newfoundmass

5 hours ago, Al Dolega said:

Yes, same here, I wish the camera companies would be brave enough to do some intermediate resolutions/frame rates between HD and UHD.

A 2.5-2.8K option would be a really great choice for finishing to HD while having some room for cropping and having a bit of oversampling for that nice sharp-but-not-sharpened look.

It could also help fill gaps in the spec sheet for marketing, for instance the A7IV (and my S1) can't do 4K60 at less than an s35/APS-C crop, but if it could do 2.5-2.8K at ~1.3x, or even full-frame, that would be a lot more attractive, while still keeping some distance to the A7sIII, A1 etc.

Agree with all of this. 

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I think it's great that cameras are adding ProRes as there are clients that demand it, but the bitrates in 4K are just too much for the bulk of my work, and the editing performance on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro really isn't that much better than h.264. My modest MacBook Pro can handle four camera 4K multicam editing with color correction, titles, and motion graphics with ease. 

I haven't used h.265, but I've heard it's pretty easy to edit. 

It really depends. I think for 90+% of my work 150Mbit is more than enough if I don't need to push the image around in post much. Storing/archiving the footage is a big factor. When you're filming a multi-cam live event and have four cameras with 3-4 hours of footage from each camera that gets to be a lot of space, especially when you're doing it multiple times a month. I've honestly thought about transcoding some of the unedited footage to save space. 

I really need to work on a server instead of using 5TB drives and try doing off site backups, but it gets to be so expensive.

1 hour ago, canonlyme said:

I doubt that getting soft footage with the s5 is to blame on the camera.. 

My guess is focusing is an issue. It's an amazing camera, and I do think the AF is better than people give it credit for, but it's not perfect and I run into the same problem from time to time. 

Cancer has literally taken away everyone I have ever loved the most. First it took my Grammy, then it took my Papa, then it took my Mom, and earlier this year it took one of my pups. To say that I hate it with all of my heart would be an understatement. 

Hearing how many people talk about how it has impacted them breaks my heart. I hope I'm alive to see the day when we finally beat this disease. It won't bring our loved ones back, but if it'll make sure no one has to feel how the way I did holding my Mom's hands as she slowly

The thing is, in any film that's meant to take place in a post apocalyptic environment, that environment is like another character ESPECIALLY when it's something as iconic as Las Vegas. You really kind of squander that though when it's all just a blur in the background of every shot. 

I found it obnoxious, and felt that it hurt the film. It's also one of the few times I've seen normal people notice shallow depth of field (though they didn't use that terminology) and talk about it.

5 hours ago, ade towell said:

Ha yes couldn't make it  through that film, was such a disconnect between the characters and their environment - reminded me of the early days of the 5d mk2 when everyone was filming everything wide open - just because you can doesn't mean you should

It's like Zack Snyder was possessed by Tony Northrup! Too much toneh! 

On 10/6/2022 at 11:36 AM, Django said:

I love shooting wide open at f1.4 or even f1.2. obviously for specific shots requiring isolation or a dreamy feel but you have entire films like Army of the Dead that were shot FF on a Red Monstro wide open at 0.95 on Canon Dream lens rehoused in Leica M mount:

And the film suffered because of it, I think. Sorry, just had to say it! 

Yeah, I was shocked at how reasonable it was, at least on first glance. I do wonder if there's a catch. I didn't look too deeply into it. I think the music industry is starting to understand, with the way things have gone, that it makes more sense to play ball so to speak. 

I'm pretty satisfied with Artlist.io personally, and don't really have use for using a song as a one off for YouTube, so I don't really see myself using it, but it's cool that it's out there. 

Yeah, it's probably lickd. It allows you to license "mainstream" music for like $8 per video. 

Sorry 😔

1 hour ago, Geoffrey said:

Thanks for this, it sounds like a good method.

The problem I have is that I want (need really) to stick to the look of one camera, the S5, as I use the CineD2 space and the rest of the film, all shot with the S5 only, uses it. So what I am actually trying to do is match the Fuji to the S5 footage which I don't want to change (much). I have tried the auto colour match feature in Lumetri but it is very ballpark, so stopped using that and went manual as it were but then ran into a wall of ignorance. I have made some progress with the hue curves and the match is much better but not right by some distance.

One of the problems I had in the field was that the Fuji white balance feature did not work - it is stupidly sensitive to light and kept coming up with 'fail' and there is only so much time you can fiddle around before you have start shooting (I was filming a small music ensemble outdoors). The S5 has no such problem and I did a manual white balance no problem and when I reviewed the footage I pretty much liked the S5 material straight out of the cam with only some minor tweaks needed (and this is true for the rest of the film material). The annoying thing is I like the Fuji material but it just looks so different (and I am sure some of that difference is not colour related though all the basic stuff, shutter, frame rate etc., is the same of course). I guess another approach is to actually embrace the difference (it is from a quite different angle and both cameras are static).

Cinematch might be something that can help you, given it has profiles for all these cameras. It might be able to get you closer than Lumetri.

This is just speculation on my part, but I'm guessing that he might be using one of those distribution companies that works as a middle man between the creator and the retailer. On Amazon, at least, there isn't a lot of (maybe none?) 4K content that isn't a major studio release or an Amazon original. I just don't think they're interested in having most independent/low budget content in 4K and consider it a waste of resources. While most filmmakers would probably disagree that their films aren't worthy of being in 4K, when you look at all of the stuff on there and you look at it from their perspective, does no budget found footage horror film #25679 really need to be available in 4K? Probably not. Besides, 2K is the standard for DCPs isn't it? 

I do think it poses a bigger question though: is "4K" streaming, at least as it stands now, really necessary? When I watch 4K blu-rays the image is stunning on my television. You can genuinely see a significant difference between 1080p and 4K. The gap though narrows significantly when you compare 1080p and 4K streaming, to the point where I downgraded my Netflix account (before eventually closing it) because the difference was so minimal. Don't even get me started on comparing streaming 4K to a 4K disc.

When it comes to streaming I don't think it's the resolution that makes it better, but the better bitrates. I think you'd get essentially the same results if they used the same bitrates on a 1080p stream as they do for a 4K stream. My 4K uploads to YouTube I think look better in 4K for that reason, too, not because of the added resolution. Maybe I'll upscale a 1080p version of a video to 4K and compare it to the source 4K version to see if there's much of a difference after YouTube finishes with them? Either way, the streaming 4K version still looks inferior to 1080p blu-rays I've made for clients. 

This advice doesn't help you for anything you've shot already, but I definitely recommend custom white balancing your cameras and using a color checker for each shot. Then you can easily take your footage into whatever editor you use and easily match them. 

Calibrite ColorChecker Classic Classic https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1649331-REG/calibrite_ccc_colorchecker_classic.html

I haven't used Premiere in years, but I'm pretty sure there's a similar feature like this

Take your time, Andrew! We'll be here when you're ready, right now you've got more important things to focus on.

It's not a revolutionary camera, but it's very competitively priced, which I think is the main goal. I think they understand that there's a segment of their customers that won't shoot on anything that isn't full frame so this probably isn't going to hurt those sales anyway, at least not to the extent that it'd hurt more than they gain from bringing more people into their ecosystem with a camera like this. 

I really don't want to go with Sony, but getting 2 or 3 of these might be the direction I end up going. Though I have a Lumix S5 and quite like it I've never been someone that particularly cares about full frame, so "downgrading" doesn't really matter to me. The lack of video features that even the entry level S5 has is frustrating, though and might be enough to make me wait to see what Panasonic does. 

9 minutes ago, Trankilstef said:

DCI 4K, waveform, False color, synchro scan, possibility to dial down noise reduction to zero...

I'm interested as an A7S III owner cause I think it's a great B-cam to it but seriously tired of Sony not giving us all those little things made possible via a simple firmware update in A7sIII, FX3 and now FX30... 

I guess it's their version of the cripple hammer? It just seems ridiculous that if you want these features you need to drop thousands of dollars more on the FX6 or FX9, especially when other companies add these features to their non-cine cameras.

These more affordable "cine" cameras are very interesting to me, but it really drives me crazy that they lack so many video centric features. Like how do you call something a cine camera without offering DCI 4K? 

I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we're here for you in your time of need, Andrew. I'm so sorry that you, Zara, and your Mom are going through this. You all are in my thoughts. ❤️

On 9/13/2022 at 4:35 PM, cojocaru27 said:

hi guys. Looking for a bit of advice . I upgraded from nx1 to a7IV and so far really happy with the quality of the footage in slog3. I did a trip in Kyrgyzstan and the country with its horse riding men inspired me to shoot this westernish travel video with my sony a7IV:

It's just the quality of YT is just a mess. The original prores export looks way more clean and a bit brighter too ( which is strange ). So, do you have any recommendations for settings i should use when exporting for yt? I am using final cut pro.

Also the rolling shutter i knew it was bad. But i have this problem with the motion cadence. When i have a slow pan the image is just has a freeze like it can't deal with the movement or so. It's just not smooth as it supposed to be. This is also from the rolling shutter too?

thanks for your advice. Much obliged!

First, cool video! Second, there could be a couple things at play. I believe that YouTube prioritizes larger channels over smaller ones when it comes to transcoding, so larger channels have better quality than smaller ones. The other thing is that YouTube simply might not handle ProRes footage very well, even though in theory you'd think the higher the quality of your input, the higher the quality your output would be. 

Try exporting using your editor's YouTube setting and see if you get better results! 

19 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

I feel like their cameras are close to Cinema level but far enough away that they mostly attractive the low level + consumer crowd. Which is why auto focus is probably holding them back.

I'd love to see them put out something like the FX6. There 6k 3:2 option has made me consider buying an S1 again with all the cheaper anamorphic lenses coming out. 

I have no doubt that if they'd switched to PDAF 3 or 4 years ago they'd be neck and neck with Canon and Sony. Sony no doubt has their diehard fans, but a Lumix S1 or S5 with PDAF would've been THE YouTuber camera. Whether we like them or not, those are the users that will help ensure a company's longevity.

13 hours ago, kye said:

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, it would just be nice to have more than one or two comments in a row in a Panny thread that didn't talk about AF.

It's like in the entire world of film-making that nothing else exists.  It makes it so that nothing else can be discussed, doesn't add anything new to the discussion and just wastes everyones time.

I agree, but I acknowledge what they need to do and that the long term viability of their camera division depends on getting rid of the AF stigma.

It's one thing when it's people just repeating the things they saw on YouTube but never have had actual experience with a Panasonic camera, but I own a S5, a GH5, a G85, and a GX85. I've also owned the GH3. I use these cameras for professional work, and have an interest in seeing Panasonic succeed because I am invested in their systems. While the autofocus performance on the GH5 was always better than people gave it credit for, and I find the S5 to be pretty good in that department overall, that doesn't matter if the majority of the market thinks that Panasonic AF is completely useless. The market has spoken, whether we agree or not, and they need to do something about it.

The S5 is genuinely my favorite camera I've ever used. I'll probably end up buying at least one more, given the price and quality. But I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that my eyes are looking towards the future, and it's becoming increasingly harder for me to see myself sticking with Panasonic if they can't guarantee their longevity in a shrinking camera market. I want my camera equipment to be serviceable, and I don't want to be stuck with a bunch of lenses and accessories that belong to a dead system. A lot of folks don't care about that stuff, bless their hearts, but I do. If in the next couple of years a Canon/Sony/Fuji camera comes along that offers everything I need for my specific kind of work and at a good value, it will be very hard not to unload my Panasonic gear while it still has some value and move on if they haven't improved their image problems.

There are a lot of people like @MrSMW and myself who are looking for a reason NOT to jump. The ball is in Panasonic's court whether we do or not.

First, I genuinely believe that Panasonic not only offers the best value, but their video capabilities are significantly better than their competitors. 

Still, I think it's important for Panasonic to be more aggressive in letting people know what their plans are and to meet the needs of the market. Sony and Canon don't need to do it because they're leading the industry, but Panasonic absolutely does. I don't know how else to say it, but the auto focus perception is killing them. I will maintain until I'm blue in the face that the AF isn't as bad as people claim, but the bottom line is people demand Sony and Canon level AF. It is what it is, and the longer they delay it the worse their long term prospects seem. 

It is unlikely to ever happen, since these companies often build on top of existing code for new camera releases, but it'd be really cool if they opened up older cameras that are no longer available to the hacking community the way some developers have made older software open source. 

I know there have been some attempts, but a completely open source camera system would be really exciting. 

I recommend everyone check out the other cameras he has done videos on. Pretty fascinating stuff. 

I really enjoy this series, it's one of the genuinely good/interesting things on YouTube, but I especially liked this episode on the Digital Bolex. I always wanted to get my hands on one but never did. 

It's a shame that it ended up the way it did, because it genuinely was a pretty revolutionary way to create a camera. I don't know that we'll ever see a camera built with the same spirit and vision as the Bolex, and that's too bad.