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I did a bunch of grading - checking out Impulz vs Filmconvert Overall filmconvert feels more forced, retains less detail. Impulz luts gives a better starting point - more image detail retained in ut - to play with - to shape it and move. I also just did a rec 709 conversion and graded - and it's a lot harder to work with to get to where I want to go. So if you don't like luts, good for you. For me, it gets me there faster. And then I tweak and tweak and tweak. The overall image, then skin, then lips, everything. Also now being able to shoot pro res 444 12-bit from the sony f35 to the odyssey 7q is really, really nice. Mixed lighting test - sony f35 to convergent design pro res 4444 - with overhead crappy 4000k fluorescents - shooting s-gamut then with p3-dci gamut the lighting is all over the place - crappy overhead flourescents - 4000k mixed with more crappy flourescents and in some scenes led glow from macbook the p3-dci definitely falls apart faster. s-gamut - with pro res 4444 - very clean secondary color correcting and stress to push pro res as far as it needs to go. shot underexposed 1 stop. amazing how clean can make - used neatvideo on impulz footage

so sharp. maybe too sharp. on my 4k television, the rocks on the beach almost appear to vibrate. I bet the URSA Mini 4.6k would look great with vintage glass. whenever I see a camera that looks a little too much like video, I try to remind myself that both Drive and Friends with Kids were shot with the same camera in the same year and one looks like a proper movie while the other nearly looks like a sit-com.

Folks, I had a chance to cover a stage event last Sat and used NX1 and NX500 for a two-camera shoot. Both were at DCI 24p, with NX1/Samsung 16-50 covering the whole stage and NX500/Canon 70-200 the center. Thought you might be interested in how these two gems capture the image and how much flexibility 4K gives in reframing when outputting in 1080p. Comments/critiques welcome.

So, this came up in another thread I was just in, and I see it mentioned here and there on the forum, but I think it deserves its own topic so I'm starting one. I recently became very interested in recording externally to an Atomos or similar from my Sony bodies in an attempt to break the 30min limit. Seemed like a no brainer, especially with the current ridiculous falling price of Ninja units. But before I jump in, I wanted to read up on the workflow so I'd know what to prepare for. Until now, I was unaware of what the Skin Smoothing setting in the camera did (honestly, what self respecting photog or videog would have that enabled in the first place anyway), but now I'm suddenly VERY aware of it. Apparently (and I'm just going by what I see online in my research), there is some sort of bug in the firmware of many of the BIONZ X based cameras, that turns this blasted smoothing feature on when recording video even if you disabled it in the menu. If you aren't aware of this bug, this guy's video pretty much nails it in demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6GVm1Ke2dQ Since I didn't hear many people being scared off by this, I figured you can't go by one guy on the internet's opinion of a perceived problem. But then I found it again mentioned in Phillip Bloom's blog regarding using the A7S with a Shogun here: http://philipbloom.net/blog/dad/ (about half way down the page) And here it is again by Dave Dugdale: http://www.learningvideo.com/atomos-shogun-review/ (third paragraph) Then some guy in a forum shared this video to demonstrate how well the atomos was working with his A5100: https://youtu.be/-DmrpLji6gk He apparently wasn't even aware of the waxy skin thing going on with her face, but I see it right away now that i'm aware of it! It seems that this issue is a legit one. While I've read that a firmware update to the RX series has solved it on that camera, the rest of us trying to record off our A6000, A5100, A7S, etc have this blasted thing show up whenever a face can be recognized. The "solution" has been to turn off face recognition and press record in camera. Without recording in camera, the hdmi out defaults to smoothing on again. I'm wondering, how many people do this and just haven't noticed it happens? Now that I've seen it and will be looking for it, I'm afraid it will drive me bonkers. OR do people just hit record in the camera to disable it? My real question is, what about those of us who want to do this simply because we want to record longer durations than the internal recording allows? What happens when my A7S reaches 30 min and stops recording internally? Does everyone's face suddenly go all waxy? And what about trying to use external recording to prevent overheating on the smaller A5100? Hitting record on the camera isn't an option because it will build up heat too fast to even make it to 30 minutes most of the time. Is there another solution I'm not aware of?

For his upcoming snowy western Tarantino unearthed special cameras and 1.25x anamorphic lenses at Panavision which hadn't seen the light of day since 1965. The film was shot on 65mm film and will get a 'Roadshow' release on Christmas day in amazing 70mm. Read the full article

I love those looks - I need to play with those luts again! Just really isolate skintones and mess with them, and play with power windows, defocus edges, play with sharpness, endless endless playing around. here's some screengrabs of tests.

I have this feeling the camera you already have is good enough for a webseries

You wouldn't really spend time transcoding, right? Just enter it in a 1080p timeline should work okay. More resolution and framing options with the g7 of ourse and might be more gradeable than the d5500, but might look more digital with the sharpness you can't really lower. D5500 could be more organic and nicer colors. Tough call. Probably can't go wrong either way

I have to say that I'm not totally convinced neither... nice DR, sharpness and so... but it's missing a bit of the cinematic/organic mojo of the other BM's (for my liking). It could be the color grading or how it was shot, dunno. Insiders are saying that they're still working on those colors over at BM, so... I think I'm just going to sit on the fence for a little longer.

Thanks Mercer. Believe it or not, the zoom you're seeing with the NX500 shots is at the wide end (@70 on the Canon 70-200 L lens)! And even that I scaled down to 50% in post because I wanted to cover everyone. Also, shooting wide (less need to pull focus) and placing both cameras close helps when shooting as a one-man crew. And yeah, a documentary would be good; I need to find an interesting topic.

Don't know how I missed this. It looks good. You really can't tell a difference in quality between the NX500 and the NX1. A separate angle all together could be interesting for future videos, that way you can really work close ups of each woman separately, which I'm sure they'd love. And once again I enjoyed the subject matter. Since it seems you are so involved with Indian/American community, it would be interesting to see a documentary about the collision, for lack of a better word, of the two cultures.

Also consider NX500. IMO it produces great 4K video that's pretty close to that of NX1. I just did a two-camera shoot with it and the two videos were virtually indistinguishable with a few tweaks. It's currently on a big Black Friday sale from Samsung off $300 from $799.99 to $499.99. One aspect with NX500 you need to know is that it shoots in crop mode that makes wide shots a bit hard, but it can be huge advantage when shooting tight because you get free ultra zoom. I made multiple posts on this (e.g., see NX500 as teleconverter), search these forums and you'll find these and a lot of other posts on the camera.

I got mine yesterday too. Don't forget that there is a new firmware update to give 4K video stills post-focus as well as automatic e-shutter (which I find handy in my lx100). Now I just have to figure out how to best configure the dials and function buttons to best match my lx100.

Reading the comments on the video and the other one he uploaded, it appears that when he put his camera on the 4200, one of the springs broke. He also says, "the gimbal will work, but you need to fix bug". So, are we looking at both mechanical and electronic issues?

I think Juan Melera has an export lut - which is the answer print - 2393 - and then he sees the final output and in essence is tweaking the image before it gets to the final print. He does a primary grade to neutralize white balance, get things where they want. I usually shoot slog - and I convert it to cineon color space which is basically arri log-c color space. After that I start to tweak overall look. Then onto secondary corrections - isolating the skin tone, getting that where you want it. Also you can do highlight offsets on the skin and make the lips the correct feeling saturation. And then power windows, on the face, on the windows, background, etc etc. But yes, I think just like there are a million ways to light a scene and shot them, there are basic ideas and it's really a free-for-all at this point. Just as it is with editing. When I started I was on a path to editing. But now I see people much younger than me crushing it - doing so well, already editing - editing fast and just cranking out beautiful stuff and they just jumped into it, they didn't know what they were doing, they just started. Balls to the wall. And why not do that with coloring? So we don't think there is only one way to do it. I agree with many, the filmconvert look is start to get a little overused like magic bullet back in the day. but shit, to each their own on how they want to grade.

IMAX has a new laser projection system that should outclass all other projection technologies once it arrives. Use of laser means that blacks are true blacks (aka there is zero light hitting the screen). While there IS still a place for film projection, I don't doubt for one second that laser will be able to precisely replicate the feel of analog projection should the need arise. I just hope that some day it is available to consumers because the DR would make for an excellent color-accurate image for CC work.

That "review" was rather pointless, lol. Why do people upload crap like this?

Panasonic G7 is 599$ by now at B&H with a Rode Videomic for free on the package. It's 4k for cheap with a 100mbps codec and a good mic for run n gun. Black Friday deals ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What's ironic here is that Apple are now the company with the monopoly in many markets who are no longer innovating. Look at what Microsoft are doing. They have one streamlined OS that works across all devices from phones, tablets to desktops. They've just released new phones (Lumia 950 & 950 XL) that you can connect a mouse, keyboard & monitor to, and use as a full functioning computer with desktop apps. Their Surface range also continues to get better and better. Of course, they also have that Hololens technology that looks quite impressive from the demos I've seen. And what do Apple release? A big iPad with what is essentially the same OS as what the original iphone was running back when it was first released.

Thanks for that. I guess for my purposes I wouldn't miss those features. Also, the G7 cannot be switched PAL/NTSC. I'm not too bothered about headphone/input jacks as I bought a used Shure lenshopper with the built-in recorder to get around these audio limitations (noisy em5II preamps, no input on LX100). As long as there is a hotshoe, I'm good. I got a body-only G7 from Amazon for £249 after rebate. Too good a deal. You could get 4 of the G7 for less than a GH4. I am now debating getting the Olympus 7-14/2.8 for my wide angle or adapting the Tokina 11-16/2.8 with the metabones.

1) Don't ever shoot it above ISO 800, turns to absolute mush past that point. 2) Don't shoot with flat settings, in other words don't go past +6 black level or -4 contrast.

I can also suggest to avoid shooting in 120p at high ISO. At 1600 details will be lost big time, I believe due to the bitrate too low for this framerate (?).

Yeah it does a look little mushy compared with the camera's normal output. Compare it to the 120p of an A7 and it looks fantastic. The two things I've found that help the most are to have the subject well-lit and to have the camera on a tripod. I know those are the basics, but they do make noticeable differences in the quality of the slo-mo. I haven't played with Twixtor. I'd be curious to see your results though if you'd care to post them.

To early to tell... The trade show stand was for Wodden Camera, Metabones, SLRMagic and Filmpower, and the guy was fluent in Japanese, which makes me think he is probably just a local rep and not a anyone from Filmpower. Perhaps that explains why he didn't have a clue what to do with the gimbal or how to configure it. Still, it surprised me how huge the gimbal is (at 24:10). It looks like a full sized Ronin on a popsicle stick. The other hand gimbals I've seen are proportioned and compact. This one doesn't look like it can be really operated with a single hand... Regarding the 5 axis version, let's see if all those who alledgedly are about to receive the first shipped units are willing to test it out and post some footage. This gimbal so far seems to lack the compactness and travel-friendly size of one-handed gimbals and the reliability of larger models.