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Here's a test I just did with the sony f35 and colored with the color chart tool in resolve: No lut - just that color chart tool and some basic color corection - I feel this gives a completely natural amount of skin tones that I think I like more that Filmconvert or Impulz Luts all that stuff. I am beginning to wonder if using those luts are kind of like using a beginner guide to understanding color and maybe that's why most colorists don't like them. Anywho, now I know the importance of having a color chart - how useful and quickly it can be used to neutralize an image and skintones, and go from there. From this day forward, I will bring a color chart to all my shoots. Here's the LUT from this test - everyone can download and use on pretty much all their footage - it's made for s-log but with adjustment probably works on everything - http://kittyguerrilla.com/ed_luts/

I'd take 1080 raw over 8K any day of the week

I am agonizing over which thread to reply to "why we should use color charts" or "why we should always use color charts" - you make things so hard!!!

Anything goes for music videos for upstart bands; but my mortgage gets paid by business/corporate videos. So no PVC pipe rigs. I have a couple DIY HMIs but they look like commercial units. And I've had zero issues shooting with any DSLR, but I generally have it on rails with a matte box & FF. Several times a client has had to squeeze by the camera in a tight setup and say "I'm being careful, I know that cost more than my house!" Amazing what matte box flags can do… Funny, corporate clients - if they've seen your work and it's good - don't really care about the gear the same way getting hired by an agency or media group to operate or DP do. Even so, I've had situations where someone knowledgeable raised an eyebrow at, say, an APS-C Nikon with a Series-E 100 on it. I usually say "look through the VF" and the next thing, they're snapping off phone shots of the lens - "Less a hundred bucks??!? That's my next lens!!!" I really like using my Kessler as sort of a "fluid tripod" so when all else fails, just rig that sucker up… until someone makes a cast plastic sleeve that fits over a DSLR with a big "Arri" logo on it...

Yes coming soon, just has been jostling with a lot of work. There's a ton of stuff coming up on EOSHD including DJI OSMO review, RX1 II, NX1 firmware update and lenses, Sigma 20mm F1.4 and a lot more! Anything else people would like to see?

I think the title should say "why we should always use magnifying glass".

Bold, I'm not sure everyone will agree - or even you - but selling one of yours for $100 just to undercut him doesn't make you a profiteering a$$hole. There is a HUGE difference between both cases, even if the lens is exactly the same: he is just sucking out the knowledge and making a profit. You gave the community back so much along these threads that "fair price" is a very vague concept. In my opinion, ours is such a niche market that the price can be adjusted according to supply and demand. Do you think $3k for an Isco is a fair price? I don't, but people are paying it anyway. All anamorphics are overpriced because there's too much interest in them and people are willing to pay. It's impossible to stop them and try to drive the prices down. It won't be you alone, selling a great mod for a low price that will change that. It's very likely that if you put the price too low somebody would grab it just to resell for profit. I won't lie: I've done it before because I needed the money and because an Isco for $1750 is very hard to pass. So... what do you think of this?

It's unlikely I know, but I suspect this was shot by a time-traveling music video director from the eighties.

Franz Kraus addressed at Conference of the International Association of Film and Television Schools (CILECT) in Munich on Nov 27th, that a s16 Amira prototype has been tested. They are apparently in progress to a feasibility study with an aim to supply film schools/educational market, as many schools still having lenses left over from the SR/ST days. Simplified s16 Amira (true S16 Sensor not a crop) sounds very much in the feasibility stage for now, but could end up being an interesting little camera if produced and made available outside the educational market. http://if.com.au/2015/11/26/article/Arri-reveals-prototype-educational-camera/IQUTSYTINV.html

The quality of 1080p had barely been made film-like before being cast aside for 4K and now manufacturers are racing to make 8K a reality, which is in the region of 36MP, before 2018. It seems the megapixel race has truly come to filmmaking. Read the full article

Every shot in this video except the rooftop was shot with V-Log L 10 bit on the GH4/Assassin. Thanks to Sandro and Nicolas Maillet for helping me with a couple of Twixtor shots.

Isn't that the one Dave Dugdale tried and found a little too clunky as well? I remember him ultimately going with the Pilotfly H1. Unfortunately the folks at FilmPower don't really know how to market their Nebula 4200 PRO. It looked rather interesting... but I have serious question marks with how they run things. The 4000 seemed far from ideal as well, although admittedly was the one to really get this snowball rolling. Have you guys seen the Feiyu MX? Now that might be pretty sweet. Though... with that one, the load factor really seems an issue. Guess you can't have everything. Guess if I had to go for something now it would probably be the http://www.sturdyshots.com/sturdy2014/sturdyflight-2/ . I like the way it's set up and JazzBox seems to really like it.

Here is my sub $ 20,-- quick and very dirty push focus mod. 1. 60mm diameter 2mm thick 8cm long Aluminum Tube 2. Two step-up rings (49mm-52mm + 52mm-58mm) to hold the Front Lens. Just jammed the Front-Lens inside the 49mm Ring with some Tape. (Maybe I will use Silicone to secure the Lens) The 58mm End will hold the Lens-Assembly in Front of the Tube and is fixed there with Electrical Insulation Tape. To slide and guide the Tube I taped some thin Packaging Foam around the Anamorphic Lens-Body.

Ah, sorry. I lost interest when I hooked it up wit the Atomos, the image didn't really look different to the internal codec at all. The D5500 is another one where Nikon need to improve the HDMI.

Simply amazing. I know there's been a bit of hullabaloo about Rectilux vs Rangefinder, but I'm shooting 4K on NX1, and the Rangefinder holds up great. It's actually my taking lenses that I'm finally starting to give more thought to, now that I can focus the darn thing. Does anyone know if Apple's Motion could do this desqueezing stuff?

I don't know if anyone is still interested in this but I printed a collection of 12 images in 17x11" and the images look gorgeous. The sharpness and detail is so crisp and nice and when I had a small showing of the images to some photographers they said they were really impressed these images coming from 2Mpix files. All I did before printing (after initial color correcting) was to resize the images 200% in ACR. Again, if someone is interested I can take some pics and upload of some of the printed images.

You could get a HDMI to SDI (4k) converter. At $295, it's over half the price of the video assist itself, but it's a solution if you absolutely need the downsampling.

That was never a 2 part review Phil.

Here's the lut to download: http://kittyguerrilla.com/ed_luts/ The charts will work fine with any camera, it doesn't need to be log or raw. It just takes the color from your camera and rewraps it. Log is more about exposure and how it handles shadows and highlights - not color. And RAW is pre-processed LOG files. There is nothing magical about RAW. Most raw is actually compressed - like Red RAW. I like pro res 4444 over DPX (uncompressed) files because it saves on space signifigantly and makes it easier to get thru a shoot on time.

Lubricant, my friend.

We all obviously live in different worlds. Having the best gear does NOT make you a professional. The thing that makes you a professional is getting the required job done to an excellent standard, always. I built my business is on DIY lighting, a few Canon FD lenses and a cheap DSLR. I recently used a £5 "shitty" zoom lens on a decent budget music video shoot, because that lens was the best choice for the shot. The job was still professional, no matter what tools I used. I made the right decision, and that's what professionals do. I find on most sets that a lot of stuff is knocked together with duct tape, garbage bags and pieces of string. It doesn't matter what you use - the thing that matters is the final result. That's all people care about. An example... this particular shoot was shot with a GH3 and a few cheap vintage primes. The shot looking down over the cross shape was pulled off by sticking the GH3 on some rods, pulled against a pipe on the ceiling with a piece of string. The string was then tied to a suitcase on the ground with bricks in it, to keep the camera fixed and steady. No optical or electronic stabilisation used whatsoever. We had an idea and pulled it off by using whatever we could find. In the end, the solution was effective and the audience would never know. It doesn't make us any less of a professional when the end result doesn't say otherwise.

Yes I used the color match tool in Resolve with the x-rite color chart. Interesting the one-shot vs color checker by Art Adams. But I think resolve's default is the x-rite color checker. And it looks like the x-rite has the same colors as the one-shot. Also he works for DSC labs - he designed the one-shot with them, so he maybe a little biased. Would be interested to hear an independent colorist's opinion on the matter. Also the x-rite is like $70, his is $300 here's a good independent test:

Tough. Seems the eBay vendors pulled the plug on that one. Perhaps they can still get you one, try by sending 'em a message through eBay. You can find some discontinued listings through Google. Another thing you can try is Taobao: http://world.taobao.com/item/521598900440.htm . You'll need an agent to get hold of one on there, I'd recommend something like http://mistertao.com . Could try 'n see what these guys have to say for themselves: http://goldenvision.en.alibaba.com/product/609614812-214032112/New_Rollei_QBM_Lens_to_NX_NX100_NX10_NX5_Adapter.html , but I think they pulled the plug as well, given they're these guys: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/New-Rollei-QBM-Lens-to-NX-NX100-NX10-NX5-Adapter-conversion-ring-adapter/413706_618389056.html?storeId=413706 . Double adapters sounds like a good idea... but I'd really try to avoid it. You might run into dodgy focus issues.

So here is the long and short of it. The Beholder DS1 is heavy. It can get some very smooth shots, but you will be challenged to keep the shot on target for more than a very short while due to the weight. Additionally, I noticed something unexpected, certain movements can cause the unit to freak out. This results in a type of fast micro-jitters, that will appear as jerky image artifacting. I wanted this unit to work smoothly. I do not know if this behavior is normal or if the unit is defective. But I can tell you normal handheld seems more pleasing to my eyes, despite being less smooth. Normal handheld just seems more organic.

Great! As seen on: Might want to consider the dual mini for easier application: http://www.ratrig.com/v-slider-dual-mini.html .

The video looks great shure, but I doubt the Raven will be any better than the Dragon. If you have watched the cheapo marvel series that are on netflix (jessica jones, daredevil) you will see that it can look pretty bad even in a professional environment (I mean, what is more important than highlights when you have all the lights you couold possibly need?).

http://www.ratrig.com perhaps? Or of course http://kamerar.com/products/s-23-video-camera-23-slider-mark-ii / http://konovaphoto.com/konova-slider-k2-series.html ...

I’ve been struggling this year to understand color. I come from a strictly digital-upbringing. I have shot some film, but I never understood color timing or even learned how to look critically at color – at skintones, at greens, blues, and red. And I wondered why I would spend so much time trying to understand it, when I could be spending time practicing lighting and finding angles and watching inspiring films. But now I kind of get it – since the 90’s – one shoots film, then one digitizes it in (Digital Intermediate) then you would color it in CINEON colorspace (which is flat like log, very similar to the flatness of Arri log-C) and then send it off to film print. Right now it’s Kodak 5283 or 5293 which respond to blacks, dynamic range, all that differently. So you would choose a stock to shoot on, digitize it, color it, then send off to a film print. So colorists have been involved digitally since the 90’s on all major motion pictures shot on film. They would have LUTs – or look up tables – to emulate the film prints, so they could see what it will look like before they print it. And also, to keep it consistent when it would go off to DVD or VOD or Blu Ray – so the film looks the same everywhere, with tweaking. So I started to use Filmconvert to grade my footage that I would shoot as flat as I can with my cameras. First, it was the Sony F3 and now mostly the Sony F35 and Red One and sometimes the Alexa. Filmconvert keeps it in REC 709 colorspace, which is the standard for TVs and online. Filmconvert was great, but the curves were aggresive and I found using Alexa dci-p3 worked best with slog1, not just slog2. Anyway, I found out later to lessen the film curve, raise highlights, etc. Then Visioncolor came along with their luts that got highly popular – especially the M.31 lut. I liked it, but it was a little too stylized. This is when I started to learn resolve. Before I just used Final Cut Pro 7 and the three-way color corrector. Resolve I didn’t get for a long time, but read a tutorial by Hunter Hampton and started to understand it. I also started to mess with DSLRs more fully and learned how to play in RAW there. All helping out with shooting on Red and understanding its own RAW and why to use Redlog over their Redgammas, to have the most info to play with, out the bat. And I learned that Red Cine-X was just a simple program that existed before Resolve was made free, and it was good, but Resolve is a lot more customizable. Then Visioncolor Impulz Luts came out. And Hunter said it was as close to film as you could get. I messed with it, didn’t understand it. But now I do. You take your footage, and if you are working quick, add a FC (film contrast lut) or a VS (visionspace) lut that has less contrast or can mess with a FPE (film print emulation) lut – that I think brings down the highlights too much. I would learn to go slog to cineon, then start coloring with the filmstock I like (I like 250d and 200t and 500t a lot – 50d is a little too wild in the blues) – and then once that is good, go off to a Film Print – 2383, 2393, or their custom Film Contrast 1 or Visioncolor or even Fuji print. And that gets you a good look. Anyway why is this important? Because now I can shoot on a log or raw camera, and build a lut, and make sure that the lut looks good and that the final image is going to look good. No more guessing with shooting flat and finding out later there is too much noise in the shadows or the skintone, how it reacts to light and color looks odd and off. In essence, it’s What you see, what you get, which is in some ways an improvement over film. You know for sure, pretty much, if the image is good or not. With film, the mystery and magic of course is there and it looks the best – how it handles skin and highlights and light, and those dancing frames and how unpredictable, but hey, I can’t afford to shoot film. No matter what people say, shooting digital is cheaper and you have less chance of screwing it up. Especially if you own the gear already and shoot pro res 4444 vs some insanely uncompressed codec. The world of digital doesn’t look as nice as film, usually. But sometimes, if you have the right colorist, it can. Watching the trailer for San Andreas, I thought it was shot on film. Same with the Age of Adeline. Adding power windows, using lenses that have pop and circular rendering of faces. Using cameras that have nice motion. It gets you there, kind of close. It’s not always perfect, but I still think the DP and the Colorist can make a film shot digitally look better than a film shot and colored poorly on film. I still wish for more and more advances in digital camera technology that can have the randomness of film – the highlight smooth-roll-off – the sharpness and how it renders faces – I don’t want companies to give up and call it a day. But, hey I’m not an engineer. I’m just a guy trying to figure things out. Here’s a clip of how they digitally graded “Oh Brother Where are Thou” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pla_pd1uatg

This test looks amazing. If I had my money for best professional sub-10k camera for 2016, the red raven trumps over the Ursa 4.6k. But that is just based on one test video, that looks better than the music videos shot on the Red Weapon. The only way to really tell if a camera is better than another is to see boring test videos - comparisons between cameras. Highlight handling. Low light handling. Skin tone test. Mixed lighting tests. Resolution test. Boring boring stuff. Until then, I still have my red one mx - which is great, not good at highlight handling, but I would be curious to do a side by side. See the motion. See how it all feels next to each other. Here's a short film I shot on the Red One MX. This is with lighting. At night. Will the Red Raven look better? What are the strengths of the Raven over the Red One MX? The weaknesses? Are there going to be fan noise problems like the Red Epic dragon? Cabling issues - only one hd-sdi port? Hard to get to timecode port and weird audio ports? These are all things to know before drolling over something. https://vimeo.com/127683476

Footage looks great, but I find it very hard to get excited over any released footage anymore from new cameras...as they all can do the job, some more suitable for different projects, some more suitable for different budgets. The reality is that too many people scrutinize between the numbers and nuances of many cameras a bit too much, forgetting that as long as they do not restrict a creative end...they are the least important part of the process. The mac vs pc debate never went away, it just shifted to cameras.That is the downside of making affordable cameras - people want cheap, but they also want the 'best'. Love the look of the Raven, and apparently there is a considerable Scarlet update coming soon...but I'm more interested in renting 'high-end' rather than invest in 'medium-end' if a worthy project deemed fit. Rather spread money to art department /costume/ lighting which is almost always what actually make an image shine.

Yeah, I prefer the original

What the fuck was that bullshit? I thought it was going to be an actual short film. Why does an arbitrary video of nothing have a name? It looks like a perfume advert that is too long and was thrown out for being too cleche. As for the look of the footage. Ok, nothing spelbinding. A bit videoey in certain shots.

Here's what I posted on PV about the same fotage: For a company that relies on preorders and direct sales as their sales model this type of slick polished video makes since. For others it is less/not important as they have a strong channel the will help sell their new product offering. Personally, I don't trust these prerelease videos as representative of the way I shoot or post process. I do trust the community at large to show what the camera can do in the hands of the every man with the common tools and work flows I have access to. My main discision making tool is the comparison videos after the product is released. I'm not Red's target audience because I'm not a Red believer who buys on spec and slick promo videos. That said, if it is truly a better product solution (including post processing requirements) and a reasonable value as compared to the competition, I am all in (once it is vetted by the community). I am not the droid Red is looking for...

I've been shooting for a living for over 2 decades, and one of the definitive signs that someone is an amateur is any statement like the above. That's some massive insecurity you've got going on, man. Professionalism isn't about the gear.

I did. Very minimal grading to be honest. I used the Cineon Film Contrast 1 LUT, and added a bit of saturation in the blues.

Absolutely not the case. I have a GH4 and BMPCC - 4K 8bit H264 vs 1080p 10bit Prores. I choose the Pocket image 90% of the time. There are no 4K 8-bit cameras that rival the HD Blackmagic image for me. Possibly the XC10 but that's 422 with a huge bit rate. I'm done with 8 bit and I'm done with high compression. It's junk. The A7SII, GH4 - colours look like junk. NX1 is slightly better but not if you actually want to do anything at all creative with the image.

And the great thing about the Pocket is that you don't even have to shoot RAW (& if you do, its a lot less hassle to process than ML RAW), as it provides you with a very healthy 10bit ProRes HQ mode! You really need to use a BMPCC to understand why its so good at its price point & most people (professionals & amateurs alike) think it produces the best image of all the BM cameras. There are so many BM haters out there & they simply haven't a clue of what they're missing out on!

I seem to remember that it was Nikon that started off the video function in DSLRs, so it would be nice if they had the last word with this Samsung tech.

Would be easier to just make some sort of NX-Nikon active mount, or even create some speedbooster.

Thank you very much for your kind words, Cinegain I also picked the Olympus over the Panasonic, because the final quality is slightly better to my eyes. Normally I love my little FD prime collections, but on the gimbal a good zoom is more practical and the second setting (for the Panasonic-Leica 25) come in handy for a lot of shots. Jacopo - the MiniSturdyCam builder - has a GH4 with 12-35 OIS on one of his gimbal and in that way you are 100% free from every imaginable micro-jitter, even at 35mm. For me the stabilization of gimbal itself is more then enough with any non-stabilized lens, but he's so honest that when you contact him to talk about his products, he starts from the little "cons": of course he talks about "perfection", he's a truly passionate maniac about "flying" movements, but the gimbal is super stable, no problem at all. He's a very nice guy and I really appreciated his way to conduct business: I asked his opinion between the bigger SturdyFlight and the cheaper and smaller MiniSturdyFlight, and he recommended me to buy the latter, because he said that with my camera and lenses the MiniSturdyFlight would be perfect. He's very disposable also by Wathsapp and Skype. I hope this gimbal will lasts for some years, because after I tried I cannot stay without anymore, because it speeds up everything: besides the normal steadicam's work you can use it as a crane, as a dolly, as a monopod...

It's very easy to use: I'm lucky enough to live 1,5 hours from the SturdyShot's builder (he's in Rome), so I went personally to try it and I bought it. He balanced it mechanically for my GH4 and Olympus 12-40 f/2.8, then for the same camera and Panasonic Leica 25 f/1.4. After that he used the software to give the 3 motors the exact power for my rig and he suggest to not change lenses, unless doing the mechanical balance again (by myself, because I can't go every time to Rome). The batteries lasts for 60-70 minutes, he gave me 2. So I had plenty of time shooting with one and only at the end of the day I had to use the second. The software parameters are quite easy to change, so you can improve your setting after some days of use. Of course I used the camera's LCD It's not so cheap, but I bought it because the builder is very serious and if I broke he can repair it quickly, in one day

Just purchased my Atomos Samurai Blade and SSD from B&H this morning. (even worse... I'm an overseas buyer! Who is using a reshipping service! OMG) Usually I tend to use Amazon a bit more than I use B&H, but this time I intentionally went for B&H over Amazon specifically because of this recent Union/SJW/AlJazeera beat up. Felt like I might as well do a bit of good in going a small way to balancing out some of the many orders I'm sure they've unfortunately lost due to this.

Unfortunately, most settlements are not instigated by the victims, but are brought on by lawyers. I'm not saying that B&H didn't abuse workers, only that all companies, when they reach a certain size, are targeted by lawyers who make the real money. It's the American way. I have a fair amount of experience in Wall Street settlements and what the public sees as some large number, is actually quite small, a cost of doing business. In other words, even if B&H were no better or worse than any other company, it would still end up paying $5.7 million to settle SOMETHING. Generally, various law firms attack companies and join together to get something. Not pretty! I'd like to say the government is un-biased, but it too, is run by politicians looking to score points with voters (who never look at the details). We all accept that this happens, I believe, because we understand the best we can do is keep a fire under everyone's butt. If B&H was really bad they would get fined out of business. If one doesn't buy what I'm saying then I ask, have you never gotten a ticket (for your car) that really had little to do with safety and a lot to do with shaking you down? Ahhh life!