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The cheap easy option is un diffused red heads lamps and put black bin liners on the windows to block out the sunlight

Yeah if you study the greats in film making they use a lot of camera angles we really can't even afford to do. They are masters of isolation. Having views in films you are not accustomed to, I think, keeps you glued to the seat to see something you have never seen before in a sense. Sort of the unknown , and humans are in reality, a curious breed. Plus lets face it, they have the best of the best on every high dollar film, using 35mm, Panavision, CinemaScope,70mm, etc from script writing, acting, acquisition, best DP, lighting equipment from hell, best focus pullers, and editing, not counting top notch audio, you name it, and a 50 piece Symphony Orchestra. Hard to go wrong with that. "We should be so lucky" as they say. But I guess even with all that, more stuff probably bombs than makes 300 million bucks. So don't feel bad if your efforts, at times, does not come out so hot.

I was wrong. I was a fool. I bought a Ursa Mini 4.6k EF mount. A week before the Ursa Mini Pro came out. Opps. But, still, this camera is incredible. I was an idiot for criticizing them. And now with the pro, they have delivered an ideal camera - capable of Raw or log for only $6000. That looks like an alexa. That is built well. That is small. That seems to not overheat. A really amazing camera. Blackmagic has done what Red had dreamed of.

Well, by my count that's 2 Panasonic primes but I see what you mean Nice range you have now! Looking forward to seeing videos from especially the 25mm and 12mm!.

GH5 demo reel filmed in Yokohama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RacTSKuNuo&t=2s

Just did a search on Vimeo. Thanks. Found some great footage by James Miller. Anyone who say this camera is "unusable" needs to shoot something other than tests. The IQ IMO stomps on my A7s II in terms of color space. In fact, it gets a depth I don't see on the FS5/7. I'm torn. I plan on selling my A7s II in the coming weeks to help finance either a BMC UMP or GH5. Both have their up and downsides. But lately, I've been going smaller and more discreet so I'm leaning towards the GH5. With a speed booster - outstanding.

Pentax 645 75mm 2.8/Kipon Baveyes/Sony A7s Last one is Pentax 645 45mm 2.8 Quick test as I just received the adapter today. I had to get the Leica M version and adapt it as I needed it for a shoot and the Sony version was sold out on Adorama. Now I have to return it because the 45mm only focuses to 1 meter. I hope the extra 10mm in the Sony adapter will fix this.

That has nothing to do with "hacking". It's just a bot registering new users and posting rubbish. Maybe the register form needs a good captcha function or the new registrations should need manual approval by a moderator before being able to post for a while?

My eye was particularly taken by his post about promising to cure relationship problems using black magic. On the basis of that, I've ordered an Ursa Mini Pro. I'll keep you posted on whether it does indeed stop the missus nagging me about doing more around the house.

Could some admin delete and ban the dumbass that's spamming the forum. Thanks in advance. ??

Lighting, my achilles heel and something I really need to work on. SO, I've got a client who has requested a hard light look for a corporate interview shoot. The only thing is, their office has a ton of natural light and is surrounded on two sides by windows. It's lovely, but I'm not sure how to create that hard light look they're after in such a well-lit environment. Would anyone have any tips at this stage? My gut says, light the subjects extremely brightly and then expose for that in camera, so that the usually light office environment looks like it's in the shade. I'm also very used to working with LED panels and I feel like at some point it might be time to take the step up to more complex lighting systems. Any help is hugely appreciated! p.s We should really have a go-to 'Lighting' topic.

That's because you're not using a larger lens circle. When you put a full-frame 35mm lens on an APS-C camera you're not using a full-frame lens the way it was intended. You're only using the center section of glass in the lens. I have different systems BECAUSE they are different. I didn't buy them to try and get the same result and often use the SAME lenses across systems as it saves me buying more lenses. That said, IF there is a lens available, then you can match them all else being equal*** Trouble is, there are no 12mm f0.7 M4/3 lenses that would be needed to match a 24 1.4 lens FF or 42.5mm f0.6 M4/3 lens you would need to match an 85 1.2 FF. You would probably need to be shooting in something besides air to be able to match a FF f0.95 lens with M4/3 (though an f0.5 lens would get close). Using focal reducers with the fastest lenses doesn't get you any benefit in speed either as there seems to be limits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_speed#Fast_lenses If you have a faster medium format lens, the same also applies against FF but again, apart from some rare and expensive mostly aerial lenses, that isn't going to be available and wide angle lenses in particular are not going to be (easily) matched (let alone beaten) by what is available for FF. For me, "equivalence" favours smaller formats for telephoto use (as long as it is "good enough"). *** The day M4/3 can match my A7s in low light/high ISO is likely still quite a way off though wouldn't it be nice to see and of course by then FF low light cameras will be better still. The Government does create jobs!

Cheers, just bookmarked his review.

Can you pin down exactly what they mean by "hard light look"? Do they mean gritty with lots of contrast? High key? If it's what I'm thinking of, you could cover all the windows except one, then use that as a hot edge and gel a softer source (1/2 CTB should be fine) from the opposite side as your key. Or vice versa, depending how the ratios work out. Then some negative fill on the down side of the face. Should give you something like this. I would avoid undiffused redheads/blondes. They tend to have hot spots and an uneven spread, and are therefore not controllable enough to use directly on talent IMO. Better off using a fresnel with Hollywood Frost or a couple sheets of Opal.

Wow, "extremely brightly" sounds like a blowout from hell on their faces. You are going to have to diffuse it a little somehow, maybe move them way back, or your sensor is going to go into meltdown LoL. Naked light sources on a face, ahh I don't think that is a plan. You are going to have to have a camera like a Arri to handle the DR. Try this website for some good suggestions. About the eaisest page I have found to see differnet looks that work. https://postimg.org/image/c3e3dnmht/

Sorry I haven't had the time to do any test for you guys. I've been away for work the past 2 weeks. @jase I did a quick test with the touch AF in manual mode (that's what you meant right?) and it hunts a lot. Manual focus is better but when I'm focussing on something close and then something 1.5 m away it's easy to hit focus just to turn the focus ring to much and get out of focus again. I guess that's what you're used to with photo lenses anyway. I find it somewhat easier to focus with the 12 as it's bigger, the 15mm is so tiny. Note that I performed the tests at f/1.4. Did that make any sense to you? One thing I would like to mention is that I think 12mm is a much more difficult focal length than 15mm, but I guess that also depends on what you're gonna do with it. I needed a wide and bright lens for shoothing indoors so I bought this at 20% off at black friday. @jonpais congrats on new lens. I'm pretty sure you're gonna love it! This video is shot with the PL 15mm until 3.48 and then the PL 12mm for the rest of it. Don't remember the aperture but I think it was around 2.0. It's shot on a GH3 in 1080 50p so not sure how helpful it is but at least you can see that the two lenses match up pretty good. They are color corrected and graded btw. The PL12 has a slightly cooler signature and along with the PL42,5 it has the best color and rendering of the Panasonic lenses I have used, with the 15mm coming in not far behind. Unfortunately that's all I have for now but I'll see if I can make a quick comparison with the 12-35mm next week.

Yes...the skin tones on the James Miller footage are beautiful!...add to that overall image quality...stabilization....the controlled rack focus feature (no small thing by itself!) plus a ridiculously long list of additional features, and this camera becomes an easy choice...simply nothing approaching it even remotely, within a few thousand $'s in IMO...glad Panny takes their time with the GH releases and just keeps upping the standards that other companies then play catch-up to!

Nothing was hacked. I went through the list of spambots registered since 6th March when the wave started (around 40-50 accounts were registered) and banned them all. They can't post any more content but if you receive any PMs from spambots which I obviously cannot see on my side, let me know so I can ban them as a few may still be lingering. Forum software is already up to date. The domain name for notifications - what are you seeing exactly? It should be andrew@eoshd.com The Q&A is already there for new user registrations. Also Recaptcha is enabled. The bots don't get through very often... we've only had 4 or 5 spam attacks in the last 3 years and all completely resolved after 1-2 days. Thank you to Andy Lee and Jon for clearing up this one. This used to be enabled all the time but was relaxed to lessen the burden on mods and myself for approving new content and speeding up access to forum for eager new users. This had been disabled for almost a year without any trouble As we are now going through a wave of spam attacks it has been enabled again. I ALWAYS find the spam attacks coincide with me criticising another site. Someone is definitely putting me out there as a target. I just don't know who. No problem on the forum software side and it is advanced enough with spam prevention features. You won't be seeing any more this month, or the next.

Please. No-one is denying that there are combo's that you cannot match in practice (as in your example), when very large differences in sensor size are involved. But this is only due to the fact there are no equivalent lenses (Iphone 6 cropfactor 7.21, you can do the math...or can you?). However, the overlap between say medium format and fullframe is much less extreme and yes, can easily be matched using equivalent lenses.

From Austria with love.

I like the Pana much more. Better focus ring, even when the Oly is in manual mode and the color has something special. Really looking forward to my next project with that lens.

Hey! So my debut work is gonna be shown in a local cinema, and I have a test run tomorrow morning. I have never exported anything for the movie theaters and would need some help. I was told that the footage is supposed to be in DCP format, 2k res. When I export my project from Resolve, I can only see easyDCP format, and am not sure if that's the one I need. I am also not sure which coded I should use (footage shot is ProresHQ). There's also a bunch of setting under "advanced" dropdown in resolve, do I need to touch any of those? Thanks!

It depends on the aspect of the screen that you are projecting on! If your projecting on a screen that is Scope, format for that, if your projecting in a mainly FLAT environment go with that container. Whichever makes your image larger to the audience. I've used OpenDCP in the past and it is effective, but I actually recommend DCP-O-Matic, simple setup and you get a preview of the project. It's free just like OpenDCP, and accepts Prores and DNxHD files then does the full conversion.

Had an hour to run around, so did some more testing. All shot wide open, because why not:

It is! Even shooting spherical. In the zoom test I used the full range. On the teaser, 35 pretty much covered but was too distorted and wide for most of the content. The big stationary wides were 35-40.

Yes...I understand...and it's really about getting the image to a place you can live with...so it 's not a distraction, but the camera just gets out of your way so you can tell the story...for me, I guess I'm lucky that I like the image LOL...just bought the Leica 12-60...never thought I'd spend that kind of money on a Panny lens!...anyway I saw the footage you shot at the Santa Monica Airport? with the Micro...you made that footage sing!

I feel like f/2.8 (on FF) is the sweet spot for weight / size / performance when it comes to video. So f/2 on APS-C and f/1.4 on m4/3. Also typically easy to balance on a gimbal because rather compact lenses. I'm all about fast lenses (in photography all I used was f/1.4) but for video I think the usability decrease can be big. I'm really contemplating lately. Theoretically the easy way is just to get a set of Zeiss / Canon / Nikon glass and be done. I think I could do just with 40 (barely anyone makes those so probably a 35 + 50) and 85mm (this one preferably macro). Maybe a 24mm for gimbal and landscapes on top. If you get them in Nikon mount, you're set for life because I don't think we will ever see a system with a bigger flange distance come out. I have 35mm 1.4 & 85mm 1.4 from Samyang but obviously that's a biatch to focus with open aperture and I struggle to balance the big 35mm lens on my mirrorless body. On the other hand going native is also becoming really rewarding with crazy auto focus performance (inc. touch screen for focus), face-tracking, hybrid image stabilization and what not.

Great video Jase! Happy to hear you like the 15mm. I always though it would be a great option for what you do. If I could just choose one lens for a trip it would be the 15mm hands down. Didn't think you would get the Panny since you got the Oly 17mm though. How to they compare?

So far in all of this lively discussion the link below has been the best information on the GH5's potential. All these "lab" tests mean little to me compared to seeing footage used in a edited film. While I do conduct tests all the time to find a camera's limits and give me direction to its potential, nothing beats a shoot. Despite liking what I see in the link, I do wish I'd see more tests or sample footage would involve flesh and bone humans in front of the camera and a little camera movement rather than the usual Phillip Bloom style "moving stills" approach. I've nothing against that style of shooting but it seems to overwhelm the sample footage these days. We all don't make landscape films to easy listening tunes. I'd love to see some stories, docs, etc shot on this camera because at the end of the day, we don't shoot to make tests. Andrew, there was a Thai filmmaker you once featured that made an amazing short on perhaps a 5D (not sure) about a kick boxer I believe. I wish Panasonic would put the camera in his hands. That's the type of shooting that would tell me a lot about the camera - how flesh tone, movement, contrast, etc play into the drama. But I guess Panasonic (and Sony, and Canon, and....) rather give it to safe bets, blog presence or pretty ladies in Japanese gardens and other cinematic pablum.

I actually did a shoot the other day and got almost the exact same shot of a girl on a D750 w/ Voigtlander 58mm 1.4 and a RZ67 w/ 110mm 2.8 and FP4, a minute or so apart. I'll dig them out and post later.

I must have been lucky with my GH4's...still very happy with the cameras...though I don't do the stress tests that you do...I'm simply more than happy with the image and what it takes to operate the camera!...Looking forward to the GH5 also!....Saw some lovely footage from you on the BMMCC though....did'nt you have to come up with a major workaround to make that camera work for you? And for those waiting for their GH5s...some anamorphic footage shot on GH4 I just saw today!....

I'm really sorry but I think @kidzrevil 's videos are completely useless to judge lens performance. Half a second in I forget to look at the rendering of the lens because the women are just always so good looking. Only cat videos do for science! Really enjoy following him on FB, the consistent stream of super short snipets are just great visuals and I really like the more stylized looks.

Camera movements its a important point that people forget to mention. Clever use of a slider or a crane gives you instant film karma.

Sure. You have to re-flash all 6 gopro cameras so they are unusable as normal cameras. (Can be flashed back, but it's cumbersome) Managing the data cards from 6 cameras is a pain. It comes with tweezers so you can pull the cards out. Managing power means plugging in all 6 cameras separately when in the rig to recharge their internal batteries. Nice thing is they are all synchronized for start/stop recording, but with each one having it's own power -- problems can occur. Note: you can get it with a V-Mount, but only if you buy it as a complete $5000 kit. If you have V-Mounts already, you CANNOT buy the power cable separately. Many have fried their OMNI units trying to jury-rig or buy a "compatible" cable for V-Mount power. It's annoying that GoPro doesn't sell these cables separately. Other GoPro array systems exist, but without a hardware sync, you have to deal with aligning them in post, which is a pain in a real production environment. The software does an okay job stitching, but I expected it to be better for the amount of money spent. I plan to sell mine (without cameras, just the rig). I just haven't gotten around to listing it on eBay. It's actually pretty good for where we're at right now with surround-video. But you have to avoid enclosed spaces, and since we do mostly cars, that's more of an issue for us.

If it's anything like other blackmagic products the person will have died of natural causes by the time it's delivered

While I've seen RED and Sony content that looks great and with excellent skintones, many times the color and highlights don't look very good (looked up on IMDB etc. to see what camera was used). ARRI just looks more pleasing, and I figure that it's also creating footage that's easier to make look good with less effort. For what we do (pretty basic stuff at this point), the C300 II does everything we need including creating skintones that need little or no work in post when lit well. The A7S II for example can also do good skintones, but needs work in post. I think ARRI's experience with digital film scanners has given them great insight into building a camera system that produces film-like capture which ends up being very easy to make look good in post, and thus why most of the ARRI content looks really good. Guessing that ARRI will announce a true 4K(+) (Super35) camera at NAB.

I will make a comparison, nikon d800 50mm 1.2@1.8 vs mamiya 645 80 1.9@ 2.8 vs mamiya rz67 90mm 3.5@3.5 which is roughly equivalent. I will use some cheap black and white film unless someone wants to buy me some portra 400 or ektar 100 (sharper) for this crap :P Btw, the equivalences don't have to be exact, because if the difference is so tiny it could be adressed to some minor equivalence differences, then there is no difference between formats. The fact is, I use 6x7 because I can't take the same picture with the nikon, trust me, I fucking hate developing and scanning neither do I like lugging around a gigantic camera plus lenses and attracting views from people, I don't buy the whole romantic point of view about film, I just enjoy the endresult.

The camera's face barriers to higher end acceptance because a lot of camera rental companies don't even stock them. You can't rent them from Panavision. They're just too cheap to be worthwhile to rent out. They're cheaper to buy for a production than to rent. I haven't bought a camera for a show for a long long time. I only rent. I own two of my UM4.6K bodies because the production bought them for the show I was shooting and "gave" them to me at the end because they'd written off the costs, which were, in the scheme of things very small for camera. JB

Ursa pro mini is not a one-off camera, people will buy those to stick in the long term, being from basic (but with advanced hype) productions right now with the SD cards, a better production later on with the CF cards, and a feature with the recorded on the back. This is the selling point of the mini, and it is all over their site, as they do not stress enough how possible is to do it all with this camera (including studio work). First of all the lower spec-ed Reds or the older ones aren't that competitive to the Ursa with the 4.6K sensor right now; this Ursa upgrade is hugely on the right way that will attract all those considering buying a used Red (with I do not know how many hours on the sensor), and Alexa (and the best of the Reds) are so far ahead that aren't even an option. Do you know how many top Red and Alexa cameras people own? Less than you think, most are belonging to rental companies.

Film riot showed a DIY betterfly frame some time ago, probably you can do something similar using the Ikea shower curtains....if you do please share your results later, I am also interested in something similar....

I've heard good things about Ikea shower curtains!

Camera G80 (gimbal,slider) , GH4 slowmotion , LX100 - Timelaps