Huuow

"Already I am hearing reports that the rolling shutter on the A7S is really quite bad. With such large sensors it is very difficult to get a fast readout. That is the advantage of having a smaller sensor closer to the cinema standard of Super 35mm, for example in the GH4." can someone explain why a larger sensor should take longer to read out? It´s not that electricity covers distance by travelling... and this certain sensor only has 12 megapixels...

I was in the same Position more than a year ago, where for me it was a tough call between the Mark III, GH3 and Alpha 99. My need was a camera for 1. money making aka. image films 2. video art 3. fine quality pictures of friends and family Beeing used to the Mark II (not mine, I didn´t own anything), the DOF question was quite a big one. I knew the flaws of the Mark II, moiree and aliasing can be quite horrible... also I didn´t like the handling and the beauty of a shallow DOF is quite hard to manage when beeing alone and the target is moving. So ultimatly I settled for the GH3, which was of course also the best budget solution, for I was calculating - I can buy this lens aswell, aswell as this, while with that camera I´ll have to do this and so on.. I was shocked when I looked first through the viewfinder, for I had never seen an electronic viewfinder. It was plain awful and made me question my choice, also the jpg engine of the camera is not the best. If you want good pictures, you got to shoot raw. but... video quality was really good and it was very fast and pleasant to use, an excellent run & gun camera. Sometimes on shooting I wished for a bit more DOF but it didn´t matter anymore when watching the clips, cause they just looked good. You don´t get the extreme DOF like 1.4 on FF, but I did never use that anyway for it is impossible to track anything. As the others have mentioned, there really is no camera for everything. Look at what you are doing and decide for the best: tele or wide angle orientated? need for speed or time for a setup? portability, stealth, cost,... Personally I´d wait to see what canon has to offer with their 7D upgrade, by that time there probably will be more GH4 videos around and make my choice then.

so basically if you deliver HD, a FF lens + speedbooster convert to a bunch of primes and two zoom lenses, lol source: FF 35mm HD - normal adapter: 70mm HD - speedbooster: 49mm HD - normal adapter - tele mode: 161mm HD - speedbooster - tele mode: 112.7mm Quad HD - converted to HD - normal adapter: 87.5 - 175mm Quad HD - converted to HD - speedbooster: 61.25 - 122.5mm that lens should better have hell of a resolution

lol yes, time to unfold the present

k.   next time you want no opinion just say your question then   imagin your quote: "I'll be spending the [..] next month in a field down south blowing it all to hell, lol." in a speech bubble over your user pic.   happy hunting

Nah, no way of trolling or something...   I´m allergic to how carelessly most students or young filmmakers use weaponry in their movies... Sorry for prejudging you, don´t know who you are. Based on what you have written I assume It´s more about the coolness but spending any ethical thoughts...   I would find it rather difficult to make a funny movie out of that topic. In the hands of Monty Python, yes. But since your movie is perfectly shootable without the helicopter scenes, your "sexy sunrise" shot makes me think you´re off track on what´s important.   The helicopter scene only tells the audience, guys there´s an awesome war movie and some dudes fly in a helicopter. The joke that they actually are about to hunt ducks, is pretty lame then... definatly not worth the effort. But again, I don´t know the script.   If they hunt ducks with a professional seal unit behaviour then I don´t get the joke. Cause they normally kill people and you just flip people with ducks and all of a sudden it´s funny?   The chances of beeing a very shallow movie is high if you don´t know why you are doing this...     other than that, nope sorry, got no experience in military involvement in movies... my advice would be: less is more. Do an areal shot with like an octocopter, maybe you can add a blackhawk shadow in post and use the sound (heli & radio speakings) to get desired impression.

If you were ambitiously enough, you would have enlisted already... getting your shots while flying some badass combat mission.. maybe you could even use some of the explosions!     yes, I´m not fond of the project... also the fun is in not killing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24VA0tTTsvM

seriously?

  no ones said spending $10,000... Laptops are pretty unhandy... you always have to find a spot to build your station, relocate it every now and then cause they shoot in this direction now.. it takes time to start, makes noise and outside it´s not very usefull... for indoor it works, but you basically need two people to run... one on the boom and one controling the sound... The Fostex FR2 LE is also a nice option... A rather dated field recorder now, but does everything you want and this with very nice pre amps... cost around $500...

      http://www.43rumors.com/great-picture-collection-from-magnum-photographer-moises-saman-and-guess-what-camera-he-uses-for-his-work/

Sound is sadly an overlooked segment of the amateur film production... It´s all about cameras... Truth is, sound is much more important than the picture. The picture quality can be bad and you still enjoy the movie. But if sound quality is bad, you get kicked out of the atmosphere right away. No chance in taking the movie seriously.   better spend more money on pro stuff and really be happy with it than to instantly regret your decision (once you heard your first recording). The preamps of the Zoom H4n and the Tascam DR-100 are not very good... If you power the mentioned Rode NTG2 (which needs to be amplified very much) with on of them, if you´re not extremly close to your object, you will always hear the noise level of the amplifiers   I suggest the Sound Devices MixPre-D which costs around 1000$. It is a mixer with no recording options, so you have to get the signal either directly into the camera or into any extern recorder you have (can be a cheap one too like the zoom h2 for instance)   Also there is no Microphone for every situation. There is a difference in recording 3 persons in 1 meter distance or 1 person in 3 meter distance... 

Panasonic published two technological advances recently: their micro color splitter and the Pan/Fuji organic sensor development... would be nice to see them in a product... I´m more hoping for the organic sensor though: 88db of dynamic range - even better than the just posted TrueSense gems

dont´t know where you see this gh4 tag... but he got my attention nevertheless...   Andrew, you couldn´t just slip a pm by accident :)

I was told by an expert today that the Sennheiser 416 is a pretty old microphone and is actually very aggressive in its sound. It´s still produced by Sennheiser because of popularity and sales but they discarded it from their shop cause of better performers. Likewise in this pricerange he mentioned the Neumann K81 or Sennheiser MKH 8060 as beeing excelent mics.   And of course one single Mic will not get you through every situation...

hijiacking thread:   upgrading sound performance... had anyone his hands on the Fostex DC-302 or Sound Devices MixPre-D? Juiced Link, Tascam d-60, Beachtec all nice for sure, but I want real professional stuff this time...

    U sure about that? I once let an interview partner change his thin stripped shirt because I saw moire hell on the liveview... turned out as I watched the recorded clips later that only the camera lcd was affected and not the taken image... I used it quite alot now, and I only had one problem so far (but that was an obvious challenge pic for cameras)

Something happend? I really would appreciate an insight view of the blogger world (really!)... some sort of flame war going on? Never heard that we now got a leader neither :) There is no such thing as THE "Indie Filmmaker community"... There are thousands of indie filmmaker communities... on the Internet and mostly, not on the internet... These figures, like Bloom, they know stuff, they share stuff, they rise, they get attention, and the use this attention and probably sell themselves... who cares? I can imagine that you can get very excentric for beeing constantly both attacked and loved... it´s like going on the street and every fucking person throws their oppinion in your face...   And of course does the industry try to make their products known, some more loudly than others and if a blogger got bribed to praise something... well, that´s why you don´t just read one oppinion... and his ethics will not be forgotten... These whole self marketing videos are more funny than annoying to me... every explaining videos nowadays begin with: Hi, I´m *name* from *name" and today I show you how to press the record button...   guess the bottom question is, how to make money with what I´m doing. The Internet where you get everything for free! If you share knowledge, if you dedicate yourself to test gear, this is all wonderfull and much appreciated! Does it bring you money... well... Your digital guides are a nice idea in my oppinion. In the future I guess Microtransactions are the way to go... 2 Cents for Andrews 2 Cents...

ok. but I was not entirely right after all :) take a read on this article... it´s the best thing on such crop sensor topic I ever came across... really worth it http://www.josephjamesphotography.com/equivalence/

yes yes *edit* ...depth of field has nothing to do with lenses... same or not, doesn´t matter... 1. sensor size, 2. aperture, 3. distance to target vs. distance to background

  maybe the digital age relaxed the trigger finger, but 50:1... which poor soul has to look through this... I´d say 10:1 is common, 20:1 max.

well... not too useful in narrative sceneplay but yes it works...   actually I meant not imitating a tripod with a rig... got it out wrong, sorry

indeed, lovely colors you got there :)   I wouldn´t try mimicking a dolly or a crane with a rig... or even a tripod ;)  (<--- I suggest this to be your next investment)

I suggest you just buy yourself a diary...

nope but you can still make sense out of the images

about distortion, I´ve seen some pictures here: http://forum.slashcam.de/weiter-vt107624.html?postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=1235+distortion+bmpcc&&start=140 aperture is not a real problem. I just like the haptic of moving an aperture ring (and it´s faster) focus... well, guess you just have to hold it once... I never had a focus by wire lens in my hand, so I was seriously shocked :D ...I never use it manually, I turn on auto, get my focus and switch back to manual. I don´t do any kind of dof plays with it.