SleepyWill

Only??? Think of it this way, if you stand face to face with someone, noses only 2cm apart, and you move your head forward until your noses touch, it's only a change in viewpoint of 2cm but it makes a dramatic impression on the passive viewer (the other person) who will probably pull back from you. Now stand 200 meters away and dolly yourself 2 meters towards them, bet they hardly noticed you moved. It's a bit of a fluffed simile, but it makes the point quite nicely, that it's not the magnification that is important, it's what you do with it. 50mm is a nice portrait length, on super35, 150 is a very long telefocal length. So you can have a really dramatic change in viewpoint with "only" a 3x magnification (and when you really get down to it, how many times the wide end can be divided into the long end is a really quite odd way to judge a lens). Also remember every lens is a compromise, the wider a range of focal lengths any single lens covers, the more the lens is going to be compromised to deal with the optical effects - how can one lens adequately control both balloon distortion at the wide end and pincushion distortion at the long end, answer is with absolutely insanely expensive optics or it just doesn't but balanced some balloon with some pincushion and hope the middle is about right (and that is only one of many compromises). This is why you will find the better quality lenses have a lower magnification, they specialise in their range and do it well. If you want one lens that rules them all, one lens that finds them, one lens to bring them all and in the darkness binds them, one single lens that covers every possible focal length, then why would you buy an interchangeable lens camera in the first place. They are fundamentally designed to take advantage of the higher quality optics while retaining the flexibility to be able to shoot a wide range of focal lengths. The compromise, it takes a few seconds to put a different one on. Also, trust me on this, the Samsung 18-200 is not a pro lens and it is not a movie lens, it's a lens designed to have a giant x11 on the packaging to sell it.

Now all we need to do is persuade video game makers that setting the frame rate of their game to sub 60 fps doesn't make it a "cinematic experience", it makes it jerky and nauseating to watch and we will have a full house!

This is brilliant advice, I'm in a wheelchair which can drastically limit a lot of my options (try setting up a "pocket" dolly solo from a chair without using your legs to understand!!) but give me a gorillapod and I am sat in the worlds smoothest, most comfortable slider/tripod :D there is always a bright side!

Thanks guys! Feeling a lot better today!I have quite a collection of lenses from other systems already, they will certainly be being pressed into service - I think for this camera, I will want it to fit into a small billingham or similar, so I will probably take my sigma 18-35 and four other small lenses, probably my nokton 35, my hopefully soon to be mine dog schidt (speaking of which, Richard did you get my enquiry email?) and probably two natives - the reason being, autofocus for photoghraphy and weather sealing - I'm thinking the 16-50 and possibly the 20 or 30 pancakes, depending on the image they produce. If I need a tele, I'll swap something out for my trusty old STF 135. Then again, how can I leave my superwide samyang out... maybe a slightly bigger bag! I know it's a lot of repeated lengths, but each lens has such a different character that I couldn't swap them out. Got plenty of standard and lightweight rigs, audio gear (endless mics), sliders, tripods and heads etc but most cameras have one thing which can be really helpful, my BMPCC really benefits from a coldshoe for example, something I wouldn't have anticipated before buying, and instead of a mattebox, I use a lee filter system with formatt glass, again something I wouldn't have anticipated in advance having always found vari-nd's acceptable before. So yeah, it's less about the basic gear (though if you're here asking a similar question and this is all new to you, these guys really know what they are talking about) and more about what idiosyncrasies the nx line has, as I am woefully ignorant of them at the moment.

Well, that not only demonstrates just how sickly I am, but also makes me even more excited! Small flange length and no mirror to conflict with protrusions = even more flexible system. :D

OK, so I am excited about an SLR camera for the first time since the 5D Mk 2. I'll be honest, I am full of flu right now and I'm hoping to benefit from the research of others so I get a headstart on my own :) So with that in mind, what would be your ideal partners for an NX1? What glass would you mount on it, what gems are there in the native lineup, etc etc

It would be a lot more conclusive if the two pics were lit better and framed identically

I wonder what percentage of sales were made directly or indirectly because of the e-mount flange distance? I suspect that without it, we wouldn't have sony mirrorless cameras, but translucent lens minolta mount slr's.

A hackneyed old trope that I suggest is not true in 99.999999999% of teachers, lecturers and professors - believe it or not, there are some people who educate because they love to educate, because they love the working environment, get real job satisfaction from helping kids and because they are sick of associating with the type of scumbags who inhabit the industry who have no qualms about, say, taking advantage of an inexperienced person, trying to persuade them to work for free whilst showing them nothing more than how to work a coffee machine. They are certainly not doing it for the money, prestige, low working hours or ease, I can promise you that! If you do choose to work for someone for free, be really, really careful. All that being said, be really careful about choosing a film course, there are plenty of really bad ones and very few good ones and don't expect to come out bustling with contacts and a relevant portfolio, you almost certainly wont.

But is it what photographers have been waiting for, or us? Either way, exciting news!

The act of converting 4k output to 444 will reduce it to 1080p. If you perform a digital zoom, you will have to bring the resolution even lower. It will be the exact same quality as if you digitally zoomed 1080p footage anyway, except it will be 444, which you won't notice. And trust me, the added work in using an external recorder is a drop in the ocean compared to the hell you will put yourself through by adding all these processes in post!

Really? You would choose to needlessly throw out colour data? I suppose if you don't have a 10bit monitor & graphics pipe, you really need to! I'm fairly sure you can do this, but is it worth it for 444??

In theory, you can use the GH4 to get 1080p 4:4:4 footage at 10bits. In practice however, having to work with 4k files and adding a really frustrating and time consuming step into your workflow renders this relevant to very few people, currently. http://www.eoshd.com/2014/02/discovery-4k-8bit-420-panasonic-gh4-converts-1080p-10bit-444/

To me, this question is easy, it would have to be the camera that doesn't prevent me getting the shots I want. Many cameras are just to big and vulnerable to water for my style, even mirrorless and phones can be too big. Which leaves me with using a gopro black 4. Of course I would miss getting beautiful images, manual controls etc, but at least I would never have to restrict my vision!

What camera are you / will you be putting on it over the next 5 years? What will you need to do with it? Travel? Hike with it on your back? Can you save a touch longer and spring for a sachtler ace? Honestly, the jump at that point in quality from similarly priced rivals through to the range you are asking about is really that significant! If you really can't, how about the Manfrotto MDeVe 755XB?

The venn diagram of video cameras would give you an overlap of seriously good quality and ease of use but it would be encompassed by the large "expensive" circle. Unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw at your camera, you are going to have compromises, and ease of use is a selling point reserved for really expensive cameras. Of course ease of use is subjective and one mans sony tri controls is another mans C100 ergonomics.

Think of it this way: The speedbooster bends the image projected by the attached lens into a smaller circle. So there is a trade-off going on, the image the lens projects can only cover a smaller sensor. On the positive side, however, the photons that form the projection are being bent closer together, causing the same amount of light transmitted to concentrate onto a smaller area, thus brightening the projected image. This causes the lens to act as if it had a wider aperture than in reality it has. Likewise with the field of view, that wasted bit of the projected image that falls bejond the edge of your sensor, now is projected onto it, having the effect of reducing that crop factor. If you have larger lenses than your sensor, there is no trade-off as you are just utilising wasted light and image, but you wouldn't want to put a lens that only just covers your sensor through one, it would give you a circle of an image projected onto a black background. In this diagram, a subject being projected into the top left hand corner of your FX sensor without the speedbooster is now being projected into the top left hand corner of your DX sensor with the speedbooster, thus negating the "crop factor" Hope this helps!! FYI, lens extenders do the exact same but in reverse - they take that image circle and make it larger, thus giving your sensor a greater "crop factor" but the trade-off, as I'm sure you are familiar with, is that the light gathered by the original lens is dispersed over a wider area, so less light hits each photosite on the sensor, so the image is dimmer, and the lens acts like it is "slower" while gaining a longer FOV reach.

Indeed he is, I had to triple check to make sure they hadn't already been mentioned! Joke aside, they look gorgeous, I only heard about them last week and I already know what I'll be ordering on payday!

http://dogschidtoptiks.co.uk/ Sidles off, hoping no-one saw me leaving that there....

Just to go into the showing the kit in the reel idea - I'm not suggesting that it's the gear itself that will sell showing a tripod with a camera on it isn't what I mean - it's showing people a behind the scenes glimpse of the camera being used, showing you working the camera on the tripod instead. I believe that they are interested in that, the actual process that they are paying for. I appreciate it is difficult to get a truly candid depiction of this, especially to your standard, but it's not dishonest to get candid shots of an actor using your gear (your wife for example). Regarding the "fancy shot" - it doesn't really have to be actually fancy, but, well I guess a parlour trick, something that someone who didn't have the specific knowledge of how to achieve it wouldn't be able to figure it out - recently we've had shift-tilt "miniatures", drones impossibly and dangerously close to their subject (long lens), high speed car chases that rarely exceed 10mph, super slomo, hyperlapse, etc etc. Just a really well pulled focus does the trick too! Back in the day, I used to replicate crane shots with the tripod trick, before every daytime tv show used them to excess. Just some food for thought really, if it feels wrong, then absolutely go with your gut!

That is some spectacular footage. When I first watched it, I was only interested in looking at the difference between the cameras, but I didn't even notice the first one, I was that captivated by what I was watching, no exaggeration!!! It is very obvious to me that you have a great eye and I really wish I could tag along with you to watch you shoot, just to see how you pick your shots. I think the one that impressed me the most was towards the beginning of the reel, the shot of a train in an urban setting (London?) travelling over a bridge, bathed in an amber light (morning?). It is the type of establishing shot that I see made so mundane and dull at every level of the profession, yet you took a really complex scene and made it look, as others have said, like a living painting. Absolutely brilliant. I don't think the reel is too long, but I have to agree, the tone is downbeat, which may not sell you to every potential customer. There are just a few things I personally would include, that for better or worse seem to be popular with clients - shots of really nice looking gear being used, a few really crisp "HD ad" sharp images - remember how they advertised HD TV's on an SD screen, just a few like that, bright colours too. Lastly, I would include a shot that I refer to as the breath-taker - a shot which people (and remember the public have a vastly inflated sense of their ability behind a camera) do not feel that they could replicate, even if they knew how it was done. Doesn't matter if it's a trick and in fact it's the easiest shot in the reel, and it often is! But don't think that I'm suggesting you add all that to this reel, make several so you can choose which one to show which potential client. This one I think will sell you very well to very many people, especially to people who are perhaps in the industry already and looking to hire someone on a project because they will really understand what you've achieved here! Also, because I believe you want some constructive criticism (if not, ignore this paragraph) - I found the intake of breath as the very first person to talk fades in a bit jarring and could be feathered a little more. So apart from that tiny nit-pick, I think this is amazing!

Wow there, tiger - some of us are actually disabled on this board and while I have very limited motor function and my son has severe learning disabilities, neither of us struggle with the ergonomics of my A7s. Even with our (part time) care, we are fully capable of using the camera as well as anyone, so don't tar us with the "too incapable to use it" brush. :D :D :D

It doesn't work like that, you can't cherry pick one video and ask to compare it against the average output of other camera's. Otherwise GoPro would have Arri by the short and curlies right now, what with the hero 3 black being used in features and edited into Arri footage.

Surely that's more to do with the chips soldered to the sensor than the sensor itself, presumably with a lot more space in the camera, there will be room for better airflow management, heatsinks etc which will allow them to solder faster, hotter running silicon giving slo-mo and/or opening up the possibility for reduced jello.

amateur - from French amateur "lover of," from Latin amatorem (nominative amator) "lover," agent noun from amatus, past participle of amare "to love" Give me an hour talking to an amateur any day over a professional who uses the word as an insult. Couldn't agree more with your point!