leslie

7 minutes ago, kaylee said:

the prize is $10k. and a trophy

Stranger danger 😀 you been absent a long time. Nice to see you back in the forums. How is your pup going ? although i presume he'/she is the size of a mid sized horse by now ?

actually i'd settle for some comradery and a  group hug 😊 there more than just winning you know 

The only sin I'll confess to, is being sucked in on the marketing of the nikon v1. Its not a bad little camera per se. Its just the marketing had me believe the slo motion capabilities was more than they  actually delivered. There's also the fact 12 months or so down the track they decided to kill it off anyway. talk a bout a short life expectancy. Since then i do alot more research when buying anything.

I am considering using it in the next video challenge. Shooting some slo mo and upscaling it, to combat, john mathews with his lomography lenses 😁 also considering the notion of a p4k and takumar elmoscope combination. Figure i'll wait till the rules drop before i decide anything.

That tokina is a nice lens, i also have it in nikon mount. It has an almost cult like following on the bm user group. There's three versions of that lens. I think you have to be careful which version you get.  If anyone is wondering.      

1 hour ago, MrSMW said:

 

I just watched Dune this weekend and was blown away by the aesthetic.

Best movie ever? Well that one is debatable and in regard to the aesthetic, is it all 100% real?

Of course not, but that combination of real + manipulated, the lighting both at the time of capture and fiddled with in post, the tonality of each scene etc...

Shot on digital, transferred to film and then scanned back to digital in order (in their words) to combine the best of both for some kind of crossover look.

It appealed to my aesthetic anyway!

 

YES Yes and yes 

I already said this in a different post somewhere else. Kinda glad that someone else with some skill enjoyed it like i did. 

Mrsmw help yourself to a cookie out of the cookie jar 😉  The rest of you get out there and see it, we both cant be wrong. 😀

additionally i'd rather not call this a competition, more like show and tell at a cinematographers level, if that make sense ?

15 hours ago, John Matthews said:

I have 3 Lomography lenses (all f/8) and they weigh 115g TOGETHER (about 38g separately). They cost me 20 Euros, I think. I'll use them on a 204g GM1. Quality, schmality.

Another limitation would to be that you can only shoot in-camera, no post other than putting shots on a timeline in  the sequential order you shot them in.

 I very nearly bought the lomography experimenters kit. Which sounds like what you have ?

Regrettably, i'm like the antichrist when it comes structuring or planning something. Lets not get to too religious on the rules, next someone will want storyboards. 😉 I'll compromise with shooting at f8 if we can get a consensus 🙂 However i'm happy to go with bonus points for peoples artistic interpretation or a different category perhaps. 

your shoot in camera comment does make me wonder, supposing a camera comes with extra functionality that maybe other brands don't have, is it forbidden to use that functionality ?  I bought my bm p4k camera for various reasons, no doubt others bought their cameras for other reasons. If you have say, a sony camera that can sing and dance, well i want to see that  😀 

Another point to consider, my camera shoots in log, I presume i am ok to use a lut supplied with the camera ? If we cant do anything in post then sending something in log will look kinda flat ? 

13 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Another M43 trivia question: OMDS/Olympus and Panasonic make M43 lenses with electrical contacts, who are the other M43 lens producers that have electrical contacts?

I just learned this one the other day. Winner gets bragging rights.

i must have missed something, does btm_pix win as the xiaoyi has af  ?  or are all the answers winners.

you make no mention of af being a requirement  as far as i can see.

9 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

In the last 8 years

1. Streaming resolution has gone up. I remember when YouTube maxed at 720p and they called it HD!
2. Streaming bitrates have gone up.
3. Better codecs are being used.
4. TV manufactures and streaming services are working on a true "cinema" display standard for viewing.
5. Storage $/GB have continued to decline.
6. Camera media is getting larger and more inexpensive (You can get a 512GB CFExpress card from Angelbird that can handle 8K for $179).
7. Cameras are universally adding 10-bit color in camera.
8. Some cameras are offering 12-bit internal RAW at fairly reasonable bitrates.
9. Camera resolutions are going up
10. Color science is improving in multiple brands
11. Professional grading and editing software is more available and cheaper than ever
12. You can learn how to professional grade your footage FREE to maximize the 10-bit / 12-bit color coming out of your camera.

 

in the context of kyes topic Aesthetics, isnt it more about the camera / lens relationship although editing/grading certainly does contribute as well to the final look. 

your points while valid, in general, kinda prove that we are getting more "spoiled" for choices don't they ?  but are they the look ?

For me, Cinema and film defined a "LOOK"  Now with digital being all the rage, we are all trying to get back to that  "look"  which is subjective to say the least. If in doubt take a look at the whole og verves p4k debate and thats just one brand.

I kinda feel that cinematographers and directors of photography aught to be congratulated for getting the look right most of the time. But then they wouldn't be blockbusters, if they got it wrong  i guess. 

I have to wonder, while it may be nice to emulate a look, are we as a bunch of mundane normal people ( a couple of us at least 😉 )  striving to hard to obtain a look ?  When is it over the top, for breaking out the fill light, key light, back light for a family get together ? 🤔

There's 7 billion or so people on the planet , these days you can buy a camera and lens, gain a following all over the world. Is that the look or success, maybe more to the point is it profitable? If its for your own personal consumption or family memories does it really matter ?  There's an interesting topic for another discussion perhaps.

On 2/4/2022 at 4:47 AM, Emanuel said:

LOL You've changed your post... Yes, I do, many of them, this business is tough and I need to open many fronts but all of them connected with my core business, the film production.

YT is part of the equation nowadays but not in a way I may feel the need to sell my soul to the devil or my own beliefs, freedom, transparency and the most pure truth of the facts I still stand and love to adopt myself related to everything : )

We are all safe! : D

i'd say mr reids humour was shining through, there at the start. However its all together too easy to offend people these days. In this day and age i think its a wise man who can moderate himself. 

On 2/4/2022 at 6:42 AM, shooter said:

I like camera conspiracies guy, very entertaining, genuine.

On 2/3/2022 at 9:12 AM, kye said:

Ironically, I see him as being on the more useful side of the spectrum...

• He's consistent
   
• His motivations and commercial relationships are pretty obvious
   
• He is well aligned with his audience
   
• He is knowledgable about equipment and normally mentions when he has or hasn't used / tested the equipment he's talking about
   
• He shows the equipment warts-and-all and his skills in using it warts-and-all (this is exceptionally useful compared to the PR people that heavily edit and don't show equipment failing)
   
• He doesn't talk outside his experience (he doesn't, for example, claim to know what a professional cinematographer would want, or a wedding / corporate videographer, etc etc..  this is the trap lots of camera YT falls into)
   
• He's entertaining

I'd suggest that if you're not a fan then it's probably because either:

1. You're not his target audience
2. You don't like his style / humour

....and if so, that's fine.  But don't confuse that with being a bad reviewer.

I do/ did like him. I 'd call him authentic, i like how he demonstrates lenses capabilities with his walk around vlog. His earlier boardroom meetings where classics. Its just lately i feel some of his humour is a bit dark or doesn't quite gel with me. Maybe its just me.

I suspect my tastes are evolving. My utube subscribed list contains only media division, kinetek and make art now. The others, camera conspiracies, kai, a fellow aussie called blunty and another shayne mostyn and a few others, well  I'll look for them when i think about it. 

9 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

You can have both. 

we could of had both,  except the manufacturers never got the memo  🙄

i have played with steppers and cheap drivers off ebay . There was always a hum. I wouldn't have called it loud. i was using it for  timelapses so the noise didn't bother me. Since yours is a production unit i'd expect good things from it. i do know that steppers like to run inside a  "zone"  To fast or too slow and it gets ugly pretty quick. Again i'd expect a production unit to be tuned to avoid that sort of thing. 

Two things come to mind, can you adjust the tension on the belt ? perhaps its too tight, putting a side load on the motor which in turn makes it nosier. Since nema steppers are a standard  you could have a look at your motor find its details then buy another brand and give that a go. If your up to a bit of diy  

16 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

@leslie
There is appreciation for good stuff. When I talk about lenses to people in real life, they love it. After all my 20eu Canon Fd 28mm 2.8 looks like Hollywood even though it's no f2 Distagon.

That lens shines on 0.71 speedbosted Mft with full sensor width. On cropped 4K with G7, G85, Gh4, GX85, Gx9 there is some sensor estate and magic missing. Factor 0.64 might give enough back. But no cheapo focal reducer offers that. Just saying to get back to the topic of sensor size😊

One a sidenote. My gain in sensor estate with a focal reducer also made me avoid my ordinary faulty adapter. Latter had too much light bouncing inside due to reflective surfaces. That screwed up my footage under sunlight. Always good to experiment and try things in a practical manner. Such as sensor sizes or estate.

20 eu.....    your a thief....  @PannySVHS. 😉  None of my fd lenses were that cheap. But maybe i was a bit late starting to accumulate fd's.  I think mark holtze and a few others had started  waxing lyrical about the  fd series lenses by then.

You could try flocking your adapter with some black material, it would be a cheap exercise to try, and it may fix your light reflection problem. 

i wasn't trying to vilify the mft format, Far from it. However in a purely physical comparison mft is kinda small.  

I'm sure there are plenty of enthusiasts out there doing good work. However my youtube algorithm seems to of been hacked by gremlins, all i get is dross. My issue is leaning more towards influencers  producing mediocre content or even wrong content. If i'm watching a utube its either to learn something or be entertained. If its entertained then i want to be left happy, buoyed, uplifted you know,  generally more positive. Sadly there's not a lot  of entertaining out there.

I generally used to like camera conspiracies , however lately i'm not sure, just walking around and vlogging counts as a valid test anymore, not to mention  the satirization going on . In small doses its ok but not every episode. That gets tedious. Sure you can take something away from his vlog but lately i have kinda been left wanting.

Same goes for theoria apophasis, the last few episode i have seen from him. Have him sitting next to a pretend fire and he's just talks about stuff,  saying if he flogging it it must be good. where's the evidence?  the empirical data ?  Maybe a pretend fire appears cozy  from where your sitting, but where i am, a real fire is well... real cozy. 😃

In a nutshell i want to see a visual representation of the product pros / cons. Even warts and all is good with me  at least i can see authenticity then.  Not just talk or an opinion because that bores me to death and i cant help but wonder if my time might be better spent mowing the lawn.

To paraphrase @MrSMW there's alot of dross out there, finding the gold can be a chore.

On 1/31/2022 at 10:48 AM, Andrew Reid said:

It's not a vintage gear competition is it though?

It's about smallest and lightest possible, even if it's a big compromise on image quality.

It's how you use it that counts.

I will try and get time this week to start the competition on front of the blog, then we can put some basic rules for point scoring down (nothing strict) and get shooting!

Personally, i'm leaning towards smallest, lightest of a persons current setup, we already done the vintage thing. i dont mean to offend but to hell with compromising on  image quality 😀

after a little bit more searching i found out that the korg midi controller interfaces quite well with resolve in the audio page as well. It seems you can automate a bunch of things to do with the audio.

Don't know if all midi controllers can do this with resolve. However it seems quite nifty. On that basis i have bought one. I have also noticed @Matt James Smith ?  has one for fcp , which is mac right ? Hoping there's an windows version or similar software. it would be nice to kill two birds with one stone. metaphorically speaking of course. 

I reckon, all you can do is continue to swim upstream against the tide of mediocrity, that is youtube. I'm fairly confident that you have the lenses and cameras and could  do a deeper dive and offer a valid rebuttal but all you'd get is a handful of applause from a small group of people that had a clue in the first place. The rest of humanity wont even  look up.  

I personally have bought a couple of full frame lenses, for their "look".  The others lenses are brothers / sisters of the same brand and hopefully make it easier to match in post.  I'm on mft, the "baby format" i guess you could say. Since roger deakins and people of his ilk   😉 , still tend to shoot on huge movie formats,  i'll go out on a limb and say there must be some differences between the different formats and lenses. Not that i am complaining, just realistic. Its kinda dumb to say their all equivalent or there's no magic. Clearly there are differences other wise good ol rog would be right beside me with an olympus e-m10. 😃 

While youtube is useful for a lot of things and there is good stuff out there. The problem is specialists, or the lack of them on youtube.  If you had a problem with your arm, you'd go to a doctor. If he couldn't fix it you'd be sent to a specialist. That whole chain of command gets thrown out the window once youtube gets involved. The norm now is anyone with a webcam a wifi connection and an opinion is the new specialist.  All you can do is try to educate.

There will probably be years before you get any thanks for your efforts but then the same could probably be said of the great painters as well.

3 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

 

No word yet on whether that will adopt the new Canon industry standard metric for hybrid cameras of taking 8 seconds to switch between....

 

 

canon haven't thought this 8 second time out through very well.  If they had of, it would be a touch longer, long enough to observe some niceties, you know like a coffee or cup of tea perhaps. 

1 hour ago, MrSMW said:

Actually, though I have had a few (but not many) I have had more groomzillas…and they are a sight to witness in all their ‘glory’ 😉

Hats off to you guys, that persevere with that for your jobs.  One would think that it should be a happy day for everyone, saddening  when it goes  pear shaped for whatever reason. i Hope that the ratio of good to less than good is on the higher end of the scale. 

14 hours ago, MrSMW said:

 

Also speaking personally, I don't have any photo or video interests outside of my paid work, ie, my paid work IS my interest.

Believe me, I have tried some 'creative projects' of my own over the last couple of years, but to be honest, each one is like pulling teeth and does not inspire.

I'm a wedding hack and have been for 20 years.

 

I will go and at least look at the Lightweight thread 😜 or whatever it's called and see if it's something I could participate in...

you should do a bridezilla parody or something. you have no doubt seen it all before.  An insiders insight might just be hilarious. 

i bought a  cheap takumar m42 for just this purpose. already have the lens wrench / spanner thingy. I'm yet to have at it and other things keep getting in the way. I have disassembled a zoom at the back end. As soon as i got the screws out and gave it a twist something went sproing and i heard it as well at that point i knew i was in trouble 😨 no amount of fiddling has managed to get it back together. Lucky it was a cheap zoom, so no great loss. It sits on my shelf as a reminder about biting off more than one can chew.

I'd still have a crack at another lens but make it a prime. I'd  also video the whole disassembly as my attention span is pretty short, there's no guarantee it would reassemble in the proper order otherwise.

8 hours ago, MrSMW said:

OK, I'll give it a go, but my smallest ILC is my S5, which kind of feels like cheating, so I'll go ZV1 and explore the creative opportunities it has there in some form or other.

I've got an idea...

i dunno, personally i reckon  you might be cheating if you rented something. However if all you own is something like this

then i'm sure points will awarded for being ambitious or enthusiastic perhaps. 😉

i think its more about getting out and doing something with what you own regardless of camera type it is. i'm looking forward to other peoples footage and then the behind the scenes  approaches to the criteria others have taken.

On 1/15/2022 at 8:41 AM, CyclingBen said:

You have to set peaking to a custom button, once you do that you have to press it before you hit record for the peaking to work. Took me forever to figure out why peaking wouldn’t work with my vintage lenses. It’s in the movie menu under the customize buttons setting. 

pretty sure its the same on the e-m10 mark two as well. i vaguely remember spending some time on figuring it out. i suspect it would be the same across the Olympus range. 

I'm on to it kye, don't worry, picked up a piece of corflute probably 600 x 900 that should make for a bunch of reflectors. I also bought some cheap silver / gold reflectors off ebay, bit bigger than a hand. I'm hoping they can contribute as well. Next time i go up to warwick, i will buy one more small light which will take my tally up to three. That will give me a key light, fill light and back light. They are only small lights and for a small lego set they should do ok, i hope.

  I figure i can experiment with position  and distance to create a look, for close up shots. Yet to figure out how that equates to wide shots of sets. I doubt my 3 lights will give enough light to fill the set evenly. I presume i will need to buy 3 more larger lights to take it further. Baby steps first.

You will of course notice i have acquired a 2400 x 1200 laminate table top. That is the basis for my workspace. At the moment that wood sheet sits atop a couple of sawhorses. Got a mate who can teach me  how to weld. If that fails i'll either beg or blackmail my brother into welding up a base for it.  

Couple of more characters have arrived to help fill out the space. These guys need no introduction 😀

i have one more little guy in transit somewhere, I have plans for a little brick film and i need to add some more characters as funds permit, need six characters all up, not necessarily the above mentioned characters, they where an impulse buy when i saw them lol. Next challenge is to create a walk cycle. 

Every time i step outside with a camera, the wind picks up, its hard work taking a decent photo of a flower. To remedy that  i bought a cheap vase and cheap lazy susan. Had some photography clamps, and a black material backdrop arrive. The plan is to hang the backdrop behind the table and shoot some still-life's.

Construction has started on the 2nd shed, film studio / sound stage. Whom am i kidding... my brother with try  use it as a carport for his bus converted to motorhome. Still I'm claiming a corner at least for my own nefarious plans.

 Trying to do a lot more with my cameras and other equipment this year. Considering we seem to lurch from lockdown to lockdown, setting up a small studio is a good idea i think.  A short brick film will force me to learn resolve more quickly i feel.  The whole lego thing should work as small set, what works on a small set should apply on a large set, maybe im wrong . Not that i have any plans of a feature length movie.

On 1/27/2022 at 9:32 PM, MrSMW said:

All.

The.

Time.

"Hey kids, this week we are comparing Camera A with Camera B and Camera A will have a fast wide prime lens (because that's all I could get my hands on) and Camera B has a kit zoom lens (because that's all I could get my hands on). So guys, let's go out and shoot! My back wall! And my cat!"

I suppose in one way, 'real world tests' are of folks back walls and cats as that's all they seem to shoot.

Maybe there's a market for this kind of thing...

 

On 1/28/2022 at 1:06 AM, Xavier Plagaro Mussard said:

 

The only real thing is the cat! 

i object...  cats are easy targets. So are brick walls come to think of it.... My cat is most spritely in the morning after about 9am, he's not much faster than the proverbial brick wall. Besides that, has anyone asked the cat, how he / she feels about all  this objectification ? 

just to mix it up abit here's something not about cats or brick walls however i did manage to include a few bricks to keep it relevant. 😉 

Ignore those weeds i have yet to pick up  

3 minutes ago, kye said:

They're around, but were always quite expensive...  good luck!

yer about twice the price of the 15mm from memory, however there is 2 aspherical elements in there. So i figure the price is somewhat justified. 

getting back on topic what are the lens rules ? one lens, two lenses, points for lightest ?

On 1/26/2022 at 10:42 AM, kye said:

Why am I now having visions of a BMPCC6KPro with a 15mm F8.0 Body Cap Lens 🙂 🙂 

The other combination, well, I'll leave some mystery to that one until I do it.

im looking for the 9mm bodycap lens 😎

On 1/24/2022 at 11:32 PM, Andrew Reid said:

There are a big studios in Australia now that really push the boat out and make all sorts. Dare say they can sell a lot of their virtual assets to other studios as well!

 

i can rent you some of my back yard for cheap.🤔