2018 - The year of the VDSLRs?

[IronFilm]

7 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

But this is damned near a FS5 for 995.00.

Arguably better.... the FS5 doesn't do 4K 10bit internal. 

[mkabi]

6 hours ago, Robert Collins said:

But when it comes to the video only/mostly crowd I think it is fairly obvious that FF isnt the sweet spot. You cant currently fit 4k/60, 12 bit raw etc into a small body with a big sensor. So I dont know where this leaves the A7s series or where there is even room for the A7siii especially as Sony chose not to cripple the video in the A7iii.

I say they correct their color issues, possibly add in DCI 4K and do what they did with the first generation A7S.... Deliver the rest externally..... Output RAW 4K/60p or better 4K/120p via HDMI (so that the new atomos ninja 5) or even better pull a card like BMD - USB-C output.

[cantsin]

11 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Its going to be damn hard to sell a Sony A7s mk III for over 3000 bucks, it just is I don't care what it has in it. 

If it has a flip screen, dual pixel AF and good in-body stabilization, it will sell to the Vlogger crowd, even if the codec will be still 8bit.

I think that we're now on the crossroads where prosumer cameras (including all DSLRs and mirrorless bodies by Sony, Panasonic and Canon) will go the VLogging route, while cameras like the BM Pocket will be used for filmmaking.

[webrunner5]

13 minutes ago, cantsin said:

If it has a flip screen, dual pixel AF and good in-stabilization, it will sell to the Vlogger crowd.

I think that we're now on the crossroads where prosumer cameras (including all DSLRs and mirrorless bodies by Sony, Panasonic and Canon) will go the VLogging route, while cameras like the BM Pocket will be used for filmmaking.

Hmm I guess I never looked at the new BM camera as a film making tool versus a Hybrid. I guess you could call it. You make good points. Yeah I don't think people are going to make a living shooting stills on one.

Yeah I can see the VLogger thing now that you mention it. I guess they have to cater to it. Doubt they have a choice. Those swivel LCDs don't do shit for me, I can't see crap out of my left eye LoL. Now on my Panny AF100 it worked because I used my right eye to look into it when it swiveled out. But you are not going to do that hand holding a small camera. And I doubt I am going to V Log so.

I realize for the average person this new BMPCC is not going to be their Only camera. Probably will be for me due to lack of money, but your right a Film Makers dream camera for peanuts.

[kye]

9 hours ago, cantsin said:

I think that we're now on the crossroads where prosumer cameras (including all DSLRs and mirrorless bodies by Sony, Panasonic and Canon) will go the VLogging route, while cameras like the BM Pocket will be used for filmmaking.

I agree.

I do wonder if there's a hidden third niche of people who shoot home videos.

The reason that I have for thinking this would exist is that as a consultant I regularly see maybe one-in-twenty office workers in a workplace that own a 5DmkIII and bought it because they're interested in taking pictures of their kids.  They often buy a 'proper camera' when they first start a family.  Making friends with a lot of these people via photography I also realised that most of them don't post family pictures online anywhere at all, so it would be very difficult for non-office-workers to even know these people exist.

I wonder how many of them are shooting video now?  We probably can't tell.  Most vloggers aren't parents yet, but it seems like those that are don't show their kids online (eg. Casey Neistat) but I find it impossible to believe that a man that can edit video like him wouldn't have been making home videos as well.

In terms of their buying habits I wonder if they're a different market..  I'm in this market and I do notice that my buying habits aren't quite the same as others on here who are doing film work for the consumption of others rather than themselves.

[webrunner5]

2 hours ago, kye said:

I wonder how many of them are shooting video now?  We probably can't tell.  Most vloggers aren't parents yet, but it seems like those that are don't show their kids online (eg. Casey Neistat) but I find it impossible to believe that a man that can edit video like him wouldn't have been making home videos as well.

In terms of their buying habits I wonder if they're a different market..  I'm in this market and I do notice that my buying habits aren't quite the same as others on here who are doing film work for the consumption of others rather than themselves.

I would imagine in this day and age pretty much every parent is taking videos. And they are probably doing it 90 % of the time or more with their Smartphones. Heck they are certainly good enough to do it with. Now how they are saving them, other to the cloud, well I bet they are not.

[kye]

11 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I would imagine in this day and age pretty much every parent is taking videos. And they are probably doing it 90 % of the time or more with their Smartphones. Heck they are certainly good enough to do it with. Now how they are saving them, other to the cloud, well I bet they are not.

I agree, but I was more talking about the 10% that decided that a cheap camera wasn't enough.  ie, heaps of parents bought 5DmkIIIs - now they're taking video, I wonder what it is they'll be buying.

[Kisaha]

6 minutes ago, kye said:

I agree, but I was more talking about the 10% that decided that a cheap camera wasn't enough.  ie, heaps of parents bought 5DmkIIIs - now they're taking video, I wonder what it is they'll be buying.

Smartphones and mirrorless. You don't put your kids on the internet, or at least you shouldn't.

Check what a big market pbonr gimbals are. I even bought a Smooth Q just for fun. And I have 4 mirrorless cameras!

[kye]

21 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

Smartphones and mirrorless. You don't put your kids on the internet, or at least you shouldn't.

Check what a big market pbonr gimbals are. I even bought a Smooth Q just for fun. And I have 4 mirrorless cameras!

Mirrorless for sure.  but what kind?

I see there being a few different form factors of cameras.
There's the smartphone cameras.  They get used naked, are practically invisible to bystanders, will have good image quality but don't zoom, and have shit (omnidirectional) sound.
There's the cameras for convenience - these are the RX100s of the world.  They'll get used naked, will have good image quality but mediocre sound.
There's the cameras for pure image quality - these are the BMPCCs of the world.  They deliver excellent results in all areas, but to do so they basically can't get used naked, and when rigged up are too big, unwieldy, and professional-looking for guerrilla film-making, the category that home videos fits into.
Then there are cameras in-between - these are the mirrorless ILCs and high-end handicams.  They are practical and well-rounded, and might be augmented with an on-camera mic or maybe a handle of some kind.

Most people on here are interested in IQ enough to rule out the naked smartphone category, and generally also rule out the convenience category because of lack of good sound.  Which leaves the cameras that require huge rigs, or the mirrorless ILCs.
However, very few people here seem to be shooting guerrilla style, so the concerns of the cashed-up video-loving-parent aren't taken into consideration, because much of the filming that we do of our kids are in private property (the zoo, the fair, the museums, etc) or public property like the park or the beach where a big camera attracts too much attention.

I just think it's interesting that there's a whole segment to the market that is huge, has tonnes of money, is interested in stealth / guerrilla film-making, and we basically have no visibility of what they're filming.  They will be influencing how the manufacturers design, market and sell products, yet most of us don't even know they exist.

[BTM_Pix]

If someone can market it correctly then the ideal cameras for holiday and travel are actually the new breed of 360 ones.....just not necessarily using them as true 360 cameras where you will be expecting people to watch your content with a headset on.

Using them to capture everything front and back and worrying about what the important part was you were meant to be pointing it at later is actually exactly what is needed for most casual users.

Making regular videos from 360 ones using things like Insta One's FlowState process where you decide the angles later would be such a game changer for travel and life with your kids stuff.

They just need to up the quality a bit and market it in a more targeted way. Currently most people just see 360 cameras as a gimmick so I think they need to come up with a new term like "OmniCam" or something that takes away the headset connotation and pushes it as being a more effective source for making regular videos with.

 

[Kisaha]

You don't rig an Alexa to film your kid eating with a spoon the very first time, you usually want something you have available, and full AUTO, because you have to live the moment too.

I am not sure what ( @kye ) is your problematic here. My experience and impression is, whatever camera you have, if you are with your kids and you take photos of them, no one cares. If you are on a nudist beach with a 500X zoom camcorder, then you are suspect of something! Why do you think that a camera attracts too much attention on a zoo?! I have been to a lot of European ones with long lenses and no one ever asked me anything. I am scheduling one such visit in May and I am expecting to take one of my NX1's and the most tele zoom I have (50-200mm).

For most people, vastly majority, a a6000 is more than enough, and that is why those cameras a6xxx have sold so much the last few years - cameras which I detest using, I seriously dislike them, but for an amateur, why not? Even my barber has a a6000 with the 30mm/2.8f, and he was asking me for a portrait lens today (55mm/1.8f was my proposal)!!

Quality is good enough for most people (like 98% of the population, us, we, are such a very small group, while the whole world are billions!), and smartphones are getting there too, top mobile phones are good enough for most people already, you just have to pay top money, at the moment.

No one cares for sound, as long as you can hear your kid's first words, or whatever (usually those cameras are shot with an -in your face - approach, so mics are really close to the subject), and most TV's, if not all, have crappy sound anyway, with tiny speakers facing your wall, and you hear the reflections, really.

As I said, a phone, or a cheap mirrorless/compact, with a Chinese gimbal is what everyone wants, and really needs. Technology is already there.

@BTM_Pix I am following closely this category, and I believe it is the future, it is just not there yet. My impression is that 8K is mandatory, there is just too much information, for small 1-2 lens-ed, low bit-rate and resolution, cheap mobile cameras. I have played a little with the Samsung ones, and they were really useless. The 8K will happen, and will push this specific category of cameras. It is inevitable.

[BTM_Pix]

27 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

@BTM_Pix I am following closely this category, and I believe it is the future, it is just not there yet. My impression is that 8K is mandatory, there is just too much information, for small 1-2 lens-ed, low bit-rate and resolution, cheap mobile cameras. I have played a little with the Samsung ones, and they were really useless. The 8K will happen, and will push this specific category of cameras. It is inevitable.

I don't think it will be long now.

Huge market for whoever gets it right and pitches it properly to consumers.

 

[kye]

10 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

If someone can market it correctly then the ideal cameras for holiday and travel are actually the new breed of 360 ones.....just not necessarily using them as true 360 cameras where you will be expecting people to watch your content with a headset on.

Using them to capture everything front and back and worrying about what the important part was you were meant to be pointing it at later is actually exactly what is needed for most casual users.

Making regular videos from 360 ones using things like Insta One's FlowState process where you decide the angles later would be such a game changer for travel and life with your kids stuff.

They just need to up the quality a bit and market it in a more targeted way. Currently most people just see 360 cameras as a gimmick so I think they need to come up with a new term like "OmniCam" or something that takes away the headset connotation and pushes it as being a more effective source for making regular videos with.

Absolutely, something I've looked into before.  The term you're looking for is "angelcam", which comes from the fact it looks like there is an invisible floating camera that follows you around.  

6 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I am not sure what ( @kye ) is your problematic here. My experience and impression is, whatever camera you have, if you are with your kids and you take photos of them, no one cares. If you are on a nudist beach with a 500X zoom camcorder, then you are suspect of something! Why do you think that a camera attracts too much attention on a zoo?! I have been to a lot of European ones with long lenses and no one ever asked me anything. I am scheduling one such visit in May and I am expecting to take one of my NX1's and the most tele zoom I have (50-200mm).

It's not the zoom that's the problem.

It's that if you turn up with this then people don't think you're making home videos:

6 hours ago, Kisaha said:

No one cares for sound, as long as you can hear your kid's first words, or whatever (usually those cameras are shot with an -in your face - approach, so mics are really close to the subject), and most TV's, if not all, have crappy sound anyway, with tiny speakers facing your wall, and you hear the reflections, really.

That's what I thought, until I took my 700D to film the kids go-karting and then got home and realised I could see the kids in the go-karts but the only thing I could hear was the people next to me in the viewing area bitching about politics and the latest thing they saw on facebook.  I ordered my first directional microphone within an hour of getting home.

6 hours ago, Kisaha said:

@BTM_Pix I am following closely this category, and I believe it is the future, it is just not there yet. My impression is that 8K is mandatory, there is just too much information, for small 1-2 lens-ed, low bit-rate and resolution, cheap mobile cameras. I have played a little with the Samsung ones, and they were really useless. The 8K will happen, and will push this specific category of cameras. It is inevitable.

I am as well, and I agree 8K is mandatory.  4K RAW would probably also be sufficient, but that's not likely to happen!

I would go so far as to say that when a high-bitrate 8k 360 comes out that there's a chance that it might be all I'd need.  I'd likely still want one channel of directional audio facing away from me and another facing towards me, but that's easy enough to setup.  

Being able to capture everything and then choose framing in post would be spectacular.

[kye]

An 8k high DR 360 cam plus something like this would be fantastic!

 

[IronFilm]

On a personal level, this (or the F8n) might be the most exciting development! (the first sub $1K ambisonic mic)

A few more videos:
 

https://www.newsshooter.com/2018/04/11/first-look-at-the-rode-soundfield-nt-sf1/

[kye]

16 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

On a personal level, this (or the F8n) might be the most exciting development! (the first sub $1K ambisonic mic)

My question would be how much isolation is it able to provide?

As I said a few posts ago, I want to hear what the camera is looking at, and not what can't be seen.  This is a challenge in audio.

18mm is 90 degrees horizontally, 50mm is 40 degrees, and 100mm is 20 degrees.
If we were to take an assumption that -10dB is the 'angle of view' of a microphone, then the Rode NT5 is 200 degrees, the VMP+ is 160 degrees and the VideoMicro is 220 degrees.  In comparison to lenses they're all super wide, which is why boom mics are often used pointing vertically, as most sound sources are in a horizontal plane (except aircraft).  With the right software and the right number of microphones this would be killer.

https://www.wired.com/2010/10/super-microphone-picks-out-single-voice-in-a-crowded-stadium/

[IronFilm]

9 minutes ago, kye said:

My question would be how much isolation is it able to provide?

Errr.... you're bringing this up in a discussion about the Rode NT-SF1??? That isn't what this mic is primarily about. (although the NFS video could be a bit deceptive about that)

The entire purpose of this mic is to capture sounds in ALL DIRECTIONS

[BTM_Pix]

5 hours ago, kye said:

Absolutely, something I've looked into before.  The term you're looking for is "angelcam", which comes from the fact it looks like there is an invisible floating camera that follows you around.  

No, I associate Angelcam with the CCTV streaming platform. I think you meant angel view which is the generic term used for 360 cameras for things like GoPro's Overcapture function ? 

I think its the post process that needs branding somehow to get the point across rather than the capture method because, as I say, 360 has got a novelty/gimmicky thing attached to it which is a big negative to a lot of people.

Maybe we should call it Videofield as its pretty analogous to Soundfield capturing in all directions for targeted steering in post

 

[kye]

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

Errr.... you're bringing this up in a discussion about the Rode NT-SF1??? That isn't what this mic is primarily about. (although the NFS video could be a bit deceptive about that)

The entire purpose of this mic is to capture sounds in ALL DIRECTIONS

Yes and no.  The entire purpose of the mic is to capture sounds in all directions, but to have each direction isolated so that each of the different directions can be processed differently in post.

The normal use for this is to take all the noise to the front-left and put that in the front-left surround channel (etc) to make surround mix, however the other way you can use that functionality is to isolate the sound you want and remove the sounds you don't want.

The Rode guy explains this in the below video at 1:42s.

On a broader note, digital processing is really transforming the relationship between what we capture and what we output.

In the past we tried our hardest to capture exactly what we wanted to output, were able to do basic adjustments in post, and then shipped the final product.

Now we are in an intermediary stage where we still try to control what we capture, but we're able to change it quite significantly in post before we output.
Examples of this are that we shoot in 4k and crop in later, we shoot with green screen and comp in 3D work later, we shoot talent and do their make-up in post, we change the colours of things on set in post, etc.

The future will move to a point where we capture huge amounts of data about almost everything that is happening and then through very powerful processing we will chop out most of it to form the output, like shooting in 360 and cropping in to have an infinite number of camera angles, or like the article I linked to where they recorded a basketball game with an array of 325 microphones and then using the same technology that is used in radio telescope arrays they process the signal to isolate a single conversation between two people sitting next to the court, taking the sound-levels of the crowd, the PA, the players, etc all down to levels where the single conversation was audible. 

5 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

No, I associate Angelcam with the CCTV streaming platform. I think you meant angel view which is the generic term used for 360 cameras for things like GoPro's Overcapture function ? 

I think its the post process that needs branding somehow to get the point across rather than the capture method because, as I say, 360 has got a novelty/gimmicky thing attached to it which is a big negative to a lot of people.

Maybe we should call it Videofield as its pretty analogous to Soundfield capturing in all directions for targeted steering in post

 

Angelview - yes, you're right.  Apologies

I agree, it's the post-processing that really provides the functionality.  Like I said above, more and more the output is created in post by sophisticated processing of the raw inputs.

[IronFilm]

Yes, I've seen the video, but I don't feel the Rode guy is doing justice to the mic in pitching its proper usage. 

You're better off using a well placed shotgun instead, be it a CS3e or SuperCMIT or 816 or whatever.