heart0less

22 minutes ago, bjohn said:

I'm using some 50-year-old Minolta lenses [...] Those lenses offer a Leica look for a tiny fraction of the cost and with better lens-to-lens consistency than Leica.

You piqued my curiosity.. Which Minolta lenses do you refer to?

13 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:

Vintage

It made me smile, thank you!

Great sound design - did you play the notes yourself?

I got the same impression watching some comparisons. 

I wonder how much of this is simply Blackmagic worrying that they slightly overdid BMPCC6K, which could hurt their Ursa sales. Though, I doubt many people bought brand new Ursas during past two years. 

Is there any chance you could get a color checker and record it with both of your cameras at the same time? Note that both cameras need to be properly exposed and white balanced.

Congrats!

This is a solid piece.
I really liked the tune and I think the visuals matched it very well.
Kudos for being able to uphold it for over 5 minutes without making it repetitive and boring. Cross-cutting definitely helped.

Regarding lighting: in my opinion it's on point, wouldn't change anything myself.
Stage lighting might be quite harsh, but this makes it believable and solid.

Grading looks awesome. Beautifully enhances your set production.
Though I noticed some small issues with clipped colors, like those blue blobs and pink highlights:

You mentioned using Resolve, so I can wholeheartedly recommend adding a node at the end with 'Gamut Limiter' Effect (it's a built-in effect). It should fix it.

Another thing that didn't quite match my taste was overall sharpness.
The footage looks like you added a tiny bit too much digital sharpening to it. It's especially visible during the opening shot in the plastic wrap you used to secure the mic boom.
IMHO, a soft look would nicely complement the tone you set.

Once again: great work and thanks for sharing!

Take it with a grain of salt, BUT despite the clickbaity title (which is totally intentional), it's a solid piece of advice and shows how a professional DP tackles basic color grading.

3 hours ago, seanzzxx said:

Hey man, let me say firstly that I really appreciate the thoughtful reply and comments, thanks a lot - really.

You're most welcome.

Thanks for taking the time and replying to my questions, as well.
( :

3 hours ago, seanzzxx said:

My biggest lesson was that having lip-syncing in your video really limits how you can cut

That's a great tip, thanks for sharing it.

3 hours ago, seanzzxx said:

I actually deliberated for a long time about taking the whole dancing segment out (it's only two shots after all), but I really liked the performance and so did the artist, and I think overall it fitted in enough with the 'good vibes' of the whole video to justify staying.

I really liked her performance, too. Just some technicalities to make it look more polished and coherent.

On 6/18/2020 at 11:56 AM, Geoff CB said:

Stills from some recent interviews.

My gosh, these are in-cred-i-ble.

The overall tonality is superb.

There is a solution, although it'd require buying another item.

A FD → Sony E helicoid.

At its minimum setting it should allow you to focus at infinity and if you want to have smaller MFD, then you turn the helicoid slightly and voila.

https://www.ebay.pl/itm/Canon-FD-lens-to-Sony-E-mount-adapter-Macro-Focusing-Helicoid-NEX-6-A6000-A6300/283131024151?hash=item41ebec9317:g:EZwAAOSwf95bh9Gf

1 hour ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

He found a rigged up P4K to be impractical on rough and dirty shoots.

Precisely. That's the biggest issue with this cam - it's totally impractical. 

And while Z-CAM is just a lovely little cube, to my eyes it looks far more professional than the outgrown toy-camera which BMPCC4K is. 

Apart from that, their mobile app is awesome and allows you to use a simple iPad as a director's monitor. No need for wireless transmitters. 

58 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

He seems to really love the Z-cam though. 

IMHO, it's comparing apples to oranges.

BMPCC4K is a M4/3 camera sold for 1300$, whereas Z-CAM S6 features S35 sensor and costs almost twice as much - 2499$. And you don't get a free Resolve Studio with it.
To be honest, I'm surprised to see that the Z-CAM isn't that much better than Pocket 4K.

If he were to compare E2 S6 to BMPCC6K, then alright - it'd be more fair, but still, BlackMagic is cheaper (1995$ for 6K) and gives you an amazing piece of software without any additional fee.

Spenser Sakurai uploaded a video recently, where he discusses Z-CAM F6 (the one with FF sensor) and he was quite pleased with it, but he mentioned that the whole Z-RAW idea is terribly implemented at the moment. Nothing really supports it.

Having said that, Z-CAMs look great to me and I'm glad they're here as a brand.
I don't think I'd ever want a BM camera, even though the image they tend to give seems really nice.

12 minutes ago, homestar_kevin said:

I believe the 24mm is known to have a pretty big swing in sample variation between lenses.

Seems like most of these Rokinon/Samyang ones do.

Yeah, I've experienced this myself.

Got a new Samyang 24 mm T1.5 Cine for Sony A (to be used with Sony E Mount) and it was totally unusable below T2.8 (had a very glowy and soft look to it), whereas many people report that their copies are tack sharp wide open.
Fortunately, I could return it but the seller couldn't offer me any replacement, so I took the cash and forgot all about it.

Hello, @seanzzxx.

First off: congrats on doing and delivering this!
Especially since it was your first music video.

How do you rate the overall experience and how did you come across the band?

Did you experience any problems on set or prior to that?
How big was your crew, if there was any?

Regarding the video itself and my impressions ( I hope you don't mind me speaking freely? )

The opening shot looks a bit flat.
Your plane of view is parallel to the wall and the lighting doesn't really favor anything in particular.
I really like all the props and the wardrobe, though. They have a cozy, warm feel to it and stand out nicely from the white walls. Even the book has some orange on the cover - that's a great attention to details!

When I saw the band - a huge smile appeared on my face.
They looked great. And you definitely managed to introduce those 80's vibes into it.
Using a harsh rim lighting was a perfect choice - it really reminds me of Robert Richardson movies, eg. Casino (1995).
It felt just like you described - a daydream sequence. Awesome.

Then we have some great performance in-between.

I'm not a huge fan of the 2:28 (and again at 3:12) shot, showing the actress out of focus.
I think it'd be much stronger if something that required her immediate attention (eg. a pet waiting to play with her / some pot boiling over) happened in the foreground, while she was completely lost in the song world.

And then this 2:37 sequence - feels a little too wide for me.
Even more because we've only had seen the location through a longer focal length that was put on sticks. And now not only we're flying, but also seeing so much more.
Maybe a shot showing the female talent getting up from the couch and slowly zooming out would sell it?
Also, I sense some higher shutter speeds? The motion doesn't look as smooth as it did before?

The ending was neat, though.
Bue hour nicely matches the stage parts.

One thing I'd really like to see (hear?) is the music stopping abruptly as the tape stops rolling.
Just to wake us up from the dream.

Overall - great job, seriously.
You should be proud and I hope you are!

Thanks for sharing.

Hi, Karl.

Those look like macroblocking aka compression artifacts.
They usually happen when the video has too low bit rate, which is a common thing with consumer Sony cameras.
And it's not related to your lens, ISO or SD card (since it meets the required write speed).

What video settings did you shoot it with?
Was it 4K 100 Mbps?

Unfortunately, people have been reporting similar issues with their a6400s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/videography/comments/emyrvo/frame_ghosting_w_sony_a6400_what_is_going_on/
https://www.reddit.com/r/videography/comments/dfoqi2/just_got_my_a6400weird_compression_artifacts_not/

Some of them state that this issue only appears when shooting HLG.

Could you try reshooting this with eg. S-Log?

5 hours ago, leslie said:

I do have a nap 35 pulled apart sitting in a box, maybe i need to keep an eye out for another broken anamorphic to play with.

You can always 'rehouse' it with some 3D printed elements - this makes it much lighter and more manageable.

@Cosimo, I'm in awe with your hybrids. Even more because many of them are based on my favorite anamorphic scope - Schneider Cinelux.

I just can't get enough of this gorgeous images. 

Please, keep them coming!

8 hours ago, kye said:

And here is my entry for most ridiculous Micro rig, the competition that no-one asked for and no-one will find useful.

I completely forgot that you own a Micro.

I'd be a little worried about the lens mount, since what's in front of it looks like WEIGHT, but apart from that - it's actually quite handy.
Great for some abstract, graphic-like compositions.

48 minutes ago, zerocool22 said:

700k would take me 50 years to save up though.

Considering our (polish) median income it'd take me over 60 years to EARN 700K, let alone save that amount of cash.

Thanks for sharing, @Anaconda_.
This looks really good, actually!

I really dig the interviews you managed to do in the last couple of weeks, Andrew.
It feels good to read some solid material, not only rumors.

And all those people (Bo-Ming, Stephan from Leica, hopefully more to come?) seem to be great personas.
Humble, modest, but still realizing how impactful their companies are and how their decisions may affect us, customers, especially nowadays when brand loyalty is no longer a big thing.

Great use of matching/overlapping cuts.

5 hours ago, leslie said:

i do have one question, the anamorphic mode on the p4k is for normal lenses or spherical lenses  right ? it doesn't desqueeze the image right ?

According to this piece of info, it does desqueeze the image:

- Added support for 2.8K 4:3 2880 x 2160 recording in Blackmagic RAW up to 80 fps for anamorphic lenses.

- Added support for 2x desqueeze preview when recording 4K 4:3.

- Added support for 1.33x desqueeze preview

4:3 aspect ratio in 2.8K is to be used with anamorphic lenses, whereas the 2.4:1 ratio in 4K is meant for spherical lenses. 

2 hours ago, noone said:

my latest idea is to buy a FD lens to EF adapter and remove the glass from that and mount it in a EF to E adapter so that should give me something like a 2mm extension tube which might be pretty close to perfect for me

This seems like a brilliant idea. 

Never would've thought about it myself. 

2 hours ago, noone said:

there is a Pentax one in Germany listed as good

Don't tempt me, man! 

2 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Thanks for posting, @heart0less

Anytime! 

I had a great learning experience, so this was of mutual benefit. 

43 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

What I do know is that the older I get, the less I like 'Hollywood' or 4k, 6k, 8k, 3D, etc (watched the movie 'Extraction' the other day and the body count was just ludicrous) and the more I appreciate good scripts, good acting and especially good cinematography.

Also, slower paced stuff. 

+1

That's something I can wholeheartedly agree with.

What really spoke to me and what I found truly mesmerizing in the couple of last weeks was the Qatsi trilogy, that consists of Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1982), Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation (1988) and finally Naqoyqatsi: Life as War (2002).

An audiovisual poetry. Lovin' it.

Some self-promotion:

2 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Still, the Panasonic 10bit 150mbit codec is a feat, which has been treating filmmakers very well. Even pixel peeping professors like deezid found it to be impressive. Here is the link to the original test from Dec 2017, showing the qualities of this codec: https://www.agdok.de/de_DE/kameratest20172

Exactly.
I hope they'll continue to develop it and introduce this kind of codecs into their future cameras, as well.

44 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

S1 definitely best bang for buck.

Seconding that.

To me, Panasonic S1 is a hugely underrated tool.
Everyone quickly jumped to the S1H bandwagon and forgot all about the basic model.

If I were to upgrade from X-T3, most likely I'd choose the S1.