Lux Shots

Yeah, I think that is a hard pass for me right now. Media is cheap (1 TB WD Blue SSD cost $100), and the Ninja V is cheaper than the BM Assist, not to mention the need for a USB-C hard drive feels janky as hell. For the life of me, I don't know why they didn't simply add M2 slots at best or the old reliable 2.5 " SSD drives. Anyone know how BRAW support is in Premiere Pro?

So, now that I just stretched the legs of ProRes RAW on a job today, Panny goes and makes me make more choices! 😀 I think I will stick with ProRes RAW, since I can record it with my S1 and S1H. But is there a significant quality difference between ProRes RAW and BRAW? I've heard the nightmares about stability with the BM external recorders. Has those issues been fixed yet?

Yeah, I completely overlooked that, because who would use an external intervalometer with the GH5 right? That's what I get for not reading carefully.

It's built into the camera Jim! I don't think the OP was using anything external.

I have been submitting footage to a client using the standard V-Log LUT from my S1H, and they complained about too much magenta hue. I thought it was because I was boosting saturation too much (and maybe that did boost the red hues too much), but switching over to using the Nicest-709 LUT took care of all their complaints.

Your drive dial needs to be set to intervalomer, not single. You probably also have that switch in the creative video position. Please post a cell phone pic of your mode dial and menus.

This is a great topic! I had a bride to be die of COVID, so I had to give a full refund for that poor guy. I had 8 friends and one family member die and a dozen or so associates. I got one of my vaccination shots with another in a few weeks. COVID is a full bitch. The whole year I shot five weddings instead of the 25 I usually shoot. Most didn't want to splurge on video, so I went back to offering $500 wedding stills in people's backyards since everything else was shut down. The worst thing is, I live in Ohio, and the majority of my clients are in Pennsylvania, and the two states imposed a travel band between each other. So I would have to get a COVID-19 test to travel to P.A. and quarantine when I arrived back to Ohio, even though it was only 45-60 min away. I was blessed to do several corporate jobs for my biggest client, and that kept the income on the year flat, with much less stress than any wedding work. Problem is, that is one big client making up 70% of my income. That ain't the best from a diversification standpoint.

Once you get into the Adobe Ecosystem, it's hard to leave. Whether it's for application specific plug-ins, like noise reduction or it's seamless integration with Audition and After Effects, switching is a bitch. At least I don't have the ability to do it, without a large time investment which runs against said productivity gains.

Hello! I exclusively use Premiere Pro and run with 32GB of Ram with a Ryzen 1700X with the Vega Frontier Edition 16GB Video Card, and I edit 5.9K H.265 from my S1H, albeit at the minimum reduced resolution. The performance is not optimal, as there are tons of dropped frames, but I also edit video straight off of my NAS drive over a 10GB SPF+ connection. If I copy a project locally onto my SATA drive, performance improves quite a bit. I also get a big performance boost if I have only 4K 60p footage. Here is a screenshot of my typical sequence, which I consider moderate complexity. I would have thrown in a 5900X or 5950X by now, but my motherboard doesn't currently support it 😞.

My Panny 24-105 f/4 stays glued to my S1H at least 90% of the time for video work. I also have the Sigma 35 f/1.4 and the lens is killer sharp, and a great full body photo lens, but it's speed is wasted on the video side because of the horrid autofocus not being good enough, even at f/8. I also have the Panny 20-60 that I kept when I sold my S5. It's a nice compact lens that gives me just enough to keep me from having to pull out my adapted (and optically bad) Sigma 12-24 f/3.5-5.6. Like everyone else here, the 28-70 checks a lot of boxes, but is not wide or long enough, though it's the perfect compromise from a speed perspective. I'd love a 24-105 f/2.8 to keep me at around ISO-6500 instead of the under exposed ISO-10000 I'm running now for reception video work, but there goes my wrist and my back running this on my gimbal. I may try and grab a used Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 for stills and manual video work, if I can find one around $750. Before I sold my S5, I used it on an adapted Canon 80-200 f/2.8 in manual focus mode for stills for weddings, and I'm definitely not looking forward to shooting this beastly lens on my S1 while the S1H rocks the 24-105, just too much damn weight!

ProRes RAW is fantastic on my S1H, so hopefully they don't time limit the capture. I got this off of Panasonic's website, and unfortunately, they won't have jam sync timecode on the S1. 😢

Don't waste your energy, as the AF is still garbage unless you shoot interview type work at f/11. Even 75mm f/4 is out of the question in a talking head scenario.

You should consider a used S1 body and a used S1H. I had the S5, and as beautiful as the footage is, having limited internal 10-bit 4K recording ended up biting me in the ass on the first job I used it on. I traded it for a used S1 after Panasonic announced the S1 getting 5.9K support and timecode (hopefully over the PC Sync port, so I can sync my S1H with the S1). Same batteries, and mostly the same media. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll add ProRes RAW support to the Ninja V. It's nice to have the ProRes RAW option, but to be honest, I only used it twice with my S1H and I could have done the job just as good with straight 10-bit V-Log. Where the ProRes RAW shines is in the 5.9K capture, as it's miles better than Panasonic's H.265 codec. Hundreds of miles!

I had the S5. I traded it with someone for the S1. With the 5.9K internal and ProRes RAW coming next year, it was a no brainer for me.

This news is so good, I'm trading my S5 for a used S1 and the Sigma 45mm f/2.8 and a spare battery. This will fit nicely with my S1H and I also get the deeper buffer and the no time limit 10-bit recording, as well as internal 5.9K!!!

Lenses have different color tones and different blooming characteristics. You may see the difference from one scene to the next because of these characteristics. The biggest difference if the amount of sharpness between the lenses.

This is one of my biggest mistakes of the production to be completely honest. I shot most of the scenes with Canon FD 28mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4 and 35-105 f/3.5. Beautiful glass, but you need to stop down a stop or two to get it really sharp. I lit all the scenes with LED Fresnel lights and panel lights, but sometimes that wasn't enough unless the lenses were wide open, so some shots are way too soft for my liking, like the black guy with the white guy in the car scene. I was away from power, so couldn't use my A.C. powered lights. 😥 When I rented the GH5 for some scenes, I also rented the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 and Speedbooster. This is the lens that is shooting the scene with the guy and girl in the bar (shout out to my fine ass wife 💞). In other scenes, I even used the Panasonic 42.5mm, 25mm and 20mm f/1.7 primes. That was just stupid of me. I even used the 14-45mm 3.5-5.6 in a scene because I needed a much wider shot indoors. The guy looking out the window at night was shot with this. The one other thing I wish I had was an electronic gimbal. I had a vest with spring arm and mechanical stabilizer, but I really wasn't good at it at all. It would have been better for me to go into more debt to add better motion shots, as many were killed and just shot on sticks. I went with the GH4 and GH5 because it was the camera I had. I made certain to always shoot out to a Ninja 2 and at the time I was using DNxHD as a codec. All in all, I'm very pleased with the quality. You may be surprised, but low light shooting wasn't really an issue! Every single scene was lit, so I didn't go over ISO-1600 for any shot. This is why I really can't understand cameras like the A7S line (even though I eventually bought the GH5S myself) when it comes to filmmaking. For docu work, yeah, that's a perfect camera, for weddings it makes life super easy. But when you are trying to sculpt a look with light placement, when shooting a film in available light, you relinquish all control of the visual medium. Now you could use negative fills to great effect (never seen it done once on an indie set) or fly large diffusion panels and scrims, but what indie production can afford to do that? The biggest problem for this project is, well, life. Everyone in the film has jobs, businesses and careers. Getting the moons to align was quite the difficult task. Many a time it was a shoot day, and someone had to be at work early the next morning and couldn't make it. At that point, I just needed bodies for grip just to not loose another day. I even hired my handyman that does home repairs for me to do grip work! Almost all shooting was done exclusively at night by design, but that worked out in my favor. The budget went to craft services, location rentals and gear. I also paid a talent agency to wrangle extras for me for two scenes. At least these people had an interest in the business, as you really can't have just any Joe or Jane do this because more often than not, they will fuck up your shot by looking into your camera or talking when they aren't supposed to, etc. I hope this helps!

Here are some frame grabs from my first feature length film Bad Decisions. I started on the GH4, then shot some scenes on the GH5. I will finish this next year with the S5 and S1H if COVID-19 doesn't turn into COVID-20. 😬 I'm probably going to go straight to Amazon Prime. My budget thus far has been $10K and I have another $3K or so for the last two scenes. As so many of you know, no ifs, ands or buts about it; filmmaking is fucking hard! This is probably why this is my last one. I've been discouraged so many times that I had pretty much decided to delete the whole film and just quit altogether. But looking at these grabs, and knowing that I lit that, I blocked that, I wrote that, I shot that and I directed that gives me the courage to complete what I've started. It would be nice if I break even, but even if I don't, I can say that "Hey, I did that!" And boy I didn't do that alone! I had so much help from friends, family and complete strangers that it's too much to even count! They were angels, there just when I needed them, and for not a moment longer, There was one scene, that I was shooting straight guerrilla style. I needed to shoot on three city blocks at night, and I had to light it, and there was a gun scene that kinda made me nervous for the safety of the cast and crew. We have no permit process in my city, so I went to the police department, and explained what I was doing that night, and they were like "Ok". As soon as it got dark around cast and crew call time was at 6pm. We went to the neighbors houses and let them know what we were doing. We started blocking, and laying down markers for lights tripods and actors. It got dark at 9pm, and we started shooting. We were shooting in moving cars, had special effects, and every scene was lit. We even faked a window getting shot out. We wrapped that scene at 5am the next day, right before the sun came up. Do you know for the entire time we were shooting, not a single car drove up any block visible? It's like we rented 100 homes, paid everyone to stay inside and blocked off the area for a 1/4 mile radius! God was most definitely on my side that day, and it was one of the best scenes in the entire film!

Ooops!

I use the entire Flashpoint system, and they really do work great! I use the Flashpoint XPLOR 600 and the Zoom LiOn.

I use the entire Flashpoint system, and they really do work great! I use the Flashpoint XPLOR 600 and the Zoom LiOn.

I use the entire Flashpoint system, and they really do work great! I use the Flashpoint XPLOR 600 and the Zoom LiOn.

I use the entire Flashpoint system, and they really do work great! I use the Flashpoint XPLOR 600 and the Zoom LiOn.

I use the entire Flashpoint system, and they really do work great! I use the Flashpoint XPLOR 600 and the Zoom LiOn.

Don't fret about the fan, as it's really ingenius how they did it. The fan intake does not go into the body, but just draws air over the radiator fins that are completely sealed from the body internals. You will struggle to hear the S1H fan in most any case. I first though my fan was broken until I literally rested my ear on the camera!