Michael Ma

I have the Pilotfly H1+. If you are a run and gun one camera one lens guy, this thing is perfect. But prepare to spend hours tweaking it to perfection. Not only do you have to tweak for smooth motion w/o vibration, you also have to calibrate it for battery life. But once you get it tuned, you really can just hit the trigger and capture amazing video. The organic camera movements are what I like about it the most. Walking, panning, still etc. The battery life however, is abysmal. About 1.5 hours if you've calibrated it optimally. Badly calibrated (too much unnecssary power to any of the motors), you can zap the battery in about 15 minutes. Where this power goes is beyond me. A well tuned CameTV Single can run for 10 hours. The H1+ for 1.5 hours. Even a perfectly balanced and calibrated H1+ will die in 1.5 hours where the motors are not doing anything. The external battery attachment to the base sold for $65 is actually an amazing addon because now you can shoot for 7-9 hours no problem. All day without worry. But keep in mind while the H1+ looks like a well crafted professional piece of electronics, the battery attachment's make and quality is insanely poor. About the quality of imitation tupperware that you get at a dollar store. But again, the batteries inside of it is what counts. Switching lenses is a hassle for every time. But as long as you got the recipe down, you can do it on your smartphone, and it's not too bad. But don't even think about trying to switch lenses on set if you don't already have the perfect set of numbers written on a notebook. Change bodies on shooting day? That's crazy talk unless you've practiced switching bodies like how a soldier practices how to disassemble/reassemble his rifle. Then you can balance it and change the PID settings and calibration under 5-10 minutes. Another thing about the H1+ is that it uses LiPo batteries. The battery inside the H1+ is LiPo. The batteries inside the external battery attachment, LiPo. The alternate external battery solution they also sell is LiPo. LiPo batteries are extremely high maintenance. If you are going to buy a H1+ you should become an expert on the maintenance of LiPo batteries. The fact that Pilotfly doesn't tell you to do this is a bit irresponsible. my guess is because Pilotfly comes from the hobby R/C business and they just kind assume people know how to take care of LiPo batteries. There are probably dozens to maybe even hundreds of LiPo battery fire videos on YouTube. In hindsight, should I have bought the CameTV Single? For the battery life, the ease of changing lenses, bodies, I think this was the CameTV Single would have been a better purchase. Reading about so many people with CameTV Single's battery issues, although I'm sure a handful of people are indeed experiencing battery issues, I believe most of this has to do with the lack of balance, lack of knowledge about calibration. People have it so poorly balanced that the motors are working overtime, and on top of that, they probably are told to not worry touch the PID settings which leads to people not really knowing how to troubleshoot their issues effectively. It's no surprise the battery dies really quickly for some people. Becoming an expert at the H1+ makes me believe I can rock the CameTV Single for 10 hours on a single charge without battery issues. But without becoming an expert in 3-axis gimble calibration and Basecam SimpleBGC, I don't think I'd know how to troubleshoot a CameTV Single if I bought that first because I would think my battery is defective.

There is a Z1 Smooth for ~$200 for large smartphones and GoPro. Would it support the RX100? Probably not. I have a Pilotfly H1+, but after looking at some tests, I'm looking forward to buying the Z1 Smooth C for my large smartphone and GoPro. The camera movements look as organic as my Pilotfly H1+. although I have yet to get it so I'll let you know. They make one for the GoPro mount.

Here's a question. How will the GH5 remain competitive? Advantages: Better battery Better UI Better articulating screen Must haves: Significantly better low light performance than the GH4. ISO12800 has to be as clean as A7RII ISO51200. 120p FHD I'd pay $1100 for it. $1200 would be pushing it now that the a6300 is out, unless I was heavily invested into the mft lenses already I'd be willing to pay a bit more. And maybe a bit more for ProRes. I really doubt that we'd see that though.

Well, one more thing to point out. No fully articulating screen. It is so useful on the Panasonics. Why they have to make this so hard.

Ah no ibis. This camera doesn't have everything. But to be honest, it will never replace a need for a gimbal. I highly recommend anyone to get one. Words like Ibis or rolling shutter will never be a concern after that.

FHD at 120fps. S-Log3 100mbit Phase detect AF 4K No full frame.but it was never on my list of must haves. And an insane price! Cheaper than the GH4 It has S-Log2 and S-Log3, and at least in the dpreview article the 14-stops were stated for video.

Great video Andrew. You actually incorporated the Osmo bounce and added to the energy of the video. In other applications though, I really think DJI unnecessarily put effort into trying to smooth out the vertical axis by playing with the pitch. It creates like a bouncy effect that's not organic making the walking motion looking unnatural. I always felt walking with 3-axis gimbals looked fine because it gave you a sense of walking. Without another (4th) axis to stabilize the vertical, it would never look like you were on a slider anyway. But trying to smooth it out the bumps when you're walking to make it a smoother up and down motion was a bad idea by DJI. With that said, in the right hands, you have demonstrated you can use anything and make it a plus. Edit: After a second thought, I think the Osmo bounce may be more prevalent than bounce from a traditional gimbal due to its light weight, not pitch accommodations. If that was the case, DJI should have put at least 4x the battery to add to the weight. It would kill 2 large birds with one stone.

So many things are looking up for Samsung. I really wonder what they really think about all this. Best camera of the year in many categories. Lots of praise and positive reviews. Recognition that they can hang with the best of them. Are the cameras selling more though? I guess that's the important question.

Just for fun, I'm gonna guess he's keeping the: A7S II because it's the hottest camera right now and it is the leader in low light capabilities. GH4 because of its reliability and how it has become a standard in the industry. NX1 because you never know what update may come that changes the game 5D3 because of Canon lenses and EOSHD heritage.

I usually see this when the color of the sky starts clipping to white. One of the color channels clips and the color becomes inaccurate and posterizes, until eventually all channels clip and it turns to white. Lower the exposure, and/or shoot in S Log2.

I've been thinking of getting a DJI Osmo. But the sample footages from the early reviews are really not convincing. What I really don't like is the speed of the pan. It's way too abrupt and it seems like even a small adjustment is made too abruptly. In some clips I've seen, it seems to stutter. I've been comparing it to the footage off my Pilotfly H1+, and the Osmo's movements doesn't feel organic. The Pilotfly on the other hand, you'd swear an experienced camera man has the camera on a shoulder mount even if an unexperienced person is holding it. All can be addressed with a firmware update and probably can be improved after tweaking settings....but that's an art in itself, and it should come tuned to the best of it's ability out of the box and it seems far from that.

Intentionally back focused for 60's level of sharpness. Interesting. I hope these colors are just from a filter not the result of a sensor.

Have you guys been working with the Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC2? I haven't heard much talk about it but I think it deserves some attention for people who may have missed the release notes. Just found it myself, but it literally has changed my entire workflow overnight. My old workflow used to be Levels, RGB Curves, and maybe either Filmconvert, Colorista II, or a LUT. But....I find none of that necessary anymore with Lumetri Color. Everything corrects and grades so easily like you're editing a frame in Adobe Camera Raw. Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Saturation....all the sliders are there. And surprisingly, it seems to work very well with 8 bit frames. It knows of S Log2, S Log 3, etc. The rgb curves are incorporated into the filter. It also has tools with Color Wheels, LUTs, Vignettes. And it renders fast. One more thing. Not sure when it appeared but the Lumetri Scopes Window has a live histogram that I've always been wanting and needing.

I'd say contact the manufacturer and they should send it to you pretty reliably. At least that was my experience when I did the exact same thing with the Pilotfly H1+ when I first got it. It's a really common mistake people make. You follow along on some website or video stating you should start with all the settings zero'd out. You push update, and yep, it's all gone.

AMIRA....interesting.

I think that's what people are doing with the A7S as well. They are shifting the histogram to the right since the darker group of pixels are more likely to be banded together during compression.

Looks fantastic. I was doubting the practicality of v log because all the images thus far seemed like there was too much noise to deal with, but it looks like with the right settings and lighting situations, it's fantastic.

Totally agree. Conceptually, it's good, but I've placed my bets before on ideas before, not the actual product, and it always didn't end well. What they are showing is only the best usage case. The best camera for this application is something that can shoot 4K at 60p at super wide. That camera doesn't exist yet. GoPro Hero 4 Black does 2.7K at 60p. Maybe the new Sony sensors can do as much as the GoPro ~2.7K at 60p. Pretty sure nothing does 4K at 60p. Also, with the higher frame rate and resolution, all that high bitrate is going towards something else other than image quality. You can see the compromise in the details in the samples. Also, I'm still not sold on the fast processing. Sure it can crop and stabilize at that speed with an average computer. But keep in mind you are still left with frames you probably shot at 1/120 shutter. So you're gotta need to add motion blur and maybe even convert it to 24p. This all adds significant processing to your workflow. Lastly, we're completely ignoring the lens and composition in respect to DOF. We're going to shoot extra wide just to stabilize later meaning if we want any background blur, it's just going to be difficult to find the lens that capable. All this is addressed by the gimbal. But I'll be happy if I'm proven wrong.

In my opinion it is pretty limited in use. You can't use this if you want to shoot 24p with motion blur. Which is pretty much what most people want to shoot in. Also, the processing this requires is gonna be a pretty heavy workload, even though it doesn't have to analyze the video. it's still working with 4K frames. With a gimbal, it is stabilized out of the box. Last, if you want native 4K this is not the solution either. Additionally, it is still not a product you can buy today. Is the 3-axis gimbal dead? I strongly disagree. This is not a replacement for a gimbal. It's just an improvement for unplanned shooting day with just a camera and nothing else. Unless you prefer to shoot 30p or 60p at 1/60 or 1/120 shutter, your footage will be compromised.

I might get some heat for this but I am pretty sure some of their samples are faked. The kickstarter video, you can see some before and after videos (the girl running) are shot with 2 different cameras at a slight different angle. Also, if you've ever warp stabilized really shaky video, you get some artifacts due to blur from camera shake and rolling shutter. You just can't stabilize the frames with that level of crispness if you don't have crisp frames to begin with. Undoubtedly, if they have a real product, it will be of some use, but they are making it seem like you can replicate what a 3-axis gimbal can do with this little device and software. My guess is, it will be slightly better than warp stabilizer, with the same artifacts.

Definitely room for adobe here to improve the way people want to use it. I like many, know how to do my best work with Adobe Camera RAW, can only do minor adjustments with RGB curves and Levels. Would love ACR filter optimized to work in Premiere Pro.

I wished exporting video in photoshop was a bit more optimized. I usually find that trying to color grade in photoshop directly takes forever to encode, although it's the most direct and straightforward to color grade a video with photoshop. LUTs are good if you are working with the same lighting and camera/color profile.

I wonder if we'll have a Log profile with 12-14 stops and LUT on a smartphone...who's gonna do it first? Apple, Samsung....Sony? My Galaxy Note 4 does 4K, 24p at 50Mbits/sec with the OpenCamera app. The Exynos variant (not common) even does 4K with HDR enabled and looks pretty amazing. Just needs a few more stops of dynamic range.

Just updated today with a new update. I guess they meant, next, next update. Haha. Doesn't work yet.

It still has a Cuda requirement. I guess it's Premiere until I upgrade my hardware in ~3 years.