jgharding

This is pretty common with adapters from eBay. I have only cheap eBay EF adapters, some do it a little but many not at all.

Hmm there's so much contrast added in here it doesn't tell me a lot about the camera's footage, for a test! 

Yes I saw this one. Obvious scam I'm afraid.   Looks like a compromised account. There's now tons of super desirable high-value items  all with the $2000 buy now email listed! All the pictures are clearly from other auctions. Some of the things are worth an enormous amount more.   Every feedback as seller is for a low value sports t-shirt. Now suddenly they're full of swarovski, high-end audio and expensive lenses.But only if you email them $2000. Oh dear.

  Hmm that is a shame for the C500 eh!? ;)   So I wonder if it's just the housing and the diaphragm that's changed, not the glass makeup?   Zeiss basically admit that CP2 are almost the same as the ZE etc primes, in better housings, with slightly cooler image, more diaphragm blades, so it wouldn't surprise me if the actual lens makeups were kinda the same in the Cinema lenses.   In which case i don't really have a point, as they are just good designs rehoused for another purpose (not that I'm an L-glass fan).   I supose it's just the shocing prices...

There's no thought behind it as far as i can see, they didn't decide not to include it cos it's "more pro" to have fewer options on-board. The bloody Arri Alexa has peaking. some use it, some don't. It's a standard camera option.   it's Canon brand philosophy to make as big a profit margin as possible by altering as little as possible in order to segment a line. I will need a lot of convincing before I believe their "cinema" lenses aren't slightly modified L-lenses.   The EOS DSLR line has no peaking in any of the Canon firmware (except C300, C100 and C500 which aren't DSLRs) so Canon didn't add it because they consider such development to be an unnecessary development expense. You may get it at a later date. Maybe. Most likely everyone will get really excited when an impending firmware update is announced, and it will just add a few bug fixes. That's a Canon classic   They simply wrote some extra code into the 1Dx and added a heat sink, shuffled a few bits around and added a fortune to the price. They didn't even print its own manual, you get a 1Dx manual and a 1DC add on.   The sad reality is that I would have dumped the 550D/600D ages ago except for Magic Lantern. I've used nice cinema cameras. I still think Magic Lantern is a work of utter genius.

Yeah that's true!   Also, each sensor and supporting ADC and circuitry has very different noise characteristics. So though Canon codec implementation isn't hugely efficient, the noise pattern (especially after using Magic Lantern hacked bit rates) is an order of magnitude better for denoising than Sony AVCHD, I've found when mixing in timelines under the same lighting.   While the Canon EOS footage denoised cleanly, the Sony was horribly damaged in the lows, with very bright blue noise everywhere. The noise pattern and heavy compression of Sony AVCHD (I used RX100 and FS700) looks clean as is, but for the higher ISOs where you have to denoise, it's a mess...   Also, there's the profile level to consider.   H264, for instance has profile standards of Baseline, Main and High (among others), each requiring greater processing power for playback and encoding than the last, but also providing far higher quality than the last at the same bitrate and file size.   So although 120mbps All-I from the 600D hacked may sound awesome, it is still Baseline H264 at 8-bit 4:2:0, and isn't really directly comparable to Avid DNxHD 120 for example.   Furthermore, newer and more efficient codecs are quite amazing in terms of using bit rate. The H265 standard (approved just recently) shows a 70% decreasing of bit rate compared to MPEG2 of the same quality, for example. This means that with powerful in-camera processing, 50mbps H265 may not be so bad.

Here's an interesting and/or anal comparison of the higher end.   http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2011/12/lens-test/   You could use any of them realistically. Once again though, in this test, I find the Canon ones to be a bit plastic and cartoony.

I like the look of Samyang, yes. They make good lenses for the cash.    I'm not a big fan of L-glass anyway. It wins resolution tests and other such anal things against Zeiss and Leica, but the resulting image is lifeless in comparison, IMO.

On the visual side, one of the less talked-of parts of CCD structure is the off-chip ADC, so it'll be interesting to see if you can adjust and programme things at analogue to digital conversion stage from the sensor.   High-ISO cleanliness is still a worry though, what with CCD and  small chip size... let's wait and see...

I have pretty high standards when it comes to audio myself, in fact I recorded an album for a fellow last year, and traveled with the Benchmark ADC1 and DAC1 because I didn't want to use any other converters. Though i got them as bargains, to get the modern versions on the street that's three grand just for stereo conversion, nothing else. But it's pretty amazing conversion...   So seeing statements like "we bumped up to 96kHz 24-bit" seems a bit silly. Regardless of sample rate, a convertor is a convertor. I'd take my Benchmark at 44.1kHz over a SoundBlaster at 192kHz for example!   As long as it's a nice enough circuit in this camera though, I'll be happy. Because I can't always get Sound Devices or Edirol on set (I've never used a Nagra, but touched one at a trade show once), in fact I've even used the Beachtek adapter to get audio into an SLR. A bit dirty, right?   Even if your standards and ear tuning are both very high (I spent a decade doing audio mixes etc before touching a camera) sometimes practicality wins over...

I remember having a funny debate with someone about 550D vs 7D. He just couldn't accept that there was no difference in video quality, and that in fact the 550D was better due to having Magic Lantern hacks. Actually refused to acknowledge the higher bitrate when put in front of him. Much as when one tries to argue with a religious fanatic, it was pointless. The ideas were fixed and things like reason or actually seeing evidence didn't come into it. It was a sign of someone being completely blinded by the religion of capitalism! More expensive must be better right? :/ On the other side, as nice as resolution comparisons are though, it's the codec implementations that make more difference at the low end. Really different aesthetic feels from each company i think. Alexa, for example, has lower stats than Red Epic, but I do prefer the footage on the whole. Though I hated how it looked in Skyfall, it was beautifull in The Hunt and Drive.

The 25mm is closest to a 50mm on full frame, which is a "standard" lens, if you will. Very versatile. The 17.5 is a 35mm on full frame. It's a wide-angle lens. You can get portrait shots with it, but there will be more distortion of the image perspective. However, you can more easily capture wide scene-setting type shots without the need for being so far away. The 25mm would be my choice if I had to have only one, as it covers most uses comfortably, and since I usually shoot people, it's better to have good portraiture than good landscapes or wide angles. I guess I'd just step back quite a bit for those. Of course YMMV depending on the work you do. If you mainly want huge sweeping landscapes, you'd want wider. probably something that looks good closed down too.

For a standard lens? Traditional thinking is that a 25mm lens will give you closest to 50mm on full frame, which is pretty much "standard".   Keep your 50mm for portraits and your 12mm for wides and you're good.   The 35mm is approaching the portrait range. A wide-portrait, if you will.

H4n's strength is the stereo field. It's increrdibly noisy, and the built-in mics are pretty harsh, but it is one of the best for stereo atmosphere tracks on a decent budget.   The preamps are surprisingly nice given the price.   I wouldn't really entrust dialogue to it, I'd hire some nice Sound Devices or similar for that.   ***   I think I prefer the look of this to BMD cam, just seems more tactile and ergonomically sensible.

As an addendum, you can get a lot from 8-bit source in post. Most of those complaining about footage "falling apart" are in fact complaining about the 4:2:0 spatial compression aspect, that destroys red-channel resolution, not the limited 8-bit colour pallete, or the temporal compression of bit-rate.   For this reason I tend to avoid capturing 4:2:0 footage with a warm balance. I always head towards green and blue, there's more resolution there, then bring out the red in post, when you work in a programme like After Effects for example.   Work in a 32-bit space, and you eliminate compression aspects as much as is possible. Your footage is treated as individual RGB, 32-bit frames, instead  of 4:2:0 sub-sampled 8-bit heavily compressed GOPs.   You can't gain back information you lost in capture, because compression is destructive unless it's lossless, but you can get the best from your footage this way since you aren't limited to 8-bit colour values, and there's no need to transcode.   If you don't clip your highlights, and keep the lows away from the zero point where the codec compression is worst (Cinestyle does this, and you can do it on sony cameras too) you have a greater chance of achieving a film look.   Not clipping and lifting black reduces your range of bits that are used for colour shades BUT i find it far easier to bring in more shades in post, than I do to recover clipped highs and shadows, which is of course, impossible.   But of course, if you know exactly the look you want, and it can be achieved in camera, doing it that way when using heavily compressed footage will actually yield a nicer result.   Decisiveness and consistency on set pay off...

Yes Video Manual gets rid of most of the reframing issue.   The reframing is to do with digital stabilisation i think.   The colour change can be a bitch too, but again, it's not there in video mode.

Simply put: The number of different colour shades the camera can record. It's bit depth, because unlike a bit-rate, it isn't measured over time.   Essentially (as technical as we need to be) 8-bit allows 255 different levels of colour for each channel. 10-bit allows 1023 different levels.   Each channel is: R G and B for 4:4:4 or uncompressed, while it's Y (white), Cb (blue) and Cr (red) if it's sub-sampled (like 4:2:2 or 4:2:0). . The result is that 10-bit codecs record a greater number of subtle shades, great for skin, the sky, and other subjects with subtle gradients.   I say codecs rather than cameras, because most of these sensors convert analogue light to digital data at higher depths, like 14-bits, which has 16384 possible levels per channel. The rather crippled codecs then interpolate (pick the nearest one) out of 256 shades, so you can see how much data you're losing.   That's why people are always complaining, because a lot of companies make a conscious decision to cripple their hardware for commercial reasons.   There are certain considerations, like processing, heat dispersal and buffer speed and size, but the main concern of certain companies is profit margin. Which is why those companies are so huge.   Now, in practice the division of these bits across dynamic range spectrum blah blah is very complex, but it doesn't matter. More is nice.   But you can make a movie that gets Oscar nominated, or a promo that makes you a fortune, with 8-bits, so don't worry too much even though it's nice to know and nice to have more.

So basically, it gets brighter, wider, and usually only looks softer at the edge cos the centre gets sharper.   Man, people will moan about anything in video these days! I'm guilty too, but deep down I'm just glad I don't have to shoot on DV anymore.   This is pretty fucking awesome...

I really miss vertical light streaks from CCD!   Actually I love em in most situations. At least compared to jello, they're actually aesthetically pleasing a lot of the time!

I agree entirely.    I was only yesterday talking to someone from a production company who was thinking of buying a 1DC for Alexa style shoots.    I took them to eBay to see the F3, F35, Red One. I think I changed their mind...

Portrait is definitely the flattest, it has a better highlight roll-off than Sunset, by a bit of a stop.   If you use portrait all -3 and DRO at 3, then grade in a 32-bit RGB app like After Effects, that's as close as I've found to Cinestyle on this camera.   It's very good. Only the motion codec artifacts hold it back.

Have a look at the details for F65, I think that although a 16-bit process is used, colour information is actually 12-bit by the time you get the footage. Or something like that... maths...

JCS has it dead on here IMHO. I have DR100 and H4n too, and I'm going to sell both as they're both pretty noisy and harsh sounding when compared to proper pro-audio kit I'm used to in studio. The Beachtek adapters are good for in camera audio.   So something like the the H2 should suffice til you wanna jump up quite a way in quality.   Things start to get good with the Edirol R44 and up I think. Sound Devices are lovely. Nagra are transcendent and hilariously expensive.

Try using the Dynamic Range Optimiser as well.   It just lifts the blacks up out of the most destructive area of the codec, it's pretty good.

No 10-bit, so drab plastic skin unless we use a ton of post-production...   The Canon 550D *cough £250* with magic lantern has peaking. The RX100 has peaking. The 1DC... does not.   Hitting self with plank now.