kye

3 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Inevitably, the answer to both of those questions will be "all of them and then a few more just to be on the safe side"

The more lenses you have the safer you are from just putting one on the camera and leaving the house to go shoot something!

3 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

It travels compact but expands rapidly!

I keep my GH5 + lenses in a drawer and it's pretty tightly packed in there, and I keep pulling out the 135mm or 200mm, using them, then wondering why they won't fit back in the drawer.  Then I have that "ah ha" moment where I set them back to infinity focus and put them back, then I have that "oh dear" moment when I realise I do that every time and still don't remember.. ???

3 hours ago, hijodeibn said:

I agree, she probably get used to just use her phone, specially since it is not going to take any more room from her handbag...

Non-techie types do like using their phones, but "there is no zoom" is also something non-techie types who have a bit of interest in photography understand and care about.

Don't confuse people not knowing about cameras or tech with people not knowing about what makes a good image or what they like.  We are drowning in photos and video and therefore live in the most visually literate time in all of human history.

4 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Bigger sensor of the FZ1000 vs the FZ300's weather sealing and touch screen.

When in doubt, go for usability and durability, then just tell them to shoot everything and not worry about the camera.

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Interstingly, the 135mm f/2 gets pretty good reviews as well...

DO IT!!! DO IT!!!

I mean, err, you know, if you want to ???

Cool about the 1.2L.  I look forward to your tests

19 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Xeen would be the cheapest you'd see a Cine PL lens go for at $2K each (or the Sony CineAlta PL lenses are dirt cheap too, but you need to buy them as a set), which is pretty similar to an expensive stills lens. 

Ouch!

I guess it depends on what stills lenses you're buying.  For me $1000 is a crazy amount to spend on a single lens.

19 hours ago, Emanuel said:

@BTM_Pix for some reason you're to me and many others one of fav posters here... ; ) Other than that, the flaws going with that Petri are simply delicious! : -)

Delicious!  what a word to use!!

I think I will adopt that word as my goal for all images and colour grading 

15 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

I had considered the lighting change but I couldn't see any difference in the spread of highlights on the bottom of the piano keys where I would have expected them in that situation.

Its that inconsistency that set me against the Petri as I don't mind the lower contrast of it per se

The more we analyse those two images, the more confused I get about what is going on with that lens..  what other tests should I run to better understand what's going on?

3 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

I have access to all three cameras! I'll see if I can get it done. 

If you struggle in post then upload some clips and others can have a go and we can all compare our results

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

Oh wow! Those are some major names (well, not so much Celere) in the cinematographer world, you need to explore the rest of the internet some more!

I hadn't hear of them either.

Whenever I'd dipped into the cinematographer world I've always been astounded by the price for lenses - they're normally 5-10x the price of similar stills lenses.  Is it a rule that cine lenses exist in a kind-of non-overlapping price range?  Or are we looking at the higher-end of stills lenses when the lower end of cine lenses overlaps them in price and quality?

10 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

A bit of a crisis here.

So I thought that my addiction/collection was six so I'd figured out a way to have a tournament where they were seeded so that the Nikkor, the Leica and the Contax Zeiss would be automatically in the semi-finals and the fourth one to join them would be the winner of a preliminary round.

I have just got them all out to line them up to give them a bit of a clean before doing it tomorrow and can you spot the flaw in that plan ?

It strikes me that with having seven then the only fair way to do this would be to have an eighth one to make it four seeds and four non-seeded lenses so there would be four quarter finals and then the semi-finals and the final.

This is clearly the Lord's way of telling me to buy that Samyang isn't it?

One lens short?  No worries - I'll mail you the Petri ASAP!

It would be interesting to see someone shoot a scene that includes a test chart, then apply NR in post to the XT3 and P4K until they match the level of detail and IQ from the A7III.  

If the A7III gives a certain resolution and noise level at some ISO but you can get the same noise level but with better resolution by applying NR in post to the other cameras then in the real-world they would beat the A7III.  

Far too many people are judging cameras like the entire post-production phase doesn't exist, when unfortunately half the image processing happens inside the camera these days.

9 hours ago, DigitalOxygen.ca said:

Honestly so far I'm not sold on it. On paper it seems amazing and in lots of ways it is, but practically speaking for me it's not a game changer... yet. Being limited to odd crop sizes and limited frame rates (i.e. hard to get decent res at 60fps) is not great. Fully understand the hardware limitations all the ML contributors have to work with. The effort and ingenuity being put in to work around the limitations is amazing but I need more time with it to see if the downsides and extra workflow elements is worthwhile for me.  So far it seems like if the scene is exposed properly there isn't a massive noticeable difference in the final footage with raw vs the default h.264. But again I need more time to fine tune the settings and figure out the best workflow.

I think it's also due to your personal preferences.  There are a group of people on this forum that really appreciate the image from the original BMPCC and another group that don't rate it as being particularly special.  Because of that difference, some people are willing to put up with the quirks and weaknesses of the camera, and others opt for better all-around performers as the 'downgrade' in image quality is worth it for the ease of use for them.
I suspect ML is the same.  Some absolutely adore the image and others don't.  It also depends on what body you're shooting, what lenses you have, and what particular features you're interested in using.  I really appreciated the 3x crop mode which turned my 55-250mm lens into the 35mm equivalent of a 264-1200mm zoom, and combined with the nice IS of that lens, it was even usable at 1200mm!  Now I have a GH5 and the 3x crop mode of ML is still something I miss a little bit.

11 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

I agree with this.

I'm very curious about the contrast difference between the f3.5 and f8 shots on the Petri @kye

I'm presuming its a difference in a post correction rather than the lens causing it ?

 

No post-processing done.  The only adjustment I made between any of the shots was aperture (of course) and SS for exposure.

The scene had very strong light coming from left-of-frame from a ~3m full-height window with full Australian sun, so I suspect it's a difference in the flare, and at the time I thought it was due to the coating, but the fact it varies so much between the two apertures that doesn't seem to make sense.

The other thing is that the exposures weren't all identical because the apertures didn't always line up to full-stops and I didn't have infinitely adjustable SS, so just matched the exposure to the nearest third-stop SS adjustment.  Maybe that is playing a role too?

I'm not really sure why people don't like the Petri.  The other lenses make it look low contrast, but in reality the other lenses are also low-contrast in comparison to other lenses, but unfortunately I don't own any of them and couldn't include them in the test!

23 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

......and niche topics like obscure Russian lenses....

Hooray!

4 hours ago, DigitalOxygen.ca said:

I played around a bit more and noticed that in a particular view of the resolutions it said something at the bottom about using left / right on the directional pad to fine tune the adjustments. I'm not near it at the moment so don't recall the wording or which screen it was on (it wasn't all of them that allowed resolution adjustments, just one I think). The directional buttons allow you to cycle through the "in between" resolutions.

That sounds vaguely familiar! Awesome you found it

How are you finding ML?

There are many people who prefer it, even to the BM cameras.

On 3/24/2019 at 11:48 AM, DigitalOxygen.ca said:

I have this same question. Most of the examples I see online show resolutions I don't seem to be able to get even with the experimental 10-bit builds. For example this article on this very site shows resolutions like 1792 x 762 on the 6d and even 70d. I finally discovered it's with experimental builds for 10-bit but even with that neither camera can do continuous above 1600 x 680 give or take. In most of the sources there doesn't seem to be mention of the sd_uhs hack so I feel like I'm missing something somewhere.

Any help would be very greatly appreciated.

I think I figured it out eventually, but I can't recall what it was unfortunately, so sorry I can't be of more help.

I do have a vague recollection that they are available in a different menu/mode?

17 hours ago, Laurier said:

The issue for me is the same as any entry price cinema gear, it s accessible to a wider untrained audience, who produce tons of garbage with them. So you get a biased judgment based on that and brand loyalty. 

I agree.  For me, you have to look at the best examples that are available online, as a "this is possible with this equipment", combined with the excellent point below..

12 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

I'm not sure. I tend not to be scientific about lenses. If I consistently like the images I capture, I like the lens.

Absolutely.  It's about what they can do combined with how reliable they are to do that, specifically for how you use them.

Most lenses are great for at least one type of shooting.  Even smartphone lenses/sensors - if you want deep DOF in a scene with lots of light for online publication and you use a third-party app with high-bitrate codecs then they're just fine!

53 minutes ago, HockeyFan12 said:

@kye, no that's totally applicable to me. "CAT VIDEO MM/DD/YYYY" describes a lot of my "personal work." I think that might be the better naming convention for a lot of my stuff.

Uploading to YouTube like that is a smart idea. The only caveats I can imagine are that you can never truly delete anything that way, or there's that story about Myspace losing 12 years of music. You can't really choose if it gets deleted, I guess.

Still, I do that with a lot of stuff on dropbox, always keeping essential files there, but am at 850GB/1TB right now and of course have to pay monthly to keep that data online.

@KnightsFan, tons of great advice, thank you.

Are your tools OS X or Windows? One thing I didn't realize would be helpful but think would be, is including relevant information (client, project name, etc.) in the "comments" section of all the files correlated with a certain project. That way, it's searchable even if it's not in the file name, I believe. Batch modifying comments might be interesting. I'd rather not change file names in some instances, but I wouldn't mind adding comments.

The flip side of me (perhaps) having more projects to organize than you is that most of them are a couple weeks of work from start to finish at most. So I can't relate to most of those concerns about years of footage existing together in one scene; even for longer-term projects, it's a few days of shooting and then pick ups. I did something long-term like that many years ago and it was awesome, though. Despite some continuity errors and changing hairstyles...

What's the two-year project you're working on? If it involves Blender and Fusion it sounds cool...

That might be the best advice of all. I try to archive footage and photos I shoot, but have no idea why I keep most of it. Been shooting a lot of raw video lately and I can fill up a few 256 GB cards in a day. Backing those up is not cheap.

lol at "CAT VIDEO MM/DD/YYYY"

It's probably obvious, but the reason I do YMD at the start of the filename is because I can sort alphabetically and it sorts chronologically, even if you move/copy files between drives and the file system stuffs up the created/modified dates on the files.

I'm kind of lucky in comparison to people with clients because I only have one brief, so I only need to be able to have the equipment to create one look (lenses, codecs, lighting, etc) but the downside is that I have the need to categorise clips by several criteria and nothing really supports that.  Things like LightRoom are great for that, being able to recall images from certain dates, or certain subjects, or certain locations, or just those rated with 5 stars.  I was using LR to do this for video clips, which was clumsy but it worked, until I moved to a 'real' video camera and LR doesn't understand the file formats and won't import them, so game over.
In a sense video is about structuring things like CLIENT/PROJECT/DAILIES and if that's what you do then great, and if not then too bad.  Also, the tools for managing footage are much more manual and tedious which is fine if you're running a big production and have time to pay attention to it, or you're not shooting most days, but when you shoot a few clips most days and it's not your day job then you really want something like the LR import tool that will sort and catalog the footage automatically on import.  I wrote a unix script (I'm on Mac) to copy files and sort them into folders based upon the file creation date on the card, so I just run it and it copies all files from a card into the YMD folder structure.  Of course, it's a PITA if I then rename the folder but don't delete the files from the card because then when I run the script again it doesn't realise I have a folder for that footage and so re-copies it.  But I really wanted something that I could use when I was travelling and you get back to the hotel at night, and you can just put everything on charge, throw the SD card and USB HDD into the computer and hit GO and not worry about losing any footage.  

I'm happy to share my script if anyone is interested.

1 hour ago, Kisaha said:

how true is that?

I see/hear a lot of people talking/writing about the end of the mount, but EF is pretty much relevant as always, and maybe even more.

EVA is EF, P4K has a lot of EF(-S) mounted on it, the new Z S35 camera is rumored to have an EF mount, even the cameras that supposedly will end the EF, the R ones, make more sense right now with EF lenses (except the people that just spend 3500€ for a 2f zoom!) for many reasons (the ND adapter included).

Can't see the EF vanish anytime soon..

Yeah, the folks over at red.com seem to treat EF as a standard and have their vintage lenses modified to have EF mounts, including people who are buying sets to rent out, like the Contax Zeiss, etc.

It is good when a marketplace settles on a standard because (if the standard is open) it benefits everyone.

The only exceptions are lenses that have a similar flange distance to EF and therefore have to be modded but can't simply be adapted.  Mounts like Konica, m42, Pentax-K and others are probably too similar to be able to fit an adapter, and the Konica is shorter than EF, so definitely no adapters!  This is where having an adapter from that system to your mirrorless system comes in, so the EF mount works for everyone on lenses, but not on cameras.

16 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

Just kidding. Ugly maybe is too strong. But I have shot quite a bit on a full set of Rokinons, and quite a bit on a set of Nikon K lenses, and I prefer the Nikons' look, and that of most other lenses I've used I find the Rokinons to consistently make unpleasing flares and to have some annoying warm color casts. After seeing in Duclos' teardown that Rokinon applied a yellow tinge to one of their elements, I was like "oh yeah, that explains SO MUCH about the color." I prefer cooler colors I guess.

Can you white-balance to compensate for it, or is it a more complex colour shift?

7 minutes ago, AlexTrinder96 said:

They're still as relevant imo, nothing comes close in value for money in the budget cine market. 

Veydra were good but they seem to have dissolved? Although Meike's new lenses seem similar? 

 

Canon EF mount is always a bonus as well.

I believe that's before tax price? Still a great deal for 6 lenses and case! 

Ah, maybe because I'm an International visitor.  I thought the UK wasn't keen on those any more? ???

7 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:

The other question is do I just throw some stuff I shoot out? For test shoots and stuff, do you keep everything you shoot or delete some of it? Maybe I should devote an entirely separate drive to assorted photos and videos that I just shoot for fun with no plans to editor or publish.

There are 3 approaches that you might consider:

• Keep everything - storage is cheap
• If you're never going to look at it again then delete it, or keep it for a while and if after that time it's not still relevant then delete
• Upload it to YT in the highest quality you can, set it to be a private video, then delete it locally, and if you ever need it again it's "backed up"

I kind of do the last one for some things.  For example, with my various tests and experiments one of the reasons I document them online is that it means my observations and conclusions are essentially backed up for me, so if I need to refer back (which I do sometimes) then I know where to go to find them.

recently @BTM_Pix compared the 24mm and 85mm Samyangs to other well-regarded lenses and they punched well above their weight.  I'm assuming that the F1.4 stills versions are the same lens as the T1.5 cine versions.

Lenses are very subjective, so you really need to look and assess for yourself.  One mans trash... etc.

Oh, and that kit is showing as being on special now.. £1,915.83 for me, unless I'm special

https://cvp.com/product/samyang_7413-vdslr-lens-kit-5-canon

and just for fun, here's one where I partially desaturate the image, then tint it back to being red:

It evens out the colours a bit, and "de-muds" the shadows nicely.

For my curves-only attempts, I'm limiting myself to the Lum-vs-Lum curve, so no fancy Hue-vs-Hue or anything like that.

Curves-only challenge #1, a softer more film-like grade:

Curves-only challenge #2 - a more contrasty grade:

Normal grading #1:

That was quite an interesting one to grade.. very contrasty and that clipped red channel was tricky to recover in a natural way.  Plus the strong red light made the denim jacket an awful colour if you tried to WB it 'correctly'.. the jacket on my first attempt looks ok to me, the second looks awful, although I managed to balance the green-magenta ok using the curves, and the last one is more just embracing the fact it's stage lighting and not meant to be compensated for.

Probably less useful to others, but I organise very differently to most.

Essentially I am documenting the history of my family, I don't really have 'projects' or 'clients'.  I will do separate videos from a trip or a day out, but I may also do a 'year in review' project, or a '21st birthday mashup of embarrassing moments' type thing.

So I organise by date, with folders in a YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD XXXXXXXX format, where XXXXX is the description of what happened that day (if it was significant).  My challenge is that in this format a project sits across multiple folders, but it works ok.

I don't think any organisation system is perfect, you're always trading off one aspect against another.

I shot the second part of my lens test...

135mm / 150mm / 200mm vintage lenses.