Tim Sewell

Apparently shipping now USD5995.

The saga so far has seen me order 3 different fabrics. A white ripstop parachute nylon (suggested by the estimable Phil Rhodes), a classic sailcloth and some 'bridal' tulle. Picked up a length of muslin while I was there! Frame-wise I was pricing stuff up and it works out that just buying a couple of Manfrotto Lastolite 2mx2m frames will be cheaper than trying to build my own. I'll keep the board posted as to my progress.

I've got a set of Samyang/Rokinon primes and they're mostly around T1.5, so should the need arise I'll probably have to go with them. The only fastish EF lenses I have are the nifty fifty and the 85 1.8. I also have the 17-55 2.8. My feeling is that with the camera's fairly stellar low light performance super fast lenses, while nice to have, aren't quite as important as they might be with other cameras. Of course I'm very aware that - as I don't have to earn my money doing this - a super noise-free image isn't a priority as I'm generally applying fairly stylised grades anyway.

Wow! The 55-250 just arrived. DPAF with STM is virtually indistinguishable from magic.

So I'm looking to build a couple of home-made butterfly frames and silks and I'm balking at paying hundreds of pounds for the fabric just because it comes from a grip supplies company. I'm sure it must be available from a standard fabric shop for much less - but I haven't been able to find out exactly what sort/weight of silk (or more likely rayon) I should look for. Does the EOSHD hive mind have any pointers please?

I have to plus-1 for the C100 mkii. I recently sold my other cameras to buy a secondhand one (GBP3000) and although I've been pretty much confined to quarters due to a combination of work and bad weather since it arrived, what little I've been able to shoot has given me an experience I never had with any of the others. I loaded the log footage into FCPX, applied a technical LUT and felt my jaw hit the floor. Just an all-round gorgeous image. Experiments in the kitchen in low light were also mandible-lowering, it simply knocks the socks off anything I've ever used before in the way the IQ holds up at high ISOs. Add to that the ease-of-use, the astonishing battery life, the parsimonious-yet-gradeable codec, the NDs and you have a machine that you just want to pick up every time you have a moment spare. I have the 55-250 and 18-135 STMs arriving over the next few days and, weather permitting, an afternoon filming my son in a tennis tournament at the weekend and I just can't wait. I'll just also add that I've had an idea for a micro-documentary brewing in my mind for some time, but just couldn't figure out a way to do it single handed with my previous gear. Just my around-the-house experience so far with the C100 mkii has finally given me the confidence to set to work on it and I have a meeting soon with the subject to get it all in place - so thanks, Canon!

Here's an amazingly detailed and informative video of a presentation given by David Mullen ASC on (mainly) simulating daylight.

I think his blog is something like the fifth most influential in this field.

Well look at this - newsshooter to the rescue: http://www.newsshooter.com/2017/02/23/masv-rush-a-super-fast-pay-as-you-go-file-transfer-system-for-the-professional-video-production-industry/

You might want to take a look at Amazon's S3 service.

Based on very recent experience - Canon C100 mkii.

Maybe I'll have to up my budget a little. I'm not even slightly interested in a electronic gimbal - I basically want something that will allow me to fly the camera for short periods and double as an impromptu monopod - just like the unit I have now does, but suitably sturdier/heavier to deal with the heavier camera. I'll probably be using an adapted Olympus OM 28mm 2.8 that I love, stopped down a little.

Cool. I've been playing with this sort of thing too - trying to create a digital tobacco filter. Hadn't tried blending with 'Soften' mode, though, so that's this evening's activities planned for me! Thanks.

So I've just sold most of my other gear and bought a C100 mk2 to use for my personal project pleasure (I may do some band vids as well - having a meeting with my sound engineer mate next week). The question is this - I have a Glidecam knock off at the moment that has a great top end, but silly little screw-on weights at the bottom. I was thinking of getting something new anyway but that's now a necessity as it won't really be usable with this camera. I don't want to invest Glidecam money and there are sooo many knock-offs on Amazon in my price range (up to 200GBP) that I'm wary of just sticking a pin in the screen to choose one. Does anyone have any good experiences to report on systems in this price range with a Cinema Eos camera to guide me please?

It sounds as though you should check out some tutorials on achieving dynamic balance, which will generally involve adjusting the sled weights non-symmetrically..

ICYMI I have my XC10 up for sale:

I worked the darkroom for a photography business for a couple of years. I hated the fumes, but I loved the work - there's something magical about beavering away in red/no light, sloshing plastic and paper around in chemicals and seeing magic appear. God I miss Cibachromes.

Uploading a large ProRes master to Vimeo also helps to reduce motion compression artefacts.

Dynamic range, motion cadence.

Won't look as organic - how could it?

You will lose motion blur by shooting at a higher frame rate. Shooting at 24p gives a shutter speed of 1/48 (if you're using the 180 rule, which I assume you are), which gives the level of motion blur we subliminally associate with cinema. If you shoot, say at 60p, you'd be using a higher shutter speed by necessity, so the motion blur would be affected.

Sorry but I can't agree with this - if you mean 'save' in the sense of preserving their current/historic size and market penetration. The fact is that there is certainly no technology available today that would let the vast majority of, say compact P&S camera users, produce watchable video. To produce anything of that nature still - and will for some time - needs practise and acquired skill. That majority of consumers neither want nor need to take the time and make the effort to build those skills. Given the steady improvement in smartphone cameras, which very much allows consumer-level users to produce stills that look fine without skill or knowledge, I can't actually see anything that is going to save the photo camera makers butts in their current forms. FWIW my prediction is that within a couple of decades we'll either have less than half the current number of manufacturers, or a similar number, but less than half their current sizes/values. Without the cash engine of a large consumer camera market we'll also see a relative rise in prices of the kind of cameras we want as fewer sales have to support the same level of R&D and tooling.

I've long read The Guardian online as my primary news source and they have sunk an absolute fortune into their web/app presence and have never had a paywall. As a consequence, of course, they're deep in the doo-doo financially as web ads don't pay the bills like print ads in the physical paper used to. I remember those days - successful sales guys on national papers' jobs were more about picking the advertiser who would demand the least discount rather than actually having to go out and sell to clients - everyone got respectably rich (well, a lot of them didn't, actually, as they spent it all on drink, drugs and hookers at the weekend and came back hungry for more cash on a Monday - but that's another story for when I see you all in the pub!). Not any more. The Guardian have resorted to hawking 'memberships' at £49 a year to those who wish to pay - you get access to some dedicated content and they send you a nice bag. I've bought one because I have a need for good professional content - I'd be happy to do the same here if @Andrew Reid were to offer something similar.

Unfortunately, with all the other calls on my time, some months I don't get a chance to take any stills, let alone play around with them. And I would never dream of insulting my digestive canal with anything sold by Starbucks.

I used to work in the world of obscure international trade shows and magazines, first as an ad/space salesman, later on the operational side. The magazines - with enticing titles like 'World Plastics and Rubber Technology', 'Railway Interiors' and 'Automotive Testing International' were 100% advertiser-led. They had editorial staff, who called themselves journalists - but in reality they were employed to put the words of the advertisers and the exhibitors into a form that looked like journalism but was, in fact, thinly disguised advertorial. There was absolutely no way in the world that any of those magazines would have criticised any advertiser, exhibitor, or potential client of the future - the companies in those industries could have caused the immolation of a small country and the only news about them in our mags would have been about their latest widget. This became especially pernicious once the publishers all jumped on the (far more lucrative) expo business as potential exhibitors would be offered puff pieces in the magazines as an incentive to book stand space. That, I'm afraid, is the end game in non-news journalism once it becomes advertiser led. In fact, it even happens in pure news as well - witness the ongoing reluctance, for instance, of the Daily Telegraph to publish articles critical of China in the light of its regular, highly profitable, supplements sponsored by that country. Personally I stopped taking much notice of DPR once Amazon bought it as, having the experience outlined above, I couldn't see how a website owned by one of the largest camera retailers could maintain integrity in the long term. Whether or not they actually have started to water down adverse opinions of cameras or their manufacturers, the fact is that I can no longer be sure that they don't. And that's the pity of it. I don't make my living with cameras any more - it's a fun hobby, but an incredibly expensive one (well it isn't actually - I've got friends who are into cars and motorbikes who will happily spend tens of thousands of pounds on their passions and no-one really bats an eyelid - I spend £3K on a camera and people think I'm insane) so I need to know that the sources of information I use to guide my purchases are going to give me the bad news as well as the good. I no longer bother with any of the 'magazine' style sites at all - I research potential purchases here and on DVX User and get opinions, in the round, that I can trust.