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Tom Antos on shooting with a single lens...

Considering that my trajectory was a 4K cine camera (XC10), a 4K non-cine camera (GH5) and latest purchase is a 2K cine camera (BMMCC) I have enough data points to confirm that 8K is definitely not on the trajectory I am taking!

Stop motion! Yes, that makes sense. It turns any 12MP camera into a 4K BEAST!!

@Michael1 I agree. I see three factors in play: The first is that cameras bitrates and DR and processing has improved to the point that 4K h264/h265 isn't that much worse (on well lit material) than 1080 RAW, especially if the compressed codec is 10-bit or more. The second is that the in-camera profiles are the result of a huge investment in Colour Science and processing by very skilled technicians, much more skilled than most colourists. The third is when using in-camera profiles the compression is applied after the adjustments have been made rather than before it. This matters because most compression schemes are optimised for hiding the data loss in areas of the image we don't look at much or are less important, however if we record in a flat profile then it might be that when we process the flat gamma curve that we're pulling parts of the image from where the compression was a bit more severe into the parts of the resulting rec709 image that we're more sensitive to.

If we're stuck on lockdown, how the hell are we meant to shoot FILM and then get it developed and scanned?!?!?! Unless somehow you're in lockdown but live in a vintage film museum or something!

A lot of people have been asking why we're not all working remotely by now, considering the tech has been there for years, and it's been obvious the barrier is humans not machines. I wonder if this will have had a significant effect on that barrier, by the time we're done at least. It's a good idea to use the time for educating ourselves for something that will serve us well down the road. The photography / videography market is changing rapidly, and in "change or die" markets it's typical to see people who change, and to see the people who don't survive be the ones that are bitter about it. There's always an upside, if we can just find it

@BTM_Pix I know you didn't explicitly call for it, but "Having a couple of lens world cup shootouts to try and thin the collection" gets my vote! The One Room challenge isn't too bad either We're not on lockdown over here, but who knows what will happen. Our arc with this thing is just beginning.

In case anyone wants to overcomplicate their selfies, here is a couple of videos to take things to the next level....

No need to apologise.. unless you represent the sun, that is It's a strange thing, but the sun here in WA is stronger than on the east coast, and the Aussie sun is stronger than elsewhere, like Europe or Asia. My skin is fair, but I could go out in the sun for an hour or so when I was in Italy and not get burnt, but here it's like 10 minutes. I've gotten burnt wearing a wide-brimmed hat sitting in a chair on the side of a grass sports field, which is completely ridiculous. Anyway, isn't it your turn to post a selfie? I have a vague recollection you might have posted one before at some point...? Great pic. Nothing broken in your lighting or composition skills!

This is from commuting to work at sunrise and home again in late afternoon, standing in the shade when waiting for buses, and not going anywhere outside in-between. I'm not sure where I'm meant to be wearing that hat. My indoor lighting isn't that powerful!!

Easy. Just pick the one that looks most like you playing the lead in an Indy film called Modern Ninja where you are John Normal, a man who achieves invisibility through being unremarkable and where special skills are centred around his ability to talk about local sporting events, a passionate love but mediocre understanding of politics and global affairs, and traditional and slightly close-minded values.

Mark loves his Takumars but just got some CZ lenses, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they compare. I think the Takumars might not be too far away from the CZs TBH.

Post the one that is the most cinematic....

Way ahead of you.. this is me hanging out with my colour checker in specially arranged "mood lighting" 😂😂😂 PS, I'm not quite as sunburnt as I look, but I am pale as hell and live in Australia, sooooo......

oh, and to clean their lens before recording.

Another tip is to tell people to hold the camera really still for 10s. I once gave a camera to some friends during an event to film and when I looked at the footage afterwards I realised that everyone waved it around like they were watering the lawn - I ended up pulling stills from it as the camera only settled onto anything for 3-4 frames. I was mad until I remembered that I did that the first few times I filmed anything. It seems to be a common thing when people hold a camera for the first time. If you do get vertical video then you can use several shots side-by-side in a Sliding Doors kind of way, and I've deliberately shot vertically on my phone on a travel day for the express purpose of using this layout. I used it to show the same location over time so showed the shots simultaneously instead of via jump-cuts, and I also did a bunch of shots out of the window of the moving train to show the diversity of the landscape. This works for fancy b-roll, but if you get a speaking part then maybe put that one centre and use the audio from that one and have the ones on the sides as b-roll. Definitely get people good mics. I've used the Rode ones that plug into the microphone port on a smartphone and they're pretty good, but IIRC the cheap knock-offs are almost as good and much cheaper. You can use the opportunity to get creative shots too.. The trick to take-away from this video (which is a bit of a one-trick video) is that the camera was mounted to something stable and had the subject in a consistent location in the frame without much movement. I think you're in danger of each person taking footage that is all the same - one person might only take landscape shots from far away or another might only take close-ups. Some advice about trying to get lots of different shots (far away, close up, from above, from down low, etc) and to make them interesting. I suspect that people will want to shoot good footage but won't know how. Think of how many beginners say things like "I would never have thought of doing that". It's also dangerous to give people too many instructions, so I'd suggest only giving them the top ones. Maybe something like: hold your phone horizontally / point the microphone at the person talking / hold it steady and count to 5 before hitting stop / get lots of different shots / make them interesting. Good luck! If you're given enough footage you can make something useful, shooting ratios are a thing and b-roll doesn't have to be super related.

Ok, I think I've got my head around a few things. The unknowns are: UV filter Lenses RGB filters on sensor WB image processing on GH5 Colour profile (3D LUT) on GH5 Compression UV filter and Lens I have eliminated by testing the UV filter and 14mm lens vs 14-42mm lens without UV filter, and these are within ~1% of each other, so as I am not going to get within 1% in my matching, I can eliminate these as variables between the cameras. RGB filters on the sensor I can work out the transformation for by matching a RAW still image from the GH5 to a RAW DNG from the Micro in uncompressed RAW. Compression is separate to colour so I can treat that separately via resolution tests. WB image processing on the GH5 and the Colour Profile will take some doing, but here's the plan. The camera applies the RGB filters, then on top of that applies the WB, then on top of that applies the Colour Profile. So, what I have to do is to correct the colour profile, then the WB, then convert the RGB filters from the GH5 to the Micro, then I will have a matching GH5 image in Linear to the Micro image in Linear. So, firstly I work out the RGB filter adjustments (via a 3x3 in Linear). Then I construct the following: <colour profile compensation> ------> <WB compensation> ----> RGB compensation. At first I will know the third, but not the first and second. The trick is separating them, so I can shoot the same image in two different WB settings. If I make it so that one of the shots has had the right WB and one has the wrong WB, then I just make it so that one has a WB adjustment built in and one does not, and then I work out how to make the colour profile compensation so that it works for both WB settings. This should separate the WB adjustment from the colour profile compensation. This should give an adjustment that will work regardless of the WB on the clip. Hooray for year 10 algebra

I'm now more confused. I think this is the system we're dealing with: The challenge is that on the Micro I am shooting RAW and so the only colour variable is the RGB filters on the sensor, but with the GH5 the variables are (something like) the RGB filters on the sensor, the WB setting, and then the colour profile, which is likely to be a 3D LUT with all sorts of unknowns in there. A realisation that's useful is that I can take a RAW still image on the GH5 and that should allow me to do a straight 3x3 adjustment in Linear to match them, without having to worry about the WB and 3D LUT that's on the video files. I should also be able to lock the GH5 down on a tripod and take a series of RAW images and video files and then I can try and use the RAW image as a reference to isolate the WB+3DLUT away from the RGB filters on the sensor, although this doesn't seem to help that much as the 3D LUT is where all the nasties are. I suspect that: the RGB filter adjustment is a 3x3 RGB mixer adjustment in Linear the WB adjustment is an adjustment of the levels of RGB in Linear and that the 3D LUT is all sorts of wonkiness I've also worked out that I can use my monitor as a high DR and high saturation test-chart generator. It won't be calibrated, but it shouldn't matter because the entire idea of this conversion is that any light that goes into either camera should result in (broadly) the same values after my conversion, so absolute calibration shouldn't matter. I've also realised that this is a mixture of black-box reverse-engineering where there are a few black-boxes and we can take guesses about how each is likely to work. Of course, Resolve isn't a black-box reverse-engineering tool, and it's very difficult to get pixel-perfect comparison images between the two cameras so that's kind of what makes it a challenge. I'm wondering if I should be converting things in reverse order, peeling the onion at it were, so doing the opposite of the 3D LUT, then the WB, then the RGB filter. I've also realised that I should switch to Cine-D profile instead of HLG, because although it gives a slight reduction in DR, it will enable the conversion to work on >30p footage too.

I am a hobbyist and I was a big champion for AF, now I'm a big champion for MF. What changed for me was: I thought MF would be way harder to get right than it actually is (although I don't shoot in the most difficult situations) I also thought that having something perfectly in focus at all times was required I was upgrading and it came down to the A7iii vs GH5 and the only significant downside of the GH5 was poor AF, so I did an few experiments with MF and discovered that I actually like the look of MF as it makes things more human and suits the style I prefer I think that there are situations when AF is great (doing those gimbal shots where you run around the bride/groom at a wedding for example) but I suspect that a lot of people new to this just haven't put in the work to discover how good they are at MF and what the aesthetic really looks like. Plus, Hollywood gets shots OOF all the time.

@mercer very nice image - deeper colours than your normal grades but it sure works!

It's not personal.. for me it's about trying to reduce the myths that mislead people. Like "MFT lenses are soft wide open" and "FF lenses are all sharp wide-open" There are MFT lenses with way more than 2K resolution wide open, and the P4K shoots RAW 4K so there's no limitation on the codecs either.

This conversation started with "MFT isn't as good as FF because MFT doesn't have wide lenses that are sharp enough wide open" and now we're here talking about how softness is something that is actively sought after by the folks that make the best images around. Apart from cropping or doing green screening, it sounds like your point is that MFT can't be used to make deliberately softened 2K output files because it doesn't have >30MP lenses, which just doesn't make sense.

Get them to film something too A 5 minute film made from footage shot on the trip would be a great project!

I appreciate that this is part of a much larger subject, but I think you're still not getting this. There is a perspective that many people take, which assumes that higher resolution is better, and that back in the day people chose the highest resolution lenses that they could and it was just the tech that limited that. This is where you (and others) are fundamentally disconnected from the high-end of cinema - the point of me showing you the article on netting is that people are actively going out of their way to reduce the sharpness of fine detail - which is a more technically accurate way of saying that people are reducing resolution. Deliberately. They're actually taking what is on offer currently and paying to soften it. They even used to do that in the days of film too, back when the technology had lower resolution. Even those older lenses were too sharp! This is a fundamental lack of understanding - when people say "I want my video to be cinematic" and then they say "I can't do X because it's not sharp enough" they are arguing against themselves. Part of the cinematic look is the lower resolution. If you're still unconvinced this is a real thing, then here's an article talking about Knives Out and Star Wars: The Last Jedi and how some/all of these were shot on digital but were processed (including halation, which is a particular type of softening of fine detail) on purpose. https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/6/21125680/film-vs-digital-debate-movies-cinematography You cannot possibly think that they didn't have enough budget to do whatever they wanted, and could have shot it in RAW 8K with $100k lenses, so I hope this demonstrates that this is a serious thing that Hollywood actually does. The people who are talking about resolution and sharpness are in a different world than this, looking in lustfully at the images and then insisting on doing things that will take them further away from the look they want rather than closer to it. But they don't know, because they're only talking to the stills photographers online.

Not ideology.. we're all chasing an image that's as high-end or highest quality as we can. The issue that we have here on this forum is that we are very out-of-touch with what techniques are used to get the images that we admire, from large budget productions, or from classic films anyway. There is a lot of stuff that isn't spoken about online, and it kind of exists outside of the internet, or at least is hidden behind paywalls. It's easy to spend a long time consuming content and interacting with people online without ever really knowing that this stuff exists, especially now with social media 3.0 actively creating echo-chambers. In order to move out of the realm of ideology completely, let's look at some data. I'm going to assume that you know how to read an MTF chart, since you seem to value resolution so highly. If you don't then I'd highly recommend you look into them, they're invaluable. One thing you may not be aware of however, is that lenses don't have a "resolution". To say one lens is 14MP and another is 16MP is oversimplification to the point it's misleading, because it's not that simple. The resolution of a lens will blur detail, which essentially has a softening effect, lowering contrast of that detail. Yes, there does get a point where if the detail is fine enough then the lens has lowered the contrast of that detail to zero, but the transition from it being very sharp (ie, high contrast) to very soft (ie, low contrast) is actually a progressive one. MTF charts show this softening effect by measuring contrast at varying lines per mm, lp/mm, and obviously the higher the lines per mm you use to measure, the less contrast a given lens will have. This is an important distinction, as we will see later. Amongst the most popular workhorse cinema lenses are the Zeiss CP.2 primes. Here is how they measure: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/06/just-the-cinema-mtf-charts-zeiss-cine-lenses/ Here is one of the MFT charts: This indicates that with fine detail they have very low levels of contrast, ie, low resolution. Here's a chart from the Xeen testing article: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/05/just-the-cinema-lens-mtf-charts-xeen-and-schneider/ This is even lower resolution again. Lets compare a 50mm Zeiss CP.2 to a high resolution lens: The Zeiss is obviously inferior in resolution terms to the other lens by quite some margin. Also, that other lens also happens to be an MFT lens. So why are cinematographers happy with such poor resolution. Well, there's two factors that I can see, one is that digital video has been low resolution historically, and the other reason is that cinematographers actually like lower contrast lenses and will go to reasonable lengths to lower it. Remember when I said above that a "lower resolution" lens is actually a lens that has relatively lower contrast on finer details than another lens. Have a read of this article: https://www.provideocoalition.com/the-secret-life-of-behind-the-lens-nets/ This article talks about how cinematographers are deliberately putting netting / fabric between the lens and the camera, in order to lower the contrast of fine detail. ie, to lower resolution. Some examples from that article... A close-up with no net: Black sparkle mesh: Silver sparkle mesh: Cropping is indeed a thing now, especially on lower budget productions where multiple cameras or multiple takes with different focal lengths are beyond the budget, and in this case, people may now move to controlling image softening in post. Film halation effects also do this. To go one step further, softer light sources do this, especially for skin texture, which is where the desire for lower contrast is typically expressed. In photography there is a very strange set of behaviours: Insatiable desire to get the highest resolution lenses and the highest resolution camera and the highest quality image format (RAW) in order to capture the finest details, then.... Get the model to put on makeup (which lowers the contrast on larger skin features like lines, wrinkles, etc - it's called "concealer" for a reason) Cart around ridiculously huge soft boxes in order to smooth the skin (lowering the level of contrast across all detail sizes) Now we go into photoshop and we: dodge/burn with a brush (lowering the contrast of medium sized details) paint over skin areas with filters that lift shadows, or similar (lowering the contrast of all skin details) and then potentially we do frequency separation, where we literally seperate the frequencies, which correspond to small, medium and large detail, and then basically eliminate medium sized detail What is left after all this contrast reduction (lowering resolution) seems to be that we have the models eyes and hair rendered in glorious detail, but skin at detail levels approaching 720p with a Petzval lens. I'm not sure about you, but in the context of all that, I've kind of lost the logic as to why we need a wide angle lens that is 36MP wide-open (8K resolution). They do exist, but go have a look at DXOMark and tell me how many lenses there are that exceed 30MP that anyone here can afford.