BTM_Pix
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Posts posted by BTM_Pix
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I've just picked one of these up and its a pretty nifty little thing.
Basically its a series of locking bars that you can easily change to be anything from a selfie stick for Vlogging to a top handle to a shoulder mount or even a poor man's low mode stabiliser.
As the joints lock in any angle its really flexible in being able to be shaped to what you need it for. Its really useful in the shoulder mount mode actually because you can make the angle of the piece that runs over your shoulder to be really tight so it hooks in firmly.
Each piece also has 3 mounting holes so you can attach handles, mics, lights, monitors, cup holders or whatever else rig enthusiasts like to cram on there if thats your thing.
Its light, versatile, folds down small enough to fit in a coat pocket and at £38 its not exactly going to break the bank.
With something with IBIS like the GX80 I've got it with here, it gives some great additional stabilisation advantage and still keeps you stealth.
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2 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:
Hey guys,
Since so many people here appear to be using GX cameras, does anyone know of a way to power them through a usb? When I plug my camera in, it asks to be turned off to charge. So trying to shoot a time lapse or something on the battery is very limiting. Is there an adapter somewhere that lets you plug into a mains supply?
This is the bane of my life recently!
I have to keep the camera powered while I'm testing my controller with it and its a real pain in the arse keeping the batteries charged to get it through the day.
We need this dummy battery for AC power but ideally a version that can take USB to the dummy battery. They do exist but if not then some wire strippers and a donor USB cable will sort it out.
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7 hours ago, jonpais said:
Are you kidding me? BH Photo lists the G85 as discontinued? If you can find one of these for as little as USD 715.00, I wouldn't hesitate to pick one up. In fact, I was about to pull the trigger on a second body myself, but they're going for around $1,000 at a shop here in Hanoi.
Readily available in the UK still as body only. Thanks to the country lurching from one laughable decision to another it won't be long before there is 1:1 parity with the dollar and it'll be worth buying a plane ticket to come and get one!
http://www.wexphotographic.com/panasonic-lumix-dmc-g80-digital-camera-body-1607694/
It does point to a new model but I'm curious to know what they could put in it without threatening the GH5 to be anything other than a relatively small incremental change. Higher bitrates and purchasable VLOG are both available in their top end bridge camera the FZ2000/2500 so it could be those and that could make it worthwhile for upgrading. But either way, a new model will make a used G80 quickly be available sub £400 which is beyond a bargain.
5 minutes ago, Grimor said:@BTM_Pix i really think G80 is your camera!!
We, G80 owners, really wish it so badly !!
And think about the surprise faces of the camera store crew, when you came back but this time not to capture data packages...
Not to mention the surprise on their faces when I ask if I can test it with my new follow focus controller........
And how doubly shocked they'll be when I put the metabones smart adapter on and they see it doing it with Canon lenses as well......(As shocked as I was yesterday when I got it working !)
But that's for another thread on another day. Like next Thursday probably.
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Some great discussions on here in the past few weeks about paring things down and in the spirit of that, what do you think is the sweet spot camera?
I'm beginning to think its the G80/85
4K, IBIS, Mic input, Cinelike D, articulating screen, flexible mount, compact, no overheating, decent app for remote control, easy workflow.
And you can now get them for £550.
I can see it about cameras further up like the A6300/6500 and the GH5 but I definitely think the G80/85 packs the biggest bang for the buck.
Whats yours?
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7 minutes ago, mercer said:
But in all honesty, why can't I get the high bitrate 1080p in the G85. Canon constantly gets bashed for withholding features but every single other company does the exact same thing... granted not to the same extent.
Cinelike D being able to be switched on in their £250 travel compacts might have opened a few people's eyes to Panasonic playing a very similar game
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The free version is 1080 only but, blimey, its Avid Media Composer for free.
If you'd gone to the NAB show 10 years ago to pick up a Media Composer system, a DaVinci Resolve system and a Fairlight system you'd be looking at a six figure investment minimum.
And now you can download all of it for free tonight.
Incredible really.
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53 minutes ago, luizhmgoncalves said:
I also believe the 1D C is a perfect B or C camera to use togheder with the Alexa.Careful with making B camera suggestions.
You'll have someone on saying that the only B camera to an Alexa is an Alexa.
Or that the Alexa is actually the B camera to the Enormo2567-T
4 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:Wonder what other settings it can control if opened up?
Is that a challenge
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Shooting tethered for stills using the LAN port I imagine?
The EOS utility can do camera setting control over that port as well I think.
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4 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:
There’s one missing piece, though, and it’s funny you mentioned it prominently and defensively in your article: audio. There’s yet to be a game changer in audio that equals the Red One or 5D Mark II or Movi in innovation. There are cheap mics that are okay now, but the 416 (40 years old) is the golden standard. Still. You can buy an iLav that sounds remarkably good enough compared with a real lav…. but ingesting, logging, syncing, hooking that thing up to an iPhone. It's the worst. Not that using timecode sync via slate is exactly reliable or fun, either. But while I don’t want to put my sound operator friends out of business, sound recording needs to be next. Sound Devices just released cheap mixers that can compete with the big boys. Just this year. For the first time ever. That’s HUGE. That’s the 5DII. What we're missing is the DPAF or the Ronin or low light equivalent for sound. Something that makes good easy. Good sound is still hard, no matter what camera, XLRs or not be damned.
Not that I follow post as closely, but post seems to have changed as fast as video has, so sound is next. (Great direction and art design and acting will forever remain elite and exclusive because the mis is physical. This fact favors porn but also storytelling.)
With regard to audio, I think the innovation has largely come from the music side of the fence rather than the broadcast/film side to be honest.
From that point of view, there have been numerous 5DMKii moments.
The Portastudio was one, the LinnDrum was another, the Akai S900 sampler, the Atari ST with Cubase, the ADAT digital multitrack, the Yamaha 02R mixing console and of course SoundTools as it was and ProTools as it became.
Arguably, these were all much bigger game changers than the 5DMKii, particularly the latter ones as they changed the entire industry at the high end as well as the low.
The 5DMKii let you make images that looked somewhat like the movie studios could do, the audio products didn’t just allow you to produce audio that sounded like a real recording studio did but actually became the real recording studios.
The nature of broadcast and film is intrinsically more conservative.
I’ve been involved in product development for one company where it seemed inconceivable why the BBC, for example, would spend five times more for something that did less and then for another company where it seemed inconceivable to me why they would spend five times more on what we were proposing to them than they could on something similar they could get from a music store.
Some days you’re the statue, some days you’re the pigeon !
The problem with audio developments for music is that it plateaued and then became a race to the bottom price wise from which it will never return. It means that the innovation is now in the cost reduction and arguably why not because there really isn’t many more places for it to go in terms of functionality or quality. Which is good for us!
As all of this rapid development was going on in music technology, say between 1982-2000, it was like the wild west at times with companies coming from nowhere with bombshell products that either drove their competitors out of business or drove them on to greater heights.
And the vast majority of these companies were small ones (generally created by musicians who had to invent what it was the market didn’t have for them to buy), which made them lean and agile.
Over time though, the eating each other’s lunch routines often combined with little, no or reckless business practices (and ESPECIALLY poor cash flow from over ambitious product developments) left them vulnerable to being put out of business or, more usually, being bought out by the major manufacturers who were predominantly large Japanese companies. The likes of Oberheim (Yamaha), Linn (Akai), PPG (Korg) and Sequential Circuits (Yamaha again) all went that way and the innovation generally went no further for them once they were under the wing of those bigger manufacturers. Eventually freed from their ‘consultancy’ deals, most have resurfaced as boutique operations serving an ever more niche market.
If I look at someone like Fairlight and my relationship with them as an example of what happened to an innovative company, its quite informative. I went from being an awestruck kid when they brought the CMI out, to then working for a manufacturer who basically drove them out of the sampler business they’d created, to eventually working on OEM development with them when they transitioned to broadcast. In the subsequent 20 years they’ve changed hands countless times and are now just a tab on a piece of free(ish) software. Its hard to grasp such a transition for me but for anyone who’s too young to know what the CMI was, its the equivalent of RED’s RAW pipeline ending up as a free download in the Sony PlayMemories store for your RX100.
Lexicon are exactly the same. From making jaw dropping almost other worldly products to being gobbled up by a company that was making most of its money off providing car stereos for GM etc and Lexicon was reduced over time to being included in every low end mixing console and software bundle that it could be licensed to. The company that bought them has done the same to every company its bought and I can’t even dignify them by mentioning their name even 20 years after them destroying the company I worked for !
So there’s just no incentive there for anyone to be innovative in music audio anymore as its littered with similar stories and the ones left standing wouldn’t see the amount of volume in broadcast/film that they need to press the button on the mass production runs they now need due to how cheap everything has to be now.
The company that COULD do it are the much maligned Behringer.
If you look at something like the X Air XR12 digital mixing console and see what they can knock out for £239 retail (inc VAT!!) then it doesn’t take a genius to see what they could do against Sound Devices if they had the inclination but there just isn’t the market there. Because, believe me, they wouldn’t have blinked if there was.
So, unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get that 5DMarkii moment and the innovation such as it is will come from individuals themselves looking at products from the music side of the fence and modifying it themselves. Like getting that X Air XR12 and powering it from Sony NP batteries to make an extremely capable digital field mixer and recorder for £269 (including the £30 for the bits to do it) or being a smartarse and using cheap midi controllers to create remote focus and control systems for Panasonic cameras for under £75 (ahem!).
Because music audio had its numerous 5DMKii moments a few years ago there is a backlog of a ton of cheap stuff that flies under the radar for film makers that is waiting for them if they look for it.
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Just now, Trek of Joy said:
Twenty years ago when I first picked up a guitar I got one of those, could multi-track on a cassette. It was a revelation. Then a few years later I discovered Cool Edit Pro and went completely digital. I gave the Tascam to a friend for free as it was just collecting dust in a closet. Like all my old cameras and the white Les Paul Custom that had aged to a yellowish tint and weighed more than any other LP I've picked up (11 lbs, it was a tone monster) - I wish I had it back.
There is a definite connection between specific function devices with dedicated controls like a portastudio and creativity.
They keep you focused on what you are doing by serving you rather than the other way round.
Unlimited possibilities seems like a good thing but the problem is that its so easy to be drawn into trying most of them. Often that just leads to varying degrees of turd polishing where we're spending good creative money after bad as it where when we would be better off walking away from it and spending that time on making something that doesn't actually need polishing.
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Also available in blonde.
- Chris Oh, Tim Sewell and tomastancredi
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Bit of a surprise but its all over for Lexar.
Meanwhile, over at Sandisk
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It converts it to CAT5 so obviously its not wireless but it will do the trick for longer distances if you can live with the cable run.
I was looking at something like this one here when looking for cheaper alternatives to the Terradek encoders.
Its a bit of a different approach to what you want but it gets the same result and a bit more.
Its got a lot of flexibility to it as its a streaming encoder that can be set up locally to stream to an iPad or a cheap android box out to a tv if you want but can also stream directly to YouTube live, Facebook Live or any similar streaming service.
Its cheaper than even basic consumer wireless HDMI transmitters as well and I think it offers a lot of additional unctionality for the money and obviously its a fraction of the cost of the Terradek equivalents.
I can't vouch for it as I didn't end up buying one but have a snoop around and I'm sure you'll find some reviews for it or something similar
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17 minutes ago, IronFilm said:
The Tascam DR10C series is only sold in some markets (such as the UK) with the headphone output option, as Zaxcom and their army of lawyers stopped Tascam from selling it in the USA.
Thus Tascam had to go back to the drawing board and release a newly designed product: the Tascam DR10L! (basically the same thing, but without a headphone output. Maybe the "L" stands for "Less"? ha!)
However... this feature missing is not such a big deal as you might think, as very obviously you can't monitor the audio via that headphone jack while the talent is wearing it!! ha
***EXCEPT***..... if you're passing it through to a TX so then you can monitor it wireless, on your recorder. Thus the Tascam DR10C is acting as a back up recording (which is what Zaxcom hated, and they claim to have a patent on), in case of wireless interference.Ahhh
Blimey, must be one of the few times we get more on a product here!
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I've used the same sensor in a different (even more compact) body which was the X-M1.
Image quality was good but it just didn't work for me really without having an EVF.
So, the XE2s would've resolved that for me and I'd have probably kept it.
One thing I'd say though is also have a look at the X-T10. They've come down in price a fair amount since the X-T20 was launched and give you an articulating screen and extra dial with only a a small increase in footprint. Internally they are identical.
They are even cheaper than the XE2s in a lot of places.
I think MPB might be quite local to you?
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Don't forget the subterfuge involved.
Last morning in Berlin so suggest going to the flea market as I'd been reading about there being lots of interesting locally produced jewellery available there.
Just sat in cafe reviewing the only locally produced gems that were actually bought.
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53 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:
It does work on 1.2 firmware. Once it's loaded, you can save it to C or save it as the custom Photo Style (press disp. once you've fine tuned the settings), either way, you don't need to re-do it every time you turn the camera on.
You'll konw if it's worked because the name of the Photo Style will be blank, where others say 'Standard' 'Vivid' etc.
BTM_Pix - I just saw a thread about focus ramping time lapses:As it's also done through a browser, is there a way to include that option into this html. file? Then all these sweet tweaks will be in one place. I know nothing about how you're doing what you're doing, otherwise I'd give it a go myself haha
Yes and no.
It eventually ends up being sent out as http requests so yes from that point of view but there is FAR more going on behind the scenes to get it to send the messages that you actually want to so its a no from a practical point of view.
All of the effort regarding what can be done with this stuff will be merged within the hardware controller. The focus aspect of it in the controller will be targeted at live control and, with the wind in the right direction, an A/B or even A/B/C focus transition control.
Have a look at the other threads for work in progress.
Not much progress this week as I'm on holiday though !
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13 minutes ago, jonpais said:
I would pick the X-T2 hands down, however?image quality doesn't exist in a vacuum.
No, it exists mainly in the dry box now
Ties in with the other thread on a different level really about there no point something having 20% better image quality if its 100% more difficult to shoot with.
I think thats why the X-T20 might be the decent compromise for people after the image quality of the X-T2 with more of the form factor of the G7/G80 sort of camera.
- Aussie Ash and jonpais
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2 hours ago, Inazuma said:
You mean lock settings?? That is assignable
Lock an individual image while reviewing it instead of going through the menu and the stupid double confirmation?
I'm buggered if I can find it and Fuji told me that it doesn't do it because no one ever asked for it!
Where is it?
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They added audio memo to it based on feedback from sports photographers, which is a good thing.
And then still didn't add being able to assign the lock image function to a function key because, I was told by them, no one had ever mentioned it being needed. Despite it being such a fundamental part of the workflow that all Nikon and Canon pro bodies have a dedicated button for it, let alone just allowing it to be assigned to a function key.
So, I expect that the next firmware update will allow even more stuff to be put on the function keys.
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The Sweet Spot
In: Cameras
Posted
I would imagine the 80D would smoke it for stills and there are lens choice advantages, particularly on the wides.
But having said that, you could get the G80 with a smart speedbooster for less money and reduce the bridge the lens gap and make a dent on the low light as well.
Whereas the advantages the G80 has of 4K and the IBIS (not to mention small primes in MFT format) and form factor are not something that you can bring to the 80D. Or, it seems, can Canon this side of 2020
Thats why the G80 is the sweet spot for me.
The one that could have been, if Fuji had IBIS, would be the X-T20.