kye

4 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

But by the time you get to that point, then you can no longer hold it steady for any extended period of time. Which is why you then need an Easyrig (or at least a shoulder rig, but that is limiting in various aspects, and still is not something you want to do for very long periods once it gets heavy). 

Have been very seriously considering getting a knock of Easyrig from China to use with my Sony PMW-F3 rig.

Yes, I feared as much.  I just got back from a trip where my rig was the XC10 and Rode VMP+ and all I took was a wrist strap and I kind of regret not taking a shoulder strap as carrying around the camera while not using it got a bit tiring on the hand, and that rig isn't that heavy compared to what we're talking about here!

An easy rig is way beyond where I'm willing to go, personally. 

16 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Yes, the KineMON monitor (and power for it, uses an integrated cable like say RED/Sony/Canon do) is just a small 5" one you can clip onto the top of the camera. 
The battery is just a small Sony BP-U30 that slots into the KineGrip side handle. 
The whole thing is not too dissimilar in total size to what a large-ish DSLR might by like a 5D or perhaps D5 might be. 

That's interesting, thanks.  I just started a new thread partially inspired by your suggestion

18 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

And with 9mm f8 it is easy to get your subject in focus even with manual focus!

I've owned one myself for years. 

Have you recorded video with it?  I don't think I've seen any from this lens - only stills.

14 minutes ago, jonpais said:

I’d pass on the KineMon if it’s only 500 nits.

I guess it depends on what you're filming and how good it is at focus-peaking and other assists.  If, like me, you're just capturing what happens, then keeping the composition and focus right can be enough, although I'll definitely agree that brighter would be better!

I shoot hand-held, but because camera shake isn't my aesthetic I naturally assumed that OIS and IBIS were the only solutions, but I'm now wondering if the weight of some of the cine lenses will be as good as OIS.

With rigs that have heavier cine lenses do you need OIS?

I was inspired by this video which has great looking output and looks (relatively) compact.

That setup looks like an XT-3 with Ninja V and MKX 18-55 cine lens.  There are lots of other options too, for example a C100 or Pocket4K with appropriate cine glass.

I am a little bit apprehensive of the weight too, considering that I carry my rig for hours at a time, although if it was something special I'm sure I could get some comfy straps.

2 hours ago, IronFilm said:

As well as the BMPCC4K, the Kinefinity Terra 4K is also smaller than a C100.

Even in a full rig with monitor and power?  That would be interesting to see, but still no IBIS I think!

2 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Stick with the Olympus 9mm f/8 Fisheye Body Cap lens! 

That lens is famous in street photography circles.

It is really wide, which is desirable.  There's a saying "if your photos aren't good enough then you're not close enough" so wide and close was the combo to have.

It is MF and has a mechanical control that your muscle memory can learn and then rely on.

It is F8 which is about right for the genre, anything shallower and you don't have time to take the shot, and anything deeper is probably too slow and doesn't have enough separation.  I don't know about eye-focus or anything with the latest cameras, but people with all types of camera would "zone focus" because acquiring focus took too long, not too long on certain cameras/lenses, but too long in any case.  This gives you MF that can be adjusted, which is kind of the best of both worlds.

It is soft, which is desirable because in combination with a bit of ISO noise, makes everything look like film, which is the right aesthetic.

It is cheap cheap cheap!!

I have been half tempted to get a Pocket2 with a fixed lens as a 'special projects' camera, in addition to the setup that I've been pursuing with a flexible zoom lens.  My thoughts were that the fixed lens would have to be a walk-around lens and would have to be special in some way, otherwise a zoom would be better because of the flexibility.  A Pocket2 with one of these on it might be a fascinating thing to see the output of.

9 hours ago, mercer said:

Yup, you must’ve been... or there aren’t “wrong focal lengths.”

Maybe he wasn’t looking for the same shots you were?

There aren't wrong focal lengths of course, only tools for a job.

I've been told many times that shooting with only one prime is a great way to focus yourself and really learn how to see what the camera sees before holding it up. I can also totally understand if someone really likes the feel of a certain lens and just wants to use that. 

I did my fair share of street photography, much of it with the 14mm F2.5 m43 lens and have shot enough now to also be able to 'see' a range of shots that are possible with a zoom lens, and frequently would walk into a place, shoot half a dozen or more compositions in my head before rejecting all of them and not bother to do anything with the camera even though it is in my hand.

In my case I'm looking to tell the story of the event or trip and so I really want to be able to capture anything I can see, unfortunately that would require something like a 10-600mm lens which is obviously out of the question. I can crop into the footage to extend the long end and also the viewer will also unconsciously crop when they see the bit of the frame with the action in it. I can also extend the wide end of the lens by panning or tilting which in a way creates a reveal, but if you're at the top of a mountain it's still a bit like looking at the world through the mail slot.

8 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

I think like a lot of gentlemen of a certain age, I have an attachment to 50mm as its what we all had as our standard lenses when we got our first SLRs and used them to shoot dinosaurs roaming in the local park.

I'm sure Google has a way of generating EXIF from any image so when they tire of snooping on us electronically and invent a way of physically sifting through our cupboards and drawers undetected they'll scan all those negs and slides from latter part of the 20th century and we'll find that about 75% of pictures were taken on a 50mm.

I never really bought into the 50mm being closest to what the eye sees - or at least concentrates on for want of a better expression - but its not totally far off.

I suspect its probably even less so now though for people who have grown up looking at the world through a 28mm equivalent on their iPhones as they have developed a wider (yet simultaneously narrower  ) viewpoint of what is standard.

Anyway, a couple more from the 7Artisans 50mm f1.1 at narrower apertures to balance out the previous glowfest examples of shooting it wide open.

 

You're probably right, but definitely hilarious! ?

7 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Cameras have pros and cons. All of them. We should all know that.

+1

And we should all work hardware to understand how we shoot and what our requirements are.

Of course, if they just go ahead and make a FF Arri with GH5 stabilisation in the body of a C100 we can all stop hanging out and making excuses and go make the best darn cat videos the world has even seen!

On 9/29/2018 at 10:05 AM, jonpais said:

A dissenting view to Lens Rentals, in which Lloyd Chambers criticizes the increasingly common habit of companies publishing charts showing MTF results without distortion correction applied, claiming that lenses can never achieve the same results with correction enabled, that certain lenses actually require correction in software (Fuji X in Adobe Camera RAW for example) and that correction actually hurts micro contrast.

The benefits of such software correction are obvious: cost reduction and the ability to design smaller, lighter lenses. The problem as I see it is when using lenses relying on software correction on a body without such software, like the P4K.

We are seeing some manufacturers allow disabling in-camera vignetting and diffraction correction and perhaps in the distant future a fn button can disable them all. But I still see Lloyd’s rant as a bit of a tempest in  teapot, since most if not all manufacturers’ charts are nothing more than idealized computer generated models based on fairy tale conditions. Which is where Lens Rentals comes in...

Really they should test them both with and without the corrections, but that would be too much work I'd wager!

6 hours ago, mercer said:

Idk, I have to agree with Mattias on this one. In FF, 35mm and 50mm are my favorite focal lengths... I could film an entire movie with either focal length if I was forced to use only one lens. And for aps-c,  24mm and 35mm FF lenses are fairly inexpensive and they both equate to 35mm and 50mm respectively. Logical choices IMO.

35mm equivalent is a very good walk-around focal length, so if you want flexibility but want the benefits of a prime then it's a good choice.

Yesterday I stood in line for the Pantheon behind a guy with a 6D, a 50mm prime and no bag (so potentially no others lenses). I have no idea what images he took, but my 24-240mm zoom was still not wide or long enough for many shots so I guess we were all shooting with the wrong focal lengths!

+1 for @webrunner5s post.

I side some testing of different apertures vs depth and discovered that I only need F4 equivalent to get the look I'm going for.

I also made a few videos at F2.8 equivalent and many shots were too blurred.

I'd recommend to anyone that they test out different settings and see what works for them. On FF going to F4 from F2.8 means the lens is smaller, lighter, cheaper and if it's a zoom is probably longer and also has OIS.

The footage does look pretty good, and assuming the stabilisation is done before the compression it will help to get the most from the limited bitrate.

Be aware that any official footage will be the absolute best possible, so ensure that you look at real-world examples too.

It does look pretty tempting though.

When is it shipping?

1 hour ago, Yurolov said:

Which lenses will you use if you are using canon for birding? Full frame emount are prohibitively expensive to be used on a crop sensor camera.  

I know the question wasn't directed at me, but I'm getting great results from the kit 55-250mm zoom on my 700D.

With the crop it goes to 400mm equivalent, it's small and light, and the IS is really good. The IS is so good in fact that it is usable even when I record video in crop mode in ML where it's a 1200mm equivalent FOV!

9 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

soon, we got 8k sensors, so its not too far out. I don't really even edit in 4k much though lol. 

I'm not being serious...

I'm waiting for a camera with a combination of features from different types of cameras, so I'm likely to be waiting a long time. It would be quicker if I was wait for 8K!

I am waiting for a plane though. 

The most important thing is the stuff you put in front of the camera!

8K? ???

45 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Can't believe you didn't give a mention to my Improvised Lens Device as one of the show highlights

Incidentally, it did get pulled by airport security on the way out of Berlin yesterday !

Completely OT but I was travelling through the US with a couple of friends in wheelchairs and when they got whisked off to a separate line for TSA I got accidentally left with their carry on bag which contained the disconnected hand controller for the electric wheelchair that they checked. Not only did it raise some eyebrows going through the scanner, but the all-metal clip in tray table also in the bag wouldn't have helped either.

"Sir, is this your bag?"

<choose words carefully >

"Err, that one is with me...."

I'm not sure if the lack of adjustable screen is due to it being a 'cinema' camera where the world is expected to bend around the camera instead of the other way around, or if it was a size or cost measure, but the idea of it being a 'cinema' thing fits with the great attention and effort towards image specs and (relative) lack of effort towards ergonomics for hand-holding.

I must say that as someone who shoots in whatever conditions I am given, a tilt screen is worth a huge amount to me, enabling up to a third or half of my shots, either with a low angle or a high angle to get over the heads of the other tourists in front of me!

We're really seeing a merging of devices with cinema camera specs in an almost DSLR form-factor meeting DSLR and mirrorless cameras with video specs almost at cinema camera standards, but the two haven't merged yet.

It'll only be when we get a camera that shoots RAW but also has IBIS and a half-decent grip that we'll have achieved unification.

I'm waiting for that day eagerly!

2 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I don't care what most of them do. Some of them are going to be screwed. There is no room for all these camera company's anymore. Just about all of them now have the same stuff in them, and what is missing is of no real concern to 99% of the people in the world. Sure we want 10 bit, 98% of the people don't even know what the hell that means.

I have no clue how they are Ever going to sell all this stuff, or even who the hell needs most of what is in them. Like everyone is going to buy Resolve and edit all their stuff, and Vlog? Their phone does all most every thing they need. These camera company's are living on borrowed time in a dream world.

+2

We'll see huge consolidation and what happens now will decide who will be the new Canon and who will be the new Pentax in 5 years.

The reasons that I think the third category is small-screen and enthusiast content is that more and more people are producing video content for online and many of those will need multiple cameras for interviews, and even if you can use your phone for one of them you're probably not going to buy two other phones for the other two angles, although you might just use last year's and the year before that. Everyone wants a wedding video, an engagement video, there are now clandestine proposal videos being shot by photographers hiding in bushes nearby (I kid you not) and this trend will continue as the first world economies change from manufacturing to services economies. Social media and human vanity and sentimentality aren't going away.

The other segment of this market is cashed-up enthusiasts. Every office building has a dozen or more people who own a 5D and 24-70 F4, not because it's got the FF look, not for the low light, but because they earn 100K a year, like photos and want "the best" or "what the pros use". It will take a long time for the answer to those criteria to be "use your phone". Don't forget that photography is an art that people think comes from the camera.

"That's a lovely photo, you must have a great camera".

This alone might be Canons entire profit margin - selling the same camera that took the lovely picture to the person that wants to buy the ability to take similar ones on holiday or at the park.

I see two major trends in this sector, convergence of stills and video, and computational photography.

I don't see computational photography being ready for some time and there isn't really a market leader (Apple perhaps? Hardly a likely partner), leaving video as a potential direction.

Olympus has deep stills experience so maybe they partner with a video only company, like Red or Arri. I have no idea how likely that is, probably almost zero, but it would make sense from a certain perspective.

The cinema company would get a partner who does lenses, has deep stills history, and is in the consumer market. Olympus would get a partner who can give experience designing bodies built for huge data rates and image processing.

The not-so-distant future of imaging belongs to the smartphone for mum and dad, the cinema camera for the big screen, and the hand-held run-and-gun setup for small-screen and cashed-up amateurs. Adding AI and computational photography to the mix would best be done by acquiring a third partner down the track once we've moved forward a bit.

On 9/29/2018 at 6:13 PM, BTM_Pix said:

I was discussing with @Andrew Reid at the show the other day about someone making an s35 camcorder and how I thought Fuji would be ideal basing it around the X-T3.

But I've been subsequently been thinking about having an attempt at cinevising something like the A6500.

And when I say something like the A6500, I actually mean my A6500

I think it's a capable and compact enough building block to make something pretty interesting with.

God knows I'll have to do something with it because I can't stand it as it is !

What are you thinking of?

IIRC it's a nice camera but had some significant flaws, RS comes to mind.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

Price it sub $3K and it will be competing hard against the C100 mk3 / FS5 mk3 of the future and will blow them out. 

Go higher and then it is a tough job against FS7 / EVA1 /  UMP etc

A C100iii would be a fascinating thing to see. Of course the interesting part would be how crippled it was.

Even if it was the same ILC / S35 form factor but matched the digital specs of the XC10 / XC15 that would be great. Including 4K60 and IBIS would make people pee themselves with excitement at the announcement event.

The more that I think about it, the more I realise that a tiny cinema camera fits my needs better than a hybrid, but of course the lack of IBIS in "cinema" cameras is an ongoing issue.

Maybe I should do another review of the ILC camcorder options again.

21 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

If I was rich, I kind of used to be, even a Arri Alexa LF wouldn't cost me shit for money compared to what I make.

Cameras are a funny thing - it's one of the only things I know of where having more money wouldn't help me that much.  If you want an ILC cinema camera with good 4K smaller than a C100 there are simply no options.  That is, unless you're a billionaire, in which case you can probably ask one of the manufacturers to design you one!

Edit: with great IS for handheld work.  Otherwise the Pocket 2 is fine

6 hours ago, jagnje said:

Valid points you guys made. I forgot whats it like to shoot wedings and not being able to light the scene. Heres another one...the only light modifier was a white bounce, same gear, completely diferent feel.

Many people forget that other people are shooting in different conditions to them.

I shoot home and travel videos for myself, but the conditions are generally the same:

• The event comes first, photography shouldn't get in the way, camera placement is often restricted
• No re-takes, either you shoot it when it happens or you missed it
• You may have some control over lighting, you may not, but anything you do can't get in the way of the events that are happening
• There are parts in low light = high ISO performance
• There are scenes with high contrast = good DR
• There are action scenes = ok RS, and slow motion
• You have to be mobile and move very quickly = monopod / gimbal / hand-held = good IS
• etc etc etc.

I started my photography / videography journey with a <$100 Nikon point-and-shoot and every upgrade since then has been based upon the quality of the end result from me actually shooting what I shoot.  I haven't gotten a setup that I really gel with but my current setup is close, however I have shot enough to know what my style is and so I am not trying to buy equipment to hit a moving target - I know how I work, where I work, and what I am trying to achieve.

If someone has different feature desires it might be because they're shooting different films.

10 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

though they did some nice editing with these dinosaurs. nowadays we see the worst hobbiest editing and post work of all time, with all the misused possibilities at hand.

And we see absolute magic coming from people that wouldn't have been able to operate or afford to make anything on that old equipment.

The old days aren't better, or worse, they are just different. Get over it.

Anyone who has the privilege to be able to do something and is complaining that too many people also have that privilege is just showing fear of being inadequate.  Master artists aren't campaigning for schools to stop giving students access to art supplies!

On 9/25/2018 at 11:51 PM, IronFilm said:

People will often call a $50K or whatever feature film a "zero budget" or "no budget" film, as it is all just a rounding error that rounds down to zero. 

Excellent! Can you please share the technique for me to round $50k on my next family holiday down to zero?

(Yes, I know....)

11 minutes ago, JurijTurnsek said:

Android based camera could mean very hackable - you could probably get any app working on it. Too bad it will be priced right out of "hackers'" hands.

ML.. the app!!

I totally understand your point and mostly agree with you......

but if you're going to give an example of why we should stop nitpicking the video features of mirrorless cameras then don't use an example from a cinema camera that has many of the features we're talking about and costs double or triple or more!!!

42 minutes ago, mercer said:

Yeah I get that, everybody has different needs and wants but separation isn’t impossible with 1” sensors, it just requires a different strategy. Now I understand you shoot a lot of travel and family videos so you don’t always have the luxury to go run back and frame your shots accordingly, so in your instance, a bridge camera may not work for you. For others, it definitely can.

Absolutely, my complaints about the XC10 are few and relatively trivial, and my situation is not the norm by any measure.

If you're shooting with a bit of room then you can just get further from the background to get some defocusing and adjust lighting for more contrast.

In a sense I am looking to create the polished and slightly dreamy impression that we have of memories. I make the footage a bit on the warm side, I use the nicest moments and angles I can, I add cheery music. It's just a slightly different aesthetic.

There is lots of criticism of people wanting to buy more equipment or have more features, and sometimes that criticism is warranted, but when the desire for features comes from starting with the creative process and working backwards then it's mostly not warranted.

I think it's like writing an essay in school, you can say anything you like as long as you can back it up.

If you want new features and can back it up with real-life creative needs then go for it. No-one criticises Hollywood productions for shooting in 4k or RAW or on huge rigs, or people shooting hair commercials for wanting great slow motion because we understand that the equipment choices are relevant for the task at hand.

That should be the only criteria.

3 hours ago, androidlad said:

Latest leak from Weibo:

S1/S1R use Sony global shutter sensors. S1R has 150MP pixel shift mode for photos.

4K60p supersampled from 8192x4320 sensor area.

What exactly does "super sampled" mean?

4K60 down sampled from 8K??

That would be absolutely stunning to see!