Leaderboard

Loving the S1H viewfinder, coming from GH3, 4,5. Am I the only one that uses monochrome live view with colored focus peaking? I find it much more practical and effective to visualize exposure in black and white than in color. B&W has less distractions. Bonus: focus peaking stands very nicely. I like the bright green or orange. Just offering this out as a neat little trick.

Happy Holidays! Since Covid-19 has made shooting possibilities pretty limited, I've decided to shift to micro short films. Here are some test frames using the Canon FD 50mm 1.2 L...

I mean the Alexa comes close. RED Komodo is global shutter. I do think the Alexa surpassed film. It has great color rendition and amazing latitude. What I was saying is that there hasn't been a digital camera on the market that has matched the look of film in all its complexities. Of course shooting on an Alexa you can mimic it with post processing due to the flexibility of the files coming off that camera. Same goes for anything that can shoot RAW.

The 1DC is nice but I wouldn't say its on par with film. The color science is nice but its not mimicking any certain film stock. It also won't respond like film does to under or over exposure. Over exposing the 1DC will result in a digital clippy mess.

I love shooting on my Olympus OM-2N! The Zuiko 50mm1.8 is really incredibly sharp with nice character.

I am not sure I understand what you are talking about. The A7s3 uses noise reduction at all ISO's and regardless of the lighting situation. Look at the comparisons between the native footage and prores RAW, even in daylight situations you'll see a difference in the noise. Of course for people who don't want much post workflow and want a super clean looking image this could be a good thing. But noise reduction is not something you'll see on a RED or Arri. There is also no reason why Sony shouldn't give us the option to turn it off as you have on their FX6 with the same sensor.

This was a good question five years ago.

Yes, but A7S-III have a very much better slowmotion quality with a very much better af system, better rolling shutter and better stabilization using gyro data and fast shutter speed

Right, well I got so pissed off with both the eye/face detect and the tracking option, I wondered if there was anything else I could do. I tried everything from trying to create a timelapse of motion instead. I could. It was awful. I tried 6k mode and that kind of worked, but when it lost focus, it never regained it. So before finally biting the bullet and moving to Sony for my video (AF) needs, I thought I'd just try all the options that are not supposed to work. Such as 225-area AF. And it pretty much worked. At least good enough for my needs based on this one test. The kit and settings were: S5 + 20-60mm @60mm and f5.6, 4k 50p, 1/100th, variable ND, Natural profile (individual settings such as contrast & sharpness turned down mainly), 225-area, speed -1, sensitivity -1. Unless I happen to have hit upon the best all round settings for this kind of capture...which I doubt, I think there is still room for slight improvement... Really, the only area I have to play with now is the speed & sensitivity settings which I have played with extensively using pretty much every combination of pluses and minuses available, but only in the face/eye and tracking mode. I could test with the 85mm f1.8 and will when I get some more sunshine so I can back or sidelight as on a wedding day I can't control any of that such as if the bride is walking down the aisle at an outdoor ceremony with the sun behind her, that's what I have to work with, so my kit has to pass worst case scenarios. But the latter is not critical, ie, the 85mm f1.8 not working 100% in this kind of scenario would be a bonus rather than a need because as long as I can get a few seconds of it locked on...which I can, in any scene, it's enough. So AF summary based on my experience/testing and needs: A. For stills, it's not in question. It's not the fastest but it's reliable/accurate. That's an easy pass. B. For static video, ie, the subject is people doing things such as; hair, makeup, eating, drinking, talking, wedding ceremony etc, which is 95% of my coverage, it's again, an easy pass ie, this camera does not have a problem with anything like that other than in very rare situations, ie, is pretty much as reliable as anything out there for this kind of thing. C. For tracking AF, based on my above test, it's not 100%, but it's good enough for my needs for those 5-10 sequences on a wedding day (bride entrance, couple exit, confetti walk, couple walking shots, entrance to meal) provided I can replicate (and maybe even improve upon) what I managed in the video. I have been quite desperate to make this thing work, just as I once was moving from the Nikon D3s to Fuji X Pro1 with it's garbage AF. Why? Partly sheer bloody-mindedness, but also because the camera and sytem very much is just right. Top of the list are video quality and stills quality and it's as good as anything and better than most. The size & ergos and build are just perfect with the Smallrig L bracket to just bring the size and weight up a little. The lens options that are beginning to appear and more so in '21 are excellent. I'm still waiting on the complimentary Sigma 45mm f2.8 (I have been battling with Panasonic but it appears I have now won, probably just to make me go away) and that will be my next major test. I'm hoping the Sigma(s) will work for me in the hybrid role. I'm sticking with the Pan 20-60mm for all tracking pieces regardless and it's also my wide-angle stills lens so retains a place in my bag regardless. But I am really interested in the 35mm f2, the 65mm f2 and the 105mm f2.8 macro as these mirrorless designed lenses would complete a perfect line up for me. Various tests have shown however that within L Mount, native works best but we'll see and if the Sigma route doesn't work out, I'd be disappointed but more than happy with Panasonic's own new f1.8 lineup.

still a good camera!

Well they had it coming... WB did not kill anything... Nolan did. as well all the top actors and top director...Movie budget are getting completely out of hand.. Nolan took 20 million salary for tenet. How can that be justified? Top actor are paid tens of millions. Now, the last time I wanted to go to the cinema, probably 18 months ago, the tickets were £15.50 for their so called Imax experience... So 31 quid for my wife and me. imagine if we had the kids!! Well enough said... We simply didn't go. not because we can't afford it but because it's insane to spend such an amount to pay for a below par experience. the last few times I have been to the cinema in the last 5 years they were 10 to 15 people max in a 300 seat cinema... What experience is that? my suggestion... Bring actors and directors back down to earth, pay them decently.. make good film with good script and story for 25 million max, put the cinema ticket around £6-8, and I bet you that they will fill up again... or go on spending 200millions on some crap with high price ticket and the 20th century fox and the others will follow in the footstep of WB...

So I have been shooting more fashion and higher end work lately and wanted to improve my color grading process without adding too much time or going down the endless rabbit hole that is known as color grading. My current process is to simply conform each clip to Rec.709 using a VLOG to Rec709 LUT make some minor tweaks using the waveforms then add an adjustment clip over the whole project to give it a certain look and feel. This works fine for events, real estate, etc. but what I am finding is that the finishing LUT is also affecting skin tones in ways that I did not like. So a quick YouTube search turned up the below video which is what really helped me develop a new workflow that is almost as fast as my previous one but allowed me to greatly improve my color grade without adding too much more time to my process. My new workflow is as follows: 1 - Apply a VLOG to Rec709 LUT to the clip 2 - Adjust the highlights and shadows using a mixture of the Log Wheels and Color Wheels until I have a good starting Rec709 image 3 - Apply a false color LUT to Node 2 to check for skin tone exposures then remove it when the exposure is right 4 - Create an adjustment clip and adjust the curves, saturation, etc while creating a skin tone layered node to control the skin tones separately 5 - Clone the adjustment clip to each subsequent clip and make small adjustments to the skin tone node qualifier to keep the creative grade from affecting the skin tones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcFPJOLTFP0

Great to hear you're upping your colour grading game, and getting better results! I watched that video a long time ago and found it quite useful at the time. The workflow you describe above is a pretty standard workflow in colour grading circles. In terms of how I believe it's normally discussed: Skintone exposure is typically set on location through a combination of camera and lighting / lighting modifiers Somehow the image gets converted to a 709 space (This can be via a great many methods, depending on your preferred workflow, but a conversion or PFE LUT is fairly common) The adjustments that get made to the whole image are referred to as primary adjustments, or "primaries" The adjustments that get made to parts of the image (for example via power windows or a key) are secondary adjustments, or "secondaries" Colour grading can seem like a bit of a dark art, and in many ways it is, but it's definitely a case of the 80/20 rule where you can put in a little effort and get a big reward in return. Here are a few videos that I've found useful that cover the basics but go a little further than Avery does in the above video... enjoy! Great video from Wandering DP (excuse the clickbait title - it was done as a joke!): I can't speak highly enough of Wandering DP - his channel is full of cinematography breakdown videos where he talks about lighting and composition and are tremendously useful if you shoot your own content. Ironically, the above video by him talking about colour grading is better than most YT colour grading videos, despite the fact he isn't a colourist, doesn't claim to be one, and this is the only video on his channel that talks about it! I have gone through a kind of mental 180 degree shift in how I think about shooting and colour grading over the last 6 months or so, and I think that his videos have played a significant part in that transformation. My understanding about how to go about shooting and grading is now far simpler, clearer, and I'm getting radically better results, and I'm not sure how I didn't understand this years ago or how there is any other way to think about it at all! And to take things up a notch, here's a video from Waqas, who is a professional colourist and obviously enormously talented. This video shows his approach, how he might make a commercial grade, and how he might make a cinematic grade. I can also recommend his videos too, as although he has a standard approach that he likes to use (as all colourists tend to have), most of his videos have little details and tips that you can pick up new stuff from, even if you've watched his other videos already. You'll also notice if you look at his channel that he recently did long interviews with the DP and the Cinematographer of Joker. The common theme between these two YT channels is that both of them are industry professionals, not internet professionals, so their frame of reference is how things are done on set, rather than the typical YT / Vlog / buy-my-LUT / links-in-the-description folks that are all over YT pretending to know what they're doing. Good luck!

Nikon is not a video company. Their forte is and will always be photo gear. They make very good products in that respect. A bit more expensive than the usual players, no doubt. But the quality is there. Let's be honest here guys: Nikon = Japanese ethos. Failing for them means being bought by another Japanese company. Since they are a part of the umbrella of the massive Mitsubishi group, I HIGHLY doubt we'll ever see a dramatic shift. At least not as dramatic as Pentax, which by the way still make a very good photo cameras.

@Walter H Thanks man! These particular shots were with Zeiss ZE lenses, with a 35mm Distagon on the RED for the wide shot and an 85mm Planar ZE on on the S1. @TomTheDP Honestly not nearly as much of a DR difference between the RED and S1 as I would expect, at least in the limited comparisons I have made between the two cameras. I'm sure in a very high DR situation, especially with the red raw, that it would win out, but I have always been really impressed with the DR of the S1. @Robert Patts I know that "motion cadence" is a big thing for some people, I mean for me personally, the S1 more than suits my needs and is a whole lot of bang for the buck, and with it I have gotten some of the most pleasing images of my career. In my experience, I think the biggest factors that contribute to a "video" look vs a more cinematic, filmic one -- and not just on the S1, but on any camera -- is usually a combination of not respecting the 180 degree shutter rule, and using glass without character. Super sharp, clinical, modern glass, such as Sigma's art series or Panny's L-mount glass is always crazy detailed edge-to-edge, but throw something with more character and imperfections like a helios 44-2 or something like that, adding diffusion filters, etc. and keeping. a nice, filmic shutter speed, for me that gross video feeling goes away really fast. Purely subjective, of course. For me the S1 delivers cinematic mojo in spades.

Despite "editors" we got ton of lies and propaganda on 'weapon of mass destruction" ownership. Thanks to youtube "policies" we got censorship on biological sex. Before "the internet" we got books on conspiracy theories and suicidal sects. Now we got wikipedia and it seems ALL other internet sources copy & paste its content. So what?

SUCCESS! Just to finish this thread, I replaced the eBay purchased Metabones XL with a new one. The new one had much tighter tolerances and even a weather sealed gasket on the back. I had to adjust the infinity focus a small amount but now my XL and Tokina 28-70mm work great together!

That won't work as the adaptor body is not the same thickness as the non speedbooster adapter. With speedboosters the adjustment if you are short of infinity is to wind the optical group towards the sensor.