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How about a good old Camera Blind Test?


Mattias Burling
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9 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

I think the Pocket 4K's advantages were levelled flat, raised to the ground in fact, by YouTube compression & smartphone viewers voting... 

Maybe raised by smartphone viewing, but I watched the footage in 4K (by setting it manually in YT) and managed to pick the P4K in 4K twice and the BMMCC for the other option, so I thought it was apparent.  I was looking for aliasing and resolution without excessive sharpness.

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10 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

I only had the option for 1080p for it on YouTube.

Perhaps Gunpowder sabotaged it after we degendered him?

Just checked and 4K was available for me.  I do know that on OSX I am limited to 1080 by Safari, so maybe your browser is the limiting factor?

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i went with j and j.  In the gunpowder shot, i just like the moodiness or darker frame.  I have a  natural preference for a low key image i think. The lake scene because i had already gone for j kinda predetermined  a vote except i did a goldilocks thing and decided i was too little and k was too much j was just right. i didnt  do a 2nd or third place.

from a newbies perspective i think that perhaps a lot of people from this forum probably made a science experiment out of it and literally tore those images apart. however i suspect a lot of people that watch mattias's channel are a bit like me and picked images they like without too much analysis which is why j and j won.

it is a bit embarrassing i have the bmp4k camera and i like it. but it didn't pick it in the contest. Don't worry i'm not that distressed, that theres going to be a bmp4k on ebay anytime soon  ? I also watched it in 1080 on a laptop. With a pretty average internet connection and download plan 4k seems a little excessive too me. So i get by on hd when i can. not sure if watching it in 4k would have made a difference and going back to do it again maybe camera choice would change but then i know more now than i did before so its not that relevant and the results biased. thanks for the test matthias and the others for their input i learned a couple of things which i guess is what its all about  :)

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1 minute ago, Andrew Reid said:

It certainly shows the importance of watching it in the right browser.

And people seem to pay a lot of attention to colour grading and lenses, as far as the mood goes.

Yeah.  I hit that VP9 / Safari / Chrome thing when I bought my 4k display and wanted to watch 4K content and went down that rabbit hole.  Safari also used to restrict going full-screen on an external display because of DRM issues, so I read up about it and it turns out that the other browsers are fine.  Now the DRM issue is gone but the 4K one seems to have replaced it.

In terms of the colour grading, I did really like the colour from the EOS-R.  Somehow Canon manage to make the colours very saturated without them being so in any negative artificial way, which when I grade log footage is deceptively difficult to do.  One of the reasons I've kept my 700D is to use as a reference.  I haven't done it yet with my GH5 but at some point I should probably setup a test scene and shoot it with both setups, then colour match the GH5 to the 700D and save that as a reference grade.  Even if I don't end up using all of the steps (the 700D is likely to be far too contrasty for my tastes, for example) there will be elements of the grade that are desirable, and will translate across other lighting setups and subject matters.

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Hi Mattias,

On 7/8/2019 at 6:00 AM, Mattias Burling said:

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

Well, my not being privy to the the fact that adapters might or might not be used in the various sequences at the time of voting (heck, there were pre-reveal speculations that there could well be cellphone cameras in the mix!) kept me (and others) from adding that possibility to my (our) assessments when voting. As part of my postmortem, er, "analysis toolkit" it was good to know that they were in the mix but there were too many sensor/lens combos and not enough samples of each for me to to consider adding that variable to my broad assessments and conclusions.

FWIW, my fear going into this test (based on reading many of the incoming votes over at YT and here prior to my own sitting down to make my own evaluations and casting my own ballot) was that the reasons behind the numerous votes were going to be equally as random (or more) as the different camera/lens choices being presented and that coming to any concise conclusions would yield as many random interpretations...was it about the colors for this person? or the tints for someone else? perhaps the dog's pose for those folks over there? maybe it was it about the framing? or the resolution (for those who could tell)? or maybe even the focus? was it about the codecs? or the device viewed on? etc., etc., etc... My pre-vote hope, the whole while being, that you had some "method behind your madness" (an idiomatic phrase that might not translate well) and that "all will be revealed" in good time.

So, when your own 3 conclusions turned out to be seemingly at a 90–180° variance to my own I was A. not unexpectedly surprised and B. presented with the challenge as to how to present my own findings as discussion points (and in a friendly conversational tone so as not to ignite some forum war. Ha!) as I truly wanted to hear the varying conclusions and viewpoints from my fellow posters here (and I did not wish to detract from the hard work you had put in. ;) ). So I thank you for that enjoyable test and for your attention to my responses here.

 

22 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

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.
 

Thanks for harvesting and presenting that data, it's very informative (well, for me, anyway) for this test. Using, for arguments sake here (that everyone will kindly play along), that "half the computers were laptops and half were desktops" then, quite nearly 3-out-of-4 viewers participated with mobile devices while on-the-go and the other 25% viewed on a desktop-sized computer screen or larger.

Sooo, what I get out of all of this is that there are some good fundamental lessons to be taken from your "blind test"...where visual production values are critical for the content producer (and their intended viewers) it clearly pays to invest in the tools that best suits ones needs and desires to attain those results, and conversely (and obviously) where visual production value (and audience) is non-critical there is clearly a lot (emphasis on "a lot"!) of leeway in ones choices for their production tools.

Many thanks again for taking the time to produce these tests and results and for your willingness (along with the courage and confidence that goes along with that) to share it all here on the forum. (Trust me, your lessons went well-beyond the "blind test" for this yet-to-post-their-own-content-on-the-internet participant. ;) :D ) Best online fun I've had all week!

:) -JG

 

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I probably should keep my big fat yap shut, and I have a lot of respect for Mathias and I agree with the sentiment about technique and worrying less about specks but (obviously there going to be a but...) I try to tell potential clients that if they're comparing photographers to try and look at all their output, not just their portfolio pics. And that anyone should be able to get 20 good shots together. It's how they handle the most difficult situations and the level of consistency that is the mark of a professional, and I'd humbly like to suggest the same is true of gear.  It's when you push cameras to the edge of what they're capable of that you find out which ones work for you.  I'm constantly shooting in very high dynamic range situations. The z6 is a better fit for me than the gh5. I prefer the highlight rolloff on the z6 and like how much you can push the shadows. The same test shooting the dog backlit against a window would be more enlightening. Can you recover shadow detail, highlights, does the image still look nice with the background overexposed etc. 

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There is nothing nightmarish in this. Just the opposite, we have so many great affordable options to choose from now. Even though gear matters depending on the requirements, I don't really care because gear is not a limiting factor anymore. Unlike a few years ago, anybody can shoot a great film or documentary with very low camera budget.

I don't necessarily agree all the time with Mattias but he has a point. All these endless topics about motion cadence, compression, bits, curve X and Y are a bit boring nowadays especially when there is very little actual movie making and demo real going on.

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