Andrew Reid

Panasonic should have announced their intentions at NAB before they teased us with the beta V-LOG. Just come straight out and said "here is how we're going to do it" instead of letting speculation run rife for 6 months on the internet, because it creates an atmosphere of uncertainty amongst loyal GH4 owners and the temptation to jump to a Sony with S-LOG already must be pretty high. So yeah they have mishandled this but hopeful of positive outcome on September 1st!

By now you might be wondering which to pull the trigger on - the RX10 II or RX100 IV? The good news is I have now finally got round to finishing my review of the RX10 II and have also bought the RX100 IV to compare it with... Read the full article

That's a good article by Noam. For me the lens draws attention to itself when it is wider than 24mm on full frame. He seems to like very deep DOF. I am not a shallow DOF junky but I like a gentle roll off of focus, with the background a little bit back... not completely blurred out. I find deep DOF too 'flat' looking on digital. It's ok on Super 16mm (Digital Bolex for example) if the c-mount lens has a lot of character but it looks a bit sterile with modern lenses. Lenses that give me the gentle focus roll off and a shallower DOF control at wide angle are cinematic and three dimensional. Go too wide & slow and you have a very 'flat' look where infinity focus starts at 3m. On full frame 35mm F2.0 is definitely a sweet spot. 28mm on Super 35mm = 42mm, not too far off. 28mm on the 1D C in 4K is interesting...you get 36mm in APS-H 4K, then can crop to 42mm for the Super 35mm look in post without losing much resolution. You can't really do that with 1080p. Then in stills mode of course it is a 28mm. Like having 3 lenses in one!! The Zeiss Distagon 28mm F2.0 is a lovely lens. They don't call it the "Hollywood" for nothing. Shoot with it wide open. When I was shooting with the GH2 I used to prefer longer lenses. Favourite focal lengths were 35mm and 85mm. 14mm and 50mm didn't do it for me for some reason. On the 1.86x crop sensor 35mm and 85mm were practically telephoto in full frame terms compared to what I use the most now! On Super 35mm, the Zeiss Jena DDR 21mm F2.8 and Canon 24mm F1.4L are a nicer look than a 16mm or 17mm for me. Less flat. By the way the edges of the lens are as important as how they render the field of view. I think a slight vignette wide open is very attractive and also bokeh that curves at the edges slightly makes for a more immersive, dreamy picture, and it doesn't have to be extreme - just subtle. The easiest way to lose the magic is to take a vintage c-mount lens and crop out just the centre. Or take a full frame 24mm F1.4 shot and crop into. It isn't the resolution loss or just the deeper DOF that makes it look bad. You lose the character of the edges of the lens and the overall rendering of field of view that it was designed to do, artistically.

I do the hard work in Resolve then just apply the LUTs and don't fiddle with anything afterwards. That makes for a much quicker edit. It is tempting to tune each shot isn't it? Shouldn't be necessary. A LUT can be consistent and give you the same look for everything. It also helps to use manual white balance. Most shots need tweaking due to the wrong colour temperature rather than the wrong exposure.

"In order for the EditReady file to look “right,” you’d need to apply a LUT or color correction to adjust the signal." When I developed my LOG LUT for the NX1 I had better results in Premiere when the camera was set to 16-235. Trust me 0-255 is asking for trouble, it is a whole host of complexity on top for virtually no gain! Whether 0-255 or 16-235 we are splitting hairs because the NX1 has banding in both modes. As the EditReady blog post said, NLEs expect 16-235 and the ProRes files won't look right in them if you shoot 0-255. They don't explain HOW the LUT should correct for this. Even if you use a LUT in EditReady like my LOG converter, Premiere will still crap it up in 0-255. Is it worth getting confused about? Just shoot 16-235 and be happy! Rocky Mountain probably remaps 0-255 to 16-235 anyway.

LUT will work with 0-255 as well but you might have to do a workaround in post to see more of the shadows. LUT or no LUT it doesn't matter, shoot 16-235 so that when EditReady converts to 16-235 ProRes you see into the shadows.

Yeah but the 24-70 F2.8 is absolutely enormous and has no stabilisation on a Canon body.

24mm F2.8 IS 28mm F2.8 iS 35mm F2.0 IS 100mm F2.8 Macro IS 200mm F2.0 IS 300mm F2.8 IS And a few others but oddly no 50mm or 85mm yet. Ultrasonic IS on the above lenses is very good, better than IS on the Sigma or Tamron zooms.

Is it just me or is it absolutely crap? Time for Samsung to stop ticking off the marketing features boxes and go for a real update with actual problems fixed such as the manual focus issues.

Forgot to mention, transcoded to ProRes first with EditReady of course. Only reporting what I see. 16-235 works for me and doesn't give me any 'side effects' You will not see more banding with 16-235 compared to 0-255. We are talking luminosity here with the 0-255 'steps' not tonal precision which is what causes the banding. A blue sky for example could have such subtle variation in tone that it gets compressed away and you end up with 4 coloured bands. 0-255 allows for 256 so that isn't to blame, the compression is. Banding on the NX1 is mainly caused by the scaling from 6.5K to 4K internally and compression, plus the fact that at low ISOs the image is extremely clean so there's no noise to dither the 8bit bands smoothly together. You can try applying some dithering noise in post though.

With 16-235 I see more detail in the shadows. Premiere seems to take the 0-255 footage and clip it to 16-235, so you lose a ton of dynamic range.

Rich is quite right. Sure video is nice on the A7R II but... 1 - I still think the codec pisses over colour somehow 2 - The ergonomics are naff 3 - The screen is useless under bright sunlight 4 - The AF is extremely hit and miss 5 - For video it is going to be an expensive obsolete brick in under 6 months when the A7S II comes out. I have bought mine now so no going back. But I'm not enjoying it quite as much as I'd thought. Hot pixels all over the show. Cybershot ergonomics. Reliability is iffy, the heat issues... But then I am spoilt with the 1D C which is a rock sized diamond that happens to shoot 4K video. However... Sony Flagship vs Canon flagship. No excuses!? Just bought the Canon 24-70mm F4 IS. Cost me 635 euros used (perfect condition) vs 999 for the Sony FE 24-70mm F4 yet I can use it on both bodies. Similar size, not much heavier. Stabilisation is better than the flitty IBIS of the A7RII as it is ultrasonic. Sharpness is as the $2000 Canon 24-70mm F2.8 but it cost me far less. I can lose that one stop, and gain the low weight / size / stabilisation / lower price. The look is cinematic and for stills, AF is simply unmatched. I am extremely reluctant to build my FE lens collection due to the Canon lenses. For stills the A7R II gives me too many AF misses, too much hunting. The A7R II's body is too small for my hands, the 1D C is the right shape and size, like a glove or that feeling it is an extension of your arm. I can see the screen in daylight, which helps. The OVF is useless for video of course but for stills it gives me less eye strain than the EVF on the A7R II and of course a better image. I get much higher confidence using the manual focus assist (zoomed) for video on the 1D C too, which is critical for 4K video. I wish Sony would make a big A99 style pro version of the A7R II but keep the E-mount. A7R II is amazing but it just doesn't feel like a pro camera yet.

Didn't read the whole thread, can we recap something critical... What is the crop with DIS like?

Putting a 4K 10bit recorder in there would be possible as well. Enough room to cool it with a heat sink. Panasonic missed a big opportunity... They came out with a shit brick with wires in it for $2000. It should have been a battery, a recorder, as well as an interface unit, or at the very least an ergonomic interface unit for XLR like what Sony have with their hotshoe thingy. There is a wide open gap in the market for a battery grip recorder which extends battery life, uses single battery for camera and recorder, no extra bulky screen, just use the one on the camera. Shogun battery life, separate battery to worry about, big bulky screen, no thanks.

External recorder go for A7S. A7R II is all about internal 4K codec... and 5 axis but that isn't more effective than what you get already with Canon IS lenses on the A7S.

Definitely doable on Kickstarter. Massive 13,000mha battery is quite small these days, only slightly larger than a 2.5" HDD and smaller than a 3.5" one An HDMI interface chip inside, from GH4 HDMI port... out to XLR, HD-SDI, probably an off the shelf component. I've seen more complex stuff done on Kickstarter. The YAGH was a sales DISASTER though due to dreadful ergonomics and need for external power, however they listened to with regards feedback on that should have had his mouth taped up.

Publishing mine today, merely to make people stop cracking the whip.

1D C keeps an astounding amount of colour information in the 500Mbit/s MJPEGs. The weird thing compressed 8bit footage should not have that amount of colour information in it. And of course it is 4:2:2 but I never see the same advantage on other cameras when switching from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 over HDMI. So either those other cameras are lying to us and simply wrapping 4:2:0 colour in a 4:2:2 ProRes file or the 1D C is doing something else that the specs don't hint at. Fact is, 8bit 4:2:2 internal on the 1D C just looks WAY better than ALL my other cameras doing the same 8bit 4:2:2 over HDMI, hell it has better colour than the GH4 doing 10bit over HDMI. You know when I shot with the 1D C and NX1 side by side, the NX1 ended up having a crazy amount of green and less info in the reds, yellows and blues... If you look at the way 4:2:0 vs 4:2:2 colour sampling works, far more red and blue is thrown out in 4:2:0 but the green is kept... Source: http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/news/news-articles/dv101-411-444-422-and-420-understanding-digital-cameras-and-color-dissemination/423608 But if that really had such a dramatic effect on the image and didn't just pixilate the edges of red highlights (the most visible 4:2:0 artefact I always see), why don't the reds and blues come back with a vengeance when switching to the 4:2:2 HDMI output? HUH?! From a Canon white paper on XF100... Sampling at 4:2:2 takes advantage of limitations in the human visual system to avoid transmission of unnecessary colour information. The human eye is more sensitive to black and white detail than colour. The 4:2:2 ratio refers to the ratio between black and white and colour. 4:2:2 sampling is especially useful where advanced video processing, such as compositing and colour correction, is required. Both models in the XF100-series capture twice the colour detail of camcorders which use 4:2:0 sampling, and combined with Canon’s powerful DIGIC DV III processor and CMOS sensor, offer unrivalled image quality for camcorders in this category.

Yes it is 20 years of cutting edge modern colour know-how, the accumulation of 15 years of CMOS sensor development and the 1D X all rolled into one hell-of-a-cinematic beast. It kicks the arse of the A7R II for colour. Whenever I am handling the Sony material in post there is something I have to do to make it look better. Never spent so much time fiddling. With the 1D C it just looks right on one of the standard image profiles and C-LOG takes about 5 seconds to grade.

I had to send mine back to the Sony shop as couldn't get the slow-mo in focus half the time due to a bug. Apart from that was great Review is written but didn't shoot as much nice footage as I'd liked to have, which has made the edit a difficult chore in the midst of a lot of other interesting stuff to be doing, hence the delay Wolf33d maybe you could crack the whip over my back a bit more, I am your unpaid slave after all.

Manners? The whole point of this LUT you missed above. It is to make the GH4 compatible with LUTs designed for Canon LOG / S-LOG / Arri LOG-C footage. You can't apply a LUT that was designed for a flat LOG image out of the camera to CineLikeD and the GH4 still does not have V-LOG. Also with carefully fine tuning the in-camera picture profile for more dynamic range it actually captures in rec.709 space nearly all of what the sensor sees and the LOG converter allows you to better utilise that in post. No it doesn't mean losing information in the process. Opposite in fact. Thanks Charlie. Canon LOG is quite light LOG, not as extreme as S-LOG. So I was able to get the GH4's image really close. Yes it is like having Canon LOG in-camera once you do the conversion... same amount of shadow detail, same contrast curve, same saturation, etc.

As Don pointed out, if you want to put a pack of frozen peas anywhere on the A7R II put it on the back behind the LCD. Copper piece is the heat sink. To be honest it is quite a basic solution and not that clever considering the warm LCD screen blocks it entirely when closed. If they make a pro body it could have a heat pipe down into the grip, problem solved. It is the other way round, unless you count rolling shutter. Yeah all the 1080p modes look the same but the HD 120fps has heavy moire & aliasing. Very true. External HDMI recorders are still at the mercy of the camera's image processor. 10bit 422 doesn't mean anything. If you want to see a real boost in image quality from an external recorder, record raw onto the Odyssey 7Q+ from the FS700. I doubt that helps the heat issues, though a slower card might run a few degrees cooler. It looks to me actually like the low power ARM processor faces the sensor block along with likely just a tweaked A7 image processor (JPEG?). Hot chips like the memory chip, 4K processor / system on chip seem to back onto the heat sink side. Enjoy!

I don't see anything wrong with wide angle. Kubrick used a lot of extreme wides in 2001 a Space Odyssey as well. Maybe it is because we're so used to watching fisheye GoPro stuff on YouTube. I am sure if you saw Revenant on a proper screen in a cinema it would be fantastic. Trailer looked great to me.

3D LUT export from Resolve 11. Much of the work in creating the 1D C LUT was to keep fine tuning it across a ton of shots from both my GH4 and 1D C until I had something that closely matched.

If you're used to Nikon then get the D750, and don't forget the lenses are as important as the camera. What do you use with the D200? If D750 is out of your price range get the D5300 or D5500.