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Everything posted by kye
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Ah yes. Maybe if each user either had edit permission or didn't, then it could be earned by new members, and removed if abused. BUT, it's really about what is built-into the forum platform, as programming such a thing and keeping it through (what I assume must be) regular updates would be an absolute PITA. Not me on Gearspace, but sounds like an interesting thing to discuss, and something that one or two folks out there might pop a blood vessel on their forehead about. I'm on some coffee forums and one guy keeps banging on about the definition of 'espresso', which needless to say isn't something that there's a lot of value in being dogmatic about!
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Isn't ARRIRAW 12-bit LOG? That would be broadly as good as 14-bit Linear, one 'level' better than 12-bit Linear or 10-bit log.
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I don't think this is the cause. My strategy is to draft the post, then re-read it in the editor before posting it. When I post it and then re-read it I have to frantically make edits until the timer blocks any more edits. I think it's a 5 minute window. I also have a vague recollection that it was put into effect because people were making inflammatory posts and then days later were editing them then gaslighting everyone after the evidence had been erased. It made for very strange reading too because it looked like they made a calm post and then all the following quotes were doctored to make them the asshole. Sadly, we all suffer because a few people are emotionally damaged.
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I'm contemplating buying and SSD for editing, and potentially in future for USB-C recording from a camera if I ever go that direction. Any reason I shouldn't buy the Samsung T9 drive? Pricing is not much more than the T7 and it's faster and more future-proof.
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I once shot stills at a christening for a friend with my Canon 700D and having the mechanical shutter pierce the tranquility in the mostly empty church felt like I was letting off firecrackers at a meditation retreat. I had to force myself to continue taking any photos at all, but pressed the shutter with extreme reluctance. I really don't know how you guys do it!
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My close vision has finally lost its battle with decrepitude and I'm now trying to work out how to proceed. I can't see the LCD screen to save my life, don't want to wear reading glasses on the point of my nose like an octogenarian (vanity is a virtue, right?), and don't want to use the viewfinder because I don't want people to see me holding a camera up to my face (despite the fact that the EVF adjustment compensates for my vision). Life is full of challenges.... I have recently switched from MF primes to AF, but because I only tend to shoot short shots I have found that AF-S is sufficient. The spectacular thing about this is that AF-S is often instant and accurate, even on very budget cameras, and when things move out of focus it appears natural and organic, in contrast to having a poor AF-C where things getting out of focus just looks like the AF is crap.
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Obviously this depends on your individual preferences, but after much playing around with controllers and setups, I found the following as a pretty good workflow: In Resolve, use the Source Tape mode in the Cut page to queue up all clips in the order shot Using the J-K-L keys you can play backwards, stop, or forwards (and holding K and pressing J or L moves one frame) Hit I to create an In Point, Hit O to create an Out Point, and I mapped P to be Insert This is literally the same process as a tape machine, just without the jog wheel. If you want the Jog Wheel then the Speed Editor wheel feels top-notch to me - weighty and smooth. More recently I found an approach that uses the "gaming" keys, and this involves putting all the clips onto a timeline, then use JKL in combination with Q as Start To Playhead, W as Split Clip, and E as End To Playhead. This is similar to setting In and Out points, but cutting away the unwanted tails on the clips. I combined that with A and S which Swap Clips left and right, to quickly move clips around, and D for deleting a clip. This setup doesn't use a jog wheel but is fast and intuitive. One thing I learned in all my editing and colour grading workflows and controllers and customisations was that I could get by just fine with just a keyboard and mouse, and that Resolve is actually setup pretty well for that. YMMV of course, but if you're able to use Resolve and not be tempted to hit all the buttons, having a workflow that only has the buttons you need can work pretty well. One thing I realised from the Olympus 15mm F8 body cap lens is that if you make a lens slower you can make it drastically smaller, but unfortunately it looks like FF lens manufacturers just don't do it for some reason. For example, the 14mm F2.5 is equivalent to a 28mm F5 lens, both in terms of DoF and light gathering (taking into account the fact that a FF sensor is 4x the size) but where are the F5.6 prime lenses for FF? Are there any at all? What about F4 primes? Any of those? We know that MFT with fast lenses becomes large very quickly, but it seems to me that FF could make very small lenses but the PR department from the Cult of Ultra-Fast Lenses seems to have prevented anyone from actually making one.
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Ah, sorry.. I missed the mention of it being on a gimbal, where obviously you lose the ability to touch the camera or lens. Makes sense now, and yeah, having a wireless control of some kind where you don't need to buy new hardware would be optimal. I have a vague recollection of someone on YT saying that the BM camera app is actually a camera control app where the first camera it controls is the internal iPhone camera, but that the roadmap will be that it adds control for BM cameras. That would effectively give every BM camera a smartphone-sized touchscreen interface. I think that was just speculation, but if true would definitely be a very nice user experience. and SSD. The AF on the P2K is better than nothing but only marginally, but it seems like the M4K has a much newer sensor so I'll be keen to see how much the AF is improved. If the AF is improved and the images are compelling, this will be the closest I'll have come to buying a new camera in quite some time.
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I guess we'll see if it's absent or disabled in time. How often would you need to change something in-camera? On my P2K and M2K the only thing I might change is aperture on native MFT lenses, but on manual lenses I wouldn't change anything.
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Looks like the Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4k G2 (or M4K as @mercer has coined) has started shipping - I saw a quick video from someone earlier this week, but now Will von Tagen has received his, and promises to rig it up and take it out into the world, so we'll be able to see how it fares. Here's a video showing the menu system and giving some initial comments towards the end of the video, which are very positive.
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Cool showreel, some nice shots in there. I'd suggest uploading it in 4K - the 1080p upload had glitches and stuff that I think are YT compression artefacts.
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Ok. Andrew (who owns the forums) prefers that if people post links and videos that they also include other information as well, so that the forum is a place of discussions rather than just everyones bookmarks. What was it about this project that inspired you? How is this relevant to how you (or others here) might work? What things can we all learn from it?
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Welcome to the forums! After almost a decade of trying to wrap my head around gammas, colour spaces, colour management, and Resolve, I think I am finally coming out the "other side" and have a semi-clear understanding on things. As you are starting out, I'd suggest the following: The overriding principle is "if it looks good, it is good". If you're getting good results then (to a reasonable extent) it doesn't matter how you did it. If you just want good results and whatever you did is working, then keep doing that and move onto other things and don't feel bad. Once I finally wrapped by head around Colour Management I realised that much / most of the online content about it is outright wrong, or potentially misleading. It was only once I had a professional colourist explain it that I realised that even the way that people talk about it is wrong. To this end, I recommend the video below - it is a step-by-step explanation of what colour management is, what it's for, and then how to go about it. It takes a bit of effort to sit through and learn things properly, but I find that it's the best strategy long-term if you want to grow your skills: In order to build your skills in colour grading (not just colour management) I recommend ignoring all colour grading content online, except for Cullen Kelly (the presenter in the above video) and Darryn Mostyn (link to his channel), who are not only both working professional colourists, but are also very good at outlining the concepts as well as the tools. If you're willing to pay for content then that's also a good way of getting high quality information. Once you're feeling really comfortable and have watched a lot of their content then you can start watching content from other colourists, because you'll see that what they're telling you might be only half the picture, might be bad advice, might be flat out wrong, or might not even make sense. When I started learning about colour grading and colour management, I read and watched a ton and I think it actively hurt my journey and just filled my head with a bunch of half-truths and confusing tips that I then had to un-learn once I realised how bad the information is. Good luck!
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IIRC you have to have the camera in one of the auto modes, like aperture or shutter priority, then the ISO goes to auto and you are now allowed to set the ISO limit in the function menu.
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Were you involved in this project?
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Yeah, I still have it but don't use it. I should have used the absolutely excellent standard profile that was 709-like but had an extended highlight rolloff that contained the full dynamic range of the camera. The downside was that it wasn't a professional colour space and wasn't supported by colour management etc, so I would have needed to know how to grade the image manually, which isn't a problem now but certainly was then.
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Well, if you're yet to see issues then let us delay no more! This is a post I made about the endless issues I had with the XC10 and its 300bps 4K 8-bit C-log files: While it's not banding, it's definitely problems related to 8-bit on decent bitrate 4K footage. In reality, the combination of 8-bit and log is the reason, but the blame is mine for not using the camera differently, or for buying it for this kind of work in the first place.
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Interesting. I suspect that the two key aspects that make this even remotely possible to get a professional result with 8-bit at that low bitrate are: The DSP in the F3 The complete control on set - being able to change what is in-front of the camera to suit the camera makes an enormous difference to how well something will look in the final version Mostly now, the cameras people are shooting on that are limited to 8-bit will be consumer cameras that have completely rubbish DSP (certainly compared to the flagship cinema cameras of yesteryear) and the people that use them will be pointing them at mostly / completely uncontrolled scenes, perhaps with mixed temperature lighting, and many elements in the frame that do not look pleasing in the footage that is captured. Also, many of these cameras will be used to capture scenes with a lot of movement - either of movement of objects in the frame or movement of the whole camera due to being hand-held, which puts an incredible strain on a limited bitrate codec. I've said it many times but its worth repeating - the amateurs who shoot the real world need the best specs but are given the worst, and the professionals who shoot on sets with dozens or hundreds of people to massage every aspect of the scene to look good to the camera need the least specs but are given the best. I suspect that the missing piece in the above is the oversampling. 4k 8bit 4:2:0 should be inferior to 1080p 10bit 4:2:2 when put into a 1080p timeline because the potential banding and quantisation error of 8-bit aren't always overcome by the extra resolution, however making the statement that "shooting in 4k 8bit 4:2:0 > shooting in 1080p 10bit 4:2:2" is perhaps more accurate due to the lack of downsampling in most cameras. The 1080p from the GH5 is stunning, for example, and I think the downsampling is the main reason.
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After my little deep dive into the tiniest camera I could find, it does occur to me that the cameras that killed this market segment might soon be good enough to satisfy our requirements in this space: Action cameras and phones have had manual controls for several product generations now, and things like the BM iPhone app has better features than many MILCs (waveforms, zebras, view LUTs, false colour, etc etc etc) The limitation on action cameras has always been the fixed wide lens, however with the Insta360 Ace Pro and its 8K sensor on 16mm FOV lens, it now has the resolution to do 4K at 32mm, 3K at 43mm, 2K at 64mm Even if you ignored the crop modes on these cameras, a 100Mbps 16mm FOV cropped in post would still be 66Mbps at 24mm FOV which is better than some of the lesser cameras in this segment, and you can reframe and stabilise in post with that approach! The Insta360 RS had an interchangeable lens module, so future models might have more normal lenses or even a module with interchangeable mounts The trend for action cameras and phones is towards larger sensors, so it's not inconceivable that we'll get an MFT action camera / smartphone down the line iPhone 15 had a professional codec and professional colour space, way ahead of most cameras discussed in this thread, with better low-light and DR than some too In a sense these will be good outcomes for us, because with the death of this market segment we have been stuck with 8-bit cameras with relatively poor codecs, limited manual controls in video, and small sensors, but I think the gap is probably about to be filled. My vision of making super-8 style vignette videos just for fun is almost possible with the latest GoPro, because I could crop in post, grading the image to be soft and having the right colour / grain / jitter / etc, and the fixed focus lens means that my in-post lens emulation has perfect-AF and is parfocal!
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My point was that there's creativity to all art, but maybe it's not obvious. Here's what a video process might look like if it had no creative decision making involved: Generate random GPS coordinates (applying some sort of criteria to ensure they're practical / accessible etc) Go to GPS coordinates, setup camera on tripod Select a lens at random from the selection - if it's a zoom select the zoom randomly Set the focus distance and aperture to random values Generate three random numbers between 0 and 365, orient the camera using these values as pan / tilt / roll Record for a random amount of time Repeat above sequence a random number of times, then proceed to editing Put all footage on the timeline in random order Generate a random percentage, then remove that number of clips from the edit at random For each remaining clip generate random start points and durations and make the edits For each cut apply a random transition effect Select a random number of pieces of music from all music ever created Cut random sized sections from these and add them to the timeline in random locations In the colour grade, randomise all the controls etc etc Obviously this would not be pleasant approach, and regardless of your views about "art" "creativity" etc, you wouldn't think this is a good way to make a film (with the exception of the experimentalists, but that's another discussion). ANY choice you make during the process that isn't random and isn't directed by some other factor (like "the cheapest one available") is a creative choice and will be based upon some sort of aesthetic preference. It's easy for people to get blind to the bigger picture and just narrow in on tiny details, which is what most disagreements stem from.
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There is one point I forgot to mention in the first post, which is the WHY of this whole situation. The point of looking at exposure and WB latitude isn't to correct these things in post. It is to understand how the camera reacts to colour grading. When we colour grade, we are taking the image and pushing things around. In a literal sense, we are just raising or lowering the value of the R/G/B channels in pixels based on a variety of factors, but it's just that - raising or lowering the value of each channel. So, if a camera falls apart when I try to make a tiny adjustment then I'll know that I can't colour grade it much. Assuming you get the exposure and WB relatively close in-camera then the changes should be relatively minor, but some changes are larger or smaller than others. As some examples, here are the operations that I would do across most shots in a grade of mine: Adjusting WB - this is raising or lowering the values of the RGB channels against each other Adjusting exposure - raising/lowering RGB channels together Adjusting contrast - raising/lowering RGB channels together but doing the shadows and highlights in opposite directions Adjusting saturation - raising/lowering RGB channels in a way that expands the differences between channel values Applying a subtractive saturation effect - lowering the RGB channels together based on the differences between channel values Brightening faces - raising the RGB channels in an area on and around the selected faces Massaging skintones - raising/lowering the RGB channels to subtly change the hue and saturation Cool shadows - lowering the RG channels in the shadows etc etc.. as you can see, all these things are just subtle changes to the RGB channels, which relies on the latitude of the files. Most of these changes will be adjusting values by 1 stop or less, and sometimes a LOT less (like skintones), but some might also be more (cooler shadows). I did an experiment on bit-depth and wrote a plugin that lowered bit-depth, and discovered that taking a final image down to 6-bits wasn't visible (and some were fine with 5-bits!) but if you tried to colour grade those 5-bit images then you'd discover pretty quickly that even very minor adjustments would annihilate the image entirely. The other thing that occurs to me is that there are things you can do to help the image keep from falling apart too, like adding noise etc. I should explore that in future tests.
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Absolutely, if you can shoot 10-bit Vlog and are happy to grade it in post then there's no reason not to. The main motivation for me is really in dealing with the older or smaller cameras that don't have a log profile built in, and being able to realise as much of their potential as possible. The GX85 is my main camera now, simply because of size and form-factor, but as we have been reminded by @John Matthews in the "World's smallest DSLM that shoots 4k?" thread, there is still a lot of love for these small cameras.
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I have contemplated setups that included multiple cameras before and my brain kept wondering if there was a way I could make some sort of Franken-rig that included both cameras, like how street photographers often make BTS videos my mounting a GoPro in the hot-shoe of their camera. I could never get a rig that seemed to work, but the Pocket 3 is so small and so flexible (if you configure it to always keep level / never tilt) then you might be able to add it to another setup, potentially even using using both at once? Maybe it's an ill-conceived fever-dream, but I feel like it might just be a killer idea that changes the game in some situations - if I could only find that situation! My Intel MBP is slowly approaching retirement and I'm definitely looking forward to Apple silicone. When I last looked at the benchmarks the different 'levels' of their chips sure made a difference too. It won't be before time either, yesterday my wife and I shot the first couple of talking-head promo videos for her new business and the export was sitting at 2fps in places!
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Cool videos - I especially liked the last one with the pink skies, very nicely done! It's great to hear you're getting deep with the Digital Bolex, it is one of the oldest cameras that are still very relevant and create images as good, or better, than the megapixel behemoths of today. Your description of having a small setup that is ready to go reminded me of the way that documentary film-makers organise themselves when they're making a doco and that at any minute they might get a call from the main cast members that something is happening and they have to rush there to get coverage, so they have to own everything (no rental equipment) and it has to be ready to go at all times. Also wonderful that you're making real work and showing it. I think that anyone who upload a finished project deserves huge respect, but to get involved in a community and then have your work shown is next level. Congrats!