gethin

I posted this because of some footage I'd seen. Honestly it was nearly shit enough for a $500 camera. It had no right to be so good. It made me positively angry. ?

well whatever you do, you always try and make it as good as possible, but even a year ago you wouldn't have thought about shooting on an action cam. It reminds me of the printing industry 20 years ago. People were going bust all over the place because they were still paying off 100's of thousands of dollars worth of kit, and were being out-competed by startups using kit 1/10th of the cost, quicker and easier to use, and cheaper to run. For $500 aud, I might have to get one, just to see. I could attach it to my current setup and would hardly feel the weight difference!

I just saw some footage from DJI's new action cam. HDR video! WTF? Sometimes I wonder why I dropped $5K on a camera setup when I could just shoot my real estate vids on an action cam, and most people wouldn't notice the difference. I just bought the 14-30 lens for my z6, and I'll buy the mozo aircross 2 to replace my ronin-s when it comes out, because 3.6kg of camera setup is killing me. But to think someone could just buy this and a wee gimbal, or the pocket osmo, and even begin to compete is head scratching.

I just quoted on a job. Required 3 trips to location, 3 lots of drone work and shooting on a roof and a little interview. I quoted $2200 Aud (about 1500 usd) for a 2-3 min finished vid or $275 per hour ($195usd) for the raw footage, only. Got message back that he didn't have a lot of money to spend on the vid, and ultimately that i was too expensive, and I just wonder what folk expect when they phone about that sort of job. $500? I am seeing this more and more. Time to give up on video and become a plumber.

the s1r is going to be 6-7000K in australia, I betcha. and they're positioning it as a stills camera that also shoots video. I dont really get it.

Yes really farking heavy, and 30+ degrees. that shot of the person in the river is me. Even after jumping in I was still roasting The video is really clean, in the shadows too. My first impression is that the GH5 will offer you more control, and ultimately a better image when you have time to work on it. I'd be more comfortable shooting a low-budget advert on the gh5 if I had control of light, and time to do anything about it. Coupled with just how weird the gh5 was to grade. Sometimes the exact same grading would look vastly different from one shot to the next. I was constantly fiddling just to get something acceptable. I'd try to pull the sky down and it would fall apart. I'd try to boost the shadows and it would fall apart. I got used to living with a shot pretty well how i'd shot it. z6 i get the feeling I'll be able to shove it around more, which is odd because I'm pretty sure its a lower bitrate and 8 bit. Go figure. I'm going to sell my gh5. Just need to decide if I'm going to sell all my m4/3 kit or keep it in case I get a BMPCC4k. the ronin is impressive in that regard if a bit quirky. Even with the ronin you dont get full movement - the rubber eyepiece hits the ronin, so you only get about 30 degrees to tilt down. I tried adding extra weight to the back so I could move the camera forward, but didn't work. Cant wait for the 14-30. (I imagine I'll be looking at the mooza air once i start getting more native lenses). However, seeing what sony are doing with their autofocus, and how much their colour has improved, I still havent ruled out going all in on sony depending on the next a7s.

I just finished my first shoot where I used the z6 for all the video shooting. Was a bit painful to shoot (z6+14-24f2.8+ronin-s), but a total joy to grade. The house was pretty easy to shoot though, nowhere near the dynamic range of some properties I shoot, it'll be interesting to see how it fares with them. The ronin-s is miles better than the crane 2 for me. virtually no jitter even with the humongous cam and lens combo. Good job too because the rolling shutter makes warp stabiliser a bit hit and miss. I know some people have complained about the slomo, but I think its better than the gh5's. I spent the first few weeks telling my partner I was going to sell it, but just like the d5500, I'm loving the image. Foibles: flicker from lights. I assume this is to do with the slow readout too. Never had this issue with GH5. Its fine if I leave the shutter on 1/100 or 1/50th, but problematic if I want to use an auto mode. I noticed some flicker on manual with auto iso. Have no idea why that should happen. I know people dont post there own work a lot on here, I think more people should.

d5300/d5500 was a dog to use for video (I assume the d5600 was too). I put up with it because the image was nice, and because the video was so obviously a "and also" feature. The z6 has aspects of dogginess, but I have less patience with it because its supposed to be aimed at video makers.

does anyone know readout speed of z6 sensor. I forgot just how this effects my workflow (warp stabilizer is amazing with a fast readout sensor, woeful wobbly jelly nightmare with a slow one). MY gx85 was truly terrible, the z6 is not as bad, and I was spoilt rotten with the gh5. In fact the gh5 made me forget this could be an issue. Got my numbers here, but z6 not on the list:http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?303559-Measuring-rolling-shutter-put-a-number-on-this-issue!

If you want that you do that. If what you want isn't what I want then feel free to keep doing what you do. Everyone has different priorities with a camera, what is important for one person is not important for another. The fact remains though that having an auto mode where the min shutter is 360 degrees, and where one mode apparently does nothing different to another is completely fucking bonkers. Yes I agree there are a bunch of foibles that need to be fixed. It'll take a miracle for nikon to do anything other than fix them in the z6.01 or whatever the fuck they'll call it.

Yeah I'm talking to a nikon tech about it. He said it's setup so min shutter is always 1/fps. I've asked him who or where i can petition for a firmware update Yeah shutter priority does not work at all. Lols

I have a cineform workflow too. I was about to start switching to prores and thought I'd google which flavor was most like cineform, and found a ton of posts raving about cineform vs prores for quality, compression, speed of encoding and playback. so I'm just wondering what the advantage is. (having prores is fab for final exports of course!)

I'm getting a bunch of people frothing on the nikon z facebook page for querying why nikon set the min shutter speed in auto modes to 1/25th, AND forced autoISO in the auto modes. You cant switch it off! I phoned nikon today, I'm hoping there's something I'm missing somewhere. Frothy facebook people are wondering why anyone would want to use an auto mode, but for what I do it is essential. Auto iso in manual mode doesn't cut the mustard. I've used this on canons, a couple of GH's and 2 DSLR nikons. It's baffling that the z implemation is so limited. (and why didn't they just set the min shutter to 2xfps, or at least let you specify max shutter angle). I'm in that weird period with a camera where you're getting to know it, and finding out all its quirks and foibles. (Controlling the IBIS via the lens. No peaking in autofocus mode, despite the fact you can change focus manually. No zebras and peaking, no level and histogram on screen at same time... and i have much to learn about autofocus.)

not enough. you dont get fine control of the speed of ramp up and down fr instance

I went from a blackbird, to a pilotfly to a crane 2 (the big one not the crane 1v2). The thing I dont like about the crane is how little control I have of settings. With the pilotfly I had a nice dead zone then a very slow ramp up and down. it meant you could get the great smooth circular tracks, and the smoothness would iron out any accidental extra twists. So. I'm thinking of ditching it in favour of ronin S. Am I right to think that I will get as much control as I do with the phantom? That I can control acceleration and deceleration, dead zone and what nots? If not, where should I look. Its a shame about zhiyun, the crane 3 lab looks fab, but I'm waiting to hear if the only control will be through that goddam awful zy app.

yeah but graphs! Dxo my d5500 had better dynamic range than my d800. Pfff. And active d-light makes a huge difference. I suspect tests like this are done without it (rightly so, because they are measuring what the hardware is capable of, but I have it on 11 most of the time I tested it today on the z6 seemed to make stuff all difference. I tried jpegs and the HDR setting. They were all gnarly compared to the d800. And pink. THe video looked like it had more dynamic range than the stills, so maybe I got a dud.

I'm coming round to thinking that apsc crop is the way to go for me. Smaller lenses, full frame look via speedbooster... whats the dynamic range like on thse fujis I wonder? ?

a beta raw processor. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say ? well it would be great if the issues were down to a shitty profile. Here's hoping. I highly doubt it though, that noise at 5 stops aint going away. Cant see that on my laptop, but can see that the focus is all over the place.

just finished processing the stills from my first commercial job with this camera. No video yet, but in case there's anyone else on here who will be using it for both, here is my first impression: Wah! Dynamic range, does not keep up with my 6 year old d800 at lowest isos. There is much less highlight detail retained, and you cant push the shadows as far. Much more noise, weird colours creeping in. I can push my d800 five stops and still get a vaguely usable image, not so z6. I really thought a 6 year younger camera would keep up with stills. Sadly my d5500 does a better job of holding onto highlights. ( shadows are a bit gnarly though). More testing needed, I'll do some side-by sides with the d800 and a mate's a7iii

I dunno. I'm finding myself skeptical. Seems like the hoohar has arisen because of those 2 sensors, but we've been here before. I'll happily admit ive been wrong before too.

is that still true when you can capture 16 stops? I ask because I dunno I know that even with my 6 year old d800 I can push a 5 stop underexposed shot to to be almost usable, so far fewer bits having to do the work of many. Isn't that scenario where extra bits are bit better?

dynamic range yay, 16 bit yay, 8k urgh. Honestly. I'll feel like I'll have to get it at some point to future proof my stock footage, but with processors improving at about 5% per year, its going to make editing blerg

well here's one of those things you wont find out till you've been setting it up for an hour or so: you cant have focus peaking and zebras on at the same time. this is a very typical nikon snafu. I read someone on a forum saying they'll probably fix it in a firmware update. They obviously didn't know nikon either. Its also quite simple compared to the a7iii and gh5. no bitrates to select or curves to alter, no vectorscopes or kitchen sinks. This is probably a good thing on the whole. I shot today with someone elses a7iii and we couldn't figure out how to get it into aperture priority mode whilst in a custom menu setting. Lol I'm gagging to take it out shooting...

Well it turns out they were out in australia today! I just ordered one. :)

anyone here from australia? I know the states are getting deliveries mid november, the only retailer I contacted here was still saying early december