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Do you own these? An alternative for MFT is the SLR Magic 8mm F4. Not quite as wide but the image quality is pretty decent and they’re not too expensive. I just upgraded to the 7.5mm F2 Laowa to get the extra aperture, but the SLR Magic IQ was fine.

Agree with the above about getting a refurbed or second-hand mac. PCs can be good too, especially when looking at previous generations. One thing to be careful of, and not something I know much about, is that there’s a couple of different types of computers out there. Without getting too technical, if you think about computers we had before the internet, they basically did everything themselves. You had software and it was on your computer, and your computer did all the work. Now, there are lots of things “in the cloud” and some things (take Gmail for example) are computer programs running on a computer somewhere else. Accessing Gmail using a web browser (or any webmail) is a good example because you load up the web page of gmail and the gmail server goes and looks at your email and crunches the data in the server, then sends the web-page to your device. The program is running on the google server and you’re basically looking at the screen over the internet connection. Lots of software is like this - you look at it through a web browser. So, they made computers that were designed to just access things online (like webmail, google docs, etc) and the idea is that you just need a computer that can run a web browser and all the processing is done by a server “in the cloud”. This makes these computers cheaper because they don’t need to have lots of CPU or RAM or whatever, but the problem is that they’re not designed to run without an internet connection. I’m sure someone else will explain this whole thing much better, but the general idea is that unless your brother works with everything online, he’s better off with a real computer rather than one of these things. IIRC the Chromebook is one of these, and I think there were others.

I've used both Sandisk Extreme Pro 95MBs and Sandisk Ultra cards with no issues on the 150Mbps modes. The Ultra is only C10 / U1 so I think that makes it V10.

You can't please all the people all the time. Besides, the standard behaviour of the younger generations is "Ewwww - No!" and then after some prodding you discover they don't know what the hell it is you're even talking about, so it's actually that they've worked out that they don't have the same taste as you do. My kids constantly surprise me about their knowledge and appreciation of music made before they were born, often due to its use in memes (eg Sound of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel) or movie / TV soundtracks. Of course, suggest you watch a movie that was released last month instead of this week, and you're basically screwed. I find the world a large and pretty intimidating place, and when you're a kid and basically know nothing in comparison to what I know now (remember being a kid and looking at the adults around you and thinking they knew everything? I'm approaching being twice as old as most of those adults now...) so I suspect that kids have all sorts of strange psychological defence mechanisms not to basically melt from the sheer scale of what they don't know. Anything outside their comfort zone must, at some level, be a reminder that the world is huge, they are small, and they know very little about it.

Your argument is circular... here's what happens if we run the loop backwards: If people didn't want to drool over new cameras then no-one would need to pay for the development of them. If no R&D budgets were needed to be re-couped then products would be cheaper as we could just keep making the old ones, and also with economies of scale they would also get cheaper over time. Therefore, it's people wanting to drool over new tech that prevents cheap cameras being available to people on a tight budget.

Cool. I know it goes without saying, but it's hard to tell between situations when it goes without saying and situations that went without anyone saying it, if you know what I mean!!

Damn! Nice work!! ..and what a character too FUZZYNORMAL WINS BEST CASTING - CONGRATULATIONS!!! The Helios really is a nice lens. I'm looking forward to people seeing the lens tests when I get them done. I think people will be surprised at how good these things can be.

We're agreeing I'm saying that $1k is nothing compared to what people are spending on upgrading cameras that are already fine (and those cameras were to replace other cameras that were probably also fine)!

Yep! Both to being in Perth and also about the pavers If I used lighting for making films then yes, $1000 would hardly be a significant investment (look at people thumbing their nose at 4K cameras now because they're not 6K, and think about what those 6K cameras cost). I'd argue that the biggest value you get from having a light is that it's not dark any more and you can see the people in your footage, but then I'd just be being argumentative ???

I'm not familiar with the Minolta 50mm 1.4 specifically, but the faster primes are often not so sharp until stopped down 2-3 stops. That's so common that it's kind of a 'rule' in cinematography. Some lenses are exceptions, but they're normally the modern / super expensive ones.

Yeah, I'd edit without proxies if I could, but I prioritised portability and light weight over pure grunt, so it's proxies for me. Of course if it really mattered to me then I could shoot in 1080, use the 10-bit ALL-I mode on the GH5 and it would cut like butter, but.... 4k makes a difference

Those were a mix of 4K MOV and the 5K MP4. The 5K was 200Mbps mode and the 4K is 150Mbps mode (I haven't got a UHS-II card).

You know, I'd never noticed that before, but I just checked, and pulled up 3 random shots and the audio kicks in between 7th and 8th frame on the first two, and between 5th and 6th on the third. What a strange thing! I'm not sure it would bother me that much for what I do, but I certainly include shots where the first few frames are beneficial, so it's the fact I don't rely on audio much that means it's not a big deal for me. Does anyone know why this happens? The delay seems to vary.

I did the film festival / film competition circuit for a while and my takeaway was this. Content is the only thing that matters. I've seen barely acceptable videos with out-of-focus shots, shots where the camera got bumped, clipped dialogue, noisy dialogue, car sounds making it difficult to hear people, overexposed shots, and various other problems win competitions outright because they interviewed old people and got them to talk about sex and it was hilarious. I've seen films win best edit when the editing was clunky because the story was good, etc. Content is the only thing that matters. Content is the only thing that matters, content is the only thing that matters... content is the only thing that matters.

No worries! Yes, that's a very small taste of the Australian heat.. It's 40C today (104F) and it's what, the third day of summer? LOL, yeah, $1000+ for a 1200W light doesn't seem too affordable to me either. At least, compared to the 1000W Halogen lighting setups you can get from a hardware store for a tiny fraction of that cost, it seems expensive. I know they're not the same, but getting 40% of the capability for 5% of the price still seems like good value for money in comparison!

I'm not so sure that it's that "simple". I'm reminded of the old competency framework that goes: Unconscious incompetence (people don't know how to do something, and don't know that they don't know) Conscious incompetence (people don't know how to do something, but they know that they don't know) Conscious competence (people know how to do something, and they are aware consciously of how to do it - teachers should be here) Unconscious competence (people know how to do something, but aren't consciously aware of how they do it, or even that they can do it - talented people are often here and don't know that what they're doing is hard or that they're even doing anything at all) For me the "I just put it on sticks" guy is probably the last stage. Their compositions will likely be gorgeous and if you said "I'll just put the camera here" and set it up too close with a wide-angle lens and looking down on the talent they would know that it was all wrong and would know what to do to fix it, but just wouldn't know that correcting that composition is a skill that a day-one amateur doesn't know. I agree. The first shot through the Alexa is like "ahh" combined with "wow". Unfortunately, yes, this is probably the case.

Yeah.. notice I said "checking footage and copying files" NOT transcoding!! and some degree of "checking" doesn't even require the ability to play the footage, you can still check exposure and stuff like that on a low powered machine Does FCPX render proxies on import? IIRC I heard that "importing" your footage takes hours? Resolve doesn't do that, it just goes <link> and it's there. Rendering proxies is easy, but you have to do it manually. After that it runs super-smooth. Of course, of you like FCPX better, then no worries, each NLE has strengths and weaknesses and suit different workflows better.

If portability is important then I'd buy a cheaper 15 inch one without the teething issues and just render proxy media. You can edit 4K on a decade-old laptop if you know how to use proxies in Resolve.

Absolutely. Better off getting a serious desktop and a cheap older laptop for checking footage and copying files in the field. I'm enjoying Apple (most of the time) but also seem to have been lucky without getting hit with the "bugs that don't exist" that much. When I did the Apple vs PC comparison in 2012 I learned two things: Every major piece of software I used was available in both platforms and it was the ecosystem that did it (there is no Apple messenger application for PC for example) and having full integration was of value to me Everyone suggesting that Macs were reasonable computers discussed the pros and cons of buying a Mac vs a PC, and everyone suggesting you buy a PC suggested that you buy a PC because PC1 had a better screen and PC2 was cheaper and PC3 had more RAM and PC4 had a fancier touchpad (and it was buggy but the manufacturer is blaming the OS and the OS people are blaming the drivers, but it's all beta and will totally all be figured out by the time it is released!!). I decided to buy a Mac partly because I couldn't find a level-headed person that realised I can't buy a PC with the screen from one manufacturer, the RAM from a different manufacturer, and the touchpad from a third for the price they're selling the fourth. I don't know what it's like now, but the pro-PC media really had an emotional problem about the whole thing. In terms of specs you pay more for Mac, but in normal usage the Mac makes better use of the hardware it has, even having major software packages run smoothly on the Mac that won't run on the PC with more RAM. Video editing won't fit this pattern though because for the most part it's about sheer horsepower and has pretty good optimisation, in Resolve at least. It's probably all changed now, but for video-first I'd buy a desktop PC and stuff it full of CPU / RAM and as many GPUs as I could fit into it

Ah, yes, I neglected the diameter in the calculation, and only took flange distance into account. That makes sense. Full manual FTW!!

I keep seeing cool tutorials for permanent setups to be used in a controlled studio type setup but there wasn't anywhere to share them, and I realised we mostly talk about taking the equipment to the subject rather than the other way around. Who shoots in a studio? Cool videos that might be useful..... Laura has a great YT channel about making things but obviously has film-making talent too, and this one is particularly useful. It even has a cameo from the Sigma FP!

More adaptable than MFT? They have practically the same flange distance, so I would have thought they'd be similar.

I was just thinking that!!

Hahaha... considering how much those apply to me, I just kind of assume people take that as the context of all my messages! That video really does look nice and I suspect it might be the colours. People get pretty critical of Panasonic CS but I have seen enough lovely images from P that I'm not critical at all. LOL about that guy.. I've had the same experience from Japanese ebay sellers but I must admit that the best results are coming from those people who have a rating scheme with criteria that they rate all their auctions against. I think it's a professionalism thing. I just bought my Voigtlander 42.5mm f0.95 from Japan and it's basically brand new, but I managed a ~25% discount from the new pricing. FD glass really is nice, after buying the FD 70-210 F4 and TC I really was impressed by the IQ and overall build quality. I am kind of curious about those notorious shots that everyone says are absolutely critical to Hollywood when they're saying why they could never use MFT. I'm beginning to wonder if they're a mirage because no-one seems to be able to give me a straight answer. I would have thought if they were half as common as I'm made to believe then we should be drowning in them and someone should be able to just post a bunch of them But yes, in terms of testing for me, I'll point them at a fence and run through the apertures.

Come on.. if SOME of the image being out of focus is good, then surely ALL of the image being out of focus must be FANTASTIC!!! I really do like the organic look of the Helios, I must admit.