KnightsFan

If you ever decide to launch a hobbist camera project, I'd be willing to contribute some of my free time to designing the user interface module.
I've been an advocate of real simple UIs (User Interfaces), however with a balance of the things you need most often right at your fingertips at all times. Today I mostly don't like any of the user interfaces on any of the usual suspects in the camera business (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc), and I think this could be much improved if these manufacturers gave us tools to create our own user interfaces and be able to share them with anyone else; heck, it could be something as simple as designing the UI with HTML, CSS and/or JSON and then providing javascript hooks into the actual functions, something similar to this:
camera.setISO(800);
camera.setSpeed(50);
camera.setApperture(lens.getMaximumApperture());
timeToShoot = 300;
camera.shootVideo(timeToShoot);
etc

I just want a board sensor that covers 16mm and has dual pixel AF so I can hack my 16mm camera apart and replace the ground glass with a CMOS and have reliable AF on a film camera.

On some shoots, that is almost precisely what happens. I've worked on projects where they shoot a scene on expired 16mm because of its feel rather than accuracy, or where we chose a profile that gave us the look we wanted while being completely inaccurate.
And yes, I've also been on shoots where they strive for 100% accuracy. Many times those projects sucked, because the people in charge were more concerned with technicalities and test charts than they were with evaluating what worked for their vision. I don't mean to say that those kinds of projects will always be bad. I'm sure you have your workflow and that it works for you--as do a lot of people. That's just been my experience on micro budget projects.
There is a huge difference between understanding the color that you are capturing, and always striving for real-world accuracy in 100% of situations. Just as any animator or CG artist who uses the same colors and tools but has no real world reference anyway.

Well this is not true. Many movies with great cinematography, including virtually everything shot on film, have their style chosen from the moment the film starts rolling, and that often determines their choice of film stock or LUT. If you are shooting anything other than generic footage, you must know your end result and how the scene will end up in order to light it. Looks aren't chosen in post.
I'm sure some productions this is the approach, but it's certainly not universal, not in cinema. What kind of productions are you saying use the approach of always stating with "accurate color" and grade from there?

Well this is not true. Many movies with great cinematography, including virtually everything shot on film, have their style chosen from the moment the film starts rolling, and that often determines their choice of film stock or LUT. If you are shooting anything other than generic footage, you must know your end result and how the scene will end up in order to light it. Looks aren't chosen in post.
I'm sure some productions this is the approach, but it's certainly not universal, not in cinema. What kind of productions are you saying use the approach of always stating with "accurate color" and grade from there?

I know you feel bad about it, but I think it makes sense in the current economic climate. No sense to hold onto two similar but different cameras, hold onto which ever one is getting you more work and sell the other

 
  


Wrong, color can be subjective. 

Heck, the debate in the stills world of Nikon vs Canon colors has been going on far longer than the HDSLR colors debate has gone on for filmmakers!

Yes, some color science / brands get a far great majority of people preferring it than others. Like ARRI for instance will get almost universal appreciation, but even ARRI can get a few crazy holdouts who will say they don't like it as much as something else!

Plus what is "best" can be project dependent, the color science you might pick for a cheerful romantic comedy might not be the same as your preference for a dark horror. 

I love the movecam battery plate with two npf batteries. 

This is very cool! First time I've ever seen this design. You've got fully integrated BOTH BP-U Batteries and V-Lock Batteries! V-Locks for your usual shooting, with the option to super slim down your setup to use a BP-U30 for the likes of gimbal shots. 


All in all this is a very attractive looking camera, you've got that nice big integrated display for camera controls (although, on the operator side! Not the AC's side), and just in general more integrated into this body than before (no need for the KineBack-W now!). This is also the first Kinefinity camera to do ProResRAW

This looks very cool! I've been eyeing a Deity Connect system for my next project, which still looks like a better value for my uses than this new system. But this is really got some great features.

Zcam doesn't have fans for cooling... one of the many reasons I purchased one.

The 14 stops that C5D measured on the Alexa was at 2k resolution, and presumably the C300 III number of 12.8 would be closer to ~13.5 if downscaled to 2k. So it seems very close in terms of SNR.

There is no rule mandating a 1:1 correlation between dynamic range captured and dynamic range displayed.
Measuring the "stops of DR" of Rec.709 is based on an 8 bit image with a standard gamma curve. This means that on a Rec709 screen, the light emitted by a white pixel is 5 stops brighter than the light emitted by a black pixel. It doesn't matter what the pixels refer to--an "untouched" video from your camera, CGI, some text, a webpage, etc.
The amount of compression (or expansion) of dynamic range that you apply to an image is just an artistic choice. It's just like a CGI render: your image doesn't HAVE to look like the real world, but it will end up on a screen that emits 5 stops of DR. So, to make a "natural" looking image, you should display about 5 stops of real world DR on that screen. However, we've universally agreed that we like a little bit of compression at least, so we put maybe 8 stops of the real world onto our 5 stop display. But if you show straight up log footage with 12 or 14 stops, it looks really unnatural.

https://www.canonrumors.com/canon-u-s-a-to-host-virtual-press-conference-for-new-professional-imaging-products-and-technologies/
Virtual press conference from Canon HQ planned on April 20th. Should be related to "professional products", so eos C300 mkIII and hopefully the latest details about the R5. Really hope it's the day the Canon eos R5 will be officially announced (with all the specs, release date and price) !

I just bought a used nx1 body, but that's because I already own one and all of the samsung lenses.
If I were buying today, I wouldn't buy into the system unless I was absolutely sure that's what I wanted or if I found a really good deal. I'd go fuji, sony, m43, or stick with the Nikon Z stuff.
Honestly, I'll probably buy into Nikon Z this year or next depending on how the system evolves. 
I love the samsung stuff and the results I get from it. None of it is going anywhere at this point.
The lenses are all very very good. The native lenses are one of the biggest reasons I'm still with the system.
They are focus by wire, but the responsiveness is adjustable in the menus and I don't mind it. The autofocus on the S Zoom lenses and some others is pretty fantastic and has been my main way of working with the camera for live events and run and gun. There's some faults to the autofocus system, but once you learn it, it's strengths are there and are very strong.
You can set up peaking and turn it on or off from the menu. Then, you only need to turn the focus ring to get peaking to show up. This works with native or adapted lenses.
I've hooked up monitors view HDMI and it's fine. Not great, but definitely should work fine with the zacuto EVF.
The EVF and LCD on the nx1 are both really, really good. I've been very content using just those.
You can hand hold the camera, but again, 95% of the time I'm using the native lenses, some of which have good IS.
I love the camera, it really has been amazing and fun to use and because of my situation and the size/depth of my NX collection, I doubt I'll ever get rid of it, but we're a long time away from these cameras being new and it was discontinued when I bought into the system. 

It's great for what it is, but buy the Fuji or something else that's still supported/manufactured unless you get a good deal and know that this is exactly what you want. 
 
 
 

When I started making movies with my friends in middle school and all we had was a camcorder with no external mic at all, we would re-record our lines with the actual camera, just holding it close to our faces usually with the lens cap on. We'd have hours of "footage" just for ADR, lol.

Honestly the XT-3 was already ahead of the NX1 in everything except ergonomics, XT-4 far surpasses that with IBIS, LOG, and far better rolling shutter performance. 
Only thing that the NX1 beats it at is the body design.

Guys, thanks so much for taking the time to watch the film and post your thoughts! Awesome. I posted this over a year ago so it's a nice surprise to see these today.
@Displayhd - great feedback on audio! I have very little experience with sound design but since releasing it it was the thing that struck me most when watching other people's more accomplished shorts. I barely used any location or foley sound and relied heavily on the music and the character's audio. Big learning point there!

Yes, my bro was actor. He definitely has some natural talent and we're hoping to get together and make some more shorts together soon. He'll appreciate that feedback, and agree we could have leveraged more emotion, particularly if the script was more fleshed out.

Given the time we had we were relatively happy with the script, but yes sooooo much more we would have liked to have done with it. I don't mind that it poses a few questions, leaves some things a little mysterious, but I don't think we drew the story our strongly enough.
hehe, it's funny, we recorded a number of panther approaching shots, with me running, jumping out of the bushes and growling at him, and it was so difficult pulling focus while running and jumping and landing the framing on his face (I was having to shoot close to wide open with the Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 as the light faded) and then we decided we had to record something more simple for backup. I was wide open at iso3200/6400 at the end, retaking the shot trying to get something that would at least make sense! Strangely in the edit we started by using one of these running takes, but it felt a bit "b-movie' which wasn't quite the right vibe.
There are some "outtakes" here showing some of the failed attempts haha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPqztHFSLPc&t=1s
Love the idea of 8 hour production with most time on script! I think limiting time, giving yourself boundaries, is great for creativity.
@KnightsFan - thanks man!! I was really pleased with first shot too. Actually, I think it was my favourite shot and then went down hill from there haha
Again, great feedback on audio! Would have loved to use boom mic, but it was just me and my bro doing everything so we had to go with lavalier. Great idea going out and re-recording some of the audio. I think with better planning I would have definitely made time for this because of the value it would have added!
Agreed, there could definitely be a little more background on who died. We wanted it to be somewhat ambiguous so people could draw their own conclusions, but it's a little too loose.
Thanks so much again for your comments, it's great motivation to start thinking about the next one.

To summary up the findings so far around Resolve Studio 16.2 and 1Dx III files:

- HEVC ALL-I and IPB 10bit 4:2:2  25fps neither Quick Sync or Nvidia 20xx can HW decode them. From our test seems all done in the CPU. 
- A top class desktop CPU 9900K can software decode in realtime both HEVC ALL-I and IPB 10bit 4:2:2 25 fps
- A top class Notebook CPU 8750H can software decode in real-time but really at the limit (not really usable on a timeline without setting half resolution) HEVC but only IPB 10bit 4:2:2 25 fps not ALL-I (this is a strange one as IPB are more computationally intensive, probably the software decoder is more optimized for IPB).
- A top class desktop CPU 9900K with a Nvidia 2080ti can realtime playback RAW 24fps. Probably even at 60fps I would need to upload and send a file to @Trankilstef
-  A top class Notebook CPU 8750H but with a medium gpu 1050ti cannot real-time playback RAW 24fps, CPU is at 70% and GPU at 100% so maybe a gaming notebook with 8750H or 9750H with a 2070 or 2080 is able to do real-time RAW playback. Hope to find it out soon
- A top class Notebook 9750H with 2070 cannot playback real-time HEVC ALL-I 10bit 4:2:2  25fps. We would need to test IPB

I just cannot imagine if the R5 at 8K will also be HVEC 10bit 4:2:2 if there is a machine that can playback those files. Hopefully there will be HW decoding in the future for this file type.
 
Thanks a lot to @KnightsFan @Trankilstef and @Matthew19 for the tests and contribution
 

Nice! I think the first shot was great. The mysterious references to past events made me want to find out what the mystery was. I think that after that first shot, I would have liked to get a little more story and for it to reveal a little more about who died, what they were doing that made them "stupid," etc.
I agree with the comments above, it was a little too obvious the character was wearing a mic, especially when the rope was rubbing against the jacket. And then one yell was badly distorted. One option for better sound is to use a boom mic and strategically mix that with the lav, for example using the boom exclusively for those effects. If you don't have a boom mic but do have the time, then you can even just go back and re-record some of those sounds with the mic placed somewhere to better capture those effects.
But great job for a first narrative short with a limited production time/resources! I'd love to see whatever you make next.

My experience with Amazon prime video direct has not been great. It honestly feels more like a beta at this point, and to be fair, it has improved its interface in the past few months. It says they review titles for publication in 2-4 days, but it's more like 4+ weeks, and their system for telling you about issues is frustrating and poorly implemented.
In the end you will end up with like 5 cents per hour watched if you release for amazon prime users to watch for free. So you can do the math to figure out how much content and how many views you need to make a profit.

Happy new year all!
I’ve finally (finally!) made my first short narrative film.
I’ve been a full time videographer for 8 years now, writing on and off in my spare time, but never actually got out and turned my writing into a film.
So I decided enough was enough and asked my brother if he was up for the challenge of making something in our home village over Christmas.
8 hours writing and pre-production, a single 8 hour day of filming, and 8 hours of editing.
Loved the process. Lots of lessons learned. Here’s the result, and would love your feedback.
Cheers,
James
 

I'd say that you're pretty reasonable, both here and in my other conversations with you here, though I do disagree with you at times.
There are a couple points that negatively effect me.
1. The economy. First of all, stocks: yes, the stock market has risen quite a bit up until this crisis. For Americans who own stock, namely, above average income and wealth, that is great, but for the average and below average income, stock gains mean next to nothing. Second, the ballooning deficit, which has doubled since 2016. That's all debt that I, as a citizen, have a share in and which will be paid through raises in my taxes, or will result in a catastrophic default on loans years from now. Moreover, the deficit was created in order to "stimulate growth" and while stocks have risen, the national debt-to-GDP ratio has grown since 2016, meaning we are actually going into debt faster than the economic boost is taking us out--and that's even without considering all of those stock gains are going to the richest people in the country, and also before taking into account the recent crisis.
And as a citizen, I will be paying to dig us out of this hole.
2. Climate. It's hard to pin down specific cause-and-effects between policy and tangible climate trouble. On average, we will see more frequent natural disasters, which cause damage that I could be directly harmed from, or will contribute towards paying for as a taxpayer and as someone who pays into the insurance system. While Trump might not personally be increasing carbon emissions, the opportunity cost of not taking action, and generally lending a sympathetic ear to climate change deniers negatively impacts us all.

I'd say that you're pretty reasonable, both here and in my other conversations with you here, though I do disagree with you at times.
There are a couple points that negatively effect me.
1. The economy. First of all, stocks: yes, the stock market has risen quite a bit up until this crisis. For Americans who own stock, namely, above average income and wealth, that is great, but for the average and below average income, stock gains mean next to nothing. Second, the ballooning deficit, which has doubled since 2016. That's all debt that I, as a citizen, have a share in and which will be paid through raises in my taxes, or will result in a catastrophic default on loans years from now. Moreover, the deficit was created in order to "stimulate growth" and while stocks have risen, the national debt-to-GDP ratio has grown since 2016, meaning we are actually going into debt faster than the economic boost is taking us out--and that's even without considering all of those stock gains are going to the richest people in the country, and also before taking into account the recent crisis.
And as a citizen, I will be paying to dig us out of this hole.
2. Climate. It's hard to pin down specific cause-and-effects between policy and tangible climate trouble. On average, we will see more frequent natural disasters, which cause damage that I could be directly harmed from, or will contribute towards paying for as a taxpayer and as someone who pays into the insurance system. While Trump might not personally be increasing carbon emissions, the opportunity cost of not taking action, and generally lending a sympathetic ear to climate change deniers negatively impacts us all.

If you're staying home to avoid getting sick these days, why not spend an hour or two watching Season 2 of #millcore? It's available now on Amazon Prime in the US and UK. Hope you enjoy!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B085LTSF16/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s2

Or they have 82,000 less mouths to feed... I'm just kidding.