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The recent announcement of the BMPCC 4K has prompted me to do a lot of thinking about cameras in general and what features are useful etc, and I've realised that ML RAW has a killer feature that seems to be relatively unique - the 3x Crop mode. Is anyone else finding the crop mode to be a big differentiator against other cameras? It turns my Sigma 18-35 on my 700D into a 29-56mm and 87-168mm lens, which combined with the fact it switches with only a single menu option change, and doesn't require the purchase / carrying / changing of additional lenses, makes it a hugely competitive feature IMHO. I know this is only in ~1080 and not 4K, but the fact it's RAW goes somewhat to making up for this when compared to cameras that compress their 4K output. I suppose with something like the BMPCC 4K you could just record RAW and then crop in post, but you'd be throwing away a lot of data in post. In theory, a 32MP (or above) sensor can have a 2x (or more if greater than 32MP) crop and still have enough pixels for 4K. It would be great if someone used a 50MP sensor and had a 4K pixel binning mode for the full sensor, and then a 2.5x crop mode for a 1:1 pixel 4K mode, but I suppose all the manufacturers would rather sell you more lenses than add the flexibility.

As the owner of an XC10 I find these topics fascinating. This forum (and most of the internet) completely ridiculed the first two versions of this camera, yet Canon claim they sold more than they were anticipating and the Cinematography Database YT channel seems to run into them on professional sets on a semi-regular basis. This leads me to believe that the internet doesn't understand the design brief and associated tradeoffs of this camera. My impression is that it was designed to capture footage in certain situations (eg, one-operator ENG, B-Roll, BTS, or as a professional GoPro alternative) that was indistinguishable from the footage from larger cameras - which means that we might be seeing shots from it in professional releases and just not know it. If professional film sets can include GoPro footage in feature films then they sure as hell can hide XC10/15 footage. If this is the case then how can anyone on the internet talk with any authority when according to the above they got the first two versions so wrong?

Does the GH5 have physically separated speakers? If so, would sticky tape provide enough attenuation?

Looks like I've offended you. In which case I apologise. My motivation is to share my enthusiasm for this topic, to share some of the knowledge I've picked up along the way, and help people. The fact that my advice isn't the same as everyone else on here is actually deliberate - it's useful to have multiple opinions or viewpoints when discussing a topic and I don't see any value in posting endless "me too" posts like others do here. There have been studies showing that if you ask enough lay-people about a topic then you get a better answer than asking an expert, and it comes from the range of differing inputs. In terms of my levels of knowledge, one of the topics you mention above is what I do professionally, which I've been doing for over 20 years. One thing we should all try to keep in mind is that this is the internet and there are always people posting things that are misleading or incorrect. I'll be the first to admit I sometimes unintentionally make a mistake, but we all know that there are others with vested interests, trolls, and those who enjoy flat-out lying. I suspect this forum would be just as bad as others if we fact-checked every post. I believe that people thinking for themselves when provided with differing viewpoints is better than anyone blindly following someone else's advice.

You may well be right - is there a clear and agreed difference between 'film' and 'video'? If there is I'm curious, but if not then I would question about what value there is in excluding one style of animated images with sound from another type of animated images with sound

Lol. It depends. I can't speak for anyone else, but in combination with not knowing a huge amount about film (in comparison to those in the industry or who have been at it as a hobby for years) I know quite a considerable amount about topics that are very near film-making that are sometimes applicable. I think it must be difficult for someone who has a built up a body of knowledge to understand that someone might not know the first thing about one thing, but know hundreds of times more about the next thing, when in their experience those two things get learned at the same time. Happy to talk further about how/why this is if you're interested. I guess my point is that you shouldn't be surprised if someone doesn't have the same distribution of knowledge as you. They might be the student AND the teacher, depending on what it is that is being discussed. I should add that I try and only talk about what I know about, but sometimes I don't know I don't know, sometimes I'm coming from such a different place that it gets all mixed up and misinterpreted, and sometimes it's impossible to get a message across - text based communication is a terrible way of communicating really.

Depends on film-making style. If you're talking traditional film-making then I agree, but those at the more guerrilla end of film-making (such as those shooting travel or filming family) size makes a huge difference.

Use the minimum equipment required to get what you need. If I'm going to carry around something that weighs a lot, costs a lot, is complicated to use, is fragile, etc. then it better be worth it. My XC10 / Rode VMP+ / Gorillapod 5K rig is way too large, but is the minimum size to get the footage I want. My upgrade path goes from small and cheap to larger and more expensive, but every 'upgrade' was only justified by the previous setup being used in the field and found lacking in an aspect that I cared about enough to spend money on. My ultimate camera would be a 16K RAW flying 360degree camera with 22 stops of DR and was invisible with infinite battery life. Anything less ergonomic than that had better bloody earn it.

I've spent a while playing the "what camera should I have" game and I realised that the process is about finding out what you already know. The two questions to answer are: What is most important to you in a camera? What have you already decided, but are now trying to convince yourself of? Maybe IQ is the most important thing for you, or maybe it's the experience using it. If it's IQ, then talk about codecs and IS and 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 and all that good stuff. If it's the shooting experience, then work out what your perfect camera looks like and then go find it. Considering you seem reluctant to shoot with a big expensive camera, I would suggest that you start with a the smallest/cheapest setup possible and then 'upgrade' the setup based on what you need. eg, for me the logic would be: iPhone 8 No - needs to have zoom capability Pocket camera No - needs to have directional sound or mic input etc..... This would ensure your setup doesn't include anything you don't need.

In addition to my previous post, a good way to think about efficiency is that it's like a relay race where the baton is passed from person to person. The largest issue in productivity is when the baton either isn't passed properly "I thought you had it... I didn't realise you were waiting for me..." or the person who is meant to take it isn't ready yet. Obviously there are situations where it's not a straight pass between people/departments, the easiest example of that is "ready on set" where everyone has to be ready for a take, however you will find that there is only one critical path / sequence of activities that starts when the director says "cut" and takes longer than everything else that needs to be done between takes or setups. Having an AD / Director that understands the sequences of what is happening, the dependencies between them, and then continually monitors everyone on set to ensure the baton gets passed cleanly and there are no delays is how you get efficient. The "appearance" of what people are doing on set can be important too, if the client is there, but don't confuse that with efficiency. If you can, educate the client so that they can see that the baton is being passed efficiently around, but if not then manage things however you must, but be clear that managing a client who cannot see if a set is efficient or not is something that doesn't effect the final work, and what effects the work won't be visible to the client.

If you are interested in raising the efficiency of your set then I suggest two things: Look at what is lowering the efficiency of your set by actually looking at what is happening rather than what you think is happening Recruit the people you hire to also raise the efficiency of the set, which can only be accomplished through trust Most workplaces are radically inefficient, often because instead of actually looking for what is actually going on and trusting their teams to do the same, they think they already know what is happening. I remember one example of an inefficient set was because filming at a rural location the portable toilet was about a 3 minute walk away, so every time they made a change everyone had a 6 minute walk to use the facilities. When the schedule got more and more behind the response of the AD and Director was to yell at people instead of moving the portable toilet. Complete fail.

I've just watched the video and unfortunately I detected a couple of potential issues with the test. The fact the camera is panning is a problem because it means that the motion can look uneven (as if it's speeding up and slowing down) by having an uneven pan. Ideally the cameras would all be stationary. Also, I noticed repeated frames on both the S8+ and the 1DC. It also looked like there was a skipped frame before the first repeated frame on the S8+. Please note that it wasn't a repeated frame in the video file (which I downloaded from YT) - on both the examples of repeated frames the other cameras had non-repeated frames, so the YT video file appeared to be fine. I wonder if the 1DC file was fine but the error was introduced in post by a slight time stretch? The S8+ file (which seemed to combine a skipped frame with a repeated one) seems more likely to be related to the camera itself - maybe something was happening in the background and the camera app didn't get CPU preference at that moment. It's a pity as the test seems like a good idea and would have taken quite some time to setup and edit and upload.

Have you used this camera personally Omar? If so, what type of filming do you do? With all things, the features of a camera can be great or terrible depending on what you are using it for

It depends on how 'intelligent' it really is. I won't be holding my breath!

Ouch!! Luckily they're getting more robust with each update. Waterproofing and drop-proofing are killer features. I took my iPhone 8 swimming with me at the beach when I first got it to test the waterproofing and see if it was an alternative to the GoPro. I even (accidentally) did the opposite of their suggestions when I plugged it in to the computer without giving it a few hours to dry out. Still works fine, and the video looks incredible. 1080p240 in full-sun at 400% video bitrate (via an app) is very impressive.

Ah. Yep, almost zero chance then. No matter - we've almost got 4K RAW on the 5D and almost 1920 RAW on the crop-sensor models.

Have Canon done all their NAB2018 announcements yet? I had in the back of my mind they might be announcing the XC20..

Well, it's relevant to me today, but I'm a very long way away from the 'industry', so it's not really relevant to anyone who gets paid for audio in film work. This is where we run into the difficulties of people having vastly different expectations and involvement in film-making! A lav mic for each person is a logical choice, although I am reminded of the FB quote that you shared - tracking batteries and all that stuff is something I'm trying to avoid. Besides, getting two teenage kids to wear a LAV mic all day would be almost as painful as having to replace them every 3 months because the kids don't take any care with technology whatsoever. My daughter is onto her third iPhone in two years just through being careless (she's a dreamer and just not aware that her phone will fall out of her pocket if she does a handstand or whatever) and my son thinks that dropping a pair of headphones onto the floor in a moment of exasperation when he dies on xbox and then picking them up by the cord when he starts the next game is still within our instructions to "be careful and treat them properly" - I'll leave you to imagine how long a pair of headphones last in our house. That's the challenge with 360 cameras, it's hard not to get them in shot. If the mics weren't built into the camera (like they are in others) then on top would be the logical choice. You'd have to then treat the camera like it has a blind spot, but considering that a standard wide-angle has a 'blind-spot' of 270 degrees, it's still a huge step up in terms of coverage of a scene. In terms of delivery format I'd film in 360, and crop to 16:9 or 2.35 or whatever suited the vibe of the video (16:9 for more life-like and 2.35 for more cinematic) and then delivery via YouTube as an unlisted video. Then the relatives can all view it from the link that I email them, and I avoid all technical compatibility playback issues. To elaborate on how I'd use it, here are some thoughts: - I'd film by holding it somewhere in front of us so it can see our faces as well as what we're looking at, or above and behind us for a follow-shot. - If we're walking along and the kids see something funny and react to it I can have something like: shot 1 is wide of us walking, shot 2 is wide of what's in front of us, shot 3 is a medium of the thing they reacted to, shot 4 is close-up of their reaction, shot 5 is wider to include us reacting to their reaction, and shot 6 might be other people reacting to us all laughing or whatever. - If it's an activity of some kind I can cut between us and what we're seeing or doing. - It allows either continuity editing of different angles of a scene shot once in real-time, or I can even do the classic suspense technique of having shots overlap in time, so that shot 2 starts at a moment in time slightly earlier than shot 1 ended on. For me it's about always having the camera already pointed at whatever is happening before it happens, and the 360 camera does this by always being pointed at everything. With a traditional camera if you're trying to film a situation you're often caught where something happens and by the time you point the camera at it then the moment is over.

Or when ML is ported to the camera... although that might be a tall order depending on what the insides look like from a technical perspective.

I use my Hero3 in that mode and I still find it disappointing. Maybe it's just too old for what my expectations are - I know the sensors get a little bit better with each new model. I understand what you mean about the sensor, but if given enough light it should be good quality. Maybe there's something else going on that I'm not aware of. In terms of the RX0 1" Sony, it's not as wide angle as the GoPro (RX0 = 24mm, IIRC my GoPro Hero3 = 17mm). If I wanted 24mm I'd just use my iPhone. I either use the GoPro because of it's wide angle or because it's waterproof (and even then because it doesn't have a screen I still use it in wide-angle mode), but it may work for your purposes though. A real fish-eye lens may also be a good equivalent depending on your needs. Absolutely agree. When they were cashed up they should have been pushing and innovating, but didn't. The video I posted above suggests that they are good at selling and understand the waterproof action-camera market, but that's the extent of their strengths.

Here's the intro to Fusion video from the same youtuber as the above - most of the people were asking for a fusion video in the comments! He shows an example of doing a screen-replacement on a phone, which is cool because it involves compositing and tracking. This thing really is like learning to drive the space shuttle..

I'm surprised no-one has posted this video yet... I think the video takes a well balanced look at the company and the founder. I took my Hero 3 to a concert on Sunday to record a short video for a friends birthday and when I got the footage back I was really disappointed - it was hazy and soft. I thought something was going wrong with the camera (maybe some coatings going bad or something) so I tested the camera in good light and it was fine, but the quality was not great - I think it's the poor codec. I'm often half-tempted to buy a newer one to get real 4k but due to the limited video quality I just can't justify it. If they released something that had high-bitrate codec then I would probably buy it. I'd be willing to pay a decent margin if it recorded RAW or something close to it.

It might be a technical limitation? I'm just guessing here, but IIRC my 700D upscales 1920 from 1728 wide, which explains why the footage was so soft.. upscale + low bitrate codec = blurry mess. The reason I think that the limitation might be technical is that ML on the 700D is also limited to 1728 wide in RAW, so I'm guessing that they just take every third pixel - the 700D sensor is 5184 wide, and 5184/3 = 1728. The m50 sensor is 6000 wide, so if they took every second pixel it would be 3000 wide so 3k video upscaled. This is my guess as to what it happening.

Wow, ok.. Let me try and clarify @IronFilm You are right about one mic placed in the scene being superior. I believe this will change, but not for a long time (as you say, maybe decades - when I said 'tomorrow' I wasn't meaning in 24 hours time, obviously). What I am saying is that even though it's not what this mic is designed for, it is a feature that it has. This feature will be useful to some people, and there will be early adopters. One of the early adopter markets will be 360 degree filming. In narrative work, where every shot is carefully setup and people can be positioned offscreen then it makes sense to have a boom operator and a shotgun microphone. One of the challenges of these forums is that people are coming at film-making with such different perspectives that people get confused about what people are saying. I speak from the perspective of an amateur guerrilla run-and-gun film-maker who passively captures what occurs, rather than shaping what happens. I realise that I am by far the minority on here, but to compensate, I do try and be really obvious about where I'm coming from. I apologise if that wasn't obvious enough. @Kisaha it's funny to me because from my perspective I'm not mixing too many things together at all. I see film-making as an incredibly complex system of business, art, technology, logistics, people-mangement, logistics, and all the other things that go into the creation of a two-dimensional pre-recorded piece of art that is designed to play linearly over a finite period of time. It's always funny to me when someone who points a camera at something and records it, then edits it, then colour corrects it, then exports and distributes it for other people to watch it turns around and says that someone else who follows exactly the same process is doing something completely different. This happens between fictional film-makers and documentary film-makers, those who shoot for profit and those who shoot for fun, those who want their audience to feel vs those who want their audience to think, etc etc etc. In fact these are all completely imaginary distinctions that people make up. We are all just people trying to achieve our goals the best ways we know how. Actually what I want is to go to the zoo and have the whole thing recorded with a minimum of equipment getting in the way of the experience. To me, a 360 degree camera and a 360 degree microphone sounds like the perfect setup actually. However, the tech isn't there yet, and won't be for some time. As we've discussed, it needs 8K 360 cameras at least In terms of what happens to the jobs of the hundreds of thousands of audio professionals, I would like for them to live happy and fulfilling lives doing what they love to do, in fair and supportive environments. Technology is changing all the time and I just excited about talking about where it's headed. Isn't that why we're all here on the forums instead of making films or doing something else Sorry if I offended anyone.

This is the point of having an array of microphones to compliment a 360 degree camera.. when you shoot with a 360 camera the beauty is that you choose what angle you look in post, therefore to match this you also want to be able to choose the angle you listen to in post as well. We are talking about a fundamental change in film-making. Today = choose what to record. Tomorrow = record everything and choose in post. [Edit, to be clear, I'm not saying that this usage is what the microphone is for, I'm saying that it could be used this way for the benefit of directional audio that is steerable in post]