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To be fair, I haven't tried their pasta sauce.

Hey guys, I build a 4K Recorder out of some ghetto parts, right now that still includes a Laptop and is really not that useful, its not even battery powered yet. However I did a small test and some of you might appreciate it, its by far the cheapest solution to get 4K out of the A7s but requieres a lot of knowledge of electronics and soldering (+- 200€) I am going to try to make it battery powered and smaller and add a Monitor, I think the price for the Shogun is too high. First priority is going to ditch the laptop in favour of dedicated electronics. It is also still dropping some frames (or rather holding them, weird maybe one of the chips is having a timing problem). The A7s HDMI signal is actually a very normal signal, nothing special going on (contrary to the FS700 for example, which is some kind of weird Sony bullshit) I uploaded a test to youtube, I just used a cheap Igus slider with the A7s just pressed to the slider, I lost the stupid screw for the Tripod Head... if anyone wants the source .tif files or the Rendered H264, let me know and I might upload them.

Does downgrading your equipment to simpler, more basic models make you more creative? I went to find out. Read the full article

This thread doesn't address one of the greatest issues of choice vs. creativity - which is partnership vs. control. For the last year or so, I work work work with macs and digital... but my creative work, my play? Film, 60's era metal cameras, an enlarger and lith developer. Every step of that process means working within the confines of the medium. Particularly lith printing, which is very hard to replicate across 2 prints, and is packed with "ghost-in-the-machine" oddities based on chemistry and temperature and the fact that every print you make changes the chemical composition of the developer. You simply can't "control" any step of the process with any sort of totality, from exposure to final print, like you can with a digital camera and Photoshop. But once you decide you are a "partner" with the media, the game changes. Why do we make partnerships? Usually to add unique strengths which we don't possess or aren't remarkable at, to our creative, business, romantic, or fun pursuits. When you allow chance and surprise into the process, its like being handed a very active and very able muse. I shot about 200 frames, digital, of a nude for a friend who wanted to get a sense of "how she looked" in that scenario. I shot 3 or 4 frames with an old Minolta rangefinder, and one of those just had lots of the mojo I want from a shot. Printing it was work - to get those tools to sculpt the print into what I wanted, while making room for the oddities of the process and making them work together. It's probably my favorite bit of creative output this year. And those things inform my "controlled" work as well.

​The problem with vimeo and youtube is that there're way too many "test". And the "real" stuff is buried under the tons of visual garbage. People don't use their gear to create but to "test"...unfortunately.

I recently had to give my laptop in for repair. It's going to take about two to three weeks. I had been working on a feature film screenplay at the time, and had started on a second draft, but the work was proceeding very slowly. Browsing the web and watching stuff was what was taking up the majority of my free time. I don't have cable in my house, do not have a smartphone, and my computer was also my DVD player. Without it, I have essentially been sent back to the 1950s. So I order to stay productive, I decided to continue working on my script....longhand. And writing it out on paper without the benefit of instant rewrites or having the first draft in front of me has really boosted my productivity. I write more pages per day, and think about things very carefully before putting them down on paper. Because if I want to rewrite something, I have to remove the page, and rewrite all of the stuff on it. I have a growing stack of rejected pages in the folder of my binder. Then, after I finish writing, I go to the gym (something else I was loath to do with a Netflix Instant account constantly in front of me), then I retire with one of the many books I have on my shelf that I was meaning to read but never bothered to before I lost my computer. It's a true creative's life. That said, I will hug and kiss my laptop when I get it back from repair. This little vacation from the world of electronic devices was fun, but eight hours of web-surfing is one of the few things that makes me forget about my stresses. It's like a bottle of liquor or a joint. It helps you escape reality. I just hope that I maintain at least part of the discipline I have developed.

I think one quite important reason of slomo on those small test shots on vimeo and youtube is to stabilize the panning. It is much easier to do a fluid handhold panning when you move a bit faster and then slow it down later in post. Also agree with DigitalEd, people getting their nice new cams and lenses (with stabilization in lens or body) and they shoot a flower without panning or a cup of tea with as shallow depth of field as possible...kind of pointless.... I say go out and swing that cam around....in whatever difficult lighting there is. Dont be afraid it does not look nice...thats kind of the point to see where its strong points are and where not.

Totally and blatantly FAKE! The PDF was awful.

Bought a Panasonic LX100 about 3 months ago. I've been taking it EVERYWHERE and shooting stills and video that I wouldn't have taken the lens cap off the 5D Mark III. Can't remember having this much fun shooting! More importantly . . . taking risks with the smaller camera. Isn't that what being creative is about?

I think Panasonic are safe to boost the GH4 firmware without affecting sales of a rumoured AF200. My hunch is that they will release a firmware update with v-log etc. alongside the announcement of the AF200 so that the GH4 becomes the perfect B Cam for the AF200 with matching colour profiles. Maybe a hunch, maybe a hope ;-)

​In the feature film world, all directors and camera operators are adamant : "don't touch our framing carefully performed on stage". But if you are the man of all hats (camera operator / editor / colorist) on a documentary film, recording these extra pixels can help you reframe or stabilize your images on some occasions. Whatever the situation, the out-of-frame grayed area is a good alternative to the standard white or black lines that in the fire of action your eye no longer sees... letting you frame onto the full viewing screen.

Well you said it there Ed, the slow-mo footage is seen on camera tests on Vimeo and YouTube. It's people just trying out a feature and sharing their results. No big deal. I use slow motion on about 95% of my projects. A lot of them are music videos or hyper stylised commercial vids. It's completely necessary and really adds impact to some key moments. That's why any camera I purchase/rent must almost always have a slow motion feature. It really depends on your shooting style. For example, news gathering doesn't really need it. Action? Oh yes!!! Also don't forget that iPhones can do 240fps and the GoPro Hero 4. Mass market slow motion = mass YouTube/Vimeo slow mo tests!

Never underestimate the "It looks cool" aspect of amateur filmmaking. Style above substance is easy to do. After all, if you're making a "real" film does it typically involve a bunch of random urban shots with some music bed? No, but when you're making something to show off your camera or lenses that's good enough. And really, what are a majority of vimeo video creators doing other than playing around with their stuff? Not knocking it, that's what I do too. Also, a lot of folks (not me) use this DSLR/Mirrorless gear for weddings. Slowmo is a novelty that works well in that heightened romantic-reality scenario.

What I'd really love to see: a 4k Recorder (probalby h.265 - might need much processor power though?) in the form factor of the atomos ninja. I don't need an external display as in the shogun... Could be an interesting DIY project but probably financially too expensive...

I guess it was just a problem with my external harddrive, it plays fine for me on youtube as well. I bassically used the same chips used in the kineraw camera which is running on linux so it was not too hard to find drivers for it, right now its still on a deveolpment board, so its not really "small" its about as big as my ikea coffee table.. there are still lots of problems with it and I dont know if I can make it really that usefull, after thinking about it I get the price for the shogun as they have to get back their development costs, but really the hardware is not worth that much, This whole project has taken me all Winter pretty much (I am a engineering student so I had the winter off). It was really ment as a proof of concept for a cheap 4K "Recorder". And I think some chinese Company will probably release a recorder like that on the cheap (wink at Blackmagic) Now, stuff like ProRes Encoding is a totally different thing and I find it crazy what Blackmagic has pulled of with the pocket, thats just awesome engineering. This thing will never be a replacement for the shogun .. sadly

There is one coming. that's all I can say!!!!