow focus that attached to the USB port of the camera to control the camera's focus motor, you could in theory have a problem.

If you don't have any EF lenses I would go straight to RF, they are better after all. Not just in sharpness, but also autofocus and stabilization.

The 24-70 2.8 is of course a safe but fairly expensive choice.

The non-L primes is a good option if you've got a smaller budget.

The 24-105 4.0 is half the price of the 24-70 and is also sharp.

There isn't really any right or wrong choice among the RF lenses, it depends more on your shooting style.

3 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Zooms (16-35; 24-70; 70-200)

Primes (35, 85, 135)

Do you have those already in EF mount, or are those the ones you are debating to get?

If you've already got them in EF-mount, all you need is the adapter. I've had the R5 since launch, and the only RF lens I've bought is that RF 100mm 2.8 macro, simply because I needed a macro. The RF-lenses are better, but you'll do fine with EF if that's what you've got.

If you're looking into buying new lenses, I would say a 16-35 + 50mm 1.8 would be sufficient for all your scenarioes. I find 50mm lenses to be very versatile, but there are certain shots, especially in documentaries, where they are simply not wide enough.

The RF 35mm 1.8 might be a bit more exciting since it has IS and semi-macro, but it will overlap with the 16-35 and is also more expensive. Both the 35 mm 1.8 and 50 mm 1.8 are good, but not outstanding optically ( http://photozone.de/canon_eos_ff ). If you've already got the focal lengths covered by EF lenses, they are not really worth the upgrade.

For sliders it's very important that they slide smoothly. Not all does. With an IndyGoGo it's impossible to know how well it slides. In my opinion that makes it a bad choice for this kind of financing.

Did you use clog3? From my experience it either has to be overexposed or noise reduction has to be applied in the shadows (which kills details) because of the 800 native ISO.

I like the indoor scenes more than the outdoor scenes. The contrast in the outdoor scenes looks sunny, but the brightness is almost the same as the indoor scenes, which makes it look a bit odd. I like the mood in the clip, and the overall results are good.