dahlfors

I was never really happy qualitywise with the way digital cameras produced still images compared to film just 5-6 years ago - although I very much preferred the digital workflow. With the Nikon D800 I found that I didn't miss anything from the film shooting days anymore, highlights rolled off nicely, there was detail in shadows, colors were lovely. When it comes to motion, I think we'll very soon be at a situation where successors to cameras like GH4 gives most of the latitude and color reproduction that film could do - not only the highend cameras. I guess it'll take max 5 years...

If you can live with speeds around 80-100 MB/s, you could go for some of the faster NASes available (Synology / QNAP and similar ones). If you need higher speeds, Thunderbolt storage is the way. Should you need larger storage in your MBP, it is possible to replace SSD, although it might not be something for everyone to do: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Early+2013+SSD+Replacement/17059

Ebay hacked, every user should change passwords now: http://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-hacked-requests-all-users-change-passwords/ Also, be aware that any seller you've previously bought from might not currently be the one you think they are...

Probably the same thing for me as for many others - I'm experienced with stills workflow, but a beginner when it comes to video. If I remember correctly it was someone on EOSHD (Sean perhaps?) who once recommended me the book "Color Correction Handbook - Professional techniques for video and cinema" by Alexis van Hurkman. I find that book as a very good starting point for myself, and I can highly recommend it to others who are new to color grading.

Thought I'd reply here on what monopod I decided on. Visited Scandinavianphoto and tried out some monopods. I was surprised at how good the fluid head was on the Benro A38TBS2 considering how affordable it is - and at 1.3 kg / 2.9 lbs it is lightweight enough for traveling: http://www.benrousa.com/products/monopod-kits/benro-a38tbs2.aspx

I've opened a Nikon 50mm E Series prime lens and an old manual focus Sigma 80-250mm zoom lens (Pentax K). Neither of these were expensive, so it wasn't much of a risk. The 50mm E Series was easy to open up, and easy to get back together again. The Sigma zoom however... I tried getting it back together for 30-40 minutes or so, but no matter how I tried assembling it, something with the zoom mechanism went wrong - I couldn't get it to zoom the whole range, just perhaps a third or a half of the original zoom range. It wasn't a lens that really mattered to me, so I didn't bother spending more time on it. But, from my own experience and from what I've heard from the camera service shops in town - zoom lenses in general are much more complicated if you need to open them up fully, and will take a lot more time to service. Personally, I wouldn't open up any of my AF lenses. Even though I'm not fully certain that it is so - I'm expecting them to be more complicated and that there's a risk of misaligning something. My own conclusion: If it's older primes that aren't much worthy because of their current condition, I'd open them up and attempt service myself. Zoom lenses - I guess it depends on their design and what part of them that you need to service. The one I attempted service on had to be fully disassembled to clean the lens I needed to clean (oil spots). Had I not had to disassemble it entirely, it would have been a lot easier to assemble it since I wouldn't have needed to disassemble that zoom mechanism. For cleaning elements, I'd ask some camera lens service shops. I asked at one of the local shops about cleaning coated elements here in Stockholm, and they were very happy about giving advice. According to them one of the best fluids for cleaning lenses (this was in the context of older lenses, I'm unsure if they advised it for only those or for newer lenses as well) was acetone. Before using something like acetone on a lens though, I'd strongly recommend to google around and find out more about the risks of using such a fluid for cleaning lenses. Here's one discussion about that at least: http://www.pentaxuser.co.uk/forum/topic/will-using-acetone-to-clean-a-lens-affect-smc-coatings--35361 Another good tip: Try to see if you can find some *very* cheap lenses in a second hand shop or such and use those for learning.

There's quite a lot of hardware sites which can get you a long way with such. Granted, there are certain specific considerations with video, but sites like anandtech.com (great articles, and one of the largest computer hardware forums online) can teach you a lot about storage.

Voted grading, but lenses are sure interesting too :)

In computing there's usually two types of "boot flag", one in firmware/bios, and one on the media device itself (ssd/hard disk/dvd/cd/flash memory etc). The one on media only tells "yes, you can use this device for starting up" and might have the first pieces of code for the first pieces of the booting process of the operating system. The one in firmware often has two purposes, telling 1) "yes, this device can be used for starting up the system" and possibly but not necessarily, 2) telling in which order different devices should be chosen to start from if it's possible to boot system from more than one type of devices. I'm not a user of ML, but from what I've understood of it, the boot flag adds the flash memory as a bootable device with higher booting priority than the ROM in the camera - meaning that if you have a flash card (with bootable flag on media) with magic lantern - it will boot that. If you have an empty flash card without magic lantern and bootable flag on the media - it will boot from the standard firmware ROM. Basically, this kind of booting process is used by most embedded devices and computers.

A tip: For people switching camera systems, the expensive part is usually if they sell equipment used, and buy new lenses for the new system when switching. If you buy lenses used and take good care of them, you can probably sell them without much of a loss later on, if you again find that you want to switch system. Lenses tend to keep their used values for long periods of time, at least for classic lenses like Canon, Nikon & Zeiss etc. If you already have a set of lenses that you can fit to different cameras for filming, this does not apply of course - since you don't need to sell them. But for lenses with autofocus, where the brand lenses usually perform the best, Canon lenses for Canon, Nikon lenses for Nikon - this is a useful way to save some money when switching systems. Camera bodies will lose value over time whatever you buy, so there's probably not so much to gain by buying used there, but perhaps a bit. So, my recommendation: buy the Canon AF lenses you need used, and make the switch to 5DMk3 then, since it sounds like you would be happy with what 5DMk3 provides. If you later find a camera system to switch to that better fits your needs, you won't lose much by selling the lenses you won't need anymore. D800 is amazing for stills, I love it. There are situations where the increased dynamic range or resolution will help. But in the end, a camera is a tool to learn and master - if a photographer can't get good stills with a 5DMk3, a D800 certainly won't have any magic to help either :) To me, who started out doing concert photography with ISO400 & ISO800 films, it is insane how good just about any still camera is today. What I can find lacking considering video mode in cameras is to have the same kind of color in video as in the raw stills. That's an area where the 5DMk3 will have its raw mode that will really pay off.

This is the anamorphic section of the forum. In the general section of the Forum there are more threads about both 5DMk3 and GH4. Here's a recent thread for 5DMk3: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

And if it's important to reach him, he's here in the anamorphic section on EOSHD as well, just under a different name...

Don't forget that there are rumors that Metabones is working on a Speed Booster specifically for the Panasonic GH4, similar to the ones for Blackmagic cameras. GH4 + specific Speed Booster for GH4 should be a great allrounder for stills and video. And you'd get 4k, 1080p60, 96fps slow motion mode. Personally I'm not too found of Sony's AVCHD after seeing mushy low bitrate video on NEX cameras. I'd be checking the codec quality of A7S carefully in different scenarios before choosing that path. Hopefully it is better, but I'd certainly test it to make sure... Consider for stills: - Does GH4 + current m43 Speed booster get large enough? Will the possible upcoming GH4 specific Speed booster be large enough for your needs? If not, you'll have to go full fame. - Will the extra dynamic range of Sony sensors on low iso be important for your style of shooting? Consider for video: - Is 1080p60 / 1080p50 important or other slow motion modes important? - Is 4k important? - Will you have use of RAW or other Magic Lantern features? Consider for both: - Will you be in a situation where you prefer a smaller / larger camera body & lenses? (Smaller: Going more covert for street shooting, hiking in demanding terrain or so. Larger bodies: Maybe that large gray lens and Canon logo will be important to see for your clients :)) I think either of GH4, 5DMk3 and A7S will be good allrounders for video + stills. Which one will be better, depends on the way you want to shoot, which features are important for you. Myself I'm on D800, which fits very well, since my use is something like 75% photo, 25% video. If you can find a cheap D800 used, it might be an alright solution for video as well - for photos it is amazing. Rumors are that an update to D800 is coming, probably with Expeed 4 chip, 1080p60, higher bitrates and such, perhaps as moire free as D5300 - only time will tell. Had my own usage been more 50/50 photo/video, I think Panasonic GH4 would have been a very interesting candidate.

Looks great! A bit of constructive feedback: In my opinion there's too many effects added to the video. I find that they take away focus from the information presented in the video, as well as taking focus from the beautiful shots. Had it been up to me - I would have cut down a bit on the use of effects in the video, but certainly not all of them. I hope you understand that this is *minor* critique - I think it could still be improved on a tiny bit, although the video is excellent and can't be improved on by much. Cheers! :)

Julians shots already were enough to convince me that you can get great cinematic look out of GH4. There was a time when nofilmschool had some useful comment threads as well, but that time is long gone. Ignore and move along :) To me that video speaks of itself. They clearly mention that it was all done in 2 days. Which probably means they were too ambitious about their idea and the filming - which made them end up rushing the post work to be able to finish. Been there, done that - and learnt that you need to plan which shortcuts to take if you want to produce something good in a short amount of time. Had I had two days to pull something off with any camera, I'd try a much simpler story with fewer shots so I could focus on getting the shots right and having a much simpler process for editing and coloring.

I don't think there are many reasons to pay 489 usd for that particular Nikon lens, it's some weird gimmick lens from Nikon. The Voightländer 40mm pancake has better performance and it's not much thicker: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/885401-REG/Voigtlander_ba229d_40mm_f_2_0_Ultron_SL.html

Off topic for a lens thread. But I suggest you do some reading, since: 1) There's currently a reactor running in Norway that runs on Thorium. If power goes out in such a power plant, you don't need any coolant - the fission will halt when it isn't fed energy to keep the process going. The one in Norway is the first Thorium plant to be run in production, but there's a few other Thorium reactors being built & developed around the world as well. Conclusion: nuclear industry can be perfectly safe. 2) There's processes for processing high-radioactive nuclear waste into low-radioactive waste already existing today. There just hasn't been much of an interest (and capital) in further development of construction of such plants, mostly it has just been done for research purposes. And yes, you could extract energy from nuclear waste processing as well, so it doesn't need to be that much of a loss. With investment in nuclear waste processing tech, there doesn't need to be that much of a legacy for coming generations. Unfortunately most of our energy production will produce waste in one way or the other for coming generations, until we can produce solar & fusion energy well enough. If you're interested in energy production, I highly recommend watching this interesting TED talk on fusion power:

Nice thread at least since it made me read up, do the math and learn something new: For a person living in Paris you would need to touch a lens emitting 5 microsievert/hour at a minimum of an hour every day, 365 days/year to reach the same level as the yearly background radiation here in Stockholm. Who would have thought? Source: "Radon" section at the bottom (With a map showing that half of the population in Sweden live in an area with 5-10 mSv/year) http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Radiation-and-Health/Naturally-Occurring-Radioactive-Materials-NORM/

In certain areas in Finland you receive around 25-30 microsieverts a day from natural background radiation. People live there, 24/7 all year round. Touch a lens that gives 5-10 microsieverts an hour now and then... It's a piss in the sea.

If a Speed Booster has "G" in the name like "Nikon G to Micro Four Thirds Speed Booster" - it means that it has support for the newer Nikon lenses that lack aperture ring - in addition to supporting the majority of the older Nikon lenses (some rare special lenses that aren't supported). "G" is Nikon's product marking for lenses without aperture ring.

I'll paste this here with the very best intentions: Also: Yes, the 24 Mbps bitrate in the D800 already produces great footage with static shots on a tripod when there isn't lots of motion in the image. For such shots, I doubt you'll find much of a quality difference with the footage. Film a moving ocean or some other scene with lots of motion, and I bet you'll find the 36/54/64 Mbps bitrates better.

Yes. Stay away from the 720p modes on D800. It can however work with slow-motion shots if you carefully select which elements that should be in focus.

Hah. I immediately recognized the song. I also found that song on soundcloud a year or so ago, favourited it and thought "This would be a lovely song for a video" :)

Beautiful shots, Julian! The iso 6400 shot seems surprisingly good for such a small sensor. Your footage really makes me wish that the GH4 tech will trickle down to GX7-like models sooner rather than later, so I can convince myself to upgrade from the Sony NEX :)

I shoot a lot of stills with manual focus in dim lighting (concerts) with D800. It is easy getting focus right even in those conditions at f/1.8 or so. The D800 has a large lovely 100% viewfinder for stills. If you think a 100% viewfinder through a mirror could be "inaccurate", time to think again... However, for video there is no optical viewfinder while shooting due to the mirror locking up - so you're left to use the LCD as-is, or LCD with z-finder, or monitor / EVF through HDMI. Myself being a still shooter coming from the analog world, I'm not so used to shooting with live view on cameras, so I can't comment on the accuracy of the live view compared to other cameras. What I've found though, is that it can be pretty deceiving depending on what brightness level you set for the LCD. But keeping live view on while showing a histogram I find gives good enough information to shoot with. For some reason there is no button setup for immediate 1:1 zoom for checking focus on D800 by default - but you can set it up in the menus and bind it to a button, which aids in focusing. That being said, it would sure be handy to have some kind of EVF/monitor which you could keep positioned differently, since the LCD isn't articulated, preferrably with peaking.