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  Bullshit. I have seen for my own eyes putting more powerful equipment in the hands of aspiring filmmakers does inspire them, does improve their cinematography and does allow them to get noticed. This community wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the gear.   You won't know any of my work if it wasn't for this platform, which is based on the gear.   Let's knock this content is king nonsense ON THE HEAD permanently from now on. OK?

Hi everybody and anamorphic lovers ! Here is my 1st movie with the upcoming SLR Magic anamorphot 1.33X - 50 anamorphic lens on OM-D & Sony A7 !!! :) It's now since one week that I own the upcoming new anamorphic lens from SLR Magic, the anamorphot 1.33X - 50. It's a compact and light 1.33X anamorphic lens, working from 40mm on full frame and 20mm on M43 systems. It has the particularity of having a focus ring for close focus, it's very convenient because you can use it without diopters. Another difference seems to be the usuability of shooting at fast apertures. I even did a fast test at T0.95 on the SLR Magic 25mm and the image was still usable ! More tests to come. I've used two cameras with two different lenses on this movie. First the OM-D OM-5 from Olympus. Despite it's not so good video codec, this camera has what the other cameras don't have (yet) : an incredible 5 axis stabilization system. The addition of the Lumix 20mm with the SLR Magic anamorphot on the OM-D make quite the perfect combo. The problem that I still have with the love-able OM-D is finding the best image mode. I'm usually using the "Art3" mode Pale&Light Color (like in this movie), or sometimes "Art4" mode Light tone mode. Second the new Sony A7, the first full frame hybrid camera. For me this camera is very lovable too. For the first time it's offering the same flexibility than M43 systems : putting thousand third part lenses (such as Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Contax, Leica, M39, M42, Cine lenses, and so on....). And enjoy those lenses in full frame. The 50$ Nikon 50mm f1.8 is a cheap and very good pancake lens. I've put on the Sony A7 with a Novoflex E to Nikon mount adapter. The result with the SLR Anamorphot is very good too, and there is less distortion on the edges than the Lumix 20mm on the OM-D. It's real obvious when you watch the difference on the flares from the two lenses. Using the diopters on the SLR Magic anamorphot improve the sharpness of the image. The 0.33X achromatic diopter from SLR Magic seems good and offer more sharpness, but it is not indispensable for close focus, because of the close up focus ring of the lens. The 1.3X gives the possibility to film closer to the subject, and the 3X I'm using too... The three diopters of the movie are reavealing tremendous flares, as you can see at the end of the "Crêpes scene". Thank you for watching ! Any comment are welcome ! :) SLR Magic anamorphot 1.33X - 50 anamorphic lens SLR Magic 0.33X and 1.3X achromatics diopters Marumi 3X achromatic diopter on Sony A7 with Nikon 50mm f1.8 E Serie and Olympus OM-D O-M5 with Lumix 20mm f1.7 pancake lens 1080 24P on the Sony 1080 30P on the Olympus from 200 ISO (most of the time), 800 ISO (kitchen scene) to 2000 ISO (couch scene) Apertures from f1.7 to f5.6, most of the shot taken at f2.8 Light Craft mark II variable ND filter Music : Trentemøller "Candy Tongue (Feat. Marie Fisker)" from Lost

It depends. Let me share my thoughts in a same dilemma: If you work 90% in ProRes, your iMac should suffice. Bottleneck here could be the disc speed (hence the BlackMagic Disc Speed Test app, you should use it). An SSD, though hypothetically able to run at 500-600 MB/s, is hampered by old SATA-controllers of your motherboard (I don't know about your Mac, check in system report) or by external connections. No USB 2.0. Best are PCIe or Thunderbolt. Raids. Assigning cards for read/write-only, not using the system drive for footage in the first place. For FCP X, disc speeds set aside, more RAM and more graphic power make it faster, but it should run fast enough on your machine. If you use Resolve (lite), then you best have two Nvidia cards, one 4 GB for computing (I know they say 2GB were enough, but I read otherwise), a slower one for GUI (lite can't use two cards in the way FCP X can, you'd had to upgrade to the full version, refer to the system requirements on the BM site, Resolve is touchy with cards and drivers, openGL does, for example, not include Radeon cards which are supported by Apple). Probably Resolve would be the reason to give up Apple, since the costs for upgrading an old machine (if possible at all) easily exceed those for a state-of-the-art PC. I can't tell if the Photon Envy would work, but 16 GB RAM max? ""Photon Envy" wears an intimidating look. Adorned with Green LED fans and lighting, your friends and foes alike will be certainly green with envy!" - or glare red with schadenfreude. This thing (film quiz) is so ugly, it must be a modern masterpiece. The third option, at the same price point, would be a Hackintosh. The $4000 new MacPro can be assembled for ~ $1500, with even faster (but internal!) connections. That's my favourite plan. In the meantime, as others, I see raw as of little if any advantage over ProRes for most situations. More moire, more noise (noise can be avoided almost completely by ETTR, which requires enough light, as should be a matter of course for a cinema camera). The noise can be taken care of by Neat inside the NLE (after i.e. developing the raw with cliphouse), by ACR and for Resolve by the full version or by Neat's own OFX-plugin, suitable for Resolve lite (now also supports AMD graphics) - Resolve again meaning a new computer, especially with Neat, which is famous for slowing down performance, and it'd need to be the first node! The moire apparently is invited by utilizing the utmost lens' resolution and can be reduced or avoided by softer lenses or open apertures. You sacrifice sharpness for a moire-free image, old recipe in DSLR videography (you indeed increase resolution then, because the moire decreases it). This brings the sharpness down to the level of ProRes ... Keep in mind, the new Amira in it's basic version ($ 30.000) has only ProRes (not HQ), and only in Video-LOG (rec709). Why make everything in raw? If it's good enough for Arri, it's good enough for me ;-) (of course not, how can one compare a meager broadcast camcorder with a cinema camera!) The first thing I thought after I saw the first clips from my new Pocket was that I'd never do anything else with it but raw. To grade the film-LOG ProRes so that it looks even as good as GH2 or G6 video isn't easy. And the raw clips seemed to be so much better at once (shaky camera and bad focus ignored - the colors, the nuances!). But the more test shots you make and compare and the better you get at extracting all beauty of the flat ProRes, this view changes. There are situations for raw, but they are rare. You want to make only some beauty shots with raw? You can, you just need to invest some time and round about $50 (for cliphouse), if you have no AAE already (which reportedly has the better debayering method compared to Resolve). What about grading ProRes with the hobbyist tools inside 'iMovie Pro'? Actually, if you take a more scientific approach than just applying looks (I tested and detest Filmconvert), you can build a similar pipeline as in Color ('rooms') or Resolve ('nodes'). Tracking vignettes? You could add the Mocha tracker within SliceX. Comparing and conforming shots in the timeline? Easiest thing: Connect a still from one typical graded shot, shove it over the other shots and crop it accordingly to make a splitscreen. Imho FCP X can be used better for grading than the NLE Premiere, because color is not an 'effect' that has to be loaded, it's an attribute of every clip that exists in the (if you choose so) ever-open info-window. Seriously, I believe Resolve is the best software for grading, but it also is the most expensive, at least for us. I follow the advice of a friend: Either soldier on with your slow and outmoded system (MacPro 4.1 Quad Nehalem, 16GB RAM, GT 120) for now or buy/build a new one with the best specs affordable. But don't invest in any hardware to make your old system faster! Sounds reasonable.

Thank you, Andrew !! Great review and wonderful film clip. Enjoyed watching it ... especially as it was mostly filmed on an E-M1. I'm loving using this camera and video is a whole new world for me. I tried once before briefly with a GH3, but this IBIS on this thing makes shooting video FUN :) I wonder what the fun factor was for you making this clip compared to making others? On a different note, is there a thread somewhere on EOSHD that shares E-M1 clips, settings and tips? I can't find anything and info seems to be fragmented. Would be nice to have it in one place.

This whole discussion reminds me of when I got my first DSLR- an Olympus Evolt (remember that shit?). This was before DSLRs were ubiquitous so my photos looked simply because I was able to achieve a quality that others didn't necesasrily have access to (and none of my friends shot film). Over the next couple years as DSLRs became cheaper and more people started using them, my photos started looking more and more mediocre because everyone had access to great quality. It pushed me to have to work harder and harder to make my images stand out. This is becoming even more true today- as beginner and amatuer filmmakers (including myself) are getting easier access to great quality, I think that we are all being pushed to create higher-quality work (whether it be through better narrative, more stunning visuals, more thoughtful composition, or whatever you think makes a great film). I don't look at the growing masses of people picking up great cameras for cheap with contempt- I look at them as inspiration to create art that will set me apart. I couldn't be more excited for the innovations that are coming to affordable cameras today.

No, putting different specs into the same hands will not change anything, and you hardly will notice any difference in IQ, especially on the web, if only buying Christopher Doyle camera would make me Christopher Doyle, that would be nice.

There's going to be the same quality of films being made, they're all just going to look a little bit better. That's not to say that I'm not extremely excited.

SAMPLES PART TWO ! Sony A7 + Novoflex adapter ring + Nikon 50mm E Serie f1.8 + Redstan clamp + Bolex System Moler 16/32/1.5X anamorphic lens Here are more still pictures taken with my Sony A7 in anamorphic ! Tell me what you think ! Thanks for watching ! :) Full resolution and more pictures on this Flickr album : http://flic.kr/s/aHsjP2yEuy some examples from it : Full resolution and more pictures on this Flickr album : http://flic.kr/s/aHsjP2yEuy

If shooting 30p, I'd use 1/60 (180º shutter angle equivalent) unless flickering suggests otherwise. Having said that, the only reason behind the shutter angle rule is that the footage has a natural motion blur, and by "natural" I mean what our eyes are used to seeing on the screen. A very high shutter speed (1/300) will produce a staccato effect with hardly any motion blur, desirable sometimes for aesthetic reasons (remember Saving Private Ryan?). A very low shutter angle (1/30) will produce a very "creamy" image with too much motion blur, almost ghosting (moslty undesirable). Between 1/50 and 1/60 at 30fps there won't be a great difference...

Complete footage of just the SLR Magic Anamorphot from Chinese New Years 2014:

Just shot this with the mark 2 raw at high iso, quality is pretty good: According to magic lantern forums, the 5d mark 3 is the way to go for shooting raw though. It has better low light performance, and it can shoot full hd when the mark 2 cannot. The only reason I used the mark 2 here is because it was what was available to me. Really interested to try the raw on the mark 3, must be pretty amazing. I don't see any reason why the mark 2 footage would look better, actually I assume it must be the opposite.

Sorry to dwell on this topic again but I too am confused about the reason for using Prores in the timeline settings. The only way I found it possible to select prores in the timeline setting is for the video previews if the editing mode is set to custom, preview file format is set to quicktime(at least on Mac) then the preview codec can be set to whatever. Are we saying here that in order to really dial in things like grain during the edit process and be able to judge them correctly the recommendation is to set the preview codec to ProRes rather than h264? The only way these settings would affect export is if the "use previews" option is selected in the export window. Is my understanding correct?

For home movies (sometimes even professional ones) I think this 3 or 5-axis stabilization feature is far more beneficial than superior resolution. You should go try one in a camera store to really get a sense how powerful this ability is for your movies. Stable handheld shots without much effort? That's incredible. And your viewers will thank you as well.

Sorry Andrew, but i've to insist. I want you to give the EM-10 a try for some reasons: -The EM-10 shares the processor from the EM-1 -The same codec from the EM-1 (i know... isn't the best reference on codecs world) -Small form factor (400 grams) -PRICE! $699 body only (please think like you did on the very beginning of the EOSHD. I have no budget! It's all about indie filmmakers) -And last but not least... It's not only 3 axis! M-IS (as they call it) already counts with the help of a digital stabilization mode making very similar to 5 axis in video mode. Worth it? You tell me! I live in Brazil, we hardly see some Olympus camera here... (The market is floated with Canon trash)

Your situation screams Olympus E-M10 imo. It's cheap, nice form factor, great stabilisation. Yes, it has downsides for video, like no 25/24p, codec not as good as Panasonic. But if you just want to enjoy filming the kids, I think the stabilisation is worth more. It's just pick up and shoot, you pretty much always have smooth shots.

merci superb

I've just done a movie with the A7 and the upcoming SLR Magic anamorphot lens :

Why do people come to a site that is primarily discussing film making EQUIPMENT and then go on about 'content is king'. The technical side of film making is also extremely important at telling a story.

I have a gx1 and have debated the gm1 and gx7. I'm renting a gx7 this week to see if the focus peeking and ibis is worth it. I am using more manual focus lenses so I want better focus assist and peeking. For now it's for stills since I have a pocket camera for video. I'm also using the speedboost nikon mount more and more on the gx1 and pocket camera. Opens up the lens options greatly. Jim.

I wonder how does the E-M10 do since it share the same processor as E-M1, though only 3Axis IS (from video it look pretty stable). No pdaf sensor means no pdaf strip will be shown on specific condition, and at half the price I am much more tempted to get as 2nd camera for handheld

Hi there, i have finished a Ducati Spec Commercial i have been working on. We shot it with a small crew of 3 people in two days. The whole promo spot was shot on the canon 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern Raw! I am really excited by what the magic lantern guys did. The raw is really great to work with and grading is a blast. Take a look and tell me what you think: Here the Vimeo link:

Hi guys, I heard that some were trying to get in touch with me about some custom follow focus work here. I 3D print the follow focus gears to what ever specifications you may need. Im afraid on the tapered lenses, I would probably need to have the lens in my hands (unless someone wants to give me very detailed measurements/drawings from the lens). If some one is willing to part with their lens for a week or so, I'll get one fit on there and begin selling them via eBay. I'll even give anyone from eoshd a discount on custom gears, so try emailing me again and we'll get one rolling. Just shoot me an email at helicoptersean@gmail.com or contact me through eBay's messaging system. Sorry if I've missed any of your messages!