Glenn Thomas

Nice work! How many of your videos did they use here? I agree, although Youtube are partly to blame as well. Youtube throw videos 1 frame or more out of sync with the audio. Any music videos I do for people, I have to make a special Youtube version with the audio moved one frame ahead. It's annoying, but Vimeo is fine though.

I'm sure I recall someone asking what the A6000 was like in low light or at night time. Well here's a music video I shot entirely at night with it using nothing but location lighting. A quick warning though, video contains swearing and smoking.. In case any of that offends anyone :) The video was shot around the Vivid light festival in Sydney. I've shot videos at Vivid for the past few years, and compared to videos I'd shot on the NEX5N, I can definitely see a big difference in dynamic range. With the NEX5N, bright blue lights would always blow out and end up looking like an amateur attempt at painting a lightsabre in Photoshop with a bright white core. But the A6000 thankfully captures those lights without those harsh whites. As for low light performance, well, not too good actually. I was scared to go above 1600 ISO, so some shots were under exposed. Which turns out to have been a really bad idea. In fact, for most shots I only had it set to 800 ISO. Detail was lost whilst cleaning it up with Neat Video, but it's not too bad. Although shooting the whole thing in 50P probably didn't help either. But I am happy with the overall look. I added some film grain on top as well. Also, about 90% of the video was shot using auto focus with the SEL35F18 lens, and it worked well enough. You can see quite a few shots are a bit off, but it's always difficult in low light with guys moving so much. There's one shot in the last chorus where the singer comes towards the camera, and it tracked him quite nicely. Even though that was one of the more dimly lit spots. But I have a switch set to toggle between auto and manual focus. The most recent video I've posted on Vimeo was also shot using the auto focus, and it worked better there being a daylight shoot. Anyway, here's the video -

Here's a great example of how far behind Adobe Premiere is. A video outlining a new feature called Master Effects in the latest version which was released just yesterday. http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/apply-effects-master-clips.html?set=premiere-pro--whats-new--2014-06 "Isn't that amazing?" the guy says as he sees the effect applied to multiple instances of the same clip on the timeline. I mean, come on, seriously? Sony Vegas has been able to do this for well over a decade now in the form of media fx. And it's a feature I use on almost every video I do. Give Adobe another 5 or 10 years, and they might eventually add track effects too.

The Bescor is great. I've had one for years. The last video I used it on was this - http://avene.org/zux-put-down-music-video/ I had 5 instances of the guy all shot using the Bescor set to auto pan. The speed did vary very slightly from take to take, but thankfully I was able to sync them up and mask them well enough.

I haven't seen the show, but the edit doesn't look too complex. But still, having to edit the audio in a separate window, seriously? It should display the full waveform, not just half of it, on the timeline. Syncing up separate takes of a music video in Premiere would be time consuming. Firstly, because the zoom is really slow, snapping is non responsive, and you can't see the full waveform. So when lining up waveforms, you could easily be missing a peak if it's off axis. I notice FCPX is like that too. Really stupid. Oh, and by default, if you drag one end of a clip over the top of another, it trims that second clip. Now I'm assuming there may be another option for that, but making it work like that by default? Vegas just crossfades the 2 clips together, which of course can be turned off. But even then, it won't trim that second clip. And it's little things like that, which over time will slow you down quite dramatically. And when colour grading or adding effects in Premiere. So far I've only found one way of adding effects, and that's dragging them onto the clip. I'm assuming there must be others? In Vegas there are 4 levels effects can be added. Firstly media fx, which will apply an effect to an imported video file as a whole. I use this for adjusting levels and white balance. Then when editing, the second option is being able to add effects to edited clips on the timeline, as well as crop them, and animate the crop/pan really easily just for that one edit. Thirdly there's track effects which will effect a track as a whole. This is where I'll apply a creative colour grade that will be applied to the whole video, as well as adding Neat Video after that. And lastly there are master effects. And this is good for applying film grain, so it covers the whole video including separate tracks with images or text that are separate from the graded video. Oh, and another annoyance with Premiere, having to render parts on the timeline just to be able to view them in real time. Those areas that appear red. In Vegas you can just play the whole thing regardless. If there's cpu intensive effects slowing things down, you can view the edit in preview mode, and then if it's still too slow, turn the effects off. So then you can at least make sure the edit is tight. Of course it's not just Premiere, I find Lightroom and Photoshop to be a bit slow and fiddly too. What ruins all these programs, including After Effects as well, are the scrolling panels where you're continuously opening and closing the panels. In Lightroom for example. If I'm adjusting the exposure for example, and then decide to do a bit of noise reduction, I have to scroll all the way down. And then if I accidentally hit the arrow on the side whilst scrolling (which happens a lot), the whole panel vanishes. A much quicker more intuitive way of doing things would be to just have each section appear in the same box. Like the effects section in Vegas. Yes, exactly! It still has annoyances. I used Premiere back in the late 90s, and it was slow then. So I'm amazed that after 15 years, they still haven't improved the workflow. With Vegas, apart from the occasional crash (which happened a couple of times in Premiere yesterday too), I don't have any annoyances. Everything just works, and there's nothing to slow me down. No, I want it off my machine asap :) If a program isn't intuitive enough get a feel for within a day, I don't believe it's worth the effort persisting with. And if Premiere is the best NLE for OSX, then I honestly can't imagine ever switching to a Mac as long as Vegas remains Windows only. Apologies once again for the rant. And no, I don't work for Sony, even though I use one of their cameras and software. I think their phones are rubbish though.

Yeah, I've been doing this for years. Probably as far back as 2006 for videos I was using a program called Photozoom to upres DV videos to 1080P. It works. Although I normally don't need to do it. Editing 32bit in Sony Vegas usually takes care of any banding. Otherwise I use Neat Video noise reduction followed by either film grain or the Add Noise plugin in Sony Vegas set to 0.025. A chroma blur plugin can sometimes help too. I also noticed the mention of Premiere CC in this article. I installed that last night for some videos I have to edit with a client's CC license. OMG, Premiere has to be the most frustratingly awkward, fiddly and annoying software out there! Having struggled with it nearly all day today, I honestly don't understand how anyone would have the patience to do any kind of professional work with that program. Compared to Sony Vegas, Premiere CC is a total nightmare to edit with. I gave up after one video edit which took me all day, and then did the following one in Vegas in less than an hour. I'd figured how to use Premiere, but the user interface and extreme lack of functionality drove me nuts. If my client wants me to edit any more videos in Premiere, it's not gonna happen. Apologies for the rant...

I'm not saying it's not there, but it's not visible unless you pause the video and specifically go looking for problems. Those water fountain grilles had the worst aliasing and moire out of all 55 or so videos I shot on the NEX5N. The fact that I can't see any in shots of the same grilles in the A6000 footage tells me it's no longer a problem I ever have to worry about. Not in those shots, the shot with the fine line brick wall after it, or even in the grilles of the fan on the footpath in another later shot. If I play the Cineform master file and pause it, yes, I can see some really tiny stair stepping around the water fountains with excessive motion, but those are obviously AVCHD artifacts. And I really had to look closely and put my eye up to the screen to see them! Detail isn't everything. I get clients asking me to smooth out their skin, and that's after I've used Neat Video. Andrew, I've seen a number of your videos with video like overexposed shots. But if that's the look you're after, no problem there. For a lot of us though, avoiding shots like that would be a lot more important than the difference in detail between an A6000, GX7, 5D mk3, etc. And some of us may wonder why Philip Bloom with his collection of expensive cameras would over sharpen his cat? Of course maybe it's the cat who prefers looking a bit sharper than the average feline? It's all personal preference. So it's good for the Panasonic fans to know their cameras have more detail, even if they have to use an adapter for that APSC Super 35 look. And for those of us with a Sony, rather than worrying about having less detail than the Panasonic cameras, we can be happy about getting a full frame look from one of those adapters. Or better yet, shoot, edit, and ignore all this nonsense :)

Check my post (on page 16 I think?) of the other A6000 thread with a video I shot on the A6000 and earlier one shot on the NEX5N. If you check the water fountain shots, you'll see how much better the A6000 footage looks. I'm no longer seeing any aliasing or moire. I'm not saying it's 100% gone, but I'm no longer seeing any of it in shots that were a problem on the NEX5N. And if you already have a bunch of NEX adapters and accessories, it's a good upgrade. The colours can be made to look a lot flatter too.

Haha, yes, I noticed that too. From memory though, he had the sharpening set to -1. And if he's gone and added additional sharpening in post, well yes, I can see why the poor cat looks like that. But as always, it's not the tools, but what you can do with them that matters :) Either camera with a good lens attached should provide a better looking image than the early HD cinema cameras used to shoot Star Wars episodes 1, 2 and 3, and a bunch of other feature films.

Although I'm all in favour of artists being compensated, I think this will be the end of Vimeo as we know it if videos end up being removed. Going through videos I've liked on Vimeo, there aren't many that don't contain a copywritten music track. Automatically including a link to purchase the song would probably be the best option, as is the case with a lot of Youtube videos. Or even including a link to the song on Soundcloud if the artists have made it a free download.

Actually, he's deleted all his old videos from years ago. When I first came accross his work 4 or 5 years back, he was shooting with a little Canon Ixus 110 and posted a new video everyday for a few months. Videos of all these famous locations around Paris with Metallica music over the top, shots of co-workers in the Daily Motion offices where he was working (which I thought was funny, as he was posting all this stuff on Vimeo), and a bunch of other random stuff. He was still using After Effects then, but with Magic Bullet and Colorista, and would render his videos using the Huffy avi codec, which was like the Quicktime animation codec. Then his Ixus 110 was broken, so he got the Ixus 220, and continued shooting some nice videos with that. One funny thing I remember, is that there would always be shots of his feet as he was walking. Really shakey too! Later he upgraded to a GF1 with just the 20mm f1.7 lens which he was using for a while and did some nice work with that. Videos he has also removed. I remember him messaging me then about this blogger lady by the name Eugenia who was giving him a hard time for buying the GF1 which she thought was rubbish, telling him he should have bought the 550D. He thought she was crazy for criticising his purchase like that, but he had some good reasons to explain why he'd bought the GF1. Then he went and got himself the 550D anyway :) Yeah, his early videos I mentioned above would be a good example. He actually had some really nice shots of buildings around Paris. The tripod ones were better. Although when he had the Ixus 220, I remember a few videos he did where he would fake the bokeh by masking out a foreground object like a statue or something in After Effects, and blur the background.

Thanks for the kind words Andrew. And yes, It seems I have done a lot, with at least another 15 that have either never been released (nearly all because the artist didn't like how they looked), taken down some time after they were posted, or never paid for in one or two cases. I don't really charge a lot though, which forces me to work quickly. Normally these days I'll have the edit done in around 4 hours, or more for the more complex videos. And I'm pretty lazy with colour grading. I'll match up the levels of all the clips, and then find preset colour look in any of the plugins I use, and modify that. I think it's good to stick with just one camera too. And even just one lens. The less decisions you have to make about what gear to use, the easier everything becomes.

It's funny, the other day while I was tidying up and sorting through an old hard drive, I found some of Kendy's videos I'd downloaded years ago, from when he was shooting pigeons around Paris on a little Canon Ixus 110. Inspired me to go out and get the same camera, which I ended up shooting 4 or 5 music videos with.

Yeah, I guess it's not too bulky. If I'm going for a stroll somewhere, it will still fit in my cargo pants pocket, although not as comfortable to carry that way as the NEX5N was. It's the lens that's the chunkiest part. But if I decide to use the tiny Fujian 35mm CCTV lens that I've used to shoot about 20 music videos, it's fine. Or Sony's 16mm. And yes, the AVCHD still sucks. But unless you're doing a lot of fast whip pans or shooting locations with excessive detail, it's not too bad. These look great! Watching them the other day actually inspired me to get myself that SEL35F18 lens. 27 minutes is fine. When shooting music videos, my old NEX5N would overheat after shooting just two 3 or 4 minute full length song takes. And sometimes it would cut off half way through that 2nd take.

Thanks Carlo! I actually have another 4 to post on my blog there. Anyway, I did manage to pick up an A6000 yesterday. So far though I've just been taking a few photos with it and seeing how good the higher ISO settings are. Not too bad actually. Compared to the NEX5N, and I presume some of the other older NEX range, the A6000 is a lot bulkier and not as comfortable to hold. Although I'm guessing that extra bulk may accommodate whatever cooling system they've implemented, so it doesn't overheat like the 5N did, along with the pop up flash, larger hot shoe etc. I'm sure I'll get used to the size though. It's good to have extra function switches and that dial on the top. I just need to figure out how to best customise those. The default settings actually work well, except for white balance which appears in a multi menu thing. A couple of quick questions though. Firstly, can anybody recommend a good screen protector? I saw this two pack on ebay for around $25 which includes a glare reduction protector and a normal one. The glare reduction one sounds decent, but apparently reduces the brightness of the LCD to around 92%. Also, what colour and profile settings are optimal for a really flat image? With my NEX5N I always used the sunset profile Andrew had recommended way back, with saturation, contrast and sharpness normally each set to -3. Which I always found to work well, although I sometimes bumped up the saturation a bit. I'm tempted to use the same settings, although I remember reading that the NEX7 had some kind of film look option. I'm not sure if that exists in the A6000 though? Of course I'm still yet to RTFM, so might check that sometime when I get a chance as there's a bunch of new options I'm not familiar with in the menus. Overall though, it seems to be a solid little camera with good image quality.

Thanks for all the insights here. After shooting more than 50 music videos with my NEX5N, some idiot broke into our house yesterday while I was having a shower and stole it, along with my iPad 2. Thankfully the camera only had my old Nikon f2.8 28mm lens on it. They left behind the charger with spare battery, Lens Turbo and other lenses. So I've just decided to get this A6000. To be honest, I never really had a problem with the image quality I was getting from the NEX5N. A bit of aliasing here and there, some loss of detail if I used noise reduction on low light shots, etc. But I never had an EVF, the thing always overheated, the LCD had a big splotch mark in the centre as I'd never bought a screen protector for it, it didn't have zebras, and I never had a kit lens which would have been good for travelling. So the A6000 with a kit lens seems like the perfect replacement. And affordable too, as money I've made from a couple of videos this past week will easily cover the cost. From reading this thread though, I'll agree some of the Panasonics may have better image quality. The Nikon 5300 too. Although I've never owned a DSLR, and never will. I really need that focus peaking. With the NEX5N, as long as I could see a red spot in someone's eyes, I knew my focus was good. And with the Lens Turbo, I can get that full frame look if I need it. Which wouldn't be possible with any m43 camera, or even the 5300. One other thing I do is always shoot in 50P, normally with a 1/100 shutter. Unless it's something on green screen. For music videos, being able to slow down a clip really easily I find to be a lot more important than a few possible artifacts the intended audience will never see. That slow mo can add emotion to a clip that you wouldn't get at normal speed. And for that reason, none of the affordable Blackmagic cameras are an option for me either. Or any affordable 4K camera. Better to wait until they can all do 4K 50P and without the rolling shutter. And to improve image quality, I use Neat Video followed by Boris BCC film grain. Anyway, apologies for the rant, but I guess my point here is to not be too concerned about image quality, artifacts and all that, but to go for whatever camera has the most features that are important to you. In my case those are compatibility with existing lenses (including my Lens Turbo), portability, focus peaking, a file format that's simple to edit (AVCHD files work great in Sony Vegas!), good low light performance, and 50P. In which case, this A6000 appears to be my best option. I'm hoping to pick one up later today. After I enquire about getting some security screens for our windows :)

With S-LOG 2 built in, low light sensitivity and the higher bitrate, this would have to be better than Canon's C300, right? As for the 4K output, why no 25P?

Andrew, the video looks great and I was really impressed by most of your footage. But can you explain the over exposed shots? Were the LCD or viewfinder not showing enough detail in the shadows that made it seem like you couldn't under expose anymore, or was it just a case that you were in a hurry to get the shot or were more concerned about getting the framing and focus right, than to be worrying about the exposure? Just curious, as it seems like a very capable camera otherwise.

What's the story with Cineform? Being able to convert the files to Cineform raw I think would be the best option.

I'm a fan of grain, but not to emulate film. Since I use Neat Video noise reduction to tidy up most videos I do, adding some grain on the output helps to make the video look slightly more detailed, even though there's no extra detail at all being added. And I use the simplest of plugins - 'Add noise' in Sony Vegas set to monochromatic with a size of 0.035 and the animated setting disabled.

By the way, I'm wondering if this lens would work well enough on one of these cameras with a C mount adapter. http://bit.ly/YrINMH

The slow motion looks great, but I was a bit distracted by the stair stepping. Is that due to the upscale, or does it appear in the original 240P clip as well? If it's due to the upscale, the best solution to fix it is a program called Photozoom. It only works with images, but will work with image sequences and does a very good job. Well, providing sharpening is turned off. But I'm actually interested in this camera too now. I just checked and noticed a store selling it for $244.

I remember Stargate Universe was shot on a Genesis, and that was a nice looking show. You'd see the occasional vertical flare from the CCD sensor, but it still looked good. Anyway, I agree with ScreensPro above, that hopefully all this technology will tail off like what has happened with audio. In the audio world, the digital gear now is about as good as it will get. For anybody wanting to spend big money on gear for an improvement in sound quality, the only real options are expensive outboard gear. Old compressors, preamps and valve gear. Technology that's been around for 50 years or more. Even analog synthesizers have made a come back, and with cv gate sockets too that previously died off back in the early 80s. So for cameras, once they peak, I imagine the only real investment to be made will be in lenses. Cameras that can shoot RAW may become more popular, but in the same way as people have been able to record audio at 24/32 bit 192khz for many years now, most will probably not bother with it.

In just the same way as people aren't buying into 3D, I can't see 4K doing any better. When you think about it, people already have big tvs that cover a large chunk of their walls. That technology will continue working for many years. It's not like the old days when tvs would die of a busted picture tube. And since the tv shows most of those people watch won't be 4k anytime soon either, I can't see there being a demand for 4k just to watch a small number of movies in a higher resolution. Not at least until the technology becomes so cheap that it's the standard for all screens.   But your average consumers are kind of stupid anyway. On a plane trip a couple of months back I noticed that everyone I could playing a movie, had it playing in the default squashed widescreen. 16:9 squashed to 4:3. About 12 screens I could see from where I was sitting, and not one seemed to have any idea they were watching it in the wrong aspect ratio. And if so, none knew that all they needed to do to fix it was click the clearly visible 'full screen' button.   Then I saw a 4K tv in Indonesia during that same trip. There was plenty of detail there if you looked closely, but overall I was put off by the lack of dynamic range in the footage they had on there. Lots of over blown highlights.