jgharding

it's a per camera thing. Test it and see for yourself, I'd say!   try upscaling the 720p MJPEG next to the 1080p AVCHD and see which you prefer working with....   One can easily get abstract in terms of the algorithms involved, but suffice it to say that MJPEG is less complex, it takes less power to encode and decode, and is less efficient. In theory it can provide better quality as it's I-frame (it stores each image individually, doesn't use big groups of frames and prediction), but if you hack a Canon EOS you can have I-frame adaptive-high-bitrate H264. But the sensor downscaling is soft. So again it depends on the camera, not the stats or acronyms.

(posted in wrong thread, sorry)

I don't know much about that Olympus I'm afraid! Someone here may though... it'll depend on how it's implemented I think   All i know is that the stabilisation would have sold me one, if it hadn't been for 30p. Such a silly oversight from Olympus there.

A simple steadicam system perhaps?   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aun2kjyCLXw

For example I use a profile called VisionColor for Canon EOS. It emulates Kodak tones subtly, lifts the blacks and flattens things a little, but still hold the look of the scene. I find it a good compromise, while my tests of ultraflats often show slightly lifeless results...

Indeed raw digital photography is the ideal, and hopefully within a couple of years video will behave in exactly the same way ad computers will handle it with aplomb!   At the moment video is a compromise, but great results can still be achieved.   Consider if you were shooting still JPEG instead of raw: You'd want to get a decent looking result but leave a little wiggle rooms for adjustment, I think H264 video is a fairly similar way of shooting!

A bit of both, is a short answer.   Super flat compressed footage with quantizd 8-bit colour values can't be pushed as far as you like, but if your in-camera look is too strong you're committed.   Get white balance correct in camera either way. Perhaps use a slightly flat profile, just to stop black getting crushed, and give yourself some room for movement.   It's certainly useful to decide your outcome look before you start, if you can.   The 8-bit banding can be helped by adding grain in post. This acts a bit like dithering.

Great stuff! The only difficult thing is manual focus in video using that wobbly focus ring, and it's quite slow at the 55mm end... but yes it certainly functions to learn the ropes and decide if you want to spend more

^ Now that's  a bag! It's huge! Does that do your back after a while?

  You're talking as though 5D MKiii only does raw video. The all-I H264 is good too though... If you wanna go crazy, borrow one of those epics ;)   I was quite tempted to the G6 with speedbooster, though all the footage I've seen looks a bit 'camcordery' so far. Personal taste...   Why not just use the 5D iii in video mode with ML, not the raw mode?

Hmmm, that's a lot...   Have you condidered one of the rolling plastic case type bags?   http://store.lowepro.com/rolling-cases   Some of them are giant.

I'm glad that works, but unfortunately this guy's BMCC didn't! :S As a result, newer bodys have an extra part on the SSD bay door, but if you have one of the first ones it's a danger... and wasn't spotted before release! D'oh!

great stuff. The workflow is getting gradually better...   It will be great when DNG is native in Premiere, then I may dabble in it myself a little more

Maybe I'm wrong about the monitor then, I spose i did rush it... of course, what you're saying makes sense... I found it's not in 10-bit mode but that shouldn't have made a difference.   I think it's speed more than anything else ( a factor I'm quite preoccupied with)  I only had a few minutes to do it so fucked up a little on the subtle bits   This monitor is good, but it's hard to get used to, a bit like studio monitors in audio, when you first move from hi-fi speakers!   The real test is translation. I've found grades I do on this monitor, while referencing on worse ones, translate to every screen well. Same with audio mixed on good speakers...

I like the look of 5Diii raw tough, it sure gives a lot of options, if you side by side it with Red and so on, the Red looks better, but side by side comparisons are pretty meaningless unless you're camera mixing from shot to shot... But at the moments things like card capacity and speed vs price, as well as edit storage, reliability of alpha hack, computing power required for post, long workflow... all of that stands against using it on most projects for me... Patience is rewarding I think!

Also, the last Superman film was shot Kodak Vision 3, Panavision anamorphic, all beautiful... yet it was boring. Orgies of samey violence and nasty propaganda. Upstream Colour was shot on GH2 and about to see it a second time at the cinema! It's weird and interesting, I didn't really care about the codec or colour to be honest.

A friend of mine got a BMD, took it and a GH2 out with him to Europe. The BMD broke almost immediately: one of the pins connecting the SSD bent... Those are the things that worry me too. Not just the beta nature of the software, but hardware that snaps or malfunctions.    Someone like Canon can use vast resources to ensure lower failure rate.

I got an 18, using a two grand grading monitor.   Which made me think... and it turns out it's only connected in a mode that doesn't allow it's full colour range, so some of the colours were the same or quantised! The wrong cable...   I only had three patches of failures, all in the subtlest shades! So it worked as a diagnostic test.   A colour grader isn't a scope though, they aren't there to measure micro differences between shades, they're there to enhance the emotional impact of story using colour.   If they're seriously colour blind maybe it's a hindrance, but i don't feel it matters too much if they aren't shade perfect, the scopes can do the measuring, the person can do the feeling.   A bit of fun though!

Yes I always recommend the 50mm Olympus f1.8 as a lens for canon, it's ideal. You can pick em up for 30 quid and they whip a lot of Canon lenses.   My personal favorite on 600D is a rather pricey 28mm! Different tastes!

I just finished a shoot (about an hour ago) on 5D MKii, a hired one not hacked at all, and despite not having focus peaking it was a breeze and the footage is great.    I've yet to use the BMD cam but I'll ry my friends MFT mount one soon and report back. It' seems from what most say that it needs a gentler treatment and more rigging!   If I had my own 5D MKiii I'd use Magic Lantern for sure. I only wish it wasn't 8-bit.   The Blackmagic does have the great ProRes, add that to film mode and you have loadsa latitude, easily enough if you use it right, I think that's the camera's strong point.   When I've used Alexa I've never used raw, and it always looked great. ProRes is awesome.   The man above is right though, raw is very beautiful, flexible and forgiving, but comes with a lot of extra expense and considerations at the moment. Analyse carefully whether you want it or not.

Large format video at f0.95!   One skill cell in focus! Artisan coffee!

I  suppose all this is easy to say after the fact, but still. There was no hint of any big player putting out anything close to this at such a low price.   As anyone working with clients knows: underpromise and deliver: saviour of the world   overpromise and don't deliver... black marks!

And confidence... since there was no competition, BMD could have just waited til it was ready...   Now they've put it out there, it gives competitors free market research and ideas. They should have made it behind closed doors over a year more...

3X is great, and Tragic Lantern high bitrates are great too, I'm glad that post is doing the rounds! ;)   3X does eliminate moire, but when you're using the Mosaic Engineering filter as i am... it's seems to look quite soft, while standard 1080p looks moire-less. must just be the nature of such a blurring filter. Jello is always worse in 3X mode though, very distracting.   It can give some awesome close-ups with a 1:1 macro lens, really close focusing, but keeping it still is hard...   remember crop modes don't give you shallow DOF though, as they use a smaller sensor area, and that's what something like an 85mm or 100mm lens does really well, not just telephoto distance shots...   An 85mm or 100mm can work as a really intimate close portrait lens, the full sensor area helps with this look.   So both crop modes and actual lenses are really useful. Both have plusses and minuses and are great tools, rather than one replacing the other.

Thanks for the compliments and for watching,   Yes I've enjoyed RedCode Raw shooting especially due to the exposure adjustment (just not yet used it on personal reel projects, but on others), Alexa I've only ever shot ProRes.  But that's a completely different piece of equipment, it has everything you need to shoot great footage. It's not incomplete.  It's also a fortune to buy and a lot to rent.   I also love shooting raw stills, exposure recovery is great, and yes it's good to be able to choose lower contrast and have shadow detail and make any look you want  so on, and yes it's amazing for natural light shooting.   Even when red epic shoots 6:1 compression or so while maintaining raw, that's a heavy strain on the system.   If I could, I'd love to have my own epic to play with.   But I couldn't really deal with a huge quantity of uncompressed raw that BMD cam or the 5D MKiii push out. It's not feasible in terms on memory card or in post really. I don't have the power or space, it's a lot to spend for not much return immediately, aside from vanity.   To be honest, the reason I've not completed the first mini project I did personally on Epic is because it kills systems to work with the stuff, it's incredible slow without Red Rocket cards.   Plus, the BMPCC doesn't actually shoot raw. It might say it on the box, but it doesn't actually do it now. That's the kind of thing I find annoying. It can't even do what it says on the box. The peaking is unreliable, the batteries don't last. There's no histogram. The sensor is so small I have to change all my lenses. There's no adjustment in camera for green/magenta (which does matter, since there's no raw at the moment...).   The cinema camera does have raw, and yes, even the CCam ProRes is nicer than H264 to use, but that's not what this thread is about...   So I agree, raw is great and so is proRes, they're both brilliant and kick H264. I just remain a bit unconvinced by this particular camera.   I like it, but I think biding time til the cameras that shoot it and hardware that deals with it actually work and are reasonably priced, respectively, makes sense.