kye

I know that subtlety and nuance isn't very welcome on the internet, but I shall persevere and say it probably depends. The important thing is knowing what you're trying to achieve and using the right equipment and settings to achieve that goal. If you're in bright sunlight and using a fast aperture and you want the aesthetic that the 180degree rule supplies then NDs are required. If any of those aren't the case then they may not be needed. Same with a tripod - if you want a shot with zero motion or a very controlled motion (a tilt or a pan) and you're not shooting slow-motion and you don't want to stabilise in post, then yeah, a tripod is a must, otherwise if any of those aren't true then it may not be required. An example to illustrate the above. The other day I was shooting my kids football game. I was using my Canon 700D, ML RAW, and my 55-250 lens. The 55-250 at 250 with the ML crop mode is 1200mm F5.6. I wasn't using a tripod or ND filters, however, this is an example of when that did not matter because: the IS in the lens combined with my seated position meant I could get a motionless shot, and F5.6 combined with the cloud cover gave me roughly a 1/100 - 1/150 shutter speed which gives a slightly choppy feel which is appropriate for the kind of 'fast and rough' style of video I would make in this instance. Start at the end and work backwards. The lowest level of anything is blindly following the rules, the highest is knowing why the rules exist, what happens when you break them, and then chasing your end goal via whatever works.

Thanks, that clears up the confusion I had around the CIZ function. In the video the guy showed it at 1.5X but the others were talking about how it can go beyond that, so I wasn't sure if it was a mistake or firmware differences or whatever. Still, combining crop 1.5X and CIZ 1.5X to get 2.25X is hugely useful!

Hooray! Finally a spec race for something useful ?

Yeah, that's another direction that smartphones could do with a boost in. Maybe the smartphone of the future will have 10 cameras... a colour / B&W pairing for four focal lengths (28mm, 56mm, 84mm, 102mm) and on the front a normal camera plus a depth camera for Face ID. And then 3D will hit!! 18 cameras and counting!!

Excellent... The next 100 pages will be hard to fill otherwise

I love the assumptions here.. It's like there's only one type of film-making ??

If they do go triple-camera, let's hope it's not just 1x, 2x and 3x like those articles say. 28 and 56mm is a reasonable range, but adding an 84 when you already have a 56 doesn't really add as much as a 100+ would. I guess the problem is having stabilisation worthy of such a long focal length on a very small device prone to handshake. As I've said in previous posts, 28mm is general wide, 56-80mm is portrait territory and 100 and up are sports. Having two lenses for portraits and none for sports isn't a good 'set'.

I recently heard a wedding film-maker explain that they don't use NDs, and use Aperture priority and just let the camera expose with SS. I thought about it for a while and I guess with weddings there normally isn't much fast action during the day when SS will be short, and then after dark the SS will be longer anyway so the fast-paced dancing etc at the reception will be more cinematic. So weddings is particularly suited to that mode - if you're shooting sports it's not going to work. I'm contemplating moving to that style of shooting for my personal home and travel videos as having the camera auto-expose from full daylight to full dimly lit interiors would really make shooting that much easier. The alternative is full manual and having to expose with a variable ND, which is just another thing to think about while shooting.

Crop mode and Clear-image zoom compared... the clear image zoom looks pretty darn good to me. I didn't realise that the zoom goes beyond 1.5x - that means even more flexibility! And now with the A7IV, we can just get a 16mm F1.4 and with crop mode, clear image zoom, and automagical fractal AI interpolation modes, it's a 16-200mm lens!!

Very unlikely. The whole selling point of the A7S line was video, and having less MP meant larger photo sites and thus better low light performance. If they increased the MP count then they'd either just crop into the sensor (18MP is about 5K for video) or they'd have to downscale, which would add more processor requirement and more heat, which is the LAST thing that camera needs! If they did do that and implemented a thermal solution then they'd have taken a step to turning it into a cinema camera as no doubt they'd use the processors from their cinema line. I suppose they could just output 5K video, leaving people to deal with it in post, but that is so far away from the way the industry works I cannot even imagine it (although it would be a selling point for some, it would blow up YT with other people whose tiny little minds had been shattered!)

(Apologies if you already know these things) In audio they have a number of measurements related to relative volume levels or Signal-to-Noise ratios, maybe a similar mechanism would be good. No idea how to get an industry to adopt a standard term though! In line with my above comment, this is also a problem in audio, and unfortunately they haven't nailed it yet. Different types of distortion have different aesthetics but will measure the same in absolute levels. I suspect that things like Motion Cadence and Colour Science will be quantifiable, we just haven't worked it out yet.

@Charlie Nice work!! It's always nice to see a finished project come together and this one sure did, style and then some. I said in my post some time ago you were either a genius, or you were crazy, and I think it's somewhere in between, considering that it's pretty out there, but it still ticks the boxes for a wedding video in showing the right moments, showing the right people, and having a celebratory vibe that matches the couple but will still be ok for grandma. Everyone has an opinion, but there are only a few that matter, firstly the clients and if they were happy with it, and secondly if you were happy with it. If you were happy (with allowances for you taking notes on improvements for next time - none of us ever thinks a project was perfect!) then that is what will get you over the line with the next couple when they call and you start talking about what you could do for them. Absolutely. Walk tall, offer a reliable service where you deliver on what you promise and the world is your oyster. My wedding wasn't a traditional one and whenever anyone asks about it they always say things like "I wish I could have done that" or "wow, I'm not that brave" etc, so there is a latent desire in a surprising number of people to do something that's a bit more about them and a bit less like how things have been done for hundreds of years. Plenty of people get married and the Hallmark cinematographers will get the bulk, but live the dream and do it your way! ????

I'm sure that when Canon makes their Large Format consumer ILC (WHEN! - ha ha ha) they'll sort it out ???

I'd be amazed if there wasn't! The digital camera inside the "camera obscura" chamber uses T/S to view the projection, and the other lens may also be using it, I'm not sure (I haven't watched that video in a while).

In what way are they the ultimate? The resolution used to be the thing that differentiated them, but now the resolutions are matched in FF by A7R / 5DS etc. I guess you're still talking DR? If we're going for ultimate then why not a Large Format sensor? This guy showed that the physical size is manageable.. If you wrapped the guts of a cinema camera around that it would barely increase the size at all!

Should we start a petition for Canon to make a consumer Medium-Format video-centric ILC? Some would argue that if we're going to dream then we should dream BIG!

Here's the review: The shot at 6:57 of him in slow-mo with the light of a single match is just incredible!! Footage reminds me of the Canon 5DIII ML RAW 14 bit from @kidzrevil in places. Just lovely. Are people anticipating the Pocket 2 to have IQ like the T4K? and to all the people who think you don't need good IQ for home videos - see the lovely shot at 8:12

Filmic Pro has a couple of flat profiles, but not sure if it works on iPad. Be warned they don't work for higher frame rates - I think only at 24/25/30? oh, and the profiles are an add-on purchase on top of the app price.

Around the 50,000 images mark I did a bunch of analysis in LR using the metadata from the photos I'd shortlisted to understand more about what equipment / settings worked for me. One of the insights I gained was that when in nature I tend to want a wider lens as it's nice to be able to show landscapes and also do more environmental portraits when people were in them, for example when I went to Vanuatu the 14mm (28mm equiv) lens almost didn't leave the camera. However, when you're in a city where there is stuff everywhere and is very busy (in a visual sense) you're more likely to want to isolate things during the day with a longer or faster lens, and at night you often want to do wider landscape shots, or if you're shooting people at night a faster lens is nice. I ended up with a setup that consisted of: smartphone camera for wide and during the day (when there's lots of light so ISO performance isn't a problem) or for nocturnal city-scapes of the lights nicer camera with a long zoom for cities during the day and a fast medium lens for people at night In terms of what I would suggest for anyone else, if you're taking a smartphone with an acceptable camera then you could use that for wider shots where shallow DOF is less important and choose a fast mid-length prime for the people and isolation shots. I'd question your statement about F4 not being fast enough for night shots - the A7III has better low light performance than any camera I have could even dream of! Plus you mentioned a lighting kit.. I think it really depends on what you're shooting and the style you're going for - there are street photographers that use 24mm or even 20mm

Someone recommended this YT guy in the a6300 thread and I saw these two videos - very useful! I know people aren't fans of Sony menus, but some of that stuff is ridiculous!

I agree that it's not a 'swap out' replacement for any/many cameras, but it would be a great 'instead of' camera.. ie, instead of buying a budget-model RED you get 4K RAW for cheaper, or instead of using a full DSLR rig on full manual you get a camera with hugely better IQ. I thought someone said it didn't have AF-C (only AF-S) but when I searched I couldn't find anything and the BM website only says it will have autofocus, but doesn't say more. Do we know if it will AF-C? I've seen Sony vloggers manual focus by holding the camera just under their chin, holding out their arm with fingers outstretched and focusing manually on them before recording a selfie-shot. If you're using a Sony on MF, and of course without a flippy screen, then apart from IBIS that's probably the same functionality as the Pocket 2. I can't imagine vloggers taking to 4K RAW (or high-bitrate prores) in great numbers though. LOTS of vloggers tried 4K and then when it took them 4 times as long to edit and upload went back to 1080. Some will use it, mostly those who already have a RED or similar in a studio setup, but that's not a big market, to say the least.

Thanks. I asked because I randomly watched a YT review of one just the other day and the guy was using a super vintage lens with swirly bokeh for a portrait stills session and the AF-S was quite impressive. It wasn't lightening fast, but it was still perhaps half-a-second and it was obviously phase detect because it just went from where it was to the focus point and pretty much stopped dead, no hunting or anything. Considering the lens was completely manual it was really quite surprising.

Really? I haven't visited Korea - yet! I notice that people in most big cities seem to be less bothered than where I live, which is not big, either in population or mindset.. I looked at that and thought "if only!"

Included in the intro is "so this is based on that instagram TV update that everyone is excited about" This guy does heaps of tutorials for editing and especially breaks down heavy video processing from music videos and the like. I'd say he's probably hooked into the trendy end of the independent film-maker segment with people who make less traditional media.

BTS of how Brandon Li films. Relevant to the fact he's shooting without permission, a crew, etc. He's still a million miles away from how I shoot.. he can do multiple takes - luxury!!