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rawshooter

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    Your gear of the decade?

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    8 hours ago, rawshooter said:

    - Panasonic GH2 (released in 2010)

    - MagicLantern RAW on 5D MKii + MKiii + EOS-M, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5K (still incredibly good) + all versions of the Blackmagic Pocket (& Micro) Cinema Camera

    - Metabones Speed Booster

    - Gimbals (Zhiyun, DJI, Moza) including the DJI Osmo Pocket gimbal camera

    - Sigma Art lenses, all of them, but especially the 18-35mm/1.8

    - Davinci Resolve and (not necessarily in my niche) FCPX

    All these were real game changers.

    Just to compare:

    In 2009, a DIY filmmaker equipped with the newest gear would have used

    - a Canon 5D MkII or 7D with the mushy h264 image whose actual optical resolution was closer to SD than HD, in sRGB color profiles with a dynamic range of 7-8 stops;
    - on a steady cam like the Glidecam, or a bulky DSLR rig with display loupes;
    - with adapted vintage manual DSLR lenses because of the nearly unusable manual focus of native AF lenses (and AF still being unsuitable for video);
    - editing the material in Final Cut Pro 7 or Premiere Pro using Magic Bullet Looks for color grading, with material that didn't really have enough bit depth for doing that.

    Your gear of the decade?

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    - Panasonic GH2 (released in 2010)

    - MagicLantern RAW on 5D MKii + MKiii + EOS-M, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5K (still incredibly good) + all versions of the Blackmagic Pocket (& Micro) Cinema Camera

    - Metabones Speed Booster

    - Gimbals (Zhiyun, DJI, Moza) including the DJI Osmo Pocket gimbal camera

    - Sigma Art lenses, all of them, but especially the 18-35mm/1.8

    - Davinci Resolve and (not necessarily in my niche) FCPX

    All these were real game changers.

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    31 minutes ago, Lars Steenhoff said:

    And the other thing I noticed is that the brightness on the lcd is changing in manual focus mode with exposure simulation on. This is also not expected and annoying.

    Is your LCD brightness set to "Auto"? That can be changed in the camera menu (section 'System', third tab 'LCD Settings', submenu 'Brightness').

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    For me, the shutter delay currently is a deal breaker for using the camera for serious, daily photography.

    You can easily test it: Turn 'Shutter Blackout' off in the camera menu (section 'Shoot', 5th tab), shoot a digital stopwatch like this one, and you will see that the actually recorded picture has been taken 0.1 seconds later than the picture/frame shown (and briefly frozen) in the camera display after pressing the shutter button.

    It literally means that you can't take snapshots of moving subjects with the camera, at least not in a predictable way. Unreliable focus and inconsistent metering make this a camera with an unusually high amount of pictures you have to throw away in post because of missed moments, missed focus and wrong exposure. 

    I have to second DPreview's opinion that the fp is one of the worst cameras released in 2019, from a stills photography perspective. It's most likely the worst full-frame photography camera currently on the market, maybe even the worst full frame digital photography camera ever released.

    In fact, a $250 EOS-M100 (with its similar-sized body and a pancake lens like the Canon 22mm/f2) beats it as a stills camera, except for the sensor size. Since I had both cameras, I know what I'm talking about... [and would already regret having given the EOS-M100 to my girlfriend after I bought the Sigma - if it hadn't been for my girlfriend...]

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    Yeah, considered selling mine as well.

    While it's a decent-enough mini RAW video camera (except for the file sizes of uncompressed CinemaDNG), it's a lousy performer as a stills camera - most annoyingly lacking responsiveness, with the abysmal autofocus and 0.1 seconds shutter delay.

    I've remorsefully gone back to my Sony A7iii for stills shooting, a much better camera in that department....

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    4 hours ago, JimJones said:

    How effective would 16mm and S16 be on the fp ? Which mode would be best to shoot in with S16 lenses? I thought I read a post somewhere that said this camera had an S16 mode......

    You must have mixed that up with the Blackmagic 4K, which has an S16 mode (since the last firmware update). If you were to adapt an S16 lens to the Sigma fp, your maximum usable resolution would be 1760x990, and you'd have a strong vignette/crop on the camera display.

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    5 hours ago, Brian Williams said:

    So I just now got around to testing this- it seems that turning off the camera vs letting the auto power-save put the camera to sleep are basically the same thing, have the same effect on settings. If you in one of the Custom modes (C1, C2, C3) and you change a setting and let the camera turn off, then yes, when you turn it back on the settings will have changed to their default settings; which seems right to me, that’s how all programmable custom modes work on cameras, the whole point of them is to remember a specific setup of settings. The difference here is that the “sleep” mode is actually turning off the camera, or doing all the same things that turning off the camera does, instead of just pausing the camera as most cameras do when going to sleep.

    But in any of the other modes, PSAM, anything you set stays set that way the next time the camera turns on, whether you turned the camera off or if it went to “sleep”.

    This isn’t true, you can set any of the display modes to have zebras on, and this applies to both custom modes as well as PSAM modes. (I only now just discovered this in the menus). Again, it sucks, but you can’t have zebras and focus peaking on at the same time.

    Thank you so much for your help and clarification! Turns out that, reading the camera manual, I got completely confused about the difference between Custom modes (C1, C2, C3) and "Custom Mode Settings" (which only affect the display) - I had thought that "Custom Mode Settings" were about configuring the Custom modes... (Sigma's language is not exactly helpful here...) Maybe it would be good to write a practical guide for the camera, because it has its own quirks and learning curve.

    - I just found out that the display for video recording can be much improved for judging correct exposure, and seeing more details in shadows and highlights, when setting Color to "Portrait" and "Tone" to "Manual" with +5 in the Shadows and -5 in the Highlights.

     

     

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, paulinventome said:

    That's odd. You are running off the normal battery? Is there a setting or something?

     

    I use the normal, original Sigma battery, yes.

    Can you test the following with your camera: Change the record setting (for example, from 12bit FHD to 8bit UHD), let the camera go into power save sleep, activate it and see whether it remembered the setting?

    Plus, Zebras only work in the custom modes - so whenever the camera is powered on again  defaulting to the saved  values, temporary adjustments have been forgotten.

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Brian Williams said:

    Mine doesn’t forget anything. Whenever I turn back on, it’s in the same mode as I left it, with all video and still settings as they were before turning off. 
    Now if I’m using one of the custom modes (which I do, C1 for stills and C2 for video) that does reset itself each time you go back to it, but that’s just the nature of custom modes in all cameras.

    The problem is that you need custom modes for zebras to be visible.

    But I also have this behavior in M mode.

    Correction: It only happens when the camera wakes up from sleep, not when turning it off and back on.

     

    Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW

    In: Cameras

    Posted

    Figured it out with the help of the camera manual. The menu entries for the zebras are only for configuring their parameters, not for activating them. For the latter, one needs to define a custom shoot mode and then customize the display settings for that shoot mode (including activation of zebras).

    Zebras and focus peaking don't work together. And in Cine mode + Manual mode, lens aperture cannot be controlled via the camera's wheels, but only via menus, which is a huge downer for lenses without aperture rings (such as adapted ef mount lenses).

    Many configuration items - such as audio level adjustment - are buried in submenus.

    In still mode and M setting (with Auto-ISO), exposure compensation is only available via menus, not via dials - another huge letdown. The camera tends to overexpose in automatic metering and has no highlight priority metering option. 

    This is definitely not a straightforward camera in handling and everyday use.

     

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