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I have a few cameras that reportedly vary with how well they handle motion cadence. I say reportedly because it's not something I have learned to see, so I don't know what I'm looking for or what to pay attention to. I'm planning to do some side-by-side tests to compare motion cadence - can you please tell me: 1) what to film that will highlight the good (and bad) motion cadence of the various cameras, and 2) what to look for in the results that will allow me to 'spot' the differences between good and bad. Thanks. I'm happy to share the results when I do the test. I'll also be testing out if there's some way to improve the motion cadence of the bad cameras, and what things like the Motion Blur effect in Resolve does to motion cadence.

We're agreeing. The article you linked says that "Clear Supermist is made of fine clear colorless particulate that is bonded between two pieces of Schott B270 Optical Glass which exceeds 4K resolution capability." and "Black Supermist is made of fine black color particulate that is bonded between two pieces of Schott B270 Optical Glass which exceeds 4K resolution capability." Particulate refers to something being a bunch of particles. ie, it's tiny lumps of stuff - it's not a continuous smooth layer of something. The optical effect appears to be that when you have a bunch of stuff (lumps, bumps, patterns, whatever) very near or inside the lens, then that texture somehow becomes an in-focus mask on out-of-focus areas. This is why the texture of the meshes that I linked in the article I shared also showed up, and these were attached between the camera and the lens. You can also use this effect for special effects: Once again, this is the shape of something close to or inside the lens creating an in-focus mask on the out-fo-focus areas. Tiffen are just using a mask made of tiny particles that have optical diffraction effects rather than just casting a silhouette, although it's the same optical principle that makes the texture appear in-focus.

My understanding is that the speckled patterns in bokeh are to do with any textures in / on the lens. You get them if you use a mesh for diffusion: https://www.provideocoalition.com/the-secret-life-of-behind-the-lens-nets/ I also thought that it can be if you've got dirt or something inside the lens or on the front filters?

I bought the Studio edition of Resolve and logged a support question some time back, and they directed it to a support partner of some kind here in Australia (I think they were a dealer or something - they had a different business name), who then emailed me back and forth to diagnose and help me out. I was trying to work out how to optimise my MBP + eGPU setup and at one point they checked with a BM engineer about something. It was a very positive experience overall, and I was kind of surprised because I'm used to being a customer of other brands and basically you get their forums or it's impossible to even find a phone number for them, so customer service isn't something I'm used to even thinking is available, let alone getting help from really knowledgable folks.

More spectacular footage from the Laowa probe lens.. and here's the BTS: I watch James Hoffman because I'm interested in coffee, so this is a completely unexpected foray into camera tech and slow-motion loveliness, but if you like coffee then I can also recommend his channel. He's a Barista World Champion, has a ridiculously nerdy interest in coffee, and is hilarious when he tries coffee products that taste terrible or reviews cheap and bad coffee equipment. You're welcome!

Think about it like this. FCPX, PP, Resolve, and other programs, will all exist in some way over the next decade. In all likelihood they will have new versions, new features, new bugs, various frustrations and limitations, and various performance levels doing different tasks on various hardware platforms. Over the course of the next decade, which do you feel would be the best total experience for you? ie, experiencing the ups and downs of PP for that whole time, going with an alternative for that whole time, or sticking with PP now but transitioning at some point in the future. Think about the hardware required, the whole package. If you feel you'd be better off with another package, then think about the best time to switch. Over the next decade you'll buy multiple new computers, cameras, and other equipment, so think about the best time to switch. Factoring in the next decade, switching platforms isn't such a big deal, especially if the grass is actually greener on the other side - you'd be eating better grass long after the scrapes from climbing the barb-wire fence have healed and long been forgotten. Changing software packages isn't a chore, it's an investment. You invest time, energy, money for the software, maybe new hardware even, but you would do so if the return was worth it over the longer-term. Think about the cost of your frustration. How it impacts your quality of life and creativity. How demotivating it is. If it's worth making that investment, then choose when is the best time. In the middle of a project with a deadline isn't that best time, maybe there are other factors to consider too. but if it's worth switching then schedule it in your life, then do it.

I've only had one Sigma lens, the 18-35/1.8 but it was a great lens. I'd buy Sigma again in a heartbeat.

Great stuff. +1 for GH6 info. Also, more of a comment than a question, but could they please consider adding video modes in wider aspect ratios, eg, 2:1, 2:35:1, 2:66:1 etc. I know you can film 16:9 and crop in post but it wastes bitrate and storage. They currently have guides on the GH5 for these but they're so faint they're very difficult to use.

In addition to the above questions, and considering your budget restrictions, I'd suggest you think about the complete setup of camera/lens/accessories which you will need. The GH5 would have the advantage of taking your MFT lenses, but if you sell the Blackmagic then maybe you can sell the MFT lenses and use that money towards the new setup. There is no perfect camera, so the best way to go for you will be to align the strengths and weaknesses of what you get with the priorities / preferences / situations that you shoot in.

Perhaps slightly off-topic but I once saw a BTS doco of how they filmed Big Brother (I think it was BB Australia) and although it was before I got into video, I remember it being really interesting especially about recording sound and isolating various areas so specific conversations could be heard clearly. IIRC the spa was also a challenge to get clean audio out of. That was a really long time ago, but if you can find it, that might be useful / interesting to watch.

For the high-end ones, are they recording to Prores HQ? or 4444? or XQ? As a side-note, this table is very handy: https://blog.frame.io/2017/02/13/50-intermediate-codecs-compared/

Haha, insert comment about pocket size here. I agree about really having to mean it. In the past I've contemplated trips to safari in Africa and also to visit Antarctica and in both of those situations I'd consider taking a long tele lens with me, and when I was contemplating Antarctica I even contemplated hiring some equipment, a decent tele lens anyway, as once you're beyond the EF 100-300 you're pretty firmly in rental territory for most people. I've done interstate trips to visit family and taken my 70-210/4 but only because I knew we were going to a zoo and I wanted some close-up footage of the animals, just to try it out and see what I can get. You're right that it might sell well despite not really hitting the mark in a logical sense, I guess that's economics, and consumerism. Maybe the weekend warriors who photograph sports might like it, but I still can't get past why you wouldn't just put a TC on a shorter lens.

Probably a wise investment. Cheap NDs are the enemy of good colour. I should also say, happy to share some settings or whatever. I can't remember if I did in the original thread. Or post some stills you have and some inspiration stills and we can all have a go seeing if we can match them. That's fun to play around with 🙂

Just finished a first pass on footage from a trip late 2018. Over 18 days I shot 3024 clips totalling 5h37m, but somehow after I've gone and pulled my selects into a timeline I for a minute there I thought I still had 1984 clips totalling 2h35m! Using the Source Tape view in The Cut page of Resolve it looks like I was half way through when I marked an in point but didn't mark an out point and then did an Append to End of Timeline and so I appended every clip from my in point to the end of my footage to my timeline. Oops! After fixing that little surprise, I now have 839 clips totalling 41m - much better!! I was thinking how many of the really cool shots I was going to have to cut and getting quite sad about it! I must say that I am really enjoying the new Cut page in Resolve. Especially the Source Tape view (despite the above snafu) as you can just use the J-K-L keys across all of your footage without having to manually go to the next clip. Combined with I and O and then P to append the range to the timeline I can edit with one hand and have a drink in the other 🙂

How big is the market for "I want a long zoom for my wildlife holidays but if it doesn't fit in my carry-on with my laptop then it's an absolute deal-breaker" market? I'd imagine it's probably greater than zero, but I'm not really sure by how much. I got into MFT before I really had a use-case for a really long zoom, but that's definitely a weak-point of FF, as I am very interested in optimising equipment but have hard limits on what I can afford/pack/carry. Having said that though, a 100-300 with a 2xTC would certainly cover you for most situations, and if you needed longer than that I'd be inclined to crop into the image, or at least turn on a crop mode. There's a limit to how long a lens you can use if the subject is moving because they move out of frame and you can't find them again. Assuming they move, leopards sitting in trees or big animals resting are a different story though.

Looks legit!

I'm ready!!! All I need now is a rack mount monitor I can calibrate and I'm good to go! Now, where do I plug my mouse in?

Your post is why I've avoided m39 mount lenses and stuck with m42 mount!! What a mess. Of course, lots of talk about the earlier models of the classic Russian lenses being better in many ways, so yeah.

If you have some time and don't mind fiddling around a bit, you could buy some second hand and then sell the ones you don't like. That way you get to test them. I found the primary difference between having one physically and simulating in post was that physical ones flare light-sources out of frame, and also flare more/less depending on how bright the light is, but of course you can't adjust them - it does what it does and you're stuck with it. In post it's the opposite. The other path is to simulate stuff in post and do a bunch of tests and see if that gives you what you need.

Without actually understanding how it works, I'd say most likely. All the more reason to think of it like a capture format rather than an intermediary format. I've heard that many/most/??? productions render their footage into Prores HQ and then never go back to the capture, rendering the final output from the prores files. I'd imagine that really high end productions wouldn't be like this, and amateur stuff where we can naval gaze optimise the final product for as long as we like won't be like this, but for folks seeking out a living the quality difference wouldn't matter enough to justify the expense.

Thinking about this further, it will likely first appear in streaming services, where (for browser viewing at least) they can implement it in the client and the server almost immediately and get the benefits straight away. I would imagine that bandwidth would be one of the largest costs of running a streaming service? From there it will take longer to work its way through the whole pipeline.

From the link: "After devoting several years to its research and standardization, Fraunhofer HHI (together with partners from industry including Apple, Ericsson, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Sony) is celebrating the release and official adoption of the new global video coding standard H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC). This new standard offers improved compression, which reduces data requirements by around 50% of the bit rate relative to the previous standard H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) without compromising visual quality. In other words, H.266/VVC offers faster video transmission for equal perceptual quality. Overall, H.266/VVC provides efficient transmission and storage of all video resolutions from SD to HD up to 4K and 8K, while supporting high dynamic range video and omnidirectional 360° video." Emphasis is mine. H265 provided about a 50% reduction in bitrate for the same visual quality over h264, so comparatively, h266 looks like it might be 25% the data rates for similar quality. These things take a while to roll out, that's for sure. Especially if implemented in hardware. Of course, maybe manufacturers will skip h265 in preference of h266 when the hardware is available?

That's almost exactly what I'm doing. I'm only doing holiday videos from the last 3 or 4 years, but there's a sizeable amount of them. I was doing a first pass on a family trip we did late 2018 and I'm mostly through it, but the selects are something like 2.5 hours long so I have a huge amount of cutting to do! I was really surprised when I saw that lol. Luckily I've already gone through the pain of organising the footage onto a single storage device. Enjoy the process - I really enjoyed reviewing the footage last night and remembering fun times etc 🙂 I agree about working from original material and not cutting scenes. One of the challenges I have with my selects is that I'll select any clips that I think can help tell the story and act as transitions or 'context' shots, which is difficult to tell ahead of time. My workflow typically follows this broad process: Do single pass making selects onto a timeline - choosing anything that might be useful. I never look at the raw footage again after this, so it's a hard culling pass. Sort out the sequence of things (often things aren't in order from different cameras) Go through and sort clips into a few categories: wow shots of people I know, ok shots of people I know, wow shots without people, potentially useful shots without people. Then I construct an assembly by including all the wow people shots and many of the wow people-less shots and pulling in the other people shots if I want more coverage of a person and pulling in the useful people-less shots if I need to establish a location or make a transition between locations etc Work out how long to make the final piece, then cut cut cut cut cut cut....... until it's in the ballpark Music and any audio Cut to the audio Grade, Export, Publish In that sense, being that many shots are chosen for context, of course you'd want to choose differently. For a showreel (from my understanding) there doesn't have to be any context, it's just shot - shot - shot - shot etc.. If you were making a different format, a compilation or longer piece, then some structure might be appropriate, in which case it would be differently structured again than a showreel.

I'm just going to assume what you're doing is completely legal and ethical and all that stuff.... Maybe a smaller shotgun mic attached to the outside of her bag and pointed diagonally up? If she held her bag to the side then the mic would be lying across the front of her bag and she could kind of aim it toward the person. Handling noise would be an issue of course, but that would be easy enough to sort out if you gave her a live feed of the sound from the mic and she walked around a bit to practice.

Do you mean 10K as in a sensor 10,000 pixels wide? I'm not surprised by 8K video but that's crazy! That would make it, what, 75MP?? Or go cheap and use FF lenses.. I use an FD 70-210/4 with 2xTC on MFT to shoot my kids sports games. Even the GH5 IBIS struggles with that - 840mm equivalent. Or here's the same optics on the Micro: I haven't used this setup yet, but when the sun starts to come around where I can see it hit the horizon again, I might return to my sunset project and record some RAW video. 1209mm equivalent!! At that focal length even the solid limestone wall I use as a tripod can't protect the image from people walking nearby. The GH5 in action.