Leaderboard

Even with a 16stops camera, shitty light will always look shitty.

Wow, my bad. I see enough shitty footage on here that sometimes it's hard to tell who's doing it on purpose and who doesn't know any better. Now that I know you're in the former group, I'll be sure to leave you to your own devices from now on.

​Definitely not. Brand loyalty, a strong hard-wired-to-the-brain-physiological-effect that marketers have been successfully exploiting for generations gets in the way of rationality. Humans are irrational people when willingly or unwillingly ignorant --and they rely on those "gut-decisions," typically based on familiarity, in those instances. Advertisers know this and it's why advertisements/marketing is most often built not to actively sell product but to get the familiarity of the brand stuck in your mind in a welcoming way. After all, Coca-Cola ads never sell the actual thing, they sell happiness, love, and comfort. And to get it you're encouraged to buy the can/bottle with their logo on it. Same with imaging. You want to be a great photographer you HAVE to buy a" Canikon" ...because that's what just about everybody has familiarity with. You heard about it, you know people that use it, etc. So, as us filmmakers/photographers get more informed we can make more rational decisions. Newbies can't really do this as they don't grasp the details as well, so they'll most likely tend toward Canon and Nikon unless actively exposed to different ideas. This post is an excellent example of explaining those different ideas in the context of making motion pictures. It might seem redundant to us that have been in the market for awhile, but for somebody new to it, it'll be very helpful just as a way to understand how to consider things they've never considered. Good job on articulating those basics Ebrahim, it'll definitely help someone in the future! If I could up vote this or pin it to the top of the page, I would absolutely do so!

​Yup. For whatever reason, the Japanese strive for the fast frame rate aesthetic. Not sure how they got started down that path --maybe because of the big way consumer technology is tied to their national economy, those legacy developments during the old broadcasting standard (ntsc 60i) days affected the culture? I do know the "asadora" programming has always been hugely popular and they've been doing those @60fps since the early 1960's. Almost all of their "prime-time" programming would do the same. Imagine a mini-series like "Roots" or "Edge of Darkness" grabbing the popular imagination, but instead of it being filmed at 24p on analog film, it was all shot on 60i broadcasting cameras. The Japanese would do a lot of their stuff electronically. They're both motion pictures, but obviously look really dissimilar. Point is, the Japanese now typically prefer fast frame rates with pristine zoom broadcasting lenses over the cinematic look, and that difference translates into 60fps PR videos that tend to appear way too clinical to western eyes. So, all that sort of nonsense being said, just consider the context when looking at Sony PR vids. They're coming at imaging from a different taste.

https://***URL not allowed***/samsung-nx500-video-quality-firmware-update/ https://vimeo.com/user1945704/videos

Andrygl if you're interested in dynamic range I strongly recommend all the articles and data (which pertain to stills) of Bill Claff https://home.comcast.net/~NikonD70/ What you're after is best achieved using Magic Lantern's Dual ISO feature (or whatever they call it now). It essentially takes one interlaced frame at a low ISO, another at a high ISO, and stitched them together, sort of video HDR. Cool stuff. Nikon has the highest dynamic range in still cameras, but it doesn't translate, far as I can tell to their video. Sony's A7S has great high ISO dr, but is limited on the low end. Believe it not, what some people really love about the Nikon D800 (for still again) is that it can shoot at a real 50 ISO, or something like that. It means they can shoot wider open at a fast shutter speed without a ND filter. The shots you took could achieve a high effective DR by shooting with a graduated ND filter, that's probably what a professional would do. Finally, DR is more of a physical nature of the silicon light detecting materials which, I believe, has long ago been maximized. I doubt it will ever get much better than the BMPCC in MFT sized sensors. In full-frame, the 5D3 already shoots RAW with ML. If Sony ever makes an A7S that records RAW that will probably be as good as it gets in our lifetime, until, if ever, they find another light detecting material.

Different people, different decision making, eh. I'd never follow any guide on what to purchase, but there sure is lots of people who do, especially many of the more academically minded. As always, we're just patting shoulders or bashing skulls, so let's keep going.

I recently started editing some projects from start to finish in Resolve 11 to get ready for 12. Really looking forward to it.

​Another step up in price is FS700 + 7Q for RAW. Supposedly 15 stops, but I doubt it amounts to that in practice. FS7 does RAW as well, but I don't know of anyone shooting it in RAW. Maybe Oliver has?

Here's a film I shot in 2013 with the Sony F35 using Cineon colorspace with some impulz luts that I just went back in and graded. Here's the original grade I did a year ago: And here's the full short film - grade I wasn't able to help with due to my schedule. It's subtle but the difference is big when going into Cineon camera space to work - what tectures one can get in.Also I worked more this time on vignette, on playing with sharpness and making grain and noise more subtle.Also adding a blur to the outside of the footage. It's amazing how much you can change an image based on the grade - how important it all is. And how I have developed my sensibilities in color since 2013. How it comes from exposure to films that are shot very well - to learn to see with color and light - it's all trained experience that one gets from just watching more and more films. How more and more I learned to care about the grade - to now want to be there to help with the grade. We can really get into cameras, lenses, and more, but in the end, the edit and the grade are the gate keepers of image. And image is very important for a story - it's a visual medium. So much comes from the look of a film. This isn't just radio. Visuals are much of what a film is, and can help make or break the narrative. Sometimes films can break out with poor narrative and poor acting and good cinematography, but it's a giant package. Just as in photography, a compelling photo could be framed poorly or well - and usually if it's framed better, it will overall be a more compelling experience. The right angle, the right shot is so fascinating to chase - to be creative of where to put your camera to tell the story. And more and more I think we cinematographers need to be there to help with the grade, to make sure we can help translate and get the final image to where we want it to be. I saw this brought up in American Cinematographer and more and more I agree with this. We need to be involved with the entire process.

Cheapest digital cameras claiming above 13 stops I know of is the URSA and URSA mini. But those are not out yet.

No shit there's halos. That's a side effect of maximizing every stop. And no, I didn't ask for someone to comment on personal footage that I purposely shot handheld on horrible, cheap lenses, I solely uploaded to get an opinion on high dynamic range image sensors. Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way too: the grade is over-saturated, WB is completely off, footage is clearly over-sharpened, there's vignetting, there's fringing and the highlights suffer from magenta tearing. Thanks anyways though, I'll treasure your post.

To follow onto what Mattias said, video is still secondary to these consumer cameras. Specs are more focused on stills, like dynamic range and ISO. If you want meaningful specs you need to get the technology focused on that use. I remember when I first came to this blog and Andy was 24/7 raving about the Panasonic G6. I didn't understand. The Sony and Canon cameras I had at the time seemed just as good and had the same specs. Then I bought a used G5 and I saw what he was saying. Lots of intangibles. Like autofocus, how do you really spec that? I compared a GH4 against the A6000 and only then could I see the difference. I have yet to use a camera (and I've tried most) that doesn't have some strength over another camera (and weakness). I think the question you're driving at Ebrahim, is what specs do we need to make choosing cameras betters? I'd love that too. Maybe Andrew can come up with something.

Whoa! that is one hell of a post. Basically, you have intellectualised the thought process of a rational intelligent person in this field. The problem is that not all people are sufficiently intelligent and also sufficiently rational. This is why spec lists work as advertising. This is what has driven the megapixel war and now the 4k push. What use is 4k if its got aliasing, macroblocking, focus pulsating and rolling shutter skew to the eyeballs? Try pointing that out to someone who has already decided to buy the camera because its spec sheet says its 4k and has this and that, and they will say "Dude! this file is COMPRESSED! You need to see the original." Yeah, because no video on youtube has ever looked good, right? It's very hard if not impossible to get through to these people. But be thankful that you are able to evaluate things rationally.

"- The durability under various conditions -The materials used in the built" These two I find are often mentmentioned in the prosumer to pro segment as well as if its one of the main features of the camera.

Buy a 3-axis gimbal instead. Getting cheaper and takes about 5 minutes to balance. It's worth it

Thanks for sharing. I think the bulk of that relies on reviewers with a lot of time on their hands/sponsor paid to share their thoughts. A camera company would never go into such detail, as this will highlight weaknesses to potential buyers. The best way with any new technology is to test it yourself and see what works for you. I see you mentioned the RX10 II vs the Canon XC10. Many people laughed at the Canon release....although the RX10 II has a far more spectacular looking spec sheet, the image quality looks inferior to that of the XC10 (from what I've seen so far), and that's where the Canon camera has it's value and higher price tag. Still, I'd probs buy the RX10 II because it has features that fit my clients better. To be honest, I don't get too worked up about these technical things. I just shoot. No amount of things like shadow noise will prevent that, althought it's useful to know

Well, most reviews are just part of the marketing machine and I don't see a way of changing that. Nice write-up anyhow!

The guy in that video is a total Legend!

​ TBH I think both the rectilux and the fm deliver all that's needed in this market. 2x anamorphics are plentiful - kowa b+h and rectilux appears to be delivering good stuff on 25mm/35mm and 50mm on gh4 which equates to a 50mm/85mm and 135mm on 4perf s35. However I'd almost certainly need 25mm f0.95. 35mm f1.2 and 50mmf2 if I wanted to get anywhere near what a typical panavision set look like on s35 4 perf. Even then, the b+h will never allow users to get that 35mm 2x + s35mm 4 perf 'wide combination' - the expansive anamorphic wide setup. I'm currently developing a large 1.5x anamorphic lens with a spherical focusing section. Main criteria is to deliver onto red weapon vista vision sensor with a 35mm taking lens. this will match the fov and dof of a fast 2x anamorphic 35mm lens on 4 perf s35mm, Being 1.5x it'll be more compact and way sharper than typical fast 2x anamorphs. however the price point is gonna be rather high.

Fake or not, I'm not sure why people judge a camera's IQ capabilities when in the hands of obvious amateurs posting junk on youtube. Well, I guess if they want to see the limitations of the default settings and images made by GAS geeks with no visual skills... And it's not just amateurs. I mean, let's recall that official NX1 film about the lady in the fridge. That looked lame as heck, but we all know the camera has potential well beyond what was on display in that instance.

100% fake. It doesn't even look like Sony footage (not to mention why would you mke a big deal of '4k video' and then only upload 720p footage to YouTube).

Here's my crack at it. There's a little man in your camera. He sees everything through the sensor, God like vision However, he is only given 255 paints for each color, red green and blue. Each color ranges from very dark to very light. He uses this combination of 255 x 255 x 255 reds, greens, and blues, to create a full color image for you. The problem for our little camera-man is that he often sees colors, say a blue, that sit between two of his blue paints. Might be a 243.5, a little brighter than 243 and a little darker than 244. Indeed, he believes he really needs 1,000 paints per color to render a good image. But, and this is the first KEY thing, HE ONLY HAS 255 PAINTS TO WORK WITH IN EACH COLOR. You go to the beach with your camera and you take an image of your wife. The man in your camera says, it's a shame I don't have more lighter colors because there's a fantastic twinkle in your wife's eyes and nice colors in those clouds. I have all these dark colors and I don't need any of them. So what if you found a way to take his palette of 255 colors, throw out half of the dark colors and give him double the amount of light colors? So you have, say 1,3,5,7 at the low end and then, 225, 225.5, 226, 226.6 at the high end? What if you did that, but spread it out evenly (Curved them); that is, gave him only a few paints for dark colors but more and more colors as you got lighter--KEEPING IN MIND YOU HAVE A MAXIMUM of 255? You DO NOT END UP WITH MORE RECORDED DYNAMIC RANGE. Rather, you have REDUCED dynamic range where you AESTHETICALLY don't care about it, and INCREASED dynamic range where you do. But it is a judgment call. The total dynamic range is still 255 colors. I got into a lot of trouble with these logs on the GH4 because I don't have enough experience to know when it's better to shift the recorded dynamic range. I'd rather have RAW because you can apply curves AFTER the fact. If you shoot S-LOG in an evenly lit scene you'll end up with muddy darks because you didn't give them the same paints as you gave the lights. Hope this helps!

sunyata's analogy is quite good. A small correction only: Prints don't have a linear representation of the scene light, not at all. Prints are heavily gamma corrected for projection in dark environments much more so than material meant to be shown on emitting displays. Print-through film curves (that is, scene-to-projection) typically have a gamma in the range 2.5-2.8. Now first it is important where the "log" comes from. It is because humans perceive exponential light changes as linear changes. This is a logarithmic relationship. Hence, log. Log curves mimic this. Exponential scene light changes are recorded as linear changes. In other words, each increase of exposure with a stop (or doubling the light) takes the same number of coding values to encode, and not double the values of the previous stop (as do linear encodings). There are a couple of technical benefits: 1) Much more effective and economical utilization of available coding space. This is the reason log curves encode wide dynamic ranges effectively in a smaller bitdepth. Cineon was developed to capture the huge DR of negative film in only 10 bits. 2) (And related to 1) Increased tonal precision in the dark parts of the picture, compared to a physically correct linear encoding (when using the same coding space). Since sensors work linearly, purely logarithmic curves would waste some coding space in the blacks, because there is not enough density there. That's why practically all log curves are pseudo-log, with some compression in the black end. Arri's Log-C is probably the closest to pure log. Canon's C-log is the furthest away from pure log. The other reason is, as mentioned, mimicking Cineon. This is also, I believe, one of the main reasons all log curves have a raised pure black level. This mimicks the base density (D min) of film, as encoded in the Cineon curve to accommodate scanning film densities.

FAKE!

Some good observations about the F3 and comparisons to the AF100, Red One, and Alexa. http://www.provideocoalition.com/ag-af100_and_pmw-f3_on_the_charts

While the NX500 did not perform very well in FHD due to the extremely low bitrate (no PRO setting with firmware 1.0 and even HQ was not HQ) the new firmware greatly improves FHD capabilities of the NX500 as it makes the PRO bitrate settings available. Checkout samples here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mr108nxf4teskpz/AADtu20DbI8lUAJUn5yjzq_ua?dl=0 (download an watch with a dedicated player, do not use the dropbox interface in the browser)

Hi Ken, the 40mm diopter is for the Baby Hypergonar, one of the smallest or smallest anamorphic lens around.

I would not go with the NX1 because it's too early to tell how committed Samsung is to cameras and as Oliver says, the public isn't clamoring for 4K. Face it, if a client wants 4K they probably won't hired a "man and his dog" production company. My wife gets mad at me when I order the HD version of movies on Amazon demand for $1 extra. She says she can't tell the difference. Further, RAW based 1080 cameras like the BMPCC crush all 4K 8-bit cameras in color nuance and dynamic range. Here's a video (I took quick and dirty) with some mixed cameras and you can see what the difference is. I overexposed the a7 footage a bit, which means I'm stuck with it. The BMPCC not only has better colors against the a7 (even if perfectly exposed) but it has, to me, a film look. I would not get the 5D3 because, as hell of a camera it is, and it is, it is built as a through-the-lens camera which makes video more cumbersome than the A7, where you have an EVF and can see zebras, focus peaking, etc. Indeed, if you're going to shoot with the glass you have I believe an EVF camera is a must. A bad thing for me, good thing for you, is that Sony's model updates and driving the prices down on their earlier cameras. You should consider an a7 too because you may get one for a song. However, the large pixel count of the a7 means it is susceptible to moire so you want to accept that trade-off. If you like a really crisp image, then the panasonic m43rds, like FuzzyNormal says, deliver the goods. For me, the a7 is the perfect utility camera, great stills and video, takes any lens. Also, I can't keep someone focused on a full-frame at wide apertures. For video, I agree with Fuzzy that you're going to end up shooting not lower than 5.8 anyway. The sony autofocus on the A6000, does work reasonably well at 1.8 (effective 2.8 say) however. Again, as Oliver implied, business isn't about getting the camera/equipment you want, it's about getting the camera the client wants (indirectly). As for an investment for 3 years... I live one shot at a time Photos of event https://www.flickr.com/photos/maxotics/sets/72157654514582616 I used an A7 with 55/1.8, a6000 with 10-18, Canon 50D with Nikon 50mm

You can wait forever for the next best thing. Buy a camera so you can do something tomorrow. You're not going to accomplish anything looking at spec sheets. Here's an example shot with the Panasonic GM1: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/694tsb6iwy5y6um/AABQqvadHmjdB8jqJDat5cVTa?dl=0 Is it the best IQ available? No. Do the GM1's IQ limitations get in the way of me telling an effective story? No. Is it pretty darn good with IQ anyway? Yes. DOF quality? Watch the interview shot I linked to and you tell me. Besides, most cinematographers prefer f5.6 on s35mm, so I think this FullFrame DOF argument is overplayed, but if you feel like you need it, that's your call. 4K? Eh, it's nice but not a deal breaker for me. I can shoot on 1080 and be content. I'd also point out that M43 can take a speed-booster adapter and work as an effective s35mm cam. Anyway, the thing is if you're shooting on a budget you have to make compromises...and I don't think the compromises these days are really that bad. This cheap stuff does quite well. My advice is to go get it and actually do some work.

FWIW, I will add this: imaging tech is going to get so advanced and so cheap that very soon everybody, and I do mean everybody, will have awesome IQ power with them at all times -- via smartphones and enthusiast cameras. http://www.43rumors.com/panasonic-aims-to-launch-new-8k-cameras-by-2020/ So, ultimately, I don't think you're going to be able to significantly outclass competition with just the camera you buy. I'd argue that this moment has kind of arrived already, but great IQ will continue to get more and more democratized. As this happens, what's going to matter more? How you work with a client, how you visualize your images, how you collaborate, how you successfully envision a project and deliver it, how you tell a story ... or, what camera you choose to do the job? Depending on what you do, only you can answer that, but I know what I'm trying to value and nurture.

Take solace in the fact that no matter which camera you choose, it'll depreciate by 50% in a year when the newest version is released