Matt Kieley

I decided to keep my P4K for video but get a cheap old DSLR for stills (and maybe to toy around with video). I just purchased a "heavily used" Canon 6D with 64k shutter count from mpb for $214. I was gifted $200 for Christmas so I figured "why not?"

Thanks. I've been leaning more toward the Fuji XT3 and will probably get that. Based on other peoples' examples it seems to have a more pleasing image quality, to me, for stills and video.

Good ol' Kodak TriX 400 35mm. I learned to shoot/process/print film on this stock. There was no additional lighting or bounce, all available light.

CineStill 800T 35mm:

Finally tested out my Yashica Rookie TLR medium format camera and I'm in love. Shot on CineStill 800T 120:

Did a few shoots recently. Kodak Extachrome E100 35mm:

Many times I've considered the original A7S or the Fuji XT3, and since I've gotten back into still photography, I'm thinking about them again for stills/video.

I actually recorded a ton of ADR for it, and I dumped it. Ive always loathed it ever since I made my first feature film, which also has a lot of ADR. You lose so much of the performance with ADR. I don't like bad location sound, but I'll take that over ADR. It's really more like prioritizing performance over technical perfection. I've been thinking for some time about remastering the soundtrack of my feature to include the original location sound. I've had much better success just doing the sound myself, even if it is kinda difficult juggling many tasks. Here's a short where I had zero help besides two actors (who are both in Chicken): There's even an exterior tracking dialog scene where I was having to hand hold the blimp below frame. I would use lavs for a scene/shot like that now, but I didn't have a wireless system at the time. There's one little audio goof that bothers me a bit, but I again had chosen the best performance take over the best sound take.

Better sound. It was a no-budget movie and while we had good equipment, we didn't have people who knew what they were doing. I don't fault them for messed up sound since they are just friends we handed the gear off to. I've been paid to do sound on other people's projects so I know what I'm doing there, but I was focused on directing and shooting. The best sound was from the times where I just put the mic on a stand and monitored the audio myself. I should have just done that the entire time. Script-wise there were things I wish I had kept in the script, but what's int he final film isn't bad. The original ending was more climactic and scary I think. There are a lot of little things that annoy me, like some of the sign replacement VFX shots, but they were done for free, so I can't complain too much, and it's better than what I could have done myself.

I finally finished and released this film yesterday. 5 years late is better than never, right? I was dissatisfied with it for a while, and there's a lot I would still change, but I've come to appreciate it. Now. So here it is, at last: The film has been given a makeover with FilmConvert Nitrate. I'm pretty shocked at how good this a6300 short looks and how much I could recover from overexposed shots. There are only a couple of shots with sorta mushy compression.

I just got back into film photography. Last month I did an Evil Dead inspired horror photo shoot. This is the first time I've done a conceptual photo shoot with a model. I resurrected my old 35mm Canon Rebel and bought a couple of lenses. This is shot with the Canon 28mm 1.8 (all wide open) on 35mm with Kodak Portra 800. I have some more horror themed photo shoots set up, and some pinup style shoots as well. I also recently got a Yashica Rookie TLR camera and some 120 film.

One of my favorite filmmakers is John Carpenter, so I watch a lot of his films during the month of October, and of course watch the first 3 Halloween films on Halloween night (the original Halloween is one of the films that made me want to be a filmmaker). My "costume" this year is actually the Silver Shamrock Jack O Lantern mask from Halloween III Season of the Witch. I also like watching classic Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes, and anthology films like the original Creepshow and Trick R Treat. The Evil Dead trilogy is always rewatched around this time as well.

The test videos from the still-unreleased Octopus Cinema Camera looked very natural and organic to me. Who knows if it'll ever materialize though.

I decided to play around with ML raw on the EOS M again, and test out my Angeniuex 8-64mm 1.9 Super 8 zoom lens.

I didn't use resolve except to convert some old cineform AVI files to prores for editing in Premiere. The blooming is from the lens I used, I believe it was a (correction) Canon FD 50mm f1.4 (the old chrome ring version) with an Optivision XW 5000 Anamorphic lens. Or maybe a Bushnell 35mm f.2.8 It probably wouldn't be as blown out if I actually had a bright light or at least a bounce on the subject, but it's just the natural light and nothing else.

I didn't use resolve except to convert some old cineform AVI files to prores for editing in Premiere. The blooming is from the lens I used, I believe it was a vintage Tokina 75-150mm f3.8 with an Optivision XW 5000 Anamorphic lens. It probably wouldn't be as blown out if I actually had a bright light or at least a bounce on the subject, but it's just the natural light and nothing else.

I shared this in another thread recently. I made a reel of newly-graded old hacked GH1 footage of mine from 2011-13. Graded with FilmConvert Nitrate simply using the default sRGB color since they don't have a GH1 camera pack, and exported in 4K from a 1080p timeline straight from Premiere Pro CC. I didn't even know nearly as much about lighting then, so most of it is natural light and 100w tungsten practicals/clamp lights (with frost diffusion).

To me this just proves we've had access good image quality at micro budget prices for over a decade. I've come to realize this more recently, and that the only real factor in deciding to buy or keep a camera is whether or not is suits your needs and your production style.

I never use IBIS to replace a tripod or slider, but I love it as a glidecame/steadicam replacement. As long as I walk heel-to-toe as I would with a glidecam I can get the same look/effect. I've gotten into minimizing my equipment down to what I can fit in a backpack/the trunk of my Chevy Malibu so not having to bring a glidecam and fiddle with it is a plus for me. Log I'm kinda with you on. I think I may only use it for paid video work where I might not have control over the lighting, but for narrative film work where I do have that control, I think I prefer shooting in Rec709 and getting the look mostly in-camera. Ever since I had a Panasonic G7, Cinelike V has been my preference for in-camera color. Here's a grab from some recent test footage shot with the GH5 in CineV and graded in FilmConvert Nitrate: Although 10 bit I feel is helpful for avoiding banding and other artifacts. I started making movies in 2000 with Hi8 and VHS-C cameras that had shitty AF, so I never used it. The DVX100 had bad AF, and 35mm still cameras I shot with had unreliable AF as I recall, so I got good at manual focusing. I've never felt the need for AF.

This thread popped up the exact time I got a Sigma FP, so I ended up getting an Orico enclosure with the Same WD SSD (500gb) to at least test everything. I can capture between 8-10 minutes of 12bit 4K before is stops, and I can't record frame rates above 60fps, even in 8 bit. Not sure what's going on with that. I already intended to mostly shoot 12bit FHD 24fps since I can capture it with my Sandisk Extreme Pro 170mbps continuously (I got over 20 minutes before I decided it was more than I'd ever need to record in this format and stopped it myself) because it's sharp and beautiful, takes up 1/4 of the drive space, and the simplicity of capturing the SD card. But I would still like to occasionally shoot 4K or 120fps in FHD. Should I just get a Samsung T7? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Speaking of the G7, I used one for a while and shot a bunch of stuff with it. Here's a little c-mount lens/FilmConvert test from 2017: I still love the look of this.

Thanks, man!

Thanks. It was my Optivision XW5000 anamorphic lens. Not sure which taking lens it was, either the Sakar 28mm f/2.8 or Bushnell 35mm f/2.8. I can't remember which taking lens I used for the tighter shot. I sometimes used a 75-150mm f/3.8 zoom (can't remember the brand). I think some of the exterior shots were the Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 (chrome ring).

There are some limitations with the GH1 dynamic range, but the clips in the reel are mostly available natural light. One or two shots are lit with a shop light and diffusion gel. Imagine if I actually used lights and modifiers as I would now, it would look much better. And I was just using the 14-42mm Panasonic kit lens, a Canon FD 50mm 1.4, a Sakar 28m f/2.8 and Sankor 16c/Optivision XW5000 Anamorphic lenses. The second video (Lighting test) is when I got more serious and bought lights, a modifier and "cine" lenses: 300w and 150w Arri fresnel knockoffs, a 5-In-1 reflector, and a Rokinon 16mm f/2 and 24mm f1.4 The bottom video is a test a friend (the one in the video) wanted to shoot for a film he wanted to direct (with me as DP) when I lived in North Hollywood in 2014. He wanted to test spherical and anamorphic. This video kind makes me want to get a Helios 44M again.

I've been considering getting a GH1 as an experiment, to see what I can do with it now with more experience/better lighting. I'm surprised by the color/fidelity of the GH1. In certain situations, newer cameras are better. I recently shot BTS on a friend's short in very low lighting conditions, with the GH5. As so-so as the GH5 is at 3200iso, the GH1 would be so much worse (color shift/noise above 640iso) and no stabilization. But in a narrative film situation with more control, there might be less of a difference. After writing the above, I decided to make a reel of some old GH1 footage remastered and regraded: And here's a couple other test videos I would have included had I not deleted the raw footage: