Danyyyel

Another thing I wanted to add, normally we are in a film-maker forum, with some already doing it or some aspiring ones. Most are also indie low budget one. What the example of Desolation of Smaug shows is how resolution detail can be at the detriment of your work Why !!!!!!!!!!!!! because it will make everything pop up like make-up and any short comings in your props and sets. One of the mains criticism of the Hobbit was that everything looked fake, you could see the make up, the prosthesis and set design was just fake. How this will translate to your film? One of the reason the dslr and more so the full frame sensor gave was not just simply shallow depth of field but also as it was softer and shallower compared to normal cameras, thus hiding a lot the defects in the sets etc. The 4k will put the work of your make-up artist and set design to the test, much more than true 1080p (Alexa 2.7 K for example). Just some food for thoughts.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/17/hfr-the-desolation-of-smaug/ http://variety.com/2013/film/news/peter-jackson-hobbit-3d-looks-1200941962/ Just some link about the use of Tiffen Pro-mist filters in desolation of Smaug. Peter Jackon has been one of the most vocal directors about 4k and red and he had to backtrack because of the critics on the hobbit hfr but also the harshness of the images (mainly the actors).

You can see in my second post that I discuss some things you said about photo/video in a more technical way. I am very technical about my photography in natural light and in fashion with flash, with lighting ratios etc. But I take the example above of these 3 cinematographer because they are the one who have experience at a level than none of us have here. How many of us have any film or even award winning film to your credit !!!!!!!!! I have no ego to say that I have any knowledge or I have reach a level that I know too much or I am going to lecture anyone here. For me I prefer to take the knowledge and learn from these guys who know 99.9% more than anyone on internet forums and have worked on millions dollar films. They know the rigours and stress and level of expertise needed on those big production. Why did I put that video because the second poster ridiculed that report the OP shared, while those 3 cinematographer confirm what the report says. So who am I, or as it is a sharing site for the good of all, to balance the argument that this report is bad. So I think that anyone who just reeds that as how he said it as an authority (without any link to any other report dismissing the other first one) that it was bad. Where are his technical explanation with charts and studies about human visual acuity and some reference about his work and experience to back it up. I am not there to bash anyone but please if you are going to BS some report please give us some reference to back it up. There was a Sony report about 4k when they launch and what it basically said it was that the gain was very low at normal viewing distance. I have watched 4k TV (with scrutiny) 2 days ago on a 65 and 85 inch tv curvy screen. With the usual contrasty super punchy mostly wildlife demo footage (paint drying shot), there was zero difference at normal viewing distance (and my normal viewing distance is closer than most as I like to watch films on my 50 inch plasma trying to simulate movie experience, until I get money to buy me a high quality projector with deep black and contrast ratio). Does anyone watch a 65 inch TV at less than 2 foot !!!!!!!!! Sure the vendor will bend and make you come and look at the image (like a photo) at less than a foot just to sell you the screen and images with higher contrast will give much more a sense of sharpness. So this is why I wrote my first post Ebrahim, it was not meant particularly at you, it was meant at the second poster. Now if he has some counter arguments with links etc I am all ears. What those 3 DPs where saying is very important, it is not as if resolution is not important, but everything has a threshold and sometime when you go higher it is not only counter productive but start to become a liability. I shoot human being (as most filmakers will do) and too much resolution/detail is not your friend, most of the time I have to soften the skin. No one wants to see every pores of his skin and these DP confirm that. If you don't believe me about softening skin, just do a search about The Hobbit desolation of Smaug and promist filters. I am not saying that resolution or detail is not important but In between super sharp 4k image and barely 720p Canon Dslr mush there is a happy medium.

Another thing on a more geeky side, is that I would like the second poster in this thread to show me how a bayer (most dslr) sensor camera needs 18 megapixel to get 2k resolution. Please can you show us some example because it seems really far-fetched. I mean I have been doing photography since the 6 megapixel D70 and now a Nikon d800. So by your saying with my D800 I am shooting more like 2.6/3k resolution!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At 100% on a screen of a normal portrait shot with some room above the head and a up to the chest I can easily see every smallest vein in the eye and I mean with a 12 megapixel D700/d300 (amid vertically). I can clearly see more detail on a face with my 24 megapixel D7100 and D800 than with my naked eyes at very very close distance.

You cannot compare video to photo. Many people do that same error, yes they are images but how they are perceived (I don't find a proper word for that in my english) is very different. They are very different art form. A photograph is eternity, a fraction of a second capture for eternity. It is like a painting, you can watch a photo at least for a minutes, your eyes wander through the scene, it is like a book it can convey many stories, have many actors etc. Like let say a scene at a market with a seller and woman discussing price. In a photo you could have those two into a heated discussing with lots of emotion, on one side or on her back the child of the buyer completely disinterested or bored about the discussion with a very candid face and a toy in her hand, some buy standers in the background amused by the scene with some interesting impression on there face, etc etc.. It could take you easily a minutes or more looking at this image if it is well done in terms of framing composition colour or black and white etc In a video scene of the same scene you would never look at the same scene for more than 5/10 seconds. For it to be interesting you would need this scene as an establishing shot, the you would do closer shots to capture the different people to tell the same story. At no time would you do a shot more than 5/10 second if else it will start to be boring. This is why the discussion about resolution in photo and video are two very different films. In a photo in a book or a bg gallery wall you can move toward the photo or put the paper closer and your eyes and mind can wander through it. You can watch a photo for minutes but can you tell me how many static video scene can you watch for more than 10/20 second. Video is about motion within the frame and outside of the frame (editing). As such your eyes(brain) cannot settle at any point for enough time to render the same resolution as in prints and this without facturing motion blur. Another thing myth about using 4k images for photography. When I do a wedding, I am easily shoot about 2000 photos. The work of sorting out these photos and doing selection is easily between half a day and a days work. Why, again photo can be scrutinise much more, if it is out of focus, it is out of focus..... while if in a video scene of 5 sec 5/10 frames are out of focus in a moving scene it will still be good, because again your brain will just skip it as it is not permanent, the half a second it is on the scene it is already replaced less than a second after that by other images. Then lets say you have 4 hours of footage and you have to search for lets say 800 to 1500 good one as photos as good one before choosing those that will be processed. And those photos will generally be on the lower quality jpeg compression (If you are shooting raw it is some gigantic file size). The last thing would be shutter speed, most photos will have motion blur which will equate to blurry photos at 1/50 sec!!!!!!!!!!!! For sure in some occasion it can save some shot, but 90% of the time it would be just spray and pray photography, the worst form of what is an art form. I have a D800 and I have shot with most Nikon cameras except the D3/D4 line and I pride myself of being able to capture that sense of eternity in a fraction of a second of what photography is about. On many website I see mostly videographers talking about using 4k for photo etc, and this tells me how much these two art form are very different and that they don't understand that the mindset is very different because video is about continuity.

So So Zach have you made your choice. I am very curious if someone did the comparison. For this test the D750 should also have been used with a Ninja or any external recorder as you could see the best it can do vs the best the Canon 5d3 can do. My experience is that you get a little jump of resolution when you shoot high bitrate prores or dnxhd and colour is a bit better. You do get a little more noise, but it is very fine grain type that I prefer to the more plastic low bitrate codec.

Geeks calling them DP/film-makers/Cinematographers will tell you that 4k is a big difference with all sort of mathematical formula etc... But artist and true cinematographers like the ones above will tell that there is so much more like colour to make a beautiful image. And how 4k is becoming detrimental as too much resolution start to impact the image and how they have to use filtration to soften the image. By the way the bayer filter is more like 2/3 resolution that is why Red Camera the most vocal camera manufacturer about 4k objective was to have 6k for true 4k. But in the end WTF, do people see it? even if it is 2k, 4k or 8k, motion blur and viewing distance will kill 99% of its advantage. You would need to be like 2 feet/50cm from a 65 inch screen to notice any difference and only static scene where motion blur won't take out any advantage in resolution. In this case you would have to move your eyes or head to be able to see all the scene. Its like a ping pong or tennis match if you have two actors talking to each other when they are on two side of the scene. The perception of true 1080p has been ruined by camera like the Canon dslr which even if it is written 1080p are less than 720p in resolution and SD in terms of details with the low 8 bit codec. You should take more the example of the 2.7K down-res Alexa for a proper 1080p image in terms of resolution and detail. Many films like the latest James bond have been shot with the Alexa and up-rez to 4k with no one complaining and DPs (Roger Deakins) have said how it up scaled well. In the end buy Tiffen stocks as when in 2/3 years, when every camera will be 4k and more, everybody on these geeky website will be asking what filter to use to soften the look so that there image look film-like and that the wedding couples, corporate clients, talking heads interviews, film actors to their family members won't be complaining about the highly digital look and crispness of the image.

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"The last two days I was looking for an answer to the question - can anyone make clear image on the a7s?Your grading is great...How did you do such pure tones,natural colors ?Only now I understand that it is possible,but how???!!!??!?!?!?All footage looks like on canon DSLRs...but with more dynamic range..." This is the best quote from the vimeo page, sums it up really about the A7s colour...

Thats terrible, 40 minutes discussion and what !!!!!!!!! 1 minutes about 4k and high resolution............. all the rest of the 39 minutes about lighting, composition, framing, colours, styling.... Pffff bunch of amateurs, didn't they here about the latest Panasonic 4k wonders that you can put in your pocket or Sony cameras that don't any more lighting because you can shoot at 100 000 ISO.

LOL, I have been discussing a lot about colour science lately and this video shows it, the only place I did not like the colours where with the A7s. Unfortunately the hype machine has gone wild with the low light spec and not very usable 3200 ISO slog, unfortunately you cannot measure colour science, if else Nikon would have geeks to hype it. Look at my camera CSI (colour science index) of X, aaahhhhhh yours is only Y dude...

Ohhhhhhhhhh no 4k, so amateur and my film will be more future proof...

Is this of any help?

Would really like to see your work, because remember we are on a film..... makers forum here and not film critics site. So between fellow film or aspiring film maker I would really like to know what you have done. So how you would have shot, framed and lit some of those shots in the trailer. A bit more technical analysis would enlighten us so as we can learn from you.

I don't know for people here, but for me I prefer Nikon putting its money in actual film makers than a flurry of techno geek bloggers that don't even have some short movie to their credit. I am actually talking about real short movies, with a story line, actors, props etc not just some random street shot assembled with some copyrighted music. The story style or plot might not appeal to many here but it is a mammoth task compared to some random shots. Nikon Europe also have the Nikon film festival where the winner gets a d810 and a trip to Cannes short film festival. For me I prefer that they put their money in actual film makers like in this film. It might not be to the taste of many, but it is ten time more constructive and creative than flying a bunch of bloggers to some exotic location to shoot some random flicks.

www.cnet.com/news/shoot-a-movie-on-dslr-this-australian-film-shows-how-its-done/ It is sponsored by Nikon.

Yes Canon has been using more and more aggressive noise reduction in its camera. Everytime a new camera comes out (like the 5dmark3) you hear gain of 1.5 stops compared to its predecessor. While in reality it has been only incremental the last 5+ years. The reason being the jpeg engine doing a lot more of NR in camera but at the expense of detail. So take it with a grain of salt until at least you do some side by side images with very fine detail, or wait for Dpreview comparison images.

It is a bit of a lost cause because intangible's things like colour science cannot be measured. So it does not look as sexy on the spec sheet and the hype machine cannot work enough. I have been playing and grading some shots done by my cousin on my D7100 (not really a shooter, more of a special effect and editing coming out of University) when I was shooting beach wedding in very harsh light. If I knew how to upload photos (Every time I try it tells me the image has to be less than 70K, which is ridiculously low to show some 1080p jpeg) I would post some frame grabs. I mean they are much better of what I have seen here and I did not have to lots of correction. Just some saturation and contrast to taste. It is not as if I needed some PHD in colour science to get some proper skin tone in very harsh lighting.

For one you did not gasp/understand the irony of my post. The second thing is that the irony came from the fact that the debate (filmmaking community) is becoming 100% gear centric. As I said in my second post I am for technology advancing our art or more so for the indie/small budget film-makers giving us tool that we could only dream of 5/7 years ago since the start of the dslr revolution. The thing is that people are thinking that when you have a camera that can shoot clean above 6400 ISO you don't need to light, or have any knowledge of lighting. This is the same for DR and resolution. When you will have your scene with people inside and a window. You know the amount of post processing you will need to get proper exposure for both of them. If you just do some global contrast you will end with HDR type of images. Which will make people look shit. The only solution would be to use power windows and tracking in software like Davinci resolve. What a cinematographer would do would be to light the person inside and use some ND on the window. Yes it is more work, but that is the proper way and guaranteed to get better result, that is the skill of a Director of photography or cinematographer. This goes the same way for other example you talked above. The typical example is the hype behind the A7s. What is the importance of all the high ISO/DR etc on the spec list when this camera cannot even do the basic right. What about shooting natural looking people with proper skin tone and not like shooting with some cross process magenta/green look already cook in the profile. You can watch endless dicussion on varoius website about people discussing about how to get at least ok skin look. It seem that you should have a phd in coulour space and gamut correction to get the most basic thing. I am not even talking about other problem as rolling shutter which is close to the Nikon D90 of 7 years ago in full frame look. Just because this camera has XYZ spec on paper.

I prefer to wait for some proper testing like dxomark. Sony said 15 stop for the A7s and DXO showed about 13 stop in RAW. But they are not the only one, RED said dragon 16 to 18, dxomark test at 14.7 if I am not mistaken. One thing to take into account is highlight clipping. RED used to suffer from pink highlight which mean the blue channel has clipped before so it will register on charts which are just gray but in reality it is not true usable DR. The Sony tend to have some clipping with blues that clipped abruptly which is I guess the same phenomenon on some channel clipping before others. The last thing to consider is what 21 stop of DR mean for the users. Everything will have to be graded quite heavily and the use of luts everytime, if else you will never know your exposure. All this will come to the same as the 5d3 raw, whoaw novel, and then in the end it will become such a hassle to use. The geek will always see that the more the better, for me there is always a threshold, 14.5 stop (my D800) is already very very good. Everything above this will now only become incremental. If you can't shoot with a camera with about 14 stop then you just won't with anything.

I think that the days of filmmaking as the base of talking is long gone . It more of a geek/gear talking now with the latest and greatest being the norm and everything else shit. Shooting at 21 stop you wont need to expose at all as you will be able to capture from the deepest shadows to the highest highlight with one shot, with super high ISO you wont need to light because you will able to use available light, with litro technology and infinite DOF no need to focus anymore, we just need some algorithm to be able to frame and compose for us and voila... One push button cinematography, the dream of the geek.

At least when Canon will put 4k on the camera, we will get 1080p video on the Canon dslr.

Now before I let you guys discuss about the A7s color, I will give you my assessment that some of you might find useful. Because I did asses the camera as a contender as everyone was talking about that. This was before I find the colour skin tone issues, rolling shutter issues and blue clipping. My assesment is that the the colour are bias toward green and pink which make it look a lot as when you are shooting low cri fluorescent or led light. It is as if there are some colour spectrum lacking. The best resource I saw about analyzing the different colour profile and S-log is this, I think it is a good starting point The second thing I guess is that a 8 bit file is not sufficient to store enough step for that ultra low contrast 13 or more DR. So some of the rounding off is causing part of colour to merge. As a better explanation, I mean the contrary of colour separation that you normally want, so that if you want to do colour correction etc choosing a colour for qualifiers in Davinci it wont merge with nearby colours. The last thing as this example is that shooting at 3200 you will need very very good ND. Most of the time ND will bring a colour cast. In fact in general ND tend to bring some additional green hue and IR polluting a pinkish hue. So they will tend to reinforce the green and pink tint and that is a big task to get it out of a super flat 8 bit codec.

He has graded the video to the Orange and teal look, It is a question of tast if people like it or not. But even with the grade it looks a lot better than most Sony A7s video that I have seen (he has his website here http://gbvideo.com/wedding-videos where you can see a lot more example) and it is a wedding so guerrilla shooting in sometime harsh lighting. In that video looking at the vegetation I would say south of the USA and not shooting at ideal hours (golden hour) when the contrast is low, I am sure that any camera would blow, If applying a normal S-curve and to expose nicely for the face of the couple. If not you would have to use power windows in davinci reslove to isolate the blown area and us tracking to lower the highlight so that you don't affect the skin of the principal subject, which mean the couple. I don't know many production who would go that far for some blown highlight behind them. To continue on dynamic range, I leave and dye by it because I don't live in a Tropical island with mostly dark skin tone people. If you have someday the opportunity to go shoot in the Caribbean etc you will know what contrasty light mean. I also always joke anout the golden hour because it is more like the golden 20 minutes in my country because you come from full day to knight in the space of 20 minutes as the closest you come to the equator higher is the sun and the curve of entry and exit is much more vertical toward the horizon. When you shoot in those condition dynamic range is more important than resolution and ISO. Part of my job is to do weddings of couple mainly from Europe on the beach and I have to shoot human beings in very harsh light. This is a website a travel agency who sell my services packaged with their flight and hotel accommodation. This is just a very very small sample of my work and some errors in there (One photo with couple with sunset and a big fck ugly boat behind and they are just shinning and ugly red skin........ some over smoothing of the skin done buy the agency ) http://www.danielvilliers.com . But if you take the first one with the bright turquoise sea, you can just barely open your eyes in these condition and I have 3 Flash firing at them as fill light. During those time you can barely shoot continuously more than 1) minute or risk the bride or more rarely the groom to fell unconscious. Most of the time I have to correct the skin for shininess and redness and to people disbelief, most of the time it is the groom because... they don't wear makeup. So next time you lecture someone about dynamic range or any other subject, perhaps it would be good to know his background a bit. If you want I can send you links to load of my complete wedding gallery because I pride myself to a certain level of consistency in my work and in those harsh condition like the first photo. Just as a note most of those photos are done on jpeg because I have very little time of 3 to 5 days before departure of the client. My D800 RAW (best camera in DR) are only used when I have to rescue a shot.

I have downloaded Canon slog and Arri Log and could get very good image just by applying an S -curve. I am used to high dynamic range with my D800, just apply the curve you want to get the contrast level you want, but the colour response more or less the same depending on the colour preset of the camera. I would say the closest two I have seen is Nikon and Alexa. But if we get back to your point the Slog is more or less unusable to 9 out of 10 people, or even more seeing the number of thread popping out on all forums. So what the fuss being made, as one of the supposivelly image quality of the camera cannot be used by the vast majority. This reminds me the story of Arri and Red. While the geeks shooters where talking up Red cameras because of 4k, high speed etc etc, compared to the 2k supposedly lower quality and overprice Alexa. In the end Alexa ruled the Cinema and commercial market and you them talking about the advance in the last Dragon colour science because it comes closer to the Alexa. While they where dismissing the Alexa colour science before as nothing that superior.