jgharding

There seems to be a consensus among the companies: separate the still camera and video markets! The DSLR boom was an accident, and they would like to reverse it a little, or at least delay it to make more money. Sony and Canon have both held back video in still cameras so as to create and protect lines of more expensive camcorders. Having used the C300 and FS700 quite a bit recently, both have wonderful, wonderful image quality and are remarkably consistent. The latter is a bit of a pig ergonomically, but the final image is just great, especially considering the bit rate. A similar image is easily possible with the hardware in the still bodies, as we all know, but there are plenty of lies peddled to pretend otherwise. Like the famous "5D MKiii can't have a clean out because of the hardware" shortly followed by "it's coming in a firmware update". Only Nikon competition forced their hand here. It's such a shame they're determined to squeeze every penny out of the old tech rather than innovate. If only the upstarts like BMD could be more reliable in terms of manufacturing, we'd have a challenger. But it's competition that forces innovation, and if you can't actually deliver a product on time, leading to a lack of confidence about support, overall quality assurance and repairs, you aren't competition to people like Canon and Sony, who can churn em out on time, working and in bulk. Hopefully Canon and Sony won't settle into the same symbiotic, practically innovation-less relationship that Canon and Nikon have, where they take baby steps in perfect synchronisation. That'd be a real shame.

Thanks for the help so far, I'll have a play today! The situation is: shooting a debate overseas, the debate will be transcribed while I edit, I'll receive a raw transcription as a text document. If I receive as just a word file I have to do it manually either way, whether making SRT or pasting into titles. However, if I can get the person transcribing to write into a different format, Excel sheet etc, perhaps we can save a huge amount of time? Any thoughts as to what I should ask for?

Probably the Quicktime at a guess...

skintones please! There's hardly any footage of people so far.

Full-frame 4-2-2 8-bit in Pro-res seems pretty good. Plus you get the Canon look. Plus it's an amazing still camera. Steeper than BMD overall, but no focal length crop to worry about!

I posted this elsewhere in simplified form. Stick your 8-bit 4:2:0 footage into After Effects, set it to 32-bit and it's being treated as non-sub sampled individual frames anyway, in a a floating-point space. Transcoding is pointless hassle really. You can't gain detail, and the finishing software is doing the same thing for you. God bless the floating point!

[quote name='jcs' timestamp='1351032992' post='20202'] Based on ML dev comments, the actual resolution might be 1620x910 (also matches resolution tests we did (~810 lines of horizontal resolution)). Hopefully the new firmware will provide something higher than that. 422 would double the color resolution, which is helpful. [/quote] It won't give extra res, I don't think. You'll just be gaining 4:2:2 lossless i-frame via external recorders. Still good though. Perhaps ML will do it first. If not ML will work alongside this nicely i'm sure. 10-bit would be nice.

Cool! Combine with ML this looks like the next one fro me. Probably controversial, but it just has a good balance of features, not too far in one direction or the other.

Yes please! It'd be nice to get someone to do some talking to camera using internal mics, to wear a fine-patterned shirt in a kind low key lit situation to test low light and moire. A second shot could be walking along in front of someone (back-stepping) in the street at night, it would give an idea of low light and dynamic range as well as jello and stability. It should be easy to get someone to stand in for those and shoot in a few minutes, if you're up for it. Just anything but still shots of waterfalls or grass or cats please :) Get some frame-filling faces, a bit of movement, the kind of thing you actually shoot in a film or music video etc. and we'll all love you forever :wub:

I too wanted this camera to be good, I kind of wanted an excuse to try out M4/3, but so far it looks like it's a big ugly beast with ropy video quality, and possibly poor photos too. Probably poor menus as well, compared to Canon and Sony, unless very much redesigned from the previous model. Maybe I'll get an old GH2 instead. I've seen plenty of GH2 footage I liked now, but that promo film for GH3 and all the rest look a bit rough so far: dodgy colour (especially skintones), moire, just really "nothingy". GH2, it seems may remain a one off for now.,

Interesting! The band footage was all 550D, the light flicker was created on purpose with some high frequency LEDs, just a fun aesthetic. no one outside of video production sees it as a mistake (which in this cse it wasn't), they just see an effect! It always looks great slowed down too...

I do like the metadata based workflow of that video post, though as this is a translation, I'd have to see if bridge or a similar piece of software will allow me to manually attach Text XMP data to then be used by the AE script... hmmm... I'll give it a shot...

hmm this'll be interesting. I do hope they ease up on the talking heads in the test video though, or at least put them at the end. Not like those Zacuto tests.

[quote name='Zach' timestamp='1350341953' post='19794'] Just ordered one!!! Man am I excited. My t2i has about had it. Rubber grips falling off...etc. This will hold me over till my next purchase of a 5D or 6D [/quote] I mainly cut together T2i and RX100. I'll be interested to see what you think. The RX100 still seems a lot more "video like". It's sharper, yes, but feels quite plastic... let us know how you get on and how well you manage to match them. I think I could tell which shots were which here if I didn't know: [url="https://vimeo.com/48174944"]https://vimeo.com/48174944[/url]

Camera depreciation is getting crazy. Modular sensors all round I say, otherwise we're gonna fill the world with non-recyclable junk and there'll be nothing left to film :0

Hi everyone, I have a video edit in Premiere, and I'm hunting for a quick way to turn a transcript into a set of subtitles... short of just creating an individual Title for each few lines, I can't work it out! Does anyone have any tips at all? Many thanks, JG

How the hell do they find those people?!! Who would take a load of completely still shots to test a camera? I give up...

Yep they're just the same, seems like a bargain!

I can't tell the difference between 25 and 25. I think you'd have to be superhuman! If you're going to be projecting in cinema or exposing back to film 24 is best (actual 24, not 23.976), other 25 will do fine.

[quote name='aaronmc' timestamp='1350065251' post='19674'] jgjarding, You mention HMI lights on your site post. Have you ever worked with them? I'm curious because a very salient memory of mine is when I was driving through the Rhode Island College campus back in 2006, and there is a satellite elementary school in which primary-ed students can learn in a practical environment. The elementary school was being used as a location for the never-aired CBS show "Waterfront," and the scene's involved Joe Pantoliano's character's daughter in school. They needed to simulate daytime, so they had these MASSIVE circular lights set up blasting into the school's windows. Considering their size and brightness, I can only assume that they were HMI. Is this correct? I read up on HMI and it doesn't seem to make sense why anyone would use them? Never use past half-life? Can EXPLODE?! Is it only the color temperature that is desirable? And if that's the case, can we expect LED and fluorescent to completely obviate HMI at some point in the future? Or is it also the sheer throw of the lights, something that neither LED nor CFL have? And finally, as I eviscerate you with questions, why are HMI the go-to arc lights for the film industry? Why not other arc lights, especially considering that many of them have better safety profiles? [/quote] Yes, I used Arri HMI lights on this shoot: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgh-RSJh_Qw[/media] Buying the following lights would be pretty mad. LEDs are worth owning though as they're so cheap. HMIs and Kinos are really hire lights. The stage has two Kino Divas with tungsten bulbs, while one Arri HMI 575 lights the curtain, and an Arrisun fills the stage from the upper circle. The Arrisun was so bright it has to be run on minimum and gelled with frost gel in order not to flood the stage too much. It's that powerful. I lit the scene it myself, believe me that's hard work as those lights weigh a lot, as do ballasts, sandbags and C-stands! Exhausting! I also used a tungsten spot for the dancer, but it was a bit too dim, learned a lesson there! HMI lights have a consistent colour temperature as well a powerful [i]quality [/i]of light, they are often described as 'punchy' and that's a word that suits very well. The fluorescents have a lovely glow to them. LEDs sit somewhere between, though to make them brighter you need more, thus a panel with a larger area that becomes harder to direct. They're a good cheap inbetweener though, and they can be battery powered (with [i]expensive [/i]batteries). HMIs kick out insane levels of brightness for the watts, hence you seeing people using them to[i] [/i][i]augment the light of the sun!!! [/i]These are the only lights that will let you battle reality to a certain extent, I've found. I hope some of that is useful! They aren't cheap to hire just to fool around with, but if you can find a budget this kind of lighting will kick the look of things up a notch.

^^^ That looks like a beast. I think if I didn't already have the Manfrotto I'd be grabbing one of those bargain bad boys :) It has a leveling bowl setup, that saves [i]ages[/i] on shoots

[quote name='Axel' timestamp='1350054052' post='19668'] Not only funny. One way to make an image emblematic is to compose it of elements, like in Photoshop or After Effects, but not only by compositing layers, but by treating motif and background with some care. When everything you see is directed by the intention of the creator, it may look artificial, but it will draw attention and suspend disbelief. Highly stylized images are a way to tell a story. I use to go to exhibitions and take photos. The art objects themselves are dramatic, and so is the way they are presented, he light, the background, even snapshots transport the great gesture. Surely 'realism' is also just a style, and a good photographer (not me!) will sometimes try to be at least hyperrealistic, if not surrealistic. Google images 'Gregory Crewdson'. Almost film. [/quote] Indeed, everything you do is part of a style, since any film [font=arial, sans-serif][size=1]—[/size][/font] other than a fixed-position streamed live feed with no augmentation or direction, perhaps [font=arial, sans-serif][size=1]—[/size][/font] is a construct of some kind, with all decisions filtered through many layers of cultural influence and stylistic judgement. The constant backlighting in LOTR also elevates the players by using the visual language of myth and religion, they become haloed as the saints in paintings of old. it's an effective trick for drawing us into the legend. Though if you break out of it for a moment you realise how contrived it is! A friend of mine said "you've ruined it for me now, all i see is backlights!" HAH! ;)

I'm interested in this one. That video is quite excessively sharpened and cleaned though, I'd like to see a more film-like treatment. The chip has a good character, I feel it when it was lit nicely... hmmm...

Agreed on the 3-point thing! People are so often obsessed with it but I rarely find it looks nice. It tends to be quite flat and TV soap looking as it's often used. Hahaha watch Lord Of The Rings and find the shot without the obscenely over-powered blue backlight, or massive HMI blasting through trees! It's pretty funny how far we can suspend disbelief.

They have the same kind of tint the super expensive LED panels do, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a little less :o There's a lot of talk out there about one LED panel being better than another. It's true a [i]certain [/i]extent. Parts are graded in the factory, and the premium diodes with least shift will go to the big paying branded manufacturers. Some use filters built into the diodes, but you can still do it with a gel. The green/magenta colour shift (not the blue/orange one) is a [i]spike[/i] in frequency output, it's hard to eliminate. The magenta filter provided for this purpose just makes the light rose coloured and sickly, I don't use it. The lLEDs in the cheap panels have around a +/- 200K temp shift, and when it comes to green/magenta spike, well that's just a "feature" ;) I've never ever had it be a significant problem once it's all gone through post. If you can afford Arri HMI and Kino Flo on every shoot go ahead, otherwise these panels are great! And can run off of (expensive) batteries. Once you've used HMI and Kino though, it is a bit of a shame going back. But hey, the easiest way to enjoy the basics is never to sample the best, right?