fuzzynormal

Best footage I ever shot in my life was on a XH-A1. It was the situation and lighting, not the camera. Could it have been better with a new 4K-whatever-camera? Sure! But only marginally so.

Here's the video if anyone wants to learn about hawks and the local people here to track 'em. Also, you can play guess the camera:

Same. On this particular project I found myself reaching for it more than the GH5. Not for the bird shots as that really required good slow-mo, but for the people shots? Looked awesome. It pancakes the highlights though; just loses details that LUMIX cameras hold onto. Other than that, pretty great for a $300 camera.

Oh god. That thing. When online people complain about lousy footage with the cliche "was that shot on a potato"? They're probably talking about the D90's codec.

I'm of a more ramshackle mentality, but even my loosey-goosey philosophies hit a limit. fyi, this particular doc was about people that are trying to help conserve raptor migration through SoCal. So, lots of bird shots. Which we don't really do, nor have done. The whole thing became kind of a production experiment. We were only answering to ourselves so we could take risks like that. The scope of the project kept changing, but the finances never did. There was very little money in our pockets, and what we did have we needed to save for travel. And being a seriously-non-affluent-filmmaker, it basically came down to a make-do-as-we-can process. Our personal finances, as well as the various situations of the shoot, were all over the place. We were borrowing/renting lenses and gear in a very haphazard way. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it did not. Meanwhile, the stuff we had in our own collection was inferior. For instance we used a POS Vintage Photax 500mm w/2x extender for an entire season to get a lot of the BIF shots. That was an insanely unfortunate thing to do, but it's what we could afford to have on hand. The biggest bitch was not having a real tripod. We truly wished we had friends/colleagues that could have let us use a pro Sacthler or Miller. More than willing to carry some sort of hefty rig into the wild if it would've allowed smooth shots when filming at a +2000mm FF equiv. That FOV reach is f'in hard to control. As a side note, it was pretty wild running around with birders carrying equipment that was so expensive and professional while us "filmmakers" were often using, basically, consumer toys to grab video. At the end of the day, the images are passable by a certain standard, but when you pixel peep you can tell it's all held together with spit, bubblegum, hopes, and prayers. "f8 and be there" was the mantra we had to talk ourselves into and accept. "The best camera is the one you got." ...That sort of thing.

GH5 GH4 EM10iii OM-1 5Dii XPRO2 XT-5 P1100 DSC-RX10 iPhone15 iPhone12 Xiaomi12 Ultra DJI Mavic Pro GoPro Hero All those different cameras were used to make our latest indy documentary on-and-off over the last 3 years. We finally finished post-production (for real this time) last month. Not to mention all the different ridiculous vintage lenses and modern lenses employed along the way. So that happened. My advice? Yeah, don't use so many cameras...and then try to make all that cohere somehow with no legitimate color grading skills... Surprisingly, I found the EM10iii footage the most pleasant looking color-wise when exposed correctly.

Just got one in San Diego for $300'ish, so always keep looking, you never know what'll pop up.

I'll return to Lubezki's work. Feeling the same vibes. The stuff he does with Cuarón, and overall in general I guess, really nurture the deep dof. Here's a film he shot in my back yard. I can literally see the location from my office -- which I still get a kick out of being able to 'name-drop' As an indy documentarian, I gotta say, I can't really get completely behind this notion, but I do think I know what you're getting at and why useage-context with a camera is important. I just came off a project where the cinematographer was leaving an insane amount of shots and potential in the field. Why? He was trying to wield a bunch of large production shit on an full-fledged ARRI set up rather than just shooting good extensive coverage with a small simple rig. Yes, sometimes what he got looks great. But, trust me, what he missed (and missed often) had better potential. You can chalk some of it to him not being that spry anymore ... which to me would demand you go light and small to mitigate that, but he is definitely a boy-with-his-toys kind of guy rather than a remarkable creative. Wants to have the best most powerful super car, even if he can't drive it, y'know? Anyway, IQ superior? Yes. Practicality? Debatable. Which, coincidentally, practicality is the DP's argument for the GH7 and a 12mm lens on this Magellan movie. I kind of like the 'too-much-grain' treatment, but, yeah, it's a choice. Damn. I'm rambling. Too much wine tonight.

Thankfully, we're so far beyond the camera being the gatekeeper to accomplishing beautiful cinema. There's no real technical limitation affecting the cinema we see here. I've always been partial to portrait focal lengths because of what they take away from an image, but it's great to see more creative cinematographers shooting wide. Lubezki pretty much hangs out there most of the time.

Here's my dumb-ass-getting-older-by-the-second-opinion: In an era where some people are starting to look back at 80's and 90's films while saying, "Why don't movies look as good as that anymore"? I'm not eager to jump into the high-resolution-hyper-DR-fray. The best looking film I ever made was in 1080p on consumer cameras before I really was trying to do a hell of a lot with color grading. There's GOT to be a push back at intense IQ realism in cinema sooner or later, right? Right? Ah, wtf do I know?

If it wasn't before, there's certainly a lot of those in the Billionaire class that have pivoted to literally advocating for such, are on record wanting democracy to end, and using these tools now. Anyway, fwiw, I'm kind of amazed this niche that you've carved with internet 1.0 is still active. I guess some of us are old enough for that digital nostalgia.

Add "Creation Date" to your project's MetaData Display Tabs. Now, if you're wanting your video clips to be icons and also sorted this way, you can toggle to list view, sort 'em, then toggle back to icon view. They should then be in your desired order at that point. FWIW, it's not a bad idea to dig into the meta stuff in premier's metadata window; pretty granular. You can set 'dynamic' values on clips for all sorts of useful organization.

Ha! Ans it's said one is supposed to get more conservative as they get older. For me, I just can't shake capital being the vehicle for fascism. Souped up and hot-rodded to fly down the drag strip. And, yeah, since pseudo-capitalism is now global and we're on the verge on climate collapse? Woo boy. Buckle up. Yup, sure is hard not to be conspiratorial about it all. As someone once said, have a nice day "you fucking dumbasses" 😉

There's so many different levels and needs in motion picture production, no doubt. Now, it's a debate whether I'd be considered a professional or not, but I am scrapping by making a living at it. Somehow. Still, I'm stubborn about shooting my films with manual focus. The inherent flaws and mistakes the practice of manual focusing creates? I value the humanity in it. I actually like the look of a real camera person focus hunting. It's a love-hate relationship for sure, but, yeah, I just refuse to stop using it.

Yeah, lucky. Local seller. Pick up only. I was looking to buy any old LUMIX and this one popped up. Dang thing is pristine too.