Jerome Chiu

Great stuff.
I wonder if now there will emerge spambots that betray other spambots in order to deflect suspicion elsewhere....  the AI arms race will be a fascinating thing to watch over the next decade or so.

Today I learned: Buying the "sharpest" lenses available according to, for instance, DXO Mark scores, doesn't necessarily mean I'll see any of that detail because there are different frequencies of sharpness.

"All of the fields I’ve shown you have been at 30 lp/mm frequency, which is a good ‘overall’ picture. It’s important to remember, though, that depth of field, as well as sharpness, varies with frequency. (For those who aren’t up on this, lower frequency is more about larger objects and lower resolution sensors. Higher frequencies are about small detail and higher resolution sensors. If you want a contrasty object on a 24 megapixel sensor, 20 lp/mm is good. If you want to look at leaves or blades of grass on a 50 megapixel sensor, you probably are interested in 60 lp/mm.)" 

(From the same lens rental link @noone posted https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/11/practical-use-of-field-curvature-graphs-the-50mm-primes/)

Figure out how to tell a story. 
Build a tale of high-stakes, conflict, resolution, redemption.  Use whatever toys you have to accomplish that.  Your gear is adequate, but I see that you're fretting so much about the technical.  I can't stress this enough, it really doesn't matter.  Your. Gear. Is. Good. Enough.  That part is done.
Figure out how to tell a story. 
Concentrate ALL your efforts on that.  Don't worry about ProRes vs. DNxHD.  Don't worry about this drone vs. that drone.  Premiere vs. Resolve?  Not really going to matter.  Don't even worry about frame rate.  Pick one you like.  There, you're done with that.  Anymore consideration into these things is a waste of time.  A lot of new filmmakers fall into the trap of putting the majority of their efforts into equipment and specs because it's a somewhat non-creative aspect of the craft and results are objective and easy to understand and control.  Avoid this.  However, do accept that story telling is difficult and messy and highly subjective.  Understand you'll make storytelling decisions that are flawed.  It's part of the challenge.  But you absolutely gotta do it as your main focus.
Figure out how to tell a story. 
Does your protagonist have an antagonist?  Can you frame what they're doing as a "hero's journey?"  What sort of set-backs will they have to struggle through?  Can they overcome those road blocks?  Will you be able to film those moments to tell such a story?  Is there a bit with a dog in it?  These are the things that really matter. 
Also, making bad movies is depressing.  I can't tell you all the corporate projects I've unfortunately done over the years where the singular goal was to put a camera on someone, have them talk to a dry boring interviewer, snag a few b-roll shots on the way out the door, and call it good.  Bah.  That's a recipe for mediocrity.  You could shoot that crap on an ARRI and no one would give two shits except the people that got to play with the ARRI.  And unless your subject is someone like Robin Williams on one of his cocaine benders, it's not going to be interesting.
You want to make a film?  A real film?
Figure out how to tell a story. 
Okay, that rant over.  You asked about DCP.  So, I do a film festival every winter.  We screen 8-bit .mp4's off a laptop at 1080 and they look fricking awesome.  Why?  Because we care about our projection system and have dialed it in with high-end equipment that's well-considered for the theater we use.  Not everyone does this. Properly encoded .mp4's can look beautiful.  Well shot movies made into DCP's can look like crap.  Depends.  It's not the file, it's the system that screens it.  
Here's another anecdote:  I toured my doc around the country this year with an .mp4 exhibition screener as well as a DCP.  The best screening experience I had was with the .mp4 running off a laptop into a consumer projector.  It just so happened the particular auditorium was gorgeous AND had a new projector AND the image it put out looked lovely.  OTOH, I had a screening of my DCP at a well known multi-plex chain that looked awful, even though my DCP looked absolutely fine elsewhere.  Your film is often at the mercy of teenagers running the projection system...and who knows what state that projection system is in. 
Now, the bad thing about .mp4's is that it's such a generic format that inevitably some Boomer will be running a $400 laptop and a cheap-ass projector in a rinky dink film festival that's been set up in the town's abandoned bank lobby...with no window black outs and a complete lack of understanding how to operate the sound system.  BTW, it's a sound systems that's a low-end PA in a room made out of marble.   That sounds oddly specific, right?  It's happened to me twice.  None of your technical stuff matters one bit in that situation.  When you're out in the wild with your screeners, shit happens. 
Finally, you absolutely do not need 4K for exhibition screening. People are too far away from the screen to notice that level of resolution.  4K is great for editing and then downscaling to 1080 for exhibition screening, but 4K for screening?  Only in very specific situations.  I get 4k ProRes screeners for our festival.  I get DCP's as screeners for our festival.  Take a wild guess what I transcode them into for playback on our system... Don't worry so much about the technical.
Figure out how to tell a story

I did the film festival / film competition circuit for a while and my takeaway was this.
Content is the only thing that matters.
I've seen barely acceptable videos with out-of-focus shots, shots where the camera got bumped, clipped dialogue, noisy dialogue, car sounds making it difficult to hear people, overexposed shots, and various other problems win competitions outright because they interviewed old people and got them to talk about sex and it was hilarious.  I've seen films win best edit when the editing was clunky because the story was good, etc.
Content is the only thing that matters.
Content is the only thing that matters, content is the only thing that matters...  content is the only thing that matters.

You can't make up your own mind, unless you own your own a billion dollar streaming service.
Besides, if I quote a job to an agency, and they ask what camera I'm using, I'll lead with "...it's a 6K camera that's been approved for Netflix original content, but I can run it 4K if you guys can't handle that.", and I don't have to say another word.
Netflix is a proxy to the uninformed for quality. The name carries a lot of influence, and everyone knows who they are. If you go and say my camera is approved for original content from Pluto TV, people are going to say "WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?" Oh, yeah, they are a free streaming service, and they're great!
You would be bodily thrown out the creative director's office and banned for all future jobs!
We don't make the rules, but we have to play by them.

I guess thats the direction of progress... if you enjoy stuff of old, then thats that.... content will always supercede resolution though.
You know what it is.... you have a television that you are comfortable with right now, and I am assuming that it is 1080p. And, I'm sure that television will work for another 10 years (give or take), but what if it broke down today/tomorrow? Have you checked out your local electronic store for TVs lately? For every 10 4K TVs, I probably see 1 1080p TV.... funny thing is.... I've spotted 2 8K TVs at my local electronic chain so fast forward 10 years, you will see 10 8K TVs for every 1 4K TV - 1080p is obsolete - are you going to complain then "Whats wrong with HD?"

You are missing the point.
S1H form factor is unique amongst the other approved Netflix cinema cameras.
If an Arri is your A-cam, It could be used as a B-cam.
And not rating an S1H's image highly or using an S1H yourself just because an Alexa Mini exists, is the most stupid reason ever to dismiss a tool.
For a start, it is $54,000 cheaper.
Do you personally have a Netflix size budget for your work?
If so, your opinion is first hand. If not, you're a speculative sofa surfer, basically trolling. Throwing rocks at something which plays in the same league as an Alexa Mini for $4000, which doesn't seem very clever to me.

http://www2nd.sigma-photo.co.jp/downloads/manual/fp_Manual_en.pdf
The Manual

A couple of weeks ago a lady noticed my GH5 / VMP rig and asked me about it.  Turns out she runs a small studio and is looking to replace her PD170 and "go HD".  We spoke for some time  and it was obvious from the conversation that she hasn't been looking at the tech for quite some time.  Her three concerns were 1) no-one was offering any money at all for selling her PD170 (people were offering $20 and 'novelty' amounts like that), 2) she wanted to digitise all her tapes, and 3) she wanted to get new equipment and was admiring how small the GH5 was.
Really goes to show how we on these forums are in a little bubble of 4k/6k 10-bit etc, when there are people out there who haven't gone HD yet, and we did the $200 challenge with HD cameras!

Jesus himself could come down from Heaven waving a banner saying "RED LIED" and folks on reduser would still not believe. 
 

Lol at all the die hards over on reduser moving the goal posts.
reduser: Red makes its own sensors because Jim said so something something gospel
Jim deposition: Actually we didn't I just lied about it
reduser: Red had to lie its just how business is done these days you can't expect them to make their own sensor its obvious!

We have cameras that are unable to shoot internal RAW literally because of RED. You want to stop animosity against a company that is completely screwing everyone else over and suing people left and right? A company that made it so Blackmagic had no choice but to create their own RAW format and made companies like Panasonic, Sony, and Nikon all have to figure out ways to make raw external instead, which in turn makes the rest of us have to buy expensive external recorders and expensive SSDs? Seriously, no offense man - but you should probably quit telling people what to do and how to treat companies, especially companies that are making our work life more difficult and more expensive. Also, dont forget where you are - this is EOSHD, where the creator of the site is very critical of companies - which in turn pushes them to be better and to quit their bullshit. So in conclusion, please get off your high horse and realize that we shouldn’t bow down to big bad RED and let them push us around with their bullshit patent. And this “animosity” is very much warranted.

You have lots of options for affordable cameras that shoot good. No one cares about red fanboys here. We care about if RED's patent is valid or not. In this case, details matter.

Red is the reason why we cant have nice compressed RAW video on other cameras except Red

Looks like there are lots of considerations and it also looks like this conversation isn't clear because we don't understand what your requirements are.
Questions:
Why do you care about the aperture?  Is it because you want a shallower DoF for separation?  or is it because of exposure? If it's because of exposure, then you must also factor in ISO performance - for example the A7iii might have better low-light with an F4 than a GH5 with an F2.8 Also, an F2.8 on MFT has a DoF equivalent to F5.6 on FF, so a FF camera with F4 would have more separation than the MFT/2.8 combo What about AF? If you're on a gimbal, are you going to have a follow-focus?  If so, what cameras support that function?   If you need AF then you have to match the DoF to the cameras AF ability..  an A7iii will be better at f2.8 than a GH5 might be at F4 (I'm just guessing here) but an OOF shot is probably a wasted shot How many shots do you HAVE to get (eg, you have to include certain specific moments) vs is it a quantity thing where you just need enough good shots for a 4 minute highlight reel If there are certain key moments you have to get (eg, at a wedding you have to get the kiss, but you can afford to miss part of the first dance due to AF issues) then how are you going to make sure you nail them?  If it's follow-focus or AF or deep DoF then you need to think about these. If you have to get key moments then having a longer zoom will mean you have framing flexibility and don't have to swap lenses and re-balance gimbals etc.  Reliability and speed to get the key shots might be more important to you than having a lovely lens that misses the key moments. What shots do you get?  You should be able to tell us that you need a super-wide, a mid, and you need close-ups but at a different time when there's time to change lenses.  If you don't have clarity about what shots you need, when you need them, and how much time you have to setup for them then you don't know enough to buy a camera/lens combo for this work yet. What format and resolution are you delivering in? If you're delivering 4K then you'll need a 4K camera.   If 4K, how many shots can you get away with including of 1080?  maybe if there's a few quick inserts in 1080 scaled up you can get away with it? Do you need slow-motion?  What frame rate?  4K60?  Do you need 120p? If you need vertical video then you need a portrait camera rig, or you need to shoot 4K landscape to crop out a 1080 vertical slice If you're shooting 4K for 1080 delivery, then this impacts your lens choice as you can engage a crop mode on a 4K camera to get extra range.  A GH5 can give a >2x digital zoom in 1080 ETC mode, which means a 12-35mm can deliver 1080 in a FF equivalent from 24mm to around 200mm.   If you need to deliver 4K and can't include any 1080 shots then you're limited to FF 70mm equiv with that lens More likely is you can afford the odd 1080 shot (just extra sharpening in post) so could get shots in the FF 70-200mm range in 1080, but are the shots you need the extra zoom on the ones you can afford to deliver in 1080?  Maybe not. Tell us what you're trying to achieve, what final video you need to deliver, how you shoot it, and what your style is and we'll tell you what equipment you need.

looks like a fresh new camera built from the ground up without the weight from the past so why did they kept the old outdated sd card media ? m.2 ssd are cheaper, faster and have a bigger capacity we are dealing with huge raw files after all so  so why did they not put a m.2 internal ssd slot instead of a sd card slot ?

Sigma can’t go wrong as long as they thoughtful consider user feedback.
The NVMe suggestion should be taken seriously. It makes perfect sense for the form factor and the cDNG uncompressed format they are offering.
It’s clear they want RAW in this camera and they can only do uncompressed at the moment. Which means high bitrates and large files sizes. NVMe sticks tick all those boxes plus form factor and price per GB.
I can see why Panasonic went with dual SD card slots on the S1H. Why didn’t sigma just go with XQD or Express and offer 12bit uncompressed internal?

The Fp seems like the next big indie hit. A lot of good ideas in such a small body can make the difference.
"Interestingly I also bumped into Sigma CEO Kazuto Yamaki at the show and had some small-talk. I had my venerable Samsung NX1 with me, and he remarked that the product manager for the NX1 went to work for Sigma’s camera team on the Fp! So they are in good hands as this camera was genuinely ground-breaking and ergonomic."
Maybe planning an interview with the product manager would be super interesting.

There were two highlights of IBC 2019 for me. The Sigma Fp, and the Z-CAM range. From the ground-up the Sigma Fp seems to be aimed at us, at artists. A small and incredibly light camera that hits the big full frame notes, some of the niche features like the digital director's viewfinder would be unheard of in a consumer full frame camera from a major manufacturer.
This is clever and will get the camera a lot of use by top-flight talent. Most exciting for me is the focus on the video recording features - which are big leap for Sigma and indeed push the boundaries of whet we expect from a "prosumer" camera.
Cinema DNG RAW 4K 12bit to USB C SSD media
Internal 1080p 12bit internal RAW Cinema DNG uncompressed
Internal 4K RAW uncompressed (bit-depth drops to 8bit at the moment)
Read the full article

Long interview with Sigma coming up from me with Sam Smith, one of the UK guys who really knew his stuff on the video side.
Stay tuned.
Also this guy was there:

The small hole is actually to reduce the amount of material required, thus saving 0.23 cents/unit on manufacturing costs. It's the compromise they made in order to afford the 24p license.

This plus https://www.metabones.com/article/of/HasselbladVtoFujiGmountSpeedBooster 70mm look. Anyone wants to buy a kidney?
 

With Canon debuting the C500 II today, demand for a full frame in a C-series body is clearly there but Fujifilm is looking further into to the future. Their X-Trans IV sensor technology has already debuted in the GFX 100 and X-T3 but I can reveal a leaked slide-show shows Fujifilm might be taking the technology much further than we believed...
A large format 44x33 camera optimised for open gate 4K3K RGB.
Read the full article

You damn right, they didn't. It was a deliberate act to cripple the camera as part of their increasingly aggressive segmentation game (forcing certain people looking for certain features to look at more expensive options; which is a very business oriented strategy which of course isn't a very good sign of goodwill and might alienate more people than it attracts). Which is a very reasonable and rational explanation. A much better one than including 24p because implementing so would make the camera too costly (again, we've seen cameras getting 24p added through a firmware update, long after it was sold to the customer!). The entry level Rebel T7 does 1080p24. You know which Canon camera does 4K24p? The Canon PowerShot SX740 HS, lol. A consumer budget compactcamera. So stop all this nonsense about costs or technical implementation, it's all bogus. They did it on purpose and it was not to cut down on costs of the camera itself, it was in the hopes that due to leaving it out it would generate more camera sales in higher tier products. Which is a shame, because no other camera company is leaving out something basic as 24p!
Canon blew up after the 5DmkII and 550D/T2i. Then the whole Magic Lantern years trying to make them more into what Panasonic was doing as a company themselves with the GH-range, unlocking more potential, giving its users more quality and features. Yet Canon as a company? It's swinging that 'cripple hammer'. Why do you do it?

What good have they really done after the 5DmkII? They started the whole HDSLR revolution if you will and now they're the ones least eager to keep up with it (it's like they managed to pull the Excalibur sword out... and then sold it for its precious metals). Just makes me puke. ?

He's still going...
Holy fuck.