ulrikjepsen

I think people complain in general!  The GH5 is awesome, i only shoot log, and the image is always great, but do require a little work. I would also rather have the FS5 than the FS700, but got a great offer on the fs700, so went that way  

Hey everyone! We shot this a few years back in Massai Land Kenya. I thought that I would share with you all since it was filmed pretty low key with a couple of DSLRs. A7sii/GH5 and an Rx100. Let me know what you think and GO Maasai Land!
 

Camera A is actually the FS700. I think the colors are not bad, but their cine-cams are a lot better with than the mirrorless sonys. I read someone saying, that the colors are more natural, and thats what we view as bad? I think the sony colors are great for products, landscapes and so on. But for people, canon and blackmagic are great. But then again, with the raw to prores on the sony, you can grade the colors to be awesome on the sony also 

I was recently a part of making a short movie, and the camera combination used, i thought might interest someone here. Also there might be someone thinking if the FS700 still works today, as i myself did. The film can be seen here (there are no subtitles, but the story is about a woman that gets stopped in the street by the police, because of the hoodie she is wearing. It's at satire on laws currently being implemented i Denmark)
https://www.ekkofilm.dk/shortlist/film/trojen/

For the dialogue parts, we were cutting between a Gh5 and a sony FS700. It worked out great I think, all though it was difficult to get the colors to match. We were also filming outside, so that did not help, with the ever changing sun clouds. For lenses, we used a Canon 24-70 2.8 (with focal reducer) on the GH5, and a Tamron 17-50 2.8 on the FS700.
Can you tell which is which?
 
camera A

 
camera B

I would not use this camera combo for anything that should be matched quickly, but if you have the time, the FS700 files in 10 bit prores slog and the GH5 10 bit vlog files, were super great to work with. The result is not perfect, but we like it. I love both cameras, and I am amazed how great the FS700 and the odyssey 7q are! We were afraid we would have to change batteries all the time, but big NP-F batteries lastede around 2 hours each (1 in the cam that lasted longer and 1 in the odyssey 7q). Mounted on a shoulder rig, the FS700 is also pretty comfortable, in comparison with for instance, an URSA Mini and weighs about the same, with the odyssey. The buttons are a pain to reach though.
For those interested, the dialogue was recorded with at Røde NTG1 shotgun mic to a Tascam 60d.
Here are some other shots from the film.
(if there is banding in the footage where you see it, it is jpeg/web compression, it is not in the final video file.)



 

Hi,
Thought i would share a short film, that i have worked on for some time, as the technical side of the production might interest someone here
You can see the film here. http://www.ekkofilm.dk/shortlist/film/nem-dating/
There are no subtitles, but the synopsis is this:
A young high school student gets an after hours job, to pay for a trip around the world with his girlfriend. The job is as a promoter for an online dating site, where he writes to girls there, to keep them as subscribers of the site. One day he realises, that one of the girls are someone close to him, and he tries to make things okay again.
The film was shot over a week, and we mainly used the GH5. The camera is awesome and i loved the stabilization function, although it sometimes gave us trouble. 
We where mostly shooting with a Sigma 30mm 1.4 for canon and a focal reducer, and as this is an aps-c lens, it vignettede on the GH5. That is not so much of a problem, but when the camera was on a shoulder-mount also, it would counteract the internal image stabilizer, and the vignette would "bounce" around. So we found out to either use the camera handheld og turn the is of. Also we could use the ex teleconverter function, this lessened the vignette somewhat. We also used a canon 24-70 L 2.8 lens, and when using this, there where no problems with the bounching vignette, as it is a full frame lens.
For lightning we mainly used Yongnuo led light and some Aputures. They worked great, but the aputures are imo a lot better for color reproduction. 
For sound, we had a Røde ntg1 connected to a Tascam 60d. It was okay, but the ntg1 has a lot of hiss, and really needs to be close to the talent or have a stronger preamp.
On the tascam, don't use the highest gain option, it's really noisy.
I picked the Gh5 over an ursa mini pro for the film, as i could set it up more quickly, the battery would last longer and we didn't have to carry so much gear, which was important, as for the most time the crew constisted of myself on camera and directing, a sound-recordist and a gaffer/lightning guy. 
In the editing fase, we had to tweak the colors a lot, especially skin tones took a lot of time to get right, as they where a bit read of camera. But, as we filmed in v-log 10 bit, it was not a problem. I have also shot 8 bit footage with the camera, and the image falls apart when doing any grading in v-log, and i dont like the other profiles. I have read some people cant see the difference between 10 og 8 bit, and neither can i. But when you grade them, there is a huge difference, i would not use buy the gh5 if it did not have v-log and 10bit.
In low light i was also supprised how good the image looked, but i am not so afraid of noise. The camera is great in low light, as long as you have a small amount of light on the subject, like a bedside lamp or something. If there is no light, the camera dont look good, but i dont like those kind of images anyway.
I have attached some images also, but check the film out, as the stills don't do the footage justice.
 
 

Hi,
Thought i would share a short film, that i have worked on for some time, as the technical side of the production might interest someone here
You can see the film here. http://www.ekkofilm.dk/shortlist/film/nem-dating/
There are no subtitles, but the synopsis is this:
A young high school student gets an after hours job, to pay for a trip around the world with his girlfriend. The job is as a promoter for an online dating site, where he writes to girls there, to keep them as subscribers of the site. One day he realises, that one of the girls are someone close to him, and he tries to make things okay again.
The film was shot over a week, and we mainly used the GH5. The camera is awesome and i loved the stabilization function, although it sometimes gave us trouble. 
We where mostly shooting with a Sigma 30mm 1.4 for canon and a focal reducer, and as this is an aps-c lens, it vignettede on the GH5. That is not so much of a problem, but when the camera was on a shoulder-mount also, it would counteract the internal image stabilizer, and the vignette would "bounce" around. So we found out to either use the camera handheld og turn the is of. Also we could use the ex teleconverter function, this lessened the vignette somewhat. We also used a canon 24-70 L 2.8 lens, and when using this, there where no problems with the bounching vignette, as it is a full frame lens.
For lightning we mainly used Yongnuo led light and some Aputures. They worked great, but the aputures are imo a lot better for color reproduction. 
For sound, we had a Røde ntg1 connected to a Tascam 60d. It was okay, but the ntg1 has a lot of hiss, and really needs to be close to the talent or have a stronger preamp.
On the tascam, don't use the highest gain option, it's really noisy.
I picked the Gh5 over an ursa mini pro for the film, as i could set it up more quickly, the battery would last longer and we didn't have to carry so much gear, which was important, as for the most time the crew constisted of myself on camera and directing, a sound-recordist and a gaffer/lightning guy. 
In the editing fase, we had to tweak the colors a lot, especially skin tones took a lot of time to get right, as they where a bit read of camera. But, as we filmed in v-log 10 bit, it was not a problem. I have also shot 8 bit footage with the camera, and the image falls apart when doing any grading in v-log, and i dont like the other profiles. I have read some people cant see the difference between 10 og 8 bit, and neither can i. But when you grade them, there is a huge difference, i would not use buy the gh5 if it did not have v-log and 10bit.
In low light i was also supprised how good the image looked, but i am not so afraid of noise. The camera is great in low light, as long as you have a small amount of light on the subject, like a bedside lamp or something. If there is no light, the camera dont look good, but i dont like those kind of images anyway.
I have attached some images also, but check the film out, as the stills don't do the footage justice.
 
 

As for the pro not adopting them.... Well a lot of high end pro go to rental houses, who invested tons of money on expensive system.
A red epic package is usually around 1k usd per day , for the price of a week of shooting you can buy a 4.6k mini package, so I won t be surprised if some rental house are being protective toward their equipment by saying that the ursa mini is not usable for pro work. It s probably the same thing for operator/owner of red/arri.

If people hire you for your past work they won t care much on what you shoot. If they hire you just to operate they will probably expect something else.

At the end of the day, the image coming out of the 4.6k is on par with arri and red, for a fraction of the price.
The camera is flexible enough to do what most jobs require, without being too big or need to many batteries.

People usually have a distorted view of what arri and red do, they create solid production cameras, but they don t do miracle, if you underexpose, all camera sucks.

I think blackmagic have their own market, a weird niche, but IMO they have the best company philosophy .

As for a new pocket/micro camera, I m not sure it s very useful, maybe replace the S16 4k sensor  as the DR is low.
Blackmagic released fair amount of cameras over the last years because there was a lot of improvement to be done, but today, they have a solid lineup.

In my experience, there is some truth to this. I know people who would rather like something to be shot on an expensive camera, because if i bring my GH4, they are like "i have that camera, so i can shoot it myself"... They are not just paying for skills, but for equipment..
I think a lot of people think more expensive gear = better outcome...
Am i wrong?