Hans Punk

Total Kudos to them...but to be honest I am very surprised they lasted this long. Ikonoskop went the same way BM must have seriously taken a big bite out of their pie when the first pocket camera came out.

Amen to this! On a side-note, rail mounting allows the option of extra light to be bounced around by rear-mounting UV filters that intensifies streak flare and overall internal flare wonder. (as well as allow rear mounted VND with rubber lens hood 'donut' if out in bright daylight). There is no apparent light transmission loss, extra vignette or distortion by properly positioning scope rear to taking front. Since the setup is properly aligned on rails, the non-mechanical coupling can be positioned just as close as any conventional clamp setup....and without the fear of having to trust a crappy cheap step ring or old taking lens thread to hold the weight of your beloved scope lens.

Camera comparisons not important here, 4:2:2 8-bit vs 12-bit log are two different worlds - regardless of camera. This is not an arbitrary tech spec, this is the meat and potatoes of what can deliver superior looking images from a 'lower resolution' camera. Nowadays the image is 'made in the grade' - shooting with the broadest dynamic range allows 'creative choices' to be made. Shooting 8-bit, those choices are somewhat limited. But as they say ' It's not the amount of bits, it's what bits you grab' - meaning it is totally possible to get wonderful results from a compressed codec, when exposed and lit properly...people have managed to do it for years. YT or Vimeo not a great place to judge any camera's image from - most of the time people just throw a heavy teal LUT over everything and call it 'done'...not the best showcase for what RAW processing can do in competent hands. But at the end of the day if a camera creates pretty pictures that you are very happy with - then that is the best camera for you.

Colour rendition and broad dynamic range trumps higher resolution needs every time....especially if the goal is to achieve 'filmic' results.

Reelsmart motion blur can help take most of the sharp choppy shutter artifacts away when using a higher shutter speed to reduce exposure. Like any image analysis that uses optical flow or similar interpolation algorithm - it can only be pushed so much before it will introduce its own edge artefacts. Knowing how to refine the settings in the plugin will give best results. I often shoot higher shutter speeds when I know that post stabilisation of handheld footage is going to be applied - the sharper frames enable a more accurate stabilisation solve to be made. Then I apply post motion blur to take the quality of motion a step closer to the appearance of a 1/50 shutter. It does not always need a heavy touch, just taking the edge off the sharp frames can help make the footage appear much better, and is far less prone to reveal nasty artifacts. here is a rough before/after example: Password: birds

Is this not the norm these days? The 5D3 was spotted in a similar way, maybe more noticeable now since the craze of instagramming the sh*t out of everything without thinking. http://www.slashgear.com/canon-5d-mark-iii-spotted-in-the-wild-23210416/ I suspect the attitude that Canon or others have when letting a new model out of the lab door is that it will be seen and spotted soon enough and it is no longer at risk of being harmed by competitor scrutiny and risk from them trying to file a blocking patent on something innovative and new. Unless it's revealed front and center in detail, or an NDA period is clearly breached by speech or writing about specifications - I can't see them giving a damn, or having much legal power to do anything about it. If they were really concerned, they would disguise the body, like they do with pre-production cars when they go out on real-world road tests. Luckily for Canon, all their cameras look the same...no cutting edge stealth technology to be stolen from image reconnaissance there.

A gentle reminder from yesterday's CineGear expo - that there is a reason to buy from established makers and brands when supporting your (or hired) camera, rather than Steadicam knock-offs 'Powered by rubber bands' lol. Having owned a mid range, yet 'legit' Steadicam in the past, I can assure you that the torsion springs do not catastrophically fail when at full extension and load (because they are not made of rubber and wrapped around an open pulley!)...or the socket block to the vest get ripped apart by the non-centered elastic forces (as I think happened here) ...yet another example of products already out there that perhaps shouldn't be. Goes to show that Alexa XT's or DSLR's are equally at risk when buying cheaper alternatives to Stabilizers/ gimbals/ car mounts etc. http://www.nbstabilizer.com/

Both (and a load more). Worth checking out the tutorial videos on vimeo and online to get an idea of how it works. It is probably one of the most powerful player/ asset organisers out there - and will be overkill for most, but when you deal with mixed media from high or low end formats - it works seamlessly. 2 min in on this video hints at some of it's very powerful features that can be very useful to review and organise media on a drive :

http://www.assimilateinc.com/products/scratch-play/

Not tried any of these, just what I found: 6inch: http://www.ebay.com/itm/SHORT-6-INCH-SUPER-HD-2-0a-HDMI-CABLE-1080P-2160P-4Kx2K-18GBPs-for-ROKU3-HDTV-/301482963024 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/15cm-SHORT-High-Speed-Ethernet-1-4v-HDMI-LEAD-TV-CABLE-GOLD-FULL-HD-1080p-/351596639258 4 inch http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10cm-SHORT-HDMI-LEAD-0-1M-HIGH-SPEED-ETHERNET-CABLE-GOLD-FULL-HD-1080p-for-TV-/331023715139 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SHORT-10cm-HDMI-LEAD-to-RIGHT-ANGLE-HDMI-90-DEGREES-TV-CABLE-FULL-HD-1080p-v1-4-/351263804723

I shot this the other day to illustrate to somebody how to use Warp stabilizer and RSMB plugin to smooth out 'micro shakes' on footage shot on a manual lens with a high shutter speed - and how to get a result that is a bit more akin to being shot with a larger camera and at a shutter speed closer to the 'filmic' 1/50 sec. First run of 3 shots are untreated...second run of 3 shots are after Warp stabilizer and RSMB plugin was applied. Shutter speed on camera was varied by eye to minimise in-camera motion blur. The last shot shows some slight tearing in the post motion blur - but this can easily be refined to not be noticeable. The settings were pretty much dialed down from the default, without any extra motion estimation to refine the solve. The discipline of shooting at a higher shutter speed when hand-holding (especially smaller camera with no image stabilisation enabled lens) is great for doing post stabilisation with minimal warp artifacts - as well as for post motion blur estimation. This process is exactly transferable to any re-time/ slomo treatment that may need to be done in post. The crisper the frames in the footage, the better that the optical flow or image analysis software can interpolate the frames...resulting in a much smoother slow motion or re-time effect. Password: birds

I shot with the D-20 back in the day when it was flagship new (for a music video)...lovely image and having an optical viewfinder was pretty darn sexy. D-20 is the Alexa's grandfather. D-21 was newer internal board and not a huge leap from D-20. Saw one on eBay sell recently for the cost of a 5DmkIII.

Alexa is king, Alexa Mini is queen...Amira is the prince. VariCam is probably one or two generations away from entering the castle with it's sword drawn...but King Arri will probably put stop to that revolting nonsense. F65 is a Knight at the round table If the big boys stopped waving their resolution and iso performance stats around - and instead worried more about colour rendition and simply a 'nice looking image', then Arri would have a contender. As it is however - nobody understands what a filmic image should be, or how crews are meant to work around a camera - quite like Arri does.

On a side note...if you are shooting handheld or you know you will want to re-time in post, it is a good idea to dial up your shutter speed to reduce or eliminate motion blur as much as possible. That way, any optical-flow algorithm - be it Twixtor or whatever will have crisp frames to do a more accurate analysis and frame interpolation from. I do this all the time for handheld shots where i know i want to re-time to slow motion. I can then add motion blur back into the plate (if I need to add any) with RSMB - Reel Smart motion blur - plugin for AE.

Léon A.K.A 'The Professional' is not only my favourite Action film, but probably my favourite film all round. Young Luc Besson at his finest, drawing upon his real life admirations from an illegally young girl...add guns, Portman, Reno and a crazy ass Oldman performance all in glorious Anamorphic, you have a winner right there.

Me when randomly switching TV channels and Die Hard has just started...

Hmm, never needed or tried to embed from frame.io so am unsure if that is an option. Prores is supported, not sure why it's failing on upload. Perhaps biting the bullet with Vimeo may be better if you need embedding options. Frame.io is a superb way of distributing video to clients when you share the project workspace for feedback, as for a presentation platform in itself that can be embedded, it may not be what you are after.

If it's for a private client review - which they can also download, I'd strongly recommend https://frame.io The free account comes with 2gb capacity I believe...much more professional platform for video sharing than YT or Vimeo private link IMO.

Sounds good...I guess find whatever works well for you - there should be no hard rule on what helps in judging composition. B&W shooting can be a great way to achieve this and definitely worth trying out. My only point was a general one about monitoring in B&W for colour work (and getting too reliant on that) - is that sometimes colour is a critical factor to making a composition work. An ideal solution could be a switchable monitor, where you can toggle to colour/ waveform - just to check that there is no screaming/ distracting colours that would ruin your composition if delivering in colour...Something that could easily be missed if only monitoring in B&W.

Viewfinders on most ENG cameras past and present are B&W. It can massively help judge critical focus when the image is 'simplified' into a monochromatic range - it's often easier to see contrast and edge sharpness that way. As for helping composition? - it might help in some cases, but often colour (or lack of) can affect the balance to a composition - which may well be missed if using B&W as monitoring for a colour 'capture'. If you intend to shoot B&W only - then yes, monitoring in B&W is the way to go. Best solution may be to have an external monitor or EVF that can quickly switch between mono and colour, that way you can be shooting for B&W - but actually be recording colour. That way you can always have the option of reverting back to colour if needed, but your exposure/ contrast to your compositions would be primarily aimed for B&W delivery.

I miss the D-20! Alexa 65's will be toys given away in cereal boxes when the Lytro cinema camera eventually evolves into a more affordable and practical solution in the coming years. The Lytro's half a meter sensor and seemingly limitless 'lens' options in post will piss over any 'large' format digital cinema camera likely to ever be invented. Will be quite a long time until we have them at the daily rental price point below the cost of a Ferrari...but it's coming eventually kids (providing Lytro don't get bought out by the US military or held back by a Google acquisition of Lytro's patents and IP's).

It's all fun and games until you use on a paid gig and an accident happens. I recently hired a pilot and I was camera operator on the drone...he was flying fully CAA qualified, 10 years experience, flew cameras on the latest Bond film, and had £5million liability insurance in case the worst happened. All for the cost of what would buy him a battery or two. It's personal taste and judgement I know, but I'd not be suckered into thinking that just because it's now affordable to put a camera in the air that it will instantly give production value - it doesn't, it requires practice and skill to not look like every other aerial video these days IMHO.

Why buy a drone at all?...unless you personally want to specialise in that , I'd side with hiring in a qualified and experienced pilot is often much more cost effective for many projects. Hiring an experienced person with top of the line gear is always going to give far better results, plus they'll have liability insurance, safety training and any relevant flying permits/ licence. any chump can buy a drone these days and get exactly the same results as everyone else - like most things, if you want special results from a piece of equiptment, you get a specialist to operate it for you....or make the decision yourself to focus just on drone piloting and spend a lot of time and money on it as your business. I'm a big believer in maintaining the 'craft' of things...realising that there are reasons why people specialise in such things. The same thing has happened with gimbals - people buy or rent those over an experienced steadicam op who actually know how to make a shot work technically as well as creatively. Now with all these cheaper options to hand, it seems like a race to the bottom, when it comes to quality cinematic movement of a camera. saying that, the Inspire is a good all-round drone if you were to take the jump for your own video projects.

Arri have used that tagline since at least 2013...seems that someone else who started using it from 2014 should be the one being careful