kye

I hear very mixed things about colour grading and I'm curious to get a bit more info on how people think about it.

My theory is that it's actually simpler than people think, but maybe I'm not getting the full picture.

24 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

The right place and the right time applies to a lot of great shots. But obliviously you can kind of anticipate some times and avoid pure luck. It helps to have a Lot of patience also. I find photography a LOT more relaxing, and in a sense more rewarding than video. To be able to capture something you feel that is great with a singe push of a button is quite a feat to be honest. And it is much easier to share your pride and joys to others with photographs than having them try, or even want to watch a video, especially a long, drawn out one. Plus you can hang a photo on a wall. ?

My goal is the best of both worlds.  I film my kid playing, so I don't have the pressure of having to get every moment or get coverage or whatever.  

I made a highlight video of his 50th game (banner, game, award, speeches), but really my brief is to get enough footage to be able to cut something together down the line as a highlights reel for the family history, and to get a few shots where we can extract a frame and hang it on the wall, as you say.  I am pretty good at anticipating the action and operating the equipment, the main challenge is that I don't know what framing or shots to try and get.  I want to capture the effort he puts in and to make him look good essentially, so studying professional sports photography and videography will help me see that.  I don't watch sports on TV or read about it, so my exposure is pretty minimal.

I tell you one thing though, using video as 24fps burst mode for photographs sure gives you a lot of options for choosing shots, and really makes you appreciate the skill in photographers who only have 5-10fps non-continuous burst-mode, let alone the film days when bursts were what happened between changing rolls of film!

Probably the biggest demand is that when the game is finished he always asks if we saw that goal / kick / or key moment, and of course, he remembers exactly what happened because he's out there putting in 110% and so you better have seen it and remember it!  He's the top tackler in his team and if the players end up in a heap then there's a good chance he's underneath most of them, so trying to get footage or stills that live up to the intensity of his experience is a tall order. 

29 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Speaking of Photos. Man there is some nice ones here. I can see why they were awarded.

https://***URL removed***/photography/6987116741/slideshow-wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-people-s-choice-award-shortlist?utm_source=self-desktop&utm_medium=marquee&utm_campaign=traffic_source

Indeed!

I should do some research into what makes a good sports photograph.  I've pretty much sorted the equipment I have for next season of Aussie rules football, so now I need to learn where the point the camera!

9 minutes ago, mercer said:

True but nothing about this “test” is fair. Pitting an f/2 lens vs an f/2.8 lens wide open isn’t fair. Also Nikkor lenses are traditionally warmer than Zeiss lenses. Hell, I may have even set the color temperature differently in the Raw panel because I preferred one over the other at the time.

I have a very modicum amount of grading skills, so I prefer to allow the equipments’ natural tendencies to do some of the job for me. Color grading is a craft in and of itself and as a one man band filmmaker, it is impossible for me to be great at every discipline. Of course I try my best, to do my best and your point on the lesson is definitely taken and food for thought. 

There are only three skills needed to be a good colourist:

1. To know what you like, what you want, and what is good for the project
2. To be able to see colour - to look at an image and notice that the shadows are cooler, or the highlights have a soft rolloff, etc
3. To know what knobs to twiddle

When you have the first two, the third becomes almost a non-issue.  Watching truly skilled colourists work has taught me that the top people can get 90% of the results with only a few controls - even if you only gave them lift/gamma/gain controls then they'd still put out beautiful work, add curves and they can make magic.

8 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I think Both Panasonic and Olympus screwed themselves with the pricing of the GH5, GH5s, EAM1 mk II. Hell you can buy a FF Sony a7 III for the same or less. Now you can buy the Z6, EOS-R, XT3 for the same or less. They have shot themselves in the foot big time. And now this A6400. I really do think m4/3 is in big trouble.

Even if you bring out a GH6 for 1500 bucks it pisses off all the people that bought the GH5, GH5s. They can't win now. Not with this A6400, X-T3, PK4 out. And that  is not counting this new Panasonic S1 FF line. The lower one can't cost more than 2500 bucks or they are screwed right out of the box. So what, they going to charge 2500 bucks for a GH6?

As a GH5 owner, I'm winning all the time.

I see people all bitching about newer cameras and I just sit back and relax, I see newer features on cameras that I think might be cool and then I remember how it feels to look at your footage and be reminded of film, to see people grading UMP / RED / Alexa footage and then grade the 10-bit HLG and have it feel the same.  To read about 8K and think about how that will be true 4K footage and not feel like somehow your equipment isn't good enough any more.

When someone develops a LUT pack to match with the Alexa and have the best colourist on YT (Juan Melara) comment "This is actually really impressive. Top work!" and I know that I can get the Alexa look with any of my footage if I want to.

The GH6 could be $1 and have 8K 16-bit RAW with integrated drone and I wouldn't feel bad about my GH5 at all.  My only stress now is buying lenses - there are so many and I want to have all of them!

7 hours ago, IronFilm said:

With one of those guns that everyone should own. 

Remind me again - that's the AR15, right?

4 hours ago, mercer said:

So, I took a drive yesterday in the cold to do a test of a few lenses... the Nikkor 24mm f/2 vs the Carl Zeiss 25mm f/2.8 in the Rollei QBM mount. 

Here are the results...

Nikkor 24mm f/2

Carl Zeiss 25mm f/2.8

I found the speed of the Nikkor to be pretty helpful considering that that shot was taken about 10 minutes after the Zeiss shot, but there is just something about that cold Zeiss look that has a definite pop to it that seems more cinematic... maybe it's in my head? 

Full disclosure... I didn't attempt to match these images, I just did a basic Rec709 conversion and a little bit of curves and saturation. Also I am still using my MacBook Air screen for all of this preliminary color work and lens tests. I'm in the process of deciding on a monitor upgrade... so these may look like crap compared to what I am seeing in Resolve... oh the fun of hobbyist color work... lol.

The Zeiss is a lot bluer which makes sense given the time of day - you can't use that as a fair test.

Having said that, take away the lesson that this is what happens when you grade like this - if you have a go matching the Nikkor to the Zeiss then it's a free lesson in grading

3 hours ago, Nikkor said:

I'm bored of those seascapes, I want to see some New York City footage.

I prefer the zeiss because I don't really like nervous bokeh,but let's continue this review with NYC footage, I want to see some glorious out of focus lights on the zeiss, I love it when they are dense dot and not some fuzzy crap, and I think that's where the zeiss really will show off.

Interestingly, I was distracted by how sharp the bokeh was in both the Zeiss and Nikkor images above and prefer the softer Angenieux rendering below, but for night shots with bright light bokeh maybe harder edges would be better.  

Great - now we need a set of day lenses and a set of night lenses!

2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a bit of technical jousting and whatever myself but at some point all this shit has to mean something tangible in terms of an image.

The amount of A/B/C/D camera comparisons that I see getting chewed over that use completely different lenses on each camera bewilders me to be honest, like the lens is somehow incidental.

I've posted this before with regard to making a Cinecorder but I'm definitely going to get rid of a few bits and pieces and buy one of these Angenieux 25-250mm if I can find a decent one.

 

"at some point all this shit has to mean something tangible in terms of an image"

Truth.  Otherwise we're just the video equivalents of those people that photograph brick walls!

2 hours ago, mercer said:

If this stuff was one hundred percent scientific, then I’d be a lot better and we’d all be Kubrick but it isn’t no matter how much math you throw at an explanation. Art isn’t always describable and a brush stroke can only explain so much. It’s when science and art melds with craft and emotion does a beautiful image appear. I am far from that goal but it doesn’t mean I can’t recognize it without explanation.

end rant

That Angenieux looks beautiful. I’m always tempted to pick up the 35-70mm Nikon Mount Angenieux until I see the price tag. With my brief stint with the Micro, I had the 15mm c-mount and it was like painting with pastels and sharp as a tack at the same time.

There's the same problem in audio of describing aesthetics in a consistent way.  It creates all the same confusions and arguments because people all hear differently, and people have different preferences, so comments like "A is better than B" "worth the price" etc are automatically a problem, but even things like "X is faster than Y" "X has better imaging than Y" "X has better bass than Y" etc are also difficult because even when people have the same definition of what those words mean (which takes a shared history of experience) each person might hear different aspects of those things differently and depending on how you value those different aspects of that trait will depend on how you think each one rates.

There's also another complication which I'm not sure is true for video, but if definitely true for audio and that is that the 'rules' change depending on the overall quality level of your equipment.  For example, if you have a low quality digital source, like a cheap CD player, then the high frequencies are unpleasant and so speakers that don't have an extended high-frequency response are more musical because they're covering up a problem elsewhere in your system.  However, when you start going up the levels going from a bad CD player to a very good CD player there is a point at which having speakers that hide the problem by de-emphasising the whole high-frequency range becomes a liability and not an asset.  Unfortunately what this means is that people with low quality systems will evaluate high-quality speakers and dislike them, then flood the internet with comments about how they sound awful.
The main difference is that you can't hear an audio system over the internet, so video is a bit different in that sense.  Imagine all the issues you'd have with cameras if people were all warring in the forums and reviewers relied on ad money etc, but you couldn't see any photographs or video except in person!  Yeah, it is that bad.

Synergy is always a thing, art is always subjective, haters gonna hate but who cares!  Just like Casey Neistat said about haters.. "People who don't create don't get an opinion"

7 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

There is a specific new fangled term for cameras that do 24 fps with an electronic shutter though.

"Video Cameras" I think it is what they refer to them as

Joking aside, thats actually the broader point here as stills extraction will eventually prevail in all of those disciplines and sport will probably be the first to fall entirely.

To bring it back to the topic of the thread, cameras with 8K capture will accelerate that.

So, are the sports photographer jobs turning into sports videographer jobs then?  Or will we end up with a single agency having a few cameras around the place and only employing a few people?  I know that it used to be that there was a photography team at every newspaper and it's not like that anymore, but people still want to see sports events without being there, surely?

What software are you using @Snowbro?

LUTs are a last-resort for me, but in Resolve there are more options than other platforms, so you play the cards you have

I agree with @mercer about exposing C-Log as ETTR, or just don't shoot C-log unless you need to for the DR.

I suspect that the LUT you use probably isn't the issue, it's the image.  The way to check this is to film a scene in C-Log, and in one of the normal modes (whatever takes your fancy) and then compare the following:

• the normal profile SOOC
• the C-Log with a LUT
• the C-Log graded manually to match the LUT

I suspect you'll see that the last two are pretty similar, although that will depend on how many tools your software has and how good at grading you are.  Even if this just re-affirms what you already know, you'll still learn something.

10 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

If they put as much innovation into the XH2 as they did the XT3, we'll have a real winner. 

I agree.

The other part of this equation is to remember the bigger picture.  For me, that means lenses.  

I think a lot of people were Canon or Nikon shooters, and invested in that glass.  Then the combination of GH line of cameras, the small size of Panasonic and Olympus m43 cameras for travel, and the lacklustre video quality from CaNikon might have tempted many away from CaNikon to m43 and investing in that lens system.  At the start of that progression Fuji was no-where for video (that I'm aware of anyway) and so m43 might have stolen some video shooters from them too.  

Now what we're talking about is Fuji releasing an excellent offering for video and supposedly all the m43 users will change systems?  Or that the CaNikon users who didn't change when the GH line had 4K and CaNikon had 720p will somehow be tempted by Fuji?  For me, it will take Fuji releasing a string of solid and really superior camera offerings, and not releasing a bad one, before people will shift in any great numbers, and although they've hit a good combo with the XT-3, the Pocket 4K (and potentially GH6) is keeping m43 people interested, Nikon getting RAW will keep Nikon people interested, who knows what Canon is doing to keep their video users but it's still working, and Sony are releasing cameras at break-neck speed with a long-anticipated A7SIII in the wings, not to mention Panasonic who will likely announce 8K in FF and Sharp who already have for m43.

If Fuji are going to keep from being an also-run in video they're going to have to go 8K, RAW, or deliver the exact combination of features that everyone wants and no-one else provides, or a combination of both.

Personally, I think it's a great time to go to full-manual FF lenses with adapters, that way you're not trapped in a system.

5 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

As I say, specs don't always translate into something breaking into the market when it comes to working professionals, particularly one thats dominated by two systems.

And 'systems' is the key word there as Nikon and Canon have not only the equipment range (including the boring stuff to do with image transmission) but also the infrastructure with service centres and on site event support to keep it all working.

Incidentally, when you use the mechanical shutter on the a9 (which you would do to minimise the banding with the ES from pitchside LED ad boards) then the a9 is a rather less than stellar 5fps.

With all due respect to the Northrups, I think they have some ideas about what a professional sports photographer needs and does without much if any practical experience of ever actually having done it.

For one thing they look far too healthy, wealthy and happy to have done it 

I agree.  

With respect to the Northrups, they have consistently pointed out that Sony was an incomplete offering, missing pro features, pro lenses, and the pro support facilities and servicing networks, but as they gradually get the whole infrastructure in place there is a chance that features like faster burst mode could actually impact what the pros choose to use.

It's easy to assume that no-one on YT can spell 'nuance', and you'd be forgiven because it is true for most, unfortunately, but I actually like the Northrups because they present facts as facts, opinions as opinions, guesses as guesses, and when they make claims they are happy to show their logic.  If you don't agree with something they say then that's normal, but you're not left feeling that anything sly or underhanded is going on.

On 1/15/2019 at 7:16 AM, webrunner5 said:

Sure it will help you out lens cost wise but. It's like this new Zeiss FF camera. How many do you think are going to buy it. There is only so many Dentists LoL. The FF arena is just becoming too damn crowded now for all of them to make a buck. Somebody is going to bite the dust hard.

I agree.  There are so many people in the market already and now Sharp throwing their hat in the ring.  I've always had a bit of a question mark around people like Sigma who have released a camera you've never heard of and you go look it up and it was released two years ago.  You wonder if they sold any at all.

On 1/15/2019 at 7:42 AM, BTM_Pix said:

To be brutually honest, nothing has come along in the mirrorless realm from any of the manufacturers (including Nikon and Canon themselves) that has come close to usurping mirrored versions for sport at that level anyway so in that respect it won't be much different.

I thought that the Sony A9 had potential as a sports shooter?  I have no experience with it personally, but I remember the Northrups saying it had a burst mode that killed the CaNikon flagship sports cameras.  I think that was when Sony released some longer lenses.

5 hours ago, Kisaha said:

8K is important for VR/360 in my opinion, and that will drive it considerably, I agree, but in a different sense than what we are experiencing with 1080p/4K hardware. It is going to be a whole new thing with newer range of products.

I agree.  In fact, here's a professional 360 camera that's 11k30 in 3D (ie, two video signals), 8k30 3D 10-bit, 5k120, h264/h265 and 12 stops of DR.

https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-titan/

1 hour ago, mercer said:

Let us know how it goes. My first attempts with ML on the eos-m, a few years ago, were maddening. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get rid of the pink dots but I hear that isn’t an issue anymore.

I think those are the Focus Pixels?  If so, MLVApp removes them when you process the footage - it's a tick-box.

Andrew wasn't kidding about MLVApp being a pretty cool piece of software - it is super easy to use and has so many features it's starting to look like using Adobe Lightroom!

3 hours ago, BenEricson said:

Looks nice. I love a compact setup.

Do you shoot mostly at night or in low luminance areas? It can be a struggle to compete with natural light in a bright space, having a few 5/1s can a life saver to create a nice look. 

Would it also limit your ability to control practicals too?  Eg, if you wanted to have a practical be a subtle thing in the background, you would only be able to overpower it to a certain degree.  

BUT, if you aren't competing with other lights then it makes sense to me!

2 hours ago, TheRenaissanceMan said:

Very much enjoyed the look of the Canon CN-Es (same glass as the Ls with better QC, coatings, and housings) on Helium for a recent short I gaffed. Attempted a more raw, naturalistic feeling look than I generally do, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Grabs are from ungraded Rec.709 proxies.

Nice looking images, but wow are those lenses expensive!!

I understand the advantages of cinema primes and how they can pay for themselves on a big shoot, but yeah, you'd really want the images to be super nice!

2 hours ago, TurboRat said:

Yeah the Full Frame cameras are better in Low Light. What do you think are the advantages of GH5s aside from the flip screen and the small lenses?

A7III has ibis though (not as good as GH5) so I think that's a better choice

10-bit is a pretty big advantage of the GH5 over the Sonys.

+1 for what @mercer said.

I played with ML on my 700D and found the workflow with MLVApp to be quite straight-forward.

But.. ML isn't for everyone.  Some things to consider are:

• ML isn't one thing.  It's a modular software system with different versions across different camera models.  Each of those versions can contain features that are fully-tested and bullet-proof, but may also have features that are cutting-edge with limited testing or even bleeding-edge with zero testing.  Depending on what features you use, there may be risks of errors or bugs, or in the bleeding-edge stuff, potentially crashes and loss of footage.  There has been some buzz around ML killing SD cards or other hardware, but the reality is that this has happened in very few instances and isn't really something you should be concerned about.
• The higher-resolution RAW functionality is still quite new, although lower resolutions are pretty well developed now, so there's the risk of bugs.
• There is no manual, and it's pretty technical.  In most companies you have product development teams who work out what customers want, and designers who will tell the developers how to make things easy to use, and support teams who deal with customer enquiries and write manuals.  ML only has developers, and forums.  On the forums there are users who help each-other and developers who answer questions when they get time, but if you're in the threads about the cutting-edge or bleeding edge stuff, you'll find that a large percentage of the conversation is developers speaking in machine code to each other.  You can ask questions and sometimes you'll get answers, but sometimes you won't and maybe searching will help but maybe it won't.
• It moves pretty fast.  Certainly faster than the third-party resources such as YT videos or blog posts can keep up with.  Often if you're looking for help with something you will find a how-to and you'll follow it through but get to a point where it no longer works because they changed something and the tutorial uses a menu option that doesn't exist anymore or whatever.  You have to kind of work things out for yourself sometimes.

I love ML, I think it's great and I wish them every success.  But it is a very different experience to the standard firmware that comes in any consumer camera.

The end results speak for themselves!  Nice work

It's funny how people talk about the GH5, and GH5S and P4K in similar terms, to me the GH5 is in a different class of cameras because it has IBIS.  It might seem to be just another spec, but for anyone who needs to get usable hand-held shots it's practically the king.  That's why I bought one over the A7III, P4K, GH5S, EOS-R, Fuji XH-1, etc.  If I'd not needed IBIS then I would have been ordering the P4K like a shot.

The 'look' of high-quality older cameras is an interesting thing, and I know that @mercer and @webrunner5 have an eye for it.  I think I do as well, having ranked the cameras in the 2012 Zacuto Camera Challenge in descending order of price as a blind test, but I'm not sure what part of the look it is that I'm attuned to.  
I suspect that one aspect people often get attached to is that it doesn't look as real as modern cameras.  I've noticed that modern cameras and modern TVs look more real somehow, and to my eyes that hasn't been a good thing.  Watching TV soaps on the odd occasion I visit someone and the TV is on I am struck by how much it looks like normal people in a room rather than TV stars in a fictional world.  When previously you might have watched a show you're not familiar with for five minutes and come away with questions about the story or characters, now I'm left with impressions about how makeup needs to improve and the whole thing looks like a home video despite being shot professionally.  
I suspect that this comparison to how cinema used to look is simply one that younger generations just don't have, so they can't be using it as their benchmark.  I once read an article saying that the music you listen to at 14 years old is the music that you will like forever because at that age your stage of development and hormones and whatever make the things in your life at that time kind of baked-in, so they stay with you.  If you were 14 and mostly watching TV at home and going to the movies in a digital projection setup with THX everything, then that surreal and magical aesthetic of film just wouldn't be in your experience.

In terms of 10-bit or more workflows, look to the ML thread.  I shot test clips at 10, 12 and 14 bit RAW and compared them and decided that I could barely tell the difference between 10 and 12 bits.  ML aficionados with an eye for colour claimed 14-bits was the way to go, but acknowledged that 12-bits was almost as good and that shooting 14 was mostly because it was there and didn't cost them anything.  The difference between 8-bit from my XC10 and 10-bit from my GH5 is huge, 10-bit RAW would be better again due to the lack of compression, but I think 12-bit RAW or 14-bit RAW really aren't going to excite many people in a practical kind of way.

Lastly, @thebrothersthre3 the reputation of MFT matters to Panasonic.  If they don't reassure their MFT customers, the uncertainty might lead to some people switch to FF that would have stayed in MFT, which then would mean less customers for the GH6, devaluing the system and potentially causing a feedback loop that devalues the system.  Technology devalues in camera bodies, sure, but lens systems devalue at a different rate.  If you don't think that people care what their equipment is worth, have a read in the XC10 thread, and see how many people liked the camera and the image but sold it saying they couldn't keep an investment in a camera that was falling in value.

8 hours ago, noone said:

Dissolving bearings is not fun but it is also not that common either.       I am just saying it DOES happen.       Even with it, the FD 85 1.2 L is one of my favourite legacy lenses (along with the other FD L lenses I have had).         Much better than the regular lenses from all system I have had generally.     There really is something for having those aspherical elements in early primes and most others didn't (Nikon did in the Noct and look at the cult following and cult prices they go for).   Canon had a couple of L zooms with aspherical elements too that are supposedly good as well

I have so much more to learn!

8 hours ago, noone said:

As for a cheap 40mm lens that works great on M43, don't overlook the Canon EF 40 2.8 STM used on a non focal reducer AF adapter.       I used it on a GX7 with Kipon adapter and the AF (for AFS anyway) was virtually native.

I've gone to a completely manual focus lens lineup now.  AF-S would be great, but I need to be able to pull focus manually and fly-by-wire just doesn't cut it for me anymore.  In a sense, I'm using vintage lenses as an affordable alternative to cinema primes.  I'm even a bit annoyed when a lens doesn't have click-less aperture adjustments!

It sounds like marketing BS to keep people excited about m43.

It's nice that they're implying there will be a GH6, but I wouldn't bet the farm on them still having an MFT line in 5-10 years.

7 hours ago, leeys said:

It's a strange realm to fight though; you'd think they'd do something more consumer focused.

Nah, go big or go home.

and a consumer 8K m43 camera is definitely going big.  

Just ask yourself WWCD? (what would Canon do?) and then do the opposite!!

2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Nah, you only need a flight of stairs.

Did you see what they did in the modern revival about Daleks and stairs?  It was quite an amusing moment..

24 minutes ago, thephoenix said:

 stop complaining and buy yourslef a proper photo camera !!"? loved that

Yeah, I know!

Some criticisms just need to answered by telling the people to get a grip ???

1 hour ago, FoxAdriano said:

Ok, thanks. Out of curiosity: if I use Resolve, is there an integrated filter like Neat Video so that I can do without buying the plugins for Edius 9?

The paid version has both spatial and temporal noise reduction. I am pretty sure the temporal NR isn't in the free version but the spatial one might be.

There's a bunch of plugins with the free version and a whole bunch more with the paid one. Plus everything that's in Fusion which seems to be enormously complicated and thorough.