kye

Also, I'd imagine you'll probably really like FilmConvert. I've spent a lot of time learning colour grading and I value doing things manually to deliberately build my skills, but if all I was interested in was getting a good result I'd just buy one of those packages like FilmConvert or Dehancer etc and be done with it. I wouldn't recommend them to everyone, as film-emulations aren't the only look so they're kind-of a one-trick pony, but if you like the look then they're definitely the fastest way to get from SOOC to done.

If you're using a strong look like a film emulation then it's worth noting that the preferred approach for colourists is to apply the look and then grade the clips with the look applied.. "grading under the LUT". This will prevent you from having to make two primaries passes, and will save you from adjusting things that are visible without the look but aren't with it. If you're skeptical, grab a bunch of clips and time yourself doing both methods, you might be surprised.

I think the challenge in the MFT space is the limitations of the sensor. The GH5 and P4K basically took all the modes the sensor was capable of and enabled them, the GH5 compressed and the P4K in RAW. If the best MFT sensors are limited to (for example) full-readout 60p and FHD 240p, have dual native ISO, X stops of DR, and a rolling shutter then you can't make a camera that exceeds these specs, so the best you can do is give good codecs and features and make it reliable and in a good form-factor. To be really significant, the GH6 will have to do something groundbreaking, which would require an innovative sensor or crazy processing of some kind. Still, a camera that combined the best specs and features of the GH5 and P4K would be pretty good and probably get my money. Yeah, those codecs are particularly weak. Is Olympus known for improving the codecs in firmware upgrades after the fact, like Panasonic did with the GH5?

Indeed! It's a fair point too, because for our purposes (where we'd use the camera rather than just mounting it and walking away) we need a rig that's usable so it's the rig size that matters rather than the box itself. For that the Komodo is actually a fascinating form-factor and brilliant in a few ways, mostly because of the built-in screen which can be used with a MF-style viewfinder: So you just add a couple of batteries, media, a loupe, a lens, ND and then you're off! The BMMCC obviously didn't have a screen so that made a rig essential and depending on how you rigged it basically tripled the size of it.

Ah, well RAW is RAW, so in that case they're directly comparable. For the compressed version you'd really need to do a visual inspection because 540Mbps isn't an amazingly high-bitrate for 8K. The uncompressed data rate for 8K 10-bit 4:4:4 (after debayering) is about 25,000Mbps, so 540Mbps is only 2.2%, whereas for reference the Prores HQ data rate is about 9% of uncompressed. Prores is visually different to h264 and h265, which both seem more aggressive and digital looking than Prores to me, so the 540Mbps might look considerably worse than a still from a Prores HQ file. Still, the proof is in the pudding so you'd have to actually look. A good way to preview it is to put it 1:1 on a larger monitor and then gradually move away from it until you can't see the pixels anymore. Then you can work out how large the image would be when printed that size and how far back you had to move, then scale that to how close people would stand and you'll get a rough indication of the upper limit on size.

All else being equal that's true, but it'll depend on the compression, which apart from RAW and Prores is typically very high. A 100Mbps 8K frame won't be as good as a RAW 4K frame.

The weight for the Takumar wasn't from a completely reliable source (you don't really find specifications sheets for vintage lenses straight in google) and I wasn't sure of the version either. Takumar do strange things with their versioning - "Super Takumar" and "S-M-C" and "SMC" are all different IIRC, and who knows if it varied from year to year either. Lots of things lost to time around these points in history I think. I have plenty of way heavier things, so I'm with you in terms of things being heavy. If it was heaviest setup of only camera, lens, and adapter, I might give you a run for your money - the GH5 and something like the M42 SB and 200mm F4 Minolta would be right up there. Or others. I have several vintage lenses past 200mm I think 🙂

Pixel peeing here, but it looks quite compressed: Is that compression from the original file or the compression to upload the still? My understanding of wedding photography is that the occasional couple will drop real money to get a large print of the best image of the day to hang in their house - maybe 24"x36" or more. Does that still happen? If so, that's the worst-case they'd have to stand up to, probably being viewed from about the same distance away as its larger dimension. I do really like the idea of grabbing a still from a video, especially if you're a single shooter. I've played with printing out stills from video and my recollection was that bitrate mattered a lot more than resolution, at least for modest sized prints.

My recommendation is to invest a bit of time, and if you're making money then it's an investment, and put in a bit of work. Here's what I would suggest: Go through a few weddings and pull a selection of the type of shots you typically get onto a single timeline. ie, some day, some night, some close-ups of different skintones, some high-key, some low, some with super-saturated colours, etc Put an adjustment layer (or something you can colour grade in) over the top of all the clips Duplicate that timeline and grade it using every method you can imagine....... try every LUT you can get your hands on - even if they're obviously "wrong" (eg, try the ARRI 709 LUT, the Canon one, etc etc). FilmConvert (and it's competitors) typically have free trial versions you can use, in those try every film stock emulation. Etc etc. For each copy of the timeline you make: Apply the LUT / simulation Adjust the overall contrast to suit your footage (different LUTs and stocks will have different contrasts) Adjust any clips that need to be adjusted individually (some LUTs or stocks can do odd things on the occasional shot) (optional: add a caption to the grade with the basic info like what LUT or simulation, then export the first frame from each clip as a still) Once you've done that, sleep on it so you have fresh eyes. Bring in some grades you love - either previous ones you've done yourself or reference materials, and compare all the shots you graded and see what you see This is a lot of work, yes, maybe a couple of days if you try a few packages like FilmConvert and Dehancer and others. But you'll do it once, and then you can answer the question of what look/looks you like, save them as power grades (or presets or whatever) and apply them whenever you want. Plus, you'll have a library of looks that you can show to potential customers, you can review for inspiration, etc etc. I've done tests like this and found that the old saying is right - "do it right, do it once".

My impression of the OG Alexa is that the sensor is 10 years old, which will make it likely to be less efficient compared to todays sensor tech (as a decade of tech development has done wonders for things like this, regardless at how good ARRI are at making anything), and the camera also does a ton of processing to the image in-camera. This is likely to be relatively easy to implement the alrogythms on a newer more powerful and power-efficient chip, but it's still processing that isn't done in other cameras. If they were going to make a small mountable package with an ALEV sensor in it then it would have to be smaller than the ALEXA Mini, which is larger than the FX6, definitely, but isn't ridiculously larger... Considering the age of the tech, it might just not be possible to get it small enough, get reasonable battery life, and also keep it cool. Your comments about ARRI upgrading their S35 line first also makes sense. Sadly!

According to google, the takumar is 228g and the Nikon 1 is 383g. Its tough to use older non-plastic stuff, especially things like Takumars that were built super solidly and from high-quality materials.

I'll assume you're talking to me.. I haven't started yet either, as you say we're waiting for the rules. I do have a few ideas though. I'll give you a some hints.... 285g, 193g and 83g. One of them even includes a rig and external monitor.

Maybe you just setup the camera and it monitors the scene, shooting for the edit.....

I thought they'd stagnated a few models ago when the Karma was recalled. But their EIS seems to have prolonged their attraction a few models more. I'm not really sure where they would go now with the normal Hero line. "Here's another camera the same size and shape and basic features as the last one. Please drop another $500. Thanks...." Umm, no... That would be awesome, assuming it was small enough to use in the way we currently use hybrids. A box with Prores and even an original ALEV sensor would be a spectacular upgrade to basically anything currently available now. The sensor might be a bit power hungry though..

Who knows. The section of the market we're referring to is basically crash/vehicle/drone cameras and the smallest and cheaper ones contains: random offerings of BM from the early 2010s the first Zcam a lens manufacturer - Sigma FP a camera company founded so surfers could take selfies - GoPro And cameras with a slightly larger form factor and price tag also include: the more recent Zcam offerings and, more recently, RED The fact that these cameras are all so radically different, and yet have all been used in feature films for almost the same purpose, shows that the segment isn't well catered for at all. In perhaps the only context this would ever happen in, I think the possibilities in the space of tiny cinema-quality cameras are offerings from GoPro, BM, and ARRI. GoPro recently teased that they'll be making "specialised cameras" - whatever the absolute hell that means. ARRI might follow RED and make a tiny camera at the bottom of their range. BMs smallest current camera is now the P4K, which is, in almost any context, huge, so if they wanted anything smaller than that, then they'd be a good candidate. Of course, most BM folks like to rig up their cameras to either make them easier and more practical to use, to look "more pro bruh", or both, so how knows - maybe they won't bother with small.

No no no... the OTHER French New Wave 😉

When are you uploading your vlog? 🙂

I'm sorry that you're not able to get what I'm saying, it's not through lack of trying.

I don't really know what the capability of Resolve is from the perspective of a professional editor. At one point I looked around for editors using Resolve and there basically weren't any, as its reputation was as a colour package and industry changes slowly. I suspect that there are more features available than you might think, but maybe now as many as you would want. If you haven't looked already, the manual is huge and very well written. Sven from ThatGuyEdits seemed to make a lot of very slight J cuts where he cut the audio right at the start of a word and then cut to the shot of the person speaking a few frames later, which I was surprised to see softened the cut so much that it seemed to go from being quite percussive to almost invisible, maybe the brain was mostly too busy with the start of an audio something to notice the visual changing. Very interesting effect though.

You asked why not have extremely high resolutions - the costs include things like memory and storage and processing. Everything has a cost, even opportunity cost. The cost of resolution which isn't needed for most images is the cool stuff we could have had instead.

I think it's very difficult to understand how different people with different points of view can interpret something so differently. In my corporate work I am often writing documents and then having them reviewed by various executives before they are eventually approved. I'm constantly amazed at how someone will mis-interpret something I've written, and when they explain why they interpreted it like that from their point-of-view, it becomes obvious that they would have mis-interpreted it like that once you understand their perspective. Humans are constantly evolving how we communicate depending on who is present. If we're talking to two people at a party and a third person joins the discussion, everyone changes how they communicate, even just slightly. This is why when your friends meet each other and you see them interacting, you might be surprised at how they act towards each other because they never showed that side of themselves to you. I think, to a certain extent, everything is contextual, and so everything runs the risk of being mis-interpreted by someone who has a different background to you. Tastes evolving over time is a good thing I think. When people get older and they don't evolve, I think that's a warning sign that they're not learning or changing or adapting. I subscribe to so many people on YT now, and I kind of treat my subscription feed as a partly-filtered feed, and add videos to my Watch Later list, which I then watch videos from. I unsubscribe from channels when they start to annoy me or I haven't watched one of their videos for a long time. I'm often going to the main page and going through the recommended page and adding those to my Watch Later list, and then subscribing to people who seem good. Some new ones last and some don't, depending on how much they annoy me or are good. I realise that there are channels that I've watched now for years and years. One channel, for example, I started watching when they had their shipping containers delivered to their block of land. They're now living in the mostly-built house and have two kids. There are lots of other channels that are like that too. One channel about restoring old tools now makes whole videos restoring a tool, using a range of tools in their shop, where I have seen them restore every one of the tools they now use. I say that I unsubscribes from people that annoy me because that's often what happens. I'm kind of watching people's normal lives, so as long as they don't annoy me with poor video editing or annoying personalities or being too fake and polished all the time etc, then they're real and I've gotten the enjoyment from it being real. That's completely different to a TV show that will be tremendously more exciting and fast-paced and well put together, but of course that's completely fake, so it has other merits. Other content on YT can be hilariously funny, but in a very niche way, or in a very limited style. One of my favourite YouTubers is a machinist called This Old Tony. He makes machining videos and no-one really knows what he looks like as his videos only show his hands, but his videos are spectacularly funny and brilliantly written / edited etc. My wife gets annoyed with me when I watch him while sitting next to her on the couch because on some videos I'm basically laughing for the whole 20+ minute video. Anyone that can regularly incorporate time travel jokes, paradoxes, insults, etc into their videos deserves all the subscribers they can get IMHO.

I'm not really connected to older folks who behave badly on social media, but I do remember that my grandma, who was a sweet old lady well into her 70/80s at this point, would occasionally decide to add to the fun and enjoyment of a family gathering by telling an amazingly racist joke. Sometimes in the middle of a busy cafe in the middle of Sunday brunch that we were having for someones birthday or something. She'd finish the joke, there would be stunned silence, and someone would change the subject and we'd all move on, with her being at a loss as to why no-one laughed. I realise that's different to what we're mostly talking about here, which is being knowingly awful to people online, but I remember in one particularly cringeworthy event she told a racist joke about one nationality and the table next to us was full of people from that same nationality, and I remember hoping they hadn't overheard. I guess there's cluelessness, and then maliciousness. People online probably have a mixture of both, sadly. My theory is that this prolonged underhanded behaviour relies on it triggering an emotional response in the recipient for it to work. In situations where that doesn't occur, the recipient basically ignores the behaviour until such a time as it becomes preferable to deal with it, in which case the response is calm and firm. In such cases I think that it tends to work because the underhanded people realise that it's not working. It sounds like that might be the case for you as well. Certainly the YouTubers and public personalities I've heard talk about it say they had to work through a time when it affected them, but came out the other side stronger and with strategies for managing it. I'm not saying that the bad behaviour is excusable, but I think it's a factor of life and the best strategy is to somehow become ok with it, however it is that you can achieve that. I'd imagine that the more famous / rich / respected you get the more people will come after you and the harder they'll do so, which just means that if you're growing your career or profile that it's a constant challenge and potentially requires more and more effort or energy to go into that. Perhaps the culmination of that curve is that presidents require security to prevent being assassinated, billionaires and celebrities require bodyguards, security systems, and live in gated communities (at least in most countries in the world) etc.

Editing might be, perhaps, one of the only things in film-making where you can't buy results. Writing might be another one. With editing, if you have equipment good enough to edit, then the only difference between a blah edit and a spectacular edit is the skill of the editor. In terms of classic movies, while editing on film was obviously not as easy as an NLE, they had most of the tools at their disposal. Even if you're just limited to making a simple cut, most edits would not be diminished by this restriction. The ability to dissolve, either fading to black or white or cross dissolving, gives more expressive freedom, but it's not a hugely common technique. ie, it's used very very rarely compared to the straight cut. The addition of the NLE feature to gradually crop a shot can allow the fine-tuning of match-cuts, which I notice in older film films are sometimes not quite aligned and so it diminishes the effect. However, the match cut is even rarer still, making the availability to match framing almost, but not quite, irrelevant. When I was choosing which NLE to go with, FCPX, PP, or Resolve, I realised I needed very powerful colour grading functionality, including stabilisation, but only very basic editing functionality. I find this to be true now, even more than then. I haven't used anything except a straight cut or the odd dissolve in any serious way in any of the dozens of videos I've edited. Resolves ability to do fancy things is going up and up, and my desire to use anything fancy at all is going down and down and down.

Your points are all true, but what I'm getting at is that the balance is off. If I got a family car and made it sportier it would be good and appeal to a wider audience. If I made it faster still it would appeal to a narrower audience and most people would want other improvements rather than speed, for example perhaps safety or comfort. Making it faster and faster and faster leave behind most people because they'll never need the speed but would really prefer to pay for extra safety and comfort and a better stereo instead of paying for speed they won't use. Cameras are like that now. The only people where 8K is actually better than 6K in any meaningful way (when actually looking at the end result) is people doing VFX of some kind (crazy stabilisation, severe cropping, VFX) but they're specialists. So 8K is really a feature for specialists that is implemented in every camera. So we all have to pay for this feature that we won't really benefit from. But it's worse because all the energy being put into that feature is investment that could have been put into the other things that would have been of more use to a wider audience. Take the OG BMPCC for example. It was 1080p RAW internal, but had terrible battery life. You'd think that in a decade they'd have a camera that would take care of the battery life, because that was one of the cameras leading issues. Not so, the R5C can record 8K RAW, but not on battery. They've under-improved one feature and over-improved another. It's like Canon announcing "Last year we announced our 25K flagship camera which required external power to record, and that wasn't the ideal camera for everyone, so we're proud to announce that our new camera is 50K and still requires external power to record!" and people are sitting back and thinking "WTF - you worked on the wrong thing!". Similarly, think about the reaction when Panasonic keep releasing camera after camera with more and more resolution, larger sensors, but the AF is still the Achilles heel of the whole thing - "WTF - you worked on the wrong thing!". That's what I'm doing now. I'm sitting here looking at my OG BMPCC, my BMMCC, my GH5, my GX85, and thinking that all those cameras had weaknesses that would be great if they were fixed, but the current crop of cameras has been improved in ways I didn't want (and very few people actually benefit from) and most of the current cameras still have the same issues as before. They're working on the wrong things, diverting money from the right things. Hahaha. I love the old "I found one example in the entire history of mankind - therefore your argument has no merit at all so go home and let the rest of us forget you ever existed" logic 🙂 There's an interesting error of logic that people seem to be making around colour science. I keep saying that I wanted better colour science, and people keep saying that now 10-bit and RAW is more affordable so there I have it, but this is missing the point. Colour grading RAW is very difficult and manufacturers are much better at doing it than we are (otherwise, why are people so enamoured with Canon colour, if anyone can do it?) so actually, the lower the cost of the camera, the better I want the colour science because the worse the owner will be at colour grading and the less money they can devote to it. I think you're hitting the nail on the head here, The Aesthetic is about getting the right look. It's a "right amount" mindset rather than a "more is always better" mindset. If you concentrate on the right amount, then you're interested in getting the right amount of resolution from the sensor, the right amount of resolution and sharpness from the lens, the right amount of distortions, etc. The challenge is that, for everyone except specialist VFX applications, the right amount of camera resolution has already been gained and now they're just piling on more and more, but we haven't gotten the right amount of other things, like functionality or reliability. The R5 was a classic.. it can record way more pixels than you need, for way less time that you needed. It doesn't average out! The trip to film and back is a perfect example of an artistic treatment rather than a 'fidelity' treatment. Essentially it degraded the process in every way possible, when viewed from a technical perspective. Lower sharpness, lower resolution, altered colours, and cost both time and money. Worse technically, but better aesthetically. If I make two versions of a camera, one with a lower resolution sensor and one with a higher resolution sensor, the higher resolution sensor one will: drain the battery faster, or require a larger heavier more expensive battery (camera has to process more pixels) fill the memory card faster, or require a larger more expensive card have worse low-light and noise performance have worse colour (think about how colour goes to shit in low light) cost more to manufacture require a faster computer to edit, or require time to render proxies To a certain extent these costs are hidden, because technology is getting cheaper, so the cost of getting a memory card that can record an hour of footage doesn't go up from year to year. However, if I already own a large enough SD card for a given resolution, and they don't increase the resolution of the camera, the cost of an SD card for that camera drops to zero because what I own now is fine and I don't have to buy anything. This is a point that most people don't realise. I've seen it. Great film, really really enjoyed it. For anyone in this thread using this as an example of higher resolutions being useful, absolutely. Anyone shooting a VFX film with a budget more than $100,000,000 - please understand that I'm not talking to you! 🙂 LUT support in camera would be great. Guess why they don't include it in lots of cameras? It takes processing power. ............processing power that would be spare if the camera wasn't processing so many pixels!! This desire for "authenticity" through the smartphone look has been around for years but is interesting that it has permeated this far. I remember reading about it years ago when I wasn't even into video yet. IIRC people don't trust the more polished, longer focal length, shallower DoF image because they became so associated with big corporates (the only ones who could afford that look) making highly polished videos that lied about crimes against humanity and the oppression of the poor and working classes etc (you know - business as usual). Yet, the vloggers still seem to want shallow DoF, and go to extraordinary lengths to get it, so who knows if that aesthetic will somehow gradually be redeemed due to the huge volume of honest authentic people vlogging with a shallow DoF out there. Conversely, I wonder if we're in for a spate of heavily misleading content with the smartphone look somehow tarnishing the 'authenticity' that this look currently enjoys. If you get enough people spouting anti-social crap through it then that would do it, but of course that would require the people watching to realise that the content is anti-social, rather than radical free speech. Seems we're losing the ability to tell fact from lunatic in the current climate! Still, it's a genuine thing since the authenticity came from the content of that 'look' being more honest than the previous 'look'.