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Everything posted by kye
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The camera RAW tab is kind of like the CST plugin in a sense, because it forces you to change your RAW clips into some other format that Resolve can work with. The controls are broadly the same too: You could try decoding a clip straight to LogC and not doing the CST plugin and see if that has a different effect. In theory it shouldn't, but the RAW tab doesn't have all the nice Tone Mapping and Gamut Mapping rolloff features, so it might be in your interests to keep your current workflow. Good article. Resolve is so flexible that there are lots of ways to do the same thing. I tell people to use the CST plugin because it's the simplest and because it's the most flexible. If you adjust the colour space in the Media pool then you can't make adjustments before the conversion, and you only get a conversion at the start of the processing and then at the end for viewing or for export. Some people prefer workflows where you can adjust the clip before it gets converted (I do WB and exposure adjustments before the conversion) and sometimes you want to have multiple conversions and do different grading steps in different colour spaces. The Film Look LUTs included in Resolve work with a LogC input, but you probably don't want to grade in LogC, so you convert the clip to rec709, then need to convert it before you use these LUTs: You can also hide the transforms within a node by changing the colour space that a single node operates in: These work by changing the colour space, applying the node adjustments, and then changing the colour space back again. These don't take up extra nodes like the CST plugins do, but I think they can only change from the timeline space and then back to it afterwards, so they're not as flexible as the separate plugin. They can also confuse the hell out of you if you lose track of what colour spaces are being used where as it's not obvious the order of operations. There are kind of two main types of colour work, the people that just want to convert the colour to something usable and move on with their lives, and those who have the time to have complex node trees. You can turn complex node trees into an efficient workflow if you know what you're doing and set everything up with presets etc, so there's no right answer. I think Resolve is showing its age with things like colour management being everywhere, because it probably only used to exist in one place, and then they added it to another to make it more flexible, then another, etc. In some ways Resolve is like the plucky startup who is challenging the big players with new technical offerings, and in other ways they're the technical behemoth that has existed for 15 versions.
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Ok, here's a thought. We've already found out that fungus spores are in the air and we can't keep them out of our lenses, so the solution is low humidity storage to prevent the fungus from growing. So, this begs the question - if you have a lens with fungus growing in it, why use nasty chemicals to kill all the fungus when it's everywhere anyway? I can't think of a reason to use chemicals at all. Unless I'm missing something really obvious, why not just use soap and water and non-abrasive cloths to physically remove the fungus, then just rinse in distilled water, air dry and reassemble?
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I think the DSLR revolution caught most people by surprise, including the manufacturers themselves who mostly added video as a "why not" kind of feature. Random fact, but SMS messages were originally a technical feature and not designed as a consumer feature, and they only released them because "why not", not anticipating texting or deaf people being able to use telephones for the first time, etc. Anyway, because the DSLR manufacturers were in the low margin stills photography business they created technical architectures that had all kinds of limitations that mostly didn't apply to stills photography. When the revolution hit they start the current race for a video market with legacy architectures and economies of scale that meant that everything was severely restricted. In a perfect world they would just re-design from the ground up, but that is the main reason that makes cinema cameras expensive, and combined with the lack of demand for video quality in this area of the market I suspect the economics doesn't stack up. There are additional barriers too, like protecting their cinema camera lines, organisational politics and power broking, and the same lack of vision that meant the DSLR revolution was a surprise in the first place.
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Why you should use the Colour Space Transform plugin instead of a LUT (even the built-in ones from BM)...
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Just found this thread about how to de-haze a lens: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?160423-Lens-fog-haze-what-is-it The summary is that you put the lens in a vacuum chamber under hard vacuum for about a minute at room temp. This makes sense as fog/haze is typically stuff that has evaporated from the lens materials and then condensed onto the glass. Putting the lens under vacuum will force those things to evaporate again, and considering that the haze is all stuff that can evaporate (because that's how it got there), once it is evaporated again by the vacuum pressure there will be no residue on the lens elements. It won't fix fungus or any other lens problem, but considering it doesn't require any disassembly it is a very convenient treatment
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How did you convert from S-Log to the GHa? I'd suggest that an S-Log3 to V-Log conversion in Colour Space Transform plugin in Resolve should do a pretty good job. Or maybe this LUT calculator? https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/LUTCalc/index.html
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GH6. Who knows what spec it would have, but to get GH5 owners to upgrade would take some serious changes. Maybe 8K, internal RAW, or both!
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They may also use the third digit in the serial as an identifier of some kind, like if they had multiple production lines, or something like that. Of course, 100K cameras might be right too. It is a spectacular camera if it suits your needs. The problem with working out how many of these have been made or sold is that the typical buyer for something like this would basically be invisible. They are busy shooting real work, aren't visible on social media, or if they are then it's not to geek out about cameras, and when the footage ends up in something you'd never know. If every person with a RAW-shooting cinema camera bought two P4Ks then they'd sell a bunch of them and there would basically be no ripples to show it. This is the problem with the XC10, the people who wanted it as an A-cam found the fixed lens and high-ISO NR to be too restrictive. The people who use them for C-cameras or as BTS don't go online talking about it a lot, so it seems like they don't get used at all, but Cinematography Database YT channel kept seeing them in BTS pictures of big Hollywood productions and Canon said they sold more than they expected. The cheaper cameras that can create great images could be 10% of all shots in every movie and TV series and we'd never know. The GH5 can be made to look like an Alexa, the P4K should be able to match basically anything.
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Ah, that makes a lot of sense I shot a pre-test-test today with a few of the lenses and it was interesting. I might be different to other people, but I find it difficult to evaluate lenses without having them in a controlled comparison. Other people seem to be able to see random videos shot with different equipment / different lighting / different grading and be able to kind of triangulate the attributes of lenses and even compare them. I can't seem to see past the dozen or so other variables, at least not enough to spend hundreds of dollars on a lens. So in that sense the direct comparison is useful for me, even if no-one else. I am trying to create a set of lenses for myself, which is why I'm testing the lenses I will definitely keep as well as the other candidates. I may end up choosing a lens I don't own, but I'd have to learn to work out how to evaluate without comparative tests, so I'm not sure about that. My test today compared the 14/2.5 Panasonic, 17.5/0.95 Voigtlander, 37/2.8 Mir, and 58/2 Helios on 0.7x SB. I was curious about the performance of the Mir (it's meant to be apochromatic), to see how the Voigt compared to a modern lens and a vintage lens, and also what character the Mir had. The results were all over the place, with each lens winning outright in some aspect. Both the Voigt and the Mir were modern in some ways, vintage in others, and both had better performance than the 14mm at some things (kind of making them more modern than it), and the Helios is no slouch either, even with my cheap Chinese focal-reducer. I think the complete test will be really interesting.
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EF mount has a considerable flange distance, and there may well be mirrored lens systems with a smaller flange distance than it, which would mean that flawless adapting isn't possible. I'd be surprised if the largest mirrorless flange distance was as large as the smallest mirrored flange distance. This is the beauty of mirrorless, basically every SLR lens system can be used. I have non-SB MFT adapters for Minolta MD, Pentax PK, and M42, and a M42 SB 0.7x adapter. The Konica AR to MFT adapter is still in transit, and I bought a Nikon to MFT adapter by mistake because the auction title said M42, but unfortunately all the Nikon lenses have the focus ring the wrong way so I won't have any use for it. I started reading about lenses and worked out that M42 was a common mount, so I got the adapter and then started looking at those lenses because I had worked out how to use them. If you're buying non-SB adapters then they're really cheap, so it's an easy way to do it.
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No idea. I don't pay attention to such things. The GH5 is mirrorless, so every SLR lens probably adapts to it. I just search ebay if there's an adapter and if there then I go ahead.
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Considering that the stock market (and the entire capitalist economy) trades on confidence, this isn't an early casualty at all. It's probably only short-term thinking that has stopped things from already falling apart.
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Ideally I'd have a great many more lenses, but practicality must play some part unfortunately!! I am actually not a fan of the swirly bokeh of the Helios lenses. They look fine for one or two still photographs, but using them for video is a little strange and using it as a general-purpose lens in a lens kit isn't really a sensible idea. Of course, these are FF lenses and I'm shooting on a MFT sensor, so even with my 0.7x SB I'm still only getting the more central part of their image-circle and avoiding the really crazy swirly effects Will my approach miss some crucial aspect? I figured that if I shoot RAW stills then the comparison is as useful across multiple cameras as I can make it, and there might be some interest from the P4K crowd too. There is obviously sample-to-sample variation, but short of having a lens testing machine this is the best I can do. However, if we are looking at things like colour rendering, bokeh, 3D, halation, etc then sample variation is likely not a significant factor. Also, if my test shows a lens to be unsharp then a quick Flickr search will show if this is normal or a faulty lens. What searching Flickr will not do is show two lenses pointing at the same thing for direct comparison purposes, which is what I find is most beneficial.
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The only thing you have to give is time. Here's the recipe for learning to grade: Find a look you like Analyse that look and completely take it apart as much as you can.. look at colours, saturation, sharpening, noise, lighting sources / location / direction / quality, etc Setup a shoot and recreate that shot - use any camera that can shoot RAW stills Try and match your shot to their shot - try every knob or control in your software and see what it does and if it helps to re-create that look Do this enough times with enough looks and you will learn to colour grade. Bonus - you also learn lighting and composition too. Obviously, if you pick simple looks to copy then it will be much easier to replicate them, but it doesn't matter in the end - it's the effort to study the look and the effort to try and match it that is where you learn. I have found that you can learn more in a day than most people learn in a year if you set yourself a challenge and then give it your best shot. This is why I am interested in trying to match the P4K to the BMPCC and BMMCC - I will learn more from that project than I would learn if I watched BMPCC videos and chatted online about the BMPCC for an entire year. You will learn more in trying to re-create one beautiful image than shooting and grading 20 of your own images. Aim high and work hard. This one is also nice (and contains lots of famous people which is reassuring!)
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I think this is the heart of the problem. Everyone has a different interpretation on what is going on. This has always been the case, but what has changed is that people have become disillusioned with authority and so have completely abandoned the idea of listening to experts. Instead we now have amateurs with completely no clue forming their own interpretations based upon ineptitude, fear, and outright lies from those with vested interests. Social media echo chambers reinforce delusional hearsay until it is commonly understood fact, and we are left with a global population that is making decisions that aren't in their best interests, but are too ill-informed to understand what will actually happen. It is very easy to look at the rise of nationalism and only think of them in terms of legitimate political debate and resist the idea that outright lunacy and lies might be part of such a trend. However when you see the steady stream of outright lies from Trump, newspapers and busses with outright lies written all over them, social media memes written in Russia to influence the US election, it raises a question mark about the decision-making process. But when you also look at the world and see the rise of the anti-vaxxer movement, the rise of the flat-earth movement, and the decline (at least in the US) of belief in evolution and science in general, you begin to understand that these political and social movements must have elements that completely abandon logic, evidence and common sense. As you say, people have a different interpretations, but these same people also have different interpretations of the shape of the planet, so don't confuse what is popular with what is true.
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Camera Gain setting question and cheapest recorder with automix
kye replied to Martin Matěj's topic in Cameras
When you record a sound it gets digitised, and the quieter it is when it is digitised the lower the quality is, even after you boost the gain in post. So this would suggest that you try and keep the levels up during recording. However, sound levels jump around with huge variations, and if you clip a sound (where the sound goes above 100% or 0dB) then that data is clipped and lost forever, so that's an argument for keeping the levels down while recording. In practice, there's a sweet spot in the middle where the risk of clipping a sudden loud sound is low, and the quality loss is also very low. This is why there are rules of thumb like keep your loudest peaks around -12 or -6 or whatever. Hope that makes sense -
I'm actually swinging in the opposite direction - the more I look at lenses the more I realise that "best" isn't a thing - there are only preferences and tastes. My plan is therefore to present each lens as it is more to allow others to judge what works for them. I am beginning to suspect that lens choice is strongly linked to camera choice. If you are recording 14-bit RAW and put on a modern sharp cinema lens then I doubt that many would complain that the lens is too sharp or that the picture looks too digital. However, if you are recording 8-bit / over-sharpened / overly compressed / overly contrasty then the overall result from a vintage lens may be preferable because the halation may soften edges and partly counteract the over-sharpening and the lack of overall contrast may counteract the contrast applied. In this sense you have to think about the lens as part of an imaging system, along with added filters, the filter stack in the camera, etc etc. In addition to all that are the creative looks you may want to achieve. Some projects want neutrality, but others may want the benefits of inaccurate colour rendering, softness, retro / vintage look, sharp / digital / gritty look, etc. More subtle still, lenses have varying degrees of 3D rendering (even at identical DOF settings) and this may be used intentionally for subtle dramatic effect. Every aesthetic aspect is a creative choice that will suit some projects, despite potentially being very niche, or even being very undesirable in other situations. Thanks! I just looked at the remaining lenses and discovered that supposedly the Petri 135mm was delivered two weeks ago and "left in a safe place" but a search of the front of my house didn't find it. I'm not so disappointed as it was a very cheap purchase (I was the only bidder) but the biggest loss was that the cost of postage was more than 3X the cost of the item! ebay is always a gamble anyway, so I'll take this one for the team ???
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Yeah, that helps. I've really benefitted from the F0.95 of my Voigtlander and the F2.0 on the Helios (which now that I am using a SB with it is equivalent to F1.4) so there's still one or two stops difference. It's great to be shooting things like city lights at night and looking through the viewfinder and seeing the focus peaking highlighting the ISO noise and then opening the aperture on the lens and watching the noise disappear and the colours come to life with just the twist of a dial. It really looks like a nice lens, but it's also a little short on a SB, and I'd also be afraid that I would miss those couple of extra stops of exposure. The ~T1.5 (or whatever their T-stop actually is) lenses I have really bring out the best of the GH5 in super-low-light
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Their colour grading tools are so limited that some might say you can only use LUTs in FCPX ???
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There is a lot of love for that lens around the place - this guy for example: I may be in the market for a ~35-50mm CZ, but this one is too slow for me unfortunately - it's not a bokeh thing, it's a low light thing, otherwise I would have bought one already!!
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I think you're right @leslie that your extension tubes must be a slightly different length to the instructions you're following. m39, m42, and EF will all have standardised flange distances so those are not variables in play. Grinding off a bit from one of the adapters sounds like your best bet, just be careful that you can still screw it together again and that you don't get any metal filings in anything. Looking forward to seeing some images! I've seen a few projector or enlarger lenses that caught my eye but the lack of aperture makes them impractical in the field to run-n-gun like I do, plus they all look really heavy.
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Noted! When we try and make the BMPCC4K look like the BMPCC and BMMCC I will try those and see how well that works
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FYI: Just posted that I'm about to do a lens shootout of a bunch of lenses on my GH5, so if you have any input to how I should test, comment over in the lenses thread.
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I can feel a lens test coming on... I'm only waiting on three more lenses and then I'll do it and share with everyone. I haven't completely worked out how I should do it, any specific advice? I'll shoot RAW stills on my GH5 with each lens at a few apertures - probably wide open, f2.8, and f8. I find that the most useful lens test is at an identical aperture at least a stop from wide-open for any lens as the differences aren't to do with aperture settings or how sharp they are wide open, and f16 is getting into diffraction territory. The goal of the test for me is to compare the look of modern budget lenses vs modern high quality lenses vs vintage lenses to find the aesthetic that works for me, and work out which lenses I want to keep. Lenses: 8/4 SLR Magic 14/2.5 Panasonic (focus-by-wire) 14-42/3.5-5.6 Panasonic (focus-by-wire) 17.5/0.95 Voigtlander 28/2.8 Yashica 35/3.5 Takumar 37/2.8 Mir 40/1.8 Konica Hexanon (x2 - not shown - still in transit) 40/4 Lomo (lens from popular non-ILC Russian pocket film camera) 55/1.8 Takumar 58/2 Helios (x2) 135/2.8 Minolta 135/3.5 Petri (not shown - still in transit) 135/3.5 Takumar 150/4 Takumar 200/4 Takumar 200/3.5 Minolta And yes, I know I'm not winning any Instagram-worthy-photo competitions ???
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No rush! There are higher priorities and hopefully what we learn here will be useful for a long time to come