fuzzynormal

Whenever I want super thin DOF or low-light ability, I put a Canon FD f1.2 55mm w/a speedbooster on my M43's. I've always found it a pleasing glass combo. The image is not perfect --and that's fine as far as I'm concerned. It does offer character. I also use Oly's 12-40 2.8 a lot. When I want sharp, contrasty, and clean, that's the lens I go to. Is it "special"? Eh, maybe, depends on one's POV. You're not going to see the same shallow DOF on that glass, but that's not nessecarily a bad thing either. But basically, I'm a big fan of good older lenses. If you like newer Canon lenses and the 35L II, why not get a metabones speedbooster adapter, buy another 35L II used, and keep using it? Or, rent something like the Panasonic LUMIX G Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 ASPH Power OIS Lens and see how that grabs you. I'm curious of that myself and will probably give it a try this month.

Don't forget, the moire. That's still there too. Yeah, all the issues of my EM5II, 'cept the new Oly shoots 4K. Weird thing is, even with all those flaws on my EM5II, I still use that camera the most; learned to work with the video limitations. Luckily, I've found the pre-amps to be decent enough and acceptable when combined with a sennheiser ew100 wireless kit. I think I'll be in the market for the EM1MII a few months down the road as my next doc starts...if/when the price drops. Not because it's the best, but because Olympus models seem to appeal to me for ergos. If the IQ was wildly inferior I wouldn't consider it, but I do find the image acceptable. And that IBIS is crazy. So we'll see. Oly or Pany at this point.

Well, in my case that's true as well...although we eventually got basic cable when I was in high school. My mom kept the household at a temperature that rivaled the refrigerator. Maybe that was her plan. Save money on heating and keep the meat chilled simultaneously. I wish I could use this excuse for my lack of youthful companionship. I had more challenges than a landline could affect.

Yeah, I'm of an age that knows a history without the information super highway mobile World Wide Web, so I had a life untethered. Maybe I romanticize that nostalgia a bit, but, among other things, I do know what it was like to have a conversation with friends about stuff before an easy answer was in everyone's pocket.

Not alone. It's my favorite procrastination tool, among other cons. Feel like it often diminishes my quality of life rather than enhances it.

Of course, the "chip on the shoulder" is the exact reason why this place has more authenticity than others and feels more real. Its why the articles that do appear actually are entertaining and don't feel like slogging through some PR brochure. Its why the forum has some juice behind it. Its not self censored for safe or broad corporate appeal. I, for one, appreciate that, and the culture it allows, if nothing else.

Or get a M43 native lens. Or, better yet, just shoot with a fast prime? Lots of folks seem to think that a variable is the only way to go with video shooting. However, there's a quality that leans "cinematic" when the focal length stay consistent through a shoot/footage. On a lot of my work I often favor one lens and that's it. Something around a 50mm FF equivalent would be perfect for weddings. Not too long, not too short. Great for shallow DOF. Of course, that's not the advice you're interested in! Good luck, regardless.

As you know, you have to manually set IBIS to the focal length for "dumb" adapters. The IBIS will work give or take a few mm, so you have a bit of a mm "window" to work with, but not a lot. It gets wobbly the farther from the accurate mm tandem-setting. That said, setting your focal length and then manually adjusting the IBIS to match take about 3-5 seconds, so you can always just do that.

I had to make a DCP a few months back in a rush, so I just hired out the service here: cinsend.com. Uploaded my film and they created and distributed as needed. You have the time to test a DCP build, so suggest to have a DIY go at it. Always good to learn those things.

I've never really re-visited his blog much because of this. Valuable info there, just wasn't really attracted to the style or content.

My guess is: Not a chance.

On second viewing, looks more like a filthy sensor.

Considering the guy can't clean his lens, or shoot two test shots at the same f-stop, not sure how much I particularly want to trust his results or how he's applying the color grade. That said, it makes sense to get banding from 8-bit log.

"Like I say, I have loved my time writing EOSHD but I am thinking I might soon stop. What has tainted it has been the sheer snobbery of some of that pro-video industry. The poor attitude so many pro videographers in particular seem to have towards newcomers and enthusiasts and artists." For what it's worth, yours is the only website that feels authentic. We all know the internet is now just a brown stream of corporate content, so to have a place where things are real is welcome. Enthusiast used to have places to go in the past untainted by monied nonsense. Through a confluence of timing, ambition, and opportunity, and attitude, yours is a place that's remained "clean" from all of the corporate PR clutter. No small feat in this modern life. I'd suggest that if you decide to bow out as a guy writing content, maybe become the creative director --and then bring on board a select like-minded-few that might be willing to provide the same ethos that makes this place so special. Or curate the more interesting organic bubblings that arise from the forum and turn those into front-page blog entries featuring input from the main players of the thread. As for crusty snobby "pros" that bitch about people with "toys" that "don't know the first thing about making a film"... well, that sort of curmudgeon is a scared little snowflake because they rest their ego on the tech, which is always getting easier to use and better. Not exactly the best foundation in the digital world. There's enough of them to make a blizzard sometimes, but ultimately snow melts, doesn't it?

After living on Windows 10 for the past 7 months, I'm gonna return to OSX... with this caveat: it'll be on a home built hackintosh. Now, of course, you're looking for a laptop, but if you ever want the best of both worlds, don't forget that there's always options.

Yes. I'm writing this while procrastinating on a low-end-corporate-edit currently open in Premiere that has exactly that: GX85 and X-pro2. I like the x-pro2, but I don't like that it makes me color grade "backwards" from what I'm used to doing. I have to lift the blacks and bring down the whites. With my other cameras, it's the opposite. Not a big deal. Let's say I "push" up the x-pro footage and "pull" down the gx85 footage. This doesn't even take into account the vast differences of lenses used on either camera. The X-Pro2 was the Fuji f1.4-35mm and the f4-10-20mm. The GX85 was an old Canon FD f1.2-55mm on a speedbooster. And then also some other location shots done with the GX85 and an old Nikon f1.4-50mm on a speedbooster. Honestly, that's just a lot of variable. I would never really get this stuff to match perfectly, but I'm making the footage harmonize, not necessarily be "perfect." I'm not a perfectionist. I mean, I know what shots come from what cameras and I personally can see the nuances. But that's me. The client can't make the distinction, so therefore it's all close enough, for whatever that's worth.

I have an x-pro2 and the gx85. Yes, there's more DR with the Fuji. I don't view it as being a lot of DR difference, but it's there. Good thing too because the baked in color effects of the x-pro need a little extra grading push to align them with other camera footage. It is fascinating to pull out so much detail in highlights and blacks from the x-pro2's clips. Not exactly sure why Fuji buries that stuff in the color space they're using...

I use Vimeo Pro. VOD. Any title you put on the service can have "bonus features". These bonus videos could be segregated clips of your production. The last title I listed had 5 extra bonus clips. They're easy to see and access on a browser or streaming device.

It looked great, don't misunderstand me. I loved the experience. Compared to the resolution and imaging in say Revenant, however, it wasn't as solid and crisp. --which is fine. I mean, H8 WAS an honest to goodness "film." That nice organic soft roll off look. Really good watching film in its traditional glory, but for me I kept thinking, "this is wonderful, yet digital projection is more solid." Then again, I watched Jaws again last week and loved the digital transmission of the (restored?) film. Best case scenario: shot on film, scanned, edited, projected digitally? One thing that a lot of young folks (probably not you) tend to forget, or are maybe unaware of, is that film projection had diminishing quality the longer it was on the circuit... My childhood is full of watching flicks at the local $1 mantinee grindhouse. Y'all can't appreciate how crazy beat up those prints would be by the time they hit the theatre I could afford to go to. Then, while on my first career gig in Mississippi, I used to literally go to a converted cotton gin to watch films. It was glorious and lousy all at the same time. The projectionist was this sweet cinefile with asperger's who never really knew how to run the projector. Gate problems, bad focus, missing reels, the whole bit. Romantic and fun in a nostalgic way, but never all that "pristine." Film is beautiful, but it's certainly not visually practical compared to digital. And when both are more or less equal, we'll...

Of course they are, you got the right idea. What do you really need a camera to do -or even NOT do? I used two GX85's to create six episodes for a documentary series on PBS. (unfortunately I didn't write it, direct it, or have final say on the color grade. boo!) Regardless, I firmly believe they were close to the perfect camera for such an assignment. I'd rather shoot with that gear 9 times out of 10 over an Alexa. Sounds weird, but it's really true. The stuff is just so innocuous that I could capture stuff and stay out of the way of the subject and director. (wish she could have stayed out of her own way, but so it goes) And, holy moly, at one point I had to edit in some previous footage from a RED, and, ugh, that footage was a disaster. Ugly as sin. That was mostly the ops fault though. Anyway, once done, I sold those GX85 cameras on ebay. Moving on....

Yes, if one has the means to acquire the best camera, then maybe use the best --but look at the images posted by the OP, do any of them look like they'd be impossible to capture/create with modern/cheap gear? "400 Blows" especially. The more wonderful and advanced consumer gear gets, the sillier we all look [points finger at self] hanging out on-line talking about things rather than doing things.

Me too. It was fun as it tapped into my nostalgia for watching a film screening. The whrrrr of the projector was cool. But, aside from enjoying the novelty, it didn't look technically good as a digital projection. And I truly like the minor flaws that pop up from doing something mechanical and analog, but honestly, it's inferior to digital.

Anyone dabbling with Resolve and Linux in editing? I'm intrigued. Would love a strong viable editing alternative. Didn't enjoy my first rodeo editing with Resolve, but I'm willing to try again...

I cut a concert film once where the two main cameras were a 5d and a gh1. Liked the gh1 image more, but they were close enough IQ-wise that it didn't really matter. "Filmlook" really comes down to other things beside the sensor. I truly believe sensor preference is akin to choosing a particular film-stock. No more, no less. So...maybe you don't have the fastest and cleanest "film" for your movie, doesn't mean jack-squat that it would stop you from making a cinematic production.

I learned still photography on 35mm film, and that's typical of what people often talk about regarding "equivalence" online; which makes it easier to grasps from the get go the whole debate about it all. If you came into the camera enthusiasm/hobby these days, god help you. Ignorance mixed with all the jargon and all the different sizes of things? Yeah, we can understand why it'll make one's head spin. Mine still does because the maths on all this are not symmetrical. Sliding scales, expotentials, and numerical gradients. Physics stuffs. But here's my rather redundant summation and basic understanding: shooting a 50mm lens set to f2 on an M43 is "equivalent" to what would happen (circle-of-confusion-depth-of-field-wise -- not exposure-wise) if you put a 100mm f4 on a full frame sensor. Here's where the frustrating part comes in, I think. Folks use f-stop to generally talk about what it take to achieve a certain depth-of-field. You know if you're shooting glass wide open, you're going to be increasing the out-of-focus stuff in the frame, 'kuz that's how lenses work. Director: "Hey, we need shallower DOF on this shot, go to a f2.8" DP "Got it." Those folks ain't talking directly about how many photons the want passing through the lens. Rather, they're talking about creating a visual look. So "f-stop," becomes an easy marker to achieve a certain visual result. That term can get convoluted in the broader technical consideration. (And, hoo boy, let's not even bring in t-stops to this part of the discussion, lest brains start to implode) The thing about full frame sensors, and even larger sensors, is that you can achieve the very shallow depth-of-field easier and with wider lenses than you can if you have a smaller sensor. So, when doing a portrait shot, one can whack some back ground out of focus effortlessly and rather affordably with a cheap 50mm f2 lens on a full frame. Yes, you can get such "equivalent" DOF with something like M43, but then you're spending a lot of cash to get more exotic lenses that'll shoot f0.95 or something. The good thing about full frame, pragmatically speaking, is that you can easily get shallow DOF while closer to a subject. This is cool because when you have a wider field of view and shallow depth-of-field, the visual creates a sort of 3D pop. The in-focus bit separated easily from the background. Not to mention that motion in wider field of view has a different visual quality. I believe this is referenced as "parallax," which can also has a quality that should be taken into account. Also, again, FF lenses cost less to accomplish the same shallow DOF/FOV than M43 lenses. Other than that, I think a lot of people on-line in camera forums maybe don't have comprehensive wisdom, (including me) but certainly have a lot of notions they want to assert. More often than not, it seems like those assertions are wrapped up in some rhetorical ego. Seems like people want to hear and write affirmations about their current version of reality rather than actuality. So it's easy to understand why it's all a mix-up for readers of these words. The phrase "circle-of-confusion" is apt, in more ways than one ain't it? For me, I have a general knowledge of what stuff looks like simply because I've played around with this crap for decades. All one really has to do is put their eyeballs on results they create themselves and it's all obvious. It may remain inarticulated, but it does become obvious.