maxotics

LOL! Andrew concluded that AVCHD is slightly better than MJPEG because its a new codec, etc. My test bore that out. But I still often shoot MOV just becuase @#$%$$#@#$% I have an 85mm 1.8 for my D600. I went through the same thing. 1.8, then missed focus on what would have been nice shots, then 2.8, then I'm walking out side, put on the 24-85, then 5.6. Lately, I've had no need for full-frame. However, in low light, with fast primes, it makes a difference. http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxotics/sets/72157634891578611/ @etidona. What you say was definitely true a few years ago, The new Sony 4K camcorder will have a 1-inch sensor. LIke you say, there will never be one camera for everything. I generally find that photographers who have to make do with only one camera do better than tech junkies like me. Here's a set that bears that out. Someone gave me an old camera they were throwing out, one of the FIRST digital Canon rebels. I took these shots at an event. I look at this to remind myself about what Skip says ;) http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxotics/sets/72157628003611229/

Andrew do you think you could have shot the same quality, as seen on Vimeo of course, with a GH3 or BMPCC in that video. What effect did you get with the 4K camera, that we could see in the Vimeo clip, that you could not get with your other equipment?

I couldn't agree more, Skip. I was trying to point out that Panasonic, or MFT cameras, are fighting an uphill marketing battle. When they came out there was hope they would reach full-frame quality in low-light, etc. Right or wrong, I get the sense more photographers want full-frame, whether they can shoot or not is another question. When the GH2 came out, it appealed to both photographers and videographers because it did each one reasonably well. Since then, high-end photographic camera users are moving away from MFT, which makes the GH4 less desirable for photos (again, not saying you can't take great photos with it). So that leaves the GH4 having to fight better in the video space. I have no idea how it will play out. As Andrew pointed out, the stills from the 4K cameras are as good as most cameras (but not full-frames in special circumstances). I do think it is possible 4K camcorders could make a resurgence and be preferable to a GH4. If the Sony 4K downsampled gave me more of a Blackmagic look, I'd want that camcorder convenience. Hand-held, nothing beats a camcorder like nothing beats a minivan if you have kids ;) Or let me say, I know people who shoot video on DV tapes that run circles around those professoinals shooting 4K ;)

When Sony wanted to get the high-end of the DV market they came out with the VX1000, which was so loaded with features it was desirable for years. I believe the same might happen with 4K. I think you're thinking of this, Skip http://www.amazon.com/Sony-FDR-AX100-Video-Camera-3-5-Inch/dp/B00HNJWVIA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1393989795&sr=8-3&keywords=sony+ax10 When DSLR video became hot camcorders could not take decent still. That camcorder will take as good stills as the RX10, probably. If I'm running the AV department of a school I would buy that Sony camera for 4K, not the GH4. Anyway, interesting times, huh! I doubt the stills performance of the GH4 will be better than the GH3. Does it matter? The industry can't even get APS-C to match full-frame sensors. MFT for stills? Certainly, okay if that's your only camera. Most serious photographers end up with full-frame and if not, they slum it with APS-C. MFT?

Yes, that's correct, the 6D is full-frame and the T3i APS-C. I didn't mean to imply moire isn't a problem, only that in many cases it can be worked around. I can see how a studio, with many hard edges and hard lighting would be a nightmare. If that's the kind of shooting you're going to do it seems to me you'd be better off with a GM1/GX7/GH3/G6 (smaller MFT sensor). Andy shoots a lot of music videos, and has access to RAW video, so that probably figures into his equipment choice. You could still use the 6D for stuff where you need really shallow DOF, but otherwise, like you say, it works against you. The only other fix is to rough up your image in post with film-grain and blurring.

Oh yeah, and somehow I kept paying $60 for new version. Starting with 11 or 12 Vega improved dramatically. It is very stable now. I have Vegas Pro (which B&H Photo gave for free with, ironically, the BMPCC!). I signed up for Adobe cloud and it was hard to decide between the $30/month and $10/month photo only. I went with the latter. I know what I need to do, all this money! :( It doesn't look like Sony is going to put in ProRes any time soon. Although it is stable, TIFFs make it slow. Or maybe I'll just learn Resolve, it gets better and better and I don't need complex stuff. But I did like how quickly I could add audio and sub-titles with Vegas, etc. Thanks for your help! Okay, just bit the bullet and modified one of my VBS programs that will batch create DNxHD files from ProRes. Here is the syntax. If anyone has better, or for ffmpeg, please let me know. ffmbc.exe -i BMPCC_1_2014-03-02_0319_C0000.mov -vcodec dnxhd -b 185M -strict experimental F:Files2014_RawFootage20140302DNxHDBMPCC_1_2014-03-02_0319_C0000.mov In Vegas a little increase in saturation and offset, under color correction, makes for very nice video, though not fancy graded ;)

I did a lot of experimentation with debayering algos on ML RAW on the EOS-M, which has a lot of line-skipping, therefore moire, in non-crop mode. Nothing fixed it, but AMaZE was definitely the best. You're so right JCS about the workflow. Unfortunately, you get bit in the butt no matter where you turn. Even though i've gotten the hang of Resolve enough to basic-grade output my clips to anything, I'd like to just shoot some ProRes on my BMPCC and edit in Vegas Studio 12 Pro. But I can't. For some reason, ProRes doesn't view in my Vegas 64bit because, I think, there are no 64bit Apple Windows drivers for Proress 422 HQ. I don't know. Like you say, it's all in the workflow! :)

As soon as you talk "compression", "Blackmagic and ML", you're not in Kansas anymore ;) Anyway, for the kind of consumers I think you're talking about Sony wins hands down.

It was probably about 10 years ago now when I met Brick Mason at a party (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0556624/) I asked him what his most influential films were (at the time). One of them was "Fast Runner" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285441/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 It was just leaving the 10 theaters it had been playing in, so I got it on VHS?/DVD. Started watching it. Everyone speaks Inuit so was sub-titled. Was shot on the ice with video camera (not HD). Fifteen minutes in I figured he was having a joke on me. All the names seemed the same. I couldn't tell the characters apart. It looked like an NYU student film. Around minute 16, I entered the filmmaker's world and was speechless when it ended. For all those people here who think content is kind, and technology is unimportant, THIS IS YOUR FILM. I rank this film (video) as one of the best I've ever seen. It was made on a shoe-string (gov't grant budget). I now realize that what Brick loved about this film (as a story-boardist and artist) is that it is PURE story and film-composition. This is not a film that is great because of what it did with video tech, it is great period. If it was shot on Arri today it would not be better by an inch or an ounce.

I know you're just joking, but moire is caused by very sharp (focused) lines moving between pixels in such a way that the right-hand pixel doesn't know what the left-hand pixel is doing ;) When I first started shooting RAW I never noticed moire--because I was shooting people. I don't always want very shallow DOF, but I don't want the background in focus either (or I might as well keep shooting video with a video camera from the 90s!). I start to see moire when I'm testing cameras or comparing them because I usually end up shooting buildings or other exteriors, or even couches, full of patterns. Moire and rolling-shutter (jello) are effects that are certainly annoying, but are generally rare and unnoticed by the viewer if the film-maker is careful. The bottom line is that moire is not a specific problem of Magic Lantern (though Magic Lantern, when shot on a camera with line skipping, like the 50D, or the Ti3, etc, will produce more of it). Even so, the benefits of more tonality and color nuance are worth it for most people--definitely for me.

There is a lot of moire with the BMPCC, or any RAW cameras. Just in case you don't know, moire is also a naturally occurring phenomenon; that is, our brains/eyes produce it when the detail of lines doesn't fully resolve or blur. Most of the moire in Canon cameras is from line-skipping. You can reduce it by shooting in crop-mode, or by using a filter as Julian pointed out (which just blurs the image just enough to reduce moire without degrading the sharpness--not an easy thing to do). I know a guy who shoots ML RAW on a 50D and does not shoot crop-mode. He says he just makes sure he doesn't shoot in a way that creates moire. I've noticed that I see moire when I take "test" shots of building, say, where the siding is in focus. things like that. But when you're shooting people and you have the background a little bit blurred, moire is not noticeable. IN other words, moire occurs more in test shots, than in what you'd want to shoot. That's my current feeling about it. I even see it on TV, but I have to look for it.

"When you're a hammer you treat everything as a nail." That's the way I look at every new H.264 camera. The only difference I've seen in Vasiley's GH hacks and this HDMI capture stuff is the reduction of motion artifacts generated by the video compression. I've done tests myself, could never see a difference. So I step back and ask myself, 'what artifacts ever bothered me in my videos?' The only time macro-blocking annoys me is when I'm watching a video on Amazon, which I paid for, and it slows down to a lesser compression and I see it :) Everyone has their aesthetic. I have not noticed any H.264 that I thought much better than another camera's H.264 in a similar price range. Of course, there are DOF differences. The Panny cameras are a pleasure to use (but that is ergonomics, not what I see on the screen). I could see the differences in Matt's video above, but I think more a DOF difference between cameras. I do see better color saturation in APS-C cameras vs MFT, but the larger sensors also create worse moire (because of the line skipping). That's mostly a physics problem. Anyway, the difference isn't big enough that it would stop me from filming my Citizen Cane :) Even H.264 with all I-frames and a 4:4:2 color space is not that much difference from the stock video I get out of my used GF3 body. Many people, like Skip, get fantastic results from H.264. Getting that quality has to do with photographic skill to me, however. Just my conclusion so far. There are two major video technologies. 1. ) Compressed video in an 8-bit channel color space 2. ) RAW sensor-data sourced video There is no in-between. If there was Panasonic would be offering RAW. Why aren't they? The cameras create RAW images in photo mode? Why not just string 24 of them along every second? Why do 4K instead? If you find the honest answer to that question you will see, again, there is no in-between. I strongly urge everyone to get their hands on a RAW based camera, Blackmagic, or Magic Lantern. Shoot a couple of clips. Ezra Pound said music criticism was pointless because 10,000 pages couldn't describe the first 4 notes of Beethoven's 5th. Shoot some RAW. Shoot some H.264. Pick which works best for your aesthetic.

Hi Derek, I haven't seen any comparison videos of external recorders making consumer DSLRs significantly better. If there are any, can you point the way? I've always been curious how they stay in business.

I don't get these external recorders. I haven't seen any video comparison where the HDMI out looked better than the internal CODEC. From what I understand, the HDMI out is essentially after video compression. In dynamic range, there is no comparison between the video of my Blackmagic Cinema Camera compared to my D600. Obviously, if you don't have $1,000 lying around, the video out of the Nikon cameras seems very good to me. Whatever problems aside, I like the colors and DOF of the Nikon videos shown in this thread (though I would prefer the G6 for ergonomic/video shooting simplicity). Or maybe I'm saying, if you had the money for an external recorder why not buy a BMPCC and a $15 Nikon to MFT mount adapter?

I liked the story too, by the way. If it wasn't a good story it wouldn't have been distracting to me ;) This whole thing reminds me to spend more time reading people's posts and considering more carefully what I have to say. We're all good now I think. I looked at Skip's photo sites. Very impressive stuff!

Skiphunt, I understand, it's all about you.

No one wants to be criticized. Getting better, however, is not pain-free. I was only pointing out that your narration was distracting, to me. If you are posting a video about the camera, why not just narrate what you were going through while shooting it? "I tried this exposure. .. I forgot to change ISO here so... etc." That would have been more helpful, if CAMERA TESTING is what you're doing. Yes, I could have turned the sound down, but I would have felt rude (even though you wouldn't know. Some people,as you pointed out, liked the narration. Did I argue with them? We're all here to support each other. But I don't want to help anyone who thinks they know more than me and can learn nothing themselves ;) Again, I enjoyed your video. Thanks for posting!

Looks like a re-incarnation of the Sanyo Xacti. Except they added a trigger for those filmmakers not in Philly ;) I had one of the first ones. Neat little cameras and very cheap. http://us.sanyo.com/Cameras-Camcorders-Previous-Models

I saw that in a recent build of Magic Lantern! Reads... "Alternate ISO between frames. Flickers while recording" This feature requires manual ISO Andrew?

Matt, remember to bring a bowl of colorful fruits to place on the ledge next time ;)

Absolutely, they won't sell into that most minuscule of markets ;) However, most camera companies don't make money, and succeed, by making something technically difficult obtainable, but easy and affordable. We want to keep an open mind here, right? Right now, phones are killing all kinds of cameras, still and video. In parallel, Instagram has made "rough, colorful and contrasty" images desirable, over sharp, saturated and flat imaging. One could make a case, and I think most of my friends would, that consumer photography and video is dead (from a growth perspective), relegated back to the aficionados. As I mentioned, a while back, I finally got a BMPCC because of the stills you posted. I'm still wondering if it's better to get the right expression of someone, in lower res, than perfect image and bad timing. Is is possible (and again, I'm just thinking out loud) that a consumer may choose a 4K camcorder because it provides broadcast looking video AND "photos" at a size they respect as still-quality? The readers of EOSHD are not the drivers of consumer photography and video, we are in the backseat. So where the consumer goes, we're taken. The history strongly suggests that the consumer is not as easy to figure out as one would think ;)

Couldn't agree more. I was looking at a video last night comparing 4K to 1080p, was very impressive. That video makes the upcoming AX100 very interesting. Who knows, maybe a resurgence in camcorders will be the ones to threaten DSLR video ! (Though with the BMPCC, for me, DSLR video is already dead)

Skiphunt, very nice video! Sorry to sound critical, the narration sounded very interesting, but didn't match the footage for me. Quite the opposite, it was distracting. I would have rather heard you babbling on, "Look at those dogs. Ah, the dogs life. Look at the guy on the windsurfer, ah, the windsurfer's life..." :) Another way of putting it, what are these colors RED BLUE GREEN

Yes, seems like what Andrew is saying too. Buying the 5D3 for stock video shooting is a waste of money. To answer another comment, I shot an event and had Magic Lantern on a camera and the screen went crazy. It could have fixed it in 2 minutes if I have 2 minutes. Events give no time to think. It's hard enough to get the shot you want when you know what's coming hours in advance. That's one thing I love about Panasonic's cameras. I had a G5 (lowly camera, but still) and they said cameras weren't allowed. It was more of a legal bullshit thing and since it was my niece I was going to bend the rules a bit. I was able to do with the G5, IN THE DARK, and I barely knew the camera. It worked really well. NO WAY I would have gotten usable footage from the 5D3 (for starters, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb). A full-frame sensor camera like the 5D3 is maximized for photography. For VIDEO, I don't feel they have the same low-light benefits as smaller sensor cameras, though Andrew would know better than me. You don't want to forget that for video, DSLRs in general, are a pain in the ass. But if you need a DSLR, then as Matt said, they why not go for the latest in the consumer line because, all things considered, they give the best bang for the buck.

Recognizing there are many reasons why not to mix brands, you can get Nikon D600s for a song on Craigslist. It's a better camera than the 5Dii and 6D. Very rugged camera. If there is an oil problem, Nikon will replace the shutter and it becomes a D610. Nikon can use any Nikon glass. As for video RAW, a Blackmagic Cinema camera with an OIS lens is rock-solid in my experience. VERY easy to use. As much as I love Magic Lantern, it isn't developed for professional/event use IMHO.