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Yeah, especially for anyone who shoots in a more 'studio' or controlled kind of environment where size doesn't matter so much and you're not trying to point it at yourself.

This is interesting. You're probably right (I'm not the expert in the various product lines) however, my comments were mostly reflective of what I see on the YouTube circuit. Those people don't talk about Sony cine cameras, they don't talk about Ursas, they talk about DSLR, mirrorless, and RED/ARRI. Kind of like how people have heard of Lamborghini and Ferrari but not so much Maserati or Konnigsegg etc... The people doing this stuff serviously should, of course, be going UMP and FS5/FS7 etc, but the PR tells a very different story.

Yes, two phrases come to mind... "cautious optimism" and "hope for the best, plan for the worst"

I think it might be positioned as an accessible lower end to the RED brand. In the sense that if you're shooting with h264 h265 cameras, probably in 10-bit or more, if you want to upgrade then you can go RAW with the BM / Z-Cam offerings, but if you wanted to go "up" from there it was a pretty big leap to the entry level RED / ARRI cameras, and the various RAW offerings in that gap from other manufacturers (eg, Canon) were kind of patchy and odd. This lowers the entry-level to the RED ecosystem (the Raven might have done this too, not really sure) and allows people to get into the RED world and start getting used to the terminology and various other things. In a sense (almost) all future high-end film-makers will start somewhere below these price points and will start shooting with what they can afford and upgrading as they get better, get more work and charge higher rates, and upgrade their gear. Having an entry-level offering allows those price-conscious people to step into your world rather than ARRI or another competitor. Why do you think that Resolve has a free version? For big budget productions there are only really two post-colour / processing solutions, DaVinci Resolve and Baselight. In this sense it's a bit like RED and ARRI. Google this forum and see how many times Baselight has been mentioned, but at this point Resolve is a familiar name to most film-maker you tubers. RED would do well to adopt the same strategy.

I think it's about bottlenecks. It's interesting to see what CPU and GPU load you get when doing various things. I do think that Resolve does all the image processing on the GPU, but that might not mean image file decoding, although I could be wrong. I definitely get a boost when I go from my laptops puny GPU to the eGPU (I get about 3x FPS, although it's not enough, and it maxes the CPU and not the GPU) but if you're doing heavy image processing then you'll likely get a big boost from having serious GPUs. If you're rendering proxies then just render whatever resolution works smoothly fo the amount of effects you're doing I guess. A couple of docs that might be useful: https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-DaVinci-Resolve-187/Hardware-Recommendations https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/ConfigGuides/DaVinci_Resolve_15_Mac_Configuration_Guide.pdf

Black Friday deals are starting to trickle in..... These courses are pretty good (I got the Black Friday deal last year from them) so if you're interested then I can recommend them. If you're not sure then check out their YT channel for lots of free stuff (check it out anyway) but it gives a taste of what their courses are like.

I just re-read your posts and it doesn't sound like you're clear on if you're shooting 4K or 1080. You say you want to match the c100 and want to have small file sizes as possible. File size is vastly smaller with 1080, and the c100 has good (but not great) 1080 because it downsamples the 1080 from 4K in-camera. I think you should consider getting a camera that shoots downsampled 1080, maybe in 10-bit, so that you can grade the image heavily to match it to the C100 CS. If you're not trying to buy a camera that shoots 4K then a lot of older (but still great) cameras are available and should be cheaper too. The C100 has excellent 1080 for its ~25Mbps codec, but if you get a 1080 camera that shoots at 10-bit then you should be able to get a much higher bitrate and have much more flexibility in the image too, which will be useful if you have high DR from uncontrolled lighting and you can push and pull highlights and shadows in post easily with the 10-bit.

Interesting video from Brandon Li.. It's essentially a demonstration of his skill to help people decide to purchase his (rather expensive) paid course, but has lots of useful info in it and is definitely worth watching. It's partly about why he loves FF 35mm f1.8 focal length lenses for street shooting, partly about how to frame with the 35mm, partly about shooting cinematic hand-held shots, partly about shooting cinematic gimbal shots, and lots of other tips in there about lighting, distortion, etc. It's BTS style so you can see what he's doing too. Its particularly interesting to me as I shoot doc style shots in public with the MFT equivalent of a 35mm f1.9 lens, so I very much understand the dynamics of the whole equation, which essentially boils down to every shot being an environmental portrait.

All else being equal, I'd suggest the RP + 24 1.4. This is because the 24 1.4 can be stopped down a bit to get to 1.8 equivalent, and therefore be slightly sharper at a given DoF. This would also mean you can match CS much easier to the C100 down the track. Of course, all else isn't equal, so work out what you care about more and prioritise the setups accordingly... I'm also assuming that the RP doesn't have a crop, but that might be risky with a Canon?

There might be a middle ground where you get a <person> to make you some longer legs for the little tripod thingy on the bottom of your monopod, but legs that would use the same mechanism. I'm not sure what the word is these days, but <person> above is actually "maker" in YouTuber parlance, as there are now a ton of people on YT that can design/prototype/print/carve/lasercut custom stuff, and seem to work with any material known to man.

You could always buy a couple of solid quick-release plate/sockets and put them in-between the head and the tripod/monopod, then you could quick-change the head from one to the other, even with the camera attached. It's some cost and some hassle and some weight, but if time is that important in how you shoot (which it might be) then you might find it worthwhile.

One thing about the eGPU is that there's kind of a limit to how much use it is depending on your CPU. I bought one hoping that I would be able to decode the 5K 10-bit h265 from the GH5 real-time, so I could edit without rendering proxies, but it's nowhere close. It can't even do the 4K 10-bit h264 either, and the challenge is my CPU is the bottleneck, not the GPU. I went through the Resolve support (which is excellent BTW) and they said that Resolve 16 had GPU accelerated decoding of h264/h265 on AMD, but that it was the first version so there might be optimisations in future versions, but 16.1 didn't change anything. I was poised to buy the RX 5700 as an upgrade (it's way faster than my 470) but I'm not sure I'd get any benefit really. It would run OFX plugins faster and maybe export faster, but they're not things I care about really. If I have to render proxies, then I can render 720p proxies and then the laptop is powerful enough to apply filters and grading in real-time without the eGPU so in that sense it doesn't really help that much. In this sense I'd rather that everything becomes GPU-based as you can upgrade an eGPU really easily but not a CPU, especially in a laptop. I'm anticipating that eGPU support and utilisation will improve over time as GPUs are now being pushed for AI and we'll be piggy-backing off the back of that. I remember in university I did a unit in programming parallel computers and we had access to a cluster that had 2048 CPUs but you had to program it explicitly to use that many CPUs and had direct control over which ones did what, rather than it sorting out which ones did stuff by itself. They've largely worked those things out now (programming multi-core CPUs isn't done explicitly like it used to be, the software allocates tasks automatically) so I'm hoping that GPU usage will become the same with using multiple GPUs. This would mean that you can have a modest computer setup but connect it to a bank of however many eGPUs and everything will just organise the work amongst the GPUs and it will be like plugging in more horsepower to get the job done. We're not there yet but we're getting closer with eGPU support now completely native in OSX.

I am running a MBP with SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon RX 470 in external enclosure eGPU style. It connects via a Thunderbolt 3 cable that charges the laptop as well as connects to the eGPU. It is plug and play, with the exception of you have to eject it before pulling it out (I did that by accident once and the graphics was all glitchy until I restarted - oops!) but is pretty nice after that. Resolve can auto-detect the GPU in the MBP and the eGPU and splits load between both (not that the MBP one is much help) and I have been gaming with the AMD eGPU as well on my external 32" panel. I was a bit sad that the Nvidia cards weren't supported but went AMD because I just wanted it to work, and it does. The bang-for-buck ratio of the Nvidia cards was better than AMD, but the new Radeon RX 5700 card is about on par (IIRC) so I think that performance gap has closed. I'm not a fan of manufacturers forcing customers into closed ecosystems, but overall my eGPU experience hasn't been too bad.

Well, as a MFT user I can happily report that I own quite a number of non-SB adapters... and that they're all significantly cheaper than those!! But not to lessen the importance of these options - the Komodo sure looks like an interesting and capable beast so adapters are where it's at. Personally I'd be looking to adapt older fully manual glass as I find the full manual controls really immediate and also the value for money on FD, MD, and M42 glass much higher than with the EF options, but flexibility is great to have.

If vignetting is a concern then maybe there's a non-SB adapter available?

I'd suggest trying to get a material that has roughly the same properties as what the case is made of. It should be easily googlable and likely you can buy it in a hobby shop or ebay. The point of that is partly that Pelican would have chosen a well suited material, but also you want something that is as similar as possible so that it expands and contracts the same when heating up and cooling down and is a bit flexible if dropped etc. I'm not sure about expanding foam or just using epoxy but if they've got the right properties then go for it. I'd imagine there'd be lots online about it.

You and everyone else....... Whoever gets it right will do well.

Definitely something that it 2-part so that it's curing to form a strong bond. You could also try doing a double layer where you cut out things that will fit in flush (glued with epoxy) and then sand them flat and epoxy on patches over the top of that. Then it's two glue-ups that are protecting it rather than one.

Great stuff. It's really useful to see how other people work. You're absolutely nailing it with these videos. Well done!!

Yeah, as strange as it looks, it sure looks like it can make some awesome footage

Another video on the probe lens with lots of BTS, but this time for tech reviewing. Interesting fact, it's FF and F14-40. Apparently at F14 you still need a ton of light, so that's why it has the ring light built in.

I'd weigh in, but now it's been revealed that I'm actually an actor paid by the UK to play an Australian as part of a great cover-up, it's hard for me to convince people of much at all really... https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12043583

If only film-making equipment was accessible to extreme couponing!!

Maybe the Rokinon/Samyang 35mm T1.5? Not quite as fast and not quite same focal length, but not too far off. and perhaps the Meike 12mm T2.2 or Rokinon/Samyang 12mm T2.2 for the wider angle?

Ouch. Is this a common problem? Sounds like they haven't gotten their focal adjustments correct. I've read online that often the hard stops are adjustments that get made after the lens is assembled to calibrate the focal markings, and that sometimes you can open them up and re-adjust this. Not suggesting that you do this, but that maybe it's a QC problem in the factory rather a design flaw. I mean, how could a lens company design and manufacture a lens that can't focus to infinity?!?! Are the Mikaton f0.95 lenses an option for you? I know they're not cine style, so no threads for follow-focus etc..