kye

9 hours ago, thephoenix said:

thanks.

the thing with a layer under a mask is that is has to match perfectly the upper layer otherwise you see the difference and of course you see the line where both layers ends and starts

If you have a model in front of a green screen but the screen doesn't extend out to the edges completely, then adding a mask so that those edges go through to a layer that is just plain green then you will have essentially extended your green screen in post.  Then after that you can key out the green and it will extend all the way to the edges of the frame.

It's fiddly but it would work.

I've done a much more complicated splice of two frames before and got an excellent result.

5 hours ago, thephoenix said:

hi all

i have to film someone next week. will be so kind of static, the subject will not walk but remain still (of course arms will be moving).

i want the final result to be as if i had filmed it in a studio on a white cyclo.

problem is that i probably will have to shoot at home where i don't have much room.

so i am thinking two options:

- i shoot on a white background but it will not be large enough and will have to expand it on fusion. has anyone done that before ?

- i shoot on green background and do chromakey to add a white background i have in my photo files.

what is the best option according to you ?

final result will be b&w.

thanks for the help

Assuming you're editing in Resolve, you can key out any colour, so if you are able to choose a colour, choose a colour that isn't in the shot you want.  I haven't blanked out part of a frame before, but one thing you can do is to make a transparency mask to make the part of the frame (the edges) transparent and then put a later underneath with the replacement image.  I've done a similar thing before and didn't need Fusion, just layered up a couple of clips on the timeline.

I'm sure there are people more knowledgeable than I am with green screening, but in case no-one replies, a quick google should give you the basics of what to look out for.

Good luck!

14 hours ago, Mako Sports said:

 

Nice low angle ???

8 hours ago, Django said:

I am not looking at it in "Canon-land" simply observing with my own eyes the professional scene in my location, Paris France, which visibly differs much from your own local observations (which I am not disputing btw).

That said, living and working in the number one fashion capital of the world, I think I do know a bit about that scene. So to hear " mILC have a bigger share there, for sure " is rather a surprise.

From celebrity model studio shoots to fashion editorials, to the runway or even street bloggers during Fashion week... I'd say it's 95% CaNikon.  And 80% of that 1DX2/5D3/5D4.

Battery life, weather sealing, FPS, balance with telephoto lenses, portrait orientation control. Flagship DSLR still own that market. Canon edges it off with skintone CS.

For video, I think it also depends. TV/Broadcast isn't the only market. We're shifting more & more towards digital content by one man bands.

In the rental houses I visit, i see just as much Canon gear getting rented out then Sony. I also know showrunners that swear only by RED/ARRI. YMMV.

Last year I spent about three months abroad in tourist spots through various countries and was keeping a lookout on what cameras I was seeing around the place.  What surprised me was that I think I saw three Canon sightings amongst the literally hundreds of Nikon sightings.  Most of the cameras I saw were those fixed lens super-zoom cameras that look like a DSLR but are smaller.

Either I didn't know that Nikon is killing it in the fancy family camera category, or that I just happened to go where they're popular, but considering I went to places like Rome / Pompeii / Tokyo // HK // Singapore you'd think that the tourists would be pretty international.  It got to be so predictable that I did full double-takes the few times I saw a Canon logo.  

4 hours ago, deezid said:

Fuji and Sony on the other hand don't bother fixing these problems.

I honestly don't understand why many cameras show the exact same artifacts my old Grundig CRT TV showed in the late 90s... ?

It's a pity they don't allow more flexibility.

I'd suggest that they just include a menu called Don't Go In Here that allows the user to turn everything on and off etc, but there are people that just can't keep their hands to themselves.  My dad used to work for a large company managing all the PCs and there was a staff member who would call the Helpdesk about every week or so with some strange problem.  At first they tried fixing it but couldn't work out what had happened so they erased it completely and reinstalled everything.  Some other problem a week later, same answer.  A third problem and they noticed the pattern and replaced his whole computer, another problem a week later.  Dad got involved and did some digging on his machine and worked out he spent about an hour a day screwing with random settings in the registry, which is a database deep inside Windows that has probably millions of variables that control all sorts of strange things.  The point is that he was changing things that weren't labelled, there was no mention of on the internet, or anything.  They tried everything, talking to him about it, his manager got involved, it went for months and they couldn't work out how to stop it happening.  It got worse and was taking up hours of IT time every week, he was going around the company badmouthing IT and causing big problems.  In the end they had to change the IT policies for the whole business to enable them to lock him out of the program and not be able to screw with things anymore.  There were a few other people who worked there that needed that access and they ended up having to change a bunch of things to allow them to continue to do their jobs.  

He obviously had some kind of mental issue that meant he couldn't stop doing it, and couldn't accept that he was causing his own problems.  Imagine if you're Canon or Fuji or Nikon and you give the entire world access to settings where people like this will screw with all of them and then when they don't like how things have turned out will go online and post criticisms relentlessly forever.  You might be thinking "it's only sharpening or NR" but think about how much photographers or YouTubers talk about cameras being "sharp" or about ISO performance.

It's unfortunate, but I think the only reason that some manufacturers can put real settings on everything is that either that these people can't afford these cameras, or when these people play with them the image will still look good, or that when they screw with things and they look bad and complain the other users are educated enough that either they can see it's user-error or no-one else cares about it.

1 hour ago, zerocool22 said:

I use Resolve. (dont use proxies)

And it's smooth to edit with?  That's pretty nice.  Are the standard flavours of RAW also fine to edit with, or just BRAW?

45 minutes ago, zerocool22 said:

Yeah I never bothered with cinemaDNG because of the file sizes. But now with BRAW I dont use prores at all anymore, it is so much better at the same datarates as prores! Its a gamechanger for sure. 

Which NLE are you using and do you render proxy media?  I'm not sure of the workflow, but prores had the advantage of being a dream to edit with.

2 hours ago, ntblowz said:

Multimedia Producer ( or specialist?) is in demand I think, that how my South African colleague at work got his visa from, but now he is turning into full time pilot for Air NZ, what a change in career! 

Nice.  I think that pilot isn't something you'd normally go into unless you have an interest in aviation, so (assuming that he does) then that's really awesome to hear.  So many people are into aviation and don't really get to spend much time in the industry, let alone in the air.  I get motion sickness so an aviation career is definitely not on my radar, but I've been on a couple of aerial sight-seeing tours, one in a helicopter and one in a small plane, and I can really see the appeal, it feels like you're completely free.

46 minutes ago, thephoenix said:

 

That is an interesting video.  

And when I say interesting, I mean interesting because it's so boring.

And when I say boring, I mean his findings, not the video itself.

And when I say his findings are boring, it's because when he compares the two, he finds that both have pros and cons, like we'd expect, the BM has less features, the RED costs both legs and a kidney.

Possibly the biggest point of commentary in the video was that when he took the BM to the teachers protests in the rain, he said that he didn't take the RED because it's just not practical.  I'm watching that section and just thinking "of course you've taken the BM, there's no way you'd take the RED out handheld in the rain".  

2 hours ago, kaylee said:

canon: we expect a 50% decline in sales over the next two years because our products suck so much

lol...

57 minutes ago, Robert Collins said:

By the by, one of the obvious observations in photography - is that the many of the most famous photographers in history came from 'independently wealthy' families - meaning they never really needed to work for a living...

Off hand, I am thinking of Ansel Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, Sebastiao Salgardo, Richard Avedon but there are many more. It isnt really surprising I guess because it is far easier to create a body of interesting work if you have no pressure to earn your daily bread and butter through weddings, school pics and other commercial photography.

I wonder if the same rule applies in film...

I'd imagine so.

There's a thing in the fashion industry (and others too I'd imagine) where to get a job you need to work as an unpaid intern for long periods of time.  The fact that you have to work long hours and these offices are in the middle of big and expensive cities means that you can't work a second job to pay rent, so these opportunities are basically only available to people with money.

Considering that to make money in film you must do a lot of work up-front as well as make contacts and build your network, if you didn't have pressure to put food on the table it would really make a large difference.  Not as much as working in downtown NY 15 hours a day, but some at least.

16 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

Hello,

I am looking for a baseplate I can use on my pocket 4K but also on my ursa mini pro. So def pretty small one. The idea is to mount a lens support on it.

Any recommendations?

Cheers

This isn't really my area, but if you want a flat bar that has multiple points with 1/4-20 screws then search in bay for "flash bracket" and look for these things..

They come in various sizes and the cheap ones are aluminium but I've also got a larger one that is steel, so sturdy enough.

Not sure if they're useful, but just in case you weren't aware of them

11 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

No, the adjustment is just in the rails part so that you can re-adjust the height of the lens support.

This is a similarish one on my BMP4K.

With the tripod plate on the bottom, the lens support centre column forms another contact point so when you align it you can settle down on a surface like it is here.

It all depends on the lenses you put on it but with something like this PL prime you obviously need that adjustment to get the camera up higher but with a longer tripod plate on the base it becomes stable enough to set down.

 

Nice setup!  

There is a certain satisfaction in building something highly functional that is also simple and light-weight.  Maybe I should start a "Rig porn" thread!!

4 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I am not really too sure all these company's are holding back. I think there is a physical limitation heat wise on these Hybrid bodies, and 4K 60p 10bit or better just isn't going to happen unless it is in a Cine type body with a heat sink from hell, or a fan, or both. I think all these manufacturers have known about the 30 minute limit coming off in the EU. They can't put out cameras that only go 12 minutes or whatever without taking a Lot of Heat, pun intended. They are just going to have to face the music and say small bodies just are not going to be able to meet the future needs for video. The PK4 and the Z Cam E2 have proved it really can't be done in a goofy A6000 body size.

The XC10 had a fan and it was quite a small body.  but you're right that there are thermal limitations.  For Panasonic to warn about overheating really is a sign!

2 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I don't know, Cine to me has changed so much in the last 5 years. Other than really big productions with really skilled Glidecam operators most stuff was shot on tripods. Now there is a Lot of Gimbal shots, even just Raw Run n Gun. Motion seems to be in now.

Yeah.

I suspect it's a mixture of things.  

I saw an interesting video talking about shooting portraits with slower wider angle lenses instead of more traditional fast portrait lenses, and there were some comments about how the wider and deeper-DOF look seems more authentic to consumers now, considering that what we see shot with mobile phones almost always lacks clever editing and what we see with "real cameras" is almost always heavily produced and edited, so consumers tend to believe the mobile phone look more.  This combined with the reality-tv style of shooting has changed the way we experience and interpret video content.

Gimbals or Run-n-gun can be faster to shoot with, better ISO performance and higher DR it would mean that you can shoot with less lights, and potentially light a whole room then just move setups within it instead of having to reset lighting for every setup.  Combined with face-detect AF (which isn't really there for cinema cameras but will be soon) would mean that you can move faster and miss less shots due to focus issues, and either de-skill your focus puller or eliminate them entirely, saving more money.

12 hours ago, Jonesy Jones said:

If you haven't been paying attention, Apple, for the last year or two, has been stealing entertainment execs and producers. It is widely known that they are producing original content for a soon to be released TV streaming service. Here's an article about the known content under production. With names like Spielberg and Oprah, they are definitely all in.

To know why this is such a big deal for us, the smaller filmmaker, you must be aware of 3 things.

1. The Netflix model is unsustainable for producers of original content, maybe even Netflix. Subscription conglomerates are the end of the line for content, not the beginning. By the time your content begins streaming it hopefully has already been profitable. If Netflix is not the content graveyard, it is at least the retirement home. I would even dare say that Netflix itself is struggling to profit from their own content, thus the upcoming subscription increase. Sure, there are interesting alternate options available like Amazon Prime and Viimeo OTT, and there are certainly some filmmakers who have done well using the streaming universe to release their films, but these are exceptions not the rule. Currently, the streaming model is a crap shot, and it's difficult to build a business plan on one.
2. Consumers are creatures of habit. If you expect consumers to alter their patterns of behavior to buy/rent/subscribe/watch your content, you better have an Ace up your sleeve. Otherwise, prepare to be disappointed. I will confidently claim that consumers consume long form content in these ways -- theaters, broadcast, Redbox, streaming (Netflix). For the smaller filmmaker, the first 3 are not really available to us since cost of entry is so high and there are so many gatekeepers. And the 4th is unsustainable (see #1). Thus, there is an obvious problem for filmmakers. Even if you succeed in producing absolutely amazing content, there is likely no sustainable channel to market it on.
3. Consumers will not likely pay to consume. This is not entirely true. Consumers still buy movie tickets. Some still have cable or satellite subscriptions. They still rent from Redbox. But see #2 regarding cost of entry. Ironically, in an age where the demand for video content is at an all time high, no one is buying it. When was the last time you bought or rented a movie? I ask people this all time. Answers range from years to months. Regardless, this is not sustainable. The reasons for this is complex. But I propose that a significant component is cognitive dissonance. Unlike the bygone days of VHS and then DVD, there is currently no standard. What do I buy, physical or digital? If physical, which? Blu Ray? UHD? HDR? 8K? If digital, where? Apple? Amazon? Youtube? etc. Digital rentals don't quite have the same obstacles, but most often you are still expecting a consumer to alter their pattern of behavior to rent your film/episode. Again, see #2. Bottomline, amazing content does not equal sales.

So how will Apple change this?

I believe Apple's entry into content creation is going to change the way most consumers consume content. As people gravitate to Apple's content, they will naturally be using it's products. This is going to create a shift. Its possible that soonish we'll all be watching content from a centralized ecosystem of Apple devices and services. Love or hate Apple, when they move, so does the industry. Here's another short article about Apple's entry into the entertainment market. But this is one of many articles. There are plenty more.

IF Apple successfully creates a platform with an enormous market share of subscribers/viewers/renters/buyers, then convincing John and Jane Consumer to buy or rent or subscribe will be far easier. Why? There will be a standard again. Cognitive dissonance will be gone. Even physical sales -- whichever format -- can include a digital Apple code. Buyers don't have to worry about holding on to their current physical media or worrying that it will eventually become obsolete. Apple is actually very generous and offers future versions/formats of your purchased media at no additional charge. I'm not expecting a massive shift in sales vs subscriptions, but selling, if that's your thing, will be far easier. Apple will have done half the work since we'll all be watching via Apple already.

All of that is already available via iTunes or Apple TV, what will be different?

I think Apple will alter consumers habits. I believe this is actually the most significant point. Currently, consumers do consume via Apple devices or services, but I do not think it is a very significant market share. If they effectively change large amounts of consumers to alter their patterns of behavior from Netflix and broadcast, then your and my content can live right next to the big blockbuster films and TV shows.

How does this make the streaming model sustainable?

Well, it simply makes it possible. Currently we have virtually no sustainable ways to distribute our content for the reasons described above. If Apple succeeds in shaking up the industry, as I believe they will, you can focus on creating amazing content and marketing it where consumers already consume. It guarantees nothing but an opportunity. 

Interesting.

We periodically buy or rent content here in Australia.  The only way to get Game of Thrones here (legally) is to pay for an extortionate Foxtel subscription or just buy GOT.  We compared buying it on disc vs iTunes and iTunes was cheaper.  We don't care about 4K, or even HD sometimes, so we're not paying top dollar.  Good SD looks fine on our modest sized LCD TV.

We also rent movies from Telstra on occasion to watch for family movie night.  The kids go to the movies with their friends sometimes, and if there's a big movie that I really want to watch on the big screen (like Star Wars) then we'll go to the movies, but otherwise we don't go to the movies with the kids.  Instead we rent a movie from Telstra Bigpond for about $5 or so for the SD version.  We all watch Netflix and YT but the newer release movies aren't available through streaming.

Apple is great at making platforms and locking people into them, so I think they have a real chance to dethrone Netflix if they are smart about it.  Considering that Apple operate other platforms (apps, books, podcasts, music, etc) which have far less barriers to entry, might mean that its a successful middle-ground between the media conglomerate world (that Netflix is really part of) and the open-to-everyone world (that YouTube is part of).  

Assuming low barriers to entry, this is kind of what YouTube RED was meant to be.  We subscribe to YouTube, mostly because it gives offline viewing and no ads, but now that most good YT creators have ads for sponsors within their videos it's kind of getting annoying to me now.  

I'd pay decently for something where we get a mixture of Netflix type content as well as sponsor-free content from professional YT creators.  There's lots of talk amongst YT creators about having all their eggs in one basket with YT as a platform too, so having a competitor would be very interesting to creators too I think.

9 hours ago, ntblowz said:

About Netflix model is not sustainable I completely agree! They just canceled Travelers ????

Damn, that was one we were watching ???

8 hours ago, Kisaha said:

This is daytime robbery.  I agree 100% with your article @Andrew Reid

I think you got auto-corrected - didn't you mean to say "standard marketing"...?

It's basic economics.  Companies will push and push until certain limits are met, and the phrase for this is "what the market can bear" - not "what the market gets mildly annoyed at" or "what the market would like if it's Christmas".  Saying "what the market can bear" is basically like saying "what you can get away with before the average person goes completely f*cking nuts".

We talk about these companies like they're people, and that's fine.  The problem is that we don't analyse them like people.  There was a great documentary series called The Corporation in which an psychology professor who consults for the FBI "compares the profile of the contemporary profitable business corporation to that of a clinically diagnosed psychopath". (link)

Besides, I called it September last year when I said "The best new camera purchase in 2018 is... Don't!" ???

17 hours ago, famoss said:

As I was working first time on HLG I was disappointed watching the result on a usual TV. I tried to use Resolve but it was to complex for me (I am no professional) and also did not want to change editing software. So I tried to go another way using LUTs to get colours back. I did not found HLG (!) LUTs in the internet at that time.

I am pretty sure that Resolve offers many possibilities to work on HLG. What I want to show is an easy way to grade HLG footage getting a good result. HDR will be a rising feature and will be implemented in more public editing software in future. I am sure about this. Just drag and drop the LUT on your clip, finished.

I offer a LUT for free. So you do not have to pay anything. The other LUTs differ in tone/colour mapping. Depended on your footage you can chose the suitable solution yourself.

So for me Resolve or taking LUTs are both feasible solutions.

Bye!

There's some confusion online around HLG and conversions.

• HLG is actually a delivery format, so if you shoot in HLG and are going to display it as HLG, you just hook it up to a HLG monitor and grade the way you want, no LUTs required
• HLG isn't the technical term - it's more of a non-specific marketing term, and there's conflicting information online about whether HLG is Rec.2020 or Rec.2100, but if you're looking for conversion LUTs then those are what to look for
• I did some experiments with my GH5 and I don't believe that HLG on the GH5 is either Rec.2020 or Rec.2100, but in the end I concluded that it's close enough to Rec.2100 that I don't care about the slight differences

It's complicated stuff.  I tell people that using Resolve is like flying the space shuttle, and to extend that analogy, navigating different colour spaces and gammas is like knowing how to be a pilot.  To get to where you want to go you must know how and where to fly and know what controls to adjust to do so.  Resolve, HLG capable cameras, and HLG capable TVs are all cheap now and available to the general public, but it's like making the space shuttle cheap and available, being able to afford it doesn't mean you will know how to fly it

13 hours ago, Kisaha said:

Professionals do not change gear easily, or at will. Equipment is a very serious commitment and investment. That is why Canonikon are still at the top.

Unfortunately, in our profession, you always have to buy something, and that something, usually is very expensive. I mean, some professionals buy pen and paper, and we have to buy 2000$ lenses and microphones. It's all good..

I know..  I wrote that to try and cut through the continual "new camera" discussions on here so that people didn't think Levi was just another YouTuber who only talked about new cameras.

It's us amateurs who are buying the new equipment all the time!!

In terms of pen and paper, I remember talking to an amateur screen writer who wrote feature films once, and he said that the writer was the only person without a budget.  He was referring to the idea that he can write space battles or car chases or battle scenes with thousands of people just as easily as he can write two people talking in a room, but for every other person involved in making a film there are huge cost differences of filming those different types of scenes.

10 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Oliveira was used to say a painter could be hunger only to be able to buy the pencils, no hungry would be enough for a filmmaker to afford film or lab fees.

Fortunately we have digital tools today : ) EOS M ML RAW is a Godsend for 100 bucks or so. Bought three units this week : -)

IIRC that's why we get the strange budget sizes for films, like No Budget which is actually a large amount of money - it's because the cost to develop the film for a movie was a cost that couldn't be lowered below a certain point.  Even if you only shot a 1:1 shooting ratio, you would still have to buy and develop 90 minutes of film, which cost a lot of money.  Nowadays for that same amount of money you can buy a modest camera setup, have a small budget for expenses, and pay everyone to make a film and still have money left over.  It wouldn't be a great film, but the idea you can make a feature film for less than a "no budget" film is amusing from a language perspective

9 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I am in the middle of the evaluation. The taste is a bit off, but I Think I feel a little smarter. I am hoping no side effects like twitching ears, hopping in random directions, etc.. It could be a breakthrough for an amazing cheap entry price. Might be a smart move, get it...

What are you going to Do with them? Use them as crash cams, C cams?

It depends on the camera ML is running on, and what you're shooting.  If you are shooting something without exotic camera movement, are shooting manual lenses (where the focus will stay put), and have the time on-set to fuss with focus etc, then ML can be great.  It's when you need to work quickly, need to be able to monitor real-time to change focus and framing on the fly that some ML setups aren't so good.

Andrews post about the EOS-M shooting 5K shows what is possible, and yes the monitoring is abysmal, but if you were to only shoot for a 1080 delivery then the camera is under hugely less strain and all the monitoring and performance potentially improve significantly.  If you have a set of lenses and are shooting drama or interviews where people are sitting around talking then ML is a gift from the gods!

12 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

Isn’t that Braw? 

I was referring to taking already heavily compressed data like H264 and reconstituting it to make a signal that is like it was never compressed in the first place, and how that isn't possible.

To put the challenge in different words, how do you write the least data to a file such that you can decode it later to get as close to the original data as possible, which is the goal of every codec.  And if you think about it, they're doing a spectacular job.

No-one is complaining about the quality of 4:1 RAW, which only a tiny bit different to full RAW, only they did it with only 25% of the data.
Then if we look at the common H264 bitrates, they're mostly operating with less than 10% of the bitrate available.
And we evaluate all of this via YouTube, which at 35Mbps is around 2% of the original image data.

Just think about how crazily good that is - the 4K stream from YouTube is decoded to make a signal 170X the size, and that's what's displayed on your monitor when you watch it.  If most other things were made to work with only 0.6% then they'd be so bad you'd have problems with things like recognition and being able to tell what's going on.

128kbps MP3 for example is only 11:1 compression.  If audio had 170:1 compression it would be 8kbps, which is in the lower end of VOIP bitrates, hardly what anyone would use for music.

The challenge of taking the older cameras and trying to make them look like the P4K is attempting to do better than the people that made YT quality video at 170:1 compression.  That's what I mean

[Edit, original post had some wrong numbers, so I just fixed them]

10 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Video was I was young was a real ball buster to use. Even TV stations had a hard time hiring people smart enough on the tech side to even run the station. But back then almost all of it was vacuum tube based, even the cameras. And they drifted all over the place. I remember often the tech just coming over and hitting the equipment with his first and fixing a lot of problems LoL. We weren't Allowed to hit it ?. Now, that would be less of a problem. I am sure it is still complex, but I bet it screws up a lot less than it did then, just like new cameras are a lot more reliable from catastrophic results. I don't see using Raw much in my future. Too lazy, and can't afford the computer power, storage space to do it right. ?

 

You're not really a true technician unless you've fixed something by just hitting it on the side.  I used to be an IT tech and sometimes you'd just give a computer a thump and that would fix it.

We always used to call it "percussive maintenance" ???

11 minutes ago, deezid said:

That's what it is. 
Had to deal a lot with getting rid of the negative effects of internal sharpening on the GH5, but if you want to really get rid of these you either blur actual detail or even produce other artifacts.

My next project will be entirely shot in RAW. So no more issues with that just creamy footage.

Agreed.  If there were a magical way to get compressed footage to look like RAW footage then we'd all be in heaven and be rich from not having to buy external recorders and fast media!  much greater minds than ours have been contemplating such things for a long time.

However, these much greater minds have probably been interested in recreating the least distorted reproductions, rather than the glorified Mojo of previous generation RAW cameras!  We'll probably still fail, but it will be fun learning how not to do it ???

3 minutes ago, deezid said:

In ProRes it clearly does, you can easily spot sharpening halos around high contrast edges such as trees, lanterns, roofs etc... Also there's noise reduction and other filtering going on using ProRes which causes a low contrast texture loss (which is not as extreme as on Panasonic GHxx, Fuji X-Tx or Sony A7SIII or A7RIII). Thankfully these problems completely disappear using RAW when sharpening set to 0 in Resolve.

That's why the Pocket 4K is claimed to be a videoish looking camera -  which at least when using ProRes is true.

Some types of compression can also cause halos around things, that's very common in poor quality Jpegs for example.  I'm not saying that it isn't using sharpening, but the halos won't be 100% caused by that.  

However, my understanding of sharpening is that it's basically the mathematical opposite to blurring, so in theory we should be able to eliminate it somewhat.  However, blurring won't counteract any compression artefacts, so we'll probably have limited success.  Still, let's see how we get on when we can start prodding at the footage

We talk about earning money making films, but there isn't a thread for it, so I thought I'd start one.  Contribute anything you think is useful!

Levi Allen just posted his year-in-review video and it's got a bunch of useful content that might be valuable to people.

For those of you who don't know Levi, he runs a one-person production company and runs a 100k follower YT channel (that's taken 8 years to grow) that he hasn't monetised.  He talks a lot in this video about building his business and some strategies he's implementing, how to balance passion projects with client work, and reflecting on his journey so far.  It's good content for anyone just starting their own production company or looking to do that.

There's an index available so you can skip around easily, but he's a great communicator so it's a good listen.  

One of the things I thought was interesting was that he hasn't bought new filming equipment in the last year (although he did spend over $10K on new editing gear!).

6 minutes ago, androidlad said:

Remember it's 3 readout for a single exposure, even if the ADCs only operate at 10bit, it would be equivalent of a 30bit ADC.

Absolutely.  It would be a wonderful signal coming off the sensor.

I was thinking more about what the output file would be, as if you have the same bit-depth but greater DR than the existing gamma curve is designed to handle then you need to compress more DR into the same number of bits and you risk the banding problems that 8-bit Log can suffer from.  But after doing a bit more reading I figure they could probably get away with it without huge issues, even if it was still 10-bit.

7 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Only 10 or 12 bits. A little bit better than 2K output.

Sensor size. 1/1.5. Not too bad. Smartphone size I guess.

Actually, done a bit more reading about how log profiles use bit-depth and 12-bit would be fine for 20 stops of DR.  If it was only 10-bit then there would be less bits-per-stop than other 10-bit profiles, although they could probably re-arrange how many bits each stop gets and get away with it - the extreme highlights and shadows wouldn't need as many bits.

4 hours ago, anonim said:

Yes, and playing is always so refreshing... But I'd suggest not to spend too much time - isn't' it, seriously, that all non-fanboys kinda already know the most important answer. That one about high probability that we are living in the golden era for/with so many creativity tools - so, as once upon a time wrote H. D. Thoreau ""I took a walk in the woods and came out wider than the Pocket 4k, taller than Olympus OM1X and heavier than BMCC/Panasonic S1. ""

That's true, but it's always useful for those who can't afford to walk in the woods, or don't have time or the right shoes for it, to be able to go for a walk in the city and then fix it in post

37 minutes ago, kaylee said:

see below

???

i saved a bunch of money before i moved up here, so the answer is... not much ?

seriously tho, i was having a bad time, my stress level was out of control at my job, etc, and i had a little mini nervous breakdown about a year and a half ago. it resulted in some time off work, and i was like... im not making good progress on my art, i cant think, i feel like my head is underwater all the time, and im getting the f out of here.

so i moved up to the mountains with the goal of making my first actual short film, and doing a bunch of new art work (fine art stuff), and i actually DID that~! it was a very productive year.

so now im out of money lol, but im starting to reach out to galleries and stuff. i basically need a barbara gladstone who wants to produce my cremaster cycle ?

and ive been REALLY lazy in january, the monday of months. thats whats goin on rn ?

edit: the cost of living is sooo much less up here than what im used to, its like being in a foreign country where dolars are actually valuable ? that was part of the plan ?

Sorry to hear things weren't going well for you.  We all have times like that, and it's great that you actually did something about it, which is more than most do (or can manage to do) under those circumstances.

If there's anything we can do to help, just ask!

1 hour ago, graphicnatured said:

Yeah, I honestly believe a lot of why the Pocket4k looks so clean is the 4k, but i think we all know that definitely plays a role. I don't think the pressure is on too bad. You are helping to facilitate something that gives these clips to the whole forum to give it a shot on their own. I'm really looking forward to what people do with the clips.

I definitely think we should at least shoot them all 1080 Prores. I'll put a color checker in all shots. I'm going to add 4k too as most will shoot 4k with this camera.

I'm also looking forward to what everyone else does with these clips.  If we unlock the right settings it's more likely to be someone else that figures it out lol

So, to be clear, the plan is to shoot both RAW in max resolution and Prores 1080 on all cameras?  That makes sense to me.  Partly it's a good comparison between those modes for anyone that doesn't (yet) have the cameras and can't try it for themselves, but also all that discussion about v3 vs v4 colour science and how the colours are hard to match kind makes me a little nervous, so also having the RAW without different things baked in would be good 

4 minutes ago, anonim said:

For me it is far more interesting reverse process - to make BMCC 2.5k m43 or Micro to get a look of Pocket 4k (with little bit more accurate sharpening or MD bumping in Resolve and using nice clean lenses as Veydra or Voigts). Even better with Resolve's super upscale to 4k... So gentlemen, please note it also as, at least, last and secondary task.

I agree, and that's the beauty of a well executed camera test, you can do anything in post that you like.  I'm sure we'll be feeding off this footage for some time to come, trying various things and seeing how they work.