kye

IIRC it was lowepost.com but I just had a quick look and couldn't't find it. If that isn't it then maybe LGG?

Yes - with these crop sensors it's often difficult to get a lens that's wide, fast and cheap. In the end I conceded and just paid the money. It makes it doubly difficult if you want to go wider than the normal 28mm equivalent - I know lots of vloggers use FF with the 16-35 @ 16mm because they take up less space in the frame, don't have to worry about pointing it as accurately, and don't have to stretch their arm out as far. Good luck getting a practical 16mm equivalent on a crop sensor!

Ah yes, Spielberg and Saving Private Ryan. A memory is a good thing when it works Actually, one of the main challenges I have is that I don't really know it when I see it. I think my perception is a mixture of being unsensitised to these elements, and is also untrained. A big part of learning for me is learning to see. I can often see a difference between two different finished products (eg, I know I prefer the production of Peaky Blinders and The Crown to most other shows) but when I try and isolate the individual variables I'm often just left with two things that look the same to me. In a way that's why I'm hanging out on forums like this so much - I'm trying to learn what other people see and what the technical thing is behind it. Yep - my current kit contains XC10, 700D with ML, and iPhone 8 with ProCam (which provides full manual controls). I also have other much lesser cameras, but I suspect they're not high enough quality to be useful. What settings would you suggest I play with?

If you haven't already come across them, I can highly recommend the videos by Juan Melara (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqi6295cdFJI9VUPzIN4NXQ/videos). He is obviously a very knowledgeable operator, but also seems to use Resolve in a way I haven't seen any other YouTubers even approach. I learned a heap from him. I haven't completely worked out my workflow for ML RAW, but he got me pretty close I think.

I thought that YouTubers used slow-motion because it looked 'better', which may be mostly that real-life needs all the help it can get to look nicer, and the slow-motion smooths out the camera-shake. So, as contenders we currently have: - line-skipping when reading the sensor (this wouldn't be to do with motion, it would be to do with how each image was rendered, but might be something that looks 'nicer') - less rolling-shutter (shouldn't apply much to static tripod-shots) - jitter in frame rate (variation in how far apart the frames are exposed) - shutter angle I have a vague memory of reading that some cameras take a small amount of time to open or close the shutter, kind of like it faded in, and this meant that the edges of moving objects weren't as sharp. I'm not sure exactly how this would be accomplished (I know very little about shutter design) but it sounds simultaneously like something that could be true in expensive cameras, or could be 'alternative internet facts'. On a more philosophical note, my personal view is that every technical aspect of filming will have an artistic implication, and behind every artistic impression there is a something tangible that we can isolate and measure. One of my goals is to understand what technical / specific things are behind the artistic things, so I can explore them and then use them to create a finished product where more of the choices I made are coherent with the overall feel I was going for. For example if we want something to look happy we use brighter more saturated grading because that supports a happy vibe, or if we want people to be on edge then we can have extreme close-ups with wide-angle lenses to distort the image which supports the feeling of un-ease. I read that in a recent war movie the director used a 90 degree or 45 degree shutter on action sequences as it showed explosions as being full of chunks of people instead of just being blurry and also made it feel more real and less 'cinematic'. I'm hoping we can learn something tangible about motion cadence in this thread.

Makes sense. I wasn't recommending the Sigma (it's lovely but really big and heavy!), I was more commenting on not trying to use the 50mm on APSC for anything other than specialist shots. However, if it is to add to a collection of wider lenses then it does make sense and the price is definitely right! IIRC the M50 has different crops in 1080 and 4K - if that's true and the OP is outputting 1080 then the 50mm would have extra versatility as it can effectively become an 80mm with the DPAF, and a longer lens in mode with sensor crop. Totally agree about 35mm or 50mm on FF. I shot a couple of videos at 80mm (50mm on crop) indoors and it was just a little too long for most things - 35mm and 50mm equivalents are just right.

Thanks @Deadcode @Papiskokuji @HockeyFan12 that totally makes sense - I'd forgotten that it was RAW vs compressed codecs. @Deadcode I asked it separately as I thought the answer would go into what scenes benefited from extra bit depth or that it was me being blind. ML RAW just happened to be how I got the files, and I only included it in case I was screwing something up and not really getting the extra bits! This basically answers my question, which ultimately was about what bit-depth I should be shooting. This is especially relevant with ML because if I lower the bit depth I can raise the resolution, which I thought I would have to trade-off against the gains of the extra bit-depth. On another forum I saw a post talking about getting new client monitors while things were on sale - they said they needed about half-a-dozen of them, and I just about choked when I read their budget was $8000 ..... each! I think I only recognised every second word in the rest of the thread - between brand names and specifications etc. It's another world!

I've been playing with Magic Lantern RAW and looking at different bit-depths, and after all the conversation in the BMPCC thread (and the thousands of 8-bit vs 10-bit videos) I got the impression that bit-depth was something quite important. Here's the thing, I can't tell the difference between 10bit, 12bit and 14bit. I recorded three ML RAW files at identical resolutions and settings, just the bit-depth varied. I converted them in MLV App to Cinema DNG (lossless) and pulled them into Resolve. Resolve says one is 10-bit, one is 12-bit and one is 14-bit, so I think the RAW developing is correct. I just can't see a difference. I tried putting in huge amounts of contrast (the curve was basically vertical) and I couldn't see bands in the waveform. I don't know what software to use to check the number of unique colours (I have photoshop, maybe that will help?). Am I doing something wrong? Does a well-lit scene just not show the benefits? Is 10-bit enough? Am I blind to the benefits (it's possible)? I've attached one of the frames for reference.. Thanks! M02-1700_000000.dng

Lol, looks like the cure for OT posts might be feeding us! In getting back to Motion Cadence, I'm curious about this as well, as this is one of the things people say is 'cinematic' (which I believe) but people also seem to imply that even if you set cameras to the 180 shutter that there will still be some difference to the footage (which I don't believe, but would love to be proven wrong). @jonpais I have watched quite a few of those 'phone vs cinema camera' videos and I found that there was either a huge difference in motion cadence between the two of them (they always shoot them in bright light to use base ISO and so one would be 1/50 and the other 1/2000) or they have used an ND filter of some kind and then there was no difference in motion cadence. In terms of how someone might have a 180 degree shutter without an ND filter in the real world I can't think of any way this is possible. I'd be happy to hear about an alternative to ND filters, but I'd say it's safe to assume that if they're using a 180 shutter then it's got an ND.

I've got a APSC camera (canon 700D) and for years the 50mm f1.8 was the only fast lens I had, so I tried to use it in many situations, but at 80mm equivalent it's too long for many situations. I've just recently purchased the Sigma 18-35, which is 29-56mm equivalent and I was surprised that there's a big difference between 56mm and 80mm. It depends on what you're shooting but I wouldn't recommend the 50mm on an APSC sensor as a general purpose lens at all.

You're right about people not being that critical. My family are already saying that my films look like videos from the tourist bureau, but I can see that they're not and I guess I am that critical. Early on I shot a video of a family holiday on a point-and-shoot and had it on the 50p mode, which I only later discovered didn't record sound (oops!). The result was a wonderful video half-full of slow-motion shots of the kids smiling and running around with a full music soundtrack - great stuff and still perhaps my best work. Now I have gone and spent thousands of dollars on 'real' camera equipment I am expecting to get a lot closer to the way that a feature film would render something like that, and I find that I'm still falling quite a bit short. One of the things that is letting me down is DR. I realise that my skill level is the number one thing letting me down, but that's not something I can throw money at and DR is!

I'm arguing that having a camera with higher DR is worthwhile and the answer isn't always to just work around the limitations of your camera. I've been around enough narrative, documentary, ENG and other types of shooting to realise that what I'm trying to do is at the pointy-end of making the best of situations you may have almost no control over. Most of the time on here I'll talk about something valuable to me and someone will say that I don't need it and all I have to do is change something I don't have control over but they assume everyone does.

It's a lot better than KFC!! Anyway....

You're right to be. We did a bit of study at uni around how to analyse things and how to not accidentally taint your results or get misleading results. The impression that I took away was that it's a minefield and it's ridiculously difficult to get it right. Of course, much data gathering is either completely biased through vested interests or incompetence. I once started completing an online survey, question one was pretty straight forward "Have you had fast food in the last 3 days" I answered "yes" because I'd had fish and chips, but then it all came to a crashing halt with question two "Which did you have: KFC, McDonalds, Chicken Treat, Hungry Jacks" and there was no "Other" option. Never mind the local fish-and-chip place - not even all the big fast food chains were in there!

(The article suggests that Apple will push everyone to iOS) Two main problems with iOS is lack of real multi-tasking and no shared file system. Until iOS supports running 10 apps concurrently (with maybe a total of a dozen browser tabs open) and has a file system where all kind of files can be stored then there's no way in hell it would be usable. and when I say 10 apps concurrently, I don't mean it remembers what was running and re-runs it when you swap back to it, I mean things active in RAM. If moving away from Intel means better performance then great, but no support for real workflows brings performance to a complete stop.

It all comes down to how much control you have. I fully agree that the operator has way more control and options than the average amateur thinks are possible - otherwise the famous street photographers (HCB, Maier, Winogrand, etc) were just the luckiest people in the universe! I have done enough street photography and wildlife photography to be able to feel the split in my brain where one part is thinking about the shot I'm taking and the other part is thinking about what is about to happen, what shots are likely to be available and how I would capture the best one. Highly skilled street photographers could have one eye on the viewfinder composing a shot while the other was open and surveying the broader scene looking for what was about to enter the field of view. I'm good enough at this to know what is possible but also how bad I am at it. However, there are always situations where you have no control. You have no control about where your vantage point is, if, for example, you are sitting in a packed moving vehicle shooting out the window (tour bus, helicopter, train, plane), or when you're at the zoo looking at the animals from the lookout that is only wide enough for a couple of people to stand in at the same time. In a vehicle you get to control framing, and camera position within a space about maybe 50x50x50cm perhaps, but that's it. Sometimes you don't have control about where the subject is, kids running in the park in-between areas of full sun and full shade (and the full shade is relatively dark because vegetation is pretty good at absorbing light). My approach to these situations where you are restricted about where you can shoot from, or the lighting on the subject you're shooting is two-fold: 1) Just film a lot - "spray and pray" as it's called. This is partly valid as the more you film the more likely you are to get a great moment, but it also means that when you're in the edit room you are able to replace great content that has unusable levels with other great content that does have useable levels. 2) Understand that you are not always going to get the shot from the best angle - either by lack of options, lack of skill, or both - and just buy a camera with more DR. This is what I am talking about here. If your video is about your families trip to the park, and your kid is happiest when they're running, and the bad lighting was where they were running before everyone sat down to ate and then the kids all fell asleep, good luck in the edit suite looking at one of the nicest pieces of footage you have from the outing and trying to decide between the best content and it not being noisy or clipped all to hell.

You assume that a good camera operator has control over their environment. Try doing any documentary work outside in direct sunlight and it won't matter how good an operator you are - if your camera doesn't have enough DR you're going to be clipping highlights or crushing blacks or both at the same time in the same shot.

Holy wow.. that is excellent news! I bought my 700D for stills and to replace my Panasonic GF3 as a travel camera more years ago than I can remember... I think I read something about RAW compression (which I interpreted as lossless compression) which was also being worked on?

I did say 'roughly'.. maybe I should have compensated for the internet taking everything literally and said 'VERY roughly' :P However, regardless of codec, every 50Mbps codec is going to be bested by every 500Mbit codec, so I think the principle applies. If this was a general discussion about image quality then I might have put more finesse into my argument, but considering the stupidly high bitrates of the BMPCC, I thought that it was a good enough explanation

Well, this is a lively conversation!! As I see it @markr041 and @webrunner5 are both right with excellent points. The big one for me is that @webrunner5 is right to equate run-and-gun with poor quality, and that is exactly why we need smaller high quality devices. A few points: 1) why shoot run-and-gun? Reason #1 - because some things move very quickly and you need to move quickly to follow them. Exhibit A - kids and any family outing. No pauses, no waiting, no do-overs. Reason #2 - because content is king and most of the world is more than 20m walk from where you can park your equipment truck! You need to get to the places worth shooting - and these are often at the end of long hikes. Reason #3 - because many historically or culturally significant places don't let you in with a tripod - Vatican City wouldn't let me in with a ~25cm tall Gorillapod! And good luck getting into almost anywhere with a camera that looks 'pro'. 2) why do run-and-gun shooters need high-quality equipment? Reason #1 - it's precisely because we don't have control of the environment that we need higher quality recording. If you shoot slowly and in controlled situations you can shoot with a camera with 6 stops of DR in 8-bit. Good luck with that if you're outside and the sun is shining. Part of the reason that camcorders and home videos look so awful is because people used them where the action was, not where the lighting was like a film-set. We need higher DR because the sun shines on things we're filming. We need higher bit-depth because sometimes the sun goes behind a cloud when we're recording and now the exposure is way under and we need to significantly boost the gain to get a sensible exposure. We need higher frame rates because we haven't got the ability to predict what will need to be in slow-motion and what won't. So we would ideally like to film everything in slow motion. Do I need to keep going? :D

Hi Simon, welcome to the forums. I'm no expert on what cameras are in the market at the moment, but your requirements and your budget look like they might not be terribly compatible. I could be wrong and people may reply with great recommendations, but if they don't, then that's probably the reason. If you don't get helpful replies I'd suggest having a look through the recent threads on the forum (ie, the last few months) - there are threads talking about most of the well liked cameras. Eg, there's one talking about the BMPCC active right now, partly because the camera is well-liked by people here. Threads talking about cameras that aren't well liked sink like a stone because no-one replies. Best of luck!

Interesting. I remember back in the day I compared the quality of a 720p file and a SD file of the same bitrate and the 720p definitely had more information in it, but perhaps this isn't what it you are looking for. I've been playing with ML on my 700D and trying to work out if I should bother, and if so, what the benefit was over 300Mbps 8-bit 4K. I had in mind that perhaps the colour was what people were liking about it, and 'a purer, thicker image' might be a good way of describing it, with 'thin and brittle' perhaps being the opposite. If you're going to grade heavily afterwards then putting more data into colour bit-depth wold make sense as well. Regardless, the high bit-depth / bitrate of cameras like the BMPCC can't hurt, is difficult to find at any price-point us mortals can afford, and is almost unrivalled in such a compact package. The BMPCC made the top 3 when I was buying the XC10 - it was the non-IQ related aspects like battery life and poor sound quality that meant I didn't end up with one.

I wouldn't be too down on 4K... Think about it like this - we like things like high DR, higher-bit-depths, higher resolutions, lack of over sharpening, etc. If you think about it, except for DR, all of those are related to compression. Bit-depth is colour value quantisation and resolution is about image detail quantisation (over sharpening creates artefacts similar to JPG compression and is related to the distortion of high-frequency image information) but all of these are related to throwing away information. Assuming the camera manufacturers allocate the bitrate in a sensible way, which they are pretty good at doing (ie, not 480p with 30-bit colour depth or 8K with 3-bit colour depth), then image quality will be roughly proportional to bitrate. If we look at a few random cameras, this plays out: My Canon 700D natively outputs <50Mbit 1080, but ML can do ~300Mbit. The Canon 5DIII natively outputs <50Mbit 1080, but ML is something like 500Mbit? (I'm not sure on this but it's a lot) My Canon XC10 records 1080p25 in 35Mbit, 1080p50 in 50Mbit (which is 25Mbps when conformed to 25p) and 305Mbit in 4k25 IIRC the GH5 records 1080 in 100Mbps and 4k60 in 400Mbps (166Mbps when conformed to 25p) The BMPCC records 1080 at 230Mbps in Prores and 569Mbit in RAW. When you look at IQ like this it makes sense about why the BMPCC and other models in the range still stack up. It also makes sense why people are drawn to 4K recording modes, and why despite lacking 4K TVs have looked fine for decades. I don't know what the signal-noise ratios of analog television was, but the combination of a good signal, high DR TV and a darkened room would have represented a high bitrate, as would film. With a few exceptions, 4K is the only way to get high bitrates out of the 'stars' of the DSLR revolution.

I completely agree. A new model that did 10bit 4K (and maybe a 'premium' model that does 10bit 4k60) would be excellent. However, it's worth considering that the RX0 isn't as much of a shooting-blind-action-camera as others because of it's 25mm equivalent lens, as compared to the GoPro at around 14-17mm. For the RX0 the rig where it's mounted to the top of the monitor makes more sense. Considering that the RX0 isn't fixed focus, how much of a challenge is it in getting focus? I'd imagine it's got a relatively deep depth of field.

Some time ago I was looking at external recorders and learned about the Atomos Ninja Star - something that I assumed would be a spectacularly useful and popular product. Then I discovered it was discontinued and was stunned. If you were using the RX0 as an action camera (ie, mounted and used 'blind' - unlike most of the examples here which treat it as a normal camera) then the Ninja Star would be the perfect companion. Maybe Atomos is the Canon of external recorders and protecting the higher models in their range..