bmp4k adventures

[leslie]

Two 1/4 inch thumbscrews arrived two days ago. Yesterday morning was spent altering the gimbal pole. A couple of holes drilled and tapped and the gimbal frame has been reoriented 90 degrees. Hopefully this adds some awesomeness to the user experience. 

The gimbal is not quite centered over the pole, not sure if that will become an issue or not.  If it does become an issue, i have already figured out a way to address that but i'd rather not if it can be helped.

Now i'd better go do something about modifying the garden irrigation before half the plants die from lack of moisture.

[leslie]

Ok so i lied about the watering.  Got some good news today and instead went for a drive up to the big smoke (Toowoomba).  I mean how can one go to a big city and not go into a camera store 🤔. Which invariably led to an impulse buy, an okko variable nd filter 2-400. fairly pricey,

A quick  generic google  search for  okko nd brings up about a 99 reviews in some language that could be russian  and the one nd filter review was for a freewell nd filter, not exactly inspiring. I may have early onset of buyers remorse  at this point.

 A similar search with the nd 2 - 400 added brings up pages of K & F nd filters. Either K&F are really good filters or someone's handing them out like candy.  

Never heard of okko before and it was pretty much the only one in 77mm diameter. Apparently its a kiwi brand thats made in china. they use either Japanese agc glass or German Schott glass. Sounds promising so far 

Tomorrow i plan on doing a series of test shots. It may even lead to a warts and all utube review to address the obvious disparity between filter brands. It will either be tears of joy or i might be cracking the seal on that bottle of rum i haven't opened yet. 

[leslie]

Not sure what happened with that last post an extra image snuck itself in there some how. 

In hindsight i should have guessed it was kiwi branded, as its all black 

 

[kye]

I've bought the super-cheap eBay variable NDs and they're generally ok up until a certain point and beyond that they have the dreaded X in them.  I'd imagine that yours would be usable.  Even the name brand expensive ones have colour shifts, so just WB through it whenever you adjust it and you'll probably be fine!

[leslie]

In the heat of the day i decided rather than do some meaningful work on some aspect of the property, i'd rather take some dng's  and some  footage with the p4k and the nd filters i have.

I may have to do it again as i didn't take any notes which kinda makes for an all over the place test. At least i learned i should structure my approach.

Heres one dng that i have graded and converted to jpg. This should be the okko variable nd and a black promist 1/8. it was one of the last images and i thought what the heck lets mix things up. If nothing else i should at least get a grop of grapes this year. 

 

[leslie]

All work and no play, makes for a very dull day. There's also the fact, its been raining  To remedy that i bought a cheap $13 led light and and lego kit and have been experimenting. 

A couple of hours of construction later, i had me a fast car again, albeit a miniature one. Must be near 40 years since i played with lego and i'm gonna call it therapeutic and quite adsorbing. 

Anyway they say to start small. Fairly confident you cant get much smaller than lego and its a convenient size. Learned i need either a brighter main light and or some additional fill lights. I'm thinking a small set like this could teach one a lot about lighting, without a lot of expense well thats my theory. Did i also mention its fun, there's also the possibility, i'm regressing.  

I don't remember lego having so many fiddly bits. Another thing to note is once i'd finished there were spare parts. Really i hope they included some extras as there was 1 of each of the really small pieces extra.  I wasted some time re reading the manual and i'm confident its all assembled is per the instructions.

 

[kye]

7 hours ago, leslie said:

All work and no play, makes for a very dull day. There's also the fact, its been raining  To remedy that i bought a cheap $13 led light and and lego kit and have been experimenting. 

A couple of hours of construction later, i had me a fast car again, albeit a miniature one. Must be near 40 years since i played with lego and i'm gonna call it therapeutic and quite adsorbing. 

Anyway they say to start small. Fairly confident you cant get much smaller than lego and its a convenient size. Learned i need either a brighter main light and or some additional fill lights. I'm thinking a small set like this could teach one a lot about lighting, without a lot of expense well thats my theory. Did i also mention its fun, there's also the possibility, i'm regressing.  

I don't remember lego having so many fiddly bits. Another thing to note is once i'd finished there were spare parts. Really i hope they included some extras as there was 1 of each of the really small pieces extra.  I wasted some time re reading the manual and i'm confident its all assembled is per the instructions.

Now is a good time to watch a few lighting videos and try the various techniques on your little test setup.

First thing that comes to mind is putting up a bounce as fill.

[PannySVHS]

@leslie
You might wanna consider an additional IR cut filter when using stronger NDs. All BM cameras suffer rather strongly from IR polution. They also prefer 5600k over pure tungsten. Great idea with lego lighting.:) cheers

[leslie]

I'm on to it kye, don't worry, picked up a piece of corflute probably 600 x 900 that should make for a bunch of reflectors. I also bought some cheap silver / gold reflectors off ebay, bit bigger than a hand. I'm hoping they can contribute as well. Next time i go up to warwick, i will buy one more small light which will take my tally up to three. That will give me a key light, fill light and back light. They are only small lights and for a small lego set they should do ok, i hope.

  I figure i can experiment with position  and distance to create a look, for close up shots. Yet to figure out how that equates to wide shots of sets. I doubt my 3 lights will give enough light to fill the set evenly. I presume i will need to buy 3 more larger lights to take it further. Baby steps first.

You will of course notice i have acquired a 2400 x 1200 laminate table top. That is the basis for my workspace. At the moment that wood sheet sits atop a couple of sawhorses. Got a mate who can teach me  how to weld. If that fails i'll either beg or blackmail my brother into welding up a base for it.  

Couple of more characters have arrived to help fill out the space. These guys need no introduction 😀

i have one more little guy in transit somewhere, I have plans for a little brick film and i need to add some more characters as funds permit, need six characters all up, not necessarily the above mentioned characters, they where an impulse buy when i saw them lol. Next challenge is to create a walk cycle. 

Every time i step outside with a camera, the wind picks up, its hard work taking a decent photo of a flower. To remedy that  i bought a cheap vase and cheap lazy susan. Had some photography clamps, and a black material backdrop arrive. The plan is to hang the backdrop behind the table and shoot some still-life's.

Construction has started on the 2nd shed, film studio / sound stage. Whom am i kidding... my brother with try  use it as a carport for his bus converted to motorhome. Still I'm claiming a corner at least for my own nefarious plans.

 Trying to do a lot more with my cameras and other equipment this year. Considering we seem to lurch from lockdown to lockdown, setting up a small studio is a good idea i think.  A short brick film will force me to learn resolve more quickly i feel.  The whole lego thing should work as small set, what works on a small set should apply on a large set, maybe im wrong . Not that i have any plans of a feature length movie.

 

 

 

 

 

[leslie]

things are moving along, i have something of a set now. Bit of an aussie theme because i can  😉  table is setup right under a  large shed light. Cant do too much at night as lots of bugs are attracted to the light which is a pain to clean up the next day. Gonna have to think it through a little bit more. Maybe close the roller door and run a fan perhaps. 

My dads been sick up in hospital for the last week. Which has put a dampener on everything, but thats ok. Just have to prioritize, once an illness comes up in the family.

 

Track ball has turned up, its an interesting change from a mouse.  Its quite a bit wider than a mouse,  so there's  quite  a difference in using it  i think. Almost the opposite to a mouse in some ways, instead of grabbing it, your spreading your hand out. May need to practice my live long and prosper,  spock salute. its going to change working in resolve quite markedly once i get a feel for things i reckon.  The korg nanokontrol2 is on its way, there was an issue at the start but i hope thats been sorted now. 

Ignore the crappy table top its now past its used by date, a new one have been purchased. I just need to hit it with some paint and screw it down to the old frame.

[leslie]

The korg nanoKontrol2 has turned up, had it for a few days now. i have watched a few youtube vids, got it working in resolve watched a few more youtube vids now have it integrated with windows. I now have the korg nanokontrol sliders setting the levels of the master volume and inside of windows media player and edge youtube volume levels.

Initially i was using a little midi tray thing called ntTray which i quite liked. The file size was a whole 370kb. A tiny little thing, not sure if it was me and how i installed it or something else as it fell over pretty easy. Next program i found was called midi mixer a larger  84 meg. Still it seems more stable so far.  I'm only scratching the surface controlling three sliders at the moment. still the korg has been a pretty handy addition towards an increased user experience.

Another nice feature in midi mixer is on screen display, so the moment i touch a slider the program that has that slider as its focus and its level is momentarily displayed in the top left corner of the moniter,  very cool.

I do like having a proper fader for the volume rather than grabbing a mouse and having to click on something, So far a nice user experience improvement. 

[leslie]

I have reinstalled the korg drivers twice and the korg software as well. Didn't have any control over the buttons on the nanokontrol2 No idea what i did right, however i can now mute sound levels from the korg controller, so i'm counting that as a win.

A separate issue is that i cant write or update the korg controller with the usb cable, says its not connected, which is odd as i can nearly do everything i want from the controller. Looks like i may have to get a shorter usb cable with a ferrite core as the website suggests. That will have to wait till next week. 

Got some paving done today between rain periods, more importantly spent some time in the shed before it got too dark. With all the moisture about, mozzies are abit of a problem after dark and the bugs as well. Still i did make 3 corflute light stands for my lighting setup. Pretty simple arrangement with lots of hotmelt to bind it all together. even used a bit to  hold the light switches in position. Tomorrow i'll make some little corflute reflectors to help bounce some light around and maybe some paper modifiers if all goes well. This was the cheapest way i could think of to try things out.

I did have some other led lights arrive, they are quite abit brighter. Don't know if i need them yet,  still if all else fails i can use them whenever the power goes out. Which has been more often this year than i would like. 

[leslie]

left my run a bit late today. Still i did make some reflectors. 

camera of choice was the olympus m10 with a viltrox speedbooster and the 50mm super takumar.

I learned that i crushed the blacks on an already burnt snag. 🙄 I was almost wide open so thats a pretty narrow depth of field. So tomorrows effort will be a slower shutter, narrower aperture, a bigger reflector and perhaps more light.

[leslie]

Had a new usb to mini b cable turn up today. I now have lights on the namokontrol2. Not entirely sure what i fixed as i uninstalled the korg editor and the drivers and reinstalled them. I did try three other usb to mini b cables before now, but no joy. It was quite an exciting moment to see the korg editor recognize that something was connected to it. So i hurriedly changed the lights from internal to external and saved it to the korg kontroller. Yay...

Next time i go into town i'll call into the print shop and get some labels made up.  

Somewhat serendipitously, i met a computer tech guy at the local jaycar (electronics shop). I mentioned that i had half the bits for a computer build. The end result being i'll send him a few photos of the gear i have and hopefully we can get it sorted. which would be rather awesome, as it will allow me to dip my toes further into resolve, as the laptops a bit iffy when it comes time to run resolve. 

[leslie]

Two ac power adapters have arrived one for the Olympus em-10 and one for the Canon 60d. They both have dummy batteries, which means either leaving the battery doors open or removing said battery doors, so that will allow the use of the cameras continuously depending of course on how long the power lead is.

Originally i had just planned on a powered dummy battery for the Olympus however i had a bit of a hiccup with the Olympus which led to the buying of a powered dummy battery for the canon. 

Bit disappointed by Olympus  as it seems there is no tethering available on the  m-10  mark two. it seems to get tethering you have to get the next model up. Even canon famous for their cripple hammer allows tethering with their tier two models, not sure if the lower tier models like the 600d get tethering or not. The canon 60d has it and that camera has about ten years on the Olympus, personally i  do think its a bit rude of Olympus to leave it out.

I had planned to use the Olympus to do some stop motion video. However without tethering and having that input into the computer i won't be able to do any onion skinning, could still do stopmotion, however i feel it will be rather painful with out using the onion skinning feature.

  I may be able to get around that limitation by using the hdmi out into a 1080/ 4k capture card and passing that to the software. Which would then necessitate  two presses of two buttons, one on the software side of things and one on the camera as i'd like a spare image. Not a major problem however and for now i can use the canon anyway. 

Hit a bit of a quiet patch with the photo/ video side of things at the moment, heading into autumn now and  there's a bunch of jobs that need doing before the winter frosts hit. 

I did get some stickers made for the korg,  and its proving itself quite useful as utube video sound levels tend to be allover the place. Other than that not a lot of progress.

 

[webrunner5]

I don't think Olympus even knew what Video was until the last years they were in business. 😮 Sort of the same with Panasonic on the Photo side. They both picked their Niche.

[leslie]

8 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I don't think Olympus even knew what Video was until the last years they were in business. 😮 Sort of the same with Panasonic on the Photo side. They both picked their Niche.

your right mostly. The video from the em-10 mark two is pretty ordinary, the mark three is definitely a step up as witnessed by andrew reid and his blog about it. However i'm complaining about the the photo side of things. The mark 3 doesn't have a port for a remote control shutter whereas the mark two does, although its my own fault i didn't investigate its ability for tethering at the time. 

call me cynical, however it seems to me, since the camera already has usb on board, it should a small matter or expense to implement tethering on it. Its just another usb mode right ? Its easy to imagine that somebody high up felt that it may impact sales of its big brother. 

We have these things called smart phones, their like electronic swiss army knives. Not much you cant do with one. Honestly i cant say the same about cameras, it appears there's no such thing as a smart camera. 

Camera manufacturing is in a hole, mostly because they lack vision or maybe their just a bunch of greedy buggers, not that i am asking for a phone or google drive on my camera. Best example so far  is canon, sure you can use it to take a photo, but then magic lantern came along and showed us there's truckloads more that could be done with the same equipment.  

Thats all i want, the same equipment with all the usability that can be thrown in. Until camera manufactures learn that basic lesson, some of them will keep travelling the same path as the dodo. Sad but true.

 

 

[webrunner5]

Yeah I am shocked how advanced Smartphones are compared to cameras. You would think they would have woke up by now?

[leslie]

Perhaps their victims of their own success, i think once companies get past a certain size the mentality changes to lets give what we think they need rather than give them what they do need. 

For instance the micro hdmi out thing, everyone loves the hdmi out idea except when you do get it ( usually )  its in the micro form which pretty much every user hates. Yet the manufactures persist with the idea they doing us a favour by giving us micro hdmi out. 

Luckily bmd at least got the full size hdmi out on the p4k right, but then failed miserably with a fixed screen on the back.  Bmd could have sold hundreds more p4ks if it had an articulating screen. A lot more vloggers  amongst others would have bought it just for the sheer convenience that an flippy screen offers. Maybe a flippy screen seems inappropriate on a cinema camera. Who knows what they where thinking.

Personally i would have thought it better to have a p4k in more peoples hands, at least then they can't holding a competitors camera at the same or not easily anyway lol.

Maybe it has something to do with the size thing, everything has to be smaller. Except phones and tablets it seems. I am all for smaller chips, smaller pixels smaller electronics. except when it come to usability. Half the population of the world must have average to large hands. Those with smaller hands, well i pity you, i really do, must be quite challenging at times😉 

While smaller and lighter is good in general, when it comes to usability and ruggedness maybe not so good. Smaller ports and buttons are fiddlier to use, easier to break. There's quite a lot of surface area on a camera body plenty of room for full size ports and buttons. Anyway little extra weight isn't such a bad thing on a cinema camera as it helps with stability.

[webrunner5]

Man, I hate screens that are out to the side. It is so disorientating to be looking at two different scenes at the same time. The one your camera is seeing and the one you are actually seeing out of the corners of your eyes. Ugh. I like looking though an eyepiece best.