TrueIndigo

Gerald Undone talking about the X-T3:

An update on the Viltrox/Tamron 17-50mm situation. The lens does work again with the adapter now. I don't know what made me try it again, but I found that twisting the lens more firmly round when I mount it seems to achieve a more reliable connection with the adapter's contacts. But, I do not hear a definite lock when I mount the lens, so although the fit is firm, I never feel confident the lens is actually locked on the camera! The vintage Yashica prime locks fine, though. The issue with infinity focus: again, I thought I had turned the inner element as far as it could go, especially as it's not easy to do this, but having tried it again, there was actually more rotation to be found (it was becoming quite tight to turn, and you are never sure if you should really be turning it this far or not!), but it does now feel like infinity focus has been achieved. Just wish the lens would lock...

If I remember the DVX100 hack started on the DVInfo forum (in the Alternative imaging section), then they got their own website and it was named Andromeda. There seem to be a lot of desperate stuff going on in those days - I was one of a handful of people trying to use industrial camera heads for video, RAM-recording about 20 seconds at a time of Bayer video to a laptop, great times!

I also remember following this development all those years ago. It seemed as exciting back then as the start of the Magic Lantern RAW video hack.

I tried the Canon-fit Tamron 17-50mm (f2.8 constant) on the Viltrox EF-M2 and it worked on that first occasion. But thereafter, it did not (ie. I could not change aperture). I have emailed Viltrox about this several weeks ago but never received a reply. So right now, I'd say don't consider the Tamron.

Waited for ages for the Viltrox EF-M2 to arrive, and on the first day, my Tamron 17-50mm zoom worked fine. But that was the last time! Cannot change aperture since that first day. Very disappointed and wondering what I'll do with it now. Have been using an old Yashica 50mm prime because that's the only lens I have that fits via a C/Y to EF adapter (unfortunately, all my Nikon old primes have transmission pins that will clash with the Viltrox contacts, so I cannot use them). I have never used the Metabones so I can't compare it, but I would say the optical quality of the Viltrox is generally very good for the price. But infinity focus needed adjusting. You loosen the small screw (with the mini screwdriver provided) and turn the rear element. It's a bit fiddly - once I misjudged it and the screw came right out. Luckily, the screwdriver is magnetic which helps, but it was a hectic few moments trying to get that small thing back in. You have to use a bit of down force to get the rear element to rotate counter-clockwise while trying to avoid touching the glass. With it moved to the fullest rotation, I'm still not absolutely sure infinity focus is perfect, though.

How far back was Panalog with the Panavision Genesis, 2005 or something?

I brought the in-camera highlight curve down a bit on the lowly G7 which I thought helped highlight roll-off with the more fragile 8-bit image.

Saw Blade Runner 2049 yesterday (no plot spoilers in my observations). This is a generally well-realized near-future sci-fi film, as many of the modern fully-funded Hollywood blockbusters are (this one is estimated as costing between $150-185 million depending on what you read). But it does seem somewhat formulaic, lacking any special distinction or energy. It pays homage to the advertising nightmare rainy city as before, and in the breakers yard wasteland goes for a more Mad Max vibe. But non of it has a truly unique knock-out experience as the earlier film managed with less advanced effects. Seeing Blade Runner in 1982 was nothing short of a cinematic revelation about what was possible, given the commitment of various art departments through sheer force of personality and vision. And since things have moved on so much now (the artistry of the CGI people is incredible), it does not give anything like a new version of that sense of wonder which jolted me in the eighties. The sound design follows the trend of many modern action films in being set at a painfully high level - the sort of film in which just putting a drink down on a table sounds like a firecracker going off, and drawing on a cigarette briefly sounds like a bush fire. On this film, a gun shot was as loud as an huge explosion, taking me out of the story every time because of the discomfort. And this was more easy than it should have been, because the story itself felt confused to me and several times I found myself wondering how much longer the film was going on (never a good sign). Although the trailer gives the impression of a sophisticated fast-paced action thriller, in fact everything takes a long time, and is not particularly worth waiting for. Unfortunately it's not very sophisticated either, with uninspired dialogue. I did actually feel mildly bored, which surprised me - I didn't think they would make that mistake - because the overall drama remained cold and uninvolving. Non of the characters turned out to be anyone I could care for, compared to key scenes in the original, such as when Rachel starts playing a piano (and says: "I didn't know I could play."). With the original the audience felt like crying, in this new one some of the characters cry, but it doesn't ring true. It's a bit like watching a full-on romance movie in which it is obvious there is no chemistry between the two lead actors - all of the humans watching such a movie know it immediately: that these two people are only together because they have been badly cast in a movie. In the same way the new Blade Runner story continues with the theme of what it means to be human in a difficult future world of synthetic people, yet tells it with little show of the humanity which is supposed to be so important. Seeing the original movie in the cinema was a life-changing experience, and I eagerly bought the VHS, then later many versions on DVD, etc-etc. It was a way of keeping in touch with a dream, but I have no interest in watching this one again - in any formats that may exist in the future. I opted to see the 2D version of the film because the movie was shot in 2D - ironically, the 3D version has been synthetically processed to give a 3D effect. It's not that I dislike this movie because I liked the original so much, my reaction would be the same if the original never existed. Because it's a disappointing movie in its own right, though obviously without knowing that I had to see it out of a slight hope there was something of the mesmerizing quality of Rachel's self-realization. But of course there is only one Sean Young.

Here's the colour graded version, produced in After Effects, using the Color Finesse plug-in. The YouTube contrast looks more harsh than I saw when I was actually grading it, and the shadows I fought to keep have gone to hell here. Oh well!

buggz: "Guess it's time to build yet another Linux box...." Yes, my old workstation runs Win 7 and I'm not that keen on continuing with Win 10 for a new machine. I've been using Linux on my other DIY computers for several years, but not for video use. I think GIMP and Krita (together) might be a viable alternative for my Photoshop use, but is the free Resolve on Linux an alternative to After Effects and Premiere? Last time I looked into it I thought there were some serious limitations on export options (for example, no H.264 ?), and do you need a specific distro for it to run on (I like using Mint). Have dipped into Kdenlive over the years: it has been getting better but I never felt really at home with it, probably just lack of familiarity -- anyone else on here using it seriously? I think with a viable alternative to Photoshop, Premiere and After effects, I would be much more confident in finally going over to Linux full time.

There's something about the older cameras, isn't there? :-)

Recently visited Weymouth again and shot another test there in the harbour, this time with the Panasonic G7. The lighting situation was a very bright day with hazy blue sky, and I kept an eye on the live histogram to avoid highlight clipping as much as possible. Most shots were made with a Panasonic 25mm lens, and a few close-ups using a vintage Panagor 135mm - both lenses were at f2.8 throughout the day with 3x stacked ND filters (2x ND4, 1x ND8). The 135mm shots looked a bit soft compared to the very sharp and modern 25mm, so I sharpened those a bit in post so they would not look so different (they still do, though!). Made some very slight luma channel changes to a few of the shots, but there's very little colour changes here - saturation looked good straight from the camera and I was happy with the white balance choice. I attempted to compose similar shots to the camera test I made here several years ago (using Magic Lantern RAW on the old Canon 50D), and thought it might make an interesting comparison. With that earlier RAW video test, I'd been impressed that Adobe Camera RAW could effortlessly bring blue skies out of a seemingly plain white skyline. Though this time (perhaps by having the in-camera curve set to -2 Highlights, and helped by the ND filters) I thought the G7 image straight from the camera held together quite well in this bright and contrasty situation. My camera settings are still in a state of flux, but the essential details of this test were: Picture profile: Natural (Contrast 0, sharpness -2, NR +5, Saturation -3). White Balance: Kelvin values (4,500, Green +3). Highlight and Shadow: Highlight -2. ISO: 200 (for all the shots). Here is the YouTube link: In case of interest, here is a link to my previous Weymouth Harbour camera test shot in ML RAW on the Canon 50D: Music comes from Eric's collection - the track used is 'Bitter-Sweet-Goodbye'. His EOSHD thread is here:

Thank you for the kind words. The last Panny I had was years ago (a GH1), so I was interested to see how much things had changed since then. I got the G7 body-only, and bought the Panasonic 25mm lens separately; it's a surprisingly good lens, though I find the electronic focus ring is not to my liking - increasingly now I'm using my old manual primes (mostly Nikon). I've been testing various things on the G7 for the last three months or so, and my settings were changing almost by the day! Yes, I've brought the sharpness down bit now. The option to make a custom curve in-camera is very useful - I don't particularly want to raise shadows, only to darken them again in post, but the ability to lower highlights (for a nice roll-off) makes a mature-looking image. Hoping to start shooting a comedy film soon (still finishing the props), and I think this might be the camera to shoot it with. At the moment, for exteriors, I am happy with: Natural (Contrast 0, Sharpness -2, NT +5, Saturation -3). Highlights and shadows (Highlight -2). Daylight WB preset (Blue +6, Green +6).

Since I don't have a dog or a cat, here's another "pie film" to test out the Panasonic G7, shooting UHD at 25 fps. All was shot handheld (using a pistolgrip) with a Panasonic 25mm prime lens (at f2.8 throughout). Exposure was gauged from the camera's live histogram and the camera was kept at 200 ISO. To see the true character of the camera, all shots are straight out of the camera with absolutely no colour or luminosity changes in post. The lighting situation was natural daylight, except for the last sequence at the table, which also used some fill-in light (a pair of LED lights) to augment the darker situation. Below are the essential camera settings that were used: Video: Internal 3840 x 2160 x 25p, H.264, 4:2:0, 100 Mbps MP4. Picture profile: Natural (Contrast 0, Sharpness 0, NR +5, Saturation 0). Luminance levels: 1-255. White balance: Daylight preset (Blue +4, Green +4). Highlight and Shadow: Highlights -2. The UHD mp4 export settings from Premiere were: H.264, VBR 2 pass, target max bit rate 37 Mbps. Sound was AAC, 320 kbps, 48 kHz stereo. Here is the YouTube link: Music taken from Eric's collection - see his EOSHD thread here:

Thanks for starting this great thread! I first heard of Patreon when I used to read interesting 'Doctor Who' articles by someone who was on it! It's an interesting idea: contribute to the person rather than the particular project. A film-specific crowd-funding community I found (but haven't used yet myself) is Seed and Spark: https://www.seedandspark.com/ Here's an article by Kevin Kelly about fan bases (probably a bit out-of-date now) called "1,000 true fans" which I found quite interesting when I first read it: http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ And also another by him about the nature of distribution in the age of 1:1 digital copying versus the era of precious copies: http://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/

I also think the Panasonic G7 is an important low cost UHD camera. During the period when I was making decent money, I used to buy a new camera every year, as a personal exploration which I enjoyed. Last few years though I had to stop that, but strangely didn't miss it. I sold off a lot of stuff (currently down to five stills cameras and two camcorders) and spent more time exploring the cameras I already had, rather than exploring yet another camera. Because I really think we have been in the era of "good enough" for some time now. We can make a solid starting point for colour grading and using creative LUTs which can radically change the look of the final image anyway. I did lapse recently though, and got the G7 because there was a good deal going on it, presumably because it's now an outgoing model. At £380 for the body, I think it must be the cheapest new camera I've ever bought. After experimenting with various Mods to the Natural picture profile and Daylight white balance, I'm seeing an image not so different from the Nikons which I love. Way back I bought a GH1 when it first came out, so I still had a lot of MFT lens adapters and enjoy using my vintage Nikon AIS prime set. My main reason to buy it though (after a long time shooting video with DSLRs) was not so much about image, but a usability consideration: the opportunity to have a high res EVF for hand-held shooting (using a pistol grip to hold it to my eye). Feels like shooting Super 8 all over again, and I actually enjoy using this little camera. I think you can't underestimate how important the usability and pleasure of actually picking up a camera becomes, now that image quality is so good on almost everything.

I can't remember when I actually made the switch from being a consumer to being a creator. All I knew was that when I was a kid I was fascinated with TV shows, old Hollywood movies and European art house films, so it seemed quite natural to want to create something that would have a similar effect on other people. My parents bought me a second hand Standard 8 cine camera, on which I shot home movies and animated toys on the carpet. This was followed by a new Super 8 camera, which I hard-matted with cardboard to fake the look of CinemaScope. I didn't realise then how important the fun side of things was to me. By the time I went to art college I had a 16mm Bolex, which kind've slowed me down because the stock costs were too much for pocket money. I used the 16mm cameras at the college for the course projects, but never really used my own camera very much, and eventually sold it about 10 years later (it had become just a wonderfully built ornament on the shelf). I followed my college friends to London and worked for a film and TV company for many years, working non-stop on TV series and that eventually wore me out -- I made a few personal projects along the way, but the joy of story-telling with film (as in those Standard-8 days) was just gone. I was also becoming tired of the city, too, so went back home where I can just go for a walk in the fields when I want to. I continued to work in multi-media, laying out books and magazines for a publishing house, then doing fine art printing for a gallery. I never forgot film making, though, because it was in me, but I wasn't doing anything about it. But then DV camcorder technology and affordable computer editing we're growing up together very nicely, and I was shooting just for the fun of it again. It was portable, it was cheap, it was available and eventually it was even full HD. And when the still cameras started recording video, well, there was a welcome filmic glamour to the video image that was quite exciting. Coming more up to date, I was a full-time staff video editor for a small local video production company, though after five very busy years, I've since gone freelance. Doing much less work (and pretty broke as a result), but I have more time to work on my own projects. After an abortive start on one film, I'm currently making the props for another feature length no-budget project. I just can't seem to shift the idea that film making is something I have to do. I recently wrote a novel, based on a character from one of the scripts I wrote about twenty years before, so that was me genuinely trying another medium. And the freedom of writing, compared to all the hoops you have to go through even for unambitious and informal film making like mine, is quite remarkable. I've now written half of the sequel, so I must enjoy it, but, there's something about film making that really means something important to me. Perhaps it's because I like working with people on a collaborative art project, whereas writing is a solitary experience. Or maybe it's just that you never really forget your first love: Watching mysterious and surreal TV series like The Avengers, or 1940's American film noirs, and wondering if I too could create such atmospheres and involving entertainments.

Yes, I know what you mean about batteries - over the years, moving through various models and brands, you can't help feel being held to ransom by it. These days though I factor in the cost of every new camera purchase to include a battery grip and several batteries. Ultimately, I don't want the batteries to dictate what camera I buy. I've enjoyed using the D5500 and feel the 1080p from it is possibly still amongst the prettiest you can get in H.264 8-bit colour (I haven't tried the Fuji X-T2, though). For usability I have ISO mapped to the FN button for quick changes. The pre-set WB options are pretty good in most situations (personally, I've modified Daylight and Cloudy a bit along the blue axis to be closer to what I want), though if you need to set your own Kelvin values, yes, that's where the low price of the D5500 begins to show. When it comes to image quality I really do think we've been in the era of "good enough" for some time now, and it was relatively cheap cameras like the D5500 that brought me to that conclusion. Even this camera probably exceeds my current skill set; certainly, I don't feel held back by it! Be interesting to see what Nikon does next...

It's still a bit early, but might be a good idea to eventually start a sub forum here for ML video - as we have with the Samsung hack, especially if these two new developments (lossless RAW compression and the new crop mode) get ported to other Canon models. I installed ML on a second hand 5DII I bought a couple of years ago the first day I had it, so can't wait for a nightly with this new stuff to appear at some point for that older camera. I was thinking about buying a VAF filter for it to ease moire, but probably won't bother now with 1:1 recording. Unlike Canon's own EF-S lenses, I know that my Canon-fit Tamron 18-50mm does not clash with the 5DII mirror, so some of the independent crop lenses might be a good format match-up for ML crop video.

"Exposure and curves are OK" -- that's great to hear, thanks. So, can we say the OK sliders are: Temperature, Tint and Exposure, and leave the rest alone? And keep on using "2012" because "2010" makes no difference? I've used Saturation and Contrast a few times but not on clips that would show much change anyway, so don't know if that's all right, too.

Squig, when using ACR to work the DNGs, is there now a known fix for the exposure fluctuations when a clip has big changes in luminosity? Some people have mentioned using "Process 2010" instead of "2012 (current)" - does that have any effect?

Thanks for sharing, and the grades look nice, too.

If you shoot a lot viewing the rear LCD screen (rather than the viewfinder), how about using the neck strap? I never used to bother attaching it to any new camera I had because I mostly shot on a tripod. But several years ago I put a strap on one of my DSLRs just to carry it about, and when I used it for informally shooting something, I found that with a short strap, pushing against the two strap connections gave surprising extra stability than handheld alone. You can gimble your waist to perform moves, and pushing against the strap seems to iron out any micro-tremors that can happen if you are holding a camera free from any support.

Thanks, mate, it's something to think about.