Axel

The cadence issue (if it's an issue at all, see shutter speeds) for me is not a big thing. It's the combination of all things characteristic for this camera, RS, moire, synthetic looking colors. No wonder the A7rii blends so easily with GoPro stuff. You can work around all those things in the Zacuto shootout fashion and come to the conclusion it's not the camera.

Sad, but I know what you mean. And if you know, you see those things also in videos you'd consider amazing usually (at first): ... and it can make you sick.

In german language, this distiction doesn't exist. Kinematisch, though probably the right translation, sounds like a word from physics. Filmisch is used to identify a story that has the potential for a visual drama, mostly in direct reference to unfilmisch by which are meant films with a lot of dialog scenes, "talkies". Also, there is no distinction between film and movie. An audiovisual narration shot on video would still be a Film, just shot on video. A bunch of recordings of your cat, not edited in any meaningful way, is a Video. A typical Hollywood movie is a Genrefilm (> Scary Movie). I saw it yesterday. I thought the studio lighting and the artificial skies did the job, did still look clean in most 'realistic' scenes. All in all, I think it was a not-so-great Coen film, not as good as, say, Barton Fink. In P.T. Andersons Inherent Vice, i found the use of film stock better motivated.

I am also not sure what DBounce means, but I guess it must have to do with the fact (see description) that this was recorded in 60fps, which, if played back at this speed or "only" in 30fps, never looks filmic but (what's the correct english term?) videoish. See the discussions on The Hobbit - An Unexpected Stinker. This image looks clean, almost cleansed, as if Neat had been applied. Clearly the darker version is more pleasing because of the highlight clipping in the brighter one. On film, the random positions of the crystals would have rendered a soft roll-off. So perhaps Julian graded on a 10-bit monitor and couldn't judge how this would look on 8-bit Vimeo (the information was there, he could have and should have used another curve). One also can apply one of Tiffens excellent software ProMist (EDIT: or rather White Diffusion?, there are hundreds of useful tools) filters, free trial without watermark.

Today 'film' means little else than analog storage. The images are scanned and from there on treated like any material with digital origin. And if you had the slightest idea of how cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive analog color-timing had been, of how many generations of copies needed to be printed for every stage of the postproduction. And how risky that was (and still is). No chance to check immediately what was recorded, if the material was faulty or any kind of damage that could happen afterwards. There may have been a time, say, when the Red One was unreliable and refused to work properly in various climatic conditions, that DoPs said, no thanks, we rather shoot on film, but I think that's history.

It must have been in 2007. An actor from the local theater asked me if I wanted to record a rehearsal for a scene from Blaise Cendrars novel Dan Yack. It was, as it turned out, just one page of the novel - the whole thing too complex to adapt, they eventually realized. I had a Canon XH-A1 then (euro name) with a Letus adapter for still lenses. They used costumes from the fund and the prop department (you should go there to see what's cinematic) made a sculpture from wood and painted it to look like concrete. They controlled the stage lights to maximize the effect. The camera matters? Yes, but to which degree? Somewhere between one and five percent. Tarantino used film for The H8ful 8. In a nofilmschool newsletter, I saw this: ... and I know this projector brand by heart. It was widely used because it was comparatively cheap. But it had a lot of mechanical imperfections. For instance, the lens revolver is on a hinge and can be swung away to facilitate inserting the film. We used to fold a paper twice and stuck it in to maintain backfocus during a two-hour turn with heavy vibrations. A 70mm slide is magnified to 50 feet, you can imagine what a tolerance of 4 layers of paper means! Nothing was perfect in the analog world. Tarantino must love those imperfections, among them, almost inevitably, bad image steadiness, dust (polyester running with high speed over plastic rolls!), scratches, visible splices, flicker. I too find these things romantic - in the way you love steam locomotives as a child. I sometimes miss my ancient analog Bolex (with spring mechanism) that I gave to a film student. But in comparison to the BMMCC it would have lost in almost every respect. And I second what squig wrote above. We must eventually stop to confuse terms.

You are right, of course. This was meant as a joke, but not entirely. If it fits the style, it could be cinéma vérité. Like in the said Victoria. But I agree with independant and others, the best camera is the camera that fits the intendet style. And realism? Reality? I couldn't care less.

I saw Gone Girl again just now, and I don't think that's correct. But Fincher has gone a long way for sure. Fight Club was an example of his "dirty" period. I remember how I was really *shocked* during the first minutes, where the voice?/ of the character?/ played by Edward Norton said things that felt so true (to me). The visual style was closer to Grindhouse, a compilation of deconstructivistic techniques. With Zodiac (or earlier already?), Fincher became ever cleaner. Gone Girl was crystal clear 6k, but I perfectly remember those first shots of Rosamund Pike looking up (to the narrator?), and how I thought, she looks so real it might as well be my hand touching her hair. Sony style? Surrealism? Hyperrealism? That's intriguing, isn't it? I use my iPhone for sketches. Why not shoot exclusively on an iPhone and forget about all this bullshit about aesthetics? But this borders on the killer phrase It's not the camera, and Andrew doesn't like this kind of reasoning in his forum. He once said it's stating the obvious. I think he is right.

Squig already answered: First, I understand Users complain. The perceived softness here is clearly poor focussing, since many of the shots, while not being 'overly sharp', wouldn't have given any reason to complain. I want to emphasize this in order to get any possible confusion with low resolution out of the way. I commented on this in an older 4k frenzy thread. That must be me. I am not here to be in the right. I am happy to be proven wrong, to get from mere opinion to some state of knowledge, see Eds thread The Importance Of Trusting Your Own Opinion. Aaron said it: When I wrote that it's difficult to focus I had my experiences with run&gun-style shots with my Pocket in mind. Now it's time to re-evaluate. Back then, I used peaking to judge focus. With non-speedboosted original MFT-lenses (I had a few then, left from GH2), the hyperfocal distance (which is influenced by sensor size) more often than not only showed the acceptable focus - everything glowed green in the display - and resulted in the aforementioned perceived softness. Also, those lenses (with the exception of Voigtlander and SLR) had no good focus rings. I agree with squig that with speedbooster, part of that problem is solved. Another way to avoid misjudging focus is to use a better monitor, I'd prefer an EVF. Hm, maybe it's just me. To be honest, I don't know the niceties of cadence, I think you were right if you talked about 24/25p. Those are less real in comparison to 30/50/60p. But the Sony colors always strike me as terminator vision. And I consider myself not particularly demanding in that respect. I saw a whole two and a half hour movie, filmed in one shot with a C300 (Victoria), AWB probably, but I never found the colors to be distracting or ugly. The film is worth seeing just for this aspect.

Yes, saw it in the cinema. As a cineaste, I chose row 5. It was cropped to scope (btw.: supports my theory of absolute or almost absolute DoF suggesting wider ARs), had a lot of jerky camera movement (inevitably), and after a few minutes I felt nausea. It deserved an own thread to discuss this film in detail, but if it was exclusively shot with 24mm (didn't know), then because of necessity rather than esthetic choice.

Let's put it that way: the speedbooster-Sigma combination is the best compromise for this sensor there is, covering a FoV equivalent from a moderate wideangle to a '50 mm', with very good speed, manageable sDoF, reasonably good focus ring, smooth (almost) parfocal 2 x zoom ability. The 12mm alone is too limited, offering only a 35 mm-equivalent (the reporter lens, as it used to be called) and ugly bokeh with curved focal pane if used wide open and difficult to focus properly. Although Hyperprime and SB+Sigma@18mm cover the same FoV, they look totally different, rendering the SLR useless, imo. Look at the image: Take off the useless sunhood, exchange the monitor for an EVF, and you still have a box with a sensor inside attached to one of a few lenses suitable for this thing.

I agree with everything stated above. Let me just elaborate on an aspect apparent in any Micro/Pocket-clip and particularly in the Training Day clip: sensor size vs. focus vs. aspect ratio. I think the cinematographer did a good job, considering it was handheld and focussed manually, but ... For 16x9 (or 17:9, cinema widescreen), S35 (or APS-C, let's not split hairs here) seems (to me) to be the ideal sensor size. Yes, I know, a lot of factors contribute to sDoF, bokeh (aperture with or without the need to compensate for light conditions, pixel size with circle of confusion, sensor dimensions), but generally S16 is an unfortunate choice. Like full frame in the other extreme. Full frame is best for 3:2 photography. When I look at my old Praktika 6x6 stills, how creamy everything flows into focus (but still is soft, you need good resolution for that), it looks threedimensional instantly, very sweet. For scope, however, there is little good in anything else but absolute DoF (exceptions prove the rule). Framing has to do with how the motif is accentuated and therefore it influences focussing. I totally dislike the artificial look of Sony cameras. Even without prominent artifacts or something I could nail down, the image looks processed. The Micro would have been the answer to everything, had it only a bigger sensor.

Both too small. You just don't know how many have no cinematic taste.

During the summer draught I stand on the bridge and bite my nails. Hoping nobody notices the bags in the shallow water of the Rhine containing those who disliked my favorite movies.

Yeah, indeed. Though I am not exactly a psychopath, that's my lifelong addiction to cinema, not too far from reality. Must seriously consider this. Now I'm curious: what's your motivation to make films?

Wow, big fun! Be proud of that. I enjoyed it a lot. When I was working as a projectionist, I used to join the audience for scenes that were special to me. I raised the volume, I witnessed their emotional reactions, and I wished I had made that film. I know this seems to contradict everything I wrote before. But it doesn't. The worst films try to satisfy the audience, showing them exactly what they expect. Famous quote:

Officially, the values of our nation are freedom and the dignity of man. The unofficial value, deducable by the norm, is being successful in the rat race. That's a serious disadvantage for everybody, even for the winners. It's unlikely that the disrespect of creatives for the other-directed *opinion* of racing rats can cause any serious harm. Whoever saves one life saves the world entire, why not start with myself? Why should I try to convince others? They will be solved eventually. After the current migration period will be over, little will be left of our accustomed way of life we are not ashamed to call our culture. Not meant as a verdict by me, just comparing what has happened before in history. A bad conscience is always bad. Nobody gets a loaf of bread because I do without a new fancy camera. We say I'm sorry too often.

More evil comes from obeying than from doing ones own thing (as our countries' history illustrates). Emotions or thoughts expressed with genuine passion will also be appreciated by others. Doing what you think might be after everybody's fancy results in mediocrity. At best. And: I don't see we are on 'that route'. The current crises on so many levels can't be solved by accepting practical constraints. We need more people who trust their own judgment (made with minds, hearts and souls) and who contradict the so-called common sense of their society. Again, our country provides the challenge right now. How can we sleep while our beds are burning?

A propos procrastination. I read a german book on that topic called HOW TO GET THINGS DONE WITHOUT A HINT OF SELF-DISCIPILINE, written by a very successful motivation coach. In the ad campaign for the book, the true Genesis was told. God felt obliged to create the world in seven days, but he couldn't built up momentum. No one there to delegate tasks and the clock ticking. On the last day, five minutes to twelve, he hastily lumped everything together. He saw that it was nothing to write home about, but he said to himself, hey, for five minutes work! The author defines procrastination as the result of feeling obliged to do something one is not convinced of. Seemingly lazy people can set free a lot of energy once they manage to distinguish between what they are supposed to do and what they want to do. Always try to invest as little effort to meet the expectations of others as possible, more important, don't waste a thought to second-guessing if they might approve. We are living in a less than perfect world (see above), and you don't owe anything to anyone. It's not just about business schedules or other mind-consuming, pointless duties. Creativity is blocked by self-discipline, by to-do-lists, these things are self-contradictory. Will what I plan to do please others? Why should I care?

We need the reassurance of others to keep our persona alive. We are social beings. Therefore, we act, we pretend and rarely see our real needs. Of course, we have some ideas how we should be (not that we should be), and those rule our thoughts, literally. We believe that we think about something, while in reality we listen to a debate of inner voices. Many with personality disorders call them what they are: alien. Thoughts are deceiving. Emotions are much more reliable. We can learn to trust our feelings (more), to allow them to guide our actions, we can then better sense the real motivations of others and make better decisions. Which camera to buy? How does this esoteric stuff apply there? I need to ask myself (who asks whom?), if I suffer from NCO ... >Trusting Your Own Opinion< Plato said opinion was a poor substitute for knowledge. Know why I need a tool and what I want to achieve with it.

Saw a TV report on how Amazon and competitors calculate their prices. It's done by computers using complicated algorithms. You can't predict the price, even if there is a tendency over many days, no man can. There are apps for buyers as well. You type in what at what price you want to be alarmed. Those apps communicate with the sellers' programs which, at the same time, try to maximize the profit, so you see how the cookie crumbles.

If it was that easy ...

All changes are calculated in an order that can be controlled only to some extend. For example the order of color corrections can be changed. Denoising is the effect that's rendered first in the pipeline (after speed changes, which aren't strictly effects), so before color correction anyway. So although it says put Neat first in line, you can't change what actually happens under the hood. But it's important nonetheless, because otherwise you would (just for instance, this is true for a lot of effects) judge your colors with colored noise in them. What I wouldn't recommend is re-importing neated clips. Not only is this a cumbersome workflow (FCP X has no real batch exporter for individual clips, to start with), it's unnecessary. Instead, I would tag all clips that need Neat with "Neat" (make it ctrl+number or leave the keyword-HUD open) before writing them in the timeline, edit, go to timeline index, search tags >"Neat" >select all, apply Neat to all (by double-clicking on the effect), neat them individually (i.e. by M Carters presets), then color-correct. You don't need real time playback for CC, the frame the skimmer/playhead is on is rendered in the cache. By the same method, you can toggle Neat on or off by checking or de-checking the box in inspector. If you want to see your whole timeline in real time with Neat, you can select all "Neat", then render selected. In theory, a compound clip copy would be an elegant way to avoid re-importing, but the copy just refers to the render files for playback, but in case you put another effect on top of that clip, the render queue is being triggered from the start. I didn't try it just now, but that's what I expect. This is to avoid "generation loss" by recompression, which does matter. Report.

The answer is Time Machine. Back up your status quo on an external drive and try it. Maybe you are right with Photon Pro. Didn't use it for quite some time now.

I don't. I find them too orange. Perhaps you are allergic to magenta. Allegedly, it should be 'porange' - between pink and orange. But I feel that with real HD (due to debayering and stuff like that, UHD cameras are true HD for the first time) it isn't sufficient anymore to fill a large area in your image with the right color. Here is what I mean: There isn't one skin color, there are thousands, and the texture of the skin is composed of them. This is beauty. Note, that this clip was not recorded in UHD, it's just 1080p, and also not raw, just 10-bit.. With 10-bit, you record more colors. Skip 4k, you have true HD. Your image looks too sharp to me anyway (sharpness in-camera is embossing edges, it's ugly in HD). Now top priority is to find a preset/style/profile for 1080 10-bit with a wide range of warm colors. Preferably a rather flat one. S-Log is perfect for 10-bit with LUT in post. Good luck!