matthewcelia

Tested this today (despite the bickering here) and found that I got 29m - hit record again, got 10 minutes more before the recording just stopped and the camera shut down. No data lost. But for live gigs that would like to shoot at 4k... this is a deal breaker. Really bummed out.

I preordered it and plan on testing it against my A7s when it arrives. For me, I found the A7s to have a few too many gotchas. I found that when I rented a Shogun and went to film with it, it was so impractical because of the size. If I wanted a large set up camera, I'd get a URSA mini! I also didn't like how small the stills were. 5mpx in crop mode! I have a ton of amazing crop lenses that were rendered useless. Also, the lack of internal 4k and the need for a shoulder rig to stabilize all the time irked me. Despite it's amazing low light sensitivity, those small gotchas were annoying. Now if I could only load a preview LUT onto the damn thing, I'd be set!

Hey baxterquinn - saw your post and it hit a nerve with me, mostly because I think everybody has gone through that depressions at some point or another. The idea that you "just make it" is film school bullshit fed to us in order to jack up tuition (although we do actually learn some stuff). Here's my short advice. 1. Keep making stuff. Something. Anything. Shoot it with your iPhone. But make it a story or a documentary. Challenge yourself to make a short 1 minute film every month about whatever. And then put it up on Facebook/youtube/etc whatever. Submit it to short film festivals with no entry fee if you are proud of it. This forces you to stay creative and unblock yourself. Don't worry if you only have 1 story to say, many creative people only have 1 story and they tell it over and over again (Christopher Nolan=Puzzle Movies, Michael Crighton=Science destroys man, etc). But think about who has an interesting story and capture it. For me, documentaries are easier since I don't have to write it out ahead of time. I can find the story after. It helps me then unblock myself for narrative projects. Anyway, keep creating stuff because everybody only wants one thing: to work with people who make content and make a lot of it. Not everything has to be awesome, but you'll get better with each project. 2. Find your braintrust. Who are your allies? You mention your girlfriend, which is awesome. My wife is my biggest supporter and I couldn't do anything without her, but I also have others that I send stuff to for constructive feedback. Your braintrust are people you get a long with, who aren't afraid to tell you the truth about your work, but also with a mutual understanding that harsh critiques aren't personal. My braintrust also includes some DP's, sound guys, actors, writers and directors that I can also make stuff with, because there is nothing better than working with friends. 3. Don't equate success with happiness, but also don't be dumb when it comes to filmmaking. If you want to have a career making commercial movies, then you need to think about your audience and you need to balance writing what you want to express with something audiences will tune in for. There is a lot of competition out there. If you just want a place to express your art, then that's ok too, but you'll need to have a day job for a while. So get one that has flexible hours and access to interesting people so you have access to interesting stories. Drive an Uber car, work at a nightclub. Do you have a technical skill? Use it for a high paying job that gives you flexibility to create your small projects so you can grow as a filmmaker and storyteller. Mostly, the advice of other people on this board is pretty good. Don't give up. Most directors didn't find their stride until later in life. I'm 30 and no further along than you. Made 1 feature, trying to find what that next thing is, frustrated I can't seem to "break in". Patience and determination will get you there. Good luck.

I'm a big fan in FCPX of getting my skin tones to neutral by first cropping the image so i only have a swatch of skin showing. Then I open my vectorscope and adjust the color until it's close to the skin tone line (as mentioned above). I find this to be a good starting point and then I can start to work with the look. Overall, I think it's all about the tone you want to achieve and the color science behind it. Making sure your lights are high CRE makes it easier, for example. Try taking one of those pictures you posted above, shoot a test that's in similar lighting (the bathtub should be easy) and then grade them to match. Would be good practice!

Distribution has 0% to do with what kind of camera you shoot on. It's all about the story, target audience, cast, etc. Look at Tangerine: picked up for distribution by Magnolia pictures, shot completely on the iPhone 5s. You could shoot on the best camera in the world, with the best lighting, but if your story doesn't connect with an audience, you won't find distribution. Now, getting hired to film on the other hand, that's a different question. Producers always want to shoot the best quality they can afford that still works with the story, so being a DP with a 4k camera is probably a good idea.

Lenses hands down. Even getting a couple of Rokinon primes VASTLY improved the picture I got out of my T3i. Pretty incredible really. For picture profiles, I also used Vision Color with their LUTS and found the result to be very cinematic.

Agree with Andrew. I have had no problems with skin tones on the A7s. In fact, I'm finding the footage incredibly beautiful and easy to work with. WAY better than my T3i was I think people just don't understand how to grade. Here is a hint: in FCPX there is a line in the vectorscope - this is your skin tone line. If you crop the image so only a piece of skin is showing, and move the highlight/midtone puck until the vectorscope is right on the line, then remove the crop and you've got a good starting point for your grade. Proper white balance, proper exposure help too.

Brilliant app. Use it to circumvent my biggest gripe with my A7s, the filename reset every time I format the card. Using EditReady to wrap the files and batch rename them has made my workflow a ton better.

Thanks jase. Shot all with a canon 70-200 2.8 is II with a commelite adaptor (which works great)

Appreciate all the help I've gotten from this forum. Did some tests today on my day off with S-Log and really liked how I could grade it. If you have any questions let me know.

lafilm, $2,500 vs. $350 is a very big difference. If it's the barrier between you making your film and not making your film, then put your money on stuff in front of the camera and not the body itself. I've shot loads with the T3i and think it looks pretty good. I did just upgrade to an A7s, but when you want to charge more for your work, you have to bring out the big boy tools. You can see my reel (all shot with a T3i) here: https://vimeo.com/115577741

I wouldn't go so far as to say the Rebel cameras aren't fit for video. I think if you know what you are doing (and yes, use Magic Lantern) you can get a terrific image out of them. Even the upscaled video with a good color correction and sharp lenses (I use Rokinon) deliver pretty impressive results for the price. I shot a whole feature film on one that's been in several festivals. Heck, the surprise hit of Sundance was shot on an iPhone 5s. I don't think you should be concerned about whether it's true 1080p. All DSLR cameras, save a few of the highend ones like the A7s do some sort of line skipping, algorithm. Where you start to run into limitations IMO is when you want to use an external recorder, or shoot 60fps in 1080p, or need something for greenscreen. It's obviously not going to match higher end cameras, but then again you can get a T3i body for $350 on ebay right now or even less and it's a remarkable tool. But back to your original question. If you shoot 1080p and drop into a 720p timeline, I'm not sure it really sharpens up the image much. Unless you want the ability to crop and reframe (as you mentioned) use a 1080p timeline in your NLE. It will save rendering time.

Yikes. Glad I went with the Commlite adaptor - and it was only $95 instead of $399. So far no issues.

Anybody worth looking at FCPX should hit up the tutorials from Ripple Training. Not affiliated with those guys, but after editing with FCP7 for a decade, it took me only a day to get up to speed in FCPX after going through their training. Informative and worth it so you don't bang your head trying to do stuff "the old way". I found once you embraced the new way, it's hard to go back to a track based edit system.

I do miss Batch Export in FCPX, but there are some work arounds. 1) You can try using a tool like Clip Exporter (http://www.clipexporter.com) 2) You can set up a custom destination and set it to be the default. This is helpful if you cut several projects (like a series of drum lessons I was doing) and you want to export 15 projects at once. You hit the keyboard shortcut, hit enter - repeat. Agreed, not as elegant. Then again I could point to things in any other NLE that's not elegant either. 3) Your workaround of using optimized media files is good. Optimized I believe is Prores 422. Be aware that proxy files are actually half resolution scaled up so the quality loss is quite apparent. I'm not surprised it's so fast. Apple has built FCPX to scream on the latest hardware. It's the only app I know that can playback RED footage without a rocket card in real time at a quality good enough to edit with. Even Premiere on my machine requires me to drop down to 1/8 resolution which is pointless because it's so blocky. You are using the tool in a way that it wasn't designed for, so workarounds should be expected. Hopefully Adobe gets their tools to leverage that GPU in the next versions.!

Commlite adpater arrived and so far it seems really solid. No wiggle. Lenses are working great. Pretty impressed. I have a shoot at the end of the month that I plan to use it on - crossing my fingers it all goes smooth.

IMO having IS is key to cinematic images if going handheld. Nothing gives away a DSLR look more than the jitters. However, with a decent shoulder rig, you can stabilize older non IS lenses enough to still have a beautiful image.

I love FCPX I do and I will talk at length to anybody about how amazing it is. But it's smart to know more than one tool and I pay for the CC anyway. So I'm looking for help in getting up to speed with all that Adobe has to offer. I love the ripple training guys - who is similar in the Premiere pro world?

I'm going to try that Commlite adapter via Amazon and if it's shit, I'll send it back. $99, wish I had known about it. Would have got that to start rather than the Fotodiox with built in ND (although that ND feature is super nice when shooting SLOG)

Have you tried the same clip in FCPX? Maybe premiere isn't working in 32bit color space, or your sequence settings aren't set up for maximum bit depth.

Thanks for all the good feedback so far. Honestly, would have sold the lenses except the Sony 24-70mm just seems to be garbage for the money. Since I do run and gun a lot, it's very important to have IS of some kind. I find this is the key to reducing rolling shutter and "jitter". Shooting in APS-C mode will also be important. If the Commlite has trouble with IS, then I don't think that will work for me. I recently picked up a 50mm 1.4 Canon FD lens for $40 off Craigslist which is simply amazing. Sharp, fast - I am loving the photography I am taking with this lens. Not much for my video work, but it might be enough to satisfy my photography needs for now. I think the Metabones adaptor is probably my next purchase. Then I can keep my canon glass and use the IS function of those lenses. How do people like using the Metabones with the Sony? I assume the regular one would be fine, since one of my lenses is APS-C and wouldn't work on the Speedbooster, correct?

I'm having a debate and wanted to hear people's thoughts (hopefully based on experience!) Moving from a Canon set up to a Sony A7s and having a crisis of lenses. Currently I own a Tamron 17-50 F2.8 and Canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS II as my AF zoom lenses. I'm primarily a documentary shooter, so always run and gun, and having a solid fast zoom is essential to the work I do. I also like to take stills, so having a good AF and a smallish size (why I like the A7s in the first place) is important. Would you trade those lenses for the comparable Sony options? Or would you invest in a Metabones adaptor which I think would yield better cinematic results and pick up the cheap kit lens to have a general "around town" AF solution? Debate!