Mark Romero 2

I have a Crane 1 and a Weebill s. Whenever you have a problem, you should definitely try to calibrate the gimbal. Now, i've never had a Crane V2, but I would certainly imagine that it has the ability to be calibrated. On the Weebill S (and I think on the crane one) you use your phone to connect to the gimbal and start the calibration process. It is best to be near a computer with a video about calibration on the computer since the images on your phone will most likely be too small. Hope this helps.

Late to the conversation here and haven't read all the replies. I moved from my crop-sensor a6500 to a full frame Panasonic S1 for the better low light ability / increased dynamic range, and for the 10-bit 4:2:2 codec. But that is because I shoot real estate and have to deal with ambient lighting. When shooting real estate videos, there often isn't time (or a budget) to set up lighting. So I often have a COUPLE of shots per video which are at the ISO 1600 to 3200 range. Other times I am dealing with extreme levels of dynamic range. The S1 does pretty well in these situations. Far better than the a6500.

It's not particularly good in terms of picking out what exactly to focus on. (Although I only have the kit 24-105 lens as a native L Mount lens. My other lenses are either Canon with the MC-21 or some Minolta MD manual focus lenses). but it is REALLY SMOOTH when it does figure out what you want. Meaning, that it seems to me to have an ease-in / ease-out effect when you are switching between subjects using AF. And the Panasonic lenses have minimal focus breathing and are pretty much parfocal unless you are going for extreme focal length change, like going from 24 to 105mm focal length on the 24-105 kit lens - but more modest zooms are parfocal (of course, and f/4 lens probably helps hide any loss in focus)

I agree with your points (not that you need MY validation or anything... just saying your are spot on).

Well... if they release this lower-end camera, then they better start releasing their less expensive (f/1.8) lenses to go along with it. I don't know which market they are going to target with it though. Primarily a stills camera? A true hybrid? A vlogging camera?

I don't know how much a used Panasonic S1 goes for in your neck of the woods, but it would be ideal for that kind of a situation. (I am assuming you wouldn't need AF-C in those situations but I could be wrong.)

I haven't watched a lot of videos about the R5 / R6 cameras, but in the ones that I HAVE seen, I noticed the great AF performance is often demonstrated with lenses that focus breathe... a lot!!! (I confess I watched Tony Northrop's review of the a7S III and I think he siad it was shot on an a6, and the focus breathing was really distracting to me.) As wonky as AF is on the S1 series (and believe me, it is pretty wonky), Panasonic lenses have minimal focus breathing (and their zooms are pretty darn parfocal to boot). (Doesn't the S1H have a focus pull feature where you set up two AF areas and then can pull focus between them??? )

You are correct in that you don't NEED a green screen. You just want something that is appropriate as a background. You will probably want to light your background though, too, either with a dedicated light (or lights) on a stand, or using practical lighting (shelf lamps, table lamps, floor lamps, ceiling lights), or a combination of both. In your instance, I would probably either go for the shelf background, or just a nice paper background. In either instance, you will still want to have enough room that the camera is moved back a bit and zoomed in, and you aren't casting shadows on to your background, whatever it is. And finally, a lapel mic MIGHT work out well for you, especially something like the Rode wireless go. A shotgun mic on top of the camera is almost always going to give mediocre to poor audio unless the camera is less than three feet away from the person speaking (and preferably closer to 1.5 feet away from the person speaking). On the other hand... Dude Perfect use shotgun mics on top of their camera for their videos, and I think they have over a million subscribers to their youtube channel, so there is that...

Good point. Thanks.

So is the sensor in the Z5 pretty much the same sensor in the D750???

Regarding lighting, the main factors are going to be: 1) How much of your body you want to show on screen 2) How much room do you have 3) Your budget @Trek of Joy mentioned searching for a tutorial on how to light a green screen and I would agree that's a good place to start. In a very simple setup, you would probably need one key light for your face and front, then a reflector, and then one (or possibly two) lights for the green backdrop. To use a reflector though you will probably need to get it pretty close to you, so you might not be able to shoot as wide as you would like. I use one of the pop-out folding green screen reflectors so that it will be pretty much wrinkle free. It sounds like you might already have green fabric. You might need to use a frame of some kind to stretch out the fabric to minimize wrinkles... As for the mics... I think Curtis Judd did a recent (last 6 months or so) comparison of mics that fit different budgets. I would look it up on you tube. A lav mic isn't necessarily bad (Jared Polland - Fro Knows Photo - uses one taped to his chest, I believe). It certainly is more convenient than setting up a tall stand and a boom pole and getting the mic about 18-inches above your face. Just don't get a shotgun mic and slap it on the camera and expect the sound to be good from several feet away. Because it won't be good. Hope this helps.

Hi there, @SRV1981 Yes, you are in the right forum. You should be able to create videos similar to the ones that you linked to using FCP, Keynote, and your Sony a7 III and the Tamron 28-75 lens. I don't think you need a wider lens unless the room you are going to film in is very small. Ideally, you would move the camera further away from you and zoom in instead. If you are close and zoom out to wide angle, then you can often see wider than the background. Also you would want to be far enough away from the backdrop that your shadow doesn't fall on the backdrop. Unfortunately, while the Shure SM7B mic has pretty good audio quality, it is a dynamic mic and is designed to be used VERY CLOSE to the audio source. So for a person, you would place the mic right in front of their mouth. Meaning, while you are on screen talking, the mic would need to be right in front of your face. If you want to emulate the "look" of the three videos you linked to, you would want to use a boom mic with a cardioid pattern (or a shotgun mic on a boom). These mics are designed to be placed about 18-inches away from the speakers mouth. You will need a boom arm and stand to mount the mic. Alternatively, you could use a lapel mic. The lapel mic would be more convenient (especially if you get a wireless lapel mic), but it can be prone to rustling noise if you move and the fabric of your clothing rustles against it. Also you might want to hide the lapel mic. And in general, mics that are boomed overhead have a different sound than lapel mics. I don't know if it is a huge difference in sound or not. The Audient ID14 input looks like it is good for recording sound in to your computer. But is this what you want? To make things as easy as possible, you would want to record the audio in to your camera. If you record the audio separately in to the computer, then later on you will need to sync up the (separately recorded) audio to the video. It's not rocket surgery, but it is more convenient if the audio is recorded directly to your video file. As for lighting, you are probably going to want a key light in a softbox (possibly with a grid), then a fill light, then one or possibly two lights for lighting the green screen evenly. Godox makes several affordable LED lights, and many people use the SL60 if you are going to be filming one person from the waist up. They aren't super powerful, and the fans can be a bit noisy (so you would want a good directional mic to minimize noise from the fans). A step up would be the aputure lights, which are a bit quieter and the color of the light might be slightly better. They are significantly more expensive than the Godox lights, but as they say, you often get what you pay for. My understanding is that a good green screen requires EVEN lighting and you need to remove wrinkles as best as you can. And don't wear green clothing. And don't have green eyes. I would look up tutorials on "Lighting a one person interview" because that is mainly what you will be doing. Same thing for looking up tutorials on audio for a one-person interview. Hope this helps.

One of the tests I remember was Maarten Heilbron and I thought Gerald Undone had done a test, but could be wrong. But I am pretty sure I did see another test where NLOG was about 11 stops max. Could you share with me where you saw that NLog is rated at 12 stops? I am hardly an engineer, but I thought that there would be a difference between the RAW that is captured by stills in the .NEF format internally and the RAW that is captured in the ProRes codecs.

I am not trying to be a snob, but I just can't watch the Tony and Chelsea videos anymore. Here are a couple of people suggesting cameras - often based on video features of a camera - and their videos are (technically) horrible. I mean, overly sharpened and contrasty (and both of them are at that age when having less sharpening would be a good idea). I hate the 60fps motion blur (or lack thereof). Tony's audio, in particular, is so crunchy it hurts. And I blame @IronFilm for making me care about audio quality. Life was so much easier when I had no clue what good audio sounds like.

Technically, it's not cyberbullying if it is true...

Thanks for the report. If that is truly the case (not doubting you), I would have looked harder at the Z6 + Ninja V combo. Most of the early tests I saw showed that it was about a stop and a half lower (just at 11 stops of DR). Are you using N-Log to text the Z6? Or RAW???

Huh??? I quite like the image out of my S1. Much better than out of my Sony cameras. People who are far more talented than I have said that the image out of the S1 / S1H is basically equivalent to that out of the BMPCC6K and it seems that the image has more latitude than the 6K. Yeah, the AF is disappointing. On the other hand, if you go with Panasonic lenses, then you get minimal focus breathing, and they are VERY close to being parfocal. Also, if you are using AF to do focus pulls, they are VERY smooth. Maybe that was one of the reasons they decided to use contrast detect / depth from defocus? It's like the lens ramps in and out when doing focus pulls via AF. Also, i guess one man's specs are another man's useful features. The EVF and the LCD on the S1 are quite a joy to use. The IBIS is great. It's nice that you have TWO zebra settings (although on the S1 it isn't quite as capable as the S1H in terms of zebras). Waveforms are very helpful (false color would be better though). Full size HDMI port. And the camera is rugged. I know this first hand 😞 Don't get me wrong: still lots of stuff I would love to see changed / improved on my S1. But it is certainly more than just a bunch of specs.

Yeah, a new Z6 would require AT LEAST 10-bit internal LOG, and I would need to see some confirmation that the dynamic range matches that of the S1 V-LOG since what few tests I saw online seemed to say that it had a good stop-and-a-half LESS than the S1 did. (If someone has a link to tests showing dynamic range of N-LOG where it compares equally or favorably to the S1, please let me know.) And 4K 60 full frame. But then there is the lens situation... Nikon lenses are plentiful and affordable. S1 lenses.... that's a a no. But S1 lenses have minimal focus breathing and the zooms are about as close to being parfocal as you are going to find. Anyway... all this just to say that I guess I am looking forward to the real world tests of the Canon R6 the most.

Is there an additional crop for 4K UHD 60fps? (Beyond the 1.1X crop at 4K 30fps) Wondering how the low light and DR of 4K 30 will be compared to the S1. I am guessing that just on math alone S1 would hold an advantage as it is 6K downsampled to 4K, as opposed to the 5.1K downsampled to 4K on the R6. But don't know if that is going to make any sort of real world noticeable difference.

What is the interest level of OTHER lens manufacturers in producing L Mount lenses / joining the L Mount alliance?

That's weird... I would have expected it to be out of focus then... (Yes, I own an S1)

@MrSMW Thanks again for the information and your thoughts. Much appreciated. BTW: I hope you are staying healthy out there. Your line of work necessarily puts you in close proximity to a lot of people.

@MrSMWThanks so much for the insights. I really appreciate your thoughts. I didn't know about the Tamron 45mm f/1.8. . Seems like a good lens, but pretty darn expensive. I guess I still associate "Tarmon" with "Inexpensive," although I would probably have an equally hard time justifying US $600 even if it were a Panasonic or Nikon / Canon lens. Out of curiosity, you mentioned that Can you elaborate on why you wouldn't use it in the future? As for using a G9 / G85 / GX?, yeah, that does seem like a possibility. I guess the only problem with that is I would probably end up having to buy a metabones spedbooster so I could use some Canon glass on the Panasonic M43 model. I guess my problem with that is that, say, a used GH5 + Metabones Speedboster is about as expensive / more expensive than another used S1 and MC-21 (although the AF of a GH5 + MB Speedbooster is supposed to be better than that of an S1 and MC-21) Sorry to hear that the h.265 is a pain to edit. Can I ask if you are using Long GOP or All-I and what your computer specs are? And finally, out of curiosity, which Sony 1" camcorder are you using??? And about how high of an ISO do you feel comfortable shooting it at? (I am assuming it uses ISO values instead of gain values, but I am probably wrong again.) NOTE: Just realized that Camera Conspiracies did a video comparison between S1 and X-T4 (which I am assuming has same F-LOG formula as X-T3), Seems really strange because to me, looks like the reds in the S1 kind of shift magenta while the reds in the X-T3 kind of shift orange? (Camera Conspiracies admits that he isn't really good at grading so maybe that just all goes out the window.) Thanks again.

I'm thinking of getting a used X-T3 as a B Cam (more like a 1A cam) to my Panasonic S1 The benefits of using the X-T3 in conjunction with an S1 (instead of just buying a second S1) 1) Lighter weight on a gimbal (I have been having a lot of lower back pain lately and think the S1 + Canon EF 16-35 f/4 L + Sigma MC-21 + Zhiyun Weebill S is probably a big part of it). 2) 4K 60p 10-bit internally (I know I could use a Ninja V and get 4K 60p in 10bit off S1, but again, the weight is already an issue). 3) Better autofocus (Potentially, but I will probably be using it with EF Lenses and the Fringer adapter since then I can use canon glass on both the S1 with MC-21 and the X-T3 with fringer adapter). 4) It would be a (more) convenient "everyday" camera for walking about / family stuff. The main questions I have are: A) How well does AF really work with the Fringer adapter work with Canon glass? The reviews I have seen makes it look pretty good. B) How difficult is it to match Fuji F-Log footage with Panasonic V-Log footage? (The FULL version of V-LOG, not the Lite version of V-Log found in the GH5 series) C) is the h.265 codec really that much of a pain to deal with in Resolve on a "moderate" computer system? (Resolve 16, i7-6770, 24GB RAM, RTX 2060 Super 8GB VRAM, Win 10 D) Will I end up hating the X-T3 due to record time limits and battery capacity? And finally, is anyone really enjoying using vintage MF glass on the X-T3? On the S1, it is a joy to use my old Minolta MD lenses. But the S1 had a great EVF, is easily programmed to punch in, and has great IBIS. Not sure how well the X-T3 will play with older glass like that. Thanks in advance.

Well... maybe, or maybe not... The S1H is a GREAT 4K camera after all. Personally, I don't think I would upgrade from the S1 to the S1H but there are times that I wish it had some of the features.