Benjamin Hilton

Makes sense to me

I think the color science that happens in camera is really important. I'm also a believer that the image nearly always needs to be "developed" in post, but that development is largely power or constricted by the color science out of camera.

That being said, I think all the major camera companies have good color science these days. Any nuances between Canon, Sony, Lumix, or Nikon can be easily massaged out in post if the starting image is good. 

26 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

Well I own precisely zero fast lenses as in primes such as 1.4 or 1.8’s and moved exclusively to zooms recently.

I prefer primes, but the reality for my work, is I tried juggling them for far too long but the simple reality was a typical zoom covers at least 3 prime focal lengths with simple rotations. 

OK, other than a few exotics such as Canon’s RF 28-70 f2 monster, faster than f2.8 zooms do not exist and I am over using any lens above 1kg and most of my zooms are ball park 500g or under.

AI could certainly adjust DOF to be even shallower, but you know what? I am also over ultra shallow DOF and f2.8 is just fine thanks!

 

And honestly f2.8 is about the shallowest depth of field you could want for most standard work

Just now, IronFilm said:

Yeah we hit this point for many photographers a decade ago (perhaps even longer ago.... 15yrs ago?)

And I feel for many videographers / filmmakers we've in recent years hit this point for them as well. 

Yeah, like photographers, there is very little reason for companies to want to upgrade their gear anymore. It's pretty much a matter of waiting until cameras and such are hitting retirement physically, then choosing an "upgrade" that makes the most sense feature and budget wise. We have an FX6, A7IV, two FX30s, an R7, and a GH5 we use for various projects spread across several studios in two different countries. All those cameras have pros and cons, and work well for different things, but for the most part cut together when needed. At this point the only reason we would buy a new camera is when an old one bites the dust. 

1 hour ago, zlfan said:

this is why I like to use c100 mk ii. I use it without the top handle xlr module at all. it has nd, good grip, angled evf, lcd, double recording. with some tuning, it can be sharp enough even by today's standard, as it is a 4k sensor. not much larger than a modern mirrorless if you put addons to it. 

Interesting, does the dynamic range keep up with modern cameras? 

1 minute ago, John Matthews said:

Look no further than the GH8.

I still slip GH5s into my work when needed and nobody notices...

Honestly as someone who works in the Youtube sphere doing quality content every day, the specs on new cameras cease to interest me. We plateaued a couple of years ago in that regard. I can pick up nearly any camera from the last few years and get quality results from it when run through my image pipeline and such. Now when I'm given footage shot by someone else, that is a completely different story. Skill really does matter. 

What vastly interests me though, are the little things added to cameras every year that make my life easier. I would trade a whole stop of dynamic range and a bunch of pixels for quality built in NDs on mirrorless cameras. 

As a 12 year professional editor and content creator who's used all FCPX, Davinci, and Premiere extensively, I would highly recommend putting in the time to learn Davinci Resolve. The only reason to lean the direction of Final Cut would be if you only plan on a simple editing workflow and will be limited on computing power. 

I really don't get the hype about phone cameras for cinema. No matter how you slice it, they are really expensive hard to use cameras for what they do. Like Kye broke down, the iPhone 15 can do an okay image at a basically fixed focal length and depth of field in bright light. Even with that, the image looks over sharp, and just weird in many cases. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about the latest phone camera tech for personal use. The ability to pull my phone out of my pocket and get great photos and videos of my kids whenever I want is really nice. For that purpose, the quality looks great. But when it comes to shooting anything more serious, I could think of half a dozen cameras that are way cheaper, and would land you with much better looking, easier to capture, and more reliable results than a phone camera would. 

With an iPhone, how do you do a heavy handheld look? What do you do when the battery dies? How about overheating? Lowlight? Shallow depth of field? ND filters? Timecode? Audio? The list goes on and on...

It's basically the wrong tool for the job. It's like the latest hatchback advertising how much lumber you can stuff in the trunk for your latest construction project. It's great if you need it every once and a while, but if you do construction seriously, any old cheap pickup truck from the 1980s will do a much much better/easier job. 

Totally an FX6 for me. I'd love for it to be an Alexa 35, but I know with the crazy amounts of content I have to produce on a daily basis it would be more of a hinderance than a help. 

I really do think there is something non-subjective to our current state of frame rates. This is coming from someone who likes to push the norms and who would have no problem filming in higher frame rates if I thought they looked good. As someone said earlier, I really think the motion blur of 24p emulates the dream state, it puts us into a state of believing the world we are immersed in as fake as it actually is. 30p is smoother and more realistic, but realistic has its downsides. If I wanted my films to look realistic there are a heck of a lot of things I would do differently other than frame rate. 

To me, content shot in 60-120p look nauseating and fake, I can't stand the look personally. I know this is somewhat subjective, but there are quite a few film goers that experience this. 

30p looks realistic, but watchable. I run a fairly successful YouTube channel with news commentary studio style and we opt to shoot 30p for most of that content. 

24p just looks magical, dream like, immersive. I shoot all of my cinematic documentaries and more dramatized emotional content this way. 

At the end of the day this isn't about conserving or progressing. The looks are different, they do different things to the viewers. People keep saying that we need to leave the old ways behind and "progress" to higher frame rates. Progression is fine, but when you want to change something that has been working for generations, the burden of proof falls on you to prove the progression is actually better. Many successful directors have tried this with the examples others have mentioned, and overall it seems like people have not appreciated the experiment. 

Still been rocking the S1 and GH5s for a lot of content this year. Finally mixed it with some Canon R7 which I'm really liking. Lower dynamic range and noisier image than the S1, but the autofocus and a lens adapter ND filter has made me reach for it more and more. Just hating in front of the lens NDs more and more these days. 

Our S1 finally just quit on us, so looking at hopefully re-doing our whole system, really been needing to for a while. Just bought a Sony a7 IV and lens, hoping to eventually pair that with another one and a FX6, along with a couple more e-mount lenses. That should set us up for a while I think. We have to work really fast, so practical considerations are starting to matter more and more these days. Hence the FX6 idea. 

Yeah, test test test. I don't have a lot of experience with the original a7s, but I'd imagine nailing your white balance and exposure will help you out a lot. Seems to go a really long way with the older mirrorless cameras. 

Yeah I had the same concern watching YT reviews before I bought an R7, I think it's mainly the users though, not the camera. 

I have both the R7 and the Lumix S1 plus som GH5s. Definitely a bit lower DR on the Canon compared to the S1, but not a big deal overall. Watching where you put your exposure and doing a good rolloff curve in post is much more important than actual numbers in my opinion when it comes to DR though. Seems pretty close to the GH5s IMO

I know the feeling...not a m4/3 fan myself, but the feeling of an era coming to an end with letting go of beloved camera systems. For me it was my FS100, I got so much out of that camera over hundreds of projects it still holds a special place of nostalgia in my heart, even though it was technically a terrible camera in many ways. 

Honesty stuff like this makes me wish Apple would take their phone processing and put it into a super 35 sensor one of these days...Can you imagine if we had modern smart phone processing in a quality Sony chip?

Yeah totally. I would venture to guess though that they put in more effort trying to shoot on an iphone for Tangerine than they would have put in with literally any camera. Plus they couldn't have replicated the look with literally any other camera and a decent colorist. It was basically about the unique idea, which is fine, just not a good reason to shoot other projects on a phone, unless you are getting paid by Apple or something to do it

Kind of like Gerber dropping commercials "proving" they can build a house with a multi tool. You probably can, but if you are going to all the trouble of building, for goodness sake go out and buy yourself a real drill and tape measure. You'll thank yourself a thousand times over. 

That's kind of the thing. Phones can look great, but overall are really tough to film anything serious with. For stuff like Kye is doing and with the right post processing, they can look great. But for more serious narrative or doc work, they are really the wrong tool for the job. Weird HDR, internal storage limitations, overheating, warpy stabilization, hard to manual focus, lens limitations, ND filter hangups, the list goes on and on. If it's all you have, use it. But I would never recommend buying a phone as a camera specifically. You can basically sink that $600-800 into any basic DSLR setup and not only get a better image, but also save yourself a world of headache with actual usability. 

On 6/12/2023 at 10:01 AM, kye said:

Great post - I just wanted to add to this from a colour grading perspective.

I did a colour grading masterclass with Walter Volpatto, a hugely respected senior colourist at Company 3, and it changed my entire concept of how colour grading should be approached.

His basic concept was this:

1. You transform the cameras footage into the right colour space so it can be viewed, and apply any colour treatments that the Director has indicated (like replicating view LUTs or PFEs etc) - this is for the whole timeline
2. You make a QC pass of the footage to make sure it's all good and perhaps even out any small irregularities (e.g if they picked up some outdoor shots and the light changed)
3. At this stage you might develop a few look ideas in preparation for the first review with the Director
4. Then you work with the Director to implement their vision

The idea was that they would have likely shot everything with the lighting ratios and levels that they wanted, so all you have to do is transform it and then you can fine-tune from there.  Contrary to the BS process of grading each shot in sequence that YouTube colourists seem to follow, this process gives you a watchable film in a day or so.  Then you work on the overall look, then perhaps apply different variations on a location/scene basis, and then fine-tune particular shots if you have time.  He was absolutely clear that the job of the colourist was to simply help the Director get one step closer to realising their vision, the last thing you want to do as a colourist is to try and get noticed.

It really introduced me to the concept that they chose the camera package and lenses based on the look they wanted, then lit each scene according to the creative intent from the Director, and so the job of a colourist is to take the creativity that is encapsulated into the files and transform them in such a way that the overall rendering is faithful to what the Director and Cinematographer were thinking would happen to their footage after it had been shot.  Walter mentioned that you can literally colour grade a whole feature in under a week if that's how the Director likes to operate.

I have taken to this process in my own work now too.  I build a node tree that transforms the footage, and applies whatever specific look elements I want from each camera I shoot with, and then it's simply a matter of performing some overall adjustments to the look, and then fine-tuning each shot to make them blend together nicely.

In this way, I think that the process of getting things right up front probably hasn't changed much for a large percentage of productions.

This is 100% spot on. I have a workflow I use for specific cameras. My standard color science is dropped onto my 5" monitor via LUT. In post I apply the same color science with minimal corrections. Sometimes I go on to do a specific grade, but 90% of the time I stick with that because it looks fantastic. This workflow is really awesome because I can really trust what I see on the monitor and fix problems in camera as I go.

IBIS is way too useful of a tool to give up. It's not a replacement for anything, all old school tools still have their place, it's just another really useful tool at times. For doc work I can't tell you how many times I would have killed to have some form of IBIS on a shot and didn't have it back in the day. I do steadicam and tripod work a lot, but I can't tell you how amazing it has been to be able to grab a shot at 200mm with the camera balanced on my knee or pressed up against a wall and it actually look rock solid with IBIS. 

I shoot and edit professional content all day long. While I would love to upgrade to a Red Komodo, or Fx6 or something, I'm still using GH5s, G85s, an S1, etc because I can't really justify the costs of upgrading. It would be fun, but I know the films I'm working on would be much better off dropping that 10k into production instead of gear. 

I just shot an entire $50k doc on an S1 and Canon R6 and am totally happy with the final look. Realistically I think if I get a new camera in the next couple of years, it will be a FS7 or something. Solid image like the S1, just beautiful ergonomics for doc work. Every time I use one it just feels like driving a luxury car... Not necessarily a good business decision, but purely for the joy of use. Not so hard of on the wallet thankfully used these days too.

While upgrading gear is really fun, I think at the end of the day sticking with the same stuff for years on end is the best thing you can do for your image quality, especially if you are working with something decent (like anything made in the last five years) 

I think one side to this whole thing is the fact that for some of us we focus on the other aspects of the business all day long: business, pitching, writing, editing etc. Sometimes having a place to discuss cameras and lights and stuff is just plain fun and relaxing, somewhat pointless, but fun nonetheless. 

I'd give up resolution, viewfinder, any type of raw, photo capabilities. In my book the perfect camera would 14+ stops of real dynamic range, solid 4k up to 120fps, good IBIS, autofocus, ND filters... The only things that hits really close to all of that is the Sony FX6, but it's a bit out of what I can afford. Thinking of picking up a used FS7 one of these days as the prices come down

Honestly something like this would probably do you fine:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/842086-REG/Magnus_VT_4000_VT_4000_Tripod_System.html