Axel

Fascinating projects to put the Pocket and the BMCC into new housings. I'm all for it, but with the Ursa Mini on the horizon I don't see big advantages. There are also quite successful rigs, the best of them minimalistic. Once a camera gets close to have everything we ever asked for and still is affordable, these creative constructions more and more become ends in themselves. Which is a pity. It's time to reconsider the approach. Do we get 99% of what is usually done with the definite equipment with consumer stuff, used with intelligence and care? Isn't that in part what EOSHD is about?

Unfortunately, this Avenger movie hardly features one pure recording. One that allowed to draw comparisons or conclusions. You can't tell where the Pocket was used and why. Unlike Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. It was shot with Alexa and 5D. 5D obviously for the shots inside the cars. However, having sold the Pocket (after 18 months of use, many hours of test shots, one ambitious doc and two weddings) and being back to prosumer video (I own no camera anymore, my buddy hates BM and has an FS7), I begin to see the virtues. The richness of colors is unrivaled in this price class.

Hi Alex. Where does he state that he applies a LUT on Autumn Leaves? Because, if he does, it has to be a pure look-LUT. Like one of the presets of the classic Magic Bullet looks. You'd need different looks for different moods, Brandon very often prefers a warm tone (that would be highlights pushed towards yellow/orange). You can do this with any CC tool. In most cases, you won't need secondary corrections. Because Autumn Leaves leaves skin tones with rich nuances, I think it's the best mode to choose for the A7s. Brandon amplifies the natural mood of the scene, he optimizes color contrasts (that would be shadows slightly pushed towards blue/cyan), both things can only be done manually - because it has to fit the scene (in a night that's only illuminated by fire, there can still be blue shadows (if justified by a blue sky, but in this clip the sky is pitch black) ....

Here is a Brawley clip with Ursa Mini 4,6k and Alexa Mini (in case you haven't seen it already): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6a6EToQsEM Not exactly inspring. People try to guess whether the strobe lights were captured with UM's global shutter or if AM's electronic shutter is that good. I find the black dancer from above more interesting. Only few cameras can capture such a complex spectrum of skintones. The rest, the grading, the lighting, proof of DR and the like, belong to the category it's not the camera ...

I will watch it, but I'm afraid it will be as described in answer two. Episode IV in 1977 ended a decade of independant cinema, with fresh, unpredictable stories and often very subversive messages. In one way it was pure cinema, in another it was the death of cinema. Another undead film.

Yes, for me too. Out of reach. Fully equipped (with two no-name V-mount batteries and four 256 GB cards, BM viewfinder, shoulder kit and battery plate), the Ursa Mini 4,6k is roughly €10.000. How much would the Raven be?

Found him: Saul Leiter.

This thread sums up my own observations. I do believe that too perfectly lit, framed and colored images can get in the way of the story. Did you see Netflix' The Killing, first two seasons? It's Seattle, and it's raining most of the time. The light is grey. Very often, particularly in long shots, the view is obstructed by sometimes unindentifiable foreground objects (or the said rain). I saw a book recently on an american photographer (forgot the name unfortunately, I thought it was Abel Leibner, something similar, but I got no hits on Google, does anyone know?). His photos also feature the main motif framed by a lot of obstructions, distortions or as faint reflections. Very interesting style, the opposite of Broadchurch season 2. You intentionally place distractions in the frame and let the viewer find the most interesting detail (which is the action of the characters always anyway). In the first episode of Fargo season 2, I liked the photography, but it doesn't seem to be good style, because now I just see it as decorative, and it distracts me. Maybe though that only camera nerds like us notice these things ...

You won the bet. 11 pages right now, and no hint of skepticism. A lot of brave loyality. And a stern warning for the haters:

Nice clip. Not exactly a *test*. Proves, given some effort in lighting and production design, this camera won't screw it up.

In this case, yes. Glad it was fixed.

All depends as well on the circumstances as on your own mindset and emotional disposition. If to connect to other people's emotions is what you really miss, you will find this easier. Or at least you imagine that it is. And then, no matter whether the empathy was real or not, MDMA is a medicine for you. You will always remember the experience as Love Is All You Need. Acting maybe quite accurate. But all just shown from the outside. If that was your goal, it's good.

You are right. Grading LOG that was recorded in an 8-bit codec does seem to be a challenge though, given that there are so few convincing clips (valid also for V-LOG and to some extend C-LOG) ...

Yes, good news. However, waxy skin still is a general characteristic of most Sony cameras. I'd even go so far as to say crayon colors:

This is the age of action cams like the GoPros. People subconsciously realize what the distortion does to movements, centering the view and sucking vanishing lines down the drain. Boring. The very opposite, a very long shot with foreground and background compressed, is still something special (see "Bayhem"). The very best is the intercutting of different perspectives and framing.

Awesome thread. This explains a lot. I suspect this may even not be limited to the cameras mentioned. When in the first video he says 'you also lose face detection AF', a coin dropped. I was wondering, always, why in so many Sony videos the skin looks so poor, and I blamed it on a bad 'sony color science' compared to, say, the Canon C series. We further found AF shots with our FS7 often (but not always) to look irritatingly like SD. I will follow this. Thank you for posting.

The first test clips of any camera must always be taken with a grain of salt (if that's the right phrase). When I saw these takes: ... I thought the Ursa Mini 4,6k sensor had another of those blooming problems, and a very big problem. It turned out: Only recently, I followed a discussion in another forum on the usefulness of glass filters in the 4k era. Though you can't substitute ND filters or IR-cut-filters, you should better not use any kind of diffusion, contrast, mist, glow or colors. These effects you can better apply in post. The Tiffen "DFX" filter suite is a revelation, for example. The subtleness with which you can limit the effect can't be reached by glass. Try the 15 day demo! All in all, I am convinced by the colors and the detail.

Color-blind? Can't even imagine what that means. You should then find someone who can do the CC for you. Color temperature is not always something that needs correction. Color-blind or not, you'd certainly agree that a sunset or candle light mean images with an orange cast, but you'd rather not choose, say, 2000°K, because there's no point in neutralizing this cast, it's part of the overall mood. At least you should distinguish between tungsten (3200°K) and daylight (5600°K). On a cold, cloudy winter day, 5600°K would read too blue to look natural, therefore it should be 6500°K. An expodisc (also known as white balance cap) is better than a greycard, because colors will be more consistent throughout the scene. However, it will make colors look neutral. That's not what we expect to see in most cases. We don't see light bulbs as outright orange, but we certainly don't see them as pure white.

The principle is not new in Resolve, but in Color Finale. It's like an advanced post AWB, and it's helpful to match the colors of different cameras. In this, it's limited by the colors a camera records due to it's own color science (in the extreme, a Sony FS5 will capture only a few percents of the skin tones within a BM Log file). Needless to say that it's not for the run&gun shooters ...

Yes I liked it too. I think it's a simple answer to the motto. We also discussed to take part in this competition, but we came up with no good idea for "No Limits". Funny though, one idea was Ernest Hemingway cleaning his rifle, repeating a man can be defeated, but he shall never give up! (similar to you can fail, but never quit) Because of course there are limits. We need them. Even the wonderful parkour runners had little to overcome without limitations (idea: a parkour artist sees all barriers miraculously disappear in a nightmare and then falls out of his bed). That's why so many of the clips are that bad, the slogan is dull and invites dishonest upbeat cheese. That was the same with LGs Life is good competition a few years ago. The winner didn't fall for the slogan. ... like the majority. Take this for instance:

Though I own just the cheap D3300 (for occasional stills for the homepage of my restaurant), I can confirm the part with the better colors. Or, on the contrary, the very poor colors of the A7s. And I second your statement on the Nikon lenses and the cheap speedboosters. Not because they are cheap but because I don't like camera aperture control at all. Not more comfortable (for me, that is) if it works in the first place. A no-go if it doesn't like with cheaper speedboosters that don't allow firmware updates.

If FCP X would be available for Windows or if Premiere allowed to switch between tracks and connected clips ... ... then tracks would be gone within a matter of one or two years. Seems obvious to me.

The definite unboxing video would utilize spacy backgrounds, light and magic mist emerging from the slowly opening lid. And of course a fanfare like Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Why should I buy a box that's presented with this supermarket muzak? Recently in the detergent department.

Ecstasy is about intensity. There should be no strange visuals or sounds, but everything should look like from a happy ad. It also depends on the circumstances. If you are going to a club, you will be deeply immersed in the music and move under the impression that your body can do everything. You will be constantly smiling. If you are sitting alone at home, in subdued light, with headphones on and listening to any kind of music, you will hear every note like for the first time, as if it was written exclusively for you. The best way to show the effect is the behavior of the guy who took it. In a group of sober people he will appear irritatingly, inappropriately (well, this is relative, isn't it?) and sometimes annoyingly happy. Many who have made own experiences will know what's going on, most will see his ecstasy as the manic side of a bipolar disorder.

I wrote about it before, but only recently I had the chance to play with it at a friend's PC who uses Adobe CC. And I agree, for most of us this tool will be completely sufficient. Great advantages: ease of use, good integration because Lumetri has it's own workspace. You can and need to stack instances of the 'effect' (like nodes in Resolve). May I remark that I see this development as an 'answer' to FCP X's much-derided rudimentary CC-tools, which nonetheless let you do 90% of what needs to be done. Or, to put it differently, 95% of all people never use more. What's missing most? A reference frame, a spltscreen view (unless I missed this on my two-hour-tour). I propose a workaround. Since usually you only need one reference frame per sequence, you can duplicate this completely graded clip, shove it on a track above the rest and crop it.