Clark Nikolai

I don't know what the current going price would be nowadays. It was higher than the original price for a few years but now recently I think things have changed. There has been one on eBay (with lenses and monitor) with a starting bid of 4300 Euro that has been relisted twice and has had no bidders. Earlier this year I saw one on eBay for US$1000. 😳 !!! There are many more camera options now and to get a film look, there are good emulation options too. Older used BMs, Reds and Alexas are pretty affordable too. It's a great camera and I love mine and all but if I didn't have it I would likely also be pretty happy with one of some other cameras that are out there.

One product they could make that would stand out in the marketplace would be something like a Ninja monitor-recorder that records internally to ProRes but has analog inputs for standard definition NTSC and PAL. A big thing with artists now is to shoot with old video equipment but most analog recorders save only to MP4. The Ninjas only have HDMI and SDI inputs. I've looked but can't find anything like it out there. Has anyone heard of something like this?

Looks really good. It's like design-wise they kept to just two channels and concentrated on all the other aspects of a recorder. For me I'll wait until they have a 4 or 6 channel version. I've been eyeing the Zoom F6 which seems good. I don't have a project for that many channels just yet (but sometimes have needed three) but I know at some point I will.

I look at this and get the impression that the only reason to use iPhones instead of "real" cameras is as a marketing gimmick. iPhones are capable of good quality and all that but ergonomically, they're awkward to use. If this film was shooting with an Arri Alexa for example, I wouldn't even know about it, but I do know about it. Doing something different is a way to stand out. It'll be interesting to see the results. I hope I don't sound negative or anything. I think it's great that there are high quality devices in most people's pockets now. The hippy era dream of video technology democratizing media production has now happened. Most are using it for unimportant things but some are using it to communicate their lives to others and be part of the world of media. In the past many types people weren't allowed in to the world of media. That's over.

I know someone (a filmmaker) here in Vancouver looking for one. It all depends on the price though of course. What are you hoping to get for it?

Well, look at this. Kinefinity is coming out with a small HDMI EVF.

I'm finding that, unlike earlier in my life, I have so many cameras I have access to now that which one to choose becomes a matter of image characteristics and physical logistics. I choose a camera much like a painter would choose watercolour or oil paint. It depends on what look you want as well as what situations you'll be in as to which one, all the while knowing that they'll each add a certain something that could communicate something. For example, in my next film I'm shooting most of it with a Digital Bolex, this is because it's planned as a nod to the French New Wave films and that will give it a kind of 16mm look. It's set in the present day and one character will have a video diary, for this I'm thinking of a Panasonic HDC-SD9 to give it an early cell phone/ digital camera look (without going to standard definition). I'm even thinking of another camera which might even be a (gasp!) vertically shot iPhone which will represent a different mood/situation. It becomes just another tool to use, partly for mood and partly as a reference to the technology of different times.

Ah, a razor cord. Those should be pretty easy to find though. But there's likely a chance the battery doesn't hold a charge anymore. And it might be NiCad or something too. You might need to use an external battery with it. Let us know how it goes.

MAKE ART!!!

It's better to do the deinterlacing in software rather than hope the TV or projector hardware does a good job of it. Put the interlace material in a progressive HD timeline, deinterlace, then output that. Then however it's screened doesn't matter. You control the deinterlacing.

No, it was a reality show. They started with eight GoPros but then kept adding more as they thought of more angles they could do. They're so cheap nowadays. Didn't need to have GoPro sponsor them at all. Just went out and bought them.

If you're able to set the shutter speed, then set it to be at 1/50 (if frame rate is 25 fps). This would give any fast motion a nice blur. Then the two fields can be combined into one progressive frame and keep the full vertical resolution. If the shutter speed is shorter than that you'll get double images because each field will have fast motion being crisp.

It seems like a bunch of small improvements overall but after having worked on a program syncing 38 GoPro cameras, the one feature that stands out for me is the ability to synchronize multiple cameras' timecodes.

I've been on Internet and involved with computers since the late '80s and this is the first time I've ever heard of AnandTech.

Are you sure about that? From what I can find out online the MacMinis that came out in 2008 and 2009 all have FireWire. The older ones have FW400 and the newer ones have FW800.

The FireWire protocol was incorporated into the Thunderbolt protocol. All you need is an adaptor. (Or adaptors.) What works for me is a good brand (Belkin in my case) 4-pin (tiny camera one) FW to FW800 cable. Then FW800 to Thunderbolt 2 adaptor. From that a TB2 to TB3 adapter into the 2018 MacMini. Works well. Final Cut and QuickTime Player can be used to capture with. (Probably other software too.)

You could collaborate with someone who's good at storytelling. Team up with a writer, they do the story, you do the camera work. Just sayin'...

These are really good. I especially like the ones of the streets at night. The light is where the subject is so it's okay if the rest is too dark to see. I know what you mean about things taking time to set up with a cinema camera. I've been working on a project for over a year now that's mostly tripod shots of things in the city. People do ignore you after awhile. Some come over to chat about cameras. Very few take issue with it. I guess I look like some photography hobbyist out getting shots. In a tourist and film school town like Vancouver, there are so many people taking pictures and shooting their school projects that it's just more of the same. I also learned a trick to not look at what you're shooting. Set it up on a tripod, point it where you want, frame, focus and start rolling but then look away or down at your phone and check your emails or something. Then let the action happen in the frame. If someone looks over at you it looks like you're not rolling because your attention is not where the lens is pointing. I also set it at the native ISO and native colour temperature and leave it there. Mostly have a 180º shutter (but occasionally go longer for more light.) Shooting raw it is the best way to go. In post you can do pretty much anything then. Recently I've been letting interior light stay a bit warm and exterior daytime light be bluish. I think it's better than correcting things to be always white. Gives more mood and a sense of the light at the time and place.

Wow! I've never heard of this before and I was around then doing video. I don't know why I haven't. Nice image quality.

Pretty much. It's cool that the tech is now at a point where we can do 4K without straining our cameras and computers but for presentation, HD is plenty.

I haven't. It's something to check out though. I see now that there are several software options for this kind of thing out there.

So, just found out about a software plug in called Real Smart Motion Blur. It analyzes the footage then applies motion blur to things that are moving. I haven't tried it (yet) but the previews look pretty good. https://revisionfx.com/products/rsmb/fcp/ This might let me use a fast shutter speed but still have it look like I was shooting at 180º.

These look really good. It's nice to see camcorder design with modern features like using AI for focus, etc. The image quality looks very good too. Love those handy (and big) thumbwheels for iris and ND. The price isn't bad considering all what you're getting and that these will likely still be useful 15 years from now. For someone who makes a living, or for a broadcaster, this is a great price for a well designed tool.

I did another test. In case it's useful to anyone I'll document my process. (And I'm still learning it so there might be a better way.) I shot with an iPhone mounted on the camera rig and started SensorLogger app a bit before rolling. I tested it with all the shutter angles narrower than 180º. There's a balance between avoiding weird motion artifacts (blurring) and movements looking to jittery. I found for my taste the best to be either 120º or 90º. I'll have to play around more to decide what to use. In Gyroflow, I brought in a video clip, then set the Lens Profile (there are crowd sourced presets or you can make your own or use one that's close to your lens and sensor size). Then open the motion data (the gyroscope file from SensorLogger). You then click somewhere on the timeline and choose Guess IMU orientation here. This analyzes the data and figures out which value is X, which is Y and which is Z. (As every device is different.) For my iPhone 8 and SensorLogger it's Zxy. (Once you know that you can just enter that each time into the IMU Orientation field and you don't have to have it guess again.) There's a field (and check box) called Rough gyro offset. Check that and enter how many seconds you figure was between starting the app and rolling the camera. Then you click AutoSync. It works away and stabilizes and lines up the stabilization with the footage. There are a few different ways to view it. Full cropped frame, or zoomed out with a rectangle and you can see your footage moving behind that. There will be vertical red bars in the timeline that indicate where the black outside enters the frame. You can adjust the FOV (field of view) and Smoothness to not have any red bars. For me shooting in 2K and finishing in 1080, I set the FOV to 0.94 which means it won't scale up larger than pixel to pixel. I then adjust Smoothness so I don't get any red bars. I also have it set to No Zooming. This is for a project where I want to just smooth the camera motion a bit but leave the camera motion in. Then export to ProResHQ and edit those new clips. (This is using the stand alone app. If I end up using this a lot I'll check out the Final Cut plug in.) I'm pleased with the results so far. Hope this helps somebody.

Very nice. I like the framing of some of these. It's great you brought it along. Good to have in your pocket. It's too bad that BM doesn't just make it again. Doesn't need to even be 4K, just needs to be good and small.