Leaderboard

The GH5 has the chunkiest 10bit files I've ever seen for $2000. Some of the lenses are even more of a bargain. Read the full article

I want to share a short script I wrote in python that does focus ramping time lapses for Panasonic cameras. I believe this is doable in magic lantern for Canon users but I've yet to see an implementation for Panasonic. Here is a short technical preview: Here is the python script I used to make this focus rack timelapse: https://github.com/lippyt/lumixlib/blob/master/focuslapse.py I'm sure that there are much more creative uses especially for shots with the majority of objects in the near-medium range.

Everything else is $h!t? Really? So lowlight is shit? Lens selection, battery life, durability, support, picture quality? You seem mighty convinced of the EVA1 for a camera that no one has seen a single frame from. I think I'll hold judgement for when it's released, as talking out of ones ass always stinks.

Anyone guess what might be going on here then?

I have upgraded your forum profile to a Super Member so you can edit your original post and generally have mod-like access to the forum. Thanks for all your efforts so far on the project.

And just to stress that the purpose of this particular prodder is to help develop colour profiles rather than being an end thing in itself, in case you thought I was advocating twiddling around like Kraftwerk while you're recording video. Though having said that, I think that there is a place for a similar type of control surface (one with faders as well as pots and a few switches) to operate the cameras in terms of the rest of its functionality like shutter, iris and focus. In that way, the colour profile function could just be switched into a second layer and be permanently available. Should also mention that you will be able to save a lot more than the one custom profile that Panasonic offers you with this system so once you have all of these parameters as you like them then you can save the whole snapshot for instant recall via buttons on the controller. If this gets any traction you'll also be able to easily share them with each other too to load on to your own cameras.

BTW - GH5 native support is NOW in Davinci Resolve Studio 12.5.6 ! BOTH .mov and .mp4 C24K 10bit 4.2.2 works in windoze! YEY! D/L it now.

Assuming you mean 5D Mkiii?...if yes, I can reply with what I've personally found so far. Other shooters here no doubt have more insight. Depends on resolution settings and detail of scene being recorded. On the most recent high resolution crop mode build -the clever MLV lite compression will adjust data rate to squeeze as much record time out as possible, but if your scene has high amount of detail - it can spike the data rate and restrict duration of record time. Lexar or Komputerbay CF cards are most commonly used, 1000x or 1066x Komputerbay cards have never personally let me down and are pretty cheap. I can shoot up to 3.5k continuous (scene detail and aspect ratio dependent) on Komputerbay cards. Shorter record durations are possible at higher resolutions. 1080p raw is pretty bulletproof on the 5Diii and is the easiest to shoot with, it is the higher resolutions that always have the quirks or limitations. That is to be expected when you realize what the camera is doing to enable raw video recording (that canon never intended to be made possible). It can be made very easy if using MLVFS workflow. Basically it acts as a virtual drive to convert the MLV files into .dng files that can be registered to have a Resolve compatible header to the files...no transcodes needed. Search MLVFS in the ML forum for instructions to setup and run. MLV Dump also works great, very simple operation to 'virtually' convert MLV files to .dng. There are many software options for both PC and Mac to process or view the camera files...people seem to have different workflows tips and tricks that also are evolving with the firmware. Short answer is no. You can get a lower res, choppy frame rate playback with the non-crop 3.5/4k ML builds. The most recent high resolution builds have live view seriously choked or purposely broken (when in crop mode), so as to enable enough processing power to be freed up to the camera for the higher resolution recording (from my understanding). If shooting 1080p raw, you can also shoot .h264 proxy file at the same time, then select the proxy (as normal) for realtime playback. This is a good option for confidence or client playback as well as a backup if shooting an interview for example. The audio from the .h264 can also be useful as scratch sound to help sync the raw video to a separate sound recording. Yes. On 5Diii you can monitor a 'mirrored' live view display from the camera, or HDMI output will act as separate monitor feed (clean). The options depend on the two different builds of ML firmware you can choose to run. With the new high resolution crop mode, I personally use 123 build, that allows me to use rear camera lcd live view as the framing reference (non real-time liveview)...and the HDMI feed to my monitor will display a zoomed in (but real-time) preview - this gives a nice punch in view to use for focus. It's a quirky workaround, but can be made to work quite well. Lots of Gotchas...and part of the fun is to work them out, or creatively work around them. Developments and tweaks are continuously being made to the ML firmware builds, so what could be an issue today, may have a solution tomorrow. If you can code, you can become a developer to get a feature tested, approved and the committed into a working build for others to test and use. It is a cool community of people that have managed to make great things come out of canon DSLR's. To use ML and get the most out of it, there is some research and reading of the ML website/forum required....that is not necessarily for everyone. It depends on how much time you can afford to spend. The ML builds and forum developed workflows are so much more refined than a few years ago, so it is very accessible to those who are willing to work with something that does not necessarily come 'ready to run' out of the box. Any detailed questions are best searched on the ML forum, virtually EVERY question has already been asked and answered there, as well as detailed explanations as to how to get your camera up and running pretty quickly. http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/

The stabilized/moving sensor on the GH5 may be an issue with the BMD speedbooster. The XL is not a problem, though it does a bit of vignetting with some S35 lenses....still well worth getting rid of in post, for the extra 1/3 stop faster and slightly smaller crop factor.

A quick video demo of the new prodder in action. All controls are real time with feedback of the parameters on the LCD screen. The video shows a recording of the G7 being controlled (and of it being controlled as the changes are live when its recording) but will obviously work with the other Lumix cameras. Parameters controlled are : Profile type (Standard, cinelike D etc) Contrast Noise Reduction Sharpness Saturation Hue and ISO so you can see any effect changes that may or may not occur with your current settings at different ISOs Now there may be no bugs in the software but there certainly was in the video. A real life bug crawling across the Colour Checker!

Sure. For me, it's not just the wider field of view -- it's the compressed spatial and defocus qualities of relatively longer focal lengths married to a wider field of view that really revs my engine.

I actually use the property of equality between tele-normal and wide-normal to determine the current focusing distance. I have not tried to deliberately switch between normal and fast modes, though I believe that their focus steps do not share a common denominator so we can definitely get between the cracks that way. Another way is for a user to turn the focusing ring so this generates a non squared-off value, for example he could reach 101,102,103....119,120 depending on luck. Requesting a tele or wide normal after that point will mean that all focus steps will not be similar to their squared-off values. Certainly, I guess that panasonic gave lesser focus steps at the wide end because its much easier to focus/ the DOF would more than cover up for it. And even the coarse steps in some lenses would be more than sufficient for the focus pulling portion of your camera controller. As for focus breathing on lenses, the 25mm panasonic lens has a ridiculous 20% scale from near to infinity (non scientific test, a guesstimation when playing with premiere footage).

What I think might be interesting is if you deliberately drive it to the boundary of where there are cracks between the positions, so between 101 and 120 for example on the 14-42 there is a nice bit of space to work in. If you drive it to 120 and then give it one more tele_slow command and see if it goes to 119 or does it go directly down to its next boundary point of 101. Similarly if you drive it deliberately into the cracks with a tele_fast or tele_slow will it sit at that point or round itself up or down. For stills I can see an issue with falling into the cracks depending on your interval but I think in terms of motion for a fader that a user wants to go from position A at the top of the throw to position B at the bottom under manual control then there might be more latitude to get away with it. I think that the lenses themselves optically might be a bigger hurdle to a really nice pull (especially with the breathing and the unknown sneaky correctional stuff that often foes on under the hood with these cameras) than the process. Well, that'll be my excuse anyway

Thanks for your reply. I also have a Pi so looking forward to when you give the information on this, great work

Thanks To be honest, the accuracy of the lens control and what you can do with it is always going to be varying degrees of fudge without the command to directly return it to one of the 0-1024 positions. I presume by profiling for focus steps you're referring to how many actual focus positions there are hiding within the 0-1024 range? With some of the lenses it feels like there are only about 6! I don't have a big range of native MFT lenses (and all of them are the cheap ones!) but I was wondering if requesting a dump from them using http://192.168.54.1/cam.cgi?mode=getinfo&type=lens might offer up an automated answer to what you're after. This is the output for what its worth Olympus 45 1.8 ok,2304/256,434/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,45,45,on,128/1024,on Panasonic 20 1.7 ok,2048/256,392/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,20,20,on,128/1024,on Panasonic 12-32 3.5 5.6 12 ok,2304/256,925/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,32,12,on,128/1024,on 18 ok,2304/256,1062/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,32,12,on,128/1024,on 32 ok,2304/256,1273/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,32,12,on,128/1024,on Panasonic 14 2.5 ok,2304/256,677/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,14,14,on,128/1024,on Panasonic 45-200 4.5 5.6 @45 ok,2304/256,1024/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,200,45,on,128/1024,on @100 ok,2304/256,1138/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,200,45,on,128/1024,on @200 ok,2304/256,1273/256,3584/256,1195/256,0,off,200,45,on,128/1024,on I can make a guesstimate of what each of those parameters are (and you can see that the third one x/256 is current focal length as it varies within the zoom etc) and unfortunately the answer you're after isn't in there. Obviously, if you manually put the lens at infinity and try and nudge it one more place with http://192.168.54.1/cam.cgi?mode=camctrl&type=focus&value=tele-normal It will return ok,0,1024 So you know that its correctly hit 0 and similarly if you put it at minimum distance and tell it go one step wider it will return ok,1024,1024 And that obviously doesn't change per lens so at least thats consistent! In terms of creating something functional from what we have to play with, whilst it would be desirable to hit exact points, the four focus functions that we have at our disposal can be massaged into doing something useful using methods like your comparison routine to return to a specific point. The key to making it a useful practical function though is being in control of the entire process. If we are driving the focus ourselves using a stick or fader then we have constant feedback of which of the 0-1024 values it is currently at so this can make the profiling unnecessary as we always know this is a 'legal' value because the user has chosen it based on the image being in focus therefore it must be an actual focus point the lens is capable of. And if we now that then, of course, we should be able to make it return to it. The transition between two such points is something that, again, if we are in charge of the whole process - i.e. the user has focused using our focus controller and will be doing a physical pull from A to B with our controller (particularly a fader with fixed end points) - then we can scale it to at least make it a consistent experience. By consistent I mean, the rate at which they move the fader from one end to the other is controlling the rate of transition irrespective of how many or few actual focus points the lens is capable of resolving. Don't get me wrong, it will always be a fudge of sorts but if we are up against the limitations of the lens in terms of how coarse the transition is then it would be like that anyway if they did it manually. The proof is in the testing I suppose to see how smooth or not it is with each lens (and I'm not ignoring some inherent glitchiness caused by the way we're communicating with the camera either) and then the challenge is to try and mitigate it and smooth it out with different scaling techniques.

Just read your article on this topic Andrew. Its funny that there is no good 4k B cam to the C200. Even funnier that in 2017, there is also no good 1080p B cam to the C100/300.

Yes, all simultaneously. I'll sort a video of it in operation later on. Curves are still under development....

Hi BTM_Pix, love your work with the focus controller! Would you be doing lens profiling/setup for lenses for this focus racking system? I've done some minor research into how many possible focus steps there are per lens and I found that it varies between lenses and even among different focal lengths on the same zoom lens. I would believe this will affect the duration of a focus pull depending on how the focus racking code is done. If you've already considered this, perhaps we could request fellow forumers to share their lens focus step data so that there is a more complete picture as to how focus step varies. Here is the python file that I wrote for finding lens data: https://github.com/lippyt/lumixlib/blob/master/lensdata.py

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071S8DH6F/ Passion project titled GODDAMMIT. Typical of many passion projects, I wore many hats. Directed by Ryan Moser Writing Credits Ryan Moser Keaton S. Ziem Produced by Jason Antico Rob Goldman Ryan Moser Keaton S. Ziem Cinematography by Ryan Moser Film Editing by Ryan Moser Editorial Department Ryan Moser ... colorist Sound Department Jason Downer ... sound designer / sound editor / sound recordist Music by Twilight In Versailles Grading System: DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Location: Los Angeles, CA USA Camera: Samsung NX1 Format: UHD H265 Type: Short Film Duration: 7 minutes Workflow: Much of this project was achieved with an arduous amount of time and energy spent in pre-production. Before production, I personally inquired and received helpful information from this very site. Camera and lighting choices were tested and nitpicked down to the finest minutiae. The compositing work was achieved in After Effects and had a final assembly within DaVinci Resolve. A lot of the latest features and FX within Resolve such as glows, etc. really elevated the overall look of the project.

Great to hear! That was very much the intention. PS: It was a dolly move the whole time.

This way cool!

A focus slider and and switches for sensitivity settings of the slider would be great.

I was an A7RII user who upgraded a couple of weeks ago to the A9 (I used the 5d3 before the A7R2). I shoot mostly music videos, live concerts, and a bi-weekly documentary style web series. I know some really love the s-log and swear by it, but I feel I can get just as good of a look by adjusting the in-camera profiles (turn contrast/sat/sharpness down a few notches & adjust white balance) and then color correcting in post. Video editing is my main passion in filmmaking and my strongest area of ability, so I don't mind the extra steps in post to achieve the best picture possible. I use all Canon glass with the Metabones Canon EF/EF-S Lens to Sony E Mount T Smart Adapter (Fifth Generation). The A9 thus far has been more than I expected- in a good way. It's FAST when taking photos (sometimes I'm asked to take some during the live show, and the speed of this camera really REALLY helps me get the shot I'm expected to get.) The video quality vs the A7RII is much MUCH better. Less artifacts at higher ISO's and much more clarity/flexibility in post. Not having S-LOG was never a major concern with me in all honesty, as I said above, I achieve the style & look I want mostly in post with different LUTs. Some will say that's not the correct way to do it for the best picture quality possible, but I'll just agree to disagree with them and leave it at that. My opinion on the A9 after 2 weeks of in-depth shooting in indoor/outdoor shows with a lot of changing variables in light is it's everything I needed and wanted. I'm new to Sony and still wouldn't call myself a major Sony guy (it's hard to break away from Canon), but I would buy this camera 10x over given my options at the time of purchase. If you're a guy who is worried about the lack of picture profiles, rent it for a week or 2, tweak the settings to your liking, then see what you can do in post. Hope this helps someone on the fence about the A9. Obviously if you're on a strict budget, the A7S or A7RII would probably fit your needs better, but if you want to bump your picture quality up and get 120fps @ 100mbps I would seriously consider this camera.

I would sell off the 7D (outdated IQ and ergonomics), 100-400 (longer than you'll need unless you're doing nature shows), and 135mm (duplicated length and aperture in the 70-200). Grab an 80D, a Rode VideoMic Pro, an acceptable-minimum fluid head (Manfrotto 500 or 504 or Bento S8). If you won't have an audio person then get a basic external recorder, mic, and boom pole. Maybe a small 3.5mm recorder and matching lavalier. Depends on what you're shooting. If that leaves you with extra money, go for a C100 or C100II instead. Then look at sliders and stabilizers. You could also look into switching to a Sony or Panasonic mirrorless cam, paired with a Metabones speedbooster, which will give you much better video IQ than the 80D, or even the C100 in good light.

Yes And yes again. Its for live interactive control of the profile, sharpness, noise reduction, saturation, hue and ISO to create new custom profiles. Amazingly enough, it actually work as well! Even more surprising is that it allows this while you are recording.

Am still working on my film and still loving the results. Here's a screengrab from my shoot yesterday. I just threw a LUT on there, to get it into Rec709. I'm sure the final look will be different and more refined... However I do have a question for some of the ML Raw veterans out there... I tend to shoot a lot of silhouettes, and I am finding it tough exposing for them. The Raw histogram is telling me it is overexposed when the sun is in the shot, so when I close the Iris to get me some sun stars, even though it is still showing as over exposed, I am getting a crap ton of noise. I know @squig ends up with some dark footage, any ideas? Also any new news in 3K/4K Raw?

Wow, for me this is simply about 4k (something I don't need) but it really has been eye opening looking.. Just looking to see what 4k cameras exist and on one of Canon's Australian sites at least, they had a feature selector and the option available was full HD! (have there been any recent cameras from anyone for serious -or even not so serious video that DIDN'T have full HD)? Meanwhile Sony, in just the FF A7/A9 series alone has what, seven different cameras that can do 4k in some form somehow (if you include the ones that need a external recorder and the seldom mentioned S3C and SC3a) and not to mention all the others too. Even in handycam's Sony has several 4k versions (as do some of the other makers). Looking at some video store sites and what is available, there also a few other specialty 4k cameras from other makers and a lot of those seem to also have an Exmor sensor too. Seems to me that for some players 4k is standard but for Canon it is still something exotic.

Thanks for the kind words. It's also nice to know that you grasped the depth of the project. I agree that the project deserves more views so feel free to share it with other like-minded friends and family. As for Amazon, my past feature film is better suited for that platform. I don't think many people are currently going to Amazon for short film viewing. I wish there was a larger demand because I prefer it as a platform, since it likely gets people to view films on TVs rather than computer screens. To get onto Prime you have to submit to Amazon with the required media necessary for distribution. I get a fraction of a penny for every number of minutes viewed. So like I mentioned, my past feature film makes me a stipend every month.

thx, tweak! I have a typo, Its the Elmoscope ii, (not Kowa) i forgot which one i was using, After seeing this test i did the Tito Ferradans blackening immediately.

If you get a cheap 95mm UV and knock out the glass, that has male 95mm threads and costs very little.

You can use this formula: 256GB/((MB/s * 60)/1000) Prores 444 XQ = 17 min on single 256GB Card Prores 444 = 26 min Prores 422 HQ = 39 min Prores 422 = 58min Prores 422 LT = 84 min

The Tech Specs page for the Ursa Mini has storage rates listed for all the flavours of ProRes: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursaminipro/techspecs#W-URSA-20 I shot a short doc on the Micro on ProRes LT and that graded just fine.

Its highly likely that it will be purely dependent on what controller people want to use. Its fundamentally in there but just mapped to a thumbstick at the moment. A controller with a fader in (or many faders) is easily supported. Watch this space, I suppose.

man, if you could get a slider for focus I'd be so happy!

The very first prototype I did was not too dissimilar actually !

Looks like arduino 16x2 screen

It tells the app from the camera which menus to offer to the user. By mimicking the camera side to the app, it might be possible to persuade it to show them but it would only allow the same commands that have been sent directly from the browser to be sent by the app so the end result will be the same if the camera doesn't fancy it. And it would be a lot of work to write something that mimicked the camera as the computer would have to act like a server amongst other things and because of the stay alive heartbeat between the app and the camera it would require effort that I fully expect would only prove what is already known. Which is that if the camera itself doesn't have the recipe or the ingredients to make a cheeseburger it will just not make a cheeseburger however nicely we ask. Everyone is of course welcome to try that but I'm going to focus in another direction as I firmly believe that using this method will not bring additional formats and if it does then you are into another layer of additional work to create an app to massage the metadata and there will always be the limitation of no in camera playback. The only nagging thing I have about it that might be worth trying is to set the region using the octopus boot up method to Japan. It is in no way guaranteed or expected but neither is it beyond the bounds of possibility that for its own domestic market, Panasonic may have additional functionality. ------------------------------ When the cameras return a rejected message rather than an err_parameter it is usually indicative of it not being open for any sort of burger business, cheese or otherwise. There are usually two scenarios for this. 1) The ImageApp is also running. 2) The camera is in a menu. And number 3 is likely to be the one that is being seen here which is that it is utterly confused about the burger that you've just asked it to make, has set the kitchen on fire and the order window has been automatically closed by the sprinkler system. If it could, it would be displaying this image on its rear screen

Mostly sonya7s2, some bm pocket sprinkled here and there. Graded in resolve, ohhh and the joy of using logarist. I hope you'll enjoy it (there's English and korean subs burnt-in)

Just finished my 2nd round of shooting for my short. I had a little more trouble correcting these images as I shot a lot in lower light than the first round. But here are a few shots that turned out okay... I will say that I think ML Raw has ruined me for other cameras.

I always found it fascinating how the foreground can stay in focus, yet if you watch, you can see some pulsing in the background. You'd think that would have some impact on the foreground too. I'm actually also amazed at how many people seem to focus more on the background than the subject. I did an early test of the GH5 AF in a shopping mall, and it stayed in focus on the subject, but the background did, on occasion, show that pulsing. I got a comments from a few posters that seemed to only see the pulsing and never the fact that the subject remained in focus. I can understand that a pulsing background can be distracting, but still... Oh well. Of course using AF lock, where possible, totally alleviates that issue.

this looks great. wanted to share something I learned to do in resolve. see at the far left and right of your image the blue/red chromatic aberration along hard lines of dark and light? I get that with my Kowa B&H anamorphic too. but in resolve, if you split your image into red, blue and green channels, you can apply slightly different horizontal scaling to the red and blue channels to eliminate the aberration completely. it also sharpens things up a tad. and you'll get to experience the same, very satisfying, feeling I get everyone time I apply this fix.

Why not just be happy to keep the A7S rather than waste emotional energy "wanting" a sports-journalists still camera? The A7Siii might offer more of what you require for a video upgrade but until then you have a camera you "love" so it's a good place.

great work. I think you forgot to post your setting in the thread titled "Your ideal NX1 Settings" lol. There is alot of high DR shots in there that were handled really well.