Oedipax

Not Andrew, but my understanding is that HDMI does not output during recording in the 6K open gate mode. However, according to Matt Frazer at Panasonic, they are working on getting the HDMI output in that mode to be active before/after takes and to support playback of recorded clips over HDMI for review. Apparently the 6K mode is pushing the camera so far that HDMI out during recording was too much for the hardware to handle.

Can someone confirm the crop factor in 4K video on the GH5? I've seen everything from 1.91x to 2x to 2.34x mentioned. Also, does anyone know if this changes in 6K open gate? And lastly, has anyone attempted to mount the BMPCC 0.58x Speedbooster on the GH5? Have done it successfully with the GH4 (after disabling the shutter / enabling silent mode), curious if it's the same for the GH5 or not.

I just noticed there was a new firmware version posted (1.54) some time in the past month or so. I bought the Crane in April and at the time the most recent firmware was version 1.52. The changelog included is written in Chinese, but according to Google Translate, it sounds like they optimized the motors some more. I've been attempting to balance a 5D Mark III paired with a Samyang 14mm f2.8, but it seems there is always some unwanted vertical motion when walking that ruins the effect I'm aiming for with my shots. I'm hoping this is something that can be addressed with the new firmware and also getting better at operating the crane (walking as flat as possible, etc). If anyone else here is having success with a heavier setup like the 5D, I'd love to hear about it.

I like the new look overall, but I wish there were more articles listed in the large format on the front page. Right now it looks like there are just the two and then everything else is smaller under subheadings like "Latest News" or "Reviews" etc. Perusing the articles listed on the front page is mostly how I would discover things to read on this site, especially if I haven't been checking in the last couple weeks. Now I would have to scroll down to the "Year So Far" list on the right and try to work out which things I've read or not read based on the text title alone (and with so many camera/hardware models to track, it's easy for me to forget if I've read this or that thing or not without being able to more quickly scan it based on the large thumbnail image).

Right click on the clip in your bin or your timeline and go to "Source Settings" You get RAW controls for exposure, tint, and color temp. LUTs can be loaded with Lumetri. I'm getting pink highlights when I pull the exposure down on BMPCC and ML RAW footage, but this is still pretty great.

Has anyone tried the BMPCC Speed Booster on a GH2? Curious if the tradeoffs are the same (minor scratching on the frame guide, functional camera otherwise) or more severe because of differences in how the GH2 was made vs GH3/GH4. As far as I know the GH2 doesn't have silent shutter mode, so that's a bigger risk, but I'm willing to live with that if the basic geometry works out without doing major damage.

What's the pricing on these? $1500ish? I can definitely see the usefulness of 4K in a lot of the day-to-day stuff I shoot, especially talking head stuff where at the moment I'm rigging up 2 or 3 GH2s on tripods to get the talent in a close, medium, and wide. If I could shoot everything wide and punch in, it would be great for that. Of course, you lose some of the more esoteric image quality things like bokeh increasing/altering as you cut to longer lenses, etc. For personal projects where I'm more interested in crafting the most beautiful, uncompromised images possible, I could see still preferring RAW on my BMPCC and 5Dmk3. But we haven't heard yet what the latitude will be like in the GH4 so I suppose it's a wait and see thing. There's also the option of 10bit 422 with an external recorder, that could really give Blackmagic a run for its money. My gut tells me there's no free lunch here and there WILL be tradeoffs in getting 4K at a sub-$2k price point, at least for now. But still, hats off to Panasonic for addressing a lot of the things people have been asking for (peaking! clean HDMI! overcranking! XLR via that ungodly bulky looking external thing! etc), and I could very easily see this earning a place in my kit.

It's just the feeling I get playing around with footage, having used both cameras. I feel like I can push around the BMPCC raw much more than the ML, which feels like I have to nail the exposure much closer in camera. I saw a post just now over on the ML forums where someone said according to their tests, the ML raw files were storing about 9 stops under and 3 stops over middle gray. This is purely anecdotal, but my sense is the BMPCC stores more above key and less below it, which is more conducive to my own shooting preferences - I like more headroom and am less worried about digging into the shadows most of the time. But that having been said, I've been shooting mostly the BMPCC since mine arrived, and I'm curious to go back to ML RAW and see if I feel any differently about it now.

I've always found the ML RAW files have a very brittle feeling to them when I'm pushing them around in Lightroom, ACR within AE, or Resolve. Even the prores coming from the BMPCC feels more robust to me, let alone the RAW. But I've still held on to my 5d3 for stills as well as the option to shoot RAW with a full-frame sensor as that does have definite advantages in some places over the BMPCC's extreme crop. In my day to day work, it's hard to beat the quality/flexibility/speed of prores off the BMPCC, in my opinion - as straightforward as the GH2/MTS -> Premiere workflow I've gotten used to, but much higher quality results.

Resolve 10 has basic editing functionality in the edit tab - if you're doing basic in/out type edits I could see maybe using it to cut something for the sake of not having to go out to an NLE and back. But I think for most even somewhat complex jobs you'll probably still want to use Resolve in conjunction with a full NLE. Blackmagic is clearly beefing up the editing abilities of Resolve, though.

Andrew, what version of OS X are you running? I'm curious because you mention the performance in Resolve, and I'm finding it to be markedly worse under 10.9 because Nvidia hasn't released proper drivers yet. Are you still on 10.8 or some other variant?

You can transcode in FCP7 too if you import directly from the card using Log & Transfer or copy the whole directory structure to the hard drive. Results might be a little better out of 5DtoRGB.   But yeah, Premiere is the way to go really.

I don't have buffering issues with YouTube, but I have noticed it's really unresponsive sometimes to changing resolutions. If I want to see 1080 of something I do sometimes end up having to force a download of it. Very annoying.

  With ML RAW to Cinema DNG conversion more or less working now inside Resolve, we're pretty much at parity in workflow terms with the Blackmagic stuff. Of course there's no ML Prores mode, so that's still an advantage to them.

The Kowa 2X is an anamorphic adapter that goes in front of your normal taking lens and stretches the image by 2X on the horizontal axis. It has to be focused separately from the 'taking' lens (i.e. the 10-30 in this instance). You also need the correct step ring adapters and clamps to get the two lenses attached and properly aligned. There's a lot of info about this and other anamorphic lenses out there, starting with Andrew's Anamorphic Guide which I recommend. You'll also see some huge forum threads on this site and others discussing what's involved. It's not for everybody or every shoot! The lens in particular is probably the Kowa 8Z/16H. You can sometimes find them on eBay. Another good option is the Kowa 16D which is a smaller, more lightweight lens. Good luck!