kye

Good points. For the test I did for myself I shot 4K h264, scaled some shots, exported in h264 (at a higher bitrate) and then uploaded to YT in 4K, as that is my workflow. Obviously if you're shooting RAW and delivering in Prores HQ then your thresholds for what is perceptible will be different. I was simply doing it to see if it mattered to me, and how far I could push things in how I shoot, hoping that it would matter less and I could use digital zoom to space my primes further apart and cover more zoom range with the same number of lenses. Fun stuff.

I think satisfaction levels are about comparing what you have to what you want. I think everyone probably always wants more, but it's about priorities. Do I want a camera the size of a GoPro Hero 5 Session, lenses that perform like Zeiss Master Primes, output files that look like an ARRI 65, and the whole thing to cost $100 with free shipping? Yes. But the point is that all that happens in the context of all the rest of what we're doing when we shoot. I think most real shooters are concerned with the total package of what they deliver, and if the camera isn't in the top 5 issues that are holding us back then we're not focused on it, and if asked we'll say we're satisfied. Everyone wants more, we just differ by how much we want it.

Great stuff! I can see some cool lens stuff going on. These lenses work really nicely at night!

Nice! Great work

https://noamkroll.com/why-i-just-bought-the-new-sigma-fp-mirrorless-camera-for-filmmaking/

I'm considering posting a blind test where some of the shots are digitally zoomed to various amounts and seeing which shots people could identify, and how much zoom was evident. What sort of shots should I include? I'm imagining if I included things like close shots of plants with a back-light to highlight all the tiny hairs and textures? I did a quick test like that for myself (thus the reference to me doing more tests than I share here) and I found that large digital zooms were visible but smaller ones were not.

Unfortunately. Of course, the other place that the knowledge lives is behind paywalls or online courses, but all of that is paid too. We're lucky for what Juan has given us. I suspect that part of his motivation is to show how little the YT guys know by showing what real knowledge looks like, and it certainly worked for me - the difference is pretty stark. Juan should work with someone to offer a course - I'd be very interested in it!

Remember that you were seeing the set through a camera. I'd imagine the set was lit normally and the set lighting was just way brighter. He was doing things in (what looked like) 120p, so at base ISO you'd need a bit of light for that.

Real world use of the strange wide-angle probe lens....

Ah, that makes a difference. I guess there's always the Lav-into-smartphone and sync in post option. In theory spending a few hundred extra is a worthwhile investment, but taking into account the fact that most vloggers are getting paid under $1 per hour, I'm not sure that investment stacks up!

I think it's the old problem that the people who really know what they're doing are off doing it, rather than hanging around talking about it (or making videos, which takes way more time than even posting on forums).

As above - you'll either lose quality or you'll make huge files. However, you'll make them way easier to edit, so that's worth something. 4K h264 files are a pain to edit with.

I'm sure that the older models would vlog pretty well. Each previous model probably had millions of vlogs shot on them!!

Do they see better in the dark? I understand that the pixels will be larger and have less ISO noise, but in an oversampled image the downscaling has an averaging effect on random noise on adjacent pixels, working as a sort of noise reduction filter. I'm genuinely not sure which would come out ahead. Does anyone know?

Resolve. Sorry, should have mentioned that. Check out the link to the other thread with the description of the adjustments

Balancing with natural light is fine but if the natural light changes then it can really trip you up, like on a day where the sun goes in and out of clouds. This may or may not be a concern (some places have blue skies 300+ days a year, so... ) For this situation I'd suggest renting a sound blanket (or whatever works) so that you can block out the natural light if it's being troublesome. This would mean you need a powerful artificial light, especially if you're bouncing it instead of using it directly, which is good advice. It would suck to start the shoot and not have a powerful enough light. If it leads to more work then you'll have some kind of commitment to buy something and you'll have more experience knowing what was required, both in terms of power as well as other factors, so you can choose a light that will work well for you and how you like to operate.

My take is that many of the things that camera nerds on forums obsess over are surprisingly unnoticeable. I used to get caught up in things like resolution and bit depth and colour science, and after seeing a few real tests (or even better - real world tests) I got a shock and learned that some things really make very little difference. That's why I question things I'm lead to believe and actually go and do tests to find out. I do far more tests than I talk about on here, gradually unlearning the BS that the internet is full of. Of course, much of what is talked about does matter and the vast majority matters sometimes and not other times. That deeper knowledge takes years to learn on the internet, or mere hours if you pick up a camera and go do a test and see what the end result looks like. “What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.” ― Mark Twain

Write up:

@BjornT was kind enough to share a grade he did using Filmconvert and Lumetri. Here's his final grade: and my manual grade: These are the adjustments: First node is WB Second Node is this Luma Curve: Third node is Hue vs Hue: Fourth is a YUV channel mixer with a key to only apply it to blue: This is the main 'look' of the grade, and remember that although the snip above says RGB, that the node is in YUV colour space. If you're looking for cool looks then a channel mixer in YUV mode is where it's at! Fifth node bumps up the Luminance and Saturation of the yellows (in the trees) via Hue vs Sat and Hue vs Lum curves. Sixth is a key on the skin colours that shifts the yellows slightly towards pink (with a Hue vs Hue curve) and also raises the brightness a little (with a Hue vs Lum curve). This was an interesting exercise and I primarily did it by having the two shots on top of each other with a Difference blending mode, and looking at the resulting image with the Waveform view, and also having the two shots next to each other on the timeline. I'd go back and forth between the two shots and look at what the main issue was, then go into the Difference mode view and play with the controls trying to make the waveform go as low as possible (low waveform = smaller difference between the images). I tried a number of things in curves where you'd end up with a curve that would look like a rollercoaster and that would tell you that something was going on with what you were adjusting, but that this type of curve wasn't the answer, so I went down a few of those rabbit-holes and trashed the node and tried something differently. Anyway, that might be useful for someone.

Interesting. Here's my manual attempt to replicate the grade. Original: My manual grade: Grade from @BjornT with Filmconvert etc: Some of the colours aren't quite right, but it's broadly there. I'll do a write-up in the Grading thread about what the adjustments are.

I can't think of any situation where going through all the pain of an upgrade would be worth it for half a stop of DR!! DR matters to me, but I do wonder what would be a significant enough bump to make me think about it.. This is an easy statement to make, but from a technical perspective that's a pretty big ask! I know what you mean, and I agree, but very high bit-depth RAW 24MP stills is a pretty high standard - not to mention the bitrates that go with that ???

The test shots in this lens review are P4K BRAW 3:1 if anyone is curious...

Speaking of Meike lenses..... Think of it like buying a grey card and a LUT that balances out all your footage, including matching cameras, forever (when combined with the auto-adjust function in Resolve, not sure if other NLEs have a similar function). Using that (and the NLE auto feature) to get a neutral image that you can then put a grade on top of (be it a fully manual grade, LUT, or preset) would be a pretty good colour workflow if you weren't into grading.. $189 wouldn't even get you a professional colourist for a few hours on a single short film, so that's the territory you're in.

Very impressive results.. nice work! Any chance of sharing an ungraded still with us? I'm curious to see what the plugin is doing

I shoot in difficult situations and demand a lot from a camera in terms of DR and ability to recover things and push it around in post. My strategy is to buy the camera that covers my needs and shootings style best and just make do. Every camera will always be a compromise in some way, so you just have to choose which things you compromise.