eatstoomuchjam

I would be really curious about that. The Z-Cam E2 (and E2-M4) do some sort of HDR mode from the Sony sensor which works by doing some trickery with different exposures on multiple pixels of the quad-bayer sensor. It works really well, but results in some funky artifacts sometimes. They're mitigated by using a higher shutter speed, but never fully go away. Sony's page on ClearHDR from Starvis 2 seems to indicate that it's more like a real DGO, though, so that could be pretty exciting. A 16-bit output would also put things more in Red territory. Most mirrorless systems only use 12-bit readout from the sensor in video modes.

From what I read, they handled it poorly.

IMO the phone is exactly the right camera to use for those moments. The quality on modern phones is so good that I would barely even think of it as a compromise. IBIS is still really uncommon on cinema cameras. Komodo/K-X are global shutter which makes shake feel a little more organic, IMO, and if one can deal with higher shutter speeds, they also record gyro information so you could use gyroflow or similar. Lack of IBIS can also be a feature in some cases - like I'd be unlikely to mount a camera with IBIS on my car before driving down a rough road. I've heard stories of that sort of thing wrecking the IBIS mechanism. But yes, they are converging for sure. It'll be interesting to see the knots people tie themselves into to explain how it isn't "true REDcode raw" as soon as Nikon announces a camera (or firmware for an existing camera) which adds it. I'm coming from the perspective of hiking with the original GFX 100 for the last few years so my perspective on which cameras one can carry around all day might be a bit off. The GFX 100 body weighs more than the K-X body (though the K-X weighs more with battery+screen) It sounds like you might be frustrated by the startup time and weight of it too. It's faster than the K-X, but probably not "take a shot in 2 seconds" fast. I still would say "a bit weird," but not so much "surprising." 😄

That may depend on the camera. I have no experience with their older stuff, but DSMC3 isn't nearly that slow to use. I've even been taking the K-X on hikes and from my shoulder bag to recording takes about 2-3 minutes. Of course, I'm not running with a sound person, video village, etc. If I were on a half day indoor natural light docu-type shoot with it, I'd bring it with the EF 24-70/2.8 on a focal reducer. Camera setup and teardown time would account for 5-10 minutes of the day. I'd probably have to swap a battery midway through. The problem may not be the camera in this case, but the person who is using it. 😉 That said, if someone didn't insist that I use it, I'd be far more likely to grab my C70 for that kind of shoot (also with 24-70/2.8 and focal reducer). It's hands-down a better camera to use in a fully uncontrolled environment. Setup/teardown time would be almost identical.

The latest Fuji mobile app can do the same thing or at least something similar, even with the GFX series.

Could also do something in the style of "Our Robocop Remake" where we take a single script (they remade something that existed, we could do something new) and each shoot a scene from it in our own style.

Yes. About 60 seconds, I'd say... but my batteries last 2-3 hours so while I'm shooting, I just leave the camera on. If shooting raw, the camera is fully ISO invariant (that is to say, capture is at native resolution and ISO is raw file metadata). I haven't shot anything in ProRes to comment otherwise. I'd be a little surprised, though, given that the display output looks fine. Yes. Though you could mitigate this by shooting in the lower quality 6k modes which make the files substantially smaller. Disks are pretty cheap these days so I'm not too concerned. I set the camera to MQ (170MB/s) when I got it and unless shooting some SFX thing, I wouldn't anticipate ever changing it. LQ is around 110MB/s and ELQ is about 50-60MB/s, I think. Also yes. Though it depends on your definition of "higher," I suppose. Full resolution 6k can go up to 80fps. 5k is only a slight crop and can do 96. But if you need 120, 4k is a noticeable crop - and while I haven't used 240fps at 2k, that's a pretty huge crop. If you make frequent use of frame rates > 96 fps and don't want to work with a crop, it's definitely not the best choice you could make. Other things worth mentioning that don't bug me much yet, but might bug you: Manufacturer recommends black shading sensor any time there's a ~20 degree (Fahrenheit, guess that'd be about 11C) shift in temperature which could be annoying if moving in and out of buildings on a hot day, for instance. On the K-X, it takes about a minute. I think the OG Komodo is a bit slower and older Reds would take more than 15 minutes IIRC. Not a lot of buttons on the body for quick settings changes Wifi with the included antenna is hot garbage so monitoring by phone/iPad isn't usable. After swapping to a better antenna, I'd describe it as "tolerable" if not using the phone as a wireless monitor, there's no HDMI - just SDI. If you want 4k for crisp punch-in focus confirmation, that means 12g sdi... so if you don't want to spend $1k+ on a monitor, you'll be using a Video Assist 12g. Though the nice thing about that is that you can use the VA for a 4K ProRes backup of what you're shooting.

Do we all want to shoot a single theme/genre? Come up with a single script that we all shoot in our own styles? Seems like there should be something to tie them all together - if not, what is there to make it different from what we'd all normally be shooting anyway?

Many of the YouTubers that are doing these reviews do a sponsor readout as part of it. Adsense might not be making a lot of money, but I'm guessing that Squarespace or NordVPN or similar pay alright. Maybe you didn't do sponsor readouts, but a lot of those people do. So the equation for them would become "How many videos will I get out of this free trip where I can do a sponsor read vs how many would I make at home with sponsor reads in the same time?" and not "How many pennies will YouTube share with me from AdSense?" I have terrible news for you. The Komodo-X, at least, is just as easy to use as many of my other cameras, right down to having mediocre autofocus/face tracking (I'd say a little below Fuji level, definitely not Canon/Nikon). I never used the OG Komodo, but enough is similar that I'd assume it's about the same, generally. (That's not to say you should get one - just that usability is really pretty alright)

I would never claim to have any sort of Redcode "prowess." With the K-X, just like most of my other cameras, I'm kind of a hack. 😉

I don't think I ever said "wild." Just "weird." It's a lot less weird to me to go from Red to Sony (or almost anybody else). It's just weird to me that anybody would move from any non-Black Magic brand to Pyxis, in particular - I just think Pyxis is pretty lame and there are a lot of better options at the same price or lower. Heck, other than "shoots internal raw" and "has lame high-res touchscreen on the side of the camera," the E2-F6 from more than 5 years ago is a far more capable camera. Anyway, this isn't a Pyxis thread so I'll stop. Anyway, for a certain YouTuber crowd, it seems like their business really is making videos every few months about why they're changing to a new camera from the old one. Then they make a series of videos extolling the benefits of the new camera and selling their guide for it and/or lut pack or whatever. Then a few months later, they move to the next shiny new camera and repeat. Videos about "Why I sold my ________ and changed to _______" are right up there with someone calling their camera a "beast" in terms of things that will inspire me to ask YouTube to stop suggesting their channel to me. 😅

You got me curious enough to watch it. "I'm just gonna sell my Red Komodo-X because this is absolutely fire." He mentions that it's a cheaper camera near the end, but he really seems to be pumped for the Pyxis. Like I said, still seems like a weird choice to me - but he's welcome to do what he wants for a camera.

I'm no psychologist and I don't know the guy personally so I am no more qualified than anybody else to talk to motivations, but I took it as fully tongue-in-cheek, but if you take something else away from it, you're at least equally right (and maybe more right, who knows?). 😃 Sure, but so am I - and so are you, and so is every other person. The most important thing is to understand how people are full of shit. This is a huge problem. Factor into it that for a lot of people, especially if they could only afford one camera, they might have done research for months before they finally got it. For a lot of those people, a suggestion that they didn't make the right decision can instantly put them on the defensive and cause them to lash out. I'd guess that a huge majority of online dick waving contests about cameras stem from this sort of sensitivity. To follow on that, at least for me, any time anybody refers to their camera as a "beast," whether it be YouTuber or commenter or whatever, I instantly devalue most of what they said before/after. Cameras aren't beasts. They are tools. One should understand the positives and negatives of the tool and base purchase and usage decisions on those things.

I always took that as tongue-in-cheek and as a device to add a bit of humor to what would otherwise be relatively dry videos of somebody showing him a bunch of lights on lightstands, etc.

You think BM panicked about the S9? Did they have bad intel? I really can't think of any potential customer for a full frame BMPCC who would be jumping ship for the S9 - though I'm sure there that once it starts shipping, there will be at least some YouTubers who will make videos about how they're dropping their current camera for the S9. Similarly, there was at least one who made one about how he was selling his Komodo-X to buy a Pyxis. I didn't watch the video, though - just saw the headline, shrugged, and thought "that seems like a weird choice, but you do you, buddy." I probably blocked his channel from my recs too since that's my default behavior when YT suggests "Why I'm changing from ______ to ________" videos to me.

I'm no fan of Gerald, as a general rule. He's not a filmmaker and he has a tendency to harp on and on about fairly unimportant flaws in cameras in his reviews. One of the reasons that he doesn't share much footage is because he's not out there making footage. But I do applaud that video and I appreciate the peek behind the curtain of camera reviews. I hadn't thought before about the angle of trip reviews being biased toward positive partly because of camaraderie, food, and drink (hearing a list of positives and having limited time always seemed logical to me). As others have pointed out, there are some weird inconsitencies. He mentions that his early look videos don't do a lot better than his later-released videos... but then he also makes comments about how if Panasonic doesn't work with him, it could cause him problems. Why? I'm sure that his sponsor spots pay well enough for spend $150 renting the camera for a few days and still have enough to support his lifestyle. That's what most of us schlubs need to do if we want to test a camera before buying it - plunk down some money and rent the damn thing. Anyway, if nothing else, hopefully having a bigger YouTuber saying it inspires the legions of people who breathlessly click on release videos and get super excited by the hype to start thinking more critically about launch PR videos and remembering that the people who set them up are the marketing team.

Nice! I thought it must be using OneInchEye at first, but then I saw that you mentioned StarVis. Apparently the same guy who makes OneInchEye also makes StarLightEye. https://www.tindie.com/products/will123321/starlighteye/ Could be worth messing around a bit - the cinemapi sensors are getting really decent, finally.

Oh yeah, definitely a good deal. If I were at all interested in the Black Magic ecosystem or weird form factor, I'd jump on it.

My guess is that sales were really low at the normal price to start with and that the announcement of a box camera dropped them to approximately 0. Better to make a bunch of sales at break-even or even a slight loss than to write off a bunch of inventory.

M mount adapter + Summicron-M 50mm f/2.

Lighting has always been more important than camera choice.

"I ruined a lot of shots just because I thought a $10,000 camera setup would transform my bad lighting and framing into something cinematic." Flawless quote. I've used mine as the A camera on 2 short films so far - one for Four Points Film Project and one for a local short film festival called Z Fest. My favorite modes are the 5.8k 2.39 mode that uses full sensor width and the full size 4k mode where I can choose between decent RS and high dynamic range. I also like the 8k mode, but less for the resolution and more for the crop to vary up my prime focal lengths. It also doesn't hurt that the Fuji 110/2 is probably my favorite lens that I ever used on any format/camera. Going in for a any sort of close-up with that lens feels like you just typed a cheat code into your monitor. For most shorts that I shoot, I'm way more likely to just grab the C70 or the K-X. The Fuji can make some amazing images, but I'm always having to think about which mode I'm in and which positives/drawbacks that mode has... plus the big sensor can create some problems. Like, if I put on a fast manual lens with character that I like, I might need to stop it down to f/4 to get enough working DOF to keep the talent in focus while they move (or to have the tip of their nose still in focus while their eyes are sharp) - and by f/4, a lot of the character that I like in that lens vanishes. This objection is reduced a lot with native or EF glass, though, since the eye detect AF is really decent (back to the 110/2, did I mention that I love that lens?). That said, if I'm traveling and can only bring one camera, it's a no-brainer for me. The GFX 100 II is by far the best all-around camera I've ever touched. I've taken it to Turkey and Brazil since getting it and never found myself wishing I had another camera with me. There's a reason that my answer in the "If you could have only one camera..." thread was simply "GFX 100 II." 😁

I'd take the S9 over the fp. I had an fp and an fp-l for a while. I used them on some personal stuff and they were a lot of fun with M mount lenses, but in the end, even using the DPL cages for them, by the time you made them even remotely usable, they were much bigger than something like an EOS R5. Without an external SSD, they're limited to 8-bit codecs - and if I remember right, there's no log profile anyway - just a "flat" one which didn't really seem to add much DR vs neutral. Anyway, 10-bit v-log on the S9 would be just fine and give some flexibility. Also, I'm not sure what RS is like on the S9, but it'd be pretty shocking if it were as bad or worse than on the fp. Also, FWIW, there is no cooling fan on the fp (that I remember), but it does have vents for airflow. Overheating was never a problem with mine. Anyway, I sold my fps because other than "it's a bit smaller," they didn't do anything better than any other camera than I own - and while the smaller argument is valid, it evaporated as soon as I turned them into something that I would actually shoot with. I still hold out hope that they'll come out with a newer one with 10-bit or 12-bit internally, though. 😄

Keep in mind that in 2009 (when the 7d was released), the number of consumer lenses designed for APS-C was even less than now - and there weren't a ton of people adapting vintage Cooke lenses to the 7d. Plus, 15 years ago, sensor technology was not what it is now. Personally, I don't care a lot for Sigma lenses. Every time I put one on my camera, I feel like I'm putting on something designed by a robot - all technical perfection, no soul. But yes, the 18-35 is quite popular. The EF-S 17-55/2.8 is one of the standout lenses for Canon APS-C, but it's one of only a small number. Fast primes? Not many. I HAVE considered picking up the 18-135 USM for a walkaround lens for C70 + Komodo-X since it's decent enough quality and a big zoom range, but while I'd use that for personal stuff, I'd be really unlikely to take it out of the bag when on set. Who is making CCD in the still world nowadays? The sensor options in the still world are about the same as in the video world at this point. Still world has Foveon, but video world has the 17:9 sensors included in many cinema cameras - and most mirrorless cameras (excepting GR1 and Hasselblad medium format) support a video mode which effectively means that most modern still camera sensors are also video sensors... but most dedicated cinema cameras don't feature a still photo mode. The main thing to differentiate a pro DP from an amateur, IMO, is knowing how to light. Choice of cameras like the Alexa tends to be due to a feature set designed for a large crew, reliability, and having the most flexible image to hand off to professional colorists who also spend 80%+ of their time working on footage from the Alexa. This is one of the reasons that a lot of stuff was still being shot on 2.8k Alexa when RED had 4, 5, 6, and 8k sensors available in their cameras. As people here have repeatedly pointed out, a lot of the best DP's aren't making choices for the sharpest possible image - if you want the image to look a little soft, using a Speed Panchro on a 2.8k sensor to upsize to 4k is going to get you there. Will any Internet camera/lens reviewer give a glowing review to that combo? Doubtful. Will an audience watching the film walk out talking about how beautiful the film was? Yup. As a perfect example, I just watched Dune 2 last night since it's finally free on Max. Lots of people have been talking about how beautiful it was. As I watched, some of the scenes were really pretty sharp-looking and they were the ones that seemed mostly CG. When humans were on screen, I repeatedly noticed how unsharp the images were. Googled a bit and found this bit from the DP > "Texturizing the image was the name of the game. The larger ALEXA sensors are so extraordinary that I felt we needed to dirty the image up a bit." Shot on large format sensors, but too much perfection/sharpness felt soulless. Also: > We had a 57 mm LOOK lens with Petzval glass where you can dial in your effect with a third lens ring Dude shot parts of Dune 2 with a $400 Lomography lens. https://shop.lomography.com/us/new-petzval-55-f-1-7-mkii-art-lens And: > Ultimately Fraser and his team decided to use spherical optics and he worked with a diverse range from ARRI Rental including re-housed 1980s Moviecams and re-housed Soviet-era glass provided by IronGlass, along with some lenses from his collection. Dude shot parts of Dune 2 with Helios 44-2 and Jupiter-9 and lenses like that. Can't afford the IronGlass rehoused versions? Go buy 'em for like $200-300 on ebay.

Ha! I never thought of it as a Civic, but that's great. I'm going to remember that. I recently got a Komodo-X and even though any number of specs from the K-X are better on paper than the C70, I fully intend to keep using my C70 for a lot of stuff. Having built-in ND filters and a ton of buttons to assign things to and an articulating internal screen, the C70 is just faster to use. Plus the DR is great and the image looks nice SOOC. I kind of think of it as a camera used by people who want to get it done. It's not flashy - and when you show up on set and tell people you're using a C70, nobody's all excited... but when you show the results, people are happy with them.