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Thank fuck I don't need any fertiliser. Cheaper to buy a horse and make your own these days...

I've long been a fan of 10bit log because of how far it can be pushed without falling apart. However, I still use Premiere for all of my jobs. This is because I'm used to it, have old projects that I often need to incorporate in new ones and sometimes I need to be able to talk nicely to After Effects and Photoshop. I don't mind editing in it. But colour correction sucks for log footage. The Lumetri controls are designed to work on God knows what gamma. It's OK-ish for making luminance adjustments to log gammas (still not by any means perfect) but trying to white balance accurately is basically impossible. The highlights will be over corrected and the shadows undercorrected. For a while, for critical colour work I had been pasting Premiere timelines into After Effects in order to use an ACES worfklow there using the OpenColorIO plugin. The advantage of working in ACES space is that you can adjust exposure, contrast and colour globally across the luminance range. If you're used to using the White Balance, Exposure and Contrast sliders in Lightroom for photo editing then basically you can do the same thing very easily in ACES colour space. Finally, and thanks in part to a post on the Sigma FP thread I've found a way to do something similar in Premiere. Here's how to do it. You'll need a free copy of Resolve for this. Create a Resolve project with these settings and add a clip: Add Color Space Transform effect to a node and set the input to the gamut and gamma of your log footage. Then right click the CLIP thumbnail and generate a 3D lut (65 point). This lut will transform your log footage into an ACES-like condition: Now add a second node and add a Color Space Transform effect. This time the color spaces and gammas are reversed. This gets your footage back to log. Our corrections will go between these two transformations. Disable the first node (or delete it) and generate a second lut: Now in Premiere add the following effects: The first lut, Log to ACES, goes in the first instance of Lumetri (you'll have to find it in the Effects Panel and drag it to the clip. Don't go into the Color workspace as we'll need two instance of Lumetri) The second lut is ACES to Log and that goes in the second instance of Lumetri (if you put this in the Basic lut slot you can put a log to Rec709 in the Creative lut slot) Between the two add brightness and contrast. +15 brightness units is one stop. Also add the obsolete Fast Color Corrector. This simple colour wheel will do all your white balancing for you. There's even a white balance dropper if you need it. The wheel is very sensitive, though, so I lower the Balance Gain to 2 to make it less sensitive. If you have a nice lut that you like for your log footage then this is all you need to colour correct very, very quickly in Premiere. White balance, exposure, contrast. Done! Next! I'll post some examples of saving poorly exposed and white balanced shots when I have time. Premiere stupidly doesn't allow you to save the four effects as a single preset, but you can save the first lumetri as a preset, the two middle effects as a preset, and the last lumetri as a preset. I would love to not use Lumetri at all for this, but can't find a simple "Apply Color LUT" effect like there is in After Effects. Does anyone know of one?

Did you know (do you even care…) that the venerable S1R can shoot 10 bit, 5k 30p internally? I didn’t until the other day but discovered it does so just for some amusement, tried it. Holy cow, - it’s better than the 4k 60p I have been getting out of all the S cameras shooting the Natural profile. It’s a 3:2 format, but so what. There’s no log available but the Flat profile is quite gradeable. I kind of knew it existed actually but had simply dismissed it as the 6k doesn’t look as good as the 4k so just ‘assumed’ 5k wouldn’t either. Wrong! I shot a few scenes back to back against my usual setting and it’s much nicer so giving it a run out at this weekends wedding… Had to flip everything to NTSC on all 4 cameras and will be working on a 24p timeline instead of my usual 25, but I can squeeze a little more out of my slo mo as it will be 60p @ 40% instead of 50p @ 50%. All the 30p will be @ 80% and only the static talky bits will be in real time, ie, 24p timeline shot at 24fps. So: 24 @ 100%, 30 @ 80% and 60 @ 40%. Could be a ‘game upping’ weekend… 🤔

cool to hear man, would love to try one of these out!

thank you very much! although i've expressed my skepticism before about inherent looks about cameras and sensors, it does help that the p4k lets you record raw/or if you're a bit anal about definitions, the equivalent of prores444 with metadata that lets you perfectly reconstruct the wb value. it also helps that it doesn't seem like it does any noise reduction which does make the images feel very natural compared some other cameras. for what it's worth i've used this filter for the film and added some of the stock davinci grain while color grading. but that's maybe more related to the behavior of the lenses... thank you as well, i will certainly post a link here once i'm allowed to! the t-stop kind of varied on a shot-per-shot basis, i tend to start at t/4 or t/2.8 and see whether i want more or less dof. some shots were done wide open at t/2.2, while sometimes i had to pull focus a alone on a shoulder rig, where i was more likely to be at t/4 or t/5.6. those shot-reverse shot frames at the school entrance were done at around t/3.5-4 i think on the 25mm for example, because i liked the background at that aperture. i haven't used samyangs since around 2017, but i kind of remember them leaving a sour taste in my mind. from what i can tell their mirrorless lenses and newer options tend to be a bit better, but i'm skeptical about them as well. the meikes are super clean and sharp, which i can't really remember the samyangs being, and that also means that theyre super versatile. the 25 has the most chromatic abberation wide open, but it's completely ignorable by t/2.8. it's very trendy rn to have glass that's very quirky, which is cool too of course, but i think at this point i'd rather have a very compact, matching lightweight set thats made out of aluminium and that basically doesn't breathe at all. since i've stopped using focal reducers i've noticed that my image quality got quite a bit better without weird optical errors, so i can't go back to that either. that supermist filter can give me a similar to vintage low contrast look i tend to like, but without the weird flares and halos coming from light sources, while looking more intentful at the same time. its worth mentioning that i got them my set second hand, so 40% less than the price new (in which case they are still actually an incredible deal). if you're like me, and interested in (attempting) actual fiction filmmaking, i think this lens set and the camera are quite frankly some of the more interesting gear to get, especially for the money. probably a combination of quite a lot of factors, partially being very excited during pre-production, having a bit too much self confidence and expecting it look incredible, and not getting at that level with the finished result. there's also the fact that the acting isn't quite there (although that's not my responsability as a dp), and me only seeing that when watching the end result. most of the dialogue was in spanish, which i cant speak, and i only got to see the end result with subtitles quite a lot later. i tend to be pretty insecure about my skills as a dp too tbh, and i feel like i've done better looking stuff than this as well. there's also the fact that i was a bit selective with the stills. if you're interested, here's some stills of the stuff i'm less happy with for example:

Nice to see you happy. Grats.

As good as it gets. And he was from my favorite place on earth, Naples, Italy.

Pixies, the band that changes my life. Almost did not believe when I first saw them 18 years ago ("indie" bands almost never comes to Brazil at that time), thought that would be once in a lifetime. Yesterday bought a ticket for me and my wife, to see them for the 5th time, in October, here in São Paulo. Will be my 1st music show in 4+ years... Filmed them in Amsterdam with a Kodak Zi-8 in 2009. Amazing as usual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwHixRVQ3pw

Great to see another FZ47 video! I like your treatment of the footage a lot. It looks different than just about everything else (obviously CMOS cameras, but it also stands apart from any of the HVX/ZIU/etc crowd too). Here's an earlier edit without Topaz: The image quality is riddled with problems, but I still find myself drawn to it. I agree with @PannySVHS; the video on this camera would have been a much more compelling feature with a higher bitrate. I wish this camera had been one of the Lumix bodies to be hacked back in the day.

Lucky person to have that happen, I am a big Opera fan believe it or not. Classical music is the ultimate music of all time.

Well, they are not pictures, they are frame grabs. DNG files.

Another Premiere user also because I don’t embrace change unless I have to. It’s possibly/probably why I have never got along with log because try as I might, I can’t get it anywhere near as nice as I can near enough SOOC using a profile. Whether that was Eterna with Fuji or up to now, Natural with Panny. Though switching to Flat now as after some further play and based on someone else’s editing on The Toob, was convinced to give it a go. Log is just one big PITFA for me. I may give it a go and with Da Vinci Resolve right at the back end of my season, but right now, nah.

There has been a revolution in colour grading over the last 15 or so years with the invention of colour managed workflows. These enable the automatic conversion of footage between various colour spaces, and enable things like colour matching between cameras. Prior to this, all colour grading was based on either manufacturer-provided LUTs (or other LUTs like print film emulation LUTs), or manually grading the camera files to create the desired output (typically grading log into rec709). However, colour management doesn't negate the need for manually adjusting the image to get a desired look. I've been working with colour management and colour grading for years now, but decided to up my game by getting a control surface and learning to do things manually, no colour management or LUTs - just full manual ruthlessness. Enter the BlackMagic Micro Panel! which isn't actually that micro in real life.... After shipping delays (8 weeks!!!) it has arrived and I've put in maybe 6 hours over two sessions. As anticipated, my skill level is "disappointing", but my plan is simply to put on some music and put in the hours, like building any other skill. My first grading session was actually a bit of a revelation. I started off grading C-Log footage from the XC10, and using on the Lift/Gamma/Gain controls. My second session was grading HLG footage from the GH5, and including Contrast/Saturation/Offset as well as a bit of Lift/Gamma/Gain. The three trackballs adjust the hue offset, and the three rings/wheels adjust the luminance. At first I thought that the wheels were very insensitive, large rotations seemed to make small changes in the image - especially the Gamma wheel. However, the more I used them a funny thing happened. I found that there were all these little "niches" where suddenly a particular thing emerged. Go a little bit one way or the other and you adjust the feel, but go a bit too far and the look dissolves. These are so fragile that the whole niche might only be 1-2mm of adjustment on one of these wheels. So when you find one of these all of a sudden the control feels like it's very sensitive, not too sensitive but you definitely don't want it to be faster. These things are "looks" related to a colour balance, but can also be "textures" related to shadow levels and shadow contrast, or to do with highlight rolloffs. They can be broader too, like "warm sunset glow" where the balance of the colour matches the contrast, or when I was grading some Thai temples there's a way to make the gold-gilding on the buildings and statues really glow. These looks really seem to be based on combinations of various things in the image. Here are my initial take-aways: These controls are enormously powerful There are dozens / hundreds / more? of looks that you can do with only the LGG controls - throw in the Contrast/Pivot/Saturation/Offset controls and it's almost limitless. Just using a surface is a revelation I've used all the individual controls (LGG, Contrast/Pivot/Offset/Saturation, etc) literally thousands of times over the years, but I'm learning new things by the hour that I never noticed or never understood. I genuinely have no idea why having a control surface has made this difference, but it really has. Maybe it's being forced to concentrate on only one or two controls at once. Maybe it's the tactile nature of it. Moving multiple controls at the same time is game-changing Moving two controls at the same time and in opposite directions is game-changing and simply isn't possible without a control surface. This is where the plethora of looks comes from, as you adjust multiple controls against each other the overall image doesn't change much (assuming you're balancing the adjustments) but the ratio between the two does and you can gradually dial in different looks by navigating up and down this balance point. There's no way you can do this with a mouse because by the time you adjust one control (which throws off the whole look of the image) and then adjust the second control (to almost completely eliminate the impacts of the first control) you've forgotten what it looked like before, so you can't possibly dial in the subtle changes required to find these tiny niches in any reliable way. Muscle memory developed really early This surprised me, but it was really fast to really develop. The surface feels familiar even after a few hours. I'm told that pros grade without looking down, maybe at all, and that's part of their efficiency. You can grade full-screen This is perhaps a Resolve-specific thing (I don't know how panels work in other NLEs) but if you're adjusting things with the mouse then you can't do that with a full-screen image because the controls are hidden from the cursor. I have an external reference monitor, but it means that I can put scopes on my UI monitor to cover the controls and I can still adjust things even though those controls are under the scopes. Very useful. It's teaching me to see I've spotted a few things happening in the footage (which I had seen previously) but because I was adjusting something at the time they emerged, I was able to play with the controls and see what caused them. Now, I recognise that thing and know what is causing it. I've learned what causes things I've been seeing for years. Once you've found a look it's interesting to adjust each control individually to see how that control impacts the look. That can help to dial-in the look too - you adjust each control to optimise the look and after a few 'rounds' of tweaking each control you'll have nailed it. You'll also learn very quickly which controls matter to the look, and also which ones that look is more sensitive to. Would I recommend this? Yes and no. Yes, but only if you're willing to put the time in. If not then you're probably going to have a very bad time. I tried grading some iPhone footage, with its auto-WB and highly processed 709 image, and I was half-way to rage-quitting within about 15 minutes. I still had that sour taste in my mouth the next day, and it took me a few days to get over! I've now realised that all practice is good practice and so I may as well grade more forgiving footage and leave the iPhone until my skills are significantly more developed. I don't know what my long-term plans will be, maybe I will learn to grade well enough that I don't need to use a panel but will be able to use the knowledge I've gathered. Maybe I'll always want one. I will definitely grade real projects using colour management and LUTs, but having these skills will complement that. At the moment, it's a learning tool, and damn - I'm learning a lot.

Professor Marty abides to your comment. I enjoy a good sense of humour. ONCE IN A WHILE!!!! 🙂

Sure, my friend : ) Well described BTW from someone who shows well to know both ; ) I am just much attached to that one also from my emotional involvement with the town... where I studied, have worked and lived. A year later we had the chance to receive Ted Schilowitz and organise the RED event in Casa del Cinema di Roma (in one of my fav locations on earth too: Villa Borghese) and where we succeeded to have full house (literally more than 5% of people who attended were brought by my hands).

Naples is nice but I'm going a little bit up there... Rome ;- )

Jesus Marty you are scaring me with your comment. You are sounding like my doctor about my bowel movements! I feel violated!

I'm actually picking it up today! I'll probably be super lazy about getting around to learning it and shooting with it, but hopefully I'll post a few tests here eventually. Thanks for all the help from people here willing to post test footage.

Well if the price of shit is going up that much then the stuff that comes out of Boris Johnson’s mouth might actually have some value for once.

Love the part about the cognitive effects and potential, parallel balancing and counterbalancing of actions and dimensions of tactility. Great stuff! @kye

oh it was merely one of most recent example I'd read today I could instead refer to say the plasterboard shortages and price increases instead, is so extremely bad that it is making regular front page news here in New Zealand! Or the price of lettuce? (the shortages have got so bad it was in the news today that KFC was substituting some lettuce in their burgers with cabbage instead!!) Price increases and supply chain delays are everywhere, it isn't just the Nikon Z9.

Absolutely agree. I shoot travel style content of my personal travels and started studying Parts Unknown and especially the parts they film outside (as opposed to the sit-down interviews which are controlled lighting and often closed set). The first thing that stood out to me was that their cinematography wasn't radically better than mine, but the editing and storytelling absolutely blew anything I did away. If you looked at the stills from an edit of mine and stills from an edit of theirs then there were lots of similarities, but that was where the similarities ended. After analysing many episodes I've come to realise that it's actually the sound design that drives their edits, and I would say that in that situation the sound is significantly more important than the image, and the purely visual aspects of the image (composition, exposure, colour, movement) is of dramatically less importance. I think if you gave their team some rather uninspired and drab footage, by the time they'd edited the interviews, edited up the b-roll and travelling segments, applied copious amounts of music, sound design, and audio effects, and then put in the voice-over, you'd potentially not really be able to tell that the visuals that went in were lacklustre at all. Of course, the visuals that did go in were of high-quality, no doubt, but that's not what makes or breaks a project. I think that camera YT paints a completely false impression that the camera and image is what carries a production. The elephant in the room is that it absolutely doesn't, and cannot. Cinematography is probably not even top 5 in terms of what makes or breaks a project.

Well, I think film makers at times take too much credit. As been said on here, I know I push it, is that it is about the story, the plot, whatever you want to call it. The people in the audience have ZERO clue what an Arri camera is, or DoF or what, they want a story that moves them, one they want their friends to see, or them see it again. You can have the best gear in the world and the best actors, etc., if the story sucks you are out of business. Sure, if it is all great than you have a Blockbuster, but how often does that happen and that takes Lots of money to happen. What I am getting at every frame, every scene does not have to be perfect. The actors and the story are actually more important. If they suck well your Arri and your perfection count for nothing. Work together or perish. Help prop each other up. How many people walk out of a movie and say ahh the videography was terrible even if it was.

It's hard to tell from stills - so much of film-making is in the context of the story that you really have to see it to understand. There are still a bunch of quite tangible things I see in film-making all the time that I have no idea what causes them or how to manipulate those aesthetic aspects. I find it's best not to get too polarised about anything - either too positive or negative - as reality is always much more towards the middle with both sides represented. Just concentrate on the things that are within your power 🙂

Other than the last one oof I think even the others are fine. I think you have done a good job. But I have not seen the whole thing. Thanks for your replies.

Well, the scheduled arrival for the next batch is now not going to be January 2023. Its March 2023. At this rate they won't have to worry about infringing RED's patent as it will have expired before they ship them.

Yeah, I followed the wide hint and guessed it was full frame 😛 love the image quality, so natural and lot's of dynamic range! The thumbnail shot looks gorgeous but I always had a soft spot for Panasonic so I'm biased!

This clipping point is in line with the characteristics of the PRR test clips you uploaded before, and broadly speaking, also the behaviour of the DNGs, so I don't see anything strange here. We established that up to ISO 800 was an amplification of the base ISO 100 signal so the clipping point is raised accordingly. As the signal increases it should also be raising the noise floor obviously, but we noticed that the noise floor stays pretty low which is a nice win. For whatever reason, this taps out above ISO 800, so there are diminishing returns as far as overall dynamic range. When a camera is baking in the ISO change, the clipping point would ideally continue to increase. Maybe Sigma prioritized a clean noise floor instead of highlights for the higher ISO ranges (>800). So using ISO 800 is a decent option. Regarding ISO 3200, the higher base ISO, it has a lower clipping point but my observation is that it has a proportionally lower noise floor. So my recommendation for absolute max DR was to shoot 3200 at least -1 stop underexposed since you could raise the noise floor and it would be the same as ISO 800/1600, but with additional highlight headroom. If you think about it, this is in line with the expected behavior with higher base ISOs: lower noise floor and slightly lower highlight clipping point. I understand this is a bit of a headache to track for a marginal gain, so shooting ISO 800 is a good rule of thumb to get max DR to keep things simple. Well again, the IRE value is LUT or view gamma-dependent, but your numbers make sense. The base ISO 100 has a lower clipping point than ISO 800 which is baking in an amplification of the signal, but somehow also keeping a similar noise floor. For example with this ISO 800 test clip, when importing as V-log into ACES and viewed through the standard ACES output display transform the clipping point is in the high 90's so it stands to reason that ISO 100 would clip lower.

Yes, you have to use the Doubler. They are really hard even on a tripod to keep the camera still if you zoom all the way out. That lodge was a Long ways away. The car picture is a great example. The damn picture was not zoomed as far.

Footage looks good to me. What is it about the shots that you don't like @PPNS?

OK there you go. So yes it's confirmed that Atomos decided "Native" = Vlog. After you said it, I googled it and found the AtomOS release notes update PDF that you're quoting from. This certainly reduces a lot of uncertainty. It's a shame the Atomos rep was not able to clarify this when I emailed them a while ago. The Vlog curve spec defines 8 stops above middle grey, so the max linear value is 46.0855. (0.18*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2). The fp sensor clips way before the max value that Vlog was designed to hold so it should not be an issue. Based on the test clip you recently uploaded with the sun clipping out of the window, it's clipping at about 0.833 in Vlog so that would be like 83 IRE. In scene reflectance terms once converted from Vlog to linear in Nuke, that's 9.36. So it's clipping more than 2 stops below the Vlog max value. This screengrab illustrates where that is in relation to the entire scene reflectance range defined by the Vlog curve. Specifically this shows a Vlog to linear transform, so it's the inverse of a Vlog curve. At the bottom, the input numbers represent the equivalent of an "IRE value" (0.83) and the output numbers represent the scene linear value (about 9.4, matches Nuke). So as you can see, there's a ton of headroom remaining that will never get used. That means on the same Vlog to linear transform the input is about 0.59 and the output is 0.9. Here's a screengrab showing you how much extra headroom you get for capturing highlights above that. You basically get all of the curve to the right of the green arrow I drew. So while it's not ideal that Sigma don't have their own log curve, Vlog is okay as a monitoring option on the Ninja V. It doesn't matter what ISO you use, you will never use up all of Vlog. This is assuming there's no funny business going on where the Atomos is somehow clipping the highlights as they come in from the camera, but I doubt that. Just to clarify, it doesn't matter which monitoring option you choose on the Ninja V, the underlying file is exactly the same. The difference between monitoring in PQ or V-log is that Vlog requires you add your own LUT, while PQ out of box creates a "display" image that takes advantage of the extra nits of the Ninja V but it's just a consumer HDR display standard for TVs. So if you want to view the same image while shooting as in your timeline, you would match the display settings in both the Ninja V and FCPX, which is all you do in any software/hardware combo anyway. All that's been figured out is that the "Native" input is a known log format (Vlog), so that means it's easy to figure out how to load the look from your editing/grading software into the Ninja V.

don't really know if it's really worth posting this, but i dp'd a little short by a friend with this camera. it's a coming of age film about an immigrant high schooler kind of finding his place in punk music culture. to be quite honest i'm not quite happy with most of the shots we've gotten, but i've decided to post stills of ones i like the most. maybe some of you will like the images. all done with the meike mft set if that's of any interest. i still think this camera rocks, even if it has quite a few shortcomings.

@Marcio Kabke Pinheiro Nada bate a MPB... chamem-lhe brega ou o que quiserem, venha quem for ao Planalto, os cães ladram e a caravana passa... Viva o Brasil! EAG :- ) Moça Me espere amanhã Levo meu coração Pronto pra te entregar Moça Moça eu te prometo Eu me viro do avesso Só pra te abraçar Moça Sei que já não és pura Teu passado é tão forte Pode até machucar Moça Dobre as mangas do tempo Jogue teu sentimento Todo em minhas mãos Eu quero me embolar nos teus cabelos Abraçar teu corpo inteiro Morrer de amor de amor me perder Eu quero, eu quero Eu quero me embolar nos teu cabelos Abraçar teu corpo inteiro Morrer de amor, de amor me perder

You have to have a Really stable tripod and a good fluid head to get the best out of the lens. A B4 lens like it will cover m4/3 with a 2x doubler. It will cover the s16 senor at medium to long lengths without even using the doubler. That lens cost like $8000.00 40 years ago. They are super good quality. They make normal a camera look like a toy. But they weigh a lot, but that is a good thing for stability on an ENG camera that weighs a lot also. The ENG rig I used the most weighed over 20 pounds. But you get used to it, and they were rock solid once you used them for a few weeks. Hardest thing was learning how to walk backwards fast, which you did more than forward it seemed. I covered a lot of courthouse cases. Really hectic stuff in the hallways. My rig cost close to $100,000.00 new, $20,000.00 tripod and fluid head, that was in 1980's money. 3 Tube 2/3" tape cameras, a whopping 480i was my first one. Never got to 1080p ENG wise, I bought a lot of Sony CCD ones later on my own. I had a company that shot TV commercials for about 5 years. My writer quit and so did I lol. It takes a very special talent to come up with new stuff to do.

Couple shots of my BMPCC with my 14x Fujinon.

It's a worldwide problem for many many products, both supply chain shortages and inflation hitting hard. Look at these prices increases I just saw announced today for fertilizer in New Zealand: Makes the +1500 euro premium to pay for a camera seem like a pretty trivial increase in comparison. At least you're not seeing over 1500% price increases!

Nikon really have dropped a clanger with this haven’t they?! I just went to ‘buy’ one here in France and only one retailer could sell you one in stock…for a +1500 euro premium. 7500 euros if you want one this year 🤑

Who cares about something that happened 18 years ago? If that is all you have to worry about you must live on a different planet.