Sean Cunningham

It could very well mean that's all there is, apart from the Century and Panasonic.  Perhaps the SLR Magic lens will be enough of an improvement on these designs to warrant being a demonstrably better choice than they are, if you're stuck at 1.33x, for reasons besides not needing to rig adapters and overcome the Sony and Panasonic video mounts.    As is, I'm happy to move forward on a new production with my Century.  I just look forward to one of these new camera options (or a future GH2 patch) giving proper 4:3 recording.  I never thought I'd ever be wishing for a 4:3 image ever again with the long overdue banishment of NTSC from the airwaves.

I think they are, technically, but I want to say I've read reference to this one having some single focus use.  I could be mixing it up with another one.  Might have been a 16S that I saw for sale perhaps, and lost the bid.

Damn, that's nice.  The vid and the car ;)

  Well, you can get very respectable looking grades with Magic Bullet.  You can even do it on the super-cheap with their Mojo version, but it's very much a black box with only a few options.  I won't ever not recommend Magic Bullet as long as Stu is getting something out of it, because I know he's largely responsible for there even being affordable color grading tools.  DV became not just a viable format for indie filmmakers but one with a meaningful aesthetic possibility mostly because of Magic Bullet.   That said, watch this:   http://vimeo.com/57325168

I was really hoping for 1.5X option, since 2.67:1 is still a valid cinema aspect ratio.  I say "valid" only referring to the fact that this was the big gun anamorphic ratio for a period and widest standardized aspect ratio in the golden age of anamorphic systems.  I've seen plenty of 3.56:1 videos as a result of the 2X optics that were great looking.  I'm just not sure about sitting through a whole movie that wide.  It could be awesome for the right subject.   Just gonna have to keep looking for that elusive 16mm Bolex/Moller.

He also ultimately is ending with a 1.33X adapter with a wide angle floor of 35mm that isn't practical for anything but test shooting, music videos and experimental narrative.  Too much effort was really spent on flare-enhancement through designer coatings.     It was shaping up to be a niche within a niche rather than a new product that addressed the concerns or realities of what the alternatives were.  Unfortunately.  

  It's no different than a real 180 degree shutter which would be 1/48th over here (lights and electricity being 60Hz).  Shuttering out flicker when shooting at 24FPS instantly puts your footage into soap opera land, like you were making some kind of Hobbit film or something.      A little flicker sometimes doesn't bother me like playing fast-n-loose with the shutter, introducing temporal discontinuity with the rest of the film.  It drives me insane when I'm watching something otherwise cinematic only to have a shot or scene intercut that's the temporal, visual equivalent to having a girlfriend that always farts during sex.     It could be a coincidence, the 1/50th being ~172 degrees, but it's not uncommon, historically, for British DPs to shoot on film close to this when shooting 24fps.  I've never read any official Panasonic explanation for why they chose to do this and not a true 180 degree shutter for 24fps but perhaps they have DP tradition there that's closer to the UK, even though their TV standard was closer to our's.     They drive on the wrong side of the road too ;)

  Devices, not cameras.  I'm not saying the Zoom is the best option, it's definitely good enough, as well as other purpose-built devices like it.  It's completely r-tarded to be wasting engineering and space on advanced audio for a camera when that cost, that time, that extra potential for issues would be better spent on its true purpose.   Single shooters can attach these compact recorders to their shoe on top.    You actually complain that these compact recorders are trying to do too much yet you want to jam pro-level audio gear into a camera.  This conversation is absurd.

  Only when you said that you didn't have a leg to stand on.  You kinda have a point here.  At $3K this is a little overkill for the bajillion of people that used to use Super-8mm cameras (which this design brings to mind much more than a true 16mm Bolex).  Take the pistol grip off of it though and it's really no less adaptable to actual, real shooting conditions than what a bajillion people dealt with shooting on prosumer DV gear for years.    As is it's still better than any DSLR that's not rigged out in some way to overcome their design weaknesses when not used to shoot stills.     All jokes aside, selecting (or not selecting) a camera based on its exterior looks instead of what it can do makes as much sense as selecting a camera based on its in-camera audio capabilities.  Priorities.  Get some.

  Sorry, I stopped reading here.  There are no camera audio systems that will outperform these.  These systems are perfectly fine for film production, something no DSLR audio system or camcorder system or even the audio on a CineAlta can say.   Shooting to in-camera because external devices are a pain in the ass is the shooter being lazy.  If they can afford $3K or $6K or $12K they can afford to, and learn to, do it right, especially if they're shooting anything that warrants more quality or attention that what you'd get out of an iPhone.

Kinda sad...

Seriously?  Who makes camera purchasing decisions based on audio?     If you're not one-man covering live news, considering shooting RAW, planning color correction of any kind, or "need" more than what the average smart phone can do nowadays you should be recording important audio with proper audio gear.   Maybe I'm just kooky.

  Set phasers to fun!  

Looked really nice.   You did a great job on the lighting + grade.     One of the most shocking things, to me, that has nothing to do with the camera or anything else, is you did a pro job on the TV.  Unless you actually were actually photographing the footage playing and got the camera to shutter for the screen without making the the rest of frame instantly soap opera feeling.  It's rarely done that good in a major film and practically never done that well on a network TV show so, well done all-around, considering a good chunk of your film focuses on this imagery.

Guys with British accents just piss me off.  Y'all make everything sound good.   :D

Worse thing that could happen is some types of footage look a little smeary.  Looking at Roman Legion's videos I'm not too worried.  I've been following his stuff on VIMEO a while now as having some of the best looking available light GH2 footage featuring people and never dug through the notes enough for it to register as 1/40.   Makes sense, in a way, it might "feel" better for people, versus the BBC 1/50 sampling of motion.  The extra light it gives you is a nice bonus either way.

Seriously?

Making the light and surfaces a little more pleasing and inviting can be done with a color correction pass.  It really needs that.  I'd maybe see how you like it with the motion text slightly sped up.  It seems like there's a lot of travel time before the letters come to rest.  I get that you want it to look elegant and professional but with so much "air time" there were times my eye was drawn over and watching the letters fall into place, spending processing working it out like a puzzle before the words were finally formed, rather than looking at the footage.  It's a careful balance.   It's kinda hard to add people to what you've already got though unless you're going for some really bizarre, stylized commercial with graphic "standee" versions of the therapists or something.  I could see that working in Japan maybe, but local businesses tend to not be very creative (all the while expecting the same-old-shit to bring in new customers).   When you know they're wrong and their decisions are going to hurt the final outcome, doing what you can to show them an alternate version can often un-fog their thinking, as long as you have "what they asked for" as well.  You gotta be pretty secure to just do what you know is the "right way" and disregard the client's input when you know it's bad.  That's taking a gamble on knowing, deep down, they just want it to be good and effective and hope they're the type that can put their own ego aside and not flip out because they were ignored, even if you proved them wrong (or in spite of their anger over being proven wrong).  

So basically shooting in 4K mode you really only benefit from its greater FOV, if the image itself isn't any sharper.   Good, sharp 2K can be blown up to 4K and, sweetened, ultimately looking much better than mediocre 4K.  That's an already established known.  Ultimately, 2K uprez is less of an accomplishment, or hardship, really, than what's been done very effectively in the past to improve the look-and-feel of DV blown up to HD/2K, either solo or intercut with real footage at the target presentation resolution.     Faroudja does that stuff realtime and has for a really long time.  So, it really doesn't matter what the middle-class Asians (this is like a couple cities in an otherwise non-technical, non-middle class country if we're talking about China) have in their living room when they're limited to looking at highly compressed stream sources.     There's a healthy percentage of Canon customers that buy for the bling-bling, all other considerations being secondary.  Mainland Asia cultures are often very tuned to appearances and showy displays of wealth, those fortunate enough to live in their non-People's Republic bubble that is.

Well, I'm going to try to tone my own angst down because I don't want to contribute unintentionally to any decline.  There's only three forums that I regularly rotate between these days and Andrew's is my first stop.  His site is the reason why I didn't spend twice as much for 1/2 the enjoyment with my current kit.

Wow, that is a magic trick then, changing a lens after the fact and not changing how much of what the lens already saw your sensor can now see.     Some kind of optical reach-a-round I suppose.

Well, good luck with your campaign "taking it back" and all.

He isn't often given to pedantic pseudo-intellectualism but it doesn't change the fact of the term's common usage in this way predating digital anything. Even if he did decide to eat a brain tumor for breakfast, the argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny...or even a dictionary.

Hay-soos Creestos.    You're arguing aspects of the GH2 that have already been discussed, repeatedly, here and elsewhere.  You're not even looking at the 36mm part of the image represented by the edge of the entire chart, clearly showing the 5D as being AMAZINGLY larger than the 27.7mm RED.  It's the white line, with the clear dot indicator, at the edge of the frame...the entire chart is encompassed by the 36mm 5D/1D/FF area relative to all the other cameras.     The three different, mode-specific aspect ratios of the 1DC are represented in the chart.   Look at it again.  I'd say you were confused, yes.     edit: it's pretty ridiculous to even imply Stu made any kind of gross error here.  The kind of work we do more often than not relies on the EXACT measurement of the aperture of the film or sensor involved.  Being off by fractions of a single mm can create major problems moving forward.   Stu doesn't make those kinds of mistakes.  He never has.   CF is a joke.   edit2: (and I'm done here)...pretty much says it all for me...  

Say no more, wink-wink, nudge-nudge... Still, it's 100% valid to say you watched or made a "film" whether you used celluloid or not.