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Those Helios 44-2s are spectacular lenses. From a huge lens test, here are a couple of comparisons: Zeiss Master Anamorphic at T1.9 (~$40,000) Dog Schidt (rehoused Helios 44 with coatings removed for reduced contrast and cool flares) at T2 (~$50-100) Zeiss Master Anamorphic at T4 (~$40,000) Dog Schidt (rehoused Helios 44 with coatings removed for reduced contrast and cool flares) at T4 (~$50-100) Be sure to zoom into the images and especially compare the Helios at T4. For a lens that is 0.1% of the cost, it's sure punching above its weight.

Ethics and morals are all over YT for all to see. Just because they're not your ethics or morals doesn't mean they're not someone else's.....

YouTube is capitalism at its finest. It has: the promise that everyone has the potential to participate and succeed rules that give success to the successful, essentially separating the 'rich' from the 'poor' no limits on what can be done, except for a set of 'rules' which are very badly managed, unevenly applied, and with "too big to fail" dynamics sensitivities to human behaviour where there is success to be found in trickery, meaningless amusement, as well as high art a system where value is in the eye of the consumer, so things like cat videos can become unexplainably popular visibility from outside it so that people can analyse and communicate about the market This is an online equivalent of a marketplace where value is determined by the customer, price is due to supply and demand, there is tinkering in the form of subsidies and sanctions, and perfect communication is claimed but never realised, etc.. YT is pretty close to a meritocracy, it's just that the merit other people recognise and reward doesn't make sense to you. I will reiterate this again - people are more different to each other than we tend to think, and therefore we get all excited when we don't agree with or understand what other people do and say.

Your math looks right, so 120 FF equivalent. I think you're right about getting a dumb adapter. the only challenge is lenses that don't have fully manual control - eg, some lenses have a focus ring (and a zoom ring) but won't have an aperture ring, so just make sure it's FULLY manual.

This might be useful to some:

Like every other camera release - we have to wait for a heavy hitter to release some videos then we can see what it can do. There was talk about this camera being on the radar of big budget productions (as a B or C cam) so if we're lucky we might get someone with deep experience doing a camera test.

Start at the end goal and work backwards, seeking evidence. For example, if the end goal is to get a job, call employers and ask to speak to their hiring manager and ask them if it's something they care about when hiring. If you want to learn to think differently, find who your lecturers would be and call them, asking them if their classes will teach you to think differently from the other classes on offer. You will quickly understand if they're full of shit or not. One way that is guaranteed to teach you to think differently is to find some film people you like (producers, directors, cinematographers, etc) who produce radically different work, call all of their offices begging for an internship where you work for free and get to shadow these people. Spend a few months with each, trying to figure out what they do and why and helping them. Not only will that give you access to people you know think differently to each other, but if you're any good you'll probably get offered jobs with people you gelled with. Be clear on your goals and work backwards.

No, but it's an understandable mistake!

@IronFilm raises an important and fundamental issue - that if you're stretching time in any way you will get out of sync. My method stayed in sync because it skipped past lots of content. There is an element of time-stretching effect to what you're talking about, and there are algorithms that do such things, however fundamentally it means that the time it takes to listen to the output is different to the time it took to capture the input. Have a think about how you're going to solve that and then we can talk about the details of implementing it

Here's a thought - every second you take the first 1/5th of a second and slow it down to 20% speed and watch that for the full second, then at the start of the next second you skip forward the other 80% of the second to get to the start of the next second and the cycle starts again. It would be semi-realtime, being that people would see and hear themselves in slow-motion with only a second delay. Considering you haven't specified what you're trying to accomplish, I'm not sure how this suits, but if you're looking at an art installation or something then that would work

Yes, Multicam would sure bump that ratio up.. and combined with @KnightsFans comments below about rolling through multiple takes you sure could keep a DIT (or three) busy on set! In terms of working forwards or working backwards, I've seen some conflicting approaches: One approach is to make a pass through all your source footage making selects and adding them to the timeline, then you duplicate the timeline and cull the duplicates and lesser shots, then rinse and repeat until you have a final edit. The advantage of that is that once you've eliminated a piece of footage you never have to watch it again, so it's efficient in that sense. The other approach is to review all your source footage and flag the truly great clips, then start with only the great clips on a timeline and then only pull in whatever else you need to make a final edit. This approach has the advantage that you're not watching and re-watching clips that haven't yet been culled. In narrative it's a little different as you've got an idea about what you're aiming for (a script) but in unplanned / uncontrolled documentary-style shots (like weddings, docos, events, etc) it's hard to know where you're aiming in terms of which shots will make the final edit. I've mostly tried the first approach, culling and gradually fine-tuning, and it works but it's pretty laborious. I suspect that the second approach works much better if you're able to efficiently remember what clips you have and are able to find them quickly. Some people are able to watch lots of footage and then remember it pretty well, but I guess that would depend on how much footage there was and the level of control - ie, it's probably easier to remember that there were three takes of that scene that worked rather than there were three reaction shots that might have made a great insert into a dramatic scene that you haven't even edited together yet. I once edited a video of a race where one camera was an in-camera shot looking forwards and seeing the dash and out the windscreen. It was a huge long file of multiple sections and the stuff in-between, and I was having trouble working out how to tell which bits were stages and which weren't. That is, until I noticed that during the stage the RPM gauge was fully maxing out and between times the car was basically idling.. problem solved! I would imagine that once you've worked out what to look for (like lots of crew on set) you could easily make selects. It would also make it easier as you only have to sync the footage once then you can cut it up easily.

I'm confused.. I would want a de-clicked aperture, but the nice rubber grips on the original photo series. I would imagine the follow-focus teeth would be pretty uncomfortable to use?

De-clicked aperture as I often have to grab quick shots and start recording before I've adjusted the aperture then focus then adjust aperture. With clicked apertures it shakes the camera around and ruins that part of the shot, whereas de-clicked just makes the exposure a little off (while the auto-SS in the camera follows the adjustment). I'm evaluating the idea of replacing the 40mm Hexanon with a Rokinon 85mm and simply zooming into the footage taken with my 17.5mm in post to bridge the gap. I just did a quick test then of taking a bunch of shots and cropping into some of them and not others and comparing the video quality (with sharpening added to the zoomed ones) and the results are a bit meh once you're scaling to more than about 150%, but I'll upload to YT and see if that crunches the differences. In terms of mount, not sure - I can can adapt basically anything, so it would be whatever was cheapest!

This is a 24K camera.... Not cheap though. https://petapixel.com/2014/10/30/41395-thats-much-24k-gold-nikon-df-will-cost/

Thanks! Follow-up question then - what if I shoot hand-held without a follow-focus (and will never shoot with a follow-focus) but want to have a de-clicked aperture? It seems like there isn't a combo that offers this.. unless they're like the Voigtlanders that can be set to de-click somehow? [Edit: or do real cinematographers just have an indent on their left-hand with focus gear teeth?]

Cool tips. If you feel like you can share more (without crossing your personal PR threshold!) then please feel free In terms of ratios, I can't remember where I saw the 400:1 ratio but this gives a few with a couple of stand-out numbers... I understand that knowing what the story is, having it planned, and knowing what you're going to shoot should give a lower shooting ratio than a doc (where none of that is planned) but obviously it's not the case for every film! I don't know what would have made Fury Road and Gone Girl have ratios like they did... it's nice to have options in post, but...

Does anyone know the difference between the Rokinon cine lenses and the Rokinon XEEN cine lenses, apart from the housing and of course the price? The cine lenses are fitted with follow focus gears, are marked in T-stops, etc, so I'm thinking that there must be some kind of optical difference?

Just had a look at the spec page and it only has an internal SSD up to 1Gb, but doesn't specify a limit of how large an external drive, so who knows. If there is a size limit that would be quite limiting, I agree.

VR.

I thought that this was part 2?

Let's get this party started! Not the best thing I've ever made, but in the spirit of quantity over quality (and of making things and publishing even if they're not perfect), here it is. This is lens #1 - I may make more than one film with each lens. I think I followed all the rules.... someone made so many of them!! ???

There are a couple of phrases that are interesting here... "what gets measured gets managed" which can be a good thing (eg, number of car accidents on a piece of road) but then there's "a good middle manager will meet their targets even if they have to destroy the organisation to do so" which... isn't. Metrics cut both ways.

YouTubers have been promoting the new Gnarbox 2.0 which looks kind of cool. IIRC it has ability to plug in an external USB drive for storage, as well as a USB port for an external card reader, and can do cool things like backup a card to the internal and external drive at the same time.

You're right that it would be great if a manufacturer combined all the best bits. In my mind the GH5 was pretty close to this, apart from the AF people really don't complain about it in any major way, and even then the AF isn't so bad. I'd suggest that you re-think how you look at Instagram influencers though: they create original art and publish it on a daily basis (or more frequently) they are interacting with their audience, essentially having a conversation about the art form or about the content / concepts it depicts many of them are deriving an income from their art, and some derive their entire livelihood from this Yes, many of them are just attractive millennials living off product placement, but the vast majority of professional artists are catering to the whims of big brands and the superficialities of the public, so if we simply dismiss them as brand shills then we're also condemning most product, fashion, and lifestyle photographers and videographers, modelling agencies, photo and video re-touching houses, and advertising agencies, which is a very large chunk of the entire industry!