New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age

[kye]

16 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

Nice stuff! Have you shot any interviews with this setup? 

No, I just shoot travel stuff, so not really the same thing, but having said that it would crush it if you gave it controlled lighting and a fast sharp prime.  Shooting in these high DR scenes with available lighting is a torture test compared to an interview where you're rolling out the red carpet and making everything the easiest it could possibly be for the camera.

You feeling tempted?

[zerocool22]

3 hours ago, kye said:

No, I just shoot travel stuff, so not really the same thing, but having said that it would crush it if you gave it controlled lighting and a fast sharp prime.  Shooting in these high DR scenes with available lighting is a torture test compared to an interview where you're rolling out the red carpet and making everything the easiest it could possibly be for the camera.

You feeling tempted?

I see, well in my case I would be using it also for run and gun interviews with only natural light. So dynamic range needs to be great. Not sure my s5ii will make it, allthough according to cined. There is not that much dr difference with the a7siii. Maybe the highlight rolloff is nicer on the a7siii. Not sure.

I wished there were more camera stores over here that would let you test stuff in their store.

[kye]

21 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

I see, well in my case I would be using it also for run and gun interviews with only natural light. So dynamic range needs to be great. Not sure my s5ii will make it, allthough according to cined. There is not that much dr difference with the a7siii. Maybe the highlight rolloff is nicer on the a7siii. Not sure.

I wished there were more camera stores over here that would let you test stuff in their store.

I would suggest that it has enough DR, as would most current high-end cameras.  Have you done any tests to work out how much DR you're actually dealing with?  I'd suggest it's less than you'd think.  

It's trendy to complain about how cameras don't have enough DR and to continually call for more, and I have done this in the past as well, however I did it because I actually shoot scenes on a regular basis (backlit sunsets) and I was able to work out how much DR this required in real life (the BMPCC / BMMCC could just do it and the GH5 fell short) so I knew I needed around 11 stops.  I would suggest that interview situations, even naturally lit, wouldn't require as much as literally having the sun in the frame, but it's very easy to run a test and find out.

I did a latitude test on the GH7 in V-Log Prores and whatever wasn't clipped kept full quality, so with proper colour management was basically perfect.

[MrSMW]

2 hours ago, kye said:

It's trendy to complain about how cameras don't have enough DR and to continually call for more

Read that a few times about the S5ii and hoping for a better low light camera.

My thoughts to that are 😂

and 🥱

[PannySVHS]

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Read that a few times about the S5ii and hoping for a better low light camera.

My thoughts to that are 😂

As long as colours look shitty enough, everbody seems to be happy.😊 A lot of youtube footage from the current 10bit and raw cameras makes CineD on the Gh4 look like from a grand era of color science.

I really loved the colors from your Bmmcc footage and I liked them better than GH7. @kye I've only liked the color from half a hand full of GH6/7 videos, one of them with high production values by Olan Collardy.

 

It seems to me like it's harder for a lot of people to treat log footage shot in natural light, coming from these modern hybrid cameras of the last five years. I like my og bmpcc much better than my Lumix S in that regard, same with stuff available on youtube.

[kye]

8 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

I really loved the colors from your Bmmcc footage and I liked them better than GH7. @kye I've only liked the color from half a hand full of GH6/7 videos, one of them with high production values by Olan Collardy.

It seems to me like it's harder for a lot of people to treat log footage shot in natural light, coming from these modern hybrid cameras of the last five years. I like my og bmpcc much better than my Lumix S in that regard, same with stuff available on youtube.

My first priority was to make the images not look like cheap digital, which I am confident I've achieved with my current workflow.  The images I'm getting sure look like film to me, especially seeing how it reacts when dialling the Exposure up and down within the plugin.

I think I have more work to do in learning to control the high DR shots, but that's something for when I am back at home and have time to experiment with different techniques.  I am still contemplating modifying my custom DCTL that works in L*a*b space to be the front-end that I will use to grade underneath the overall film look.

Once I've gotten a handle on the files and how to control them, then I was going to go back to the BMMCC images I took on my last visit here and then try to match the GH7 images to those BMMCC ones.  The light here is a bit different to at home, so having footage from the same place to compare is very useful.

I feel like up until now I've been struggling with footage that wasn't up to the (very difficult) conditions I shoot in, and now I have equipment that is giving me files that I can make into whatever I like, so the question then becomes what I want them to look like, which is a whole other journey.  

[kye]

Some shots from a few days ago in Insadong.  This area was very crowded and I did grab a range of normal shots at street-level, but the ones looking up were of particular interest to me due to the variety of architecture in the area.

For reference, this is what most angles at street-level looked like:

I have been recording a number of themes while out and about.  The first are the 'normal' street scenes taken mostly at ground level.  The second is views from the hotel window, which I posted earlier.  The third is looking up.  The tall buildings here (with its ~25M population in the metro area) are seemingly unending, in variety, size, and number.  Some are deeply creative and stylish, some are featureless and faceless and nameless.  A good subject to include if trying to capture a sense of the place.

Here are a few shots looking up.  Like all things here, it's about contrasts, and often the vegetation contrasts beautifully with the buildings so I've leaned into capturing compositions including both.  These were all taken on the same day as the above shots.

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, PannySVHS said:

As long as colours look shitty enough, everbody seems to be happy

Lucky the colour from the S5ii is not shitty then, or if it is, says more about the user than the camera 😜