powderbanks

The 720p/60fps mode (on the GH1 and GH2 it's 'SHD' in the 'manual movie mode, not sure exactly how it is on the GH3) will be more than enough for you. Our cameras can't do the ideal shutter speed for 180* shutter angle of 1/120, 1/125 is the closest and is perfectly fine. Having said that, a faster shutter speed if necessary for exposure may not be a bad thing for your use case.   Definitely second Michael's suggestions of tripod, continuous autofocus and a stabilized lens. The Panny 14-140 will probably be good enough, unless you're up in the stands or something, then the 45-200 or another tele-zoom will be better.   Are you going to be editing these or is it basically just game tape for study?

  Well, if you're just looking for something to dump your footage to, yes, an external drive will be fine. But for archiving, backup or even working with the footage, it's less than ideal. I'd have an archive/backup copy of the files on a RAID 10 array and then copy files to a RAID 0 array for when I'm actually editing.

I run CS6 on my Samsung laptop (Intel i5 2.53GHz, 8GB RAM) and any hacked footage plays back fine. And that's even using USB external hard drives. Sometimes it will get laggy, but if I reboot, it's fine. As long as the footage has a yellow bar above it in the timeline, it will playback at full resolution fine. Once I start to add effects (red bar), I have to drop the resolution or render. The only times I consistently run into poor playback is going through footage when it is first loaded into a project. And I assume that's mostly because it's building the waveforms for the audio (bottom right corner there will be a progress bar saying 'Conforming audio') and that will basically make playback useless. I just load all the clips into the timeline forcing Premier to do all the 'conforming' so that later I don't have to worry about it slowing down the process. If I had a better computer, I wouldn't need to do that. I'm pricing out a workstation build...   I have done a few projects where I transcoded the AVCHD files to DNxHD. Even at the highest settings, playback was marginally smoother with the DNxHD files versus AVCHD, mostly in unrendered clips with one or two effects. I'm not sure if it's really worth the time or hard drive space to transcode, but maybe give it a shot. Adobe Prelude makes it very easy.

How much for shipping to the US?

I have used GOPstoppa, Sedna, Canis Majoris and now Moon Trial 5. Moon has been my favorite so far, though trial 6 is supposedly coming soon. I use Sandisk 45MB/s 64GB cards and don't have issues. Occasional card speed errors in high detail, fast motion, 720p/60fps with autofocus, but I think I've figured out how to keep it from happening now. It has happened with all of those patches, I just can't consistently make it fail. I'm sure if I sprung for the 95MB/s cards I'd be fine. For all of those patches, 64gb gets me about one hour of footage. The OEM battery I get around 1.5-2+ hours, depending. I have 5 third party batteries, those last about the same, just no battery indicator so they'll just cut off. You can pick them up from eBay for pretty cheap, OEM batteries are not.

  Thanks for the tip for the FD 35-105..I'm gonna be ordering one from eBay now. I just got the Panny 45-200. I've mostly shot stills with that, and it's been great for that. For crash zooms and such in video though, not the greatest. That 35-105 will do the trick.   On topic..I also second FD lenses. I have a Canon 50mm/1.8, Toyo 28mm/2.8 and Makinon 135mm/2.8 in FD mount. The Toyo is the only one I bought, the Makinon and Canon were my dad's from his AE1, which I still use. I have two m42 mount lenses, a Zenitar 18mm/2.8 'fisheye' that I never use now, and a new favorite, an SMC/Takumar 55mm/1.8. I also have an assortment of C mount lenses that are fun to mess around with, but not very practical. They're super cheap though, so I don't mind having a bunch of them scattered around..  

Frame rate has no relation to exposure or light. Frame rate is how many individual pictures are being exposed/projected per second. Shutter speed is how long the shutter stays open, in seconds. The only thing you need to know about shutter angle is that it effects motion blur between frames. B: The light 'trio' of aperture, shutter speed and ISO is really for digital stills. For video, only consider ISO and aperture for controlling your exposure. Since DSLR's don't have a global shutter and you can't control the shutter angle, the only way you can control that is by your shutter speed (hence the 'inverse of twice the frame rate'). White balance really doesn't have anything to do with exposure. To a degree it does, but it is the temperature of the color white. Higher numbers give you a warmer (yellow/orange) white, lower numbers cooler (blue) white.   2. It depends on the situation, but I usually set the aperture first then use the lowest ISO I can and still retain proper exposure. I shoot at 1/40 shutter speed, you get a little bit more motion blur, but it's barely noticeable compared to 1/50 (for 24fps. I shoot 1/125 for 60fps). Don't even think of shutter speed in terms of a way to adjust your exposure. Leave it at whatever it is for the given frame rate (1/40 or 1/50 for 24/25fps or 1/100 or 1/125 for 50/60fps) and don't change it; unless you intentionally want to manipulate the motion blur. See below.   3. If you make your shutter speed faster, you'll lose more motion blur between frames, and motion starts to look artificial/strange. But if that's what you're going for, do it. If you slow it down (the GH2 can only go down to 1/30, I think, in 24fps) then you'll have the opposite. You can get down to 1/2 second shutter speed in Manual Movie Mode with the GH2, but IMO, it's only good for time lapse stuff.   So really, there is no rule of thumb, aside from the 180 degree shutter concept for 'natural' motion blur. The challenge of shooting 1/40 or 1/50 shutter speed is that it is a rather slow shutter speed. In bright, outdoor situations, to retain shallow depth of field, you'll need to use an ND filter. You can get sets or a variable one. 

I finally picked up a transfer box from ebay to convert some old 8mm films I have acquired over the years. I used my GH2 and it seems to do a pretty good job. This was the first time I used this particular setup. I had shot a couple Super 8mm films in film school, and we transferred to digital much in the same way. The setup wasn't completely ideal, I did it in my kitchen during the day, so there was a fair amount of ambient light. And then my roommate's dogs started barking during one. There are some under/over exposed parts that I'd like to go back and reshoot to get more detail. These are the raw video files, only converted for uploading. Once I get the workflow set, I'll crop it. I still have another 5 or 6 to upload   http://vimeo.com/63873861   http://vimeo.com/63895169   http://vimeo.com/63987501   EDIT: Not sure why it's not embedding  :huh:

  Get a rail setup with a lens support and you'll be fine.   I have used a variable ND filter for some outdoor anamorphic shots. I put the filter between the anamorphic lens and the taking lens. It works out well because I can adjust the filter to get proper exposure, then when I mount the anamorphic to the filter ring of the ND filter, I can fine tune the alignment of the anamorphic. Great for static shots..probably not so great if you're on the move.

  variable aspect ratios would be really cool. i just hope the price doesn't become too astronomical. part of what i liked about the gh1/2 and even 3 was the price. as long as they have a decent product in the $1-2k range, i'll make the upgrade from my gh2.

  google 'oculus rift.' while i don't see cinema or film really going much further with 3d, for the time being, but it's going to change video games/virtual reality

    most digital 'prints' that are used for projection at movie theatres are 2k even. 4k would be awesome, but unless you have a huge screen, very critical eyes or a massive wallet, doesn't make sense. for streaming 4k content, it's going to take an entire infrastructural overhaul, and fibre is going to be the minimum for sufficient data transfer. that is the biggest problem i see coming

i use a samsung qx410 for editing hacked gh2 footage with premier. it's essentially a macbook pro ripoff; core i5 processor, 8gb of ram and ssd. i upgraded the ram from 4gb and added the ssd. i need to put the old platter drive in the optical drive bay. the bottleneck (aside from a better video card) i have now is usb speed..since the ssd isn't very big, i have to store my video files on external drives. usb3.0 or thunderbolt would alleviate the issue...or a new workstation..but it's still workable. the overall performance improvement of the ssd far outweighs the slight loss in performance for video editing

you can selectively copy/transfer files from the sd card to your hard drive, or just copy everything, then delete later. as long as you format your card before you start a new shoot, you shouldn't have any problems on the sd card. you don't need the folder structure of the sd card, but you can sort them into folders as you'd like. i generally copy everything, then delete later if need be. i find a surprising amount of usable b-roll footage from what i initially think are trash clips.

it looks like it would fit my sankor compact cinemascope..what is the maximum barrel size of the anamorphic lens? i'm using a vidatlantic xl anamorphic clamp, which is somewhere around 72mm. what is your price in USD+shipping? this would be a huge help when shooting with a variable ND filter

are you using imovie? i know in one of the more recent versions, you have to use imovie's 'import' function to pull the footage straight from the card. if you try copying them to your hard drive then importing, for some reason it doesn't work. and you do need to dig through some folders on the sd card to get to the avchd files. unless you shoot mjpeg, then it will be in the photo folder, with a jpeg still of the first frame

canon fd mount 50mm/1.8 (or 1.4) is good, though a bit long for interiors. i have a 28mm/2.8 toyo fd mount that works well for that instead. the canon i just adapted from my ae1 and the toyo i picked up on ebay for ~$50 or so, i forget exactly, it's been a while

you're going to be using stills for the time lapse? you could use a variable ND filter

i sort of assumed as much, judging by your last video  ;)   shotgun mic is probably going to be easier; audio will be with the video track, you won't have to transfer the audio files from the microsd card on the recorder to your storage and it'll probably use up less batteries as well. have a safe trip, looking forward to seeing the video from it

i have a tascam dr07mkII as an external digital recorder and a cheapo thrift store shotgun mic. i haven't really used much of either (i do mostly music videos) but the digital recorder can be a little time consuming, but the quality is good. especially if you can have it isolated from the camera. using pluraleyes, sound-sync is a breeze.   are you going to have time to setup your sound and camera? or is it going to be a lot of 'shooting from the hip' type of stuff? if it's the latter, i'd probably go with a shotgun-type mic that you could mount on your hotshoe. try to get one with a shock mount, so any camera movement doesn't get translated into sound in the microphone.

  afaik, there isn't a gh3 hack. a lot of the features in the gh1/2 hacks are now standard on the gh3. i have 64 gb, 45MB/s sandisk red cards and i haven't run into write issues with a hacked gh2 with patches up to intra-frame 176Mb/s. had a couple issues at 720p/60fps where it would stop after about 30 sec, but i can't consistently replicate it. and i haven't run into the issue since changing the patch from the older GOPstoppa to canis majoris or sedna

yup. i shoot -2 on everything on my gh2 in either 'smooth' or 'nostalgic' and end up with a very flat image (if anything i'll tweak the wb a bit warm or cool if i know that's what i want for the final product) and everything on the gh2 is avchd. and even in mjpeg, it's very flat. you do need to keep in mind that with the 8bit color space, there are some limitations to what you can do in post, but all in all, the flatter the original footage, the better. how are you going to be storing all your footage on your trip? external hd? i'd just create a folder for each day, and in each folder, have a sub-folder for each disk you fill (if you have that much footage). just be careful when you're copying not to mess around with the hdd, there are some very fast spinning platters in there when writing, and slight bumps can cause write errors. generally though, not too big of an issue.

  is this after you record or just looking at the lcd/lvf without recording? the gh2, and even the gh1 at times, have some weird quirks as to how it shows the image through the camera. sometimes it will drastically change when you hit record; but if you know your exposure for a given shot, it shouldn't matter what it looks like when you're not rolling.   stick with manual mode, 24p cinema if that's your intent, 'sh' for 720p/60fps. 1/50 shutter speed (1/125 for 60fps) and then use iso and aperture for exposure. the live histogram is very helpful for this, as, like i said, the lcd/lvf isn't always accurately displaying what it will look like when you hit record

  yeah, i thought about that, and it doesn't really make sense. i was only thinking that you could use your current *insert mount* to m4/3 adapters on top of the speed booster, thus only needing one for a variety of lenses. but the physics of it don't make sense. most of my legacy lenses are canon fd, so i hope they make a fd to m4/3.   someone on mu-43.com claimed they got a response from metabones that the ef to m4/3 is supposed to be out in june, and others in feb-march

so the one going on sale is an ef to e adapter, with the speed booster. for the m4/3 adapter that is supposedly going to be coming, will it be m4/3 to m4/3? or some other mount? if it is m4/3-m4/3, in theory, you should still be able to take your existing adapters and then use your legacy lenses, correct? it would be frustrating if they made a different speed booster for every lens mount; especially if they're $600 a pop.