Leaderboard

Because I'm a cheapskate who is recycling his 5D Mk II era EF glass on the latest and greatest Panasonic body thanks to the wonderful Sigma MC21 adapter, I can't take advantage of in-body camera corrections for things like vignetting and lens distortion. And sometimes I would like to do that. It's a lot of fun using the phase detect AF in the S5II to shoot wide open and get in-focus footage with my Canon nifty fifty. But wide open, that lens has something like 2.4 stops of vignetting. That can look really cool sometimes but other times it's not. I first noticed it when editing some interview footage shot against a plain white wall. I wanted to do a little bit of reframing and it looked kind of bad because of the heavy vignetting. I know there are effects that attempt to add or remove vignetting, but I was interested to see if there's a way to do it perfectly, as you can when shooting RAW and using Lightroom. And there is! First of all, I put a semi-opaque piece of white plastic over the lens, focused it to infinity, set the aperture to wide open, pointed it at the sky and did a manual white balance. The aim here, in terms of exposure is to get the brightest part of the image (the exact centre) at exactly 50 IRE. Or you can use ACES to make a linear change to the data to get it looking like this: Then desaturate it, invert it and export as a 16 bit TIFF or similar. Place this image file on a layer above your footage. Change blending mode to Linear Light and Opacity to 50%. Hey, presto! Bye bye, vignetting! (Note: doing this in ACES linear gives perfect results, but it works pretty well in log Rec709 too - the center needs to be 50% IRE in both methods) This is how it looks on real world footage. Before: After: Obviously, this isn't as convenient as doing it in camera as you would need a different vignetting profile for each f stop. But it will allow you to finally shoot your Nocticron f0.95 or whatever wide open without that pesky vignetting! I'm not quite as flush as all that, but I'm quite pleased that my old Canon plastic fantastic that I had in a drawer behaves a little more like Panasonic's version which costs 4 times the price. And a simple Lens Distortion filter at -2 knocks back the distortion. Now if only there was a way of making the focus motor perfectly silent...

I dusted off my EOS-M today and loaded the new ML. It's feeling a lot more user-friendly than before. 2.8K with accurate monitor display? Heck yes. This is potentially an acceptable level of 'frustrating' and I might actually shoot something with it.

I would like to discover some new sites and YouTubers. I am going to delete DPReview and all the reviews sites from my bookmarks and RSS. Had enough of em. I miss Philip Bloom and his cats. I never thought I'd say that His blog was a brilliantly entertaining read but he doesn't do it any more really. I've found some great YouTubers and people on this forum who I follow the blogs and channels of. Now I'd like to know more. Who regularly updates on new camera news, gives intelligent opinions, actually uses the stuff, actually makes original content? Also is Reddit a good place for camera reviews? And even... Are there any Vimeors? People with regular and good camera tests, on their Vimeo account?

Forum member @essbe mentioned this in another thread, but I think it deserves it's own topic. Magic Lantern developer theBilalFakhouri is showing compelling evidence that he has figured out how to implement full real-time preview in most raw recording modes across the EOS-M, 100D, 650D, and 700D. Live HDMI output is supported across all recording modes too. Many have found that these are the last two major usability hurdles for these cameras. He is trying to crowdfund £2,214 (about $2750 USD) for the 300 hours he's spent figuring this out before he releases it, and says that he will begin work on full real-time preview on the 5D iii after this campaign gets funded. As of this morning, he's about 2/3 of the way to his goal, but donations have slowed down significantly over the last 24 hours. If you'd like to pitch in, instructions on how to contribute are in the link above. I haven't used either of my ML-enabled cameras in about three years, but this feels like it could be the final chapter in ML history. I would love to see it succeed and keep some of these cameras out of landfill as well as to provide the next generation of broke filmmakers with a truly affordable 16mm/S16 raw camera.

I got the mark1 version. Looking forward to snap it away with the plastic fantastic! And looking forward to your findings with the S5II and some moving images as well or stills of the caliber coming from the 300 or 400D you sent to your friends.:) @hyalinejim How does the S5II feel image and grading wise compared to dealing with colour from 5DIII Raw?

Funny you ask... I sold the Z6... had the S5... and went back to Z6 as I'm focused mostly on photography. Bough the Nikon 58mm 1.4G and love this combo for portraits. I'm thinking about getting a Ninja star but none have shown up on eBay. I'm also thinking of getting another camera dedicated to only video. Possibly a GH5 with v-log or if I can find a cheap S5 for video stuff. Tight budget so not sure. And yes, I have a camera buying/selling disease.

Hard to say it better.

Sure, I’d rather the use the FX6 over the FX3 but as a B Cam I much prefer the FX3 and FX30 to the A7 line. They are made for video, have internal fans, much easier to navigate video focused menus and a proper top handle with XLR inputs that actually screws into the body so no cage required if you don’t need it. I like the rear tally light of the FX series and the time code support as well as the ease of witch you can easily record four channels of audio. Lots of little things that make the user experience far better for video.

I guess the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wind ; ) And this answer responds to your subsequent post @markr041, funny to say the least : ) That's what's going on when people forget one thing is to celebrate technology, something else is to ignore what fabrication means or we risk to end to make our stuff look like all of them the same. This is what everyone or the majority here is trying to tell the world. Nothing about dictatorship of taste or any beef against your videos, Mark. I am used to praise them posted. As tests, yes. As piece of aesthetics is a whole other subject. Point and shoot never brought anything special. There's need for elements those already mentioned. The technology constraints of past led those filmmakers before us to learn how to handle with. They established a language. No technology will reinvent the wheel because aesthetics depends on them but aesthetics is beyond. Just mediocracy can pop up when people kill the set of know-how available these other fella are trying to express it by their written words and examples mentioned. Aesthetics is complex. Requires form. This can be simple but not unusual-reducer. If this makes sense. Up-to-date cannot mean this. To lower the standard. « 'Democratization' of image making » is effectivelly a challenge itself. Open doors. Poor or to be poor is what it is, though. It's not because raspberries are available your strawberry milkshake will be any better. A skate on fragile thin-ice features is prone to end ruined. Cinema is the proposal of an alternative reality, truth or not, nothing else. Or it's not that. For something mismatched, dissimilar as chalk and cheese, call it some other name. - EAG :- )

fwiw I have never liked the look of this person's videos & I've clicked on a bunch. Do whatever you want, mix it all up in an incoherent, unpleasant looking way & blame people's reactions on whatever you want. At the end of that process maybe ask yourself who are you even wanting to watch your videos. On one level they're right -- considered use of previous convention is kind of all out the window as audiences turn into evermore complete mushheads; largely forgetting the 'content' before it's done flashing in front of their eyes answays. Alongside that, is a flood of people who don't have a lot of knowledge making all this filler. All that shared naivety IS - and will continue - to shape how mass audiences consume this form of media; but we have our choices to make too. It's the price to pay in the 'democratization' of image making.

It's great for photos as you can one click the vignetting away in LR if desired. This is the one I have, which I think is the last version of it.

This is a representation of reality... Invariably fake. There's no point to look like that's what our eyes take. - EAG :- )

Looking forward to it and to your findings! @QuickHitRecord

99% people shoot 60p for slow motion purposes on a cine cam. here is for example your parade in 60p conformed to a more standard 30p timeline for slow-mo: 30p is a good in between if you want more fluid motion. Direct 60p output is what gives the dreaded "soap opera" look or "home video" look or "camcorder" look, pick your choice of attributes. The reason why a lot of sports is shot at 60p is to allow the editor to slow-down the footage during replay. The fast motion is also suited to fast action. Shooting humans at regular motion in 60p just feels awkward. That said you are free to do as you please and "innovate" with your faux cine/tv broadcast combo of high motion widescreen aspect ratio..

The funding goal was just reached. Thanks to everyone who donated!

They need to hack Sony firmware and make a Magic Torchlight or smth. Lots of ppl would support that in a heartbeat. I would.

This guy gets a lot of stick (probably for his young age) from the NoFilmSchool trolls and facebook camera police, but I have to say he brings up much more interesting knowledge and talks much more wisdom than the majority of other camera / filmmaking Youtubers. Simon Cade of DSLRguide: https://www.youtube.com/user/DSLRguide The channel has these qualities: Doesn't talk very much at all about camera specs and new gear, more what you do with what you've got. Gives his own insights into his thought processes and inspirations. Gives well illustrated creative and technical tips to his "beginners / enthusiast" target audience. Doesn't bullshit and is very open about the purpose of his Youtube channel. Very genuine and authentic fell to his content. and many more..... He also still films on a t3i / 600d - and does a bloody great job of using it for his Vlogs. He raises the point that he doesn't need another camera yet and would rather spend the money on other areas of his filmmaking.

Luke Seerveld's Meet the Gaffer series isn't very camera-focused, but it's incredibly educational and features some great work with the GH4 and (recently) GH5.