Leaderboard

Last set of stills from Seoul. We took a walk through backstreets and alleyways down to the river, stumbling across a tiny neighbourhood railway crossing...

When I feel sad, to cheer myself up I always go and read the comments on Andrea's rumors sites. Some people have been eating peyote. Random comment:

I thought I might share this. It would be interesting to hear some thoughts on resolution, moiré, aliasing, etc.

Well this last weekend 3 day job was the first time I actually got to use every bit of kit as intended and it passed. With flying colours. And it was not without it's challenges at times including some rain and a fair bit of wind... The S5ii's are for me right now, just perfect and will be for the foreseeable future. The A7RV for stills, other than the occasional need to drop out and reinsert the battery, approx 1 in every 500 actuations (I switch off in-between use a couple of hundred times per shoot at least) really only has one niggle and that is even with the Smallrig baseplate, still isn't quite as good in the hand as I'd like (but waaaaaay better than the Nikon Zf) so added a Peak Design clutch strap for the next couple of jobs that I think will fix that, but if not, I might consider a battery grip because with the 20-40, it's no issue, 28-75, slight issue and it's really only with the 70-180, it becomes a bit annoying. I have nothing now I feel any NEED to change and won't for the rest of the year, but for the future/2025... A 'S2H' might be of interest to replace one of the S5ii's as my run & gun unit, but not sure it will bring anything to the party...but we'll see. It might be an option just for interest and to replace spiritually, my now dearly departed S1H. A 'S2R' might be of interest to replace the A7RV, but struggling a bit with lenses for that to happen. The Sigma 28-45mm f1.8 would need to spawn a longer sibling...so again, we'll see, but 2 things that would need to happen there. Pondering either a fast prime around 35mm'ish for low light photography or possibly a sidekick for the A7RV to weld the 20-40mm to and reserve this unit purely for 'after dark' duty which can be 20-25% of any job. It would also act as a stills back up (at all other parts of any job) to the A7RV as currently, I'd have to pull one of the S5ii's off video duty to fill that role of called upon. Contenders for this backup/night role are: ZV-E1 (12mp stills does not faze me in the slightest but it's AF ability in low light does a bit) A7Cii (AF ability in low light again, concerns me slightly compared with say the Zf...) Nikon Zf which was fantastic in low light, but is a bit of a chonky boy. Hmmm, fact cheap f1.8 lens sub 500 vs second used body around 1.5-2k... It's the only area where the A7RV could be improved upon. It's not bad, fairly decent even, but I know it could be better and probably won't happen this year as I'm getting close to season end and don't really need to test anything, but ideally would like to do something for 2025. But then there is a rumoured Sony 24/28-105mm f2.8 coming soon and that could throw a spanner in the works and push me towards a second body and lose a lens in the process. We'll see, but very happy with the hybrid set up I have now finally achieved after almost 15 years of effort in this genre. I have now merely entered the stage I shall call, 'just fannying about really', as in anything else/new now is just tinkering for tinkering sake rather than need.

Liar liar, overheating Canon R5 user's house on fire.

I want to believe.

Magic Lantern was not a viable option at the time and there's no way I would use a hacked camera on a professional shoot. Canon C300 was $8,000 2012 on release and I needed two cameras. People forget how expensive these tools were back then and how little options we had. Even the two 5dmk2 bodies I used were $5k back then which is like $7k in today's terms.

And for the other 0.1%, may I offer you a very warm welcome to the forum.

Hongdae. Choosing stills is different than choosing shots for an edit because the movement really makes things completely different, so I've ended up with much cleaner and more minimal stills. In reality, every street and alleyway in every direction looked like this virtually as far as the eye could see:

Here's a little clip from a balfolk dance last weekend, shot on BMMCC with the Sigma 18-35 and speedbooster.

I love 4k as a viewing format, but overall it's not that much better than good 1080p. And I do agree, for the way most people view movies, they wouldn't see a difference. If you have the option though, it is a good sweet spot IMO for delivery, especially for future proofing. Just starting out though, it's not something I would spend money on over good 1080P. I do think that 6k is probably the most practical medium for shooting in these days. I really have no desire to ever go above that unless it's a specific product I'm selling, like 8k TV wallpaper or something

Is that level of haze/smog a regular thing in Seoul? If so, makes it a very cinematic city to work in!

Lovely last set and compositions! @kyeWouldn't mind to have these framed on my walls. Did you film prores or raw? Looking fabulous! Somehow I feel that I like the image from my og pocket even better than with my m2k. I filmed with the micro last week and it felt not quiet as beautiful as the footage i got with the p2k a couple weeks ago. That's related to daylight scenes though. Darn, it seems I belong to that group of 0.1% of people who see that difference. Welcome to this forum as @BTM_Pix would say!:) My M2K has the rawlite oplf/ir cut, whereas my pocket doesn't. It didn't bother me as I didn't have to film finest patterns or akward shirts. An og pocket with good battery, no overheating 1080p 50p would be my favorite personal camera. Go, BM Design!:)

good example. I guess my eyes are attracted to the goodies. hahaha.

I didn’t realise you had an OF channel. Where can I find it?

Hmm, ok. It hasn't happened that many times and seems to be fixed with a restart, so I guess I'll just carry on. The whole thing of shooting slowly because it's fully manual seems to align with the idea that you miss things happening, so if a shot here or there requires a bit of fiddling then it's not a big deal really. Speaking of carrying on, went for a walk in the backstreets of Yongsan last night. I had to cheat another stop by going to 360 shutter as some places were seriously dark, but in post I was able to raise up images by a stop, and if I put a bit of NR then I could go even further without issue. Of course, this requires grading the images properly - where blacks are actually black! I'm actually surprised how good the low-light is. This is only at F2.8 with a zoom and IS, and yet it's basically usable to replicate what you can see in real life, despite being S16 and almost a decade old. Images even less graded than previously: One thing I've noticed is that with the 12-35mm not being that long a zoom, and with my monitor set to show a 2.35:1 crop, I tend to compose with people smaller in the frame than with other cameras I've used. I don't know how well this is translating, as in theory this should make the 'world' larger by showing people smaller in comparison, but as I only have my laptop and not my normal monitor I'm not used to judging.

I haven't been able to use my Micro yet as I have no cards for it. Really curious to test it out though. I used to own the original Pocket camera which I am fond of. @kye Those frames look excelent, though probably mostly to do with your compositions.

Shot with the BMMCC in Myeongdong for 2.5 hours in the (light) rain today. It's a trooper. Images barely graded as usual. and a POV pic of the setup. I might have gone a touch dark on the grade, but these were just taken from checking dailies to catch any tech or usage issues. I think I'm getting the hang of this.