jgharding

hi all, Just interested to get some opinions. so far we've had once piece of footage, I can't find a way to embed it so here it is on another blog: http://www.newsshooter.com/2015/06/13/new-footage-from-the-blackmagic-ursa-mini-4-6k/ the dynamic range and skin tones look lovely as does resolution, footage seems jolly good. I am however worried about the camera itself, as someone who once had a preorder down on an earlier model and cancelled as all sorts of delays happened and problems arose once when the camera was out there. i also have a friend whose camera broke on day one on a shoot, leaving him to use a backup he had luckily brought in the form of a GH2 (remember those?;) as such I can't bring myself to preorder, despite lovely footage and a low price I still feel it's a... Gamble. Which is sad. I'd like to be more trusting but still... This is real money and real work... is anyone out there with more courage than I taking the plunge? If so let us know!

Or putting a captcha on new topic starting and maybe banning Chinese characters in titles!

I think it's a fine reference, since it's how many people will view your work. I always check work on my phone as it gives you an idea of how it will be seen. It shouldn't be your only screen though

I banned the user already, manually going through and deleting all his posts will take a while, I'm hoping Andrew has a way to do that in bulk!

My personal preference is for DPA clip-on mics rather than the Senn ones. C100 ii or FS5 are great options. I'd be tempted to Sony for future proofing but Canon is always nicer to use.

I used used the RX10 ii on one paid shoot so far. it didn't shut down through overheating but I noticed some incredibly noisey footage in HFR mode, which I assume was due to heat build up from me running about shooting at all kinds of frame rates. I also noticed the camera get warm. indeed you can't use full brightness with HFR, 4K high bitrate or 100p, which I assumed was due to drain on the battery being too great. But perhaps it's a heat issue too? Sony are very preoccupied with size, and unfortunately they will continue to invite these problems unless they make larger bodies with better heat dissipation, or think of some clever method for cooling. the C100 was fine all shoot, but it only does 1080 25p and has a fan!!

Regardless of the numbers, Ninja 2 does make quite a difference for these kind of artefacts. Set it to DNxHD 220X and you can't go wrong! I don't know why the 10bit makes a difference but hey, at least it does! this was all done c100 ninja 2 in 220x: http://youtu.be/w0o6HRBGhsc

Second hand Alienware PC laptop is a good option. you can put three (!) HDD/SSD in the m14 for example: one msata SSD then the main system drive and replace the optical with a cradle for another. so you can have an msata SSD for your caches, 1tb or 512SSD for system and 2TB for storage, plus 16GB RAM a fast GPU good screens too!

If hire prices are decent I may use it at some point. I shan't buy it though, it's too much responsibility and the accessories cost a fortune. a bit like a sausage dog.

I've yet to have any client ever demand a specific camera unless it's something high end, certainly I've never had one ask for "Canon colour" but your mileage may vary. Once I had one want a 5D cos they'd heard of it from a friend. When I explained what the C series were they sheepishly let me pick my own camera! Personally though, I always grade everything and I feel I'm pretty good and quick. I also shot with C100 and RX10ii on a shoot the other day and matched them close enough with about 10 minutes grade work. C100 does still look nicer, but it's a tiny percentage nicer better in terms of final product, and not worth paying three times the price if I'm going to own a camera IMO, so I feel we will be switching gradually unless something changes in Canon price structure. Sony even produced an Slog2 LUT to emulate Arri colour (less saturated highlights), which i find useful. If someone ever does request Canon and we've gone Sony, I'll hire it for a day, rather than own such a severely depreciating asset with such a remarkably higher price! I think having internal 4k and high speed of a Sony will be worth it. The only things that worry me now in FS5: lack of waveform mentioned above, that's news to me!? I use waveform a lot. Sounds annoying...Sony menus are always pigs.

RX10 ii is good... The only issues for me are: - battery life is quite short - a proper separate charger should be included - some memory cards that match the listed specs still won't work for 100p or 4k, which is annoying - HFR modes are very noisy in low light, much more so than 100p at the same ISO settings. - the menus are HORRIBLE and so slow to navigate. Sony just can't get this right. - some functions just won't work in 100p and 4K - your screen brightness is set to minimum and active steady shot is turned off. Power drain issue? - 100p takes ages to save the file after you stop recording Other than that it's pretty good. it got its first outing over the last few days on a corporate gig and everyone's happy: i also took this promo shot that's on Kerrang with it, which they've cropped pretty hard, but you can see it's a capable still camera. It was very dark in this room but this came out flawlessly clean due to steady shot http://www.kerrang.com/35535/sam-russo-streams-new-track-runaways

Now I do like Canon colour, but it's not worth 3 times the price for a C300 MKii over this. Sony pricing is hammering Canon at the moment... At this rate we will end up 100% Sony within the year from 100% Canon a year before. Come on Canon, catch up!

Am enjoying the RX10 ii emmensely! Its a great stills camera too, it can shoot in low light without high ISO very well due to stabilisation. im finding like most that Slog2 is too yellow and magenta out of the box so I've dialled them back and pushed the red a bit too.

By "the processor can't" they of course mean "we didn't design it to" or "because we don't want it to yet". bit depth is a separating factor for market sectors, design of processors is not 'out of their hands', it is part of the segmentation of product lines.

I think the examples presented look like Video Copilot Optical Flares presets. There's a huge number of very sharp flare elements. So to recreate these shots shoot spherical on a modern lens straight into a light and add Optical Flares afterwards to taste. if you want extreme flares and have a fussy client you can too shoot spherical and add Optical Flares afterwardS, then your fussy client can even change the flares in post! Bear in mind most presets aren't very realistic, but most people don't care. if they don't like a flare you've done for real, you can't remove it, so on client work it's a risk. On artistic work, go mental! You can also f*** with a cheap uv filter on the front a lens to make flares and odd effects, try staining it or chipping bits out of it. Go nuts! You can get them for a few quid. just a few alternative avenues of thought there!

A great tip, I never thought of doing it like that!

That whole "reformat to change region" is an irritant. Some DSLRs don't do it, makes you wonder why Canon C serious and the Sony RXs, among others, do

Yes I agree that some part of the emotion of cinematography comes from degrading the image down to a 2D flat version of how our eyes work. our hunter's vision is relatively limited in field of view, resolution and ability to focus on more than one thing or distance at a time... That can work for some shots but eventually it feels detached, like documentation rather than involvement.

I don't work in full-frame equivalents, as I've only shot APSC and S35 for the most part. 28mm is indeed my favourite. The old Zeiss 28mm F2 to be precise. A lovely feel, for some voodoo reason! it works with very close focus and wide aperture enabling a closeup separated-background feel as well as broad views. 50-60mm is your punch in 'saying something really important' view. 21mm is establishing and small-room shots. Not for much more unless you're stuck for framing in general. Unless of course the piece demands everything be wide... it's so personal and relies so heavily on the material you're trying to express visually, you've got to be honest, trust your guts and do what you think feels right. YMMV of course!

Some things suit Sony style ultra sharp ultra colourful cool tone reality, and some suit 16mm Kodak with moody tones and a ton of noise. Samsara suits the hyper-real 70mm film as its a visual anthropological document of sorts as well as social comment. the fact that we can choose formats is great. Truth is it's nice to have access to wonderful formats, but if you're doing narrative it's the least of you worries, because you're relying on performance and script to sell your story and story world. If those are good enough, format is usually a background element. It can enhance a story but it can't break it unless you REALLY screw up. if you aren't doing narrative then other practical considerations will take over, though most modern formats will do you fine. i recently re-watched some of my older 550D music videos, and the softness combines with the grain added makes them look quite nice and 16mm like, which suits the gritty feel. I prefer them to some work I've done on other cameras (Epic etc). The format suits the content and helps sell the piece. F65 would have been impractical (huge size extra crew) and would have needed to be degraded a lot to suit. So don't get *too* tied up in technology. Only other film-makers are looking for that, if they make up the majority of your audience and the technology is the point, I'd motion that you needn't worry about posterity, as your work will likely become obsolete naturally as technology changes. I agree on "narrative detachment". That's why Lord Of The Rings shot on film whips The Hobbit shot on crystal clear high-frame rate digital. layers of subtle non-linear organic distortion create the detachment, which helps you feel you're looking at another world. The Hobbit often looks like you're on a set, and that's no fun, i still maintain though, that if the story in The Hobbit was more bearably paced and the whole a little better written I wouldn't have cared so much about the sharpness of the makeup

One factor here is the size of company using the software. Another is the established working environment. Features are not the only reason large companies use commercial software. i use REAPER for audio, and I pay for it because it's an honesty based license. Ithas a lot of features ProTools doesn't. In fact, it has a lot of features many others don't. MIDI is poor but I rewire FL Studio into it for that. Now Avid recently locked out all but one plugin format in ProTools, purposefully trying to lock people in and make the software more exclusive. so if you're one man band or a few people, there's no benefit to the Avid environment so you won't suffer that kind of bullshit, you use REAPER. BUT back in video land if you have 100 edit stations all wanting to access pool of footage and have 3 or 4 on one project at the same time etc you'll choose Avid, regardless of price or various corporate dick waggling. Your turnover is millions, you need everything to work and you pay a large company to make sure it does. Now if you're a one man band and someone says "hey freelancer, we have this edit, can you take up the slack in your suite" and you don't have it you have to say no. So some people will use the software even if it's clunky in order to take on other work. This is the case in audio with ProTools, where studio sessions often come in ProTools format. If you can't open it, it's a bugger. Many studios will have at least one machine with Pro Tools just to open and convert projects. in other words, many large commercial operations can't afford to develop their own software and need reliable ongoing support. Commercial is the only realistic option for that: and because of that, commercial software use rolls down to the rest of us.

To do this easily and accurately it's best to round trip with Speedgrade. at the moment FCPX does this much more easily I'm afraid. Adobe would be wise to just pull the whole of Speedgrade correction into Premiere as a plugin or panel.

A general warning RE: over exposing log. Yes It reduces noise as you can effectively push the floor down in post (perhaps beside the point but this is how Dolby noise reduction worked in way in audio with pre-emphasis) BUT you lose over exposure latitude and usually more importantly, the skin tones are pushed further up the log curve and can end up with les data allocated to them than if you just shot 709. i wouldn't personally bother with 3 stops over TBH. Though you may find a use for one and two. Best generally is to expose properly and just de noise, I find. smooth highlight roll off is one of the joys of log. I wouldn't want to lose it over a bit of noise...

Should be here by Monday! I wish they'd made it 12mp-ish, then the low light would have been killer for a one-inch sensor due to larger pixels. Best of both worlds, and would have eliminated the only big down side. the Canon XC10 has a 12mp-ish 1-inch sensor and can hit ISO 20,000. Still, i think it'll do what I need, which is to fill in where the C100s let me down: frame rates higher than 30 and occasional 4K shots.

Taking the plunge! Can't turn down the high frame rates in a small body with no fuss for (relatively) few pounds. This should be fun