kye

16 minutes ago, Snowbro said:

Dang, that is bad. I think that camera stores do not scale their human capital, according to demand. It took over 2 weeks for BH to process a return during this same time, they normally do it in a day. 

I suspect you're right about them not scaling up.  In a sense delays are inevitable, with the combination of goods getting cheaper and people buying more, and a faster pace of life with less planning combining with deliveries getting faster, and you've got the perfect recipe for a very intense and short spike in activity.  If everywhere resourced up to meet that need you might need to have zero unemployment and everyone working 20-hour days for a week or so to compensate!

8 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

Did figure out the Juan Melara Linny LUT, looks like you have to into the PowerGrade's and tweak the HSL values to get it to not tear the footage.

On its own the Linny broke the color blue and some shades of red. With the HSL adjusted and then brought down in another corrector node, it works fine.

I will post tests soon.

Cool!

I downloaded the Powergrade and tried to test it on some GH5 footage but I couldn't install it.  Resolve seemed to want different file types than what Juan had created, so I suspect it was a software version / backward compatibility issue.  I googled a bit but didn't find any ready answers, and then got distracted.

I'm curious to see your results, but the original LUT 'look' didn't look that special to me, so I'm not that motivated TBH.

3 hours ago, arson519 said:

i was watching him he was one of the first to get a gh5 he had like barely 1000 subscribers 

Yeah, and he just hit 100k.  His success is well deserved I think, his videos speak for themselves.  

24 minutes ago, Snowbro said:

Since this thread has gotten so incredibly off track and random, I am just going to throw this out there: I ordered a camera from Adorama Sunday with next day air priority shipping. They created the shipping label, but two cutoff deadlines have passed. Called them and they said it would be shipped today, didn't apparently. I never had this issue with BH, I wonder if there is a bottleneck in their SCM. Maybe I will get it next week lol. 

My sister ordered a voucher for me for xmas online, and paid to have it delivered in next day express post.  That was about a week before xmas and it arrived after New Years day.  I think xmas consumerism is getting better / worse!!

I think there's too many people concerned with defending themselves against the people with big problems and not enough concern for actually fixing those problems in the first place.

Then again I live in a country so full of socialist communist lefty hippies that the conservative government used a massacre as an excuse to take away all our guns, and now as a forty-something I live in complete repression with only the fact that neither I, nor anyone else I know well, has been directly impacted by gun violence.  Naturally, I'd rather be packing serious heat and going to funerals like all the free countries out there.  But maybe that's just me?

6 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Thanks for both of your replys, its very helpful.  The aesthetic I am going for is capturing the beauty of the hike with relaxing nature sounds (stream, occasional boots on rock, the birds and wild life, no heavy beathing).  I want that floating flying feel over the foot step jitter, but also capture a natural looking gain of elevation as you take a big step up.  Its not a mountaineering climb but you do have to watch foot placement. 

In that case then maybe a gimbal is a good choice.  It fits the feel, if you mount the camera with a quick-release plate and then balance it then it should stay balanced and be quick to setup, and perhaps most importantly, before you take a big step you can strap it to your chest somehow, put it into locked mode, and then take the step and have full use of both hands when doing those tricky bits of a climb.  I think I've seen people strap a gimbal to the front strap on a backpack so maybe that might work.

I think two of the biggest challenges that we face in photography, and which starts fights, are:

1. People make different kinds of films.  
   I just started another thread with a great BTS from an adventure film-maker who shoots everything 60p so he has flexibility in post with which things he can use for slow-motion.  This makes sense for adventure film-making, but would be stupid in narrative work where slow-motion plays very little part.  If I had a zillion dollars then the best camera for narrative work might be an Alexa, but if I'm going to jump out of a plane it sure wouldn't be (extreme example) but also if you're running a studio for a game-show then the Alexa is probably also not the best choice.
2. People see differently and have different tastes.
   Lots of the talk about colour science is about taste, but some people can't see colour that well and don't care.  Some people are much more sensitive to motion and care about the 180 degree shutter, whereas others are sticklers for blowing highlights and chase high DR cameras with low noise and >8-bit outputs to ensure that the foreground looks good and the highlights aren't clipped.

Most of the "this camera/lens/mic/preamp/tripod/etc is better" arguments are really people judging equipment according to their individual sensory perceptions, their workflow priorities, and their shooting situations and then thinking other people are stupid because other people have different perceptions / workflows / and shooting situations and evaluate differently.

I think the solution is for people to be more curious.  If someone says something you disagree with, instead of disagreeing with them, try asking them why they disagree, or how they came to that conclusion.  This is how to cool a situation and learn something as well.

Levi Allen, who is freelance filmmaker and a solo adventure documentary maker, has made a bunch of high quality films and made a great BTS video talking about production and equipment and various other things.

This series is about people walking slack-lines (the alternative to tight-ropes!) and there's some pretty crazy content.  Here are the first five episodes, which IMHO are just spectacular:

and here is the BTS where he talks about the equipment he used (watch the above before the BTS because it's got heaps of spoilers)

Highlights include:

• Almost everything shot with the Panasonic G7 in Cine-D
• He got the Sony A6300 for slow-motion and he thought the AF would mean he could ask others for help as second shooters, but the screen was so rubbish in daylight and it kept overheating that it wasn't much use
• He shot 4K because he wanted to sell it for more
• A few shots (mainly the time lapses?) were shot on the A7S but because it wasn't 4K it didn't get used much
• Drone was Phantom 3 Pro in the Natural profile
• Rode Video Mic Pro for run-n-gun
• Rode NTG-3 for interviews
• Kessler crane motorised slider
• He used MF primes, mainly the Rokinon 35mm MF
• He used shots from his iPhone because they were needed for the story

Other interesting thoughts:

• He now owns a GH5 and shoots everything in 60p now so he has flexibility to slow things down in post
• He worked out the profiles to use in his cameras by doing a bunch of camera tests and looking at the output and choosing the settings 
• He hates PP "Premier Pro is garbage" and edits in FCPX, and "if I was working on just films I would probably be editing in Resolve, but because of my internet workflow and things like that I've been editing exclusively in Final Cut and it's made my doc work amazing"

He also then gives a commentary of Episode 4 talking about storytelling and creative aspects, production challenges and being a solo shooter and BTS, as well as equipment.  There's a ton of great info in there so I'd encourage you to watch the full BTS for more.

1 hour ago, Snowbro said:

I know a guy who used to be an engineer (80/90s), the company he worked for went under. I think he started doing photography more seriously while he was searching for another job. It turned into him doing it as a professional for around 30 years. He was the classic photographer guy, light meter, backdrops, fleece vest etc. I know he also did many weddings; then the digital age hit. One of the first Nikon D3's in the state was purchased by him, he still uses it today as his only camera.. As the years passed (2005-present) I have watched him go from a happy confident guy, to a nervous, broken looking man. He has not adapted well to the times, his photos are almost straight out of the camera jpgs at maybe f10, seems as if they could have been taken with a phone camera. Editing video is wizardry to him, same with flying a drone (even though he got his commercial license for it). One time, he visited and was almost crying, that a new soccer coach at a local high school, hired someone else to take the group photos that he had taken for a decade. His relationship with his wife is hostile, she even bought a new D850 last year, with a set of pro lenses to spite him (she never uses the camera or will let him touch it). Point being; it is hard to watch someone with so much passion and happiness decline so badly. I know he is struggling incredibly financially, but he is unable to adapt with the times. Even if he did keep up, like you mentioned, there is much less work for even the top photographers. 

I love this stuff, but I don't have the guts to do it for a profession. I keep suffering through a CS/MIS degree, because I know will make much more and have better job security down the road. 

Oh yeah, about the Economist stuff: I have a few cousins who work at GS. They saw the volatility from the bad CDO's, then offloaded it to customers before it exploded. They knew... 

Ouch..  sorry to hear about your friend.

They used to say that the only things you can count on are death and taxes, but they've added another one now - change.  We certainly do live in the times of Adapt or Perish.

I have a CS background but have generalised as my career progressed, and I now work across the whole organisation, which means primarily working with people.  Human behaviour and organisational behaviour do change, but it's pretty slow, and I do get a kick out of it once in a while, so I'm probably better off than the majority of people, even though most of it is pounding my forehead against granite.

CS/IS is a difficult area to be in because if you're technical you're having to learn new tech constantly.  In comparison to non-technical careers it's like jogging to stand still, running to progress, and sprinting to have a good career.  My dad was the head engineer of desktop computers in a large educational institution (10,000+ students, 6+ campuses) and when he retired one of the things that he said to me was "I don't think I have another operating system in me".  He went through all the major OS's from CPM to DOS to Windows 7 in his career and that constant burn was one of the reasons that made me move away from the technical side of things.

I tell the people that I mentor that if they want to get a pay rise they either have to go up, out, or deep.  "Up" is getting promoted through the ranks, which means that you stop doing whatever it was you were good at and change careers into management, which is a completely separate skillset, and which is why most managers are incompetent.  "Out" is starting your own business and either consulting or doing some kind of contract work, which means you get paid more than before for the same work, but you've taken on all the risk of not having any work and earning nothing.  "Deep" is becoming very knowledgable about a very specific thing, you will get paid a lot because your knowledge is rare, but you have to keep up-to-date and if you happened to be the worlds most knowledgable person about fax machines or steam engines or whatever then bad luck because you bet your whole career on the wrong tech.

The older I get the more I realise that people are mostly fuelled by their irrational insecurities and emotional baggage.

I've also realised that people make most of the decisions in their lives (especially major ones) with almost no knowledge whatsoever.  Think about buying a house for example - it's the largest investment that most people will ever make, but look at how many people got it so wrong in the US.  Same goes with investing in the stock market - I'm not aware of even one economist that predicted the GFC correctly and that's what they do for a living.  People are completely rubbish at picking a life partner, look at divorce rates, and those are the ones that aren't still stuck in awful situations by religion, cultural pressures, or economic factors.  The general populace are so miserable overall with their life choices that a huge percentage are on some kind of anti-depressant medication.  I could go on....

So, if people live their lives with judgement so impaired that they get major investment decisions wrong, choose the wrong partners, can't create happiness in their lives, and then don't even decide to get therapy but opt for medication instead, why would you expect that they will be able to somehow transcend all that and become informed, rational, and articulate people when it comes to cameras?

The other factor in this whole thing is that the photography industry is undergoing massive change.  Most people don't adapt well to change, and those that are resisting are competing with everyone else for the traditional type of work that they're used to doing which there is less and less of.  I think this is the main reason that many photographers are bitter and angry all the time.  If you hang out in communities related to industries that are expanding, or where the typical person is new to the field and not clinging to the past then the overall attitude of people is likely to be very different.

9 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

I have some inserts, and went that route in the past - especially on my own journeys - but it is not convinient for pro work.

What I currently do, is having a backpack or rolley bag for personal stuff and extras (cables, some additional chargers and stuff I do not particularly need on a shooting) and a shoulder bag, or two for the shooting essentials, but lately the numbers of different bags have increased substantially!

The other factor that I overlooked is the ability of some of those to go into the cabin of an airplane. 

I have to find something with the most interior space that fits on a cabin.

How big is the Ronin S when packed down?  In my mind that's the largest and most difficult item to include in a carry-on.  Unless the Ronin rides checked but gets strapped to the outside of the bag when you're on set?

If you take that out of the requirements for being inside the bag then a larger but normal camera bag would probably work well.

That KEH.com site doesn't look that great.  It doesn't show you photos of the actual product you're buying, and refers you to the condition rating and the notes section for details on the actual one you'd be buying. This page here lists four lenses, one is Excellent Plus, two are Excellent, and one Bargain, but for the bargain one there are no notes!  The description of Bargain says "glass may have marks or blemishes but should not effect picture quality", at least according to the intern who is opening the packages in the mailroom..

I'm guessing that if you're in the US you'd just buy it and return it if there are issues?  It looks a bit different once you've paid import duties, made international phonecalls to get a return authorisation, and waited around all day for their couriers (who will only give you a 12-hour window for pickup/delivery and charge a fee if you were in the bathroom when they knocked and they have to come out a second time).  Oh, to live in shoppers paradise, instead of Australia where the cost of shipping often doubles the price 

I'll have to create a eBay notification for the 2.8 version

3 hours ago, AaronChicago said:

You can easily get away with a 3:1 ratio on narrative if you’re prepared, and rehearse. 

90 min x 3 = 270 min (3TB of 4k Raw). 

A 4tb external drive is $99. Get one extra for backing up.

Shooting ratios are highly personal and I think related to the personality of the director as well as the other factors.  

When my sister was in film school I helped on a number of sets and some directors loved horror and paid more attention to the fake blood than they did to the actors delivering dialog - I even saw a set where the actors messed up a take by saying their lines kind of wrong and wanted to go again but the director over-ruled them!  When my sister directed we often went to take 20, and there was one scene where a guy was delivering a 20s monologue and although we got a usable take around take 4, it was something like take 17 when he delivered the performance that ended up taking pride of place on his showreel.

My sister was interested in authentic and powerful drama through the quality of acting, and IIRC she'd rehearsed the script with the actors beforehand and changed awkward lines and optimised it before production, so although I think she was physically capable of making a film with 3:1 ratio, there was no way it was ever going to happen.

@Dan Wake if you're set on making a feature and don't want to make short films beforehand, then consider making a single scene from the film as a trial run.  That way you can trial the cast, crew, all the tech, and the entire workflow before you're betting the whole budget on it.  If all goes well then you can take the opportunity to optimise your setup and processes etc and can use the footage in the final film.  If it doesn't go well then you can make the required changes before going into production again.  It does mean that you have to plan two productions instead of one, but in all likelihood the lessons from the first shoot will help you so much when you're doing the second that they will more than pay for themselves.  
Also, if by making the short you discover that your budget for the feature was inadequate then you can use the short to raise funding for the feature as you'll have shown you are capable of completing something and the investors will be able to have a taste of what they'll get at the end, which is more than most films are able to show potential investors.

8 hours ago, Thatguy said:

Last option is just a decent hiking bag (good harness, frame) with a camera bag inside.  But that wont be easy to pull out your gear. 

I have used this type of setup forever and it works if you have a smaller amount of gear, but I wouldn't recommend it for @Kisaha.  It has many advantages and I prefer it over a dedicated camera bag, but as you say, it's not easy to pull out equipment.  I also doubt there would be a suitable insert for the gear required.

I agree with @KnightsFan about the practicalities of the different pieces of equipment, but I'm wondering what aesthetic you're interested in creating?

Gimbals eliminate all shake to the point of creating the feel of a disconnected flying perspective.  This might be right if you're trying to make something look beautiful, but if you're interested in a POV where it's about the difficulty of the climb and you can hear the climber breathing heavily, boots crunching over rocks, maybe loose rocks falling over the edge, etc, then a gimbal would be a terrible choice and you'd want something that showed the movement of each step, and each little slip.

Start with the desired aesthetic and work backwards, only then compromise on practical grounds if you have to.  

What kind of shots are you thinking of getting?  There's a huge difference between a rig that you can stop and film people hiking (shoulder-rig perhaps) and a rig where you can film while also moving with the group over difficult terrain..  also, how much setup time do you anticipate having?  A glidecam might take a few minutes to balance every time you wanted to take a shot, whereas others would only take seconds. 

1 hour ago, homestar_kevin said:

Good Score on the primes. Can't beat free.

BTM_Pix had a great recomendation with the Nikon Series E 70-210mm f/4 I have that lens and love it. Really great for the price.

At the top top end of your posted budget, I would look for an AF-D Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 Push Pull.

The original push pull versions can be found really cheap now for how good the optics are.

Do you mean the Nikon 80-200mm AF-D f4.5-5.6?  The 2.8 version looks like they start at around $500!

My dad dug up his collection and the 250mm he remembered is actually a 500mm, so way too long for practical use on crop sensor, and not to mention it's about a foot long!  I'm still entertaining the idea of a nice zoom, just because they're so flexible, and a 70-200 would be both shorter and longer than the 135mm prime, so would be hugely more flexible to use.

4 hours ago, hmcindie said:

I don't even have an opinion on it. It worked? Didn't notice anything weird yet. You could probably happily shoot a film with the GH5 (just get a monitor for it).

Nice short!

My theory is that the latter leads to the former.. The camera is a workhorse and we probably see footage from it all the time without knowing it.  Considering how much of what we see is shot on the high end cine cameras from ARRI / RED / Canon / Sony / etc footage from a $2k camera not standing out is a pretty big achievement.  

39 minutes ago, kaylee said:

please make a short before anything else lol

Excellent point!

@Dan Wake is this your first feature?  or are you gearing for a career in post-production?  The stats on people who try to make a feature film without first having made several short films are pretty dire - most don't know what they're getting themselves into and the project is never finished.

17 minutes ago, User said:

Solid info and break down... big thanks on this Kye.

Absolutely. And in the case of my shifting the project forward from CC2014 to CC2019 - and that CC2019 wouldn't import much of the same media and maintain the links - just being able to edit again seems a luxury. And actually, in going forward, the great wish is to finish this film off in the next months before Adobe gets the chance to implement their latest technology in CC2020 which can be seen in full effect below. The help number is on the bottom of the unit... and when dialed, rings the hospital in which the caller was born.

 

LOL..  I'e seen a few versions of that box and having the sensors when it opens detect if there's a hand nearby is great - makes it look like it has real personality!

I'm guessing you'll be moving to Resolve after your current project then? ???

50 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Buying a dedicated keyboard or overlay relevant to your NLE is also a great upgrade. Just studying the keys can lead to exploration you might not normally do, and find a quick solution to a nagging problem easily solved by the push of a button or two.

The newest version of Resolve (that I haven't upgraded to yet) has a visual keyboard shortcut configuring tool that might be useful for that.

15 hours ago, Snowbro said:

None of us probably actually know him, we likely do not know his intents. He created a toxic environment and derailed threads from my perspective, but I bet he has helped some people at some point lol. 

When I was seriously considering the A7III and GH5 and trying to understand the lens options etc, I PM'd with @jonpais about his experiences and he was really helpful and wrote me quite a few long and informative messages.  This despite he and I seriously butting heads a few times in the general forum.  I don't claim to know him, but I can see that he has a lot to offer - unfortunately other factors got in the way.

Remember that you can always buy more drive space if a project ends up being larger than expected.  

Worth noting is that RAW comes in different flavours and I suspect there is very little difference between them in the real world.  People talk about Prores HQ being good enough for most projects, and considering the difference between 272MB/s and 117MB/s you might end up shooting RAW 3:1 or 4:1.

Quote

Storage Rates

Storage rates based on 30 frames per second.

4096 x 2160

CinemaDNG RAW - 272 MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 - 129 MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 - 97 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 HQ - 117.88 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 - 78.63 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 LT - 54.63 MB/s
Apple ProRes Proxy - 24.25 MB/s

3840 x 2160

CinemaDNG RAW - 255 MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 - 122 MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 - 92 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 HQ - 110 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 - 73.6 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 LT - 51 MB/s
Apple ProRes Proxy - 22.4 MB/s

You're looking at some serious drive space though - 4K RAW 3:1 at 30:1 shooting ratio for a 90 minute film is still 20TB.  That's just the source media - you will also need to render proxies to edit with, and various other assets.

I spoke to my dad and it turns out he has Minolta 135mm and 250mm fixed primes, which he'll be putting in the post and sending to me.  Win!!

He can't remember which versions, but he said that at the time they were better than the most common ones that people had.  I asked about how good they were optically and his answer was very interesting, he said that he couldn't really tell me because he only ever used them to take photos of things very far away, and at those distances atmospheric disturbances were the biggest challenge, not lens sharpness or film grain.

Anyway, we'll see when they arrive.

I'm managing my expectations though.  I suspect that lenses were made to be good enough for the resolution of the best film stocks and probably no more.  If we take a FF lens and then crop into it 2x for the MFT mode, and 1.4x more for the ETC mode, and if that is 4K video which is 8.3MP, that means I'm viewing the lens with the equivalent scrutiny of 65MP.  There is hot debate around what the resolution of film is, but most estimates are below that figure, so I'm anticipating that they will probably be a little soft!  Of course, I'm only using the middle of the lens, which is where it is the best, but 65MP might still be a stretch.. ???

9 hours ago, buggz said:

Hi kye,

I appreciate the detailed reply!

I think my biggest problem with Resolve workflow, is that I don't have the proper time to truly learn and use it.

My personal time is limited due to a high pressure fulltime+ job, sigh...

I only get to use Resolve sporadically, and often forget what I did during the last session.

I sympathise.  More than once have I decided to solve a problem, done the research, and found the thread on the BM forums where I asked the exact question a few months prior.  Or found the answer, gone into Resolve to map the function to a hotkey and discovered I'd already done it!

I've said before that learning Resolve is like learning to fly to space shuttle.  Probably a good idea would be to make a set of notes for yourself, perhaps organised by each page, of hotkeys / menu functions / etc that you use, then next time referring and adding to it.  I say this as advice as much for myself as for anyone else.. lol ???