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I think the light and amount of contrast of the scene makes a huge difference to the image thickness. When you have a good amount of contrast in your scene with areas of shadow and bright highlights, and your object is well exposed then you can bring the blacks down were they belong and help with the perceived thickness (and also reduce the perceived grain/noise). Were I notice the main difference with cameras that produce thicker images like the digital Bolex is with skin tones and also foliage/leaves/trees etc. Whether it's the tonality/colour gamut/saturation/shadow saturation or all of these when combined with good light they just look more alive. Here is a screen shot from the D16 (not mine) which while compressed to heck look 'thick' and alive to me.

Thanks. It will work in portrait orientation (albeit with a narrower angle) so if you are putting the camera into portrait mode then there is no need to change it but we also recommend it to be in landscape mode because that is the way the info screen on the back is oriented. With regard to positioning, there is no limitation so you can put it in a hotshoe on the camera, or on top of a cage or a matte box or underneath the lens etc or even behind the camera if you want but obviously the only proviso is that you have it in the same position you had it when doing the initial calibration for the particular lens you are using. If it wasn't, then its not really a big deal as you can delete the calibration from the internal database and re-do it with the sensor in the new position. Calibration is a simple process and only takes minutes. As the AFX is battery powered and wireless (save for the small 3.5mm cable if you are using motors) then it is perfectly fine to use it handheld if you want, providing of course you respect the calibration issue. Handheld is an interesting use case actually as with the QuadLock function you can store up to four focus positions derived from either the sensor or manually (or any combination) and then either move to them automatically with differing dissolve times or have them as targets that you focus to manually without being able to overshoot. So using it handheld is a useful way to quickly capture the focus targets that you may use in a scene and you could even attach a small laser pointer to the top to give a visual reference while you are doing it. This is also possible when the AFX is mounted to the camera/rig of course, and would be the more common use case for solo shooters, but there are certain situations where it could be useful, most obviously with a separate person pulling focus. The other use case of course is for YouTube hosts to solve the "am I in focus?" conundrum because you can sit in front of the camera with it and fire it back at the camera to set the correct focus distance. Like an incident light meter but for focus 😉

This looks great, appreciate the work that has gone into the development, does the module have to be positioned in a particular orientation? could it be positioned in portrait, upside down or under the lens or even hand held?

In the same vein, this might be a useful resource for you. https://film-grab.com

@kyeI don't think those images quite nail it. I gathered a couple pictures that fit thickness in my mind, and in addition to the rich shadows, they all have a real sense of 3D depth due to the lighting and lenses, so I think that is a factor. In the pictures you posted, there are essentially 2 layers, subject and background. Not sure what camera was used, but most digital cameras will struggle in actual low light to make strong colors, or if the camera is designed for low light (e.g., A7s2) then it has weak color filters which makes getting rich saturation essentially impossible. Here's a frame from The Grandmaster which I think hits peak thickness. Dark, rich colors, a couple highlights, real depth with several layers and a nice falloff of focus that makes things a little more dreamy rather than out of focus. And the scopes which clearly show the softness of the tones and how mostly everything falls into shadows. For comparison, here's the scopes from the picture of the man with the orange shirt in the boat which shows definite, harsh transitions everywhere. Perhaps, do you have some examples? For example that bright daylight Kodak test posted earlier here Has this scope (mostly shadow though a little brighter than the Grandmaster show, but fairly smooth transitions). And to be honest, I think the extreme color saturation particularly on bright objects makes it look less thick.

https://dronedj.com/2020/10/17/dji-osmo-pocket-2-appears-to-leak-with-improved-camera/ So here is the leak, no exact specs for now but announcement in 3 days. I hope they don't go for 3yo Sony IMX 586 sensor. I hope for somethings bigger.

So would I if the hardware costs involved in providing real time AI face/object detection combined with 3D depth sensing allowed it.

It won't be for another couple months after the AFX has shipped.

When do you estimate to have the additional module available in the hands of your clients as myself? ;- )

@Hangs4Fun I'll get a suction mount for my gopro to test, but it still looks more gimbal like to me than stabilization. I do have the Hero7 with the first version of hypersmooth so that might help. Walmart has the gopro suction mount, guess I'll pop into one and get one to try. I'm fine with the quality and I'm sure the person in the video isn't using a larger setup, as long as the sun isn't in the frame, gopro/phone size sensors do fine. My gopro cant stay on more than 30-40 minutes before overheating and shutting down, but I'll still try. Thanks for the suggestions! @leslie there are no issues in the US hanging a small camera on a vehicle on the road, I'll be fine. I see lots of custom cars with multiple gopros on them while driving. I regularly see a corvette with 5 or 6 mounts on it even when there are no cameras mounted, looks funny, but I guess the driver doesn't bother removing them haha. Someone near me must be doing some sort of car show. I'll check linear and narrow, I watched a few others and when the driver passes trees and such there's no distortion from the ultrawide view. Thanks for the insights! I'll report back after some testing with a gopro. Cheers. Chris

They just released the BGH1, isn't that enough?!

An example of continuous AF on a handheld Pocket4K with Panasonic/Leica 12-60mm.

Indeed. Reminds me of this article: https://www.provideocoalition.com/film-look-two/ Art Adams again. Long story short, film desaturates both the highlights and the shadows because on negative film the shadows are the highlights! (pretty sure that's the right-way around..) I definitely think it's in the processing. I view it as that there are three factors: 1) things that simply aren't captured by a cheaper camera (eg, clipping) 2) things that are captured and can be used in post without degrading the image below a certain threshold (ie, what image standards you or your client have) 3) things that aren't captured well enough to be used in post (eg, noisy shadows beyond redemption, parts of the DR that break if pushed around too much) Obviously if you expose your skin tones in a range that is either completely lost (eg, clipped) or aren't in an area that can be recovered without exposing too much noise or breaking the image then there's nothing you can do. What I am interested in is the middle part, where a properly exposed image will put the important things in the image, for example skin tones. Anything in this range should be able to be converted into something that looks great. Let's take skin tones - let's imagine that they're well captured but don't look amazing, but that the adjustment to make them look amazing won't break the image. In that case, the only thing preventing the ok skin tones from looking great is the skill in knowing what transformations to make to get there. Yes, if the skin tones are from a bad codec and there is very little hue variation (ie, plastic skin tones) then that's not something that can be recovered from, but if the hues are all there but just aren't nice, then that should be able to be made to look great. This is where it's about skill, and why movies with professional colourists involved often look great. OF course, ARRI has built a lot of that stuff into their colour science too, so in a sense everything shot with an ARRI camera has a first pass from some of the worlds best colour scientists, so is already that much further ahead than other offerings. Of course, many others aren't far behind on colour science, but in the affordable cameras its rare to get the best colour science combined with a good enough sensor and codec. That was something I had been thinking too, but thickness is present in brighter lit images too isn't it? Maybe if I rephrase it, higher-key images taken on thin digital cameras still don't match those higher-key images taken on film. Maybe cheap cameras are better at higher-key images than low-key images, but I'd suggest there's still a difference. Interesting images, and despite the age and lack of resolution and DR, there is definitely some thickness to them. I wonder if maybe there is a contrast and saturation softness to them, not in the sense of them being low contrast or low saturation, but more that there is a softness to transitions of luma and chroma within the image? In other news... I've been messing with some image processing and made some test images. Curious to hear if these appear thick or not. They're all a bit darker, so maybe fall into the exposure range that people are thinking tends to be thicker.

@tuppMaybe we're disagreeing on what thickness is, but I'd say about 50% of the ones you linked to are what I think of as thick. The canoe one in particular looked thick, because of the sparse use of highlights and the majority of the frame being rather dark, along with a good amount of saturation. The first link I found to be quite thin, mostly with shots of vast swathes of bright sky with few saturated shadow tones. The kodachrome stills were the same deal. Depending on the content, some were thick and others were thin. If they were all done with the same film stock and process, then that confirms to me that it's mostly what is in the scene that dictates that look. I think that's because they are compressed into 8 bit jpgs, so all the colors are going to be smeared towards their neighbors to make them more easily fit a curve defined by 8 bit data points, not to mention added film grain. But yeah, sort of a moot point.

Thank you. Well..... They were going to be supported eventually. Maybe we've managed to put "eventually" into the microwave.... Something like that would be nice wouldn't it....

For anyone looking to have this functionality (and a bit more) without having to buy a specific new gimbal (or any gimbal for that matter), our AFX module launches a week on Monday. I'm absolutely not going to give the game away before then and say that it also supports manual lenses. Absolutely not going to spoil that surprise.

Don't forget about shadow saturation! It often gets ignored in talk about highlight rolloff. The Art Adams articles kye posted above are very interesting but he's only concerned with highlight saturation behaviour. Here is a photo taken on film (Kodak Pro Image 100, the same as used in my example above) Here is the same scene shot as a digital RAW still with Adobe default colour but with contrast matched using RGB curves in ACR. You'll notice that at first glance it's more saturated: Now here is the same digital shot with a LUT added to match the saturation and hues of the midtones. These now look like a good match. But look carefully at how desaturated the shadow areas look. The saturation has been globally lowered and the shadows are looking (dare I say it?)..... thin! Finally, here is the same shot with a tweaked lut that boosts saturation in the shadows but keeps midtone and highlight saturation restrained. Now the shadows have deep blues and it looks more like the film shot. Is this a thicker image compared to the version with default colour? I definitely think it looks nicer. Again, open all in tabs to notice the difference. Night mode is good too 🙂

This youtube video lists the camera as "Ursa Mini Pro 12k". Wow - impressive! The color rendition is special in the way that the different shades of a color appear distinct and unique even when they are very similar. I also like the motion cadence. The image is solid and without distraction. It's nice to not have any obvious flaws that steel my attention from the content.

Hey there. New to this forum but looking for a place to post my findings: Seems that most other brands got in front of Nikon using the Ninja V and ProRes Raw now. Assimilate Scratch and FCPX would provide the possibility to change WB, ISO and exposure in Raw (befor debayering) now. But according to a list provided by Apple the Z6 and Z7 don’t support any of these options. It was mentioned earlier that you get the picture pixel binned. To make ProRes RAW really usable it would need an update taking care of these issues. Getting the 1:1 5.9 k readout and all the metadata for post production. curios if this will happen. Sad thing that it seems that the pioneer system / combination loses support.

Peter McKinnon is the best YouTuber going, AINEC. He absolutely exploded over the last 8 months or so to over 1 million subscribers. It's been wild to watch. He does photography and videography tutorials mixed with some vlogs. He just seems like the coolest dude. https://www.youtube.com/user/petermckinnon24

Wow so few! Got any more?!

Kay, hum, interestingly I haven't seen anyone mention Jake Paul yet. 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