eatstoomuchjam

Ouch. I love the cameras that I have from them, but they're going to need to clean up this shady garbage if they want my continued business. It's not that hard to spot the shills, regardless of sponsorship disclosures, but I still don't want to patronize somebody who is trying to hide it... partly because it's insulting to the intelligence to think that somebody with a day 1 video doesn't have a relationship with the company. I'll also note that iphonedo is hardly innocent in this regard as well. While his agreements with companies like DJI don't specifically remove his editorial independence, he also knows that if he's too critical of their products, the sponsor dollars will dry up. One can definitely see that he tries harder to be positive in his reviews of their gear than he tried, for instance, with the Karma drone that he mentioned. It's not a bad quality, necessarily, but just another data point to keep in mind when watching any of the reviews on his channel.

There's a lot more to the question than just which lights to use. If you're indoors and feel like you're fighting the sun and if the windows will be mostly out of focus in the background, you can just put ND gel over them - it's fairly cheap and fast. If they'll be in focus, IMO ND gels look a little bit like shit so that might not be your best option. If you're outdoors and fighting the sun, especially for close-ups, a collapsible reflector or two (or three if you have one which can give some negative fill) is often a lot better than trying to compete with the sun with your light. You can get a pretty big reflector for about $30 from almost any photo store in the world. Otherwise, short of going with really big lights, if you're trying to blast a light through a window and have it compete with the sun, it's going to have to be a pretty big light. In those cases, I'd probably try to find a way to shoot the scene differently. 😄 These days my main kit consists of 1xAputure 600X, 1xAputure P300C, 1xAmaran 300C, 2xAmaran 150C - as well as the B7C lunchbox, MC4 mini-lunchbox, and a few scattered MX's. It's more than enough for almost anything that I shoot. I'll probably continue adding some stuff here and there when Aputure have huge sales (their Black Friday sale is legit - I got a huge discount on the 600X plus a couple of bonus things). If I need to go bigger than that, I'm more likely to rent it or to just hire a gaffer to roll up with a box truck full of stuff. For shooting on the go, I just also put together a kit with 3xStellaPro's with their Bowen mount - they're tiny and run off of USB-C so I can plug 'em into a V mount plate or even a battery bank. Only disadvantage? Above 30% or so, the fan runs constantly. I'm excited to actually do a shoot with 'em. I also picked up a Molus X100 for the cases where I want somebody to hand hold a light. It's alright, but the reflector in the Bowens mount seems to do some funky things with my softboxes.

My guess is that the difference in actual user experience of a system receiving a 923 and one receiving 893 will be negligible. Between the two, I'd choose the one where I get a better deal.

By the time you add the size and weight of a converter box, you should probably just get the Z Cam EVF or the Portkeys OEYE and save money.

My guess is that Sigma and Tamron paid Canon to license the mount. They have enough profit margin that they can afford to give either a single pretty big upfront payment to Canon or to pay them a royalty/percentage on each lens sold. Canon makes a lot of money selling lenses and know that over time, they'll fill in any existing gaps in their lens lineup - but if they can also make money through licensing (with no need to even build/ship a product), why throw away the chance?

If you're in the PC world, you're definitely better off editing on desktop vs laptop if you're working with high-res footage or doing effects, etc. Most laptops throttle down a lot when not plugged in and (in my experience) make a jet engine noise when dealing with a prolonged load on CPU/GPU. And as ac6000cw says, the mobile GPU's are almost always lesser versions of their desktop counterparts. Also when on battery, life tends to be very short because CPU/GPU pull a lot of power. My M2 Max, on the other hand, can handle 8k Canon raw acceptably - and I got the weaker variant of it. Performance is almost the same whether plugged in or on battery. Fans do ramp up when working it hard (now that I've added denoising to most of the scenes that need it, the 14-minute short I'm currently working on/grading definitely has the fans running full blast when I run an export). Basically, in absolute performance numbers a high-end PC desktop will beat any Mac currently on the market and at a fraction of the cost of a Mac Studio ($3k for a decent Ryzen + RTX 4090!). A top-of-the-line PC laptop plugged into the wall will also outperform the MBP in absolute numbers (except whoooooosh fan noise)... but if you want to actually be mobile, the Mac is the hands-down winner.

You misunderstood me because I phrased it poorly. I was saying that the prices from the builders like NZXT are going to be higher than Dell's prices, to the point where the MBP is a lot closer. 😃

That makes total sense. One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw). I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability.

For the most part, if somebody is looking at an Alienware prebuilt, they're probably not the target audience for BYOPC. At that point, it's better to go with somebody like Maingear, NZXT, or Starforge - they all use off-the-shelf parts, but you'll also pay more for the same specs as you'll get in a prebuilt from one of the big players. I'd be willing to bet that for a similar price to what you'd pay them for the above system, you'd be able to get a 14" MBP with M3 Max - and then you'd be able to edit on the go too. 😉

Without having shot 12K, I'll say that system looks like more than enough (and if it's not, there won't be many systems that are). The RTX 4090 is the most powerful consumer GPU on the market and that's a really decent CPU. It might even be overkill (though overkill also means you probably won't be shopping for a better system in 1-2 years). If you aren't already familiar with PugetBench, Puget Systems have a nice database of results that people have achieved with various systems. https://benchmarks.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/ What's not clear on that is how expandable the system is - which was a problem with the Alienware that I had for a while. There seems to be only one more slot for NVMe beyond the boot drive and the USB ports are only 3.2 and not 4. The Alienware that I had only had a single free PCIe slot as well. In my case, it was enough to add a 10g network card and that was about it. If you want to put 12K footage locally on the machine, 2TB is going to get cramped fast. Fast USB 3.2 storage will be able to keep up, though as of a year or so ago, flash-based USB 3.x storage arrays were not so common - at least at a reasonable price. If it were me, I'd look for something with 2-3 additional NVMe slots beyond the boot drive to be able to add more local storage and I'd look for something with USB 4 since it will be compatible with most/all Thunderbolt devices which gives a lot of better/more interesting options for external storage/devices.

The internet says CP-16 - maybe Auricon.

I was out-of-date and it's not as bad as I remembered, but still not great. But yes, I'd say it's a stretch that professional colorists are spending a lot of time in Nitrate. https://www.filmconvert.com/blog/filmconvert-nitrate-for-aces-workflow/

The budget is just for the body and not for the body+glass? 1) Used GFX 100S - the video is good enough for vacation and the stills are incredible 2a) C70 - looks nice SOOC, built-in ND's, nearly the perfect camera for a fast turn-around 2b) GFX 100 II (Love mine) 3a) C70 - as before and the raw from it is flexible enough for anything I do 3b) Used Monstro 8K VV - I haven't actually shot with one, but they seem pretty nice and I sometimes consider doing some trade-in toward one - used models are now about 6k for the brain on reputable used sites

In general, the stills stuff is a really close match for the film stocks (differences in the production are tiny)... and we weren't talking about a small difference, especially in the greens. Meanwhile, FilmConvert and Fuji's own Velvia profile both look quite a bit like my slides. 😄 As you said, though, a lot of the people using it have never actually used the film stocks that it claims to emulate - and some of their emulations look nice. If you won't suffer cognitive dissonance from many of them not looking a lot like what they claim to be and/or want to use ACES as a starting point, it's a decent product. Unless something changed recently, FilmConvert really doesn't have a good story for ACES (I think that last time I checked, it was "transform out of ACES into something else, apply FilmConvert, and then transform back").

(Looks like I was wrong! So there you go - as others have said in this thread, whatever the specs on paper, the grade afterward is even more important 🙂 )

I was given a free temporary license of Dehancer to do a review for them and they said I would receive a free permanent license upon finishing the review (whether I gave it a positive or negative review). I tried it and declined to continue. If you already have a Nitrate license from FilmConvert, you're in the right place. Dehancer did a few things better and could make a pretty nice starting point for an image, but the output colors in many cases didn't actually match the film that it claimed to be emulating (like not even close with Velvia 50) - and their answers for why made no sense at all.

I debated between the two last year and went with the C70. It's my go-to A camera these days with the R5 as B camera. Without watching that video, I'd guess that the image on the right is the C70 (more highlight and shadow detail).

One of the reasons that people are getting frustrated is that you're "asking basic questions," but then basically ignoring a lot of the answers. It's like you keep asking what saw makes the best cabinets. When people tell you that you need more than a saw, you start asking people to compare brands of saws. Which cameras has the best color and in-camera noise reduction? All of them. Also, none of them. Go to NAB and ask 100 people on the floor. Every one of them will be completely correct. Every one of them will be completely incorrect. How do you know? Ask almost any of the others. It is also a bit frustrating that you are asking questions that seem like you are trying to choose which camera to buy and after you receive a bunch of answers, you shift your focus and start asking again. If you want somebody to yell at you about which camera has the best colors, go to YouTube. There are dozens of people shouting about how the camera that they bought is the best camera ever. Then just try to ignore the other videos from all the people saying it's the worst camera ever. Heck, there are already dozens of videos just about the Pyxis talking about how it's the best camera released in years or the most ho-hum camera announcement so far this year. Bonus: almost none of the people with those videos has even seen a Pyxis in person, much less actually shot with one.

If you're looking for SOOC color, you probably want a decent amount of SOOC noise reduction. If you're working on a project which will have reasonable post-production work done, you want the least (or no) noise reduction in camera. Tools like the denoiser in Resolve, Neat Video, and Topaz Video AI give a better result as well as giving you a lot more control of the trade-offs of noise vs lost details and plastic/wax skin.

The US raffle is open. My entry is in. If others enter, I wish you the best! https://fujifilmeventsusa.com/x100vi-le/

Indeed there is! They were smart to choose the Z Cam EVF for it so they won't need a separate wireless transmitter (though there will be a bit of lag with the Ninja in-between). That one's been discussed here, I think. Should fit in a niche somewhere, though with DSMC2 VV cameras selling and renting at pretty reasonable prices, I'm not sure what that niche might be. 😅

Panasonic is the easiest of those. The Varicam has been used on a bunch of stuff. https://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/cinema_camera_varicam_eva/shot_on/ As far as Canon... https://shotonwhat.com/cameras/canon-eos-c500-camera https://shotonwhat.com/cameras/canon-eos-c300-camera Keep in mind that the C500 series and C300 series weren't the A camera on most/all of the things listed, but neither was the RED on several of the films that you called out. I doubt that Fuji cameras have been used on a lot of major Hollywood productions. To the best of my knowledge, Fuji don't make ANY cinema cameras. I'd be shocked, though, if Fuji's excellent cinema lenses hadn't made their way into at least a handful. Anyway. Take a deep breath. In the end, it doesn't matter even a little bit to any of us if NIkon retire the RED brand - not unless you own stock in Nikon and are worried about it would do to your investment. 😉 FWIW, the most typical/obvious thing here is that Nikon will continue to operate RED as a separate business unit for a time, likely attaching Nikon to the RED name somehow - "RED by Nikon" or "Nikon RED" or something like that. Eventually, the integration will get tighter and current RED engineers will be replaced by Nikon engineers and the naming will change - "The Nikon RED Z1" or something like that. Eventually, RED will look just like any other business unit of Nikon, but continue to make cinema-focused cameras and nobody will care much about whether they keep or lose the name.

I hope they bring a few of the software features to the RS 1" 360 camera. It looks like the X4 has improved details over the 1", but none of it looked like enough that I'd run out to spend a few hundred bucks on yet another camera, especially since the 1" is still better in low light. Most of the other stuff that I saw in comparisons seemed like it would be solved by tweaking levels or contrast in post. If selfie sticks weren't so universally looked down on, Insta360's combo of 360 camera + great studio software should make them the darlings of the vlog community. Not much need to even pay any attention to where the camera is or if you're in frame - and if something interesting happens, no need to do anything with the camera. Just comment on it so you know when to turn the automatic tracker off in post. 🙂

I think it crops, but not a lot. 🙂 The M4 is the same sensor as the original E2 and I always found the DR to be fine on it (I wish the high dynamic range mode had worked better) and the noise was fine for me as long as the image was exposed to the right. If you exposed at all to the left, though... noise city. In the end, I sold it because I didn't need the high frame rates so much and other than that, there was nothing it did that the F6 didn't do better. Good point about used prices, btw!

And the E2-F6 Pro is even closer to what is described since it has a removable integrated screen with controls and SDI for lower-latency monitoring - not sure it's worth the extra $1000 to me, though. 😛 As for faster readout on the E2-F6, if you're willing to sacrifice around a stop of dynamic range, there's a low jello mode (though I can't remember what limits there are on using it - it may not be available in all resolutions/frame rates). I've never found the F6 jello too objectionable so I never bothered turning it on to figure out how much it helps.