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TomTheDP

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Posts posted by TomTheDP

  1. On 11/12/2023 at 6:36 PM, kye said:

    I am reviewing my lineup and decided to compare the OG BMPCC to the GH5, and ended up filming shot-by-shot duplicates and matching them in post.  The results were surprising.  I noticed that lots of shots had differences because the vNDs on the two setups were in different orientations and polarised the scene differently, but unless you were doing a direct comparison then that wouldn't be noticeable.

    GH5 was with 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens, shooting wide-open in 150Mbps UHD / HLG.  P2K was with 12-35mm F2.8, shooting wide-open RAW.  1080p timeline as always.

    I graded each P2K shot and then graded the GH5 to match.

    Biggest difference is the one looks softer, would assume it's the Pocket. The color of the foliage also looks different but it's not as noticeable. 

  2. 31 minutes ago, Jedi Master said:

    The one I’m looking at is the Dragon sensor in a DSMC2 body.

    It's a great sensor. The DSMC2 System is light weight and the powerdraw isn't bad about 50wh. The C300 and FX9 powerdraw are probably half of what the Dragon is though. 

    R3D and the red color science are really nice and the Dragon has pretty outstanding dynamic range. The dragon also is a bit of a baby. For optimal results you want to bring it up to temp and then blackshade it, which takes around 10 minutes. 

    You probably won't want to venture much past 400 iso though, where as you can shoot at 4000 iso with the FX9 and 1600 on the C300 MKII with pretty clean results. 

  3. 14 hours ago, Kino said:

    The Venice 6K is a certified Hollywood A-cam and I don't think it should be compared with the Burano, as the latter only offers X-OCN LT. That is a significant downgrade from the RAW and X-OCN options on the Venice cameras. My hope is that if they do bring out a Burano 6K, it will have X-OCN XT and ST because of the lower resolution and the fact that the Venice 6K is a much older design. In scenes with a lot of movement or change, X-OCN will scale resolution, especially when it comes to the LT compression. That is how Sony's X-OCN avoids artifacts. This means that Burano's 8K X-OCN LT will not be a true 8K image in all scenarios.

    Didn't realize it only shoots X-OCN LT. Though if the end delivery is 4k, that is still probably plenty for most productions. 

  4. I'll do one with a grey card next time. 

    27 minutes ago, kye said:

    I recommend doing a proper WB.

    I've seen a bunch of side-by-side tests where they set both cameras to the same Kelvin WB and then nothing matched.  I have no idea why the cameras wouldn't all match the WB, but it looks like they never do.

    I'd suggest trying a custom WB on a grey card and then trying the comparison again?

    what looks glaringly off to you in the above comparison? 

  5. It's gonna be a personal preference thing in the end.

    You'll get cleaner high ISO performance on the Sony. The Canon has internal RAW vs you need with an Atomos or the unit to do it with the Sony. 

    The Sony can't do full sensor 4k 60p. You have more lens options with E-mount. The canon is easier to mount on a gimbal. 

    If your only gripe with the FX6 is the mount then you can get a locking EF mount that has bottom support, making it bullet proof. Of course that isn't an option with emount. Although I feel emount lenses don't really need a locking mount as they are pretty light. You'll love Sony E-NDs. 

    The FX6 is pretty amazing for fast paced stuff. It barely weighs anything yet the body is big enough where it isn't awkward to rig up. E-ND's are out of this world nice to have. 

  6. @PannySVHS

    Here is the Sony with the Alexa. I just adjusted the Hue on the sony and applied the Emotive Color ARRI Daylight lut. 

    Now this is a really bad lighting situation. Sunlight, combined with Tungsten, and also bright green walls in the room lol. 

    here is the raw video from both cameras as well as PNG stills of the LOG image if anyone wants to play with them. 

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fYuQyBHEq9zvrIB_pQ-GBMXWOKxIhP8W?usp=sharing

    arri_1.1.1.png

    sony_1.2.1.png

  7. 16 hours ago, kye said:

    Actually, the XH2S and P4K are great options when combined with the LUTs/powergrades from Juan Melara:

    https://juanmelara.com.au/products/bmpcc-4k-to-alexa-powergrade-and-luts
    https://juanmelara.com.au/products/x-h2sfuji-to-alexa-powergrade-and-luts

    Juan is a working DP and colourist, and is one of the most knowledgeable colourists online, especially when it comes to matching complex transformations.  I've bought from him before and had good experiences.  The A/B results speak for themselves too.

    Here's the Fuji A/B shots, and the P4K ones match even better.

    Yeah I purchased his luts, as well as emotive color(probably more precise), and the trendy Phantom luts.

  8. 8 hours ago, MrSMW said:

    If digital didn’t exist or ceased to exist overnight, there would be just a fraction of the people in my industry that there are.

    Man I could do it but it would be tough. I mean moreso than my ability, all my jobs would be gone as none of the productions I am on can afford to shoot motion picture film LOL. 

  9. 1 hour ago, kye said:

    HA!  you don't hear the colourists saying they can match the lesser cameras to the Alexa in post!

    The first thing they will say is about managing your expectations.  The second thing will be about managing your expectations.  The third thing might not be about that, but also might still be....

    I have no idea what your situation is, but it might not be a bad strategy to just buy a set of matching cameras and then insist on using them on every job - you'd likely lose work because you're putting conditions on things but the final quality of the projects you shoot would go up.  Then you could focus on optimising your craft rather than struggling with random camera after random camera on each job, making your work increase over time and making you more desirable...

    I don't do enough multi cam stuff for it to be worthwhile. I prefer to shoot 1 cam for narrative which is 99% of what I do at this point. 

    If I were to go back a year though when I was mostly doing multi cam corporate it definitely would make more sense. It looks like this weekend I'll be using the Alexa(requested by director), a Fuji XH2S (directors personal camera), and maybe an FX30 or Pocket 4k as a C cam. We'll see how the color chart does 😅

  10. 43 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

    The strike? People being forced to sell, so that they can keep on paying their mortgage, least they have to sell their house instead 

    I think its the Burano honestly. Same sensor as the 80K Venice 2. Doesn't require the bulky raw recorder, weighs 3 pounds less. Why would you get the old 6k Venice when you can get the Burano for 25k. Now at 18k the original Venice is tempting, but for just a few more Ks you get brand new camera. 

    The Burano doesn't have as many output or power output options though, but neither does the Alexa mini. 

  11. 14 hours ago, kye said:

    LOL.  That can be taken two ways..   I'd suggest it's a subtle hint rather than a comment on the cameras!

    In discussions with colourists where the subject comes up, opinions I've seen range from "results are limited by the quality of the footage" through to "these cameras shouldn't ever have existed"!!

    It is definitely a better option to shoot on 3 of the same exact model camera or shoot high res and just punch in. Though it's fairly common now to use a cinema camera and then use a cheaper camera for a B & C cam. I'll use whatever I am given lol. 

    Every video I have watched comparing a cinema camera to a lower end camera they say something like they can be matched in post, but then when the person attempts to do it they can't. This doesn't bode well with productions that won't have a color house doing the color grade in the post process. 

    The whole post production scene that I usually deal with is a nightmare. Now it still stands that it probably wouldn't matter what camera I shot with in terms of the directors/audience noticing the final product. I am super tempted to try to start just using an FX30 on everything despite how much I dislike the SOC look. Would make my life easier. 😅

  12. On 11/4/2023 at 3:50 AM, Kino said:

    The FX6 is perfectly fine the way it is with the direct RAW output to the Atomos. The FX9 has the problem in that it requires the XDCA extension unit to do the same thing as the FX6. They need to allow for direct RAW out.

    8K acquisition provides many advantages that Sony does not want to ignore for their flagship FX camera, especially considering Canon's plans for this segment. I don't see them going with 4K downsampled from 6K yet again. The camera will definitely have a new sensor, perhaps a repurposed A1 sensor (IMX 610) or something else we don't know about.

    Brand new, the Venice 6K and 8K barely have any price difference as you note, but you can get a used Venice 6K for almost half the price. A Burano 6K would be amazing if they could get the price down to where the F5 was ($16K). The problem is that the Venice 6K is still very popular on many productions, both big and small, and listed as the official F5 replacement on Sony's website:

    https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/digital-cinema-cameras/pmw-f5

    I don't expect a "Burano 6K" for some time, but I only mention it because I think the possibility for this camera release determines the kind of features we will get in the FX9 II.

    I am seeing Venice 6k kits with all the licenses and the RAW recorder for 20k now. I just saw one go for 17k, another for 13k(with no licenses). Pretty wild considering a few months ago they were around 30k + 

  13. On 8/13/2023 at 10:21 AM, kye said:

    Any industry that seems glamorous will have newcomers and amateurs undercutting the pros and starting a race to the bottom for all but the top performers who have managed to build a reputation.  

    Meanwhile, in industries that don't seem glamorous, there are skills shortages and prices are going up (or quality goes down)...

    Unfortunately or maybe fortunately depending how you look at it, the skill to get in now doesn't need to be as high anymore. Even many people at very lofty levels of the film industry are not as skilled as they used to be. 

    DP's can utilize high resolution color accurate monitors to see what they are getting rather than light metering. Cameras are so sensitive now you don't need crazy light fixtures. A lot of big budget shows are now are using mostly small LED fixtures combined with natural lighting. There's certainly a level of skill still required especially on the biggest of productions but it's become less and less. 

    Think about changing a 35mm film mag vs digital media. Same with getting good results shooting 35mm film for a wedding vs digital. Night and day 

  14. 11 hours ago, kye said:

    Interesting.  It did a pretty good job then.

    The things that I noticed first was the skin tones.  This is what I always look at, and is most important.  The one on the left has those nutty tan and brown hues and the one on the right has 'porange' (pink&orange) and red tones.  The hues of the skin tones are the most important thing for me in images.

    I also noticed the differences in the green/cyan area top-right, which has greens on the left but none on the right.  BUT, the skin tones are so important that they're the entire ballgame if you're cutting an interview between two angles.  

    A really quick and dirty way to match skin tones when they're so far apart is to just rotate the hue of the entire image.  This sounds like a brutal thing to do to an image, but it will never break the image and we are so sensitive to skin tones that what is a huge change in skin tones is imperceptible on everything else in the image.  If there is anything that goes off in the background then you can easily do a Hue-vs curve adjustment on it, which is much more prone to inaccuracies and stressing the image so it's far preferable to rotate the hue of the whole image to suit the skin tones and then do the Hue curves on the background rather than the other way around.

    This assumes that you've correctly white-balanced and exposed the cameras, and are doing colour management and transforms properly of course.

    Sounds like a good method. 

    I didn't use the color chart in a precise way, it was held closer to the camera, probably a 6ft difference. Plus I shot the color chart about 20 minutes later. That said I'd still imagine it being closer than it was. It was a room with Cyan walls, so there is a lot of tinted light going on. I am going to try it again today and make sure I do it properly and see if it makes any difference. 

    A normal shooting situation would involve more pure lighting. 

    Skitones are a large reason I choose to shoot with an Alexa or at least RED. Every time I have done a mixed camera situation the colorist comments on how nice the Alexa/Red skin tones look compared to 10 bit DSLRs. 
     

  15. 7 hours ago, kye said:

    I was saying that, based on the lengths that product placement and cross-marketing and stealth / undercover marketing will go to these days, but points raised since then have dissuaded me from that perspective.

    The world is chaotic and sometimes things happen by accident, but the online camera ecosystem sure is eating it up!

    To be honest, despite me being critical of Sony for many aspects of their business and product strategies, and of the Sony fan-boys/fan-girls for being so one-sided and so loud ad nauseam (and frequently in the face of reality) the image that they're extracting from the sensors in the FX3 and FX30 is impressive, and I definitely respect the form factor for being small but also practical / reliable.
    Of course, from the company that has a virtual monopoly over sensor production, they'd be crazy not to make their products get the best from them and actively block other companies from getting access to the best results (or at least making them pay a lot for that level of performance).

    I was really excited about the Sony lineup after seeing its usage on the creator. 

    That said after using I am not impressed with the image. I would say Sony's low end cameras seem to have the worst color out of the box compared with Canon or Blackmagic. It doesn't carry over to the Venice line of course. It's really just a matter of balancing skin tones and accurate colors. I am sure it's not a problem for a post house to do. But for lower budget stuff where you are relying on the camera more, its annoying. 

  16. 19 hours ago, kye said:

    Continuing the discussion about overall size of total rig, I just found an interesting lens for APS-C - the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8..   it's interesting because it's got a fixed aperture and is small for a APS-C lens.

    image.thumb.png.8309986b56b7b051d3e98db2f4af3f17.png

    Apparently it's a common lens for minimalist travel etc, when paired with the (very small) 11mm F1.8 prime for the ultra-wide / vlogging end.

    Looks like a winner on the FX30. Gimbal one and done lens maybe

  17. On 11/2/2023 at 7:27 PM, kye said:

    Did you grade the FX30 to match the Alexa, or the other way around?

    I see differences, but they're subtle and not significant.  IIRC it was Steve Yedlin that talked about the idea of the "cut back" test for camera matching.  Ie, if you were to have a shot from camera A, then another shot, then CUT BACK to camera B, would you notice that A and B were different.  
    I think this is a good test because in real film-making you don't normally cut directly between two cameras showing the same scene from the same angle, so there is some distance there, and so in A/B testing you shouldn't cut directly between the same scene and angle because it's too stringent a test.
    Yes, in theory you would cut between two angles of the same scene, but in lots of film-making you'd be changing the lighting setup between filming those angles, so getting a perfect match isn't relevant in these situations either.

    That is very true. The only thing would be very interview situations where you have an A and B cam on the same subject. I haven't done one in almost a year now but I have a gig coming up where we are going to be doing that.

     

    I used the color match tool in resolve, using an xrite chart. So you can set the color space and gamma, which I set to ARRI's. I did it on both cameras so it changed up the way the Alexa originally looked as well, with its preset white balance. 

    This method would fall apart with creative lighting though. Let's say you wanted to do an orange tinted light as a key with blue for fill or something wacky. The chart is only useful for getting normal colors. 

     

    On 11/2/2023 at 7:37 PM, BrunoCH said:

    Very close. What jumps out at me is a difference in the blue of the sofa cushions in both and a difference in the saturation of the reds in the second still. 

    Yes someone pointed both out to me. I didn't see them at first but its very apparent now. Definitely got it much closer than my manual attempts. I think with more fine tuning it could come closer. 

  18. 22 hours ago, Llaasseerr said:

    Agreed, it's an interesting camera. In the last year I have downloaded some DNG footage and had a play with it. I find it interesting that they are so affordable used and the fact you can now record ProRes Raw just with a Ninja V. But also I think it records 2k ProRes 4444 internally, which sounds very nice indeed as long as the debayer quality is good and you don't mind dealing with the P2 media.

    I have heard they are slow to boot up and have a bad menu system, also that the rolling shutter is about 15ms which is really the maximum you would put up with these days for a 35mm sensor. But it just seems very robust and properly targeted at a film maker. So if you were buying it for your own creative or doc projects, it doesn't seem like a bad option.

    Yeah boot times don't bother me too much. I am used to them with older red cameras or Alexas. 

    2k 444 is ideal for me codec wise. Should be pretty nice if its downsampling from the 4k sensor. 

    Rolling shutter is a bit annoying but 15ms is very usable. I have honestly never noticed rolling shutter ever across my life shooting videos, other than for strobe lighting. 

  19. 21 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

    Is the Epic image actually different? Lower compression ratios and a wider field of view but it's the same 5K MX sensor, right?

    I've often heard about the magenta shadows the Epic-X but in my comparisons, the Scarlet-X has more neutral shadows than the magenta-leaning R1MX.


    The RED naming has always confused me. But I am talking about the RED Epic Dragon vs the RED Scarlet X. 

    Having used both the Epic Dragon has a lot more highlight latitude and the colors are more neutral. 

  20. 17 hours ago, MrSMW said:

    Helped keep the budget down by around $50.

    More money for donuts.

    lmao, why the hell did they not use the FX6. It's such a way better ND option than a vari ND. It's not even a pound difference 1.4lbs vs 2lbs. 

    I don't think the Creator will become hollywood standard as its just way too smart of a way to approach making a movie. Hollywood is too dumb to make that a standard. The high end film industry knows how to waste money like no one else. 

  21. Somewhat unrelated to the topic. 

    My attempt at matching an ARRI Alexa Classic and an FX30. 

    Used an Xrite color checker passport chart. I guess that is cheating but I wanted to see if I could match them this way 100%. 

    I think these are very close but maybe not 100%. Thoughts?

    The more stylized one I switch the color space and gamma to RED and then put a Kodak lut on. The other two are just ARRI color space with the ARRI 709 lut. 

     

    ARRI SONY RED KODAK NEW.png

    yoooo.png

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