Framed_By_Dan

On 5/27/2023 at 10:33 AM, Beritar said:

Do you use the last firmware on your S1 ? 
I never use the "Highlight" setting because it can quickly make the skin looking plastic.
Have you tried Cine-V ? This is the profile I use the most in low light and there is absolutely no difference in detail rendering between Cine-V and V-Log on my S1 with the last firmware.

Yes I'm on the latest firmware. I was very keen to see what the 6K/5.9K looked like...glorious! Anyway, yes I think bringing the highlights down might be my own undoing, thinking it's "better" in a way when it's probably not. Just knocked it back a touch to -1 to see if that helps. Boosted saturation back a touch too, I find when underexposing the colour tends to disappear so anything I can do to negate that helps.

I do like Cine V, colours are nice especially skin tones, but still just a touch too punchy for my liking when I am grading on top later. I use a slightly tweaked Cine V for quick turnaround jobs where no grading is required. 

On 5/22/2023 at 10:18 AM, Beritar said:

Note than neither the S5 and the S1 have skin smoothing/chroma NR with the 709 profiles.

Hmm, I have to disagree, I still think there's something going on with the S1 footage. I use Natural tweaked a bit and it's definitely a bit plasticy looking compared to V-Log. Skin texture doesn't shine through the same either.

My settings for Natural are as follows:

Contrast -5

Highlight -2

Shadow +0.5

Saturation -3

Hue -0.5

Sharpness -5

NR - 5

I definitely felt the profile out the box was much more contrasty and had increased saturation compared to the GH line and have spent a bit of time getting them to match fairly closely. One other thing I noticed significantly is the terrible highlight roll off compared to the GH5/GH5S. Perhaps I'm exposing my image wrong/overexposing more on the S1 but if the meter shows anything beyond +2/3 over the highlights clip easily. I have to be super cautious. Compare that to when I shoot my GH5/GH5S/GH5 II (GH5 II especially) I can be pretty confident going to about +1, +1 2/3 and still not having super harsh clipped highlights. 

Most of the time the information is still there to reign in the highlights through a curves adjustment in post but I'd rather get fairly close in camera if I can. It's just a bit off putting when filming. 

Am I pushing the adjustments to the profile too far? I recently shot Flat with no adjustments except sharpness and NR down and it looked great (save for the highlights still being a bit hot). Some aspects of the colour came out a bit better too, however I can't completely switch to Flat due to having a couple of the older bodies in my fleet which don't have Flat.

On 5/22/2023 at 7:44 PM, hyalinejim said:

This is why you're not seeing it. A baked in LUT uses V-Log as its base picture style so it avoids the nasties that are in the regular profiles.

I have thought if I replace my GH5 with an S5IIX and shoot with a baked in Rec709 conversion (I like Davinci's CST for V-Log) that could be a way round it. Trouble is minimum ISO of 640 and I don't have time to use ND on run and gun shoots such as weddings.

Anyone who’s got their hands on an S5IIX able to see if there’s improvement on the skin smoothing/noise reduction artefacts that are present in the normal S5 II in the Rec709 based profiles? Also what about highlight roll off? I have the S1 that I personally feel is a bit too smooth and has hot highlights when shooting in a Rec 709 based profile - although the information does tend to come back fairly well in post. 

I’d love to move on from my GH5 to something a bit better in low light and the S5IIX could be a logical option but I’ve noticed some quirks with S series cameras that I don’t get with the GH line. 

I appreciate any real world user experience.

Despite moving on from Canon years ago I still have a hankering for a 1DC. I have absolutely no need or place for one but having used one a couple of times and still have some 4K Log footage stored, I look at it from time to time and it still impresses me. 

I'd still be interested to see how a Sigma 18-35mm would fair on it, I do remember once using it paired with a Speedbooster Ultra on a GH5S making it roughly 1.27x crop with a touch of vignetting in the corners. 1.3x in DCI 4K mode on the 1DC must be do-able then!

On 9/20/2022 at 10:27 AM, Avenger 2.0 said:

Nice, does he share the cad's or stl's?

I'm not sure. Perhaps not at the moment if it's a project he is trying to develop himself.

Just stumbled upon this on Youtube, looks very interesting. 5K Raw shooting EOS M rehoused in a 3D printed box camera style body. 

He says a version 2 is could be in the works using the brains of the original BMPCC, that I'd love to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF7a_DYZYho&t=889s

1DC was immediately noticeable when doing the singular comparison, it looks so organic and much less digital compared to the rest.

Interested to see some images shot with that Voigtlander 17.5mm on the Fuji...

I have rented one a few times and fell in love with the image. 

I barely have any EF mount lenses anymore but damn I have a lusting for one so bad.

2 hours ago, Thpriest said:

Recently the S1 has being doing some weird stuff with the "focus magnify". The box always heads down to the bottom of the screen as if the joystick is stuck but it only happens in this function. I'm not happy about this and will need to get it checked. Saying that I have just started using a monitor and I have to say, other than the clunkiness, I'm enjoying being able to focus on the big screen.

Are you sure you're not accidentally touching the screen with your nose when using the EVF causing the focus point to jump? I always had that issue with my S1 until I switched the touch screen off.

On a completely separate matter, can anyone tell me how the S1/S5 records it's 1080p mode? Is it pixel binned/line skipped or a mixture of both? Often noticed a fair bit of moire in the HD files.

4 hours ago, Esguelha said:

Really fun to see the variety in cameras used, and I'm really happy to see I got some votes! Camera wise, I guess went the boring route.


You can just about see in the picture, It was 138€ for the kit if you exclude shipping. This is my first M43 camera, and unfortunately the chinese adapters I ordered didn't arrive in time. I have a nice Zeiss 50mm 2.8 I could have used for some more creative results.
I shot on the Smooth "film mode" with -2 contrast and sharpness, and used a preset "LUT" from Filmora, can't quite remember wich one. I was very happy with the picture quality.

Did you hack this? Footage look so good! I felt mind had terrible moire and only had to look at the footage and it looked blocky...

13 hours ago, leslie said:

i got a bit fixated on the losing camera bit, completely missed the fine print about entering just for the judges category. But thats life.

I'm a bit surprised with the amount of entries or lack thereof, as i bid on 3 or 4 cameras but was out bid on everything. I was sure you guys must have been buying everything up  for the competition. The old video camera segment  of ebay must be quite abit more active than one would have thought. Too cut a long story short i ended up using a logitech c920 webcam with a letus anamorphic adapter taped to the front. My reasoning for using the letus was to help differentiate my entry from the others. i figure if speedboosters were allowed if you already had them an anamorphic should be ok as well. Not sure if anyone else shot anamorphicaly. Considering i went to the trouble of using the letus i did forget to get any footage of the lens flaring which was kinda dumb. Since my entry has proved surprisingly unlikely to win the point is moot i guess.

I'm glad i entered i learned a whole bunch of things that i can apply to the next challenge. i am fairly confident i can increase my vote rate by at least a 100% next time round ?

So dan the man pm me your address if you need a webcam for  the odd late night online dalliance. Mind you, you can keep those tips,tricks and footage for your own personal gratuitousness ok ?

 

That's genius!! You can, on this occasion keep a hold of your webcam   I do love the fact you have fitted it to a rail mount, I say you build a shoulder rig for this! Extra points for rigging it up haha!

3 hours ago, aaa123jc said:

Looks like I can keep my camera! ?

Congrats to the winner! And to others as well. You guys are all amazing.

My setup is a Canon EOS M and a 7Artisans 25mm F1.8. 

I got the EOS M in a local store in Hong Kong. It costs me HKD $680, so bascially USD $86. Of course it is a used camera but I don't think the original owner used it much. As for the lens, I brought it from my friend. It is HKD $400, so about USD $ 50. It is really amazing that one can buy such a capable setup in under $150 US dollars! 

The moment I picked this camera up I fell in love with it. Even though it doesn't have the best ergonomics, I just want to shoot something with it immediately.  And the colors is great. The auto white balance is actually really accurate. I would say even better than the other Canon cameras I have used! 

While the 1080P is quite soft, in my opinion, it looks more vintage than cheap. That are plenty of details. I don't personally like overly sharp image anyway. 

The lens is a manual prime lens but that isn't a problem. The focus ring is quite smooth. The build quality is nice enough. The vignette is very pronounced but I think it looks good so that doesn't bother me at all. 

At first I was planning to do a simple and low budget "music video". But due to some horrific things happening in Hong Kong, I didn't have the time and opportunity to do it. So I have to use the footage I shoot during a trip to Disneyland with my girlfriend and her friend. That was my very first time using the camera.

My biggest challenge is that the EOS M does not have focus peaking. My eyes are quite bad. I need to rely on focus peaking to manual focus. That's why I missed my focus quite a lot in the video ?. Other than that I find this setup really easy to use. I shoot the whole video handheld. 1080P 24P. I even use auto white balance exclusively and it just works. 

I did a little bit of color grading and some stabilization in post (only for those panning shots). 

Many people buy the EOS M to use it with Magic Lantern. But for me, even without the Magic Lantern, the camera still works very well, even in 2019. It just becomes my new favorite! 

 

Now I loved the image quality on this, for me it looked very filmic, granted its not terribly sharp but much sharper and better looking than I remember from EOS M footage. I guess that is down to a decently sharp lens which works wonders on the Canons. I was half thinking this was shot on a Sony of some kind but the skin tones and colours were just too good   Had you said this was an EOS M from the start I wouldn't have believed you, there appears to be no aliasing and moire from what I can see, perhaps YouTube's compression is hiding some of that. Great job! 

Now for my reveal and I am really surprised to have won the vote for image quality! When I saw some of the entries I was sure I wasn't going to get anywhere near the top. Not that I was aiming to win, this after all was just a bit of fun! Now I will be honest, I nearly didn't enter. I saw the post on the blog and immediately took interest. I thought over it for a few days and done some research on what could be had for the £200 budget. Andrew- as a side note I did manage to find a large sensor, interchangeable lens 4K camera and nearly went down that route!

At the time of Andrew announcing the competition it was peak wedding season for me (my full time job as a wedding and events filmmaker) and that had to take priority. When I checked back a few weeks later on the closing date for entries it was literally a week away! I took the plunge and bought something cheap in order to take part, paid for express shipping and bought a lens adapter via Amazon Prime.

And here she is in all her glory!

£69 body only from MPB photographic in the UK, and probably the ropiest one they had! It was pretty manky, didn't come with a body cap (omg that exposed sensor!! ?) and the SD card door doesn't close properly but I was determined to make this work. 

The lenses I used were two m42 vintage lenses I had lying around, first up a Pentacon 50mm f1.8 which I actually use in my professional work from time to time - its surprisingly good! For some longer shots I used a Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f3.5 with the aperture blades stuck wide open - again surprisingly good considering the aperture doesn't function and it has been sitting in a bag without any caps on for years.

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice in the above photo there is a Speedbooster attached. This is where I hold my hands up to a little bit of cheating! I bought a Gobe dumb adapter from Amazon as mentioned but knew that for some shots I had in mind the 100mm equivalent FOV I would have would be bit too tight. So for a handful of shots I did run with this - this potentially aided in producing slightly sharper results in some shots. I also used an SLR Magic Variable ND, again not the cheapest of filters! So feel free to disqualify me for this technical infringement!

Before shooting my sequence I done a few test shots in the garden the reviewed the footage on the computer. I knew the AVCHD codec would be a potential struggle but didnt realise how bad it was until looking back on these test shots - the footage was already falling apart before my eyes! 17 Mbps is a long way off the solid looking 100+ Mbps i'm used to off my GH5! Not to mention how much moire I saw in the footage!

Despite this, I found the 720p mode better with it's Motion JPEG codec so considered using this in my film. I shot with the "Nostalgic" setting with Contrast and Sharpness all the way down. For me this looked to have slightly better dynamic range and better roll off between tones than the "Smooth" setting, although the over all colour wasn't as nice.

So, on one of the hottest days of the year I went into my home town and done some people watching. The little GH1 was a fair challenge to use as one might expect with how lucky we are with modern cameras these days. No focus peaking, no zebras, low resolution screen and viewfinder. Despite this, I relied heavily on the histogram to check my highlights, made sure not to film anything with too much motion which would exploit the weaknesses in the codec. I also threw in some 720p shots and upscaled them in the final edit. 

My biggest mistake was not taking my proper video monopod out to film, instead relying on handheld or a basic photography monopod. It wasn't until I went out for some golden hour footage I took along a proper tripod. Good old Warp Stabiliser came in handy!

The edit was a quick couple of hours piecing together the best shots, no real story part from the obvious changing of time and I graded using one of James Miller's DeLUTs as a starting point, tweaking to my own taste.

For me this was a refreshing challenge. Normally I opt to do some photography or go a bike ride to escape from my normal work but this was a cheeky day out filming to keep my creativity going at the height of working season. Filmmaking should always be about the fun and not about the expensive gear and with that I think I will arm myself with the little GH1 and see what we can come up with in the future.

I will be writing a more in depth blog post on my own website so when that is done I will link that back to here.

Finally I just want to say well done to PannySVHS for winning the best cinematography, I love the home video feel about this! Thank you to Andrew for coming up with this challenge and getting this little community together to create. Looking forward to more like this soon!

Dan

Got lucky with the weather yesterday out filming my piece! Definitely a challenge using my chosen camera body and was wary of it's pitfalls. 

In keeping with the rules, I'm not revealing my choice but the only thing I will say is that I use the latest version of this model in my professional work and boy do we have it lucky now!! The technology has definitely moved on considerably in a relatively short period of time.

Looking forward to the results from the judging phase!

Spent a whopping £25 on shipping to get it here in time!! 

Now to go shoot ?

Right folks, I have been a follower of the blog for a number of years but only just became a forum member to take part in this challenge. When I seen the blog post i was pretty interested but then became busy with work. 

Im now keen to enter and looks like I have three days to find a camera, shoot then edit and upload the video. 

I know Andrew wasn't keen on enforcing too many rules since this is a bit of fun but I just wanted to know what the consensus would be on using Speedboosters? This would not necessarily be used to improve the low light abilities of my chosen camera body but more for an adapter. I have a £20 lens I already own which I know to work quite well when paired up with a Speedbooster - I'm also willing to make my chosen camera less than £100 if it fits better with the spirit of the competition. Let me know! Otherwise I will try source a dumb adapter in time!