Oliver Daniel

This 1DX II could really do with C-log looking at the recent clips, and a lot of filmmakers won't buy it otherwise. I hope we do see a 1DC II with 10 bit... that would just be a marvellous camera. I'd be forced to save my money!

Surely the 1DC is now due an imminent update? If I remember correctly, the 1DC is a 1DX with a heatsink and 4K. To diffrentiate a new 1DC II for the 1DX II, surely it would need all the specs of the 1DX II and internal 10 bit? I can't think of much else (realistically). Peaking perhaps?

The C300 is probably the most enjoyable camera I have ever shot on. It works brilliantly, flawlessly. Focusing, especially, is fantastic. But the specs... nothing exciting! I'm really hoping for a 1DC II announcement this year. What should we realistically expect?

I like the look of your original Olivia piece. The aesthetic works - doesn't matter if it doesn't technically work for us video nuts on this forum. I particulary like your "Bokeh Bonanza" video with shots of the dog with all those crazy apertures. Although it's just shots of a dogs face with some emotional music over the top, demonstrating a lens, the degraded visuals are really a pleasure to watch. I understand most people's negative stance on Sony colour, as I believe it too. But it doesn't stop me using a Sony camera. They capture great images that make me money, and nobody complains at all about the image. Although I've said it countless times, the white balance on these cameras is inaccurate/faulty. I've done various tests now and it's definitely wrong on the A7SII. This greatly affects the colour and is hard to fix in post. When the white balance reading is close however, colour isn't much of an issue.

I'm with you on this. I shoot Sony because their specs please my client base. "Gimme slow mo!" Etc. I sold my RX10 II after 2 months as I hated it. I was sold on the specs and after real world usage I thought it was incredibly disappointing. Advertised features such as Slog2 and the 240fps was borderline rubbish. That said, I've got an A7SII and it's a lot of fun. It's great for a lot of my work and has seriously helped lift my lower budget stuff to another place. However, anything that depends on beauty/skin tones is a very hard day on the Sony. I do actually believe a lot of the "colour" problems come down to inaccurate white balance readings by the camera. On the A7SII, it's just plain wrong. I'm still yet to find a solution.

I'm a massive, massive fan of the original Ghostbusters. For this new iteration, I think it's a great move to have female Ghostbusters - especially with some of Hollywoods best female comedy actors and Paul Feig. There is a BUT though. The original films worked because the humour was so deadpan, dark and offset by silly yet terrifying visuals. It also had this kind of weird realism to it. It was serious, yet ridiculous. This trailer shows us this in reverse. To me, it looks like the Scooby Doo films (visually) and the humour seems to be a gag based affair, kind of like an Adam Sandler or Martin Lawrence movie. The tone seems very cartoonish and parody-like, reminiscent of the Scary Movie series - complete with "fat jokes" and "sick" gags. I feel the VFX from the original is superior, it's far more "black humoured" and equally quite scary for kids, whereas this would fit straight into a ghost level on a next-gen Mario game. The appeal does need to cater the new audience, however, they have done themselves no favours with the typical Hollywood comedy edit of this trailer for audiences who know the original. The female cast isn't the issue, but there a lot of other factors to be worried about if you're a fan of Ghostbusters. This is still a trailer and may not reflect the real movie at all. I remember the mouth watering Man Of Steel trailer which was almost art house like, very emotional and brooding - yet the real film was a Transformers style Superman destruction fest. Hardly the film I saw in the trailer. Maybe when we get to 27+ in age, we can't grasp this modern sparkly filmmaking because we have the nostalgia of the past versions. In my view, I much prefer the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the new one as the characters felt real and grounded, based on the practical effects and smaller budget. The new one is like a video game where Shredder is the Final Boss and he's going to kill you with this Transformer mech style rocket blades. Just doesn't seem as good to me, but I'm not 10 years old with memories of the 90's eh? I want this Ghostbusters film to be good, but in my personal opinion, this trailer isn't a good start. I think Hollywood should "cut down their production scale. The visuals no longer look convincing or tangible, plus the studio has far too much power over content and creativity. Take the route of Netflix, who obviously give a massive degree of creative freedom to their talent.

All of the current conversation regarding Sony colour science seems almost right to me. Having been a Sony user for years, I find the colours from their cameras (in a pleasing, accurate way) to be inferior to Canon, Nikon and Blackmagic. Autumn Leaves is a good baked in look, however it's vastly limited by any grading, dynamic range and highlight roll off is steep. Might work for some, not for me. I've had some pleasing results from Slog2 custom profiles, however the result is always sort of pastel looking. For some stuff, this works great! (attached still from recent shoot, shot on A7S II + Sigma 18-35.) I guess it depends what you're shooting. I find the Sony's are great for dark, edgy, gritty, surreal stuff like rock music videos. But for glamour, beauty, fashion, interviews, bright colourful work... there are better options.

I have loads of rolls of this stuff. Don't go to a production without them.

Totally agree with this. Theres a lot of ignorance towards lighting (and obsessions about cameras) in the enthusiast realm, however all cameras display their absolute best image under carefully lit scenes where the sensor isn't being pushed into sensitivity oblivion. Lighting is the biggest factor when differentiating good images from excellent images. I've moved to a battery operated setup of recent, as I can spend more time creating the look I want rather than dealing with reels and spiderwebs of cables. I can pretty much light anywhere, at anytime, whenever. The lights are: 3 x Lupolux Dual LED (650w and 1000w equivalent) with 6 Lanparte V-locks. (£4000). 6 x Scorpion Lights with Full Scorpion Kit. (£1200 approx). I love this setup as the Lupolux are Dual Color, they are very bright, light and have an excellent CRI. The Scorpions are absolutely brilliant as they are very compact, can bend in any direction and can be clamped on anything! And they are bright! Other lights I have in the kit are: Kino Flo 401s x 2 (£3000) Dedolight Kit x 4 and Gobos (£2000) 1 x Arri 650w (£450) These lights all brilliant workhorses and get knocked about, performing flawlessly. I love DIY solutions for lighting but my opinion is you shouldn't skimp and go cheap on your lighting gear. The reliability, colour accuracy and operation is very very important. Some of us out there buy every new camera with a 4K badge stuck on it, however lighting is far more important and the gear lasts for more than a decade easily.

Definitely is. Thought about setting up something to test the white balance settings and send it to their engineers. I did a quick one the other day on a shoot. Daylight 5600k in daylight rendered faces as pale green, same on cloudy and shade. My daylight lamps were green and tungsten was blue at 3200k. I've spent a lot of money on lighting and the A7SII makes them look weird. I don't understand why this hasn't been reported and fixed? (Like with the FS5 issues?)

I really enjoy using the A7SII. With the flexible lens mount and IBIS it's a lot of fun. Combined with my Ronin-M with the IBIS and Sony/Zeiss lens is tremendous. Super smooth. Things I don't like? Rolling shutter above 50mm in full frame, very poor battery life, placement of menu and record button, the menus GUI, noise in 120fps, Slog3 almost useless. (Slog2 is workable). The most pain in the arse thing about it is the white balance. It doesn't work properly and what I believe to be the majority cause of unpleasant colour science that many users report. Negatives aside, I've had a great time on the A7 series so far and I've got some videos ready for release soon! I don't love the camera but I do really like it.

I'm sure that a product called the PlexiDrone is being released soon that has most of these features. You can also mount a camera the size of the LX100, RX100 IV and Sony A6300 with a pancake lens on this too. https://dreamqii.com It also smartly fits into a backpack - that's one of it's USP's.

Having used so many cameras on many different shoots, I can absolutely agree the camera choice has a tremendous effect on the final end product. Sometimes it's the wrong choice. Once for aesthetic reasons I chose a RED, but operating it held the entire production back creatively - so it ended up with pretty visuals but an average video at best. It works the other way round too. I bought the Sony RX10 II and ditched it after 3 shoots. Hated the aesthetic, the lens, the sensor size, noise performance. Replaced the lower end stuff with an A7SII and people are saying "the quality has gone up several notches".... You should never be held back shooting though.If a Canon 550d/T2i is all you have then go for it!

I see what you mean by this. I did a lot of shooting on the GH3, and I had to do it with a rig for hands and shoulder because barebones, the motion of the footage looked bloody terrible. Jolty and wobbly, not in the "independent film" good way. With the FS7, I find that handheld/shoulder mounted operation isn't very inventive. There isn't much motion at all as you need to keep relatively still and the shots are quite static, "normal", not cinematic but great for framing a shot on foot. The F55 is different. It has a global shutter and a proper EVF on the side. I shoulder rigged this camera, and found that moving around a bit actually produced some very pleasing motion. The A7SII is a lot of fun to work with, as you can change shot quickly and use it barebones with the IBIS. I'm able to pull off some minor steadicam, slider type moves with this - and if you have a slow, fluid handling of the camera, it can have a decent cinematic "feeling". HOWEVER the IBIS can be a bit robotic (stay still an watch the image slowly shift) and moving the A7SII with a lens above 50mm falls into jello insanity (not cinematic at all). I think part of it is psychological. I used the BMPCC with a loupe and support rig. I really felt I was within the image, just seeing nothing else but the content with one eye. You don't get the same connection with a regular LCD screen. I think the emotional connection subconsciously helps you to film better. So i think the variables the cinematic motion comes down to is (not including your camera settings and lenses): Ergonomic handling on the camera (fluidity of the camera movement/motion). Fast rolling shutter readout or global shutter. Connection the operator has with the footage (seeing the action through a large viewfinder, being in the image). Codec (huge and understated reason). There's probably more but i'm procrastinating and have work to do!

I'm with you on this too. The BMMCC has a much better feel to the motion, whereas the 4.6k feels very very modern, likes it's trying not to be electronic but it just is. I've been shooting Sony a lot for the past few years just based on the features (such as slo-mo). They are challenging cameras to use, concerning "look and feel". The 1DC gets it right in 4k - soft but HIGHLY detailed resolution. A 1DC II with the specs of the 1DX II but with 10 bit 422 internal + Clog2 would be hard to ignore.

I don't have the FS5 (yet). I want to see how the Odyssey update will improve the image/codec performance, and if it's similar (better) to the FS700. The white balance issue is on the A7SII, which is why I think it has more colour issues than other Sony cameras. It doesn't work. Will need a manual fix with custom settings perhaps (or firmware fix is preferred). Glad to hear there is an option on the FS5 to set WB correctly.

I've used the A7S II extensively at the moment, and I'm finding that a lot of these colour issues might come down to white balance. It just doesn't work properly. You light a scene with 5600k top end lamps for a daylight scene, yet when setting the 5600k on the A7SII, skin looks green-ish. When lighting an indoor scene with only 3200k lamps, and setting 3200k on the camera, skin is blue-ish. Auto white balance works, but the colour shifts to red in tungsten and magenta in daylight. The most accurate I've found for white that is white, is Underwater Auto! However this makes everything that isn't white into purple. This is across all picture profiles. FS7 and F55 don't do this at all. I'd do a proper in-house test but after this post I'm busy for the day! It seems a similar thing happens with the FS5. Maybe Andrew can feed this through to his contacts?

My most used is the Sigma ART 18-35 too. Easily. My favourite current lens is the Helios 44-2 85mm (modern version). This thing is nuts. Bokeh is crazy. Flares are really random. Star shapes and all sorts.

For serious professional photographers who have EF lenses it's a great camera. For video users who also do photography and have EF lenses, it's a great camera if you can justify the expenditure. For video users solely with EF lenses, it's a luxury item and makes sense if you have that kind of money to throw around. For anyone without EF lenses, forget about it. Just move on. Me? I have EF lenses and would like to try it out, for both video and photography

Thanks for sharing Ebrahim. I'm taking a part in this as i'm very interested in the 1DX II - but only if we can get a decent HDR/smooth highlight rolloff log profile for video mode. It would be cool to get: Properly exposed/lit face in daylight and tungsten at native ISO. High dynamic range wide shot with harsh shadows and highlights. If possible.

(-horrible domestic florescent lights) There is definitely a white balance problem caused by a green tint coming from fluorescent lights. (-6400 ISO) Colour is greatly affected at higher ISO's, there isn't as much information compared to a properly lit image at ISO 800. Also I remember CineStyle being rather rubbish on my Canon 60d - the colour was utterly destroyed. Got a few good results. Combine the high ISO, bad lighting and Cinestyle together and the image is near impossible to grade to a professional standard.

Quality is much better from the full size 4k image I didn't know about. Quick 2 minute job in FCPX. Again would need house proper footage and see what it looks like in motion.

Probably missed a trick then! Yes skin is rubbish due to highly compressed jpeg, if I've got a min I'll follow your instructions and give it another whirl.

I had a tiny little go at this - a bit rushed but not too bad. The jpeg doesn't have much information in it but it's not a bad flat image from the 1DC. Would really need to use proper footage. The 1DX II is on my rental to-do list when it's released, so I hope something works! (LOG based).

I'm in agreement of what we've seen so far. I regard BMPCC footage one of the best Images I've ever worked with. The BMMCC looks to have that mojo, whereas the Ursa 4.6k looks very modern - kind of like a "perfect" image rather than motion with soul. That said, these cameras can only be judged once you've had a go yourself.