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Any idea where "the look" comes from? That's what we're trying to figure out.

I'll try to do some proper lens tests of all these if I can work out how to film myself with manual focus lens and actually get correct focus. Let's hope someone has some tips - I've asked in the GH5 thread.

See this video: I'm watching Amazon Prime Video (The Expanse) on my MBP in Chrome on my external Dell monitor. Any idea why this is happening? And more importantly, how I can fix it? Thanks....

Does anyone have any hints on nailing focus on manual lenses when filming yourself? For example, I want to film a bunch of tests of myself (like the lens tests always have a model in them) but when the lenses are wide open I can't work out how to check critical focus. I've tried the app, but found that it doesn't have enough resolution to tell what's in focus, I can't setup something at the same distance and pre-focus because if DoF is only a cm or two then I can't make sure my eyes are exactly that distance. The only couple of thoughts I've had is either to hook up the HDMI out to a huge TV that I can see well enough, or to buy a telescope so that I can see the flip screen well enough from where I'm sitting. Help?

And now some test shots I took earlier today with the Industar 50mm F3.5. Every shot is wide open at F3.5. This wasn't shot with a speed booster, so is 100mm equivalent. This lens is US$20 with free world-wide shipping. You probably can't beat that for value if you're on a budget!

OK.. My first film was with the Mir 37mm f2.8 - I think it might have been on a speed booster but can't quite recall: Second film was the Helios 58mm F2, also can't recall if it was on the speed booster or not: I shot the Helios at F4 where it has sharpened up significantly, but still has some subject isolation. I was hoping for "wow that's a great modern looking lens look how sharp it is what could it be" type reactions, but you know, everyone is off talking about 6K and completely missing the point of... well... everything Third film is uploading....

It's all good. Even if information is wrong (or incomplete) then it's worth talking about. There's a chance we might learn something, which is basically the only thing that is actually worth anything in the long run Super-shallow DoF is an interesting one, as the forums are full of conversations that go: "I've got to get that FF look... BOKEH!!!" "You're an idiot, real cinematographers rarely shoot wider than F2.8 - lots of cine lenses are only that fast, go get an education you moron" "Yeah, but....... BOKEH!!!!!" "I'm done with you... <block>" but in reading a lot about cine lenses for my cine lens deep-dive thread I found quite a lot of references of people using the Zeiss Super Speeds (T1.3) or Master Anamorphics (T1.9) wide open for one reason or another. Think about that - S35 sensors being used with 50mm or 85mm lenses at T1.3!! And people make snide remarks at me for wanting a Voigtlander f0.95 lens - that's only f2 equivalent. DOF falloff is a very interesting topic and I found references to that on my cine lens deep-dive. Apparently people like it when the falloff is more gradual. In terms of what is going on here, I'm at a loss to understand it. The way that a lens works is this: the light coming into the lens is projected onto the sensor for any (sensible) setting of focus on the lens there will be a place you can put something in the FOV of the lens that will be "in focus" on the sensor "in focus" has to do with the Circle of Confusion Circle of Confusion essentially says that any point in front of the lens will either be a perfect point of light on the sensor (ie, perfectly in focus) or it will be out of focus and in the shape of a circle (which is actually the shape of the aperture blades, but circle works well enough as an analogy). Therefore, in theory, the DoF of what is in focus is infinitely shallow. This isn't true in reality though, because pixel size matters. Let's imagine that we have a sensor with pixels that are 1um across (for ease of maths). If you get an object with an infinitely sharp edge and put that edge at the exact focal distance then the circle of confusion will be 0um across, and therefore will only hit one pixel, and in the final (RAW) file that point of light will be in-focus as it's only putting its light onto one pixel. Now let's imagine that we get that object and move it towards (or away) from the camera such that the circle of confusion is 10um across, that will be 10 pixels wide, and will probably hit 11 pixels. Obviously this is going to be seen as out-of-focus in the output files. The interesting part is where we position the object such that its circle of confusion is 0.3um across. It's technically out-of-focus, but 0.3um will probably only hit one pixel and so in the output file it will still be perfectly in focus. What this means is that we have a DoF greater than zero because the size of the pixels is a limitation. This means that the larger the pixels, the deeper the DoF for any given lens. Which is why the DoF calculators ask you for the sensor size and resolution. A 500MP MFT sensor will have a lot shallower a DoF than a 12MP S35 sensor, even with the same lens. The maths of this really doesn't care about what sensor you're using - for a given FOV and the same number of MP on the sensor the fall-off should be identical. The tricky part is where we position the object such that its circle of confusion is 0.99um across. It's technically out-of-focus, and if that 0.99um happens to like up perfectly with one pixel then it will still appear perfectly in-focus, but all probability suggests that it will fall across 2 or more pixels, making it a bit of-of-focus. This will also be true for the detail with 0.3um circles of confusion. What we're getting into here is maybe the gaps between the pixels (larger gaps will mean that more stuff looks in-focus) and maybe it's also the sharpness of the lens as in just the same way that the sensor has a maximum sharpness (it can't tell the difference between 0.001um circles and 0.01 or 0.1 circles) so do lenses. A lens with lower resolution will have a deeper DoF despite having the same FOV and aperture as another higher resolution lens. I guess this ponders the question, does a lower-resolution optical path or a higher resolution optical path have a gentler roll-off? A higher resolution optical path will have a shallower DoF and therefore have a deeper area that is almost in focus, and a lower-resolution optical path will have a deeper DoF and a shallower area where the transition occurs. Can anyone confirm this? It would require having two lenses with different resolutions that are the same focal length and can do the same aperture. @BTM_Pix has a bunch of lenses but might be too busy working on his 127 projects.. I'll have a look through my lens collection. Certainly if you have a larger sensor camera then the gaps between the pixels are likely to be smaller and the glass you're using is likely to be more modern and higher resolution, so both of those would mean a deeper area of things almost in focus, so the logic fits.

Indeed @leslie - being a bit more sceptical on who is posting is definitely an up-side. Plus I always look forward to @BTM_Pix somehow working in a can of processed ham into the thread. That mans creativity knows no bounds!

That’s what I was thinking too, that it’s basically false. I didn’t want to say so straight out because of two reasons, the first is that I don’t think I understand this stuff well enough to say things like that (and i’ve been wrong before!) and secondly that although I can’t find any tangible reason that a larger sensor should be better I have seen enough videos shot with larger sensors (FF and also larger) that had some kind of X-Factor that I just couldn’t place, so they always left me wondering if there was something to these urban legends.... It may well be colour science though, that’s entirely possible.

So, the competition is now officially meant to be closed, and judging to commence. My prize winners! Considering the low participation rate, everyone who posted anything is a winner and receives the I BEAT ALMOST EVERYONE SIMPLY BY ENTERING prize! and a special mention to @BTM_Pix who wins the I PUT EFFORT INTO EVERYTHING EXCEPT READING THE RULES prize! What’s next Anyone else that wants to award any prizes is now free to do so... the more creative the better. I’m willing to award a prize for best prize, so have at it. I’m curious to hear why more people didn’t enter... I suspect it might be the requirement to have close-ups of people, and I must admit that I had a third lens ready to shoot with and just didn’t find an opportunity to film anyone at such close quarters. So, all rules are now suspended except the Soviet Prime Lens rule, and let’s keep posting things shot with those lenses. I’m keen to see what anyone is filming (or has filmed) with Soviet Primes. I’ll definitely be filming and posting some stuff I’ve shot with the Soviet primes I have owned for some time and bought for this challenge.

I found that article to be very confusing. We all know that different crop factors can be compensated for in some ways (eg, FOV) but that other things don’t scale (eg exposure) so for example on MFT you put on a lens that’s 25mm T2.8 and get a certain exposure and a certain DoF, but when you put a 50mm onto a FF lens then you can set the lens to be T5.6 and get less exposure but the same DoF, or you can set it to T2.8 and get the same exposure but a shallower DoF. Tha article seems to be indicating that something changes when you use the larger sensor and then put on a lens to give the same FOV, but it doesn’t say what it is. It seemed to indicate that you can get closer and still see the same things on the edges of the frame, but that would mean a wider FOV, which is something you can do with any sensor size - just go wider and closer. Does anyone actually know what they’re talking about?

I didn't know Sirui is getting into lenses. That's pretty cool. More competition the better. I think my whole camera kit only has two firmwares - one for each camera body. Yet another reason for manual lenses

Well, I started a thread about 6K being overrated as there's not much difference between a 6K image and a 4K one, or a 4K crop from a 6K image and a 2.7K crop from a 4K image upscaled to 4K and I was told in no uncertain terms that the images were completely different and that we all need to film in 6K or we will starve because our films will never be watched by anyone. Never mind the films in cinemas shot on 2K cine cameras, apparently they don't count and you need 6K! I personally find this stuff all very amusing, how people get so upset

HAHAHAHA.... all these people going FF and re-buying all their lenses are already behind the curve! I've always said that if you're not shooting Medium or Large format then you might as well be using a 1/3" chip camera - you're not going to be getting those luscious immersive images! Sell all your FF lenses now - the format is dead! Get out while you still can!!

I haven't looked, but there might be a way to assign a shortcut key to the action. The keyboard shortcut engine in Resolve is pretty comprehensive, if you haven't already checked it out

Or update the firmware on!!

Also be sure to do tests to verify that you’re getting the kind of results that you want. ETTR is more work to shoot with and process in post, so if you’re not getting the level of improvement to justify the extra effort then it’s good to know that early instead of doing it for months or years and realising later

My view of minimalism is that you don’t have things you don’t need, but that you still do have the things that you do need. I think this is a misconception that people have about the whole movement - that you’re meant to be happy with what someone else thinks is the right amount of stuff, or that somehow less is better. No minimalist would ever find themselves in the desert saying that not having water was the best idea, or being outside their apartment and not having their keys is a good idea!

That’s exciting. Hopefully they’ve been scouting the various forums and looking for little annoyances that they can fix. Panasonic if you are reading this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make the aspect ratio guidelines REALLY REALLY obvious, at the moment they’re practically invisible and I forget that i’m meant to be framing inside them. Even better would be blanking out the parts that are out of frame. Even better than that would be to just shoot that aspect ratio - eg 2.35:1 and have the output files in that resolution but still with the full output bitrate so we’re not throwing data away by cropping in post!

Nah, just make sure the colour is no good and you'll be fine... works for Sony!

Spoiler, he chose the 16-35 f2.8 and the 100mm f2.8 macro. TLDR: He shoots music videos He knows his own style and what he wants to get Having more lenses creates anxiety in choosing lenses, is heavy and a PITA in general It's funny because I think I actually have less lenses than him, as I tend to travel with 3 primes, whereas he's kind of got 4 lenses (16, 24, 35, 100). I understand that with narrative or when you're shooting for someone else you need more flexibility to suit someone else's vision, but I do think that there's an optimum number of lenses / focal lengths.

The more I look at the look of lenses the more that i’m thinking that something like a BPM filter is a really useful and key item in developing a look.... more below. This idea that you’ve doubled your collection is very interesting and I think falls into my (still forming) grand unifying theory of lenses... I feel the same about my GH5 and also on reducing the number of lenses to just the right ones that will work for what i’m doing. Lots of cool interesting vintage lenses out there, although that brings me neatly to my first thoughts on a grand unifying theory of lenses... So far I think we’ve got these factors that add up to create a ‘look’: Lens resolution (both the amount of it as well as distribution over the frame, eg, field curvature) Lens hallation and flaring (amount and distribution) Lens colour (across DR but also in hallation) Lens vignetting CA There are other factors, but these are the main ones i’m thinking about for now, and obviously all of these change for any given lens across its aperture range. In terms of how to get that ‘look’: Lens resolution is limited by the lens, but can be (very slightly) perceptually boosted by adding sharpening, and can obviously be lowered by various blurring effects in post, and to a certain extent field curvature can be simulated in post too as long as it's effects are blurring what's in frame rather than bringing it into focus Lens hallation has a number of different categories - the first is what happens with flares and that’s pretty obvious, but the second is micro-contrast which is talked about with the smoothing of skin. This depends on the coatings of the lens (and flare characteristics also by the optical properties) but hallation can be added with things like BPM filters, as well as ‘simulated’ in post (under certain circumstances as outlined in the thread about simulating a BPM filter in post) and the Midtone Detail slider in Resolve does a great job of this too Lens colour can be influenced in post by a global WB adjustment for uniform tints, can be adjusted in shadows mids and highlights with curves or the LGG wheels, but if a lightsource hallation is also tinted (possibly by spreading the wavelengths differently or just a simple uniform) then it can be harder to emulate, however if you apply a blur in a separate layer set to an additive or lighten type blending mode then this can be simulated (the Glow OFX plugin in Resolve does this nicely) Vignetting can easily be change in post so that one is simpler CA can also be tweaked in post to some degree if the effects are localised For example, the Voitglander when wide open has low centre resolution and worse edge resolution, significant hallation, a purple tint, some vignetting, and CA in high contrast areas, however behaves very differently when stopped down. What can't be simulated (realistically) is having a shallower DoF than the lens, or more resolution. This leads me to think that an ideal setup might be to get the sharpest lenses you can find that meet your requirements for largest aperture, and either learn to process in post or to get a BPM filter in order to be able to swap easily to a genuine vintage look with flares and hallation (and also learn how to adjust things in post).

Make a list of your current issues when filming. Things that bug you, things that cause missed shots or shots that you have to spend time fixing in post, things you can't do because you don't have the equipment, things that aren't good enough for something tangible outcome. Then prioritise them. If I could only fix one issue, what would it be? If I could only fix two issues, what would they be? If..... THEN think about where to put your money. The worst way to spend money is to solve a problem you don't have, or that someone else has but you don't!

Nice! Light is so important. For a start, things would be pretty dark in frame without it! I think I'd be a lighting geek too if I didn't shoot only in available light. The people that do those "how to make this camera from 1987 look like a RED Epic" are always doing it with lighting.