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NX500 - To Be Continued


mercer
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Someone on another forum (I forget which) says they managed to find the 20mm pancake, 30mm pancake, and 45mm for less than $400 combined. Even as a second system, $750 total for that kit is amazing value for what you get.

yeah, I heard the Samsung lenses are pretty decent and go for a steal used. 

Looks like the price just went up to $444.

I saw that too. If they don't sell at that price, they could drop lower than 344 in a couple days.

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Ok, so my adapters arrived in the mail this morning. First thing I noticed was how small they are compared to NEX and eos-m adapters... Obviously due to the flange distance, but that is a major plus for me. I like mirrorless cameras because they're small, but I also have only vintage lenses, so adapters are a must, but the adapter is usually so long that it makes the camera seem that much bigger. On the nx500, the adapters are half the size of the others. 

I, pretty much, immediately took a drive out into the Pine Barrens to take some test shots. I brought my Canon FD 17mm and 28mm f2. And my Tokina 17mm and 25-50mm. And a Miranda 28mm f/2.8 macro m42 lens I also got in the mail today. 

As soon as I got into the car, I threw the Tokina 17mm on and it looked nice. 

When I got out to the Pine Barrens, I was blown away by the iq of the camera and these lenses. Even with everything dialed down the image was so sharp and contrasty, in a good way. I'll have to mess with some of the profiles to try and get the flattest image, but for the first time out, just messing around... I am pleased. 

The crop factor is not bad at all and the movie standby mode is smooth, even going out of movie standby mode to use focus magnification and peaking is a breeze.

I did have a card error in my second recording that worried me, it basically would not let me do anything with movie recording, but when took out the card and turned the camera on and off as instructed, it worked fine the rest of the time without any hiccups.

When I got home, I tried converting the footage to prores, it worked fine in editready, but it was slow. About an hour and forty minutes to convert a half hours worth of footage. 

When they were converted, they worked fine in QuickTime, but when I imported them into fcpx, I had nothing but a black screen. The inspector recognized them as 4K h.265 clips but not as prores... Not sure why. 

Does anyone know the best workflow with these clips? I would rather down sample to 1080p and work in it there, but editready didn't give me an option to downsample, of course I very easily could have missed it. 

I will try and upload some of the clips to Vimeo over the weekend. 

 

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Here is my first attempt at a test... And this is only a test.

Sorry, I'll have to update in a little bit, apparently I used copyrighted music from FCPX  

I shot the footage in Cinema 4K using custom profile with the sharpness dialed down to -10, and the contrast dialed down to -5.

I want to experiment more to try and get a flatter image.

I tried down sampling this to 1080p, in EditReady. FCPX recognized the imported prores files as 1080p, but I'm not sure if this is the proper workflow? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Something wrong here. For one thing, it's way too soft. Not sure if it's the lenses or the H.265 conversion or something else. Colors are also odd, possibly CA and other artifacts from the lenses (especially the Tokina). Could you give full details, like camera settings, conversion params, grading/post details, etc. You should be getting a way better image out of the NX500.

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As I said, I am unsure of the proper workflow. After I originally converted the footage in EditReady to prores422, it was clean but when I imported the clips into FCPX, it didn't recognize them as prores files, and there was no image but a black screen. This morning I converted them again but also down sampled them to 1080p prores LT in EditReady. FCPX recognized them as 2K clips. I did a little edit, added some titles, and exported to Vimeo as 1080p. I am sure I'm doing this wrong. Any insight would be appreciated. My goal is to downsample the original to 1080p, where I will edit and grade and deliver as 1080p. Or downsample to 2K for edit and grade, then a 1080p delivery. 

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I think I read somewhere that, like contrast, setting sharpness too far down causes problems. Maybe you could try a few sharpness settings and see what happens. I agree the colours look a little strange, but that may be down to the custom profile. Maybe you could do another video running through all the picture profiles with the same contrast/saturation/sharpness/NR settings so we can see what gives the best look. I like what I've seen of Standard, but there's very little out there to compare it to.

Great work on the shoot, though! Backlit trees are a good stress test for the codec and DR, which both look solid.

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I'm on Windows, but here's my workflow in case it helps:

  1. Shoot with manual focus at UHD 23.98 and all camera settings to default except for DR gamma (on NX1), sharpness -10 and contrast -5
  2. Plug in card to PC and check directly from card using Potplayer
  3. If good, copy to PC and convert to ProRes at UHD res with FFmpeg (this is the engine that does the real work, I use it directly but you can use front ends like RockyMountains)
  4. Import to Premiere Pro onto a 1080p project or UHD project, edit
  5. Color correct and grade in SpeedGrade

Other than the tools themselves, you seem to be following a similar flow. Perhaps it's the settings at each stage. IMO your lenses are also contributing to the IQ problems.

Anyway, as I was writing this, my NX500 just arrived at the door. I'll shoot some with it, compare with my NX1, and upload to see how that turns out.

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I agree that it doesn't look right, but I disagree about the fringing. I see a flare issue with the Tokina and perhaps compression artifacts?

Definitely purple flare on the Tokina, but I see that with a lot of older lenses.

If you have time, I would love to see a comparison between the 4K and 1080p modes, as well as an over and under exposure recovery test, rolling shutter test, DR test (just a super contrasty scene, like a dark interior with a bright window) and a low light comparison, all on both 4K and 1080p. 

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Definitely purple flare on the Tokina, but I see that with a lot of older lenses.
If you have time, I would love to see a comparison between the 4K and 1080p modes, as well as an over and under exposure recovery test, rolling shutter test, DR test (just a super contrasty scene, like a dark interior with a bright window) and a low light comparison, all on both 4K and 1080p. 

I will have more time with it on Monday, and I'll try to tackle some of your requests. 

I'm still unsure how I should, or want to, proceed with the workflow. Downsample to 1080p for post and delivery, or leave in 4K. 

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