Mark Romero 2

14 hours ago, TheBoogieKnight said:

So over lockdown I've been trying to keep myself busy with the odd photography job and I noticed that my Panasonic 50mm didn't seem as sharp as it was when I got it. I did a few tests and surely enough it had become pretty soft (for whatever reason).

Sent it off to be looked at/repaired and was immediately told they aren't reparable. Fortunately the lens was under warranty (runs out in November) and I was quickly sent a new one which is perfect.

Are we talking about the $2,300 L Mount 50mm f/1.4 panasonic lens???

5 hours ago, kye said:

You think that the S1 shot would have been harder to grade?

What I meant to say is that significantly underexposed shots (regardless of camera) are harder to grade, and I seem to get more saturation and the colors tend to shift a bit.

I am not familiar with Canon LOG, but I know if I were shooting the same shots you took in italy with either my a6500 or my Panasonic S1, they would have been significantly underexposed and a lot tougher to grade. (I know, I know, what's done is done, but since it seems like a nice little camera, maybe worth trying out some things to see whether you can use it in the future, too).

Also, if you are doing a CST in a node in Resolve (as opposed to doing it at the project settings level), then I find that doing my exposure adjustments in the first node using the LOG controls / contrast / pivot / etc, then have the CST as a second node, then do the actual color balance and grading in a third node can be helpful. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the CST transform is applied as the LAST effect in any single node. So (again, from what I understand) if you are changing  colors and have a CST in the same node, the color is being changed while still in LOG, not in RGB.)

I then add a fourth node set to LAB cie color space, disable channels 2 and 3, and do my sharpening in that node to help avoid excessive chroma noise when sharpening. (To clarify, that fourth node is not a CST from RGB into LAB, it is just a node where the Color Space is set to LAB CIE)

And finally, the last node I usually have is in RGB but I usually turn off two of the three channels and just use it to target saturation and Luminence of one particular channel. Might be good to do any masking / keying in this node as well... but need to do more testing to be certain.

It ain't gospel, mind you, but it seems like a fairly good working arrangement for me.

12 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

Yes a shotgun around $200 of less any recommendations?

Second-hand Rode NTG2 ???

I see one listed on Reverb for $198, but they have a "make offer" option so you might be able to get it for a few dollars less (assuming you live in the USA, my apologies if I assumed wrong).

I would hope that @IronFilm could weigh in if he has experience with this mic and would also see if Curtis Judd has a review on youtube about it. 

As an aside, if I am reading Amazon reviews of a product (any product, not just cameras and such). then I try to pay special attention to the reviews that are three stars and two stars, and pay less attention to the five-star and one-star reviews. The three star reviews seem to point out the "realistic" flaws of an item.

Also, you mentioned a7 III. I remember a couple months back that the website who we are not supposed to mention did a review of camera preamps and they seemed to get mixed results with the a7 III. 

An SM 57 is not the right mic for recording dialogue.

It is designed for LOUD sources. It is meant for people to either mic up drums where it is a few inches away from the source, or right in front of the speaker of a guitar amp.

https://www.shure.com/en-US/products/microphones/sm57  

1 hour ago, SRV1981 said:

Are there easier options for mics that can be directly plugged into the mic so there is no post editing/syncing of audio?  A mic that can mount on the camera or off/boom/stand that has decent quality for interviews?  I don't need an NTG3 level quality.

If you want one mic that will do both... on camera and boomed overhead, then either a shotgun or... a lav mic???

I know that the Godox SL lights come in a battery-powered flavor, but has anybody used the mains / AC powered units with an inverter???  (Something like the Vagabond inverters from Paul C. Buff???)

Thanks for posting, @heart0less

Yeah, looking forward to the improvements that AI can make to both stills and video. I've been pretty impressed with how Resolve Studio handles retiming and  scaling (even though Speed Warp eats up my 8GB of VRAM very quickly).

26 minutes ago, zerocool22 said:

Nah even David Fincher added CA in post for mindhunters. You can see it also on "Ozark" and "Big little lies". 

Huh... interesting. Will have to look into it. My vintage Minolta MD lenses have LOTS of CA just naturally.

2 hours ago, James_From_Raglan said:

So the XT4 doesn't have an crop mode in the sense of using a smaller portion of the sensor (equivalent to the a7sii's "APS-C mode") in order to punch in and get more range from lenses?

And does anyone know if the S1 has this function? I assume it does since it's full frame but I can't seem to find a clear answer anywhere.

The S1 has aps-c crop mode and it also has a pixel-by-pixel mode for 1080p. (It has it for 4K as well, IIRC, but I don't think it make a significant difference over using the aps-c crop).

I haven't used manual focus lenses a lot on the Panasonic S1, but in my limited experience with them, they are a joy to use. The IBIS of the S1 is pretty amazing, the EVF is wonderful, and the rear screen is pretty good (as far as rear screens go).  

I never thought of CA as "magical," although I could imagine that SPHERICAL aberrations could give a "magical" look. Maybe she misspoke???

14 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

Maybe too many Arri Skypanels in the mix giving that vibrant look:) The Cinderella Trailer lookss almost like it was for a video game. Thats on the small computer screen though.

Yeah, I am not super familiar with mainland Chinese cinema. But what I do remember from some 80's mainland moviews was that the lighting was a bit harsher. Just looking at the Mulan trailer makes me think the lighting is too soft to replicate the vintage look. But again, I might be ignorant of lots of Chinese movies with soft lighting.

@tupp

Thanks for the info! Ubuntu studio looks cool. Never used Xfce before (always Mate, Cinnamon or Enlightenment when I fooled around with Bodhi Linux a while back). 

5 hours ago, Geoff_L said:

Ah, I forgot : I stopped using the supplied fast charger some weeks after having received my camera. Sure it charge very fast, but charger and batteries got very hot, and I believe the batteries will not last long with such a fast charge (I may be wrong). So I now use a regular wall charger, in which I plug the panasonic battery charger. I can't remember if I had battery problems since...

When you say that the supplied fast charger is causing you problems, which charger exactly is it?

Is it the DMW-BTC14 charger??? (That is the charger that came with my S1)

I haven't experienced the shutoff issue that you have. I am often running my batteries down until VERY low before changing them out, since I shoot on a gimbal a lot and it is a pain to change out batteries on the gimbal.

I almost always shoot in 4K VLOG at 30p and temperature is generally 75 to 85 F (24C to 29C). Short video clips approximately 15 to 45 seconds in length. Using a UHS II SD card.

I have two Lumix batteries and one third-party battery.

Using in-body image stabilization.

I am using the Sigma Mc-21 adapter. I have the camera AF switch set to MF, and the lens (Canon 16-35 f/4 L) set to AF, so I basically get AF-S with that combo when I press the AF On button. I also get punch in when adjusting the focus ring on the lens or pushing in the joystick.

So all that is just to state that I think there is something wrong with your camera or your batteries. 

Generally battery VOLTAGE drops as battery capacity drops. Meaning, putting a voltmeter on a fully charged battery will show a higher voltage than when you measure the voltage of a battery that is not fully charged. Actually, that is probably how both the charger and the Camera calculate the capacity of the battery (when charging the battery or when in use in the camera), as it is my understanding that it is very difficult to measure the capacitance of a battery, so they measure the voltage output and just extrapolate the capacitance from the voltage.

15 minutes ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

Actually i saw a lot of unexpected movements on a FB contributor page with over 18.000 members. Many of them have already disabled their portfolios on Shutterstock and are gathering online signs against Shutterstock’s decision.

Of course i am not that naive to believe that actions like these will make any difference but these are healthy reactions of people who are loosing a big chunk of their income. I didn’t created this thread to start a rally against SS here (although i strongly disagree with their decision) but just to let you know that almost 500.000 active contributors took a big hit today.

I am personally building my portfolio on 3 agencies: SS, Pond5 and Adobe Stock, so I will stop uploading new stuff to SS from today but as i said, stock footage is more of a hobby for me.

Anyway, this is not about SS only. There are some dangerous corporate consolidation trends crawling around these days and after the pandemic. Of course these are justified to a certain degree but it’s always painful to see the most fragile social groups (and especially artists) absorbing all the shocks of an industry which they obviously can’t control on their own.

Please keep us updated on developments. Would love to know how diversifying goes, and the whole stock footage landscape evolves in general. And best wishes to you and others who are affected by the changes.

7 hours ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

These are not signs of a company that is trying to survive long term through a crisis. They just decided that this is the right time to redeem their success while ripping off the artists.

It is unlikely that simply rallying against them is going to change anything. Companies are in it to make as much money as they can.

Certainly, if ENOUGH stock shooters start to pull their content from Shutterstock, then it MIGHT make them re-consider, but I don't know how likely that is. As you said, moving a lot of stock footage is quite an endeavor.

So the question is, what are YOU going to do about it?

Is it possible you can start moving your best selling footage to other platforms first, and then migrate the rest of the footage over as time allows?

1 hour ago, tupp said:

On the other hand, you could easily do your entire post production (including presentation animation and editing) on the same Linux box, and it could cost you as little as $200 for a used machine that is adequately snappy.  The software would all be free and open source.

I like Linux (particularly fond of Linux Mint which I have on a few machines). And I LOVE saving money. But I am not sure that the OP could edit on a US $200 linux box. What would you propose as an NLE???

And would one need a particular Distro in order to run that NLE? (For instance, Resolve is coded to work on Cent OS and isn't really guaranteed to work on other Distros, although i have heard of people using it on Ubuntu).

Of course, my vision might be warped because around here, people sell their used PC's for WAY MORE than the rest of the USA. 

Definitely second @tupp suggestion that shooting in 1080p might be more than sufficient for your needs. I would kindly suggest you reexamine whether you truly need to shoot in 4K.

If you do shoot in 4K, here is a brief explanation on how to create 720p proxies, which will be much easier to edit with. Then when you render (or export or deliver or whatever your editor calls it), you exchange the proxies with the 4K versions.

One more thought.

If you are filming against a bright white background, vignetting will be more noticeable. 

On the other hand, if the background has different brightness levels, then the vignetting might be less noticeable.

Also, with the Sony 16-50mm lens, I think there is less vignetting as you zoom closer to 50mm. 

Hi there, @luiz fonseca

I own both an a5100 and a Sony SELP 16-50 lens.

Yes, the dark parts in corners of your image look like vignetting.

The bad news is the Sony 16-50 SELP lens is not very good. Although it can be ok when you have the aperture around f/5.6 or f/7.1.

I would NOT use the aperture at f/11. It will make the image soft (look up the word "diffraction" to understand why).

I don't think using an aperture of f/11 and an iso 2000 would make the image look "saturated." It probably makes the image look quite noisy.

If you do not need a zoom lens, then the Sigma 30mm f/2.8 lens is very good. It is an older lens (about four years old???), and it costs about US  $110 used. It is very sharp. But it is a prime lens, so it does not zoom. Also, the 16-50 lens has stabilization built in to the lens (Sony calls it optical steady shot, or OSS). The Sigma 30mm f/2.8 does not have stabilization).

So, for about the same price, Sigma 30mm f/2.8 has better image (sharper image, less vignetting, better contrast), but the 16-50 is more versatile (it is a prime lens and it has some stabilization).

On 5/27/2020 at 11:02 AM, User said:

In going forward, I'm carrying a fairly large doc project set in a country where a bunch of right wing thugs have taken over and have previously banned Western filmmakers for mining socially relevant stories that society is still struggling to come to terms with.

Oh... so you are filming here in the United States???

On 5/23/2020 at 3:27 PM, rawshooter said:

And I wouldn't use an on-camera mic 10 feet away...

Great advice. Hope the original poster pays attention to that.

If the original poster wants simplicity, maybe a Rode Wireless Go mic??? 

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I shoot 4k 50p for my video work so not a lot in that after all the various conversions,

Just remember that the S1 shoots 4K 50p (or 60p) in 8-bit internally and that it shoots it in crop-sensor mode. So I don't think it would be "better" than the X-T4 for your needs. Probably worse since X-t3 / X-t4 have 10-bit and would be shooting at f/2.8 on same size sensor (area). 

3 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

here is one thing I wanna share with you. I hope it´s only an exception. My camera shut off with 25% power left on the display. I was using the original battery.

That is strange.

I use my S1 down to about 10% power all the time, both for stills and video shooting.

I can say one real strange (and annoying) thing is if you accidentally leave the battery door open, it will make a LOUD beebing sound (at least when shooting stills, not sure about when shooting video). If you were at a wedding and forgot to close the battery door (or it accidentally opened up), that beeping noise would distract EVERYONE in the church. It's that loud.

26 minutes ago, Super8 said:

I didn't really have the S1 on my radar but this threads go my attention. 

Not to be out of line but how dose the S1 compare to the S1H in terms of data rate and dynamic range?  How close is the S1 to the S1H in terms of image quality?

As @thebrothersthre3 pointed out, shooting the S1 in 6K and then down-resing in post to 4K or 1080p will give you less noise, hence giving you more dynamic range (since with the 4K image of the S1, you might have to crush the shadows a bit to get rid of the noise, although i find the noise pattern of the S1 to be minor and more film like than my Sony or Nikon cameras).