EOSHD $200 challenge - Voting begins!

[Snowfun]

Apologies - edited this as it refers to what we don’t want to discuss. Suffice to say it referenced scratched sunnies and the Newton...

[Nordee]

Congratulations to the winners! Well deserved! The spirit of the competition was really fun, actually go out there and create content. I hope there will be more challenges like this in the future. 

Now, onto the reveal:

I shot on a Panasonic GF5, picked up for about 50-60$ in a used store in Hong Kong:

Locked the SS to 40 or 50 like recommended in your old article Andrew. A fun little portable camera to shoot on, and the small size of the files make them superfast and easy  to edit. Also put a LUT over the finished edit. 

I also used a 10$ tripod and a vintage 70-210 Tokina/Vivitar tele lens with OM mount, bought for maybe 10-15$. 

 

 

Now PannySVHS, if you want me to send the camera, PM your adress.

 

Best regards!

[mkabi]

I'm just going to provide my write up here.

My shoot went from "What the fuck!?!?!?" to "Fuck it! I'm done, I don't care anymore..."

I was excited about the contest and thought, I hit gold when I got the winning bid on ebay (see pictures) - cause it was mft sensor, had 4K and it was under $200.

The lenses, I borrowed from friends and family, same with adapter.

While I was waiting for the camera to come through mail, I started scouting locations and pre-planning shots, and coming up with a mini-story in my head.

When the camera arrived, I had a solid 1.5 weeks to film and edit - I said perfect....

Thats when work (my real job) started getting busy and I was forced to take work home to complete the overloaded workload. Even then, I said... no problem.... I will just film during lunch hour, but everyday that week it was raining, and my co-worker who was willing to be the main subject of my video - he got busy and started working from home.

One production delay after another...

Now, the actual camera... I didn't know its flaws until after I purchased it, I should have looked at the reviews before even looking at this camera as a contender.... Its only 4K @ 30p no 24p, and there is zero aperture control while in video mode - so had to shoot wide open on the canon lens (and use variable ND adapter). There is no log, just 5 picture profiles, but I'm sure most here were facing that problem (if it is even a problem) - I just used standard profile. It had this flickering (modulating ISO, even when it wasn't AUTO) issue , but I figured out a work around (select Auto and then select HDR mode and call it a day). 

So, camera flaws plus production delays - then I see this shit:

So, I got Used Yi camera without lens for $175, just to find out I could have waited to get a brand-new one with lens for $150.

A day before the competition was supposed to end, I said "Fuck it" came across a parked old school taxi - filmed it for about 30 to 45 min. and editted it for another 45 min. 

Oh, by the way, did I tell you guys about how my macbook pro's audio jack was fucking up too... it was interfering with the audio speakers as well. So, I went over to my older editing computer which is still running FCP7 and some old version of Premiere.

The only thing creative I did was add "Taxi" theme song to the track... lol... I didn't even color correct it, thats SOOC.

 

[TrueIndigo]

The camera used was a compact stills camera, the Fuji FinePix E900. I bought it new for £140 in May 2007 and haven't used it for seven years (the first thing I had to do was reset the clock!). The 4:3 video it shoots (auto exposure only) is 640 x 480 x 30p. I enlarged this with a video utility to make it 1440 x 1080 x 30p before editing on a 1920 x 1080 timeline, so the "Academy" shape was retained. But absolutely no exposure or colour changes were made, so the colours you see are straight from the camera. Interestingly, it's the auto exposure (and it's sudden changes within a shot) that makes it look amateur, more so perhaps than the ultra low resolution.

A sad sign of the times regarding increasing obsolescence: I took out the xD card to put in my computer multi-memory card reader, only to find that xD was not one of them! Luckily, the camera features a USB socket, so I could connect the camera directly to access the files.   

Michi: "I'm particularly curious to see what camera @TrueIndigo has used. I liked the colours of that one the most." -- This camera features a 9MP 5th generation Super CCD HR sensor. From the days when Fuji photsites were octagonal in shape and some were of a different size -- wild times!

[Esguelha]

Really fun to see the variety in cameras used, and I'm really happy to see I got some votes! Camera wise, I guess went the boring route.


You can just about see in the picture, It was 138€ for the kit if you exclude shipping. This is my first M43 camera, and unfortunately the chinese adapters I ordered didn't arrive in time. I have a nice Zeiss 50mm 2.8 I could have used for some more creative results.
I shot on the Smooth "film mode" with -2 contrast and sharpness, and used a preset "LUT" from Filmora, can't quite remember wich one. I was very happy with the picture quality.

[Andrew Reid]

Ah good choices everyone. Some interesting ones, like the Fuji E900 I didn't expect. That one was famous for the film-like look back in the day. Some artists still admire the RAW images from it.

https://***URL removed***/interviews/5683481585/sofi-lee-on-digital-nostalgia

Did you try any stills?

[Michael Steiner]

26 minutes ago, TrueIndigo said:

This camera features a 9MP 5th generation Super CCD HR sensor. From the days when Fuji photsites were octagonal in shape and some were of a different size -- wild times!

Hey TrueIndigo

Thanks for the explanation. I had no idea octagonal photosites even existed... I assume there are less issues with moire on that sensor, if any at all? Very cool! 

[Esguelha]

I was surprised to see Nordee come last, I found the footage quite nice, was definitely at the top of my list.

I also want to see what setup Framed_By_Dan and aaa123jc used.

 

[TrueIndigo]

Michi, this Wiki page gives some info about Fuji Super CCD technology (link below). I remember seeing their promotional material at the time and it looked like a great idea for organic images. And of course it was a CCD (not CMOS). Andrew asked if I took stills -- not recently, but I remember when I first got it the stills struck me as having a very nice grain structure, very photographic, and the colours were vivid but retro vivid, not modern electric vivid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_CCD

 

[Brian Williams]

Good work everyone

[PannySVHS]

Hallo, congratulations to all filmmakers and to your great films! Thank you all who voted for my film. @Nordee, very beautiful film and images you created and edited. It was one of my favorite pieces, with visual grace, taste and soul. Please keep your camera! By any means!

I filmed with a semi classic, one of my favorite personal cameras, the Lumix G6. I bought it four years ago with the classic 14-45mm lens for 240EU. Nowadays you can buy the body for 100eu on ebay!  Once graded in Davinci Resolve, I like their 709 image better than from the much more recent G7 and even GH5 cameras. My lens was the beautiful Fuji 12.5mm f1.4  C-mount lens, which I bought some time ago for 40 EU.

My approach was semidocumentary, with half a handful shots staged. The cat didnt bother the lighting, of course, because it was of the tungsten kind, WB all way up to 9000K I think. I used the 2x digital zoom a good deal to give me two focal lenghts in one. The aliasing was a fair tradeoff for convinience and immediacy of filming. I graded and edited in Davinci Resolve, with some stabilization and noise reduction. I feel a bit euphoric now and also a bit honoured! So, thanks everyone!

Oh, thanks Andrew, for "making" me buy this camera.:) Shots of my setup to come of course, when I´m home.

best, Marty

 

 

[aaa123jc]

Looks like I can keep my camera! ?

Congrats to the winner! And to others as well. You guys are all amazing.

My setup is a Canon EOS M and a 7Artisans 25mm F1.8. 

I got the EOS M in a local store in Hong Kong. It costs me HKD $680, so bascially USD $86. Of course it is a used camera but I don't think the original owner used it much. As for the lens, I brought it from my friend. It is HKD $400, so about USD $ 50. It is really amazing that one can buy such a capable setup in under $150 US dollars! 

The moment I picked this camera up I fell in love with it. Even though it doesn't have the best ergonomics, I just want to shoot something with it immediately.  And the colors is great. The auto white balance is actually really accurate. I would say even better than the other Canon cameras I have used! 

While the 1080P is quite soft, in my opinion, it looks more vintage than cheap. That are plenty of details. I don't personally like overly sharp image anyway. 

The lens is a manual prime lens but that isn't a problem. The focus ring is quite smooth. The build quality is nice enough. The vignette is very pronounced but I think it looks good so that doesn't bother me at all. 

At first I was planning to do a simple and low budget "music video". But due to some horrific things happening in Hong Kong, I didn't have the time and opportunity to do it. So I have to use the footage I shoot during a trip to Disneyland with my girlfriend and her friend. That was my very first time using the camera.

My biggest challenge is that the EOS M does not have focus peaking. My eyes are quite bad. I need to rely on focus peaking to manual focus. That's why I missed my focus quite a lot in the video ?. Other than that I find this setup really easy to use. I shoot the whole video handheld. 1080P 24P. I even use auto white balance exclusively and it just works. 

I did a little bit of color grading and some stabilization in post (only for those panning shots). 

Many people buy the EOS M to use it with Magic Lantern. But for me, even without the Magic Lantern, the camera still works very well, even in 2019. It just becomes my new favorite! 

 

[PannySVHS]

Oh, and thanks to my friend Glenn @mercer for "making me" get this lens. This lens has given so much joy like no other one has before. And images to see and to film! Thank you, my friend for this and for so much more. See you in the next Eoshd filming rally! best, Marty

[Justin Bacle]

Thanks a lot to all the competitors. This is a great idea for a contest and I love it.

For the story, I went ahead and tried to participate. I picked a setup from what I had lying around, went to shoot and was pretty please with my day. However, when I saw the footage on resolve, it was so shaky that I couldn't use it. This was my last hope for this camera, and I had no time to re-shoot :s

Just for laughs I went to shoot with this stuff. (Don't try this at home, this is the crappiest camera ever made for video) 

I can't wait for the next round ! Congrats to all participants you all did great jobs !

[KnightsFan]

1 hour ago, Esguelha said:

I was surprised to see Nordee come last, I found the footage quite nice, was definitely at the top of my list.

Same, it was definitely one of my tops for cinematography. The camera image quality didn't do anything for me, though.

[aaa123jc]

1 hour ago, PannySVHS said:

Hallo, congratulations to all filmmakers and to your great films! Thank you all who voted for my film. @Nordee, very beautiful film and images you created and edited. It was one of my favorite pieces, with visual grace, taste and soul. Please keep your camera! By any means!

I filmed with a semi classic, one of my favorite personal cameras, the Lumix G6. I bought it four years ago with the classic 14-45mm lens for 240EU. Nowadays you can buy the body for 100eu on ebay!  Once graded in Davinci Resolve, I like their 709 image better than from the much more recent G7 and even GH5 cameras. My lens was the beautiful Fuji 12.5mm f1.4  C-mount lens, which I bought some time ago for 40 EU.

My approach was semidocumentary, with half a handful shots staged. The cat didnt bother the lighting, of course, because it was of the tungsten kind, WB all way up to 9000K I think. I used the 2x digital zoom a good deal to give me two focal lenghts in one. The aliasing was a fair tradeoff for convinience and immediacy of filming. I graded and edited in Davinci Resolve, with some stabilization and noise reduction. I feel a bit euphoric now and also a bit honoured! So, thanks everyone!

Oh, thanks Andrew, for "making" me buy this camera.:) Shots of my setup to come of course, when I´m home.

best, Marty

WOW! I never thought it would be a Lumix G6. The color is really amazing. And of course the cinematography is really on point. Your video is one of my favorite! 

2 hours ago, Esguelha said:

Really fun to see the variety in cameras used, and I'm really happy to see I got some votes! Camera wise, I guess went the boring route.
You can just about see in the picture, It was 138€ for the kit if you exclude shipping. This is my first M43 camera, and unfortunately the chinese adapters I ordered didn't arrive in time. I have a nice Zeiss 50mm 2.8 I could have used for some more creative results.
I shot on the Smooth "film mode" with -2 contrast and sharpness, and used a preset "LUT" from Filmora, can't quite remember wich one. I was very happy with the picture quality.

I actually thought your camera is a GH2. But now I see even the GH1 and a kit lens can produce very good image. I think I even voted your video as the best image quality ?.

And congrats to everyone else. I was having tons of fun reading the reveals. 

@leslie Who would've have thought of using a webcam? Let alone with an anamorphic adapter ?? Maybe I should use my girlfriend's 4K webcam next time.

@kyeThe before and after is simply amazing. Your videos really show the importance of editing. Basically turn a AU $17 action camera footage into something very stylish. 

@anax276Your work makes me want to get an Olympus E-M5 just to test it out. Great image quality. The color is very good. I thought you must have done some grading. 

 

[Framed_By_Dan]

13 hours ago, leslie said:

i got a bit fixated on the losing camera bit, completely missed the fine print about entering just for the judges category. But thats life.

I'm a bit surprised with the amount of entries or lack thereof, as i bid on 3 or 4 cameras but was out bid on everything. I was sure you guys must have been buying everything up  for the competition. The old video camera segment  of ebay must be quite abit more active than one would have thought. Too cut a long story short i ended up using a logitech c920 webcam with a letus anamorphic adapter taped to the front. My reasoning for using the letus was to help differentiate my entry from the others. i figure if speedboosters were allowed if you already had them an anamorphic should be ok as well. Not sure if anyone else shot anamorphicaly. Considering i went to the trouble of using the letus i did forget to get any footage of the lens flaring which was kinda dumb. Since my entry has proved surprisingly unlikely to win the point is moot i guess.

I'm glad i entered i learned a whole bunch of things that i can apply to the next challenge. i am fairly confident i can increase my vote rate by at least a 100% next time round ?

So dan the man pm me your address if you need a webcam for  the odd late night online dalliance. Mind you, you can keep those tips,tricks and footage for your own personal gratuitousness ok ?

 

That's genius!! You can, on this occasion keep a hold of your webcam   I do love the fact you have fitted it to a rail mount, I say you build a shoulder rig for this! Extra points for rigging it up haha!

 

3 hours ago, aaa123jc said:

Looks like I can keep my camera! ?

Congrats to the winner! And to others as well. You guys are all amazing.

My setup is a Canon EOS M and a 7Artisans 25mm F1.8. 

I got the EOS M in a local store in Hong Kong. It costs me HKD $680, so bascially USD $86. Of course it is a used camera but I don't think the original owner used it much. As for the lens, I brought it from my friend. It is HKD $400, so about USD $ 50. It is really amazing that one can buy such a capable setup in under $150 US dollars! 

The moment I picked this camera up I fell in love with it. Even though it doesn't have the best ergonomics, I just want to shoot something with it immediately.  And the colors is great. The auto white balance is actually really accurate. I would say even better than the other Canon cameras I have used! 

While the 1080P is quite soft, in my opinion, it looks more vintage than cheap. That are plenty of details. I don't personally like overly sharp image anyway. 

The lens is a manual prime lens but that isn't a problem. The focus ring is quite smooth. The build quality is nice enough. The vignette is very pronounced but I think it looks good so that doesn't bother me at all. 

At first I was planning to do a simple and low budget "music video". But due to some horrific things happening in Hong Kong, I didn't have the time and opportunity to do it. So I have to use the footage I shoot during a trip to Disneyland with my girlfriend and her friend. That was my very first time using the camera.

My biggest challenge is that the EOS M does not have focus peaking. My eyes are quite bad. I need to rely on focus peaking to manual focus. That's why I missed my focus quite a lot in the video ?. Other than that I find this setup really easy to use. I shoot the whole video handheld. 1080P 24P. I even use auto white balance exclusively and it just works. 

I did a little bit of color grading and some stabilization in post (only for those panning shots). 

Many people buy the EOS M to use it with Magic Lantern. But for me, even without the Magic Lantern, the camera still works very well, even in 2019. It just becomes my new favorite! 

 

Now I loved the image quality on this, for me it looked very filmic, granted its not terribly sharp but much sharper and better looking than I remember from EOS M footage. I guess that is down to a decently sharp lens which works wonders on the Canons. I was half thinking this was shot on a Sony of some kind but the skin tones and colours were just too good   Had you said this was an EOS M from the start I wouldn't have believed you, there appears to be no aliasing and moire from what I can see, perhaps YouTube's compression is hiding some of that. Great job! 

Now for my reveal and I am really surprised to have won the vote for image quality! When I saw some of the entries I was sure I wasn't going to get anywhere near the top. Not that I was aiming to win, this after all was just a bit of fun! Now I will be honest, I nearly didn't enter. I saw the post on the blog and immediately took interest. I thought over it for a few days and done some research on what could be had for the £200 budget. Andrew- as a side note I did manage to find a large sensor, interchangeable lens 4K camera and nearly went down that route!

At the time of Andrew announcing the competition it was peak wedding season for me (my full time job as a wedding and events filmmaker) and that had to take priority. When I checked back a few weeks later on the closing date for entries it was literally a week away! I took the plunge and bought something cheap in order to take part, paid for express shipping and bought a lens adapter via Amazon Prime.

And here she is in all her glory!

£69 body only from MPB photographic in the UK, and probably the ropiest one they had! It was pretty manky, didn't come with a body cap (omg that exposed sensor!! ?) and the SD card door doesn't close properly but I was determined to make this work. 

The lenses I used were two m42 vintage lenses I had lying around, first up a Pentacon 50mm f1.8 which I actually use in my professional work from time to time - its surprisingly good! For some longer shots I used a Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f3.5 with the aperture blades stuck wide open - again surprisingly good considering the aperture doesn't function and it has been sitting in a bag without any caps on for years.

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice in the above photo there is a Speedbooster attached. This is where I hold my hands up to a little bit of cheating! I bought a Gobe dumb adapter from Amazon as mentioned but knew that for some shots I had in mind the 100mm equivalent FOV I would have would be bit too tight. So for a handful of shots I did run with this - this potentially aided in producing slightly sharper results in some shots. I also used an SLR Magic Variable ND, again not the cheapest of filters! So feel free to disqualify me for this technical infringement!

Before shooting my sequence I done a few test shots in the garden the reviewed the footage on the computer. I knew the AVCHD codec would be a potential struggle but didnt realise how bad it was until looking back on these test shots - the footage was already falling apart before my eyes! 17 Mbps is a long way off the solid looking 100+ Mbps i'm used to off my GH5! Not to mention how much moire I saw in the footage!

Despite this, I found the 720p mode better with it's Motion JPEG codec so considered using this in my film. I shot with the "Nostalgic" setting with Contrast and Sharpness all the way down. For me this looked to have slightly better dynamic range and better roll off between tones than the "Smooth" setting, although the over all colour wasn't as nice.

So, on one of the hottest days of the year I went into my home town and done some people watching. The little GH1 was a fair challenge to use as one might expect with how lucky we are with modern cameras these days. No focus peaking, no zebras, low resolution screen and viewfinder. Despite this, I relied heavily on the histogram to check my highlights, made sure not to film anything with too much motion which would exploit the weaknesses in the codec. I also threw in some 720p shots and upscaled them in the final edit. 

My biggest mistake was not taking my proper video monopod out to film, instead relying on handheld or a basic photography monopod. It wasn't until I went out for some golden hour footage I took along a proper tripod. Good old Warp Stabiliser came in handy!

The edit was a quick couple of hours piecing together the best shots, no real story part from the obvious changing of time and I graded using one of James Miller's DeLUTs as a starting point, tweaking to my own taste.

For me this was a refreshing challenge. Normally I opt to do some photography or go a bike ride to escape from my normal work but this was a cheeky day out filming to keep my creativity going at the height of working season. Filmmaking should always be about the fun and not about the expensive gear and with that I think I will arm myself with the little GH1 and see what we can come up with in the future.

I will be writing a more in depth blog post on my own website so when that is done I will link that back to here.

Finally I just want to say well done to PannySVHS for winning the best cinematography, I love the home video feel about this! Thank you to Andrew for coming up with this challenge and getting this little community together to create. Looking forward to more like this soon!

Dan

 

[Framed_By_Dan]

4 hours ago, Esguelha said:

Really fun to see the variety in cameras used, and I'm really happy to see I got some votes! Camera wise, I guess went the boring route.


You can just about see in the picture, It was 138€ for the kit if you exclude shipping. This is my first M43 camera, and unfortunately the chinese adapters I ordered didn't arrive in time. I have a nice Zeiss 50mm 2.8 I could have used for some more creative results.
I shot on the Smooth "film mode" with -2 contrast and sharpness, and used a preset "LUT" from Filmora, can't quite remember wich one. I was very happy with the picture quality.

Did you hack this? Footage look so good! I felt mind had terrible moire and only had to look at the footage and it looked blocky...

[Michael Steiner]

30 minutes ago, Framed_By_Dan said:

Before shooting my sequence I done a few test shots in the garden the reviewed the footage on the computer. I knew the AVCHD codec would be a potential struggle but didnt realise how bad it was until looking back on these test shots - the footage was already falling apart before my eyes! 17 Mbps is a long way off the solid looking 100+ Mbps i'm used to off my GH5! Not to mention how much moire I saw in the footage!

I think you are way to critical, and I mean that in a good way. Watching without knowledge about what camera etc. was used for me was a good experience, kind of like looking mor freely at the videography... And yours looked nothing short of good to my eyes. 

So for me this competition was also a reminder that filming is a craft first. And that good craftsmen and -woman can work with every tool. ?

[Esguelha]

@Framed_By_Dan I didn't, but It's definitely been hacked by the previous owner. From what I found on old forums, there's no way of knowing what hack the camera has running after it's been flashed. I just know because if I run the files through media inspector, I get bitrates of about 35-40Mbps on busier scenes. I had 0 crashes so far, and I like the image quality, so I'll just leave it like this.
I got mine on MPB as well, I almost bought your camera a couple of times but then mine came up at the same price, and it looked tidier, so I snapped it up. I did have to disassemble it about 20 minutes after I got it, because the strap lug came off about 5 minutes after I got it out of the box (common problem). The little nut It screws into was rattling around the camera waiting to cause a short, so I just went at it with a screwdiver and some epoxi. All part of the fun I guess ?