KnightsFan

I, too, switched from 7" to 5" because the large screen was unwieldy. However, the size was not an issue for locked off tripod shots. It was just a problem for handheld or those occasional really tight spaces. I could see 7" being perfect for a one man show, where I assume you'll be using a tripod most of the time. However, if you ever do another project with a crew or handheld shots, I think the 5" will be more useful.

Either way, what about using a long HDMI cable and bringing the monitor with you, rather than leaving it on the camera? You can just set it down out of frame when you're ready to roll.

There are two USB modes, Mass Storage and Remote Access.

In Mass Storage mode, the camera will lock up if a USB cable is plugged in (such as a permanent right angle adapter...)

It's in Remote Access that I get the HDMI glitch.

True, the batteries last a long time compared to many other cameras. But 90% of my shots are on a tripod with room for a massive battery, so it's a choice between changing batteries every two hours, or never having to worry about batteries.

One of the biggest annoyances about the NX1 for me is that the HDMI output and USB recharging barely work together. If anyone else has overcome this issue, please let me know.

Essentially, if there is a USB cable attached to the NX1, but the cable is not attached to a powerbank when the camera is powered on, the HDMI output will not work at all.

My ideal setup is to power the camera from a TalentCell powerbank, which also powers my monitor (fantastic solution, btw, it runs all day and can even be tethered to an AC outlet). To that end, I 3D printed a clamp that holds both an HDMI and USB adapter. It's sturdy and great for cable management.

However, if I power on the camera without attaching the USB cable to the power bank first, the HDMI out will not output any signal at all. For example, if I power on the camera as it is seen above, with right angle adapters in place that go nowhere, then there will be no way to get an HDMI signal out of the camera--- I would have to power off, attach the USB cable to my powerbank, and then power the camera back on.

Pretty much any other combination works perfectly: if the camera is powered on without the right angle adapters in place, no issues. I can even disconnect the USB cable after powering on the camera, and HDMI will continue to work. It really just seems to be an issue of whether there is a USB cable -to-nowhere at the moment that the NX1 is switched on.

Has anyone else encountered this, or even better, overcome this?

13 hours ago, Luke Mason said:

Only Alexa's digital noise comes the closest to film grain, the others have blotchy, chromatic unpleasant noise patterns, even uncompressed

I'm not saying it looks like film grain, but digital noise seems fine to me before compression.

Compression also hurts digital noise. Noise from uncompressed Raw files looks great; it's only after compression that it becomes video-y.

@Timotheus No, it does not have anamorphic mode.

Forgot to mention:

+ Almost no latency with a 1080p signal. It's only noticeable at all on very fast whip pans. I have not tried with a 4k signal yet.

I got the A5 in a rush (after finding last minute that the Ninja 2 does not work with the NX1), and have been shooting with it every day for the past two weeks. I'm pretty happy with it. Regarding the discussion of the brightness, it's adequate. I've had the brightness at 50% and it's viewable outside for framing and peaking, though it's no match for an EVF. All in all I would totally recommend it to anyone on a budget who doesn't want a massive 7" monitor. But make sure your batteries work before using! Here are my pros and cons, loosely in comparison with the Feelworld FW760 that I used to use.

+ Smaller but still 1080p. 5" vs 7" is a huge difference - and also it has thinner bezels and is thinner so it's actually much much smaller.

+ MUCH lighter. Makes my setup more balanced

+ HDMI out

+ Mounting points on three sides

+ Screen is fantastic. Focus peaking works very well.

+ It remembers settings through power on/off cycles. The FW760 would reset everything if it powered down.

- The battery plate is finicky. It's not a problem for me since I power everything from a power bank (I didn't even own any batteries for my FW760). It will not work with a Wasabi LPE6, but it will work with an Ipax LP-E6, even though BOTH of those batteries power a 5D3 perfectly.

- Plasticky. I think the FW760 felt a little sturdier, but not by much. However, the mounting points seem secure and it's not going to fall apart in your hands. Sort of the build you expect from a screen this price.

- Only one customizable button.

- False color does not have a color scale on the side, so you have to guess what IRE each color corresponds to

- The 1/4-20 threads are too shallow. I had to put a few washers on my friction arm's thread.

- The hot shoe mount that comes with it is junk.

- It would have been really nice to put one of these on the back: https://www.amazon.com/SmallRig-Camera-Threaded-Monitor-Accessories/dp/B01NCK79G2 . I had one on my FW760 and then used a lock washer on the friction arm to keep it from accidentally rotating.

2 hours ago, blondini said:

Except I'm not talking about a generic calculation of equivalent depth of field per se. My question is whether, using the 17mm lens on a mtf sensor, it is even possible to film a subject at, say, 15 meters and still differentiate them from the infinity plane as you could with a 35mm lens. I'm just looking at a few barrel markings on some lenses I own, a 20mm which hits infinity just beyond 4 meters, and a 35mm lens which hits infinity past 30 meters. 

 

I'm not 100% sure I'm following you. If you mean that the focus throw of the lens is too short to accurately pull focus, that is entirely due to the construction of the lens. You can make the same optics have a focus throw of 5 degrees or 300.

7 hours ago, no_connection said:

Are you thinking about the distortion that you get with planar projection where the edge get "stretched" which do worsen as the angle get wider?

No, we were talking about pixel vignetting, which is caused by pixels being recessed. Oblique rays of light get occluded by the "rim" of the pixel. The farther from the center of the image, the more oblique the rays that strike that pixel. Thus, more light is occluded by the "rim" at the corners which causes vignetting. My thought was that if you simply take a design and scale it down, none of the angles will change. So the light rays passing through a 50mm on full frame will have the same angles as they would through a 25mm on MFT, if measured at corresponding points on the sensors.

Now, I just did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that implies that I was wrong, since we are measuring at equivalent DOF, which interestingly makes the diameter of the aperture equal. (Maybe that's obvious to all of you, but I found it interesting). But I don't know enough about optics to be sure that any of my thought process is correct!

2 hours ago, blondini said:

A 17mm lens is likely to be at infinity by 3 or 4 meters, where as a 50 might still separate the infinity from a subject at 20 or 30 meters. This is not strictly an issue of perspective, but it is a focal-length-dependent characteristic of rendering space.

True! That is why Andrew compared  a 17.5mm f0.95 to a 35mm f2.0. Halving the focal length requires an extra two f-stops wider aperture for equivalent depth of field.

17 hours ago, horshack said:

I don't see what you're basing that intuition/assumption on. There is no equivalence theory to apply here - optics/ray angles don't change based on sensor size. The only impact on sensor size would be using a larger-format lens on a smaller sensor, where some of the rays are thus cropped (don't reach the image sensor), but that's not what we're speaking to here - the Voigtlander is a native lens.

I'm probably wrong, I'll need to read up more on lens design. It was an intuition based on the fact that scaling an object doesn't change any angles--but again, I am not sure it's right. I hoped someone could explain why it was right or wrong.

@Brian Caldwell That's how I understood you before, thanks for clarifying!

1 minute ago, horshack said:

But we're talking about a native MFT lens (Voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95), so the relative angle of incidence across the frame will be the same as a FF sensor with a native FF lens of a similarly scaled design.

Exactly. So my intuition was that a 17.5mm f0.95 on MFT would have roughly the same angle of incidence as a 35mm f2.0 on FF, thus making pixel vignetting a non-issue when comparing the two.

@Brian Caldwell has given me a few more things to read up on, thanks! Though, if I understand you correctly, the obliquity only darkens the edges of the bokeh, and will not have a large effect on the part that is in-focus?

@blondini No, perspective distortion is only affected by distance from the camera to the subject. No matter what sensor/lens combination you use, if the camera and the subjects don't move, then the ratio of the size of two subjects will remain the same. I did a quick and dirty test to illustrate. It's a little imprecise (the camcorder would NOT focus on the guy in front...)

For all three images the camera is in the same place. I suspect the small discrepancies in ratio (2.2% error) are mainly due to moving parts inside the camcorder when it zooms, which changes its actual distance from the subject. But this is an easy thing to test yourself.

First image is a 4mm lens on a 1/4 type sensor

Second image is a 55mm lens on an APS-C sensor

As you can see, the ratio of the figures is the same. You could even use a wider lens and the ratio remains, because the distance has not changed:

Third image is a 2mm lens on the 1/4 type sensor.

Quote from Wikipedia:

Quote

Note that linear perspective changes are caused by distance, not by the lens per se – two shots of the same scene from the same distance will exhibit identical perspective geometry, regardless of lens used. However, since wide-angle lenses have a wider field of view, they are generally used from closer, while telephoto lenses have a narrower field of view and are generally used from farther away.

1 hour ago, Tiago Rosa-Rosso said:

if you would film this with a smaller sensor and place the camera in the exact same place and try to have the same frame you would have to use a different lens, maybe a 1000mm, then the plane wouldn't look so close to the actors.

Yes, it would. As long as the camera is in the same place, the relative size of the plane compared to the people will remain the same regardless of the lens or sensor. If you don't believe me or my Legos, go try it yourself!

1 hour ago, horshack said:

Vignetting is due to the angle of incidence of light reaching the pixels on a sensor and I can't think of any reason why a smaller sensor would have less oblique angles. In fact, the higher the pixel density the more likely vignetting is to occur. BSI sensors should be less prone to this but to my knowledge neither the G5 or G5s are BSI.

Same reason why there is less vignetting on a center crop from a full frame image. Angle of incidence becomes more oblique the farther from the center of the image.

@horshack If I'm not mistaken, pixel vignetting is entirely due to angle of incidence on the sensor. Smaller sensors have less oblique angles of incidence at the corners. I could be wrong, but I bet that pixel vignetting won't be a factor in this comparison. I'd love to see evidence either way, though.

I would get a MoBo with more PCI slots. They can be used for many expansions, including GPU, I/O ports, capture cards, WiFi cards, and more.

I would also get a case with lots of large fans. I've got something like 3 120mm and 2 140mm fans, which keeps it cool enough to prevent the loud GPU fans from kicking in. Lots of large fans => low RPM => less overall noise.

@Andrew Reid Yeah, "directly related" isn't the correct wording, but we mean the same thing. As sensor size increases, you can either increase resolution with the same pixel size, or increase pixel size at the same resolution. You said so yourself in your disclaimer at the end: "For example you can have higher megapixel counts because there’s simply more real-estate on the chip surface to add more pixels."

40 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

The A7R III is FOUR stops more sensitive, with a smaller sensor...It's more of a positive correlation with pixel size if anything, rather than total surface area.

That is why I said "assuming similar tech." The a7r3 has better tech. I should have specified photo-sensitive area, rather than simply "surface area" and would perhaps have been clearer.

44 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

But nope... You don't. They are two completely different things.

Wait, you just posted an  article about how the 17.5mm f0.95 is comparable to the 35mm f2.0. If you don't have to change both numbers, why aren't you saying the 17.5mm is comparable to a 35mm f0.95?

But anyway, I'm just explaining Northup's argument. He claims there is marketing material on their websites that is misleading, idk if that's true but his crop factor equivalence works for the comparison he's making, despite being poorly worded and convoluted.

3 hours ago, Inazuma said:

The last video I saw of his (a couple years ago), he was claiming that m43 lens manufacturers were mis-marketing their products and that they should be calling their f2.8 lenses f5.6. And seemed to forget that other companies including Canon have been making lenses for crop sensors for years even before m43. Should Canon be calling their 17-55mm f2.8 an f4 instead?

Assuming we're talking about the same video, he was saying that manufacturers were erroneously marketing their lenses giving equivalent focal lengths, but not equivalent apertures. Like marketing an 14-42 f2.8 as a 28-84 f2.8. His point was that IF you change one number, you have to change the other. And he did specify that he was talking about equivalent depth of field - his title card for talking about it is "Aperture & Depth of Field." He was using ISO to talk about exposure, which he explained early in the video. In his logic, once you compensate for exposure with ISO, you have to compensate with aperture as well.

It is a roundabout logic, but it does account for the lower light gathering power of a smaller surface area, and thus the need for more gain (and thus more noise or lower resolution) to reach the same ISO.

3 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

At the end of the day you can project the same image into a smaller space.

True, but the light gathering power of the space is directly related to its size. The SNR ratio of a smaller sensor will be lower than a larger sensor (assuming similar tech), given the same image scaled down. Hence the f0.95 doesn't actually have any low light advantage over the f2.0, if you look at the system as a whole.

42 minutes ago, Tiago Rosa-Rosso said:

There are some differences that you might not spot on this shots but you might in other situations. One it's how apart objects are from one another in depth. A 17.5mm makes the space wider, this is almost not noticeable in many cases but for example when you are filming a dialog between two actors the distance in depth between then will be different and this will convey another mood to the scene.

This is not true. If it were, photos of a total solar eclipse wouldn't work on different size sensors.

I may be misunderstanding, but it seems you want to transcode each original clip to a lower file size, which you might use at a later date to make new edits?

Unfortunately, every time you transcode, you will lose some quality. It's up to you to determine how much you can lose and have it still be acceptable, since the only way to avoid losing quality is to keep the originals. So the question is, how much space do you want to save? Do you want to clips to take up half the space? A quarter?

In general, you will want to use a space-efficient codec with the maximum bitrate you can. A 50mbps H.265 file will most likely be indistinguishable from the original. If I were you, I'd conduct a few tests with different encoding options, and then compare the smaller files to the originals to find the optimum size/quality that you like.

4 minutes ago, OliKMIA said:

Good article but what about the image quality at 0.95 ?

I wonder how much harder it is to manufacture a 17mm f0.95 that resolves the same on MFT as a 35mm f2.0 does on full frame.

Quote

An F0.95 lens on Micro Four Thirds still has a big advantage over an F2 lens in low light, 2 stops in fact.

which is compensated for by the 4x larger surface area of the full frame sensor (I know it's implied in the small disclaimer, but taken in isolation that sentence could be misleading).

I could not reproduce any of your issues.

What is the icon on the left side of the screen in the middle? The little aperture icon? Mine is greyed out and I don't know which setting it relates to.

I've never shot in AWB, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had the same glitch. Fwiw, I can usually produce bizarre color shifts by quickly changing a manual lens' aperture from wide open to closed. I think it has to do with sudden exposure changes. But again I've never seen it happen with a white balance preset or when it's set to a white card.

Were you shooting with a Kelvin white balance? If you set your white balance to a Kelvin value you'll be in for a bad time. I did a few tests and found that almost every shot had weird color shifts, sometimes for single frames, and sometimes for seconds at a time. It did seem to be "overriding" my picture profile or something.

I've never had that issue in any other white balance setting, so AFAIK it's just a really bad bug with Kelvin white balance.