kye

Yeah, I read a number of articles that talked about films shot on only one lens and one of the favourites was the 24-28mm on S35 combo, which was a ~35-40mm equivalent. It's wide enough to get a wide, but not so wide that it distorts too much on close-ups, so it's a good middle-ground if you're only going to use one lens. I ended up settling on 16mm, 35mm, 85mm equivalent focal lengths for my own work, and that was before I really read a lot about lenses and understood the implications around them. The 35mm focal length is great for environmental portraits, which is perfect for the work I do (family and travel) which is primarily about my family and friends being in and interacting with interesting places. The 85mm focal length is a great second option as it can give the impression of being far away. So a wide on an 85 seems very distant emotionally, a mid at 85 seems like a normal gaze at a normal distance, and a close-up at 85 indicates a combination of being relatively close physically with a very very keen interest emotionally (intense focus on that person). It's a great compliment to the wide/mid/close emotions you get from a 35mm.

The deep DoF on the xc10 was definitely a downside, but perhaps an even larger downside was the autofocus performance. If anyone thinks that Panasonic auto-focus is bad then their brain will literally melt if they ever saw what a truly bad AF looks like. Using the camera was a joy, punctuated with regular occurrences of the AF messing up a shot and it was so slow and traumatising it was like watching a car accident in slow motion. You would literally be screaming at the camera inside your head, and several sentences would pass that way before it locked focus - often well and truly after the moment had passed and the shot was already lost. I didn't tend to notice that in real life TBH, and I shot in all kinds of conditions using auto-ISO and hand-held. The way people talk about it I would have thought that I'd have shot after shot after shot ruined but I don't think I ever noticed it. I definitely noticed indoor shots that had heaps of noise, so I definitely used it in situations where the ISO noise degraded the image severely. I always used the camera on full-auto and I know that the lens wasn't parfocal but IIRC Canon mapped the lens and when you changed the focal length it adjusted the focus on the fly to maintain the same focus distance, so if you zoomed at a slow-medium pace then it would feel like a parfocal lens. I mention that because I don't think I ever noticed it change exposure when I zoomed either, so maybe it was compensating for that in some way too. Still, if you shot with it manually it would have been an issue.

I was surprised that it had enough exposure as I have told myself this is a "outdoors during the day" lens, but on closer inspection I think the ISO was working a bit on the images so it's not the best choice for post-sunset. One thing that got me a couple of times on the previous shoot (with the GF3) was that putting it into my pocket seems to adjust the focus to the "closed" position and pulling the camera out of my pocket seems to adjust the focus to the 0.3m position, so that's a trap for new players. Still, when I'm shooting MF with the GH5 focus is always a thing to adjust so I just have to keep that mindset that it's a manual lens and needs to have that attention too. I am contemplating doing a sharpness test of various cameras and lenses and I think that this lens might actually be in the sweet spot of sharp but not too sharp. I'm optimistic for that, plus the size is incredibly convenient. Your analysis is terribly kind in ways that I probably don't deserve, but I'll take it - thanks!! I like to think I have pretty good composition but to be honest I've been shooting for long enough that I don't really even think about it that much anymore, and my mental effort is more around anticipating what is about to happen. For example, with the bird shot, I was thinking that: the bird was chasing bugs and spent most of its time off-screen frame-right and down below the edge of the wall if I moved the camera to the right then that's where the sun was setting and the auto-exposure would be slow to react and would clip the sky, which isn't a good look on the GX85 (even in Cine-D) I don't know enough about bird behaviour to read it's body-language so I can't tell what it's doing, plus if it spots a bug then it all changes in an instant I could make a half-decent shot if it darted off frame-right by starting to follow it, stopping short of the clipping point of the camera, letting it leave frame, and then me lingering in an odd composition telling a little story of interaction and abandonment between the bird and the film-maker, but also giving me the opportunity to cut earlier than that and to just have a bird shot without the little drama Then I just went through the shots in VLC and found a good moment and did a screen grab, based mostly on instinct. In terms of light - I'm reminded of that old saying in film photography - "F8 and be there" 🙂 The lens isn't fixed focus, but it might as well be. It's got a little focus slider on the front that closes a little lens cover, and has stops for infinity and 0.3m (12inches). You can position it anywhere in-between, but you'd really be guessing... Theoretically you could manually focus with it, using peaking or whatever, but the DoF is super deep so it would be difficult to really nail the right distance. If you set it to 0.3m it certainly blurs the background though. This is a shot from the GF3 video I filmed the previous day with the lens set at 0.3m: It's got good flaring characteristics too (that's the sun in the background) but isn't so modern that it's clinical. I shot a few test shots of RAW still images on the GF3 and at 12MP (4K) it was pixel sharp, so it's a pretty decent performer and priced very reasonably (I think) for what you get. Yeah, I'd be inclined to summarise the shot more like "the shot of the bird flying around" rather than what @PannySVHS said!! 🙂

I've seen multitools feature fairly steadily in the "things I carry all day as a film-maker" type articles/videos. D4darius did a great video that talks about his setup.. he uses a chest bag with heaps of pockets...

Thanks, that what I thought you meant and what it would be. It would obviously be nicer if it could tilt through 180 degrees (straight up to straight down) while in-line with the lens, and then the normal 270 when flipped out to the side, but I'm used to the GH5 screen which you have to flip around to at least 90-degrees before it can be rotated to face up or down. I don't use it for selfies (I think I tried it a couple of times, but nah...) so for me it's like @Kisaha said - low angle where you are looking straight down or high angle where you are looking straight up (as well as train shots lol). I've gotten quite a number of nice shots by using that high angle approach. Sometimes I'm tall enough that at zoos I can get the camera higher than the glass barriers and so can get a reflection-free shot, or avoid some other barrier or other. The XC10 really was great for standing behind the camera. The ergonomics and layout etc were all exactly what you'd want. Canon sure know how to make a cinema camera.

If you are ok with cropping then going wider will give you more options. One thing to be aware of with cropping in post is that you frame up properly while shooting for that crop. I have lenses that vignette and so I have to crop in post, but while I'm shooting I don't think about it (composition is quite an automatic thing for me these days) and so when I go to crop in post I am cutting people's heads off left and right and things all go sideways basically!

I think it's like anything else, it's new and could be mis-used so it gets locked down much more than other things. You don't have to look that far to see that the world is full of risks of all kinds, but the amount of effort put into preventing these risks from occurring is vastly different between them, and often has no bearing on the level of risk that is actually present. It's based on public appetite and apathy as to which things get looked at and which things get left alone.

According to one article it said that Hitchcock preferred 50mm, which on S35 would be ~80mm FF. The 15mm on the GX85 in 4K mode is about a 2.2x crop factor, so around 33mm equivalent. Maybe it's the contrast or the colour perhaps?

Speaking of great colour.... great colour! Things like this just make me more motivated to practice my colour grading and develop my skills. Every time I fire up Resolve and do some colour grading I can feel that I'm getting just a little bit better. Both in seeing and noticing things, and also in being able to make the colour how I want. While I was watching it I kept thinking of the FD and then thinking it was a Canon camera, but a G6 - that makes it all the more impressive! 🙂

Thanks!! That's the second grade I did on that little edit. The first was with a 250D 2393 PFE film emulation combo, and it well and truly broke the image! Especially in the sky, it really exposed the jagged compression artefacts. So I re-did the grade manually, dealing in a number of adjustments that are similar to a film emulation (including things like lowering the luma of saturated colours, etc) but limiting them to juuuuust before the image broke. I think I've worked out that the GF3 is basically the digital equivalent of the 8mm film camera when film was in. It's not sharp, hasn't got leading image quality, hasn't got stabilisation (except if you put a huge lens on it), and is full-auto, but is small and fun to use and gives a very "amateur" aesthetic.

Just popped out down the beach and discovered that fashionably late isn't a thing with sunsets. Good thing I'm not fashionable enough to have been that late, but also not early enough either. Here are some ungraded frame grabs from the GX85 and Olympus 15mm F8 pancake lens, which fits nicely in the jeans pocket. @webrunner5 I seem to remember you were keen on this lens? It sure is sharp and relatively distortion free... it's just not, well, fast! These are 4k grabs, so click on them to see the full quality. I don't know what ISO the GX85 was at, but the images don't look too bad for F8 and after sunset.

I'm confused. I was talking about screens that are flat against the back of the camera unless they are flipped out to the side where they can then rotate to face up and down. For example, this is the GH5 mk2: It cannot be tilted up or down while remaining in-line with the lens. This is the type of screen that is required to shoot sideways, like this: A screen that only tilts in-line with the lens cannot be seen from the side: ...and seeing the screen from the side is required for shots like the train one, where it's not possible to stand in-line with the lens because you'd be standing outside the train. I know you don't like the flippy screens, but you said "They can also be flipped out sideways and used for no reason known to man in that manner." and I am telling you that I use it in that manner from time to time, and in those situations it's the only way to get the shot (and be able to see your composition while recording).

Hmm, that's not what I would hope for. How far does it tilt down? Oh, and how far does it tilt up and down when also flipped out to the side? I shoot high and low angles frequently and am looking at the camera from almost directly above or underneath.

I use that mode to shoot around corners. A common use is shots like this: Personally, I find that trying to stand directly behind the camera in such situations to be quite problematic! It's also good for shooting at a 90 degree angle when you can only just reach to put the camera around the corner, and can't stand any closer. Sometimes good shots can be had in historic places by putting the camera and your arms through the bars of a locked gate or barred window etc and holding the camera ahead of you to shoot at an angle. I've gotten some great high-angle shots by using this trick from tall buildings or pedestrian walk-ways that are fitted with bars to prevent people jumping or climbing where they shouldn't be.

I think once you get to the point of understanding the focal lengths and what they do emotionally and how you can work with them (composition vs distance vs distortion vs human perception of faces) then choosing focal lengths simply becomes a matter of choosing the style and content of a production and selecting accordingly. I think the fact we're thinking along the same lines just means that we've all gotten to a level of understanding where the answers become pretty self-evident. https://noamkroll.com/many-iconic-directors-have-shot-their-feature-films-with-just-a-single-prime-lens-heres-why/

Message received... I will start creating videos with flowers in them immediately!

Everything can be measured. If you put a bunch of people into a blind A/B/X testing setup leaded with uncompressed and compressed RAW images and more than, say, 65% of the time they could guess which was which then that wouldn't be visually lossless, whereas if they got it right <65% of the time then that could be interpreted as visually lossless. These aren't the real numbers, but somewhere there will be a standard for "visually" and if not then one could be agreed during any legal process if that was required. There is also the SSIM which is "a perceptual metric that quantifies image quality degradation": https://www.imatest.com/docs/ssim/ Something like this might already be the established way to judge such things in the legal system, and it avoids the inconvenience of dealing with people in your testing process.

@MrSMW @Kisaha What are your thoughts on the tilt only + flippy screens combinations, like the GH6 and S1H have? They're bigger and chunkier, but do give the option for both. Personally, I loved the tilt-only screen on the XC10 because it's so compact and linear with the camera but I also really appreciated the flippy screen on the GH5 for many moments where I wasn't able to be behind the camera and could use the camera from the side etc.

....and a 1.5 crop on the Sony A7iv too... I literally underlined and bolded it. In terms of dealing with crops I'm totally with you, the last thing I want is for the fps to modify my entire lens collection. I'd genuinely be interested in the Komodo if it wasn't for the horrific cropping it does. I like to own the exact focal lengths I know that I like to use and so because I'm not buying the whole set I can buy really nice copies of those models - something that a series of crops just throws out the window. But, like I've said, it seems like almost every manufacturer does it.

@mercer and I have had many discussions that revolved around a two-lens setup - normally something like (on FF) a 50mm for the majority of shots where everything is 'normal' in the plot, and a 24mm wide for location/establishing/emphasis shots and those wide close-ups where the shit has hit the fan for a character. It seems a lot more flexible stylistically to have a couple of lenses so that you have some dynamic capability to change the perspective during moments of emphasis or when you want to change the mood in some way. It's also more practical being able to do wide shots with a wide lens, otherwise you have to shoot them from far far away - something that a low budget might struggle with, so it's a practical choice too. In todays crazy market for vintage primes it's not too much of an ask to get a 24 and 50mm from a set, even the most sought-after sets are affordable if you're not chasing the fastest primes. For example just getting a 2.8 of each focal length should be enough for the DoF but shouldn't break the bank for most.

The first of many more little edits - thanks to my latest film-making purchase....

Great post. Before I got into video I did some street photography and two of the "rules" I used to use were: 1) if the person you're shooting sees you then make eye contact, smile, and say "thank you" 2) If the person asks you to delete the shot then smile and say "sure" and just do it There's lots of talk online about the first one and the general theory (which fits my experience) is that people don't know what to think when they see someone out shooting photos and so they look to you to determine how to react and what to think about it, so by smiling you're indicating that you're a calm and well-intentioned person (rather than a threat) and by saying thanks it makes them feel good because you're indicating they've done you a favour (which they have) and doing things for other people who seem nice gives people a nice feeling. If you're asking people for permission beforehand (which some people prefer) then a compliment is often a great icebreaker like "I love your hat/shirt/look/smile - would you mind if I took a quick photo?", as once again, people see that you're a calm person, its flattering (presumably they also like the hat they're wearing, or whatever you mentioned), and it explains why you might want to take a photo of them. I remember that people are often calmed if you give them a business card too, as it's "proof" that you're legit and not up to no good. Remaining calm and having an answer ready goes a long way it seems. Still, confrontation isn't something that I'm particularly fond of, so I tend to avoid it where I can. In terms of flying drones, I think it seems like a reasonable income stream if you're willing to go through all the hoops to get registered etc, and then do enough flying to justify getting certified etc. For me, I'd spend about 3 hours flying per country I'd be visiting - the absolute worst type of bureaucracy-to-flying ratio imaginable! Yeah, I skipped through the video looking for him to get arrested - had he not mislabeled it I might have relaxed and watched it more thoroughly. Still, clickbait works - just ask the people who have written headlines for tabloid newspapers and pamphlets for the last, say, 300 years!

Great shots he managed to get, but yeah - there's no way I'd even try. With all the regulations being different across different countries, with almost everything cool (or just everything) off-limits to fly near, and the... let's say... "unpredictability" that members of law enforcement sometimes exhibit in various countries, I wouldn't even bother buying one.

A quick google for "Sony crop 60p" revealed this as the top hit, which lists a crop on both the A7S3 and the A74: https://www.4kshooters.net/2022/03/04/shooting-full-frame-4k-60p-video-on-the-sony-a7-iv-no-crop/ If you search for Nikon instead you get this: https://www.engadget.com/nikons-latest-z-6-ii-firmware-unlocks-4-k-60-fps-recording-110552464.html I'd recommend fact-checking your posts before you post them, rather than leaving others to do it, or to leave the people that don't do it to walk away with false information.

Yeah, and that you can buy your way out of having no skill or experience.