jonpais

hmmm $750 vs. $4,500.... ?

@Damphousse Those were your very words, man. Take a chill pill.

I sure wouldn’t.

Shot on What alone lists dozens features and shorts shot with the BMPCC, which at one time sold for as little as $500. Shotonwhat If you read my post, you would have seen that I wrote that already. Geez... But $750 for true cinema lenses that compare favorably to the Zeiss CPs is not expensive by any stretch of the imagination.

I’m sure @Andrew Reid and the rest of us could profit from your sage advice.

@BrooklynDan You obviously did not read the post. First of all, the feature does not work with a smartphone. I’m happy you have the budget for Arri wireless follow focus, but my intention was not to say cinema lenses are dead on big productions. This is for those who do not have thousands of dollars for lenses, rails, matte boxes and heavy duty tripods; who don’t have the luxury of several assistants and skilled focus pullers. I wrote this for people who own Panasonic, so please don’t feel threatened. I’m sure you will never see a GH5 on a serious production, because, as you say, it will get destroyed along with the toy lenses. Enjoy your day.

Those are some mad prices! Only $750 for the 85mm T2.2 is a steal. I'd say not taking advantage of these deals is crazy. Time to delete the topic.

The Olympus 45mm f/1.2 PRO. It's a beauty.

Here's a simple focus transition with only two points - one the nearest focus (just to make fuzzy), then my model. Transition speed, Medium. yes, they will breathe.

Sorry, Mark, but as much as I value your contributions, I have to disagree with you here. Hype is extravagant or intensive promotion, often exaggerating its importance or benefits. I'm not seeing that anywhere. BTW, the forums are not exactly free from hype or its opposite either.

Unfortunately (or not), it is not available on the app. I say 'or not' because I've found that my pictures are much sharper when shooting at wide apertures like I do when manually focusing, at least when you must use the camera's own LCD screen. The app can only be used for autofocus. BTW, almost all of the screen grabs I've posted until now have been with the tap to focus feature, which I don't think I'll ever be using again, now that I've seen how much sharper the images are when manually focusing using focus assist and peaking. It's not clickbait at all. Sorry you feel that way. I thought I made it quite clear in my post that this is for controlled situations. I don't know,. but I can't see ever doing more than three pulls in one shot, so I consider it very useful. And it's a feature that few people are using, so the purpose of the topic was to bring it to their attention. If the title helps accomplish that, so much the better. If I'd used this feature sooner, I might very well have never purchased a set of cinema lenses and all the gear that goes along with that. Add to that the extra teleconverter function, and you're potentially looking at thousands of dollars in savings.

@markr041 What hype, Mark? Apple and Atomos announce a new codec and instantly it's labeled as hype.

@sanveer There are no 'focus jumps' when using the focus transition feature: it goes smoothly from one point to the next and focus does not stray once it reaches the designated point. It is also possible to have much longer transition times than any other system out there.

The primary reason for using cinema lenses is for pulling focus. Focus pulls have become a hallmark of the cinematic look. However, cinema lenses can run anywhere from around $1,000 to over $30,000 apiece. And that doesn’t include extra expenditures like rails, matte box, follow focus, a heavy duty tripod, an external monitor, batteries, cables and more. Not only are cinema lenses expensive, but you’ll probably need an assistant or two just to get your gear to the location. In addition, it takes quite a bit of time and experience to learn to pull focus properly. This afternoon, I had a chance to play around with Panasonic’s brilliant focus transition feature along with Olympus’ sensational 45mm f/1.2 PRO lens and was fairly blown away by the results. For those not familiar with the feature, it involves setting as many as three focus points and choosing from among several transition speeds. On the slowest setting, you could probably go to Starbucks, finish a coffee and return to the set and the camera will have just finished pulling focus. It is possible to set the camera on auto and execute the focus pull without any human intervention; alternatively, you can tap on the screen to control the timing between transitions manually. Setting up the shot takes just seconds and is repeatable. When using the feature, there is absolutely no pulsing of focus - once the camera has landed on the focus point, it remains locked there. Of course, cinema lenses have advantages other than just having gears - they are designed to have little breathing, and should have fairly consistent color across a set. They also have T stops rather than f stops for consistent exposure and always have declicked aperture rings. So those are things for a budget filmmaker to consider. But I would think that for narrative or product photography, and in other situations where the filmmaker has absolute control over conditions, Panasonic’s focus transition feature would be a welcome timesaver. Many filmmakers are already realizing the benefits of motorized sliders, and I believe that for many applications, the focus transition feature could be just as revolutionary.

I tried out the focus transition feature this afternoon - it's brilliant!

@sam Do you have a side-by-side comparison? Otherwise, it’s just anecdotal.

?

Up until now, all this motion cadence conversation has been anecdotal. I was hoping to see some real life comparisons, just like we regularly see for rolling shutter artifacts. If it were truly an issue, we'd be hearing reviewers talk about it; manufacturers boasting of their superior motion cadence; we'd see some technical papers published about it; directors would all be mentioning it; websites would be testing for it; prominent filmmakers would certainly have brought it up at the Zacuto shootout; the comments section of mirrorless camera reviews on YT would be overflowing - but the fact remains, none of this has happened. And if you do a Google search, EOSHD is pretty much the only website on the planet that regularly brings it up. Which is why I'm inclined to believe it's the EOSHD server.

Apple should totally stick to cell phones.

I’m hoping to hear Atomos announce they’re working with Panasonic to allow RAW recording from the GH5.

For some reason these discussions always lead back to food. ?

Seems to me that innovations like ProRes RAW certainly show Apple’s continuing commitment to professional filmmakers. But that’s just me.

Was that the point of the Terra 4K clip then? To show how it can look video-ish?

Right, I couldn’t help but noticing that comment myself. But again, I don’t think it’s entirely subjective. It can easily be demonstrated how the footage is lacking, for example: the constant jump cuts, monotonous repetition, purposeless pans of uninteresting buildings, split screen and zooms of the couple, slow motion that adds nothing to the story, the disjointedness and the the dull lighting and grading.

Step sideways perhaps.