mercer

I am back with another test of the NX500. I have recently been testing the settings that were used in the Cinema5D promo video for the camera before its launch. He used Saturation -4, Sharpness -10, and I believe Contrast -5... even though that has not been confirmed. Either way, I am looking to use this cam for an upcoming horror short, so I was testing out some looks. I still haven't settled on the perfect settings for this camera, but to be honest I haven't done much shooting with it lately. I think I went a little heavy handed with one of the graded shots... Anyway thanks for looking and as always... any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Yeah, I have the NX500 and I have experimented with nearly every possible setting. My current set up is -4 saturation -10 sharpness and -5 contrast. Not sure how the colors are with the nx1, but I find the colors on the nx500 to be off. If I don't desaturate in camera, the yellows oranges and greens just don't look right. But I am a newbie, so it could be user error. Btw, love your videos man... Top notch!!!

I never saw any of Albert Fast's work until this post... I was blown away. Great stuff. Too bad he sold off the NX1 for the G7.

Trust me, get EditReady and don't look back. It is much more than just a transcoding tool. You can put LUTS on the footage pre transcoding, you can change frame rate and ratio, and there are a slew of metadata tools. It handles nearly every codec, except raw dngs, I have ever needed to convert and they constantly update it. And it is super fast.

Damn you Max... Now I want a 50d. Amazing colors. It looks like a vintage post card that would read Greetings from... That blue sky reminds me of Kodachrome. Nice job. And the funny part is, like the woman in your video, I was just finishing a Bloody Mary as I watched it. I also like how candid your videos are. You must be very unassuming or trustworthy because nobody in your videos seem uncomfortable at all.

Do you underexpose because of Gamma DR? I am still searching for the perfect settings for my NX500. It doesn't have Gamma DR or the choice of 0-255 or whatever the other option is. I really like your footage so if I could get my image looking half of what you're getting I'd be a happy filmmaker. Recently I have been exposing to the right with -4 saturation, -5 contrast and -10 sharpness and I have been getting pretty good results, but then I see your footage and learn you're underexposing = I am confused all over again. Btw, where do you live? It looks like the most beautiful place in the world.

Ricardo, you have some beautiful looks in those images. What camera settings are you using? Do you expose to the right and adjust in post, or do you try to nail your exposure in camera?

EditReady. I think ClipWrap may do it as well. It's cheaper than EditReady, but a lot more basic.

I have an affinity for cheap cameras... Mostly because I am poor, but with them comes a lot of headaches. Before I really understood anything about image quality and color correction and color grading I was ignorantly content with my eos-m and its factory firmware. I used vintage lenses to obtain different "looks." After spending the past 6 months reading this forum, I learned that I had a lot to learn... Still do. With 4k cameras coming into fashion, I decided I wanted one, but I couldn't afford a gh4 or an nx1, so I set my sights on the FZ1000 or the G7. While I patiently waited for the G7 to hit the stores or the FZ1000 to drop a little in price, I found a great deal on the Samsung NX500... $350 for the body. I immediately snatched one up (good thing I did because it went up to 500 bucks the next day) I'm sure some of you remember my failed tests with the camera. I was at a point where I was going to sell it, there was just something wrong with the way it handled color, but the image downsampled to 1080p was too amazing to deny. It has a... Weight to the image that was lacking in the 4K. So, Max I completely understand your 4K to 1080p conclusion. I am still not a fan of the way the camera handles color, but I am sure my skill set is, at least, partially to blame. Now after getting a little more experience with color, and how amazing B&W looks on the NX500, and experimenting with the 3x crop raw on the eos-m, I am confident in selling my a5100, my Q7 and my S100. I don't think I will ever shoot h.264 1080p again. When I am ready for an upgrade, I will probably buy a pocket cam or micro.

Max, I just watched your daughter Alice goes back to College video and I can honestly say that it is some of the most filmic looking video I have seen. Really great stuff. If I can get my videos to look half as good, I'll be pleased. I really love the 70s film aesthetic, especially the horror films like The Last House on the Left or Let's Scare Jessica to Death and I think it is a look that easily attainable with some vintage c-mounts, eos-m raw crop and a whole lotta patience... Not one of my strongest virtues, unfortunately.

Haha, my programming expertise began and ended with a Tandy computer back in 1986.

I almost bought a new GoPro black 3+ already modified for $275 last spring, but I was a little short on cash and I really was only interested in the 4 silver. I have seen a few videos online, and the quality looks pretty good... Just wish it was a bit cheaper to modify it.

From researching the history of ML Raw, the workflow does seem to be getting easier, if I could just get rid of the pink dots and get the damn audio to record more than one consecutive shot before the dreaded "threads failed to start" message. With mlv, the workflow is really quite quick, it just requires the time to sit and go through all the clips. The specs of ML Raw Viewer states you can put clips into a queue, but I have not been successful with it. I used Raw Magic yesterday instead of MLV Mystic to make my dngs and that worked fairly well... So we'll see. Luckily I'm a glutton for punishment and will tirelessly waste hours of my life until I figure this out.

Did he ever tell you, before you bought it, that it would work on your t2i?

And therein lies the problem. Almost every step along the way from shooting to getting the footage in the NLE is frustrating, but then you see the footage...

Yeah, after closer evaluation, the pink dot remover program is not working. Am not sure if I am doing something wrong, probably, or if the program is confused because there are two options that pertain to my clips... Eos-m and crop mode.

It's my understanding that .mlv files are the newest version of raw that is compressed. But, as I said, I am a beginner so I could be completely wrong here. Either way, I would think regular raw would be better as you suggested. Ugh, more tests. Thanks again for your help. Oh yeah, I did find the PDR, and yes, I already noticed a higher quality running the clips through that as opposed to chroma smoothing. And the program is so fast... The added step is inconsequential. Thanks again. If you have any other tips you can think of... They'd be greatly appreciated. Oh yeah, I had read one of your posts where you were explaining how you were synching sound with the raw, but I can't seem to find it again... Were you using an LED key light?

Thanks Max. I am a narrative filmmaker, so I agree about the look of Raw footage for storytelling. Even with my lack of experience and bad workflow, I could see a major difference in roll off shooting with the raw. I see on my cam, there's the option to use version 1 raw. Is it any better since it's uncompressed? Or does the added workflow make the benefit negligible?

Right, that makes sense. I have been selling a lot of my lenses... I have been know to suffer from LBA. I use specific lenses with specific cameras. I have a set of non-ai Nikkors... A 50mm f2, a 35mm f2 and a 24mm 2.8. I loved them with the eos-m but now that I am shooting with the 3x crop, the focal lengths just don't fit with my shooting style. To make a long story short I am looking for a reason to keep them because I paid next to nothing for the set. I'll look into the all i-frame mode and test them with that. Thanks for the reply and the great info.

Raw on the eos-m works in apsc as well. It just excited me to use it with old c-mount lenses. Thanks Max, I have been reading a lot of your posts over at the ml forum. Yeah, I figured the chroma smoothing was the culprit and now that you explain the process of how it works, it makes perfect sense. I do have a Mac, using FCPX. So, with your experience, what is the best workflow from capture to edit? I have been researching it, but I found there are so many different schools of thought and updates, it honestly gets confusing keeping it all straight. Is mlvmystic an okay program to convert the mlv files to dngs and then pink dot remover and then mlvrawviewer to convert to prores?

I can't tell you how happy I am that Bror posted about ML Raw on the eos-m because I have recently started using it but I figured nobody would be interested in discussing something so out dated. The reason I started using it was because I recently learned I could use my vintage c-mount lenses with it in crop mode. Which is great. I was getting ready to sell them off when I realized it. Anyway, I am getting some mixed results, and I am wondering if it is due to my workflow? I am recording in .mlv and then using mlmystic to ingest and convert the clips to's .dng. I click on the chroma smoothing option, at 2x2 to remove the pink dots then open those files in mlrawviewer where I fix the wb and convert to prores444. Is the chroma smoothing softening the image, or is that how the pink dot remover program works? I also stopped recording sound because it seemed to cause the dreaded threads failed to start issue. Now I read that it is okay to have in camera sharpening up a notch when shooting raw, but if the camera doesn't acknowledge the picture profile, then how do you use in camera sharpening? Now I have seen other people's footage online, Max and a kid named Ryan Moorman, and they both were getting amazing, sharp results with raw, and I am just not sure what I am doing wrong? Are the c-mounts the problem... Can they not resolve properly for the raw footage. I also am only using the 64gb Transcend card that writes at 60MB, could that be the issue? Bror, I saw that focal reducer and was wondering the same thing. With just the 3x crop on, the camera is insanely better than the original canon specs, so I was wondering what the image would look like with the Nikon focal reducer shot in 3x crop... Would it bring it back to apsc sized without the aliasing? Here's a jpeg grab from a raw clip I took last week using a 12.5 to 75mm Cosmicar c-mount zoom. I really love the look and the colors.

Do you think this would work with an eos-m using magic lantern 3x crop?

As you know, h.265 is highly compressed, I'm not sure the codec will hold up too well to native editing... Or at least grading and correcting. Transcoding to prores, or similar, is pretty painless.

Jonesy, OT question, but how is your feature you shot on the Canon doing? Any festival luck?

I guess you key frame the masks?