How about a good old Camera Blind Test?

[kye]

4 minutes ago, Ingerson said:

Surprising results indeed. I didn't intend to pick a certain number of cameras, just pick which image I liked. I picked 3-4 from each scene and all turned out to be the EOS R!

Here I been researching cameras left and right and turned every stone and been looking at everything except Canon because everyone hates them, haha, and in a blind test I preferred Canon. And the ones I've researched the most BMPCC/BMMCC I disliked the most O_o

Perhaps I should just stay with Canon and upgrade from my 1000D since I like the colors, ergonomics and feel at home with the menues, etc.

If Canon is working for you, then go for it!  There are more important things than just image.  I picked all BM cameras but I own a GH5 because of the IBIS.  

Shoot with what you have, upgrade when your work is being limited by something and only upgrade to fix the things that are actually causing you issues.

[Ingerson]

1 minute ago, kye said:

If Canon is working for you, then go for it!  There are more important things than just image.  I picked all BM cameras but I own a GH5 because of the IBIS.  

Shoot with what you have, upgrade when your work is being limited by something and only upgrade to fix the things that are actually causing you issues.

Of course, I'm pretty new to filmmaking and videos, so I need a camera do begin with since I just borrowed one for my first short. Been playing with my phone for almost a year now, but's it's not quite doing it for me

[BTM_Pix]

34 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

The biggest mystery of all is how you got Gunpowder to sit still and look into the camera for 10 minutes

[Video Hummus]

@Mattias Burling Gunpowder better have gotten a good pat and possibly a treat for all his hard work.

Results where interesting indeed. I agree with the conclusions. Just get out and shoot with what you have it’s probably more than good enough unless you are doing some kind of special case of shooting (green screen) or extreme grades where you want to change one color to another.

Also let it be known to @DBounce that I picked B and it happened to be an EOS R. He should be happy.

[Mokara]

4 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

The results are in. Some are a little funny, others kinda expected but still interesting.
When I counted the first time a few days ago the funny part was that J wasn't to far behind I. But I didn't expect this.
(BTW, this morning J was still in the lead between the two.)

 

Gear doesn't matter because you were basically using two cameras, lol.

[kye]

3 minutes ago, Mokara said:

Gear doesn't matter because you were basically using two cameras, lol.

4 actually, but who's counting?

I'm sure you can do better!  

[Mattias Burling]

15 minutes ago, Mokara said:

Gear doesn't matter because you were basically using two cameras, lol.

Counting up all the blind tests and shootout videos I've made we must be talking at least 50 cameras, probably closer to 100. 

The results are always the same. It doesn't matter..

1 hour ago, Ingerson said:

Surprising results indeed. I didn't intend to pick a certain number of cameras, just pick which image I liked. I picked 3-4 from each scene and all turned out to be the EOS R!

Here I been researching cameras left and right and turned every stone and been looking at everything except Canon because everyone hates them, haha, and in a blind test I preferred Canon. And the ones I've researched the most BMPCC/BMMCC I disliked the most O_o

Perhaps I should just stay with Canon and upgrade from my 1000D since I like the colors, ergonomics and feel at home with the menues, etc. Magic lantern seems kind of difficult if you're non-techie person like myself, so maybe skip the M/70D decision all together and go for the R/RP ?

If you can get hold of an R to try it out it could very well be worth the time. Personally I enjoy it. I don't own it but when buying new gear for my employer it was an easy choice.

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Diving deep into The Matrix now, I know...

There are always "ifs" and "buts" to tests. And conclusions are about as subjective as color

[KnightsFan]

Interesting results! I certainly disagree with the majority here haha.

Though, I suppose in an uncontrolled test, people are going to be judging different things. I tried to ignore DOF, compression, and focus, and really just looked at colors to the best of my ability. It would be interesting to know why people voted the way they did.

[Towd]

On 7/2/2019 at 12:52 AM, Towd said:

I think I liked E, I and K the best.  But the colors out of E were probably my favorite of those three.

From my own results, I ended up picking the only three samples that were shot in 4k.  Based on my test observations, I discarded samples that had line skipping or aliasing artifacts that were either apparent on the floating platform or in the fine hairs on the end of Gunpowder's nose.  There were also a few samples that seemed excessively soft.

All in all my take is that these camera makers use a fairly rough form of downsampling to achieve HD.  At least on the cameras used in this test.  From what I've seen on the S1 in other tests, it shots amazing HD.

A few of the tests had some pretty muddy looking colors.  I wonder if that was due to the variable NDs.  Not really sure.  The colors presented were a secondary concern in my judgement because I personally feel that as long as there is decent color separation, a final look can be achieved with some quick tweaks in post.

I really appreciate the test.  And I know they take a lot of time.  My own take away though is that the hardware and what format you shoot a camera in to squeeze the best quality out of it does have real impact on the final results.

[Jimmy G]

8 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

There are always "ifs" and "buts" to tests. And conclusions are about as subjective as color

Hi Mattias,

Thanks for taking the time to put these test sequences together and for providing for feedback, I truly enjoyed the opportunity to put my senses to the test and see what the results turned up. My early conclusions, so far, is that I had clearly selected 2-of-the-3 4K sequences (K and E) as my favorites (sorry, even I. the BMPCC4K couldn't salvage a decent image out of the Kipon 40mm f/0.85 for my eyes! Haw!) and that the Tamron 17-50mm Di II VC was a common denominator with both of them. Contrary to your conclusions, the sensor clearly mattered first-and-foremost for my tastes. Also, the mediocre (IMO) Tamron lens proved itself sufficient for 4K (with a few caveats) when A. shooting wide open for a centered subject matter (as in the dog image) where all the peripheral lens softness is safely lost to the background blur and B. when stopped down to f/5.6 for the outdoor shot where it then does provide enough detail for the 4K (~8MP) resolution frame...

Tamron SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II VC LD IF Lens Image Quality:

https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=679&Camera=474&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=3&LensComp=0&CameraComp=0&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0

What I also learned from this test was that there is a world of quality difference regarding how well youtube's compression "plays nice" (or doesn't) with a camera's codec depending on whether one is shooting a static subject like your dog vs a scene with a lot of random motions occurring (like the lakeside scene) within the frame...the latter clearly suffering with image breakdown with that challenge.

What puzzled me most about the, um, "popularity" results were the choices for those camera/lens combos that ended up topping the list. It would have been nice to know which device each respondent used to perform their test. As an after-the-fact request, (my not being that youtube savvy) is it possible to harvest that data using YT's "Devices Report" function?...

Devices report - YouTube Help:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3044697?hl=en

...it would be interesting to learn if there was a correlation between viewing devices and voting selections (i.e. smartphones preferred abc, laptops preferred def, desktops preferred ghi, TVs preferred jkl)...as I mentioned in my previous post my iPhone 8-Plus defaulted to 360P and had to be manually overridden to play the max 720P and my non-retina iMac had to be set to forced 1080P. FWIW, I used the iMac and its higher resolution for my posted results as (IMO) it was impossible to make any meaningful assessments at the 720P on the phone.

Short of having that data (and based then on my own limited test results) my only conclusion or advice, in regards to whether a camera's sensor matters or not, could be...if one's target audience is the 720P YT smartphone audience then one could easily and reasonably get away with a less-than-4K camera, and the lens choice will not much matter. And if one's target audience is the 1080P YT desktop audience then there is a clear quality gain to be had going 4K and one can then also choose the appropriate glass and apertures to suit their subject matter.

Many thanks again for providing the challenge and the opportunity to learn something here, I had a lot of fun!

:)

Jimmy G

[Mattias Burling]

11 hours ago, Jimmy G said:

 shooting wide open for a centered subject matter (as in the dog image) where all the peripheral lens softness is safely lost to the background blur and B. 

Don't forget to take the speedbooster into account. What you see might not be the lens.

[Andrew Reid]

13 hours ago, Jimmy G said:

if one's target audience is the 720P YT smartphone audience then one could easily and reasonably get away with a less-than-4K camera, and the lens choice will not much matter. And if one's target audience is the 1080P YT desktop audience then there is a clear quality gain to be had going 4K and one can then also choose the appropriate glass and apertures to suit their subject matter.

What about the Retina display YT laptop audience?

Try using a MacBook Pro for a month and then switch to a 1080p PC laptop.

Difference is enormous.

I'd say 4K matters more at these kind of close viewing distances than it does in the cinema.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

On 7/7/2019 at 8:29 AM, Andrew Reid said:

The biggest mystery of all is how you got Gunpowder to sit still and look into the camera for 10 minutes

Just put a Tony Northrup video, any living being looks like a deer in the headlights trying to understand it.

But not for more than 30 seconds - it is animal cruelty, brain damages could occur.

[Mattias Burling]

51 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

What about the Retina display YT laptop audience?

Try using a MacBook Pro for a month and then switch to a 1080p PC laptop.

Difference is enormous.

I'd say 4K matters more at these kind of close viewing distances than it does in the cinema.

Just as reference here are the stats from the last 28 days on my entire channel.
Smartphone 40%
Computer 39%
Tablet 12%
TV 7,9%
Gaming console 0,8%

I would be completely shocked if even 5% of the computer users watched the 4K uploads in 4K.
 

[Anaconda_]

So what's the most relevant; the light, the lens, the camera or the viewing device?

What about the grade, the framing, and the viewing order?

[Andrew Reid]

21 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

I would be completely shocked if even 5% of the computer users watched the 4K uploads in 4K.

So would I.

Good job I make my films primarily for me, not for some sucker who can't be arsed to watch them properly

I'd also say that the kind of compression and mush we see in the otherwise lovely lake scene, isn't what any of us go into this passion for.

I'd go as far as to say everyone here loves the look of film and cinema. We all have our favourite movies and cinematographers.

If someone on YouTube, or some client, or some audience members can't get off their smartphone to appreciate our art, why do we owe it to them to dumb down our love of images?Why should we start believing that none of what we love matters any more? Why should we stop demanding more from our equipment and dumb down our craft? Why should we think that none of this technological progress matters, just because of a lazy audience, or a clueless clientele?

In the end we all had fun with this test and it reveals something very interesting, but I'll continue to revel in image quality for sake of my own interests and art, even if it doesn't matter to a smartphone viewer on YouTube.

[Mattias Burling]

39 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

why do we owe it to them to dumb down our love of images?

We don't. The point is that you can't dictate what "dumbing down" means. It's subjective. There are no end all feature that means nicer image according to everyones taste and workflow.

I choose the best tool with the best specs in order to get the best possible results. In no way am I dumbing down anything. It just happens to be that tool is recording HD.

 

[Andrew Reid]

Smartphones are the worst thing that have ever happened to cinema... And 40% our audience!

But I do recognise what this test was primarily about... The overall colours and look of the lens. These can be judged from a smartphone.

But if the camera sensor and codec is levelled out by YouTube and tiny smartphones, it doesn't mean to say they don't matter!

I think the Pocket 4K's advantages were levelled flat, raised to the ground in fact, by YouTube compression & smartphone viewers voting... But does that mean I will stop using it for the incredible images vs something less capable? Nah.

[newfoundmass]

On 7/7/2019 at 8:26 AM, Video Hummus said:

Gunpowder better have gotten a good pat and possibly a treat for all his hard work.

Gunpowder is a she! 

[IronFilm]

8 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

So what's the most relevant; the light, the lens, the camera or the viewing device?

What about the grade, the framing, and the viewing order?

Yup, even viewing order can matter!

Although I'd hope it matters less than those other factors.