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Since Mr. Jones brought it up - As a follow-up story to B&H Photo Video and Worker Abuses - they have unionized. And this is partly because of people like you and me: "The workers received additional support on Oct. 22, when a coalition of photography and video professionals launched an open letter to B&H management, calling on the company to end the hazardous working conditions and discriminatory practices. They also called on the company to negotiate a fair labor contract. Within a week more than 1,000 signatures from artists, journalists, gallerists, educators, students and photo technicians were obtained. “We welcome the workers at B&H to the USW and look forward to addressing their concerns with the company at the bargaining table,” said Shinn." http://www.usw.org/news/media-center/releases/2015/bh-photo-warehouse-employees-vote-to-join-usw-union This is an example of social media activism being successful. The employees now have collective bargaining powers. Hooray!

Making of a Murdered on netflix, is probably the best doc I have seen in the longest time. And just an example of incredible storytelling. Amazing editing, and for us on EOSHD, a great example of how it doesn't matter what the camera is, how crappy the lighting is, as long as you tell a super compelling story. Having the latest and greatest camera means nothing without putting hard, painstacking effort into ones story. Granted, I rather be caught dead than have to shoot again on the Olympus EMii or whatever that camera was called, but in the end, if it was for a doc like this, no one would say watching it, "oh boy, why was it so noisy in the shadows." Please watch this doc - it's amazing. The criminal justice system is broken in America. Oh I am speechless about it.

Yeah just use and layer grain.

I am really pleased to say the video quality of the X Pro 2 is seriously impressive. It's not 4K but it's enormously satisfying, sharp and detailed. What's great is that now we can finally shoot moving images with Fuji's superb film-like colour science, without having to worry about image quality. Read the full article

Hello guys, I'm creating this post to share something I did for myself to help me understand the difference between the original aspect ratio and end aspect ratio after de-squeeze with the different anamorphic lenses. Maybe it will be helpful for someone else. You can download it for mac of pc here http://www.sandrobrt.com/ratio-comparison-tool

Actually the US justice system is the worst one on earth… except for all the other ones.

That CPU is fine for RAW. Only the H264 codec is problematic. Other than the CPU you will need a strong GPU like the GTX970. See here for some info:

Well, I don't think it's in any way a stretch to realize that the American judicial system is flawed and imperfect. Honestly, any system run by humans will always betray our foibles. Regardless of this particular instance outlined by the documentary, I'd say it's reasonable to realize concerning problems do exists. Sometimes they can be very deep, motivated by pettiness, institutionalized, and/or highly troublesome. Cumulative realities about American law over the history on the nation are pretty telling. So, on the other end of the spectrum in this example, to idealize an institution without honest critique isn't good either. Also, the main point of the post I got is that a filmmaker can tell a good story without great gear. Other factors are wildly more important than image quality.

Not at all. I actually believe the filmmakers in this instance are making the right choices for their tale. Their storytelling decisions are impressive. Good storytelling isn't always comprehensive truth telling is all I'm saying, nor should it be. Nor, often, can it be. And I just felt like I could see some of the narrative strings being pulled in this instance. I do agree with most of their decisions regarding what strings needed to be yanked (and not yanked) in service of amazing a viewer. In other words, I'm impressed with the story, but am confident a more nuanced reality of it exists. I'm not saying I, as a viewer, should experience that nuance.

For me there's two kinds of docs, the ones which hook you visually and the ones that pull you in through a gritty ugly sense of realism, presence and story. Take David Attenborough's nature films on the BBC (Africa series certainly) as a good example of the visually spellbinding type, where the camera work is so important they attach 30 minutes to the end of each episode to show how they did it. In that case the cinema aesthetics are mega important (and sound) in terms of building tension, mood, poetic struggles for survival and drama. Take Koyaanisqatsi as another example - that's a poetic 'earth' doc shot in a visually mesmerising way, zero dialogue just spellbinding cinematic imagery and a Philip Glass score. No way would that have had the same effect on me if it had been shot sloppily by a news crew with a small chip ENG. And for an example of the polar opposite kind of docs, well there's plenty of those. Ed is right, in this case the visuals matched the content and it didn't matter about making it cinematic. I highly recommend the Nikon D5500 and D7200 if anyone wants to get out of the rat race of specs. They look just as good as the high end stuff in terms of style, with none of the hassles or expense of editing & storing 4K res footage.

Ok let me back up. There are a handful of cameras that pump out a decent HD image. I'm a renter so ive tried all of them. There are no cameras under 10k that I would consider buying due to deal breaker issues. The C100 2 comes closest as far as HD image quality is concerned but that camera is still brutally overpriced for what it is. I also like the Canon 1dc, lovely image but even at $7k, it's still overpriced and with no high frame rates and difficult post, it's also not worth buying. Blackmagic is hit or miss. They have a great filmic look but their cameras are notoriously unreliable and I pretty much can't trust them for paid work. Panasonic have backed themselves into a corner with m43 which will always be a disadvantage in the low light department. Nikon has never even spoken to someone who shoots video for a living so their cameras are almost always DOA. The Sony A7s has a stunning sensor and very lovely 1080p but their color science is bogus, I had to turn picture profile off and no slog 2 in order to get decent gradable skin tones but when I did that, there was a 2 stop hit in dynamic range. Since it's still 8bit color, the image falls apart quickly. Basically every camera company is run by morons when it comes to video. Canon literally hate their customers. They will give you the quality you want but they will charge you twice as much as you are willing to spend. Seriously, the c300 2 should cost $7k at most. It's especially frustrating since Samsung are literally sitting on a gold mine of video tech that they have decided to waste on cell phones. Fuji color can't be beat their video functionality almost always sucks and I'm sorry but I'm not seeing the image quality in these samples. The motion cadence is pretty unpleasant and I am seeing aliasing which at this point, is totally inexcusable. Everyone always talks about how many great tools we have at our disposal but I don't see it. I think most sub $10k cameras are garbage when it comes to image quality. I'm slightly hopeful for Panasonics new camera but with Varicam branding, I have a feeling it will be a pricy item. Keep in mind that Panasonic have the GH5 due later in the year so I doubt they would produce a Varicam in the prosumer price range.

Gravity was terrible. The first 15 minutes were mind-blowing, the rest was a train-wreck. George Clooney comes back as a Ghost to help keep Sandra Bullock alive? Is that a plotline out of a soap opera? I think the film was supposed to have a different cast, but took so long to make, it was compromised. Another film recently that was a complete mess was Joy. I think directors who pump out films too fast make stinkers. Innaurtu had Birdman, which is amazing, and David O has been pumping out beautiful films really frequently. I haven't seen Reverent, but the trailer puts me off. I don't know why - I'm not a fan of the look. Feels digital. Wish it was shot on film.

I found that timelapses are difficult with the BMPCC & simply resort to using a DSLR, but that looks fine. What I meant about focusing wide open (or there abouts), was just about getting critical focus - once you achieve that, then you stop down the taking lens. The problem with trying to focus when your taking lens is at f8 is to do with depth of field - there are more things in focus. For example, if you set your lens @ 10m & stop down your lens, then the area of what's in focus could be between 8-12m (this is not exact, but an example), as opposed to if you shot wide open, where only objects @ 10m will be in focus. So you never try to focus with a lens stopped down, simply because you'll never be able to achieve critical focus - you stop down once you achieve critical focus. Hope that makes sense.

Couldn't make it past 5 mins - the tone seemed so pretentious and fake. I enjoyed the movie, but this was so dramatic as if they just cured AIDS.

Panasonic has a 12-35mm f/2.8 and 35-100mm f/2.8 already But you'll need to keep on swapping back and forth between the two, plus they're expensive to buy both. To make a lens with a great range you will need to increase size and cost substantially, or be a slower f-stop. I'd rather keep the cost low! Thus why I proposed a Panasonic 14-90mm f/4 be created, could be a great little run and gun lens for the AF200 to compete against the likes of a FS7/FS5 or C100/C300 with their 18-105mm f/4 (or 28-135mm f/4) and the 24-105mm f/4 Given the existence already of the Nikon 24-120 f/4 for Full Frame and the Sony 18-105mm /f4 for APS-C, I believe a 14-90mm f/4 should be very achievable for the 4/3" sized sensor.

The Panasonic cameras have solid 1080p too, as do the new Samsungs with the latest firmware. And don't forget the A7S and RX10/RX100 III, which produce excellent 1080p out of the box.

Ok itsup now. https://vimeo.com/152842865

I disagree. The 1080p of the D5500 and D7200 is very solid indeed with the Canon LOG style flat picture profile. D750 as well, very good!

I have this CPU and Premiere Pro definitely uses all 6 cores. However if you're editing 4K h264 material don't expect blazing speeds. See this thread for more info: http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/18802-fast-4k-editing-on-osx-and-windows-10/

Hi! I'd like to share some tests I've been doing with my brand new sony a7rII. I used quite a lot of lenses in this video, including some anamorphic set ups. I reeeeally like this camera so far.

Nice! Would be great to see an head to head comparison with nx1, both with native 1080 and with 4k downsampled.

I give free 4K film grain on my website based on 35mm film scans. Feel free to five a check : http://luts.iwltbap.com/#freegrain

Yeah, as-is it's meant to be used in this kind of fashion: Oompf. Won't see me walking around with one of those anytime soon. But now... they've probably optimized the unit and upped the mobility so it can be used in a similar fashion as the Canon C-range, Sony FS, Blackmagic URSA Mini, heck even the AJA Cion and JVC GY-LS300. A proper AF100 spin-off indeed! Combining the AF100 styling and the Varicam tech turning into a significant pro-up from the GH4 and less limiting than the fixed zoom DVX200. Sounds like a sound plan to me!

I am sure there may be a day when I look at The Tree of Life and it speaks to me in ways I could not imagine right now. But right now I preferred Badlands. I was at the School of the Art Institute Chicago and it was the first Hollywood film I was asked to truly 'look at' by our screenwriting teacher. I think it is considerable to, er, consider context when viewing a film. If that film had been Tree of Life, it probably would have been my Mallick fave. The argument I am throwing out there is this: Is there a trend in Hollywood towards auteurism, whereby substance is being sidelined for technique? I don't know, I am just noticing a few Oscar voted films that were nominated for spectacle. Thats not neccisarilly a bad thing, but is this Hollywoods response to the digital age? Its like an anti-CGI. All technique. Like the DOP is saying, 'ok, imitate this bitch!'. In this regard I am generalising, because I am only thinking of the Revenant and Gravity, but to me they feel similar in how they got the publics opinion.

Does anyone see correlations with Gravity? Technically beautiful, loads of awards... forgotten. I liked the film, but it wasn't a real film experience, given the heavy subtext I viewed it with. I felt obliged to love it because, you know, I'm just suppose ta. I actually loved it before I saw it. Like a Tarantino movie, and I love his films. But I sometimes feel pressured to be able to quote stuff or talk in detail about shots and scenes. His films, to me, aren't that kind of inspiring. I like Star Wars. It was fun, and I was entertained. I did also have a hollow feeling, but I get that from Abams films. They are kind of satisfyingly revisionist and twisty, but leave you feeling like you have eaten too much candy. Hard to explain... Maybe its just taste, I like thrillers, twists and turns. I just watched Results and I had more fun laughing at Guy Pearce than I did being reflective about the Revenant. Its a movie, I never intended to be a cinematographer, so I kind of just wanted a good story. But I find that I prefer a lot of other revenge movies more (Old Boy, True Grit, Bone Tomahawk, Unforgiven....). For nature survival stuff I watch Bear Grylls. Shoot me. (Edit: The Edge with Hopkins and Baldwin was awsomeness!) For bear attacks I get my fix with Grizzly Man by Herzog, or Youtube. CGI stuff doesn't feel real to me, ever. I watched all the vlogs for the Hobbit movies and I find it strange that the director is in control of absolutely everything, until they hand the film over to CGI. Then a bunch of folks (young dudes) seem to make all the decisions about what seems real or gross or scary, and Jackson just kinda signs off on it if he likes it. But no one was pushing them to push themselves. It was like they sent the movie to compositing like they send an actor to make up. To me everything CGI has looked the same since forever... but better than the Matrix trilogies. I digress... Just my 2c. ... and I actually worked with a director who has recently worked with DiCaprio, so I am bias towards his movies because I feel some kind of 15 degrees of separation. AND my boss at BBC Storyville went to dinner with him to discuss his environmental work. I asked him what he was like and he said he was 'simply charming!'. Even given this... The Revenant was nice, but forgettable. To me.

Indeed. Happy accidents. I love the fuji cams for stills and just get so frustrated that their cameras I have on my shelf are pretty average for video.

Never. I don't go to movies rooting for the filmmaker to fail. I suppose any disappointment is the price one pays for not being an asshole.

I quite enjoyed it when all the dialogue faded away and we were left with the survival stuff. Fun to be an observer in that situation, albeit a sadist one!!

Unfortunately there was only a small amount of this film shot on the Alexa 65. Lubezki estimated that only 13% of the movie was shot with it. They received the camera well after production was underway and was only planning on using it for establishing shots. It would be fun to know what was and wasn't shot on the new camera.