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kye

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Posts posted by kye

  1. IMG_3494.thumb.jpg.39ae456de77f62f3edc6c526e04fca39.jpg

    I can feel a lens test coming on...  I'm only waiting on three more lenses and then I'll do it and share with everyone.

    I haven't completely worked out how I should do it, any specific advice?  I'll shoot RAW stills on my GH5 with each lens at a few apertures - probably wide open, f2.8, and f8.  I find that the most useful lens test is at an identical aperture at least a stop from wide-open for any lens as the differences aren't to do with aperture settings or how sharp they are wide open, and f16 is getting into diffraction territory.

    The goal of the test for me is to compare the look of modern budget lenses vs modern high quality lenses vs vintage lenses to find the aesthetic that works for me, and work out which lenses I want to keep.

    Lenses:

    • 8/4 SLR Magic
    • 14/2.5 Panasonic (focus-by-wire)
    • 14-42/3.5-5.6 Panasonic (focus-by-wire)
    • 17.5/0.95 Voigtlander
    • 28/2.8 Yashica
    • 35/3.5 Takumar
    • 37/2.8 Mir
    • 40/1.8 Konica Hexanon (x2 - not shown - still in transit)
    • 40/4 Lomo (lens from popular non-ILC Russian pocket film camera)
    • 55/1.8 Takumar
    • 58/2 Helios (x2)
    • 135/2.8 Minolta
    • 135/3.5 Petri (not shown - still in transit)
    • 135/3.5 Takumar
    • 150/4 Takumar
    • 200/4 Takumar
    • 200/3.5 Minolta

    And yes, I know I'm not winning any Instagram-worthy-photo competitions ???

  2. that-escalated-quickly-300x300.jpg

    LOL, I guess going from SPAM to Brexit to cow nappies and the literal interpretation of scripture is logical in some sense, but...

    In terms of the overall situation, I agree with @BTM_Pix that had the potential futures been laid out so people could clearly choose between them there is no way that this one would have gotten the vote.

    In more general terms, globalisation is scary and people are resistant to it.  Everyone resists change when it happens too fast for them, so this is a natural human tendency.  The world is slowly unifying as it has done for thousands of years, and will continue to do so.  

    The only history lesson that is really relevant here is that we have made the progression from tribes of nomads to villages to small kingdoms/states to empires, simultaneously we have made the progression from hunter-gatherer to farmer to self-contained societies with specialisations to formal trade agreements and to global organisations.  These progressions are often difficult and there is huge resistance and often some backwards steps but inevitably the progression moves forward.  Yes, there have been many examples of the failure of empires and unions, but any argument that we live in a steady state and that this trend is not absolutely overwhelming in the long-term would have to provide many examples of large countries splitting back into the dozens of small kingdoms or hundreds/thousands of tribes that existed before the country was unified.  History only makes sense if you actually talk about all of it, talking about only a few hundred years or a book that isn't meant to be taken literally isn't that helpful.  Do regional differences and old prejudices still exist, sure.  But they fade very quickly over generations, and this is the future that will come to exist.  We've managed to avoid global destruction for long enough that it's reasonable to assume we're capable of it indefinitely, at least from a warfare perspective.  

    Globalisation is the future because it is in everyones interests.  Any resource not spent on war is a resource that can be spent on education, health care, research, or making a camera with DPAF, Canon colour science, and global-shutter FF 4K :)

    Besides, cows don't need nappies.  They need AI drones that will collect the dung and manage it for electricity production and composting purposes.

  3. I've only flown domestic in the US a couple of times, but they actually weren't too bad.

    I was travelling with a group and a couple of the group had physical disabilities with one in a wheelchair.  I was carrying one of their carry-on bags through the airport and when we got to security they got whisked away to a special gate before I realised that I had one of their bags.  So I figured it would be fine and went through with it.  So of course it gets triggered for a search and the lady says "whose bag is this" and I say (using my wording very carefully) "it's with me".  

    We go to a desk and she says "is this your bag"..  "No, it's my friends, she's with the guy in the wheelchair, they went down there somewhere"  I point in the general direction of a zillion people and they're not visible..  "Is there anything sharp in the bag?" ... "I have no idea". she gives me a strange look..  "but probably not" I add.  She opens the bag and starts going through it, and quickly finds the removable hand controls for my friends electric wheelchair.  She asks what it is and I explain.  It would have looked like a huge mess of wires and a circuit board in the scanner.  I make a joke about how it would definitely have looked strange on the scanner, and she didn't really react.  She looks over it and it's fine.  She asks the scanning guy and he said something else was in there too.  She keeps digging and finds a big metal plate with a hook on one side and looks concerned.  I explain that it's a tray table for his wheelchair, she looks puzzled but accepts it after looking it over.  She gives me the all clear to go and I thank her and she gives me a smile.

    I think that I got some slack because I was helping someone with a disability, and she was firm but nice about the whole thing, but basically I was going through security with a bag that wasn't mine that looked like wires, circuitry and a big metal plate in it on the scanner.  I had a good attitude and I suspect that the TSA lady did too because I did.  I've watched those border protection shows and those people are digging around in bags but mostly they're watching how people react, so if you have no problem with them then they're most likely going to have no problem with you.

     

  4. 30 minutes ago, DBounce said:

    @kye the only problem I see is that Panasonic and Fuji have been working on this technology for several years and still nothing you could buy.

    Isn't that the case with all new technologies though?  Things take a very long time to get from the R&D department to the Engineering department to the Product Design department to the Manufacturing department.

  5. 12 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

    After taking numerous cameras from numerous manufacturers through numerous different airports, I'm going to venture my anecdotal experience of the only risk to your gear going through the scanner being someone "accidentally" picking your bag up at the other end if you yourself don't get through the metal detector fast enough.

    There are also some airports (Manchester in the UK for example is a bastard for this) where they make their own rules up about what electronics have to be separated out and make you take all of your electronic items out to go through the machine separately which means you can have a ton of very expensive gear sat there on very public display on the end of the conveyor while you are waiting in a queue behind half a dozen idiots who've left coins in their pockets .

    Worst airport security I've been through with camera equipment was recent trip to India when we flew domestic internally.  The Indian culture has a lot of the average person basically doing whatever the hell they like, pushing and shoving, trying to skip the lines or walk around like no-one else exists, and the authority figures having to constantly bark commands at people to pay attention and behave, so the officials are used to ordering people around without really applying judgement or listening to anyone, and you have to be quite assertive in general.  Airports are a hotbed of this kind of thing.

    I lined up, did the normal thing of taking out my laptop but leaving camera gear in the bag, and lined up.  I was then informed that I was in the line for the women to be scanned (metal detectors) and I had to go all-the-way-over-there to the mens line.  I left my bag on the conveyor as it had already been put into several trays, I'd already become separated from it, and the rest of my group were women and were in the line next to the baggage scanner.

    When I went through the mens line and came back it looked like my bag had exploded.  My wife was there guarding my gear, but they'd made my wife take the camera bag insert out of my backpack, and every item out of the insert.  So there piled up in the collection area surrounded by a crowd of other travellers was my GH5, three lenses, Rode VMP, USB charger, cables, spare batteries, phone, wallet, keys, and sunglasses.  Some items were on the actual counter, not in a tray or anything.  The lenses looked like they'd been rolling around.  I was furious but held it in because an airport is the last place you want to make a scene about anything these days.  I've never been to another airport where I've ever had to even take the camera bag insert out of my backpack.  Had I been travelling alone who knows what would have walked off by itself.

    Not sure what I should have done differently TBH.

  6. On 2/14/2019 at 2:25 PM, liork said:

    What do you think, will it bring a real change in grading for us? Nikon confirmed that it will be 12 bit output through HDMI:

    https://***URL removed***/news/2961478322/nikon-announces-development-of-new-firmware-for-z6-and-z7

    If you're interested in what the differences are between 10-bit, 12-bit and 14-bit RAW video are, check the Magic Lantern thread and search for those phrases.  We've had that conversation before, because ML has offered those things for ages.  In fact, IIRC it's offered 14-bit RAW for ages and only comparatively recently added 12 and 10-bit variants!

  7. 2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

    I'm actually quite partial to a spam sandwich myself.

    And also to its spiritual brother, Bacon Grill.

    A childhood of camping defined those sorts of sophisticated tastes!

    Good grounding for the post Brexit food shortages as well.

    Are you stockpiling food and supplies?

    I've read your Brexit comments with interest as I'm following the whole situation but you're the only person I know in England.  My sister is in Scotland so she's in the same situation, but considering that Scotland has a different leaning and Brexit might well trigger another referendum for them to leave the UK and re-join the EU, she's effectively in a different boat than you.

    I wasn't really clear from your posts if you would end up staying in England or if you would head over to the continent.  Your situation seems like there were pros and cons to both ???

  8. 11 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

    The colour space is Rec.2100 which develops on several aspects of Rec.2020 introduced with the Sony A7R III’s HLG mode.

    This is very interesting to me, especially the Like2100 mode shown on the LCD.

    The reason I raise it is because I am not sure that the HLG on the GH5 is actually Rec2100.  I often want to adjust exposure or WB in post and I tried the method of turning the GH5 HLG from Rec2100 to Linear, making some kind of offset adjustment, then turning it back from Linear to Rec2100, but couldn't match the results from raising the exposure in-camera by one stop.  

    I shot a test scene at two exposure levels and tried matching one with the other via this method.  Every adjustment I could think of resulted in complex non-linearities, and when I asked the question over at LiftGammaGain someone suggested that maybe the GH5 HLG mode isn't true Rec2100.  I tried Rec2020 and other colour spaces too, nothing worked.  I did a bunch of googling to try and find out what the GH5 HLG mode actually is and couldn't find any definitive answers, so I basically just concluded that it wasn't real Rec2100 and that I couldn't do an exposure or WB adjustment in post that completely matched having done it in camera.

    Any idea what's going on here?

  9. The weak link definitely seems to be how to get things from the camera to the internet.

    It's stunning that camera makers haven't made any real attempts to fix this issue, especially considering that the fixed-slow-prime/awful-low-light/low-DR/low-MP camera on the iPhone has become the most popular camera on the planet because of convenience and constant connection to the internet, and that it overtook the DSLR despite Apple starting off as a dinky computer company at the time that the big photography companies were already ruling the world in photography.

  10. 20 hours ago, DBounce said:

    Interesting.  So we've essentially got two sensor technologies here.

    The Panasonic / Fujifilm one here that has an organic layer that acts as an ND, enables global shutter, and can make the well-capacity of each pixel far larger which will increase DR.  This sensor still has a sequential readout like traditional sensors.  Panasonic has been able to build one, and says that 8K60 is possible.

    Then there's the Sony one which has one ADC per pixel, enabling different ISO per pixel to increase DR, and providing a global shutter as the ADC is done in parallel.  This doesn't have a built-in ND capability so in very bright situations an ND would still be required.  This design adds lots of complexity and Sony has only managed to build a very low resolution one so far.

    Is that right?

    I wonder what the DR of the Panasonic one would be.  They claim a light-well capacity of 10X previous designs, so keeping the same overall noise levels equal that should mean an additional ~3 stops of DR.  That method seems to be the better one, at least in the short-term as the extra DR of the Sony isn't worth the lack of ND, plus the fact that the Sony sensor still isn't 1080p yet ???

  11. In my searches for vintage lenses to make my GH5 more organic looking I came upon the Contax Zeiss lenses, and then yesterday I found this video...

    It's basically the dream team of organic classic aesthetic - Contax Zeiss primes, BMPCC, Metabones SB, Tiffen Variable ND.

    Personally I think one of the lenses is a bit soft for my tastes, but overall it isn't bad.  [Edit: actually I think the softness is a combination of missing focus and stopping down too much, so not the lenses].

    I've seen better BMPCC videos (lots of talented people used that camera) but overall it should be positively dripping with the look we're chasing.  

    Thoughts?

  12. 4 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

    The BMCC go for more especially the MFT mounts. I wanted one though the internal battery was a turn off for me as well as the black sun issue(did it ever get resolved??).

    No idea about resolved in firmware, but IIRC Resolve has it as a tick-box option to fix it.

    2 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

    I think Black Magic should pull a Canon and release a Pocket v2 with the old sensor but with Braw, full size hdmi, and a brighter tilt screen at like a $650 price point. Well that would probably still be cooler than Canon. I'd probably get it.

    Interesting idea.  I suppose the difference might be that Canon could do it because they presumably have their own production facilities and so old moulds and machinery tooling would either still be in use or would still be in a warehouse somewhere.  With BM making things in such small numbers who knows if the tooling is still around.  Also, who knows if they still have stock of the sensors etc, Canon probably buys them in such huge quantities that they have sheds of then sitting around waiting to be used in every new camera announced for years, whereas BM might have only bought enough of that sensor to do a run and might not have any more in their stock piles.

  13. 37 minutes ago, kaylee said:

    so let me put a fine point on this: do i need a mic inside the mask?

    If you're going to ADR this actor and not going to use the on-set audio then the only things you need from on-set audio is for it to help with ADR, so as long as you can hear the actor then I wouldn't worry about it myself, unless I'm missing something..  @IronFilm ?

    I've done ADR done a couple of different ways:

    • where the mouth of the actor is visible and the aim is to get clean audio that looks natural
    • where the character is not a normal human and you can't see it's mouth

    In the first instance the ADR took a long time to record to get a result that didn't seem separate to the visuals, and the actor just copying the line over and over again to get the timings down was really helped by being able to hear the original audio.  In this instance we ADR'd because the location was noisy.

    In the second instance the character was a delusion (IIRC it was a human actor wearing a huge Easter Island head that fit over their head, shoulders and partly down their chest).  They didn't record on-set audio for this character (someone read the lines from off-screen) because the character stood perfectly still in frame.  The voice-over was a deep male voice and we recorded the lines without trying to match them to the footage because there was no timing to match.  We got a guy with a deep voice and recorded it through my 1" condenser mic and a valve pre-amp to make it sound as fat as possible.  Basically we did a bunch of takes for some variety and they just chose the take in editing that suited the edit best.

    Your project seems like it is somewhere between these two extremes, so you've got some flexibility.

  14. 12 hours ago, DBounce said:

    When Panasonic or Fuji finally release the organic sensor that they have been promising for the last few years. That sensor is supposed to have per pixel gain adjustment meaning NDs are no longer needed and HDR is real hdr instead of simulated or calculated HDR like on a smartphone. 

    But who knows if/ when that will be released?

    Why would NDs not be needed if we had per-pixel gain?

    Currently the lowest ISO combined with desirable aperture and SS during the day results in many more stops of light than the sensor can handle, so unless the per-pixel gain adjustment was able to have ISOs much much lower than 100 then you'd still need NDs.

    I get that it would give us increased DR, but only by taking dark pixels and brightening them.

  15. If you record sound on set then it'll be easier to sync ADR.

    One consideration is that if you're going to have an actor talking through a bunch of effects, there might be certain things that the actor can do to make the processed dialogue more understandable or sound more menacing or whatever.  Ideally you would have the effects applied to the actors voice in real-time so they could hear themselves through it all and act appropriately, however real-time audio is tricky unless you're setup to do that.

    More likely is that you get the actor in to do ADR, you record a take, apply the effects, listen to it, hear what works and what doesn't work, and re-record / apply effects / listen again, etc until the actor has learned how to speak so the end result is good.  

    Of course you can just record normal ADR and then only apply the effects that work with that way of talking, and that will be more straight-forward, but it will be creatively more limiting.

  16. 1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

    A lot of skills will overlap between software, so even if you switch later it wont all be wasted time. 

    I should mention that i was referring to standalone fusion. I would not recommebd using the fusion tab in resolve for serious composites. I have had a lot of crashes and terrible performance compared to standalone Fusion 9. I am sure it will improve, but at the moment i see it as more a beta feature than a solid tool.

    I haven't used the Fusion tab yet, but I'd agree about BM and bugs.  The next versions are likely to fix a lot of them though.  Resolve 12.5 used to crash on me about every 20 minutes of use, but since V14 it basically never crashes, that is using the Edit and Colour tabs mostly and not Fusion or Fairlight.

    2 hours ago, popalock said:

    So, I've never used any proper video editing software but want to start in a big way.  Given that I'm starting from fresh does it make more sense to go straight to Blackmagic software given it's free and apparently industry leading instead of the classic Adobe combo?  Adobe CC is pricey and I don't want to use any of the other creative apps.

    I have PC laptop with

     - 16gb of ram,

     - i7 8th gen processor, 4 core

     - 256gb SSD, 

     - Graphics:  NVIDIA GeForce MX150 with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM 

     

    There are a few in depth training videos for Fusion on Udemy so I think I can get hold of all the training I need for either combo.  My understanding is that the Blackmagic software is quicker (eg in rendering) but looks kinda weird with the "node" based approach in Fusion.

    Let me know!

    thanks!

     

    Resolve is the way to go.  Check out this thread where I've tried to pull together all the good resources I've found:

    Enjoy, if you find anything good then please add it to that thread, and feel free to ask questions :)

  17. 5 hours ago, IronFilm said:

    The cost for spamming is very very very very VERY low, likely it is getting posted by the thousands by bots across many many forums. Thus you only need an extremely small % to click the link, and an even smaller percentage to buy the items, to make the spamming profitable. 

    Yes, and considering how rich the west is in comparison to other parts of the world, even a tiny bit of money might make a huge difference.  The definition of extreme poverty is a dollar a day, and there are millions of people living in these kinds of situations.

    I read an article about one of the first major computer viruses/worms (I can't remember which one it was) that took down Wall St and other major facilities across the world.  It was written by a Russian programmer.  The interesting thing was that the guy had no concept of what effect it would have until many years later.  

    The short version of the story was that the USSR was a pretty harsh place to live but the focused on education and gave technology scholarships and trained thousands of Russian students in computer science and programming, but when they graduated there were no jobs (because this was communist Russia) and so you had a bunch of skilled and highly angry young men.  The thing about the USSR at that time was the the Iron Curtain was still in full force, they had no idea that the west was using computers for real things and in Russia the only people who had computers were rich people.  So, the pissed off programmers amused themselves by writing viruses to mess up the rich people's toys.  It wasn't until a journalist managed to track this person down over a period of years and communicate with him that he found out that the west used computers for real work, that his virus/worm had escaped the USSR, and had caused huge damage to companies the world over.  He basically had no idea.  After that he dropped out of that scene and history seems to have forgotten him.

    The world is a funny place sometimes.

    38 minutes ago, leslie said:

    define spam link please. i must be particularly slow this morning  as i'm thinking a valid link to an ebay item is in its self kinda harmless, out of the possibilities that exist. if it was some sort of scam surely ebay would have done something to close or block accounts by now ?  i have yet to see something in the for sale section that interests me, so by my definition  i could say its all spam if i was being belligerent. tompeter seems to post a couple ads a week, not sure what his short, middle or long game is. but it doesn't bother me much, its not my storage, data or bandwith that's being consumed if i suddenly saw ten or more ads a day from tompeter then i'd be sending a private message to mr reid  about doing some (house cleaning) other than that i am kinda of indifferent to it all, like the rest of us i guess 

    Who knows.  If they hack an ebay account, inject malicious code into the ad, then get spammers to direct people to look at that auction then that's a mechanism.  Remember that computer security is basically a software arms race, and it's been going for decades now, so the bleeding edge isn't the obvious stuff anymore.  Plus considering how hard people in poorer countries are willing to work combined with the sheer number of them in that situation, there are bound to be thousands of people way smarter than both of us who would work non-stop for a tiny income to feed their families, feed their egos, or whatever else might motivate them.

    If you're unaware of what the complexities are in this arms race, check out the Stuxnet virus.  It is spectacular and kind of terrifying too.

  18. 10 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

    Sounds like a headache. not enough quality control when it comes to precision alignment In certain manufacturers have kept me from buying certain lenses. 

    It would be a headache, but I think that you might be missing the point.  This guy has a supremely accurate calibration device and spent hours trying to get these lenses to be as perfect as he could make them.  All manufacturers have standards that lenses must meet before they go out the door.  Of course some companies standards will be stricter than others, but all of them will measure a lens, find that it has some level of distortion that could be corrected with fine-tuning, but because it meets their tolerances, out it goes.  That's just capitalism.

  19. 2 hours ago, leslie said:

    i'm not sure there's any advantage to cleaning a bunch of lenses a time.you run the risk of disassembled parts everywhere, which would lead to most of those lenses never going back together again, well thats how it would happen with me anyway ? unless your in a clean room by the time you have one lens back together you'd have to clean the others all over again. what happens if your interrupted ? and have to drop the wife off at the maternity ward, more cleaning and oh dear god where was i up too ? plus having a bunch of lenses to do at once could be a more daunting proposition than originally anticipated and its too late after you have opened a couple. i'm thinking slow and steady and eventually the tortoise will win the race.

    i know this because i have a canon fd 35-70 sitting on my bench. i believe who ever had it before me did something to it before i had it as the rear cap wouldn't lock on like my other fd's i have. me being adventurous and thinking how hard can it be ? had the screws off it in no time a slight twist and something went sprooiing as it came apart. do you think that thing will go back together before this side off hell freezing over ?. i guess when i  am feeling adventurous again i'll have another look at it ? my only consolation is it was a cheap lens so im not too upset/ but i think i learned another lesson :blush:

    LOL.  I meant that I'd clean them one at a time, but straight after each other.  The problem is that I don't really have a place where I can setup the various tools, towels, little containers for screws, containers for the chemicals, the measuring devices for the chemicals, etc, and still expect them to be there if I don't use them for a couple of weeks.  So my plan was to figure out what I needed, then get it all, then work out how to approach it, which lens to do first, then do the first one completely, and then work out what to change before doing the second one.

    If I start now, then the setup would have to stay setup, or I'd have to go through that process a second time, when the Russian mail service decides to finally let my last package out of Eastern Europe! 

    2 hours ago, leslie said:

    chalk should be ok and while we are at it lets make it coloured chalk. and because the new bmp4k has better low light, lets have flares too, not anamorphic flares but real magnesium burn your eyeballs out kind of flares. you can at your discretion use an anamorphic  lens but it has to be 2x ?

    Oh, I don't know...  the Zeiss article says "Nutrients (textile lint, traces of grease, varnish, dust and dirt)".  If grease and varnish are food then what do we know - chalk might be a feast!!

    16 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

    Will cleaning make the lenses sharper? As long as you store them in the right humidity no fungus can grow.

    I don't think that cleaning will make them sharper.  It might even make them worse, if you put them back together again with worse alignment than when you took them apart.

    There is some fascinating discussion on lens quality control in this thread: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?158004-Let-s-make-STAR-LENS-TESTER-to-get-best-lens-copy-easily-(Airy-disk-PSF-point-source)

    In another thread he compares three vintage lenses, and to be fair (and make sure he's not comparing a good one of one lens with a poor one of another lens) he aligns the three lenses using that lens tester first.  The results are interesting, and he does say that with that machine and a lot of trial and error he was able to improve the alignment of all of the lenses, although one of them seemed to look worse in the little resolution test he also took pictures of, so it's complicated.

  20. More lenses have been arriving..

    Super-Takumar 35mm 3.5 - ebay auction specified fungus:

    IMG_3489.thumb.jpg.18629dc272dc69cbac8e2e632bcd000f.jpg

    and some with fungus that didn't specify it in the ebay ad....  I figured there's always a chance of them having it, so it's not a problem, but buyer beware!

    Minolta 135mm 2.8:

    IMG_3486.thumb.jpg.ba1381eb5549408c054b478ef0425858.jpg

    (Note that the little 9-dot pattern is from the LED torch I was using, so they're just reflections, not fungus colonies!)

    The Minolta 200mm 3.5 also has some patches that look like greasy smudges on the front element, but further investigation shows they're on the inside of the front element, so I suspect fungus with that too.  I tried taking a photograph but couldn't get the angles right, it's quite faint and you need light from a certain angle etc.

    My hygrometer says that my lens storage drawer sites between 65% and 40% humidity, even though we have refrigerative air conditioning on many hours a day (it's peak summer here).  

    I'm not sure if that's acceptable, but the Zeiss page here says:

    Quote

    Where does fungus come from?

    • Fungus spores are everywhere and germinate under suitable environmental conditions:
    • Growing conditions
    • Relative humidity of at least 70% (more than 3 days)
    • No or little airflow
    • Darkness
    • Nutrients (textile lint, traces of grease, varnish, dust and dirt)
    • Temperatures between 10 and 35°C

    How can fungus be avoided?

    • Reduce the relative humidity to less than 60% (never under 30% as it is dangerous for the instrument) by storing:
    • in climate-control cabinets in which hygrometers maintain environmental conditions
    • next to driers (e.g. silicagel orange packs) in the containers
    • in a special cabinet whose interior is heated to 40°C (max. 50°C) using a fan heater/ incandescent lamps, thereby reducing the relative humidity
    • in hermetically sealed cabinets with fungicides with high vapor pressure (fungicide depot must be replaced at regular intervals)
    • in an dehydrator above driers

    After the work is done, Immediately clean the instruments. If possible, you can use a fan to facilitate evaporation of surface moisture. Do not use containers made of leather, textiles or wood for storage. Short solar radiation or irradiation with UV light may also help avoiding fungus.

    These seem a little contradictory, so I think more reading is needed.

     

    Once all my lenses arrive I'll begin the cleaning process in earnest.  No point cleaning a bunch only to have another one arrive and you have to set it all up over again.

  21. 2 hours ago, Snowbro said:

    My middle school teachers called me that, now I make more than them. 

    I heard that Green Day named themselves that after their teacher or school principal said it would be "a green day in hell" if they ever amounted to anything.  Not sure if it's true, but it makes a good story to tell on the internet like I'm doing right now :)

  22. 16 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

    I appreciate the input. Its good to hear other people had the same struggle. Its keeping me up at night haha, but I think a little pain is necessary to get to a higher level. I just took a position as head of lighting for a web series, its unpaid so I am not too worried. That said regardless of pay I like to perform my best. I was very honest about my experience though.

    I took the plunge last year and worked for a wedding video company, was super worried they wouldn't like my work but everything turned out fine and I learned a lot.

    A really senior former work colleague had spent a lot of time in the armed forces and talked a lot about "time in rank".  As far as I could tell it talked about the dangers of promoting people too quickly, and that you needed to spend "time in rank" to really learn how to do things properly.  I suspect that for some people who never rise through the ranks that's because they haven't worked out the things you need to learn at that level, so they never advance.

    I take this to mean that there are key skills to learn before you can progress (and still do a good job) but that if you learn fast then you can progress steadily too.  This has been my experience.  When I was young (which saying makes me feel like I'm 80 years old!) I was frustrated about being underused and that I had so much more to offer and could do a way better job than the people running things.  In a sense that's true, but it's also like when you watch someone playing a game and you see things they don't, but what you don't take into account is that they're seeing things you're not.  Also, the easier something looks the more likely it is that the skill of that person is what is making it look easy, rather than it actually being easy.  Now when I look at younger generations and I think about them being in charge, the sheer weight of what they don't know would make me very reluctant to put them in charge of anything.

    It's a balance I think, but hard work and learning as much as possible is what will distinguish you in the long run.

  23. 8 hours ago, Mako Sports said:

    Whilst the DSLR video Revolution ended in 2014, some say it wasn't worth it.

    But the question is where would we be today if we didn't have it?

    It spawned "afforadable" mid tier Super 35 ILC video cameras like the C100, FS100, FS700. 

    The cameras that sparked the beginning of the end of the revolution. (GH4, A7S, NX1, Pocket Cinema, BMC 2.5K) Would they exist?

     

    https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/2862-opinion-the-end-of-the-dslr-revolution-benefits-major-manufacturers

    https://www.eoshd.com/2017/06/pro-cameras-not-creatively-liberating/

    We'd either be shooting on handicams or ILC video cameras like C100s.  There might actually be more action in those sectors as there would be more money.  I saw a guy vlogging in public with a little handicam and it was covered in stickers that said 4K and Stabilisation and things like that.  We might be talking about which handicams have 10-bit, and if the C50mkII would have C-Log, and if the FS3 would have internal 10-bit, and the P4K thread would probably still be talking about battery life, strange bugs, and shipping delays ;)

  24. 12 hours ago, IronFilm said:

    My first "jobs" were on student short films, or no budget web series, or similar such shoots. 

    How confident was I? Very. 

    As I'd been "DoP" or AC on numerous such shoots like those already, and I felt confident I could perform better than the average soundie I'd usually see on such levels of shoots!

    Same for me in my day job.  If I come across potential work and I think "wow, that seems like it might be beyond my skill level" I stop and think about the alternative, which is someone else doing it.  That usually 'inspires' enough confidence to jump in and do it :)

    18 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

    How confident were you when you took your first job?

    My advice if you're contemplating taking on jobs you're not sure if you're up for is this:

    • Get as much experience as you can in your own time
    • When talking to potential clients, highlight your strengths and previous experience, but be honest and don't promise anything you can't be 100% sure you can deliver
    • If the client takes you on, work your ass off to make them as happy as you possibly can (both by how you conduct yourself as well as the quality of the work) - even if you don't care about the work or the client this is the strategy to learn the most from the job
    • Leverage that successful work to 'level-up' and get better work next time (if you deliver a $2K result on a $500 job you will have an example of $2000 work and can use it to book $2K jobs, etc etc)

    Opportunity looks a lot like hard work.

    I've had a lot of growth in my career because I took on jobs that stretched my abilities.  I didn't get those jobs because I'm great at selling (I'm not) - I got them because they were awful jobs that the more experienced people didn't want.  I took jobs where everyone else would suck air into their mouths when they heard about them, I took a job where I was the fourth person to do it and the previous person quit after the first day.  I've gotten lots of experience because of this and learned a ton on basically every job.

    By being humble, asking for input from others (when appropriate), and focusing on the work instead of yourself, you can build trust with people.  I've been on jobs where everything went sideways because that was just how the situation was going to go, and the people around me saw that I was making the best of the situation and didn't blame me, in fact they had a higher opinion of me for keeping calm and keeping focussed on the work.  People will re-hire those people that they like to work with because they have the right attitude, so that's the best long-term strategy.

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