mercer

Right, which is why I am moving everything to EF. My issue with a single adapter is that they aren’t built to the same quality as the original camera mount, so over time, the metal will wear and the springs will loosen... unless you buy really good adapters like Metabones or Novoflex... but that can get pricey. I also like the different color looks that different lenses can offer. For instance my Zeiss lenses have a naturally cooler look compared to my Nikkors, so when I plan out some projects, I can help my post color work a little by choosing the right lens for the tone of the piece... so although a lot of folks might prefer the clean, sterile look of modern glass and then find the look in post (which is a valid option) I prefer the character of the glass to help me find the look I am after.

When I bought my first camera, I couldn’t afford any good native lenses and since I wanted shallow depth of field, I bought adapters and vintage lenses. When I moved to mirrorless, I did the same thing except the adapters got larger. I followed the advice to get an adapter for every lens so I was swimming in adapters. One of the great things about still lenses are their small size, but once you add the adapters the lens is unbalanced and huge on mirrorless cameras. Once I moved back to a DSLR, thankfully the size of the adapters are smaller, but there is just too much wiggle for my taste and for not much more I can change out the mount via Leitax or Simmod and have all of my lenses with the same mount. But now I have a couple of small boxes full of mirrorless adapters taking up valuable real estate in my closet... but I don’t want to throw them away... maybe I’ll list a bunch of them on eBay or include them with some lenses I plan on selling. As far as speedboosters... it’s just another piece of glass I have to make sure is clean... the lens elements and my NDs are more than enough. Don’t get me wrong, if I have to use one, I will.

Thanks! Is that with the eos-m or do you use the 5D3 experimental build? I think I want to give that a test this week to try and get 2.7/3K out of it... but I’ll also load this onto my eos-m and try a side by side for the fun of it. Also... with these experimental builds in ML, are the basic 14bit settings the same as the stable nightly builds? Meaning: can I have the experimental builds but use the old school build with everything else disabled?

Can you judge framing at all or is it way off?

@Nikkor how is LiveView with those settings?

Well, get out and shoot some stuff... you owe it to the community to show me some 1080p ProRes. But I’m sure it’s great... it sounds better, or at least as good as a Red. I’m going to wait and see how a few things pan out before I make my next move, but this is definitely on the list. @Ehetyz makes some amazing films on his UMP, so his endorsement of the P4K has pushed me a little closer, but since at this point, any camera will be a 2nd camera, I wonder if a Micro would make more sense. And then there’s the Ursa Mini 4K with its global shutter. Or a GH5. Or Z-Cam E2. Or X-T3... Just saying there are a lot of options available to us right now. I’m smack dab in the middle of two projects, so I have zero reason to change systems until the summer or next fall by the earliest... maybe BH will have some P4Ks in stock by then... lol... of course by the time BMD has the preorders filled, they may have to offer a price cut because the camera will be 2 years old.?

I love what Roman Hense does with his a6300, so I can see the appeal of this camera, but in some ways, since it is so recycled, I almost feel it should be cheaper. I mean, other than the AF... is there anything new in this camera?

Well, it’s all relative. I owned both the GX85 and the G85 and I preferred the ergonomics of the G85 to the GX85 and I felt the IBIS was a little better... not as good as Olympus’ but a little better than the GX85. Also if you’re talking sub $1000, you can buy a G9 for less than a grand now, and the IBIS on that camera is supposedly 2 stops better than the GX85 plus it has 4K up to 60p... so it’s all relative. With that being said, the GX85 is a great camera and other than a used Pocket/Micro it’s the best camera under $500.

Oh I hear you and get your point. But a huge difference in price isn’t necessarily a valid point for a visual comparison. You can do the same comparison with any cheap camera and ask the same question. It’s a gotcha comparison designed for a specific answer. For instance, I could do a similar comparison with a D5500 vs the Alexa. The D5500 has about 11 stops of DR... if I had to guess... but it has very clean shadows. Then I could say, “obviously the Alexa wins but it is a $65,000 camera vs. a $500 camera...” Clearly in that video, the Alexa wins. No question. With that being said, I felt the guy did a good job and it shows the strengths of the P4K... but he could have done that without the clickbait “vs” nonsense.

I didn’t mean to suggest it was the same, I just felt the LogC curve was easy to work with. One of these days, I’ll have to find some authentic LogC footage online and give it a go. I do like the Raw image from the C200. I’m hoping the C200B has a significant price drop in the next year or so. I ordered the 85mm yesterday, I was wondering if you knew what I should expect.

Yeah, I know the 1080p out of the P4K is probably pretty darn good but to be frank... I hate adapters now. The idea of using a speedbooster with that camera gives me angina. I’m even switching the mounts on all my lenses to EF via Leitax or Simmod mounts.

I’ve never used either camera but based on comparison videos of X camera vs. the Alexa in the past... yes there is a difference.

@HockeyFan12 obviously you have a lot more experience with different cameras than I have. Even my experience with LogC is based on Log conversions in different MLV apps but since LogC to Rec709 LUTS respond properly to the converted files, I must assume they’re fairly accurate. Have you ever used the FS5? The small form factor, internal 10bit 1080p and external Raw seems very appealing. The used prices seem pretty nice as well. OT - I just bought a Nikkor 85mm 1.4 to go along with my 35mm 1.4. Did you say you have the 85mm?

I’m not here to knock BMD. I think they have done amazing things for indie filmmaking and I have owned a few of their cameras and have loved them. But they aren’t always the most reliable company based on promised specs or deadlines. The global shutter in the Micro comes to mind, as well as the missed release deadlines. Even with the P4K, they promised a September release, which they hit with... a dozen or so cameras being shipped? With that being said, from a business standpoint, B-Raw in the P4K makes zero sense. Why on earth would they include a feature in their lowest model camera that they also include in their highest model? And since B-Raw was released the same week the first P4Ks shipped, then why didn’t they ship the cameras with B-Raw. It’s not like B-Raw was invented the week before. With that being said, I really do hope the P4K gets an upgrade but I wouldn’t buy the camera on that basis alone. But I am starting to warm up to the camera some after seeing your guy’s results.

Honestly, I don’t care about stuff like that. Arri uses 2.7K in the Alexa to downscale to Cinema 2K. I was joking around before in my reply but the sentiment was true. As you recently mentioned somewhere... John Brawley was shooting 1080p ProRes with the Micro and UMP for his network prime time television show. If 4K is important to other shooters, then that’s great, but for my needs... better people than me are delivering at 720p. However, my next goal is to figure out how I can get a clean liveview out of the 5D3 at around 2.5K. I believe you can do it with anamorphic but I don’t know if it’s possible with the regular build or with 12bit MLV Lite With aspherical lenses.

I couldn’t agree more about the importance of cameras. When I first bought my 5D3, I happened upon a cheap Pocket as well. The Raw footage from the 5D was soo much easier to get to look good than the Pocket. I could get a nice image with half of the steps. It’s funny how certain cameras or Log curves are so much easier to navigate than others. You’d think LogC would be difficult but I find it to be one of the easier Log curves to bring to life... also Canon Log and Nikon Flat are very good picture profiles/Log curves in my opinion. @hyalinejim recommended that book to me a while ago and I still haven’t bought it. I wish I had. I’m going to put it in my cart and order it. Thanks.

I liked using the D5500 for video. The flat profile was beautiful and the whole camera felt like an extension of my hand. Sure LiveView was annoying and the lack of exposure tools were an inconvenience (but there was a workaround) but in most cases it was fun to go back to exposing with my eye and having such clean video with more than enough latitude.

@BTM_Pix ... interesting analogy. That band sounds pretty cool... what do they call themselves? I always forget that you can bake LUTS with the P4K. If I was a smarter person I’d probably buy one but I still think 1080p video is going to make a comeback. It’s funny, my best results with color has been using the guided color correction tool in Colorista IV. With some saturation and an s-curve, I’ve received my biggest compliments. Anytime I try to sit down and watch tutorials and learn the proper way... eg. left to my own devices... I spend hours and get worse results. So I agree that it’s great that the tools are available but to master even one discipline in filmmaking is a life long endeavor let alone every single craft.

I’ll believe that the P4K gets B-Raw when I see it. I won’t buy a camera based on what I hope it may end up having.

Sorry, I was just joking around and yes I guess it isn’t as detailed as a 4K Raw video might look but that wasn’t my first takeaway from the video. I guess I’m in the middle of deciding how important 4K video is to my needs right now and I keep coming back to the same answer... 9 out of 10 times, 1080p has more than enough resolution for my needs. In a lot of ways, I think lens choices are more important than resolution. YMMV.

That’s always been my complaint with Alexa footage... definitely not detailed enough.

Being an ML Raw shooter, I can say that the MLVApp is pretty awesome and I think I have an older version. The LogC curve conversion alone is worth its weight in gold in my opinion. It’s pretty insane what is possible with the basic nightly builds of ML Raw. I’ve never tried any type of uprezzing but after seeing that video, I am definitely intrigued. I think even a simple 1080p to 2.5K could be a nice POP. Takumars are great lenses and are so cheap. Some have the radioactive yellowing issue, so be diligent about what you buy. Pentax made a replacement line of SMC lenses in the K Mount shortly after the Takumars and what’s interesting about them is that they used the same optical formulas without the Thorium glass, so the same 50mm 1.4 doesn’t have the yellowing issues that the Takumar has.

I have a folk horror short I’m writing, so any nature footage in the woods/forest would be helpful... if you live near one? But anything would be good. By having some experience shooting with the Pocket and Micro, I always would stick to the native ISO, so I imagine having the two native ISOs could be very helpful to get a clean, consistent image? I recently acquired a small set of Nikkor lenses... the 35mm 1.4 and 85mm 1.4. Since both lenses have the same open aperture and the same amount of aperture blades, it will help me when I stop down the lenses within the same scene and having that dual native iso sounds like a dream for the darker horror movies I have coming up. But I’m so content with my current camera set up, that I am probably a long ways off before I do a camera upgrade... or a camera sidegrade in this instance. In some ways, I am more intrigued by the Z-Cam E2 than the P4K, so I will probably wait to see how that develops first. And then there’s the 5D4 ML development... so many choices. And to be honest, the X-T3 has impressed me the most of all available cameras this year, so as a second camera, that may make more sense for me. In the end, compared to 6 years ago when I got my first camera... we are spoiled.

Being an FCPX user, ProRes is definitely the most interesting aspect to me. With that being said, I have zero need for 4K right now, so even though the camera is a steal, for a second camera, a Micro would/could make more sense for me. But then the allure of that Dual ISO sensor is appealing. Has anyone shot and shared any 1080p ProRes? In my brief search for it, I haven’t found much 1080p from the P4K, especially in 24p.

Interesting poll and discussion. I struggle with color... both in theory and practice. I’ve always been a tinkerer and with most things in life, I can figure it out but color correction/grading has eluded my tinkering ways. It is an art, and a craft. And the folks who are really great at it are either naturals or well trained. There are so many facets to the craft that out of respect for it, and the people that take the time to perfect their craft, I hate even referring to myself as a hobbyist colorist. I can only speak for myself, but I find the most difficult part of color work to be correction. That portion of the craft can make or break the acquisition phase and the grading phase. There is such a symbiotic relationship that it does make sense that shooters are also coloring their own work but traditionally and professionally that is not the case. I’m guilty of it myself, but I think mistakes in the acquisition phase can make color correction/grading more difficult than it needs to be... For instance, most shooters, in most situations, do not need Log footage, or 10bit video, but they use it anyway because they want more latitude... because somewhere, someone told them they needed it. Proper exposure for 8 or 10 stops of dynamic range is difficult enough, when you start adding 3 or 5 more stops of DR with a Log curve you are entering a different level of skill set and understanding of Log Curves that could be more detrimental than just shooting with a flat Rec709 profile and keeping your color work more basic. I have not shot in every scenario possible but with my basic understanding of shooting, most situations can be properly shot with 8-10 stops of DR. So if that’s the case, why shoot with a Log curve designed for 12 or more? I’ve personally found 10-12 stops to be a good sweet spot for the type of image I am looking for. If I was a Hollywood DP, I’m sure I could justify 15-18 stops. I guess what I’m trying to say is... like most things in life, less is more in most instances. So in summation, this is a learning process and as I learn I realize what I don’t know and more importantly what I don’t need. But color grading is fun and I wish I were better at it.