rawshooter

Well, still a camera limited to 8bit 4:2:0, and even for the Vlogger target group, I don't quite get how you can release a camera in 2020 that only has USB 2.0 with a MicroUSB port...

Not getting very excited by the image quality either - just see the newest DPreview episode which was alternatingly shot on the Fuji XT-4 and the ZV-1. IMHO, the ZV-1 footage sticks out like a sore thumb:

In the last segment (at 13:10), I actually find the iPhone XR footage looking much better than the ZV-1 footage... So then why bother with the ZV-1?

These two videos cover the subject:

15 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Yeah. I know exactly the feeling. I just want to do the art bit... The rest of it is truly exausting and haphazards sometimes.

Regarding the gear, it gets in the way for video like it doesn't for stills. Gimbals, tripods, it all slows me down too much. I want to strip all that back.

Experimental filmmaker legend Maya Deren had an excellent take on this,  in 1959! Her text "Amateur versus Professional" is worth quoting in its entirety:

The major obstacle for amateur film-makers is their own sense of inferiority vis-a-vis professional productions. The very classification “amateur” has an apologetic ring. But that very word – from the Latin “amateur” – “lover” means one who does something for the love of the thing rather than for economic reasons or necessity. And this is the meaning from which the amateur film-maker should take his clue. Instead of envying the script and dialogue writers, the trained actors, the elaborate staffs and sets, the enormous production budgets of the professional film, the amateur should make use of the one great advantage which all professionals envy him, namely, freedom – both artistic and physical.

Artistic freedom means that the amateur film-maker is never forced to sacrifice visual drama and beauty to a stream of words, words, words, words, to the relentless activity and explanations of a plot, or to the display of a star or a sponsor’s product; nor is the amateur production expected to return profit on a huge investment by holding the attention of a massive and motley audience for 90 minutes.Like the amateur still-photographer, the amateur film-maker can devote himself to capturing the poetry and beauty of places and events and, since he is using a motion picture camera, he can explore the vast world of the beauty of movement. (One of the films winning Honorable Mention in the 1958 Creative Film Awards was ROUND AND SQUARE, a poetic, rhythmic treatment of the dancing lights of cars as they streamed down highways, under bridges, etc.) Instead of trying to invent a plot that moves, use the movement of wind, or water, children, people, elevators, balls, etc. as a poem might celebrate these. And use your freedom to experiment with visual ideas; your mistakes will not get you fired.

Physical freedom includes time freedom – a freedom from budget imposed deadlines. But above all, the amateur film-maker, with his small, light-weight equipment, has an inconspicuousness (for candid shooting) and a physical mobility which is well the envy of most professionals, burdened as they are by their many-ton monsters, cables and crews. Don’t forget that no tripod has yet been built which is as miraculously versatile in movement as the complex system of supports, joints, muscles, and nerves which is the human body, which, with a bit of practice, makes possible the enormous variety of camera angles and visual action. You have all this, and a brain too, in one neat, compact, mobile package.

Cameras do not make films; film-makers make films. Improve your films not by adding more equipment and personnel but by using what you have to its fullest capacity. The most important part of your equipment is yourself: your mobile body, your imaginative mind, and your freedom to use both. Make sure you do use them.

https://hambrecine.com/2013/12/10/amateur-versus-professional/ (also includes a PDF of this text.)

- She shot all her films on a 16mm Bolex H16 btw.

24 minutes ago, colepat said:

@Andrew Reid ah, Sorry mate should’ve been more clear. Where on the zoom range does it change between f/2.8-f/4

See here:

https://***URL removed***/reviews/sigma-17-70mm-f2-8-4-os-hsm/2

Yeah, maybe change the name of the forum to "GAP", Gear Addicts Pseudonymous... 

It's quite funny how a thread on the perils of G.A.S. has turned into another G.A.S. thread...

3 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

I am looking to make educational videos for my students and have been working a little with Google Slides and other plug-ins to animate.  Two big things that are glaringly missing from basic setup (tripod, a73, Tamron 28-75) are a green screen/green cloth and an audio solution.  I like simplicity and ease of use.

Does anyone think I could just buy green fabric/cloth from Amazon and use pins behind me?  I am shooting most of the educational clips in my small NY apartment.

Also for audio, what are both inexpensive and semi-quality solutions?  An on camera mic would be best with fairly good sound quality up to 10 feet away.  Second to that would be an off camera mic on a stand (table or boom) that would plug into the camera.

 

I'd say: forget about green screen. Not only is proper lighting - and postproduction - for grey screen complex/difficult, but the Sony isn't really the right camera for that task because of its 8bit 4:2:0 codec. (Greenscreen work is one of the reasons for using raw cameras...) 

For a good and inexpensive mic, I'd first go for a lavalier, especially if you speak to students. The Audio Technica ATR3350 is a really good low-cost solution. - And I wouldn't use an on-camera mic 10 feet away...

Not sure whether this forum here is the right place for this video...

The MagicLantern project is pretty much dead - the last nightly builds are from July 2018:

https://builds.magiclantern.fm/

There are only some (or just one?) individual developers who keep hacking individual camera ports and offering their own builds off-site.

51 minutes ago, Django said:

Everything points towards a 5D class product, adjusted for inflation and the newer tech I'd say were looking at around 4K-5K tops.

The primary consumer is still going to be image and Canon won't sell a single R5 to photographers with a $7K price tag.

I'm less optimistic and think that Newsshooter's estimation of $5,800 for U.S. is realistic. (Take into account that prices in other countries are higher because, unlike in the US, they always include tax.) Camera sales have been dramatically shrinking in the last couple of years and so that R&D costs and lower production runs can only be recouped via higher margins. 

Well, Newsshooter editor Matthew Allard nuances the news item (the price of the camera having turned up in an Australian camera store web shop) by factoring in price difference between Australia and the US: 

"So if I do a few calculations based on the difference in prices between the US and Australian deals on the 1DX Mark III you would be looking at a US price of around $5,800 USD for the R5."

According to a leak in Australia, it seems as if the price of the R5 will be $6,792 USD... 

Source: https://www.newsshooter.com/2020/05/15/canon-r5-price-listed-in-australia/

4 hours ago, Super8 said:

Vimeo and You Tube have solved the video player issue and the standard on page display issue.  It's not as easy as "uploading them to your web site/blog and hosting them the same way you host & serve still images."

I build and maintain a lot of wordpress sites and embedding videos hosted on your server through the wordpress site are a pain in the ass.  I'm talking about the video player and how it displays on your site. This has been going on for years. 

Have you ever heard of the HTML <video> tag? The times where you had to embed players (back in the days, via Adobe Flash) are gone for 10 years now.

What exactly is the "video player issue and the standard on page display issue"?

I tell you what: they don't exist, and you're just making up nonsense, like you always do here, because you are a full of shit.

"I build and maintain a lot of wordpress sites" - yes, and you also hire and direct DPs from Disney and have internal connections to Canon, among many other things that you wrote here before.

Your postings are not only bullshit, they poison this forum (and people looking for advice) with wrong information.

Can somebody please check your Egyptian IP address?

26 minutes ago, Video Hummus said:

AV1 has a long, uphill battle before it has a chance to be a dominate codec in the webspace. It has the support of very rich and powerful tech companies, including Apple and Google but it’s hard to win over the companies that make the hardware acceleration hardware seen in set-top-boxes, streaming devices and on the backend streaming service providers.

Yes, and just to be clear, services like Vimeo and YouTube do adaptive streaming (i.e. they host each video in a variety of resolutions and bit rates and switch between them during playback depending on network bandwidth), which you will lose when you self-host your videos. But I don't really care, because I prefer my work to be seen at the intended 1080p resolution anyway.

This website has an online demo of AV1, which works with Chrome and Firefox (since they already have AV1 support built-in): https://bitmovin.com/demos/av1

I personally find the quality at 1080p and 1 Mbit/s good enough, even when viewing the video full screen on a 27" computer monitor in short viewing distance. With audio included, such videos will only take about 8.5 MB per minute storage space and transmission bandwidth. Serving them from your personal webspace will then be a no-brainer IMHO. 

The original reason for Vimeo's existence, namely the absence of native video support in HTML, has been resolved since 2010....

17 minutes ago, zerocool22 said:

Not true, at least in my case. Unless it changed it the last year.

I definitely had half of my videos blocked two years ago after having forgot to renew my subscription. This will happen when the combined file size of your videos exceeds the 5GB storage quota of the free Vimeo account.

Vimeo's real business are film production companies who upload their screeners for clients and festivals as password-protected videos. That's why in the current times, so many films festival and arthouse theaters have been able to switch to streaming overnight: all they needed was to unlock their Vimeo screeners for larger publics.

My own plan is to wait till support for the open AV1 codec will be mature on both on the client/browser side and the encoder side. I've already run a few encoding tests, and the quality is absolutely stunning at much lower bitrates than both h264 and h265.  Once AV1 will be ready for the masses, hosting your own videos will just be a matter of uploading them to your web site/blog and hosting them the same way you host & serve still images.

12 minutes ago, User said:

What happens to my material on Vimeo if I no longer pay? Anyone?

Most of it will be blocked/be no longer visible and only be unlocked when you renew the paid subscription.

3 hours ago, keessie65 said:

Not mine, but found this on Vimeo. Looks good to me. Don't know anything about settings.

 

Look closer - IBIS stutters at 00:04, 00:21 and 00:38 and jumps at 00:36. (I even downloaded the video and watched it in an external player to make sure this wasn't caused by Vimeo's sometimes unreliable streaming.)

9 hours ago, Super8 said:

I've hired DP's that have worked on Netflix shows and Disney mega blockbusters.  On my crew they were DP's and on the Netflix and Disney shows they were not. But they sill worked on my crew and I still directed them and hired them. 

Yes, in Egypt, right?

On 4/30/2020 at 9:22 PM, D1305696 said:

Does anyone have experience with vintage lenses C-mount/D-mount on the BMPCC first generation? thanks a lot

Yes - still have it and love it. But I'd advise you against this camera because it is prone to infrared pollution (=brown image tint) in practically every light situation, so you always need an IR cut filter in front of the lens. And that's very hard to do with c-mount lenses and the often irregular filter diameters. Also, the native ISO of the camera is 800, so you would need ND filters when shooting outdoors.

On top of that, most c-mount lenses only cover 2/3" sensors respectively traditional 16mm (not Super 16mm) film. That means that you will get vignetting at 1080p recording and need to crop in post to ca. 1440x810 pixels.

D-mount lenses are hard and, in most cases, impossible to adapt to MFT anyway; but their 8mm image circle would leave you with SD resolution, in the range of 720x480. 

Cropped resolutions will be difficult to record and monitor on the tiny display of the first-generation Pocket camera. On top of that, it's not advisable to use an external HDMI monitor with the camera because its HDMI port is directly soldered onto the camera's  mainboard. Both the port and the entire camera can easily be damaged when accidentally pulling a cable. This is a well-known construction flaw of the first-gen Pocket. If you buy a used one, pay attention to an undamaged HDMI port.

1 hour ago, Super8 said:

I am curious though.  I posted videos showing Canon color vs BMP6K color that almost no one responded to except to say the C500 was a much higher priced camera so the color science would be better than the P6K.  Why is that that no one took the time to have an opinion about a side by side color test between two cine cameras but a hand full of people have asked to see links to my work?  Why is that? Is it off limits to talk about color based on video samples? 

We do see color with our eyes right?  You can't really see color just by reading the words that someone types can you?

I call you out as a fake and liar.

If you were a professional colorist, then you would know that in the age of RAW cameras, colors are what a colorist makes of them. A camera's out-of-the-box "color science" hardly matters to colorists if you work from 10bit/12bit Log or RAW; it only matters to quick turnaround-documentary and ENG video makers who rely on the camera's factory color profiles and do not have post-production colorists. 

Judging colors by YouTube videos, in highly compressed 8bit 4:2:0 Rec709, is ludicrous anyway. Any RAW cine camera today - even Blackmagic's $1200 Pocket 4K - covers more than the Rec709/sRGB color space. Difference in color gamut will only become visible in greater bit depths than 8bit, with better color subsampling than 4:2:0 and wider color spaces such as Aces, P3 and Rec2020.

On 4/30/2020 at 10:37 PM, Super8 said:

Yes I do.

I sure do.

 

...and posting no links to work or a reel. Does your first name happen to be Ebrahim?

10 hours ago, Deadcode said:

You dont really get the point of the topic do ya? 😄

 

I'm doing my best to reply to your posting, then you derail the topic and accuse me off being off-topic.

Moderator, please get this troll off the forum. (The username seems be a giveaway.)

1 hour ago, Deadcode said:

These feature list is appealing for todays standard. 

And C500 Mk II checks most requirements today. R5 too...

No. 

C500 fails doesn't have a compact form factor ("not bigger than a typical DSLR/mirrorless"), so it fails to meet a crucial criterium. And this forum isn't about C500 class cameras anyway, the C500 is a $16,000 camera.

The R5 doesn't have high-quality audio recording, and at the moment is only a camera on paper about whose practical performance and limitations we don't know anything yet....

13 hours ago, Deadcode said:

We are talking about 2025 spec not 2020.

Internal ProRes in 2025? You want to edit huge files on a 2015 laptop in 2025? H.266 is the future.

Please show me a single camera that can do in 2020 what I listed...  Btw., I wrote nothing about internal ProRes.

And I wouldn't expect too much innovation by 2025 - we are facing a time of camera manufacturers going out of business, slower product cycles and higher prices, after years of a dramatically shrinking market, now the Corona crisis, and technological innovations (such as AI and last-generation chips) no longer landing in classical cameras. 

Here's my list again:

• at least an APS-C/s35mm or better a full frame sensor,
• compressed internally recorded RAW (on the level of REDCode or CinemaDNG, not pseudo-RAW like BRAW or RAW without RAW controls like ProRes RAW)
• plus 10bit Log in a high-quality codec 
• a full, manufacturer-supported workflow for color space transformation and ACES of the RAW and Log material
• good sensor stabilization
• good video autofocus
• compact form factor (not bigger than a typical DSLR/mirrorless)
• solid build  (better than Blackmagics Pocket 4K/6K)
• large swivel display with touchscreen and touchscreen focus
• touchscreen menu system like Blackmagic's (instead of 1990s-style camera menus)
• high-quality internal audio recording (24bit or better 32bit float) obsoleting an external recorder for most tasks
• timecode support (via Tentacle Sync and similar systems)
• USB-C webcam support + smartphone monitoring
• USB-C charging and external powering
• Sony NP-F batteries