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StHubbins

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Everything posted by StHubbins

  1. As the former owner of a GH5, I must say, the tiltable screen was not very usable for me. 1) When you tilt it, the sun reflects directly off of it, so it's unviewable. 2) To tilt it up, you have to flip it out, and when you do that, it makes reaching the lens focus ring with your left hand almost impossible. You have to go under the camera, which is extremely awkward. I would have much preferred the Sony design, where it tilts without swinging out. The screen was a big factor in me buying the GH5, and I was wildly disappointed.
  2. Of course, Shijan (that's his name, I believe). I may have to get this...
  3. Also, the only time I've ever been shut down for shooting something was with my Micro rig. And I was just filming my family ice skating! Granted, I live in LA, so people are more attuned to this stuff, but here I am, filming my family skating at an outdoor rink around Christmas, and the Manager comes up to me... "Hey man, you can't shoot with that thing here." "What? Why not? Everybody here is filming their family on their phones, etc." "Yeah, but you've got a whole professional camera deal. We've got rules about that." "Look, that guy over there is filming with a Canon 5D Mk IV, that camera costs three times as much as mine!" "Yeah, but you got this mic and stuff, it's making people nervous. Sorry dude." ...So, of course, I pretended to agree, waited til he left, then shot at waist level, glancing down at my monitor surreptitiously... Two minutes later... "No, dude. I can still tell you're filming. You gotta put it away or leave." "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WITH ALL THE STUFF IN THE WORLD THAT HAPPENS, YOU GOTTA SHUT DOWN A DAD FILMING HIS FAMILY?! C'MON EVERYONE, GET THE SKATES OFF, WE'RE LEAVING. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!" ?
  4. Hmm, what is this Breakoutbox you speak of? Is that Phil Lemon's project, or a standard breakout box? A great thing about the Micro is the 3:1 RAW, so thank God I don't have to worry about screwing up the white balance. BMPCC has RAW too, but it's ungodly huge and impossible to play without transcoding, so I never used it much.
  5. True, it's best to buy already built kits. Which is one reason I'm NOT selling mine, NOBODY'S gonna slide in and take all my hard work and tears putting that crazy rig together!!1! I will say, the original BMPCC is MUCH easier to use (for me) than the Micro. All I need is the mini-shotgun mic, and a Kinotehnik loupe, and I'm good to go.
  6. Yeah, the biggest problem with my Micro is that it is literally the most difficult camera to use in the history of cameras... and that's from an owner of the original BMPCC. To get my Micro to work for my run-and-gun style, I've needed 1) A cage 2) an HDMI cable lock 3) a Blackmagic URSA Mini handle, with LANC cable 4) an offset Arri rosette, purchased from a guy who makes them in Russia 5) a right angle-to-straight HDMI cable for the monitor 6) a monitor, with 6B) a battery sled 7) a Sony battery (and charger) for the monitor 8} a One Little Remote control box, and 8B) a separate mounting screw for the cage 9) a Sennheiser MKE400 small shotgun mic for usable sound, with 9B) a screw-in cold shoe mount This rig took me a ton of research and about 3 months to get together. And the camera is still barely usable - even the One Little Remote (which is great, compared to the laughable buttons on the front of the Micro) doesn't have a screen, so you have to guess if you've pressed a button once or twice or 3 times to figure out which parameter you're on. He's made a new one with a screen, but I don't want to buy yet another thing (though at some point I will). And nothing's worse than having your monitor run out of juice... and realize that your camera is still going strong, but there's no way to see what you're shooting. Now, to get a fully useable rig for my BMPCC4K, I've had to buy... 1) Nothing. Yep. Great (stereo!) audio from in camera, huge built-in monitor, tons of easy access buttons, plus a touch screen and amazing UI. I literally have NOTHING on the camera. And it's about 2 lbs. lighter than my Micro. The Micro's image quality is indeed delicious, but it's a preposterously huge hassle to shoot with, comparatively. Nonetheless, you'll never get me to sell it
  7. I would not at all be surprised if part of the legal settlement with RED was coming up with a way that future cameras could not use the old firmware. It's not much of a settlement if the future users of the camera can still use the forbidden format. They just should've been up front about it.
  8. 4K isn't a big deal to me EXCEPT... the fact that you can zoom in means every prime is turned into a mini-zoom lens. And that is awesome.
  9. I will say the classic BM cams have more of a "romantic" look straight out of the camera. To use guitar amp terminology, the BMPCC4K is more of a "transparent" image, clean and detailed, that you can put any look you want on after the fact. With the OG Pocket/Micro, you have one choice - "that look"... but damn, that look is sexy as hell, and I'll love it forever By the way, as a fanboy note, I've enjoyed your videos for years, you're my favorite camera reviewer!
  10. Yes! My bad, it's the Zhongyi Mitakon 25mm 0.95. It's awesome. Oddly, it also has the coolest box I've ever gotten with a lens. It's 25, but because the sensor of the new Pocket is much bigger than the old one, it's kind of equivalent to a 20mm field-of-view on the old one.
  11. As a passionate owner of the first BMPCC, the Micro, and the Pocket 4K, I'd have to say... it's just a different approach. I LOVE much of my Pocket/Micro footage. I mean, LOVE. But... there's plenty of footage from those cameras I DON'T love. Anything without a ton of light, or incredibly fast lenses... the footage is ehh. I mean, that which is even salvageable is ehh. And most of it is not even salvageable. The original cameras are amazing, provided you have tons of light. If not, they're pretty much terrible. The P4K can obviously capture 10x the amount of usable footage that the old ones can. Bright light, low light, no light, it's all good. And yes, the look straight out of the camera, on sharp modern lenses, looks video-ish. Blegh. But then I started using interesting lenses on it, and the magic came right back. If you want "filmic", do NOT shoot the P4K with clinical, modern glass. I am LOVING the combo of the inexpensive Kamlan 25mm F0.95 on the new Pocket. The creaminess and softness of the old Pocket returns (but with more resolution). Add grain in FilmConvert, and I'm back in love. In short... the old cameras had "mojo" from the sensor, but you had to add sharpness and light from the lens. The new cameras have sharpness and light, but you need to add "mojo" with the lenses. I love them all, and am keeping them all
  12. Yes... and no. What the "Highlight Recovery" setting does with RAW is find areas where one channel (say, red) is clipped, but another (say, blue) is NOT clipped. Resolve then fills that red channel with information from the blue channel. In ProRes, this info would just be "clipped", and come out as white. But in RAW with Highlight Recovery, that detail appears... but with a caveat. That detail is basically black and white. Because the actual red color info is gone, the best Resolve can do is kind of guess the color, and it defaults to desaturating (it used to make that detail pink, which was pretty ugly). So usually what this means is, instead of a window being blown-out flat white in ProRes, in RAW, you can barely see the frame of the window panels. It's not gorgeous, but it is kind of nice. More importantly, in a hot spot on someone's skin, RAW can bring back a bit of (desaturated) texture in the skin, which CAN be kind of a big deal. It's up to you whether these subtle differences in the extreme highlights are worth the trouble or not.
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