seanzzxx

I second the XT-3 or XT-30, those cameras are GREAT allrounders.

I use the 1/8 Black Promist filter on that exact lens A LOT, and I highly recommend it. Subtle, but great.

Hey Yurolov, sorry for the late reply - I completely missed this comment! First of all, thank you for the interest, and you are completely right that I could have provided a bit more detail. So the atmosphere we were going for was that of a daydream, except for the scenes with the lead actress just by herself. The aesthetic of that daydream was heavily inspired by old music videos, both from the seventies and early 2000's. So all the studio shots (the seventies aesthetic) were shot with actual stage lighting equipment, using mostly old seventies lights with fresnels and so on, except for one or two LEDs that originally were used for providing some extra color but ended up creeping in the shots. The camera was a very light one (Pocket 4K), but it was operated as if it was much heavier to emulate the feel of those videos: the tripod had a lot of resistance on it, the camera was on sticks and rails, and we mostly shot on long lenses (50 and 85mm Sigma Arts that were heavily Pro-Misted with stacked 1/8 and 1/4s), at a minimum of 28mm (except again for one time when I cheated to have a two-shot with the bass-player and the keyboardist) around f4-f5.6. Then the hotel scenes (the early 2000s) were shot much more modernly, with a lot of LED lighting (120D to provide enough light generally, with cheap Yongnuo LED panels for overhead and backlighting). A wide-angle lens was used almost exclusively (a Tokina 11-16) shot at f.2.8 or around there, and everything except for one shot was handheld. Both scenes made extensive use of rim-lighting, because that just feels old-fashioned to me. The lights were either all tungsten or gelled to be tungsten, (with the exception of the backlight in the hotel, for a bit more 'kick'), to give the color rendition of tungsten lighting. The scenes in the apartment with the lead actress (the ones in 16:9) were lit very differently, with much softer lighting (using the same 120d and led panels, but much farther away and diffused at 5600k), only meant to accentuate the light that was already there: the lights were supposed to be invisible. We also really dialed back on the promists (using only a subtle 1/8) until the band shows up, at which point the pro-mists went back to 1/8+1/4 (also the fake grain returns) to illustrate the daydream blending into her reality. As for the grade: I used a custom grade, with a bit warmer greens/yellows/oranges, and more saturated blues. Also a lot of fake grain was added and some balancing was done, and the scenes at blue hour (with the guitarist) were graded to have the shots were the sun had not yet set match. Also in the blue hour scenes the skin tones were warmed up, to make everything look a bit more pleasant. Aside from that almost no local or 'stylized' color grading was done, because I think very stylized grading would have detracted from the old feel of the clip. Hope that provides some more info: any and all feedback is welcome!

Hey folks, a bit late but I wanted to pop in to say thanks for the feedback, I very much appreciate it still!

Hey man, let me say firstly that I really appreciate the thoughtful reply and comments, thanks a lot - really. The frontman of the 'band' (it's actually a solo act officially, but the guys behind him do most of the instrumentals on his tracks) is an old acquaintance, who also acted in some older videos we did (I'm talking more than five years back at this point). I would rate the experience highly, the band was very cooperative and set-ups went smoothly and as planned mostly, except for a last-minute cancellation on the hotel room. I think the new hotel room looks kinda plain, but we did as much as we could to spice things up with the lighting on the walls (something which was planned but which we now really relied on for atmosphere). My biggest lesson was that having lip-syncing in your video really limits how you can cut: I really found out I had to use certain takes or let them run longer than I intended or otherwise it would look jarring, which meant I had to cut other planned (and shot) footage (there was waaaayyyy more footage of the female lead dancing, which explains perhaps why what was left of her dancing felt a bit out of place!). Big lessons and it meant that we could have actually shot less than I ended up doing and take the time to finesse a few shots more. Case in point: the opening shot is actually one of my least favorite shots (other ones are in the hotel room, where I think sometimes my framing and directing of the actor led to some less-than-exciting shots, although overall I like the segment), but I did not shoot other wide coverage of her on the sofa so I basically 'had to' lead with that one. Ah well. You're right about the shots of the female lead dancing using a higher shutter: good eye! It effectively uses a 90-degree shutter, because the footage was shot in 50 frames at 180-degrees and then sped up to 25 frames. This was a deliberate choice; originally the segment was supposed to have a few slow-motion cut-aways (that ended up being cut) and I wanted to have the normal-speed footage at a higher shutter anyway, to make the movement look a bit more tight and 'crisp'. I still personally like the effect, although I see where you are coming from on disliking it. I also agree on the focal length being a bit too wide, I shot this at 12mm (whereas everything else is between 35 and 85 millimiters, with a large portion at 50 and 85), so the difference is a tad too big, not just relative to the other focal lengths but also for the framing I ended up going with. I think in a perfect world I would re-shoot this at 18mm, but in practice I think I would have gone for a 16mm, because my 16mm-lens is half the weight of the 18mm I own, and we were shooting a lot of set-ups of her dancing on the steadicam and I think my arm would not have taken it. There's actually shots of her coming from the couch to start dancing, but I did not like the performance and my framing, so it's wholly on me that I did not get useable footage to more naturally transition into that dancing. 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. As for crew: I directed and shot the thing, and I had two guys helping me with moving and lighting. Now, these guys were actually not gaffers but theater-stagehands: so they mostly did the lighting set-up (and controlling) in the studio and the neon lighting in the hotelroom, but they were at other times also invaluable for quickly adjusting lights on set and just helping move from location to location: I was really glad to have them there - these guys are hard workers! We shot on two roughly twelve-hour days (this included moving from location to location which ate up some time) and we had a half-day beforehand setting up all the lighting in the studio for the band-segment.

Hey folks, this is the first music video I ever shot. While I am decently happy with the results, I am very much looking for feedback and impressions, any at all. If you have any questions feel free to ask, of course! The music video tried to capture a few different aesthetics, so were the stage parts all on long lenses, locked off on a tripod and shot mostly with old stage lighting, in order to emulate that 'Earth, Wind, and Fire' aesthetic, while the hotel room parts were shot much more modern, using LEDs and a floating, quickly moving camera. However also here the aesthetic was meant to evoke a feeling of an older video (notably with the heavy use of a rim light), because the general feeling is that of a daydream. https://vimeo.com/429361546 password: mogimikevideoclip

Hey folks, this is the first music video I ever shot. While I am decently happy with the results, I am very much looking for feedback and impressions, any at all. If you have any questions feel free to ask, of course! https://vimeo.com/429361546 password: mogimikevideoclip

Holy cow, that is great! May I ask about your grading process?

I posted about this in the BM forums but this place seems a bit more active, thanks a bunch in advance! "Hey folks, I am looking for some feedback on the coloring and cinematography of a video we made. The video uses the poetry of a friend of mine and while the video is not supposed to tell a simple linear story it is meant to evoke the feelings of the poem, which (for you non-Dutch speaking people) is about making choices, failing, struggling with past memories and letting go of things. The audio is the super rough draft audio (done by me ) which at some point will be replaced with a male and female voice over. With regards to what I was aiming at: the coloring is supposed to feel nostalgic, warm, and definitely not 100% realistic, while still remaining very naturalistic; people should not 'see the grade', so to speak. I added grain to a number of shots, Vimeo compression killed most of it except in the most extreme cases, but that's life, haha. Looking forward to any and all feedback! https://vimeo.com/386482322 password: dutchpoetry "

Thanks a bunch!

Can I ask something? All these options are greyed out for me in the management section. What am I missing?

Damn, that's some amazing cinematography.

I'm 99% certain Steve Yedlin, without mention the article or the author, is talking about this article when he once again has to whip out his explanation of large format fallacies: http://www.yedlin.net/191106.html Here's his visual explanation: http://yedlin.net/lens_blur.html

My sweet baby boy, if you really think the Pocket 4k has 13+ stops of usable dynamic range I have a bridge to sell you (and this is coming from someone who owns and loves the Pocket 4k!)

Wait, you know you're not going to get the full dynamic range on rec.709 recordings, right?

The calculation is very simple. Let's say you use a 50mm. Your metabones reduces the crop by 0.64. 50*0.64=32. Your Pocket has a crop factor of (in full sensor width) 1.88. 1.88*32=60mm (rounded down). That's pretty close to the full frame equivalent already, but your new crop is (60/50) 1.2 times. So if for some reason you absolutely NEED to shoot at exactly the same equivalent focal length all the time (instead of just framing your shot slightly different), you can take your full frame lenses and divide them by 1.2. 50/1.2=42 equivalent perspective (rounded up). You could do that for all lenses. You want to match your 14mm on full frame's perspective with the Pocket+speedbooster? 14/1.2=12mm, etc. Does that make sense?

Good to hear you're safe, Anaconda. @Newway12My 11-16 does vignette at 11 (even without hood), on the viltrox. Do you shoot the full sensor with?

Well, this is a bit shocking:

Right now it only works with USB 2.0 on Windows, that might be it?

Just a quick question - in Davinci Resolve in Color Space Transform, Input Color Space still doesn't have a Pocket 4K FIlm option? Am I missing something? Thanks!

That's a really common problem with the Viltroxes, and it seems to be a quality control thing. I have the same on my 18-35, from 1.8 it's really sharp but at 1.2 it's a ridiculous washed out glow, totally unusable. I didn't bother returning it because I'm 1) lazy and 2) never shoot below f1.8, but it's still annoying. Can't complain for the price, though.

Yep! It's an awesome feature that came at the cost of DR and noise so they dropped it like a brick for the 4.6K, which has a superior image. People don't give a hoot about rolling shutter as long as it's minimal enough. P4K, GH5S, Ursa 4.6k have all reached that point imo.

No problem! Just to clarfiy, the 1.44x crop of super 35 is against FULL-FRAME (again, in 4k your 1dx mark II is not the same width as full frame). Full frame sensor width is 36mm. Super 35 film width is 24,89mm. 1dx mark II in 4k sensor width is 27,5mm (give or take). 36/24,89= 1,45. So the crop of super 35 compared against full-frame is 1,45x. 27,5/24,89= 0,91x. So the crop of your 1dx mark II in 4k compared against super 35 is 0.91x. You can do this in all directions. 24,89/27,5=1.10x. So the crop of super 35 when compared to the 1dx mark II in 4k is 1.10x. Again, this is all theoretical, because a 1.10x crop is meaningless.

So Super35/the Arri Alexa (90% of movies you will have seen will be shot on those formats) have a crop factor of around 1.45 (I got this number wrong at first, updated my earlier post), unless they were shot anamorphic in which case we get into the story of horizontal crop factors and we get really freaky, which we will not do now. Your 1dX II has a crop of around 1.3, so the angle of view is WIDER. If you don't want to exceed 18mm angle of view when compared to s35, you'll have to put a tighter lens on your 1dx mark II. In your case the crop factor of a 1dX II when compared to super 35 would be around 0,9, so you wouldn't want to go wider than a 20mm roughly. However, to make your life easier: in real life a crop factor of 0,9x is is so incredibly, insignificantly small that it really doesn't matter, just go for the same lenses you would use on Super35 and you'll be fine.

Okay, so a few things. Super35 is technically a 1.44x crop (I GOT THIS NUMBER WRONG AT FIRST, EDITED IT NOW) when compared to full-frame. However on Sony it's a 1.5x crop, on Canon a 1.6x crop for their aps-c sensors. If you want to match the angle of view of Canon aps-c (1.6x crop) to that of the Canon 1dx II, it's important to remember that the crop factor is compared against a specific sensor format, namely that of full-frame 35mm (so NOT Super35). So the aps-c crop is heavier than that of the 1dx II (1.6x as opposed to 1.3x when compared to full-frame). This means that if you want to to match the angle of view of a aps-c sensor to a 1dx II (4k) angle of view, you will have to apply a NEGATIVE crop (because you're actually getting a wider angle of view, not narrower). That crop is about 0,8x. So it will look like this: Super35 (canon aps-c) to 4K (Canon 1DX)(0.8x) 18mm = 14,4 21mm = 16,8 etc...