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There are many professional DOPs out there and I believe there is much we can learn from studying their work. However, it can be difficult to gain insights if you can only study their work when each project has been created in partnership with a different team of people each time - lighting, shot design, camera and lens choices, grading, etc are all aspects that the DOP doesn't have full control over and makes it hard to 'see through' to the commonalities that the DOP provides. There is one notable exception to this, and that is Philip Bloom, who regularly creates videos as a one-man operation and shares them on YouTube. I'm not suggesting that he's the best DOP in the world, or that we should copy him, or anything like that, but he is a career professional, and I'm not afraid to admit that he knows more about this stuff than I will ever know, so I believe there is a lot we can learn. He recently published his annual Best Camera Gear video, and I made a number of interesting observations from watching it. Here are a bunch of frame-grabs from the video. A7RIII with SLR Magic A7III with Sony 55mm Parrot Anafi drone DJI Magic Pro Fuji X-H1 EOS-R (ungraded) Insta360 One X Osmo Pocket (ungraded) Kinefinity Terra 4K BMPCC4K Kinefinity Mavo LF Here are some observations from the above shots: There is a look that is relatively consistent across the shots. It's not applied so heavily that every shot looks the same, but people familiar with his work would have a good chance of recognising that these were shot by him. Something that is worth noting is that he's managed to get this consistency from a hugely varied selection of equipment, including different brands, different focal-lengths, different apertures, hugely different price ranges, and from different levels of image quality and codecs, across different locations within different countries, at different times of day, in different seasons, and shooting different things. He's not able to get that look in all cases. One notable exception is the Insta One X that doesn't seem to fit the look, everyone has limits on what they can achieve. Equipment doesn't matter as much as the skill of the operator, but it still matters to a certain degree, and especially if the equipment is below a certain level of quality or capability. The look that he's creating is quite pleasing. It won't be liked by everyone (no looks are universal) but on the whole he manages to get good looking results from whatever equipment he's using. Anyone who has picked up an even half-decent camera and not been able to get good results from it knows that this is not something that just happens - you have to know what you're doing. So, what are the ingredients of this look? (note that not every shot includes every ingredient, but the more you can include the more consistent your results will be) The images have a warm colour balance. There are two main contributors to this that I see, the first is the grading he does which often warms the images overall, pushing greens towards yellow, pushing blues towards aquas. The second is that he's very often shooting into the sun in golden hour. The shots also tend to have fewer hues in each shot - making them more likely to be harmonious and pleasing. The images have a kind of controlled level of contrast to them. You don't look at them and find them flat looking, but they don't look super contrasty either. This look probably comes from paying attention to the blacks and almost blacks, which are slightly lifted and don't ever appear to hit absolute black, let alone crushed. This look seems to come from shooting directly into the light and having camera flare lift the blacks, but is also controlled in grading. His images have a kind of controlled level of saturation to them. Colours are bold but not electric, skin tones are very well controlled looking soft but not desaturated and are neither too yellow nor too pink. Considering all the talk about colour science and skin tones, this is noteworthy. His compositions are strong. I chose nice frames for these frame-grabs but there were no shortage of frames to choose from. Composition is hugely important and is free with every camera - even with the Insta360 which struggles in most other ways. He uses great lenses. This is perhaps something that people easily mis-interpret. Great lenses is a relative term, and is about the combination of the lens, the subject, the conditions, and the desired end result. It's tempting to think that you'll get great results from super expensive cinema lenses that he often uses, but the smooth rendering and polished look of these lenses is a terrible choice if you want to shoot something that needs a more realistic / edgy / gritty image, and besides, if it was all about cost, then how do we account for the image that he gets out of the Osmo Pocket with its fixed budget lens, or the Parrot and DJI drone shots? The answer is that he uses high quality glass when he can, and when the glass has limitations he adjusts the subject and the conditions to get the best out of that lens. In a sense, these videos are cheating. He is able to shoot whatever will look good and not include the shots that don't. If you don't believe me then go have a look at the lovely images he got from the iPhone 5s at 120fps and notice that he only shot images looking straight into the sun near sunset, this is because a camera with bad ISO performance, a small sensor, in HFR modes needs a huge amount of light to get good results, then see that he tended to shoot with things very close to the camera which is the only way to give some defocussing and depth, and shooting into the warm setting sun also makes sure that the colours will be nice and the colour range will be simpler. He uses great glass by making sure that he only shoots what the available glass is great at. Not visible in the frame-grabs, but he also shoots a lot of slow-motion. It is totally cheating and is completely over-used, but these shots are about making nice images, so why not. Im sure there is lots more, but this is what stands out to me. Let me know what I missed. As there is a graded shot of the BMPCC4K in the video and he posted the RAW file from the same shot earlier in the year, it gives a unique opportunity to try and copy the grade and see what is actually going on, so if I get time I might try and reverse-engineer the grade. If so, I'll share the results. Thanks to Philip Bloom for continuing to share with us.

Looks like they will also be releasing a 'lite' version of the E2. under $1000... 4k 30p 10 bit (same codecs as e2) USB C and SD Card... 11.6 stops DR M43 SENSOR (GH4 sensor?)

Here's a new music video I directed, shot, graded and edited recently, for the Finnish punk/thrash metal band RiESA (Loosely translates to Burden). It's in Finnish, but I find it quite interesting even if you're not well versed in Finno-ugric languages. Their new album is a concept album, depicting a protectivist, totalitarian state controlled by a single dictator, and led by fear and propaganda. This gave us a nice opportunity to play with some 1984-like imagery and I'm quite happy with the end result. We did the video in essentially two days, with one day spent building the sets (the whole thing was shot in a basement of a local office) and one day of shoot. The interrogation room was mostly lit with practicals, with fluorescent tubes on the background and some IKEA spotlights lighting the posters. Only cinema lights used were two Aputure LED panels with diffusers used as fill lights. The jail cell was lit with one overhead 300W Fresnel and a 650W fresnel right outside the door to give us some heavy volumetric light. The propaganda scene was done simply with a home theatre video projector playing a video loop I prepared beforehand. I shot the whole video using modern EF lenses but with a Cokin P Pastel filter. It's one of my favourite diffusion filters as it gives a gorgeous bloom effect on light sources without eating too much into microcontrast or fine detail. You can see this if you watch the video in 4K, some of the skin detail is pretty astounding imho. And, not to sound like a Blackmagic fanboy, but I have to say the Ursa Mini delivered in spades, again. It's a fine workhorse. Visually the biggest downside is the youtube compression, which introduces banding, even here where the original image has some added film grain. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, and if you guys have any questions about the production I'm happy to elaborate

Stop Glenn, don't come here to try to put some conflict between me and Don. We have a friendly communication, sorry to bother you if it is the case. His point is not valid because he speaks about something he doesn't know. I guess it is not his intention, but he can mislead who reads his comments on his unfounded perspective about something he never tested. BTW, what about you? DId you ever put your hands in one? Or will you also come here to shoddily preach that's very hard to shoot with this acquisition device?! ; ) My point is from someone who owns the camera, yes. What do you think? I owe you something to post anything to prove to anyone here or anywhere else? I pay my bills, dude. And to follow up this input now from yours, sit down while you wait : D You get what your deeds ask, my fellow of boards. It is rather pathetic this post of yours and such invective against my standpoint. Any beef against my persona, dandy? Perhaps because of posts like yours or not, you don't read Jon's posts anymore these days over us. Something I can tell you though. I am not here to write to someone what I am not able to tell him quite directly face to face in the real world. I am all yours. You can start to write me to my inbox. You're welcome to meet me wherever you want. I can even bring my stuff with me just for the case you want to inspect the foundations of my argument. In real life, man, not invariably behind a keyboard like I see some silly comments from people who simply have no clue what they're telling about. All my point, cowboy : ) Yours? On topic, you'll never see me to bash whatever cam out there my options. You'll never see me to defend there's no use for other cameras as your post infers and misleads any casual reader and the whole thing. I would dare to write I cannot say the same about your usual condescending tone anyway, when someone has a strong point beyond the lines posted here. Sorry me if this my post looks like too harsh -- written speech is what it is (ain't you used to claim over these pages you're a writer?!) : P but you really pissed me off now with this entry of yours. I basically dislike ANY distortion of facts. You have nothing to add from your experience for the subject matter, i.e., your yadda yadda is just BS in disguise. Yours sincerely, Emanuel

They said it should have the same codecs, so I assumed that meant if E2 has Prores so will this. Yeah, I feel you on that front, but the features I'd be most excited about are in the E2 haha. I don't need anything straight away, so I'm going to do a little waiting.

Which is why I vote for owning BOTH!!!

Thank you very much. The same to you.

The camera has arguably the best interface available in a small or large camera and it's incredibly fast to use on set or on the move. 4k ProRes HQ is pretty ideal and we edit it remotely on macbooks all the time. People who are actually using it seem to be pretty much blown away by both the camera and it's IQ.

Not meaning to open a can of worms - but most iscorama models (at least 36, pre 36 and 54 types) have an actual stretch factor of 1.42x. But to answer the question - no, I’ve not noticed any discenable shift in ratio when setting minimum focus using the proxiscope.

@Emanuel with all due respect... do you even own the P4K? Do you have any footage to show? Do you have a photo of your rig? I only ask because you come here and attack @webrunner5 for having a valid opinion about the P4K and state the same reasons you love the P4K that you stated about the GH5, which you never owned and about the X-T3, which you never owned. So if Don can be criticized for not liking a camera he’s never owned, I think you can be criticized for praising cameras you’ve never owned. But to a greater point... why does one camera need to be better for everybody? We all know my choice of camera and I understand being excited for a camera purchase and if you have the P4K, I wish you luck with it, but there have been cameras before the P4K and there will be cameras after it. I am personally more interested in the evolution of this Z-Cam and the X-T3 than I am with the P4K. That doesn’t mean that the P4K is a bad camera... quite the contrary. It is a great camera at a great price but hardly the best camera to ever grace cinema.

Update. Just bought a used - march 2018, almost no use and still 1,5 year warranty left - for US$ 380. Very close to half price here in Denmark. Will arrive sometime next week.

I have a feeling they won't give us internal 10bit. Hopefully I am wrong. This camera could be a holy grail though. People saying Hybrid cameras are finally there in terms of being good enough. If the A7S3 delivers internal 10 bit 4k 60p with venice color, then I'll say that is true.

I get my news from Facebook, probably not a good thing??

Everything is just a trend in the end. Movies shot on digital are still adding film grain and IMHO, the younger generation has a continued obsession with older stuff. Shows like Stranger Things were super popular for that very reason. The push for 8k and higher resolutions has a bigger benefit for VFX and live event capture. Of course its easier to manipulate a high res image to look softer then a soft image to look sharp. That said I honestly can't tell the difference between film and digital. The Force Awakens was shot on Film and I couldn't tell. Looked super sharp and detailed to me. Unless its being shot on Super8 or 16. When things are being lit and exposed by professionals it all looks very similar at least with moderately professional cameras. I don't know about people ditching the pocket 4k like they did the pocket. I think the original Pocket sensor was kind of outdated when it came out. In terms of overall usability I'd say the Pocket 4k is Black Magic's best camera in terms of usability. It crushes the Ursa 4.6k in terms of ISO performance, which is important for most prosumer low budget people. I am pretty excited to see what Black Magic puts out next in a bigger camera.

The “Cine look” has nothing to do with resolution. I also believe sharpness has less impact on cinematic aesthetics than one may believe. It’s more about lighting, mood and camera motion. And I might add, how to move the camera is an exact science, if you want a cinematic result. Just as there are basic guidelines for framing a shot, shutter angle, fps; there are also guidelines for panning speed and how to move the camera to avoid unpleasant stutters that result from using the slower 24 fps... which is not really 24 FPS... because TVs don’t play back at 24 FPS. The Cine look is not dead. The Cine look is expensive if one lacks the knowledge of how to produce it. Barring financial resources the only recourse is investing time and energy into learning the art. But very few are willing to actually devote the required time and work to do this. Most give up, and then try to justify their decision with absurd statements like, “the Cine look is dead”. When what really died was their willingness to forge ahead and master the art. There’s no shame in giving up on art of creating cinema. There is a whole world outside of the lens. I just shoot for fun. If anyone likes what I shoot great! But if no one does I really don’t care that much. It’s just about capturing precious moments and having fun?

Funny the thumbs down with no comments. Truth must hurt? Some idiot actually tried to get that video removed from YouTube with a phony copyright violation claim. Unfortunately for them, it was cleared by YouTube.... but hey, nice try. Honestly, I wanted to love the Nikon for video, but in practice it’s AF is weak, in both stills and video. The competition has improved... the X-T3 beats the Z6. The Sony performs better than the Z6 under most conditions... but nothing comes close to the 1DXMK2; it can actually hold focus better than is humanly possible.

You guys seem surprised a $6K flagship camera beast like 1DXII trumps base level mirrorless cams..?! That said, EOS R does hold an advantage over it with the inclusion of peaking, focus guides, canon log, 10-bit out, EVF, MP4 codec, flip out screen & light weight. Not bad for a third of the price if you ask me. Of course 1DX2 excels in other areas, but at this point I'd wait for the rumored Mark 3 for ultimate Canon DSLR. If anything though this makes a strong case for Dual Pixel AF still holding the crown over the competition which some like to claim have "caught up".

The blackmagic one is affordable and also very good.

Thanks for explanation - yes, exactly.

I love Philip Bloom for the information what he has given us. But I dont think he is a DOP, not even a cinematographer, videographer/camera operator is more likely the term you can describe him with.

Try recording in lots of different locations and see how it sounds.. cupboards, bathroom, toilet, outside (if it's quiet), in the roof, in the basement, sitting, standing, lying down, facing up, facing down, mic close to your mouth or far away, mic in front of your mouth, above your mouth, below your mouth, to the side, behind your head, it will all sound different. I read an article by a studio recording engineer who said he liked to imagine a big flame coming out of a singers mouth, and it was his job to put the microphone in the right place within that flame to get the best result. He said that the difference between something sounding disappointing and glorious might be a few inches of moving the microphone around

From a couple of mentions by Juan Melara I think that Film Convert is actually a really sophisticated colour engine and has all sorts of film profiles built-in, so while Philip may only apply it in a subtle way, I think the "it" that he's applying is complex and sophisticated. That's why I'm interested in trying to replicate it. Of course, the Osmo and EOS-R shots above were ungraded and they still have a lot of his look, so it doesn't look like he's heavily relying on it. I was in the train once and noticed that a woman was putting on her makeup and I'd noticed just as she started. Over the course of about 5 minutes she did about a dozen different things and ended up looking quite made-up. The interesting thing about it was that each time she'd pull something out and start applying it, it had such a subtle effect that I couldn't tell at first if it was doing anything. Her overall look was created through applying many subtle and almost imperceptible changes, and her final look was obviously something she'd spent a long time crafting such that each of the elements all worked together in the end. I think this is what quality film-making is about - pushing and pulling things very subtly all through the process in such a way that the end result is really great but nothing stands out as being the single reason behind that result. I think this is why we can watch 100 award winning films and still not be that aware of how to make one ourselves!

When I took up doing a bit of video about 18 months ago, one of the first things I did was to watch a 10 hour video called something like 'The Phillip Bloom Master Class'. One of the things that really struck me was how little video grading he did. Basically he applies 'Film Convert' plugin to his video and tweaks it a bit.I guess this gives him a consistent look across cameras because the camera and profile are inputs for the plugin. It also tends to add grain although I vaguely remember that he tended to dial it back.

uhm... what? i have an ipad pro. thats all u need ? seriously tho, im taking the rebel without a crew approach on this one: im not buying ANYTHING im distorting the vocal, like its a phone call ? a collect call, cuz im down and out

He is not afraid of grain or noise in his stuff either. I think he actually takes advantage of it. He is a wiz at grading, editing no doubt. I think one of his strong points is he seems to always be willing to take his time to get it right. He is meticulous.

In relation to the Voigts being soft at f0.95, that's definitely true, but I would still choose to have them be able to do f0.95 rather than only be something like f1.4 but remain sharp. The advantage of the extra aperture is useful for multiple reasons. I shoot in completely uncontrolled conditions, and so have to make do with whatever lighting is available, and in low-light there's many times I looked into the viewfinder and saw a dark image with muddy lifeless colours and the focus peaking highlighting the auto-ISO noise in the shadows, but then I start opening the aperture dial and the ISO noise goes away, the image lightens up, the colours clean up, and by the time that I hit the limit at 0.95 I am so happy that the lens can gather that much light that I don't care that the focal plane will be a little soft. I like to be able to use aperture to control the attention of the viewer by focusing on what is important in the shot and to slightly blur the things that aren't important in the shot. This is a fundamental of composition I think. It also helps to create some depth in the image and escape that flat video look that people don't like (otherwise we'd all be using handicams and this forum wouldn't exist). Any lens is capable of blurring the background if the subject is quite close to the camera and the background is much further away, but in my travels I sometimes want to blur the background a bit when the subject is a bit farther away from the camera and closer to the background. In normal circumstances you might just ask people to move, you might move the camera closer, or you might put on a longer focal length lens, but often I don't have the luxury of being able to do any of these, but I can just move the lens past the 1.7 or 1.4 maximum aperture of other lenses and get the job done with a simple adjustment. There are also rare occasions where you want a greater than normal background blur for artistic effect. This goes beyond the blur you would want just to control attention or to add some depth to the scene. This could be used for highly emotional scenes, scenes depicting a POV with altered perception (half-asleep, drugged, the view of a baby, etc), but normally this is a night shot where you want to have pretty lights in the background. This shot that I took a few weeks ago is a combination of all of the above - low-light, subject further away, no time to change lenses or move closer, and I wanted the background Christmas lights to look wonderful. It's basically ungraded, but illustrates the points I think.

Could you tell me your settings

Only if you're shooting raw. I've been filming exclusively in Prores and editing on a 2015 Macbook Pro and it's 10 times faster than trying to edit h264 footage from a consumer GX80.

I personally think it’s genius but if it doesn’t suit your needs, then sure buying one would be insane. The EVA1 is an amazing camera, and from the looks of that grab, you made a wise choice. Oh God... sorry but it is replies like this that has kept me away from the forum lately. You can use the camera all you want and I’d say it was a moronic decision to use this camera for event shooting or whatever work you do. Forum fairy tales... haha... you’re the one who sits around here and argues the benefit of using a Raw cinema camera for jobs that don’t require Raw and then complains that it’s not a good camera... Sorry... not sorry.

When you realise this camera is really 95% a RAW shooting camera with big amounts of data - it’s a fine line between being really stupid or a genius, on the basis you buy one. I didnt get it and it’s just not as versatile as the EVA1. I like the image better on the C200, but sometimes, logic needs to come before your emotions.

I thought the C200 had comparable DR? Regardless, I think if you’re in the category of shooter where you are using an EVA1 or C200, you probably can make gorgeous images with either.

It’s funny how perspective plays into gear opinions. Being a Raw shooter, I see the C200 as a Raw cinema camera that has some 8bit proxies thrown in.

I have just recieved 729S, and so far it looks promising. Also, I purchased BP-U60 plate and BP-30 battery instead of NP. No LUT support, but I will apply LUT to HDMI out in GH5S so not a big deal. Need a sunny day to fully test it.

It is certainly very cinematic movie and the story was nice. I liked the ending

I have tested a lot of the popular anamorphics (except Lomo). I sold them all and only kept the most versatile and easy to us Isco pre 36 and 54. I still have the baby Moeller for the most beautiful image and it is also easy to use (you can pull focus with some practice). Regarding Kowas and Elmoscope I think they have to be considered as the best projection lenses and that is how I use them (Elmoscope II). Last but not least: Sharpness is overrated