Leaderboard

Any camera is a good camera if it fulfils your purpose. I think we get into trouble when either 1) people don't actually understand what impacts the end result (and therefore rely on rules of thumb that are often not true) or 2) people don't understand that your needs or goals or priorities aren't the same as theirs (and therefore just tell you that you should do X, and/or that you're wrong for choosing something other than their suggestion).

For me, he effectively demonstrates the insignificance of taking professionally prepared 4k+ content, downscaling it to 2k, and upscaling it to 4k again. The resulting images, even when compared A/B style, don't show any difference. I'd love for you to prove otherwise. I really didn't think of it like this until after watching him. Again, his point wasn't necessarily this though- it was to show there are many other considerations BEFORE pixel count that show significant importance as long as the detail threshold is met.

Well, that went about as I predicted. In fact it went exactly as I predicted! I said: Then Tupp said that he didn't watch it, criticised it for doing things that it didn't actually do, then suggests that the testing methodology is false. What an idiot. Is there a block button? I think I might go look for it. I think my faith in humanity is being impacted by his uninformed drivel. I guess not everyone in the industry cares about how they appear online - I typically found the pros I've spoken to to be considered and only spoke from genuine knowledge, but that's definitely not the case here. There's irony everywhere, but I'm not sure what you're talking about specifically! 🙂 I'm not really sure who you think Steve Yedlin actually is? You're aware that he is a professional cinematographer right? I'd suggest you read his articles on colour science and image attributes - they speak to both what he's trying to achieve and you can get a sense of why he does what he does: http://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/index.html I agree, but I think it's worth stating a couple of caveats. Firstly, he shoots large productions that have time to be heavily processed in post, which obviously he does quite a bit of. Here's a video talking about the post-production process on Mindhunter, which also used heavy processing in post to create a look from a relatively neutral capture: That should give you a sense of how arduous that kind of thing can be. Which I think makes processing in post a luxury for most film-makers. Either you're shooting a project where people aren't being paid by the hour, such as a feature where you're doing most of the work in post yourself. This is a luxury because you will be able to spend more time than is economical for the project. Film-makers who don't have the expertise themselves and would have to pay someone, or more likely they would just try and get things right in-camera, and do whatever they can afford in post. The second aspect of this is knowing what you can do in post and what you can't do. Obviously you can adjust colour, and you can degrade certain elements as well, but we're a long way off being able to change the shape of bokeh, or alter depth of field, or completely perfectly emulate diffusion. So it's important to understand what you can and cannot do in post (both from a resourcing / skills perspective as well as from a physics perspective) and take that into account during pre-production. I completely agree with this. It certainly eliminates great proportions of the people online though. I suspect that the main contributor to this is that most people online are being heavily influenced by amateur stills photographers who seem to think that sharpness is the most important image attribute in a camera or lens. I think this tendency is a reaction to the fact that images from the film days struggled with sharpness (due to both the stocks and lenses), and also early digital struggled due to the relatively low number of MP at the start as well. I think this will eventually fade as the community gets a more balanced perspective. The film industry, on the other hand, still talks about sharpness but does so in a more balanced perspective, and does so in the context of balancing it against other factors to get the overall aesthetic they want, taking into account the post-process they're designing and the fact that distribution is limited to a ~2K perceptual resolution.

I almost sold my micro the other day with prices so high but I just can't do it. Every time I shoot with outside I am blown away with the IQ. I love my Siii but there is something so nice about the micro.

This too, but I believe the 32 bit will help people like me who have to juggle many responsibilities in one role.

I guess there are a couple of different segments. At his level, I guess you can pick and choose your camera for each job so to me it would be something like.... Choose resolution as an easy first step for the required job, then pick the lenses and the rest to achieve that and not worry about resolution any more. For most amateurs who are going to own their gear and for who it will be a major purchase, I guess many will want the latest, greatest they can afford and latest greatest for many will mean higher resolution as a by product (though many will chase the more is better thing). Full HD is still all I need for video still and 8mp for photos is just fine most of the time (which means 4k video too when I need it). I have just got rid of most of my cheap cameras (film and digital) and am down to just three digital cameras... 20mp, 16mp and 12mp and they all have their uses ... A superzoom 1/2 inch 16mp used at 8mp most of the time....(only full HD video), 20mp 1 inch sensor (has 4k but i never use it) and my 12mp A7s (lovely full HD and has 4k to a recorder but I have never tried). I can not afford anything else now other than cheap fifteenth hand stuff from Ebay. Most of my videos will never be seen by an audience not held captive though.

Yeah it is as if they thought, "well it comes like this so must be reviewed like this". What does he think the quarter inch thread is for? A beer holder? It takes about 10 seconds to attach the official Sigma grip. The box format is about the modular flexibility and they barely touch on it. Would have been easy for Sigma just to do yet-another-clone of a Sony A7. Like Nikon are. Props for having the guts and imagination to step outside the box. Just shows up these YouTubers for how uncreative they are as artists that they can't even be bothered to attach a wooden hand grip.

As almost no one consumes imagery in print form, the issue of megapixels is completely mute nowadays. Any camera is good enough and will satisfy any non-forensic based analysis. Your A7s should do a splendid job. You just can't crop the hell out of it without AI upresing it if you don't think it'll satisfy people. As I remember it, the only thing you need to "worry" about with that camera is highlight fidelity in jpeg's and video with its tendency to go cyan.

After watching the video, I was surprised how many localized edits were made, incredible amounts of finessing the image. The director doesn't like pink; so, we choose a color-space with less pink, but still has significant color saturation and separation. Of course, they shoot it HDR too, but Fincher doesn't that kind of look. "Arduous" was the right word. However, when I watch the Steve Yedlin video, I really don't get the same impression. However, not knowing the entire process, it might be the same. The video you linked makes me never want to be a colorist!

Not 4K but it shows that ull need skill beside those 200$.... filmed on a Canon 550D + 50mm f1.8

That makes sense. I'm always curious what people are seeing, what they're paying attention to, and what they prioritise. Much can be learned by understanding how other people see the world. I think you're right in that under more forgiving situations the differences between cameras are much less. I think it's unfortunate that most professionals shoot in controlled situations and demand high-quality outputs, so when you say that you're an amateur they assume you're still shooting in controlled conditions but expect a lower-quality output and therefore your camera demands are less, when actually it's the case that we're often shooting in uncontrolled situations so our requirements are (in some cases) actually more than for their shoots.

More so the more pixels = stills camera thing. Even in this forum I have been told many times my (now aging) A7s is not a photography camera. To me as long as you have ENOUGH resolution for either stills or video, that is all that matters. My best photos have been taken with the A7s including reasonable level photo competition (highly commended) shots and use in newspapers, and now by the Australian national portrait gallery (not portraits). Enlarging software for stills has also gotten very good lately not that I have had any need for it to date (is there such a thing for video using AI yet good enough to end this debate?).

The A7S3 unfortunately has internal NR and Sharpening that can't be dialed down. Its a completely different comparison but comparing my S1's 10 bit codec to REDRAW, in good conditions I don't see much difference. But with harsher conditions the RAW just looks better, everything just rolls off nicer both color and contrast. I assume its the similar with BM CDNG and the A7S3 codec.

I'd be interested to know if it continues to work well and reliably. The Kingston cards are super cheap even up to 256GB. The maker says they're suitable for 4K video capture too.

sooo, any idea if or when a GH6 and "special lens" are going to be announced?

Very cool! Your rig reminds me of @ZEEK's EOSM Super 16 setup. It shoots 2.5K, 10-bit continuously or 2.8K, 10-bit continuously with ML at around 16mm and Super 16 frame sizes.

Yes, as he says in the video, people are just looking at that ONE number to make easy choice as to which camera is better. Maybe this is what separates a real cinematographer from wannabes. The image is what counts, not the megapixels (after you get to the "accepted" amount of detail threshold).

I've posted them quite a few times, but it seems like people aren't interested. They don't follow the links or read the content, and after repeating myths that Steve easily demonstrates to be false, the people go back to talking about if 6K is enough resolution to film a wedding or a CEO talking about quarterly returns, or if they should get the UMP 12K. I mentioned this in another thread recently, but it's been over a decade since the Alexa was first released and we have cameras that shoot RAW in 4, 9, and 16 times the resolution of the Alexa, but the Alexa still has obviously superior image quality, so I really wonder what the hell it is that we're even talking about here....

Was considering getting an EVA1 to compliment my S1 but I am kinda waiting on Panasonic to make its next move before I do.

I suspect that the two primary reasons the image sensor market is dominated by Sony is because of: (1) shady business deals between Japanese tech companies and (2) a lack of competition from outsiders.

What cameras don't use Sony sensors? Arri, RED, obviously Canon, Sigma (Foveon, anyway, the Fp is a Sony sensor), and by all indications, the Blackmagic Ursa 12K. And I'm unclear about some older sensors, like the Panasonic Varicam/Varicam LT (guess that isn't "old" - it's still being made). That camera was the first true dual native ISO (vs. dual GAIN, which is what most cameras actually are despite being described as "dual native ISO") and predates anything Sony did with dual native ISO tech. So, my guess is they did not make that one - maybe Panasonic themselves or TowerJazz. Someone more internet savvy than I might be able to figure it out. I don't put much stock in this whole "did Sony make the sensor or not" as it relates to how the image looks. Sony makes multiple sensors used in Hasselblad, Nikon, Panasonic, Fuji, Olympus, Blackmagic, etc. And every single one yields completely different raw output in a number of different metrics. The processing pipeline that Nikon/Fuji/Panasonic/whoever implements matters infinitely more. Looking at images from, say, the original Blackmagic Pocket vs. the Pocket 4K/6K and preferring one over the other has far less to do with who made the sensor and more to do with what Blackmagic is doing (advancements from their Gen 1 color science to their new Gen 5, for example). Exceptions would be comparing CCD to CMOS; Hasselblad's Kodak CCD sensor clearly is very different from Sony's CMOS sensor, no matter what Hasselblad does. But that's a bit apples and oranges. Now, should someone (like a big company) start making sensors? Absolutely. Competition is f***ing great, and Sony is bulldozing the sensor market. Samsung is probably best poised to do something like that, and I hope they do.