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The weak link definitely seems to be how to get things from the camera to the internet. It's stunning that camera makers haven't made any real attempts to fix this issue, especially considering that the fixed-slow-prime/awful-low-light/low-DR/low-MP camera on the iPhone has become the most popular camera on the planet because of convenience and constant connection to the internet, and that it overtook the DSLR despite Apple starting off as a dinky computer company at the time that the big photography companies were already ruling the world in photography.

Interesting. So we've essentially got two sensor technologies here. The Panasonic / Fujifilm one here that has an organic layer that acts as an ND, enables global shutter, and can make the well-capacity of each pixel far larger which will increase DR. This sensor still has a sequential readout like traditional sensors. Panasonic has been able to build one, and says that 8K60 is possible. Then there's the Sony one which has one ADC per pixel, enabling different ISO per pixel to increase DR, and providing a global shutter as the ADC is done in parallel. This doesn't have a built-in ND capability so in very bright situations an ND would still be required. This design adds lots of complexity and Sony has only managed to build a very low resolution one so far. Is that right? I wonder what the DR of the Panasonic one would be. They claim a light-well capacity of 10X previous designs, so keeping the same overall noise levels equal that should mean an additional ~3 stops of DR. That method seems to be the better one, at least in the short-term as the extra DR of the Sony isn't worth the lack of ND, plus the fact that the Sony sensor still isn't 1080p yet ???

In my searches for vintage lenses to make my GH5 more organic looking I came upon the Contax Zeiss lenses, and then yesterday I found this video... It's basically the dream team of organic classic aesthetic - Contax Zeiss primes, BMPCC, Metabones SB, Tiffen Variable ND. Personally I think one of the lenses is a bit soft for my tastes, but overall it isn't bad. [Edit: actually I think the softness is a combination of missing focus and stopping down too much, so not the lenses]. I've seen better BMPCC videos (lots of talented people used that camera) but overall it should be positively dripping with the look we're chasing. Thoughts?

No idea about resolved in firmware, but IIRC Resolve has it as a tick-box option to fix it. Interesting idea. I suppose the difference might be that Canon could do it because they presumably have their own production facilities and so old moulds and machinery tooling would either still be in use or would still be in a warehouse somewhere. With BM making things in such small numbers who knows if the tooling is still around. Also, who knows if they still have stock of the sensors etc, Canon probably buys them in such huge quantities that they have sheds of then sitting around waiting to be used in every new camera announced for years, whereas BM might have only bought enough of that sensor to do a run and might not have any more in their stock piles.

If you're going to ADR this actor and not going to use the on-set audio then the only things you need from on-set audio is for it to help with ADR, so as long as you can hear the actor then I wouldn't worry about it myself, unless I'm missing something.. @IronFilm ? I've done ADR done a couple of different ways: where the mouth of the actor is visible and the aim is to get clean audio that looks natural where the character is not a normal human and you can't see it's mouth In the first instance the ADR took a long time to record to get a result that didn't seem separate to the visuals, and the actor just copying the line over and over again to get the timings down was really helped by being able to hear the original audio. In this instance we ADR'd because the location was noisy. In the second instance the character was a delusion (IIRC it was a human actor wearing a huge Easter Island head that fit over their head, shoulders and partly down their chest). They didn't record on-set audio for this character (someone read the lines from off-screen) because the character stood perfectly still in frame. The voice-over was a deep male voice and we recorded the lines without trying to match them to the footage because there was no timing to match. We got a guy with a deep voice and recorded it through my 1" condenser mic and a valve pre-amp to make it sound as fat as possible. Basically we did a bunch of takes for some variety and they just chose the take in editing that suited the edit best. Your project seems like it is somewhere between these two extremes, so you've got some flexibility.

Why would NDs not be needed if we had per-pixel gain? Currently the lowest ISO combined with desirable aperture and SS during the day results in many more stops of light than the sensor can handle, so unless the per-pixel gain adjustment was able to have ISOs much much lower than 100 then you'd still need NDs. I get that it would give us increased DR, but only by taking dark pixels and brightening them.

If you record sound on set then it'll be easier to sync ADR. One consideration is that if you're going to have an actor talking through a bunch of effects, there might be certain things that the actor can do to make the processed dialogue more understandable or sound more menacing or whatever. Ideally you would have the effects applied to the actors voice in real-time so they could hear themselves through it all and act appropriately, however real-time audio is tricky unless you're setup to do that. More likely is that you get the actor in to do ADR, you record a take, apply the effects, listen to it, hear what works and what doesn't work, and re-record / apply effects / listen again, etc until the actor has learned how to speak so the end result is good. Of course you can just record normal ADR and then only apply the effects that work with that way of talking, and that will be more straight-forward, but it will be creatively more limiting.

I haven't used the Fusion tab yet, but I'd agree about BM and bugs. The next versions are likely to fix a lot of them though. Resolve 12.5 used to crash on me about every 20 minutes of use, but since V14 it basically never crashes, that is using the Edit and Colour tabs mostly and not Fusion or Fairlight. Resolve is the way to go. Check out this thread where I've tried to pull together all the good resources I've found: Enjoy, if you find anything good then please add it to that thread, and feel free to ask questions

Yes, and considering how rich the west is in comparison to other parts of the world, even a tiny bit of money might make a huge difference. The definition of extreme poverty is a dollar a day, and there are millions of people living in these kinds of situations. I read an article about one of the first major computer viruses/worms (I can't remember which one it was) that took down Wall St and other major facilities across the world. It was written by a Russian programmer. The interesting thing was that the guy had no concept of what effect it would have until many years later. The short version of the story was that the USSR was a pretty harsh place to live but the focused on education and gave technology scholarships and trained thousands of Russian students in computer science and programming, but when they graduated there were no jobs (because this was communist Russia) and so you had a bunch of skilled and highly angry young men. The thing about the USSR at that time was the the Iron Curtain was still in full force, they had no idea that the west was using computers for real things and in Russia the only people who had computers were rich people. So, the pissed off programmers amused themselves by writing viruses to mess up the rich people's toys. It wasn't until a journalist managed to track this person down over a period of years and communicate with him that he found out that the west used computers for real work, that his virus/worm had escaped the USSR, and had caused huge damage to companies the world over. He basically had no idea. After that he dropped out of that scene and history seems to have forgotten him. The world is a funny place sometimes. Who knows. If they hack an ebay account, inject malicious code into the ad, then get spammers to direct people to look at that auction then that's a mechanism. Remember that computer security is basically a software arms race, and it's been going for decades now, so the bleeding edge isn't the obvious stuff anymore. Plus considering how hard people in poorer countries are willing to work combined with the sheer number of them in that situation, there are bound to be thousands of people way smarter than both of us who would work non-stop for a tiny income to feed their families, feed their egos, or whatever else might motivate them. If you're unaware of what the complexities are in this arms race, check out the Stuxnet virus. It is spectacular and kind of terrifying too.

It would be a headache, but I think that you might be missing the point. This guy has a supremely accurate calibration device and spent hours trying to get these lenses to be as perfect as he could make them. All manufacturers have standards that lenses must meet before they go out the door. Of course some companies standards will be stricter than others, but all of them will measure a lens, find that it has some level of distortion that could be corrected with fine-tuning, but because it meets their tolerances, out it goes. That's just capitalism.

LOL. I meant that I'd clean them one at a time, but straight after each other. The problem is that I don't really have a place where I can setup the various tools, towels, little containers for screws, containers for the chemicals, the measuring devices for the chemicals, etc, and still expect them to be there if I don't use them for a couple of weeks. So my plan was to figure out what I needed, then get it all, then work out how to approach it, which lens to do first, then do the first one completely, and then work out what to change before doing the second one. If I start now, then the setup would have to stay setup, or I'd have to go through that process a second time, when the Russian mail service decides to finally let my last package out of Eastern Europe! Oh, I don't know... the Zeiss article says "Nutrients (textile lint, traces of grease, varnish, dust and dirt)". If grease and varnish are food then what do we know - chalk might be a feast!! I don't think that cleaning will make them sharper. It might even make them worse, if you put them back together again with worse alignment than when you took them apart. There is some fascinating discussion on lens quality control in this thread: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?158004-Let-s-make-STAR-LENS-TESTER-to-get-best-lens-copy-easily-(Airy-disk-PSF-point-source) In another thread he compares three vintage lenses, and to be fair (and make sure he's not comparing a good one of one lens with a poor one of another lens) he aligns the three lenses using that lens tester first. The results are interesting, and he does say that with that machine and a lot of trial and error he was able to improve the alignment of all of the lenses, although one of them seemed to look worse in the little resolution test he also took pictures of, so it's complicated.

More lenses have been arriving.. Super-Takumar 35mm 3.5 - ebay auction specified fungus: and some with fungus that didn't specify it in the ebay ad.... I figured there's always a chance of them having it, so it's not a problem, but buyer beware! Minolta 135mm 2.8: (Note that the little 9-dot pattern is from the LED torch I was using, so they're just reflections, not fungus colonies!) The Minolta 200mm 3.5 also has some patches that look like greasy smudges on the front element, but further investigation shows they're on the inside of the front element, so I suspect fungus with that too. I tried taking a photograph but couldn't get the angles right, it's quite faint and you need light from a certain angle etc. My hygrometer says that my lens storage drawer sites between 65% and 40% humidity, even though we have refrigerative air conditioning on many hours a day (it's peak summer here). I'm not sure if that's acceptable, but the Zeiss page here says: These seem a little contradictory, so I think more reading is needed. Once all my lenses arrive I'll begin the cleaning process in earnest. No point cleaning a bunch only to have another one arrive and you have to set it all up over again.

I heard that Green Day named themselves that after their teacher or school principal said it would be "a green day in hell" if they ever amounted to anything. Not sure if it's true, but it makes a good story to tell on the internet like I'm doing right now

A really senior former work colleague had spent a lot of time in the armed forces and talked a lot about "time in rank". As far as I could tell it talked about the dangers of promoting people too quickly, and that you needed to spend "time in rank" to really learn how to do things properly. I suspect that for some people who never rise through the ranks that's because they haven't worked out the things you need to learn at that level, so they never advance. I take this to mean that there are key skills to learn before you can progress (and still do a good job) but that if you learn fast then you can progress steadily too. This has been my experience. When I was young (which saying makes me feel like I'm 80 years old!) I was frustrated about being underused and that I had so much more to offer and could do a way better job than the people running things. In a sense that's true, but it's also like when you watch someone playing a game and you see things they don't, but what you don't take into account is that they're seeing things you're not. Also, the easier something looks the more likely it is that the skill of that person is what is making it look easy, rather than it actually being easy. Now when I look at younger generations and I think about them being in charge, the sheer weight of what they don't know would make me very reluctant to put them in charge of anything. It's a balance I think, but hard work and learning as much as possible is what will distinguish you in the long run.

We'd either be shooting on handicams or ILC video cameras like C100s. There might actually be more action in those sectors as there would be more money. I saw a guy vlogging in public with a little handicam and it was covered in stickers that said 4K and Stabilisation and things like that. We might be talking about which handicams have 10-bit, and if the C50mkII would have C-Log, and if the FS3 would have internal 10-bit, and the P4K thread would probably still be talking about battery life, strange bugs, and shipping delays

Same for me in my day job. If I come across potential work and I think "wow, that seems like it might be beyond my skill level" I stop and think about the alternative, which is someone else doing it. That usually 'inspires' enough confidence to jump in and do it My advice if you're contemplating taking on jobs you're not sure if you're up for is this: Get as much experience as you can in your own time When talking to potential clients, highlight your strengths and previous experience, but be honest and don't promise anything you can't be 100% sure you can deliver If the client takes you on, work your ass off to make them as happy as you possibly can (both by how you conduct yourself as well as the quality of the work) - even if you don't care about the work or the client this is the strategy to learn the most from the job Leverage that successful work to 'level-up' and get better work next time (if you deliver a $2K result on a $500 job you will have an example of $2000 work and can use it to book $2K jobs, etc etc) Opportunity looks a lot like hard work. I've had a lot of growth in my career because I took on jobs that stretched my abilities. I didn't get those jobs because I'm great at selling (I'm not) - I got them because they were awful jobs that the more experienced people didn't want. I took jobs where everyone else would suck air into their mouths when they heard about them, I took a job where I was the fourth person to do it and the previous person quit after the first day. I've gotten lots of experience because of this and learned a ton on basically every job. By being humble, asking for input from others (when appropriate), and focusing on the work instead of yourself, you can build trust with people. I've been on jobs where everything went sideways because that was just how the situation was going to go, and the people around me saw that I was making the best of the situation and didn't blame me, in fact they had a higher opinion of me for keeping calm and keeping focussed on the work. People will re-hire those people that they like to work with because they have the right attitude, so that's the best long-term strategy.

It turns your Canon camera into an iPhone with Portrait Mode!! (just kidding.. ?)

Yeah, I keep telling people that there are two types of cameras, those with IBIS and everything else. If you can't work with tripods or "professional rigs" then your choices are IBIS, the 1% of lenses that have IS, or making every video with the aesthetic of a 60s 8mm home video. If it wasn't for IBIS I'd be in the P4K thread hanging out and complaining about how I haven't received my P4K yet with everyone else ? IIRC it does Prores HQ, which is 10-bit. Is that supported by P2K? 10-bit would allow a lot more DR than 8-bit, so maybe the DR is ok in Prores? You could even rig it up with a tiny fan - for a wide shot for a wedding you don't need sound, and this isn't the camera for recording sound anyway! Yeah, and even if you broke it you just replace the cable and the camera is still fine. It's great to have options like this.

ProAV on YT did an interesting video showing the EOS-R as a B-cam to a C200 and it looked like a reasonable option. The crop was even a feature as it means you can get a bit of extension on a shorter lens for a tighter portrait shot. If the P4K thread is any indication, let's reserve the next 80 pages of this thread to BATTERY RAGE!! As a consolation the contrast / saturation controls might have some decent leeway in them? With 8-bit it might be preferable to allocate more of those bits to the middle parts of the exposure range. I did really like the Normal profile on the XC10 which provided the same DR as C-Log, it just had a knee at a higher point so it was only compressing the highlights. (From the XC10 EBU Test Paper - Normal = Look1, C-Log = Look 5) As far as I know the XC10 is the only camera that had this feature - the rest just clipped highlights. For an 8-bit codec this would be a spectacular gamma curve, and it wasn't something that Canon or anyone else seemed to make a big deal out of, so although I'm not optimistic for the RP, we won't know until someone tests it.

@leslie Wow! I bet that would have been a pretty nerve wracking few days!

I used to be an IT technician for a small organisation with a modest IT budget, so we used to try and solve problems ourselves. We'd often clean keyboards, printers, and other hardware when they went a bit funny because often a good clean can get something back to working well. What was quite common was when me and the boss would pull apart a laser printer or something, there were almost always parts left over. Sometimes they were parts where both of us would look at them and think "I've never seen that thing before in my life!". Funnily enough we never pulled something apart and had it not work again because we stuffed it up - everything always came good. I think they just put spare parts in there so that there will always be parts left over and you'll be less likely to try and service things yourself next time

Hi A1ex!! Keep up the great work.. we appreciate it! ??? (https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=22770.msg211977#msg211977) I have had a recurring thought that ML would make a spectacular project for someone who wants to work in PR to get real-world experience and actually make some kind of difference by making ML much more accessible to people who don't want to trawl though threads about registers to understand how to turn on crop-mode or similar things like that. The information is around, and even just collating it and providing some instructions would make a huge difference. I think one of the main issues is that people want to record in some combination of RAW, 4K, and >30fps so the challenge isn't installing ML, it's installing the right build, installing the SD-Card hack, working out the menu system (that keeps changing faster than the blog posts can keep up) to enable the right modules, the button combinations for preview modes, and potentially other bits and pieces as well.

OMG - that brought tears to my eyes!! How funny! Let's hope A1ex has seen the other nice things I say about ML!! ???

I agree.. However, in my experience it's sometimes hard to see who is a spammer and who might be a newcomer who is potentially from the instant-messaging generation, or doesn't have English as their first language, or both. Film-making is a pretty complicated topic and it's pretty easy to ask a genuine question that seems inflammatory or non-sensical, so apart from posting links, it can be hard to tell.