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One of the best YouTube channels I know An interesting experiment

Yeah I love his channel. His contax zeiss episode was one of the best things I’ve seen on YouTube in our genre. It’s refreshing to see someone put in actual effort and not clickbait bullshit over and over. The video/photographer cliche videos are comical at this point “don’t buy until you watch” or “I was wrong about this camera” with the same style thumbnails and the same style videos with horrendous color grading because they used a horrible LUT that blows out their highlights and over-saturates everything. Hopefully we can see more channels like the one you posted. Sorry, I had to vent.

I agree. When McKinnon started out, for instance, I'd watch his videos the second they dropped, guaranteed. It was bound to be an interesting tutorial with a bit of Pete's fun personality thrown i. Now that he's a big successful brand, I don't watch nearly as much of his content. For one, his fun personality has grown a bit obnoxious and I don't need ANOTHER tutorial on how to shoot b-roll of making a cup of coffee in some exotic location. He, and others like him, have gotten a little navel-gazely about their success with their blogs. But that's fine, there are always other channels out there to discover. YouTube is still a great Skillshare platform. You just have to look harder for it. I think the fault lies with YouTube, not the creators/influences who are charismatic enough and clever enough to have figured out how to make a successful career off of the platform post Adpocalypse. When YouTube decided to slash the ad revenue going to channels and aggressively demonetizing them, it changed the platform. We all know how much work it takes to produce good videos. If you can't earn enough ad revenue off of your creative content to make it pencil as a business venture, you either have to figure out how to get other revenue streams, hence the growth of the channels we're talking about, get off of YouTube, or only due it as sort of a hobby. Some folks, like the Crimson Engine guy, are figuring out ways to split the difference. He for one, posts a fair bit of gear review, but he also posts some technique stuff and interesting content about the business side of making indie films and other content. YouTube is sort of a jungle; if you want to find worthwhile content you just have to keep hacking a way at it. Sometimes you'll find interesting trails to follow (channels) and they may take you somewhere awesome and they're just as likely to peter out. That's my take on it, anyway.

The attention seeking, race for sensations, lifestyle vlogs, all that has somehow crept into many of the channels about enthusiast and artistic subjects. I don't think it makes a very good bedfellow to the arts. If you are constantly going bigger, bigger, more more more, I think it is greed, always looking over one's shoulder at a competitor or another youtuber and trying to outdo them for attention. I am not against spending lots and lots of money on camera gear, I do it myself. But I am against the internet becoming a exclusive walled garden and a show-off's playground. It is also a very personal and persuasive form of 'consumer advice'... well, consumerism. I probably own 10 headphones due to one channel I liked, Z Reviews. He was charismatic, knew his stuff, an incredible enthusiast. but the HYPE... oh the hype. Then you see the comments under it, all backing him up and saying, yeah, get this... get that... it is a recipe for bankrupting your audience. It gets boring fast, all this hype. If every release, every week, every day, is AMAZING then it becomes monotonous. I'd prefer to see a more level headed approach but still with the HYPE and excitement - only when justified. Just turn the fucking dial down a bit, pleeeeease.

DON'T COMPARE LENSES WITH DIFFERENT MAXIMUM APERTURES ON THEIR "WIDE OPEN" RESOLUTION!!!! You wouldn't compare a 50mm F0.95 at F0.95 with a 50mm F3.5 at F3.5 would you? The f3.5 lens would kill the faster one, but that's just ridiculous. Lenses sharpen up when you stop them down, and the Voigtlanders sharpen up very well when stopped down. Lenstip is the only site that has measured both in a way we can compare, and you'll note that the Voigt is behind the Leica on sharpness but not too much when you actually compare them at the same apertures - here's the Voigt: and the Leica: The Leica is sharper, but it depends on what you're looking for in a lens. For example, here is a comparison between the Voigtlander 42.5mm f0.95 at F1.4 (RHS curves) and the Samyang Xeen 50mm T1.5 (LHS curves). The Xeen resolution is abysmal, yet it's on B&H for USD$1795 and those who shoot with it found it fine, and it didn't seem to really be that bad in tests... The Xeen at T1.5: and at T4: It sharpens up sure, but you're hardly looking at the first image and crying about how it's so terrible and unusable. We have to stop thinking like internet stills photographers who seem to only talk about sharpness, and start to learn from practicing cinematographers who love the softness of vintage primes and older lenses. @midloch I'd say go for the 10.5mm because you've said you like the less clinical look of your 17.5mm, and the 10.5mm lens should be the same. Also, 10.5mm is slightly wider. I have the Voigt 17.5mm and 42.5mm lenses and went with the 7.5mm Laowa F2 lens because I wanted the extra width, but otherwise would have gone with the 10.5mm

Potato Jet has access to all that gear through a variety of ways. He is an active video producer so he has access to rentals and other equipment used for that. He has many filmmaker friends that loan him stuff. He has many sponsors that send him items for review. And he is has a healthy case of G.A.S as well that leads to many of his own purchases. If you watch enough of his videos, he eventually tells you how/why he has basically every piece of kit. Sometimes he'll reference a RED he rented or borrowed for a video from months prior, for example. TBH Potato Jet is my favorite Youtuber right now. He feels very genuine and I legitimately like watching his stuff.

Pro Color nearly ready for the A7R IV / A6400 and it might include a handy Creative Style this time which works on some Sony cameras without picture profiles (*cough* A9 *cough*). Will reveal all next week. The white balance system Sony is using baffles me. You have so much as a slither of different temperature light source in the frame and starts going wobbly adjusting for that, wreaking the dominant light temperature in the scene. The Leica SL2 is an Alexa for colour. In 10bit L-LOG you can apply the Alexa LOG to Rec.709 profile in Premiere and it is 100% perfect. No secret there who Leica are working with on their colour science. So I started by matching the A7R IV to the SL2 and I think I have made some progress. If Sony does not dust off their old Minolta / A900 colour science soon, I am going to be very rich. Apart from the same old dreadful white balance and uninspired picture profiles, it's a great camera!

I watch potatoJet stuff all the time. 1 - He works very had. The amount of stuff he is uploading and reviewing is insane. 2 - He is very good at time management. He is very effective at using any extra time he has to shoot his YT material. 5 minutes here 5 minutes there. 3 - He has external professional gigs and seems very professional. 4 - He has charisma for YT and knows how to play the YT game well. His followers are skyrocketing in the last few mounts. He works very hard, he has talent that translates well to YT followers and he just seems like a very nice likable guy. Good for him! I wish I could be as good and as productive as he is.

IIRC the tests i've seen showed that the Sony (the one they were testing anyway) was the most colour accurate of the bunch, more accurate than Canon, Fuji and the like. Of course, that's different to what is the most pleasing, and to that end, I agree that Sony doesn't do the best job. I have also seen some strange WB choices from Sony shooters in the past too.

No worries - many others say it that way and mean it. I mean what I say about not getting too attached to resolution too. We go to huge lengths to implement the 180 shutter rule, which takes our 8MP image (4K) or 2MP image (1080) and makes absolutely sure that whatever is moving is blurry as hell in almost every frame. Then we complain that the lens isn't tack sharp on a 50MP sensor at 1/10000s exposures. I find it strange that stills photographers are busy emulating the best still shooters, and we're into video but instead of following high-end cinematographers we follow the best stills photographers instead. Have a look at this post I made in the cine lenses thread again and see what the pillars of our profession (not a different but similar profession) have to say about lenses: What I take from these comments (combined with the various other tests that I've seen on these lenses) is that people want resolution but not too much of it. They want contrast but not too much of it. I think there's a huge disconnect between how a lens measures and how it looks, so that when we see measurements of a certain lens we screw up our noses, but when we watch TV or movies shot with that same lens at the same settings we don't have the same reaction at all.

Yeah, but what if I like that softness? (And I do) Sometimes, flaws are not something to avoid, but to be embraced. At least for me. Anyway, the Voights are fun because you can squeak out extra exposure for dim lighting, and it's nice to have that option. FYI, just my ideas and style. Others really want that tack sharp stuff. I'm not that particular. I go for character rather than precision.

Simon Cade, DSLRGuide, the little chap who used to always shoot on a 550D was sharing as he learned and branched out. Right now he only posts a vid every few months or so when a sponsor of his pushes him to finish one before a deadline. Bit of a shame. YouTube used to be Skillshare. A place where you'd get wiser. Where people were genuinely excited to share wisdom and had fun making videos they cared about themselves. Hardly the case anymore these days (though still a few around, luckily). All about creating a brand for yourself raking in that Googoo money. Might be a generational thing. People don't really want to know about the artform of shooting video anymore. It's about how to get results the easiest. Gadgets and gizmos play a big part in that of course. But that kinda shifts the focus away from the creative side... for which that should actually open up some capacity for due to these advancements, but kinda seems nobody is taking an interest in (in turn forcing the channels wanting to make a living offa being a YouTuber to shift more towards being gear reviewers; which doesn't necessarily leave them any happier. But atleast with a wallet full of stacks, so who's complaining).

He's a working DP in LA. Most of the high end gear would come from connections there, or rentals he's already got temporarily. He's one of the few Youtubers who've impressed me when they've actually shown some of their professional work. Perhaps at some point his Youtube stuff became more lucrative and is now the main focus, but the connections he'd have within the industry would certaily make it easy to get his hands on gear temporarily. Of course, the lower end stuff is probably all brand deals or stuff he went and bought. The Alexa was an older model that he paid $6000 for. That's nothing in terms of professional cinema cameras. He may or may not have ever used it on a proper job but if he did it could've saved/earned him most of that back in rentals. And he could've easily sold it a week later for the same - or even more (the buzz around that video alone would've caused quite a few people to go looking for rock-bottom Alexa's). It might seem like he's flushed with cash but really he's just in a saturated local market. It's not rocket science and if you're already making a full-time living as a cinematographer, gear all just becomes part of the cost of doing business. Most working DP's will rent/borrow any new cinema cameras that come out so they can test them out anyway - only difference is he puts some time in to shooting a Youtube video at the same time.

I think mega rich was a figure of speech on Andrew's part. But still a lot of YouTubers obviously come from some wealth, especially those that are millenials that are set up in major cities straight out of high school / college. It costs a lot to get set up in Los Angeles or New York; if it didn't a lot of us would do it! It's not an attack on them, but that they're the top names on YouTube when it comes to this stuff, it kinda overshadows the rest of those channels trying to put out helpful / good content. Like I genuinely feel bad when I stumble across a channel of someone that is putting out good content and only gets a couple dozen hits. When YouTube never bothers to widely promote them a lot get discouraged and stop uploading or they'll start copying what others are doing because it's apparently what YouTube wants out of creators. Then all the sudden I'm watching people that used to put informative stuff out now riding boosted boards, drinking coffee and doing things I don't care about. ?

Thanks Emanuel, I was reading the manual and there's no mention about it, so I feel a bit confused. I hope someone else can also confirm this! Tanti saluti dall'Italia! ?

@heart0less Doc Kajtek, you're an example to everyone my friend, my hat off : -)

Danilo, once there's AF, I guess there's no reason to be locked during recording for sure : ) Blackmagic Pocket camera series with a much more incipient autofocus have it, 4K & 6K coupled to native glass or lenses with AF functionality at least, so... Ti saluto, E : -)

I'm still tryin' to acquire more information about this camera, and I've a question for you, can't find in the online manual: Does the touch focus works while recording, so you can change the focus point when you want? Or the focus can be only set before start recording?

Most likely - yes, just like you said. https://photographylife.com/the-effect-of-dust-on-lens-bokeh

These things hold their value though... I was looking into the original 1dx... still in the $2K to $4K (Canadian) range and that’s used... some retailers on eBay are selling original 1dx brand new for $5K to 6K (CAD). As reference, if I were to pre-order the 1dx mark 3; it would be $8K (CAD). So, if you are already a 1dx or 1dx mark 2 owner; and you are looking to upgrade... it’s not really $6500 (US). It’s $6500 (US) minus whatever your current gear sells for...

This immediately reminded me of an incident from some years ago when my (then teenage) nephew grabbed both my brother's and my twin DCR-TVR820 Hi-8 Sony camcorders and began walking around holding them together, best he could, filming everything at a family event...his goal was to be able to shoot a "stereo 3D movie"! Interestingly, my brother later took that footage and was able to create some single-frame stereographs! I love watching this sort of out-of-the-box experimenting! Regarding 8K/10K footage...too bad Panasonic didn't provide their S1R with enough electronic horsepower to give us some out-of-the-gate 8K UHD (7680 x 4320) or Cinema 8K (8196x4320) with that gorgeous new (8368 x 5584 Photo) sensor...though I expect this is all in the pipeline for future model releases. (...rolls fingers...)

It's the compression, I never release LUTs with such problems

@IronFilm , what did I say wrong? ? No hard feelings, I'm always happy to learn something.

I draw the line at anyone wearing a baseball cap backwards. Also, it’s not a Tiny Home, it’s a garden shed. And Van Life is no life when you don’t have a toilet. Good for folks who are making a living and enjoying life, but so much of it is so shallow. Having said that, there is a ton of good stuff and it’s free. I both love and detest YouTube but it’s a rare day I do not go on it.

That one video alone might stop ARRI ALEXA Classic prices from falling any further in 2020

But why? I don't understand his claim that what he is doing in not the same as a panorama.... it is.

Sony is the most accurate, then again accurate isn't always pleasing.

Not really. great thing about the FS7 is that in 10-bit Cine EI mode you got all the necessary flexibility, and with in-camera LUT support u can basically get Venice CS SOOC..

I'm not a fan of the YouTube consumerism era, but I'm so old I actually resent my iPhone and what it's doing to me, so there you go. Same shit applies with the glorification of stuff. We've all done it as young people. Now it's just a different generation. As with most new people, they do everything a lot more and they do it with their own style. The fact that they have this modern and new infrastructure that's never existed in the course of human history is rather fascinating and really is kind of nuts...but that's for the 20 and under set to cope with. Screw all you young kids. You can pound sand.

Well just looked at image quality and I’m honestly impressed. I’m not doing anything scientific to compare but I’m liking the image. You get more of that full frame like fov. I’m not pixel peeping but I think for anyone looking for an affordable way to adapt vintage Nikon manual primes, you won’t be disappointed at only $80.

I phrased what I was trying to say incorrectly. What I meant to say is that the Leica is still pretty sharp wide open, while the Voigtlander needs to be stopped down because the f0.95 isn't very useful and is more of a gimmick. The Leica wide open at f1.4 is sharper than the Voigtlander is at f1.4.

Alright viltrox cheapo speedbooster is in my hands! Came in a nice case. Hard plastic but feels sturdy. I’m assuming I have to set the f ring to whatever lowest f stop my lens is? Put on my favorite 28mm lens and holy crap it’s like shooting full frame on my Nikon fe2 film body! FOV is similar! Still have my tree up so I plan to do some tests with nice Christmas bokeh this weekend. Curious to see image quality...

Yup, once had a director disappointed when I showed up with a teeny BMPCC to shoot this: He insisted on using a RED ONE MX for another shoot, ha! (sorry, still got no footage from that to share yet) Even though I'm not personally the greatest fan of the R1 at all. Ah well, whatever makes the client happy! :-)

I think one thing to remember is that flashing/reviewing/showing off all the new gear is part of the business model some of these YouTubers use to make their living. It's the affiliate links. The key for channels like Potato Jet, Matti Happoja, Crimson Engine, Peter McKinnon, Kai W, etc, etc, etc, is to get reviews up as often as possible, especially when flashy new gear comes out, to pull in viewers. Yeah, they only make pennies per view, but they make a lot more through affiliate link purchases. The next $ tier up is the big brand deals that people like McKinnon get to fly somewhere posh like Dubai and shoot ~10 minute advertorial/blog videos about products. And the bigger the channel gets, the more likely big companies will loan or give away gear for a video review and little/new/Chinese companies will just send random product to them in hopes of getting a mention. Matti Happoja has mega swag-opening sequences pretty regularly on his channel that highlights this phenomenon. I wonder how much of brands' marketing budget has shifted from TV commercials, magazine ads and other traditional media purchases to social media placement. For marketing people, it's all about the impressions per $ spent.

id love to see some side by side video off the canon vs say the s1h see if its even noticeable difference

There's this one guy I follow that's always been transparant and sharing of his earnings, which gives an interesting insight: I suppose the same goes for a whole lot of other YouTubers. Hustle. Be smart. Find some side gigs. Profit. The most successful YouTube channel apparently is this kid Ryan that plays with toys... 23M+ subs and $26M yearly earnings. Fanbases are pretty mindblowing as well. Just take a look at the whole beauty guru thing on YouTube, it's insane. Social influence = monie$. Cringefest. That Jeffree Star fella has an estimate networth of $75M in 2019... probably more like $200M in 2020. Like... whut. lol There's money in YT no doubt. A little less perhaps for camera channels, because not enough people might care enough to geek over that kinda thing. But just the amount of sponsored video. I can't take any more Squarespace, Skillshare, Freshbooks, NordVPN, Audible, etc sponsored videos. You have YouTube Premium to fence off ads... and then you still need to skip the timeline! Ugh. I mean, I get it... but, argh. And with YouTube 'celeb' status, like red carpet parties where actual celebs get free 'swag bags' with like fashion and electronics (headphones for example), there's freebies too. Like... two or three years ago I suddenly started noticing people wearing 'Canada Goose' jackets all of a sudden. Apparently one of their ploys was to hand out their parkas to Hollywood celebrities. They'd get photographed wearing them = awesome promotion. In the camera world you'd get sponsored with free gear for promoting a certain product, store or service (plus possible sponsorship moniez; but usually not because YouTubers often claim not to receive straight up money (but they'll happily take the free gear as payment (ok, sometimes just 'on loan'), so...?) and can say whatever they want: give their honest opinion. Of course... if you want to stay in the good graces of the company... you're likely not to mention any downsides and just highlight the positives, that way you're not exactly lying, just withholding the complete truth; of course we see this happen in more industries... like car journalism where getting exclusive early insights is crucial). Btw. Also YouTube:

I think we've seen this for the past 2-3 years. Instagram turned into a platform for selling you stuff a few years ago and now Youtube is exactly the same. This is rampant consumerism at an all-time high. And honestly, camera gear and electronics are one of the worst offenders. There is a large selection of Youtubers who seem like fine people but are making a good chunk of money by promoting incredibly wasteful consumerism. I believe our current widespread depression and addiction epidemic is based on these false "social" channels and "relationships" that are actually more about envy, greed, and jealousy than actual real human connection. Maybe without knowing it (but some of them do), these Youtubers and Instagram "influencers" are contributing to people's increasing unhappiness.

Must be some very wealthy sponsors involved, most artists I know don't have 1 million dollars a year to spend on stuff they don't actually need. So if we are seeing extreme gentrification of the internet, with nothing but hipsters, then count me out.

I watch a lot of YT and I think it behaves in similar ways to any other marketplace. More specifically: Those with more money / resources / connections can get access to things that aren't available to many/any others, which leads to unique content, which leads to more views, which leads to more money / resources / connections There are gaps where a lack of competition exists and there are openings to new players, and the only way to find these is to either get very lucky, or do a lot of experimentation, which of course is easier when you have more money / resources / connections because a few failures doesn't mean you go broke or get excommunicated altogether Those two are what separates the successful from the unsuccessful, but there are other factors in play too, such as talent and authenticity and hard-work which can give you an advantage, but this is difficult but the separation between rich and poor is bound to expand when the successful people also work hard and try to be as authentic as possible too.

I occasionally watch this channel. His wife often comments on the lack of funds available to afford their own home due to his purchases.

This is true, but it still requires a sizeable investment over time to buy new drives and media. I find things get cheaper, but sizes go up. The RAWLite out of the C200 is just about manageable to the moment, with 256GB getting you about 30 mins of record time. This is nicely broken down. I purchased a second hand (never used) C200 from a production house 2 years back for just over 5k euros which was a great deal at the time. So if you buy second hand you can easily get cheaper prices. I'm not entirely sure why you'd want the 1DXIII if you're doing both video and photo. It offers the extreme best of both world, but do many jobs really require you to be shooting 5K Raw and using a top of the line professional photo camera? I guess the middle broadcast codec is a great thing to have for some photojournalists out there and the more I think about it the more I think that's who will really end up buying and using this camera to its full ability. The rest of us probably specialise on one side or the other. Doing only video, once you have internal NDs and built in XLR audio it's very hard to go back.

The specs are really nice, but 13 minutes or so on a 256GB card is crazy. It's nice to have the option and it's great there's a ton of codec options in there but that's a serious cinema camera bitrate for serious productions. Maybe it'll be used as a B or crash cam on some bigger productions. I'm not entirely sure who this is for to be honest. It's a couple more grand more expensive than the C200 I bought a couple of years ago. My hopes for a middle codec have completely disappeared, but I can't see myself seriously requiring more than the Canon RawLite format. Once you start shooting in these really nice, thick codecs it quickly shows up other areas of your production that could be improved like lenses, lighting and sound. I'd argue that if you have a camera that can shoot decent RAW and you like shooting with it, there will be no real reason to upgrade for a long time. It's going to be too big for a lot of shooters used to mirrorless, and it's too expensive to be used as a B cam. I'm currently using the BMPCC4K as my B cam and gimbal cam and it pairs really well with the C200. You would have to have a very particular use case to warrant splashing out on the 1DXIII as a B cam. Serious hybrid photographers maybe?

You can probably thank RED for the absence of a compressed RAW format. The coolest bit of new info to me is that the 4K h264/h265 supersamples from 5.5K. This is the first time Canon doesn’t do a 1:1 readout for its 4K and means we are finally going to get a really sharp detailed 4K image. It’s crazy because this camera will basically deliver an IQ that blows away the C200 and even the C300II. I hope Canon will now unlock at least 10-bit on the C200 or they might have a problem selling them with this beast of a camera on the market. I myself am seriously considering parting with my C200 in favor of the 1DX3, although they’d probably make a mean combo.

Thanks all! @heart0less I have also seen that adapter but I don’t really like the idea of two adapters especially when I have no interest in canon or EF mount. I understand the idea behind it though! Is the Lens Turbo II ($150) really that much better than this Viltrox? @EthanAlexander Most people seem to prefer canon FD glass so I seem to find a lot of reviews on the canon adapter, less the Nikon. I’ll check the comparable reviews and make a decision I guess! My goal with this adapter is that I’m trying to use what I have to help adapt to my filmmaking needs. I currently own Nikon series e 28 f2.8, 50mm 1.8 and 100mm f2.8 lenses (mainly use to shoot film on a Nikon fe2). My only native Sony lens is the 35mm 1.8. Love the af but to be honest I miss the manual control. I have a dumb adapter already but 28/35 is too close. I also need a wide lens so I thought hey, why not adapt all the Nikon lenses you have and then boom wider lens collection. I’ve been following Matteo Bertoli and a few others who are still using manual vintage film lenses so I want to give this a more fair shot in my a6500 with what I have. Not exclusively tied to this adapter but was liking the affordability of it. Wouldn’t be opposed to spending $150 if it was THAT much better of a quality jump...

Seems people like pairing their S1H with Leica-R lenses... and I'm one of them! I'm shooting a short doc on my brother about his comic book, "I Am Not Okay With This", as it's currently being adapted into a series for Netflix. This will be the second time he's had a comic book adapted into a series. The first was "The End of the F*cking World" which did well, however, he told me that people would see him signing copies of the original comic at cons, and accuse him of "ripping off the show". So this time, i wanted to help raise his profile a bit when "I Am Not Okay With This" is released, and it gives me something to flex my creative muscles on. Anyway, some sample stills... Panasonic S1H, Leica Summicron-R 35mm, 50mm, & 90mm. Not a final grade -- just wanted to get some images out.

Aces slog2.cine3 in resolve, combined with my avisynth program mdegrain3 for noise reduction.... Perfect image quality...

First of all, I apologize for the delay with which I reply but I am very busy and I will be so for a long time. The new Magicobooster for Pocket 6K is similar to that of Ursa Mini Pro, the internal support is replaced with a threaded one, the IR filter, unlike the Production Camera, Ursa 4K and Ursa 4.6K is installed inside in a support of black round aluminum and construction to be replaced, this means that Blackmagic has planned to replace the IR filter. The very positive thing is that the Magicbooster will be installed inside with a threaded body and it can be easily removed whenever you want. For the warranty, it will depend on the user's technical capacity. If you follow the instructions correctly and leave no signs of tampering, the warranty will not be invalidated, otherwise even without using the Magicbooster there may be cases of damage not covered by the warranty. In any case, the Magicbooster will not damage your camera. Thank you.