Getting started again.

[IronFilm]

7 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Is the amount of money you get from these gigs really enough to justify a major equipment upgrade??? 

Are you getting paid enough that the clients really expect great color grading?

What made you decide that your a6500 and X-T3 weren't good enough? Was it something a paying client said to you? Or was it something you read on a forum somewhere?

There are definitely people who shoot with the likes of a FS7/FS5/FX6/EVA1/UMP/etc (what you'd call "a major equipment upgrade") who do the bulk of their bread and butter work shooting solo, and make a good living from it. But still.... you should at least be on the fringes of doing bigger crewed work, with a sizeable minority of your work of the scale that a gaffer / 1st AC / sound mixer / MUA / etc (perhaps not all four at once though, although even that still falls into the "very small crew" category) are being used as part of your work. And if not, do you really need that "upgrade"?

[Mark Romero 2]

On 3/3/2021 at 6:52 AM, DanielVranic said:

After reading through, it seems like if there was a S5 that existed that had RAW output and a significantly improved AF that would be my ticket. Maybe a MK2.

True, The AF is not dependable, but I am not personally convinced that you will be getting that much of an improvement shooting in RAW over the internal 10-Bit V-LOG codec.  Pretty much all the tests I have seen seem to show only minor improvements. 

It's a really good codec and in Resolve 17, just use DaVinci Wide Gamut and the HDR grading tools and you've got a ton of flexibility. 

As for autofocus...

 

[DanielVranic]

19 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

True, The AF is not dependable, but I am not personally convinced that you will be getting that much of an improvement shooting in RAW over the internal 10-Bit V-LOG codec.  Pretty much all the tests I have seen seem to show only minor improvements. 

It's a really good codec and in Resolve 17, just use DaVinci Wide Gamut and the HDR grading tools and you've got a ton of flexibility. 

As for autofocus...

 

You’re actually right Mark. 

I probably shouldn’t be making this upgrade. matching the cameras I have isn’t hard and the PQ is excellent out of both. I got into Color grading as a hobby and just learned Resolve by studying Juan Melara and Marc Weilage on their forum posts and i sold my a6500 for the XT3. The a6500 photos kinda sucked but the XT3 is just fantastic in that realm. 
 

my only real gripe (if you can even call it that, is that I never really trusted it on a gimbal (AF for concerts) and was a god shitty awful at framing and manually focusing the Pocket4k with one hand on a gimbal. Just can’t do it to a level where I’d take someone’s money in exchange for it. Hence my search. If I were to sell both of my cameras and put that cash toward a modern ff mirror less that can honestly achieve the PQ of the P4K but the ease of use, storage and AF capability of a native lens system then I was all ears. 
 

however it doesn’t appear there is anything on the market that would justify it at this point. Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

[DanielVranic]

But 1 quick question.. am I reading this right that the S5 outputs 5.9K RAW to the NinjaV? 

Is there a catch to that?

[mercer]

14 minutes ago, DanielVranic said:

But 1 quick question.. am I reading this right that the S5 outputs 5.9K RAW to the NinjaV? 

Is there a catch to that?

It's ProRes Raw, so it works best in FCPX. I think Premiere supports it. Davinci Resolve does not work with ProRes Raw.

[DanielVranic]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

It's ProRes Raw, so it works best in FCPX. I think Premiere supports it. Davinci Resolve does not work with ProRes Raw.

It could always be transcoded right? 

[chadandreo]

The XT3 is a mirrorless beast.
There’s nothing that you did with the A6500 that you couldn’t do with the XT3, if not better imho. 
update the firmware and connect the cam to the ronin and you’ll be able to control the camera while powering/charging the battery.  

[DanielVranic]

10 minutes ago, chadandreo said:

The XT3 is a mirrorless beast.
There’s nothing that you did with the A6500 that you couldn’t do with the XT3, if not better imho. 
update the firmware and connect the cam to the ronin and you’ll be able to control the camera while powering/charging the battery.  

I think I might have to sell a lens or two and get some native glass. 

[mercer]

15 minutes ago, DanielVranic said:

It could always be transcoded right? 

I assume you could as long as you use a program that has ProRes Raw support. There's no point in shooting raw if you can't adjust the raw data at the camera level.

[DanielVranic]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

I assume you could as long as you use a program that has ProRes Raw support. There's no point in shooting raw if you can't adjust the raw data at the camera level.

Great point. Totally outfitting the Fuji for hybrid shooting is probably the best bet. 
 

So can the Fuji be charged by a Ronin RSC? 
 

since I do 50/50 gimbal and tripod work I would definitely want to make sure I could switch from other the other and still maintain consistent power and audio. 

[EphraimP]

17 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

Great point. Totally outfitting the Fuji for hybrid shooting is probably the best bet. 
 

So can the Fuji be charged by a Ronin RSC? 
 

since I do 50/50 gimbal and tripod work I would definitely want to make sure I could switch from other the other and still maintain consistent power and audio. 

The Ronin S supports Fuji, both charging and stop/start record. So I assume their other gimbals do as well. 

Interestingly, the S can also control Fuji native lens focus with the Ronin focus wheel and no external focus motor. The wheel can control the internal focus motors of the lenses. When they first introduced this in firmware, it canceled out autofocus, meaning all Fuji lenses became manual focus only when the camera was plugged into the gimbal. Now, I believe, autofocus will work and you can use the wheel to adjust focus even while autofocus in on.

Not 100 percent sure about that though. I should probably test it. Shows how much I use my gimbal these days.

 

 

[DanielVranic]

Very cool. Did not know that.

Most of the features of these new gimbals, just stop start, and charging sounds awesome. Can these new Ronin's mount a monitor like the Ninja on it? 

I have a Fieyu-tech (spelling?) that even fully charged is just not... stable. No amount of tweaking has ever made it work really well so I have given up on it. 

Trying to plan out kitting the XT3 right now is a total pain. I have everything BUT audio figured out, but well see when it all gets here.

 

 

[TomTheDP]

If you want good auto focus I'd get Canon or Sony. I've tried Fuji and it's just not reliable enough, I end up going back to manual focus and at that point why I am I paying for auto focus glass. It's an expensive feature. 

 

[DanielVranic]

20 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

If you want good auto focus I'd get Canon or Sony. I've tried Fuji and it's just not reliable enough, I end up going back to manual focus and at that point why I am I paying for auto focus glass. It's an expensive feature. 

 

I totally agree with you when I used adapted glass, when I rented the XF stuff it was on-par with my A73 in my own tests, of course. I could be way off base.

[TomTheDP]

6 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

I totally agree with you when I used adapted glass, when I rented the XF stuff it was on-par with my A73 in my own tests, of course. I could be way off base.

I only have experience with the Fuji 23mm f2, 50mm f2, and the 18-55 2.8. The 18-55 is pretty reliable but the other two would randomly lose focus in simple interview type situations. There was also focus pulsing which isn't that noticeable but once you see it you can't unsee it. Didn't really discover these things until using it quite a bit though. 

[MrSMW]

For whatever reason, when I used Fuji (which was for quite a few years) it was indeed the zooms that work best for video.

It’s mostly why we parted company, - virtually no native glass that suited my needs and I was adapting relatively large/heavy lenses.

My full frame Panasonic set up is smaller and lighter than even native Fuji:

XT3/4 + 16-55mm f2.8 vs Pan S5 + Sigma 28-70mm f2.8

Plus the latter has more range because if used in APSC mode (which it has to be for the 4K 50p I mostly shoot) then that Sigma (arrives today!) is more like a 42-105mm compared with Fuji’s 24-83mm, so can shoot between 28-105mm. Actually closer to 110mm if in pixel to pixel mode!

The Fuji focuses better and does have nice film sims however 👌

[DanielVranic]

Almost done!

Ninja is coming this week, so I am excited.  Gunna put it on top of the mini handle dead center.

Footage is fantastic out of this kit lens, total clean and colors are great. Adapting my Resolve Powergrade to Fuji has been a struggle, so probably going to start that over from scratch entirely, but worth it.

Thinking of getting a new gimbal to replace my AK4500. Not going to lie, was extremely let down with that product. It simply is not smooth. The new Ronin RSC2 seems like a great fit.

 

[TomTheDP]

6 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

Almost done!

Ninja is coming this week, so I am excited.  Gunna put it on top of the mini handle dead center.

Footage is fantastic out of this kit lens, total clean and colors are great. Adapting my Resolve Powergrade to Fuji has been a struggle, so probably going to start that over from scratch entirely, but worth it.

Thinking of getting a new gimbal to replace my AK4500. Not going to lie, was extremely let down with that product. It simply is not smooth. The new Ronin RSC2 seems like a great fit.

I don't think you'll be disappointed with a Ronin or Zhiyun product. 

[DanielVranic]

I am having a really hard deciding between these two setups. As I am probably going to be on the gimbal 70-80% of the time, I have to consider that.

1. Ninja V +Cage + WD kit + Ronin RSC2 Basic kit - $1335, and I can't use RavenEye on the RSC2, only 150mins record time at HQ.

2. Shinobi + Cage + RSC2 Pro kit + 2x more (i have 5)V90 Prograde Cards ~ $1390 but I have RavenEye, and 400 mins of record time, only at 400mbit HEVC.

I lean toward 2, because of how much I use gimbals for my workflow, but also having a robust codec is important to me.

[EphraimP]

5 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

I am having a really hard deciding between these two setups. As I am probably going to be on the gimbal 70-80% of the time, I have to consider that.

1. Ninja V +Cage + WD kit + Ronin RSC2 Basic kit - $1335, and I can't use RavenEye on the RSC2, only 150mins record time at HQ.

2. Shinobi + Cage + RSC2 Pro kit + 2x more (i have 5)V90 Prograde Cards ~ $1390 but I have RavenEye, and 400 mins of record time, only at 400mbit HEVC.

I lean toward 2, because of how much I use gimbals for my workflow, but also having a robust codec is important to me.

150 mins record time at HQ (ProRes I'm assuming). What size drive are you using? I can get nine and a half hours of record time on a 1TB ssd on the Ninja, and more than 14 hours with ProRes 422 regular.