Notes On Video

Blackmagic Cinema Camera Problems Solved? Camera Shipping Update: 11/15 | Grant Petty | Blackmagic Forum The good news is that we got a small shipment of sensors that the sensor supplier had tested with their new test setup and they were all ok when we built cameras with them. This is good because they will now be able to see sensors that are contaminated and not ship us anything that's unable to be used to build a camera. Also, the sensor supplier has done a small run of sensors at the new company that's bonding the glass and they got almost a 100% pass rate, which is also great. This means they finally have a solution to bonding on the glass that looks like it will work. Sony F5 and F55 pricing released, by mistake! | Alister Chapman A rough conversion of the prices gives us the following: PMW-F55 Camera Body £23k/$36k PMW-F5 Camera Body £13.6k/$22k ASX-R5 Raw Recorder £4k/$6.5k Sony not doing well financially | Photo Rumors After their stock hit 32 years ...

I wrote about the Final Cut Pro X presentation at Tuesday nights BOSCPUG meeting, and completely left out a part of the meeting that was perhaps as educational as Abba Sahpiro’s talk. Because in addition to that talk, several film makers talked about – and some even showed - their films at the event. To start things off, Dan Berúbe invited two filmmakers who had shown their films at last weekend SNOB Film Festival to get up and briefly talk about their films. Steve Riley came all the way from Texas with his film Shooter . Steve is a professional photographer by trade, and this is his first film. You can see the trailer on YouTube : Shooter Noel Barlow said she is a couple of years out of film school, and directed and produced ‘Giddy in Love,’ a story about a quirky librarian who is ‘looking for love in all the wrong pages.’ With a cast of 12, she described it as a labor of love. Film website : Giddy In Love Director Marie Della Croce and DP Ben Consoli showed their s...

Last nights Boston Creative Pro User Group  meeting featured Abba Shapiro giving a run down on the new features in the 10.0.6 update to Final Cut Pro X . If you haven’t been following Final Cut Pro X ’s evolution, the latest recent upgrade featured a number of UI changes and enhancements, many of which seem to address the complaints that many Final Cut Pro 7 users had when they first tried Final Cut Pro X: Want a preview window as well as a Timeline viewer? FCP X now offers that as an option. Had problems with multi-channel audio? FCP X now lets you Expand Audio Components and start adjusting the individual channels. Frustrated that FCP X didn’t remember the In and Out points for a clip once you start working with another clip? Now FCP X remembers them for you! Found the Magnetic Timeline a little frustrating? Now you can put clips beyond the end of the timeline – it actually inserts a blank slug. You can also move clips that are linked, without having the linked cli...

A Portrait of Stockholm | Den Lennie | F-Stop Academy Shooting with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Zeiss lenses: Why Zeiss? Several reasons really; I like the metal construction as this makes them extremely durable. The ZF .2 are Nikon mount and have built in aperture ring which really does make a tremendous difference when exposing because you can adjust the aperture ring smoothly rather than in stepped increments when using Canon less with electronic iris control. I had two fader ND’s a Heliopan 77mm and a Genus 82mm and a series of adaptor rings for each lens. I’m also using a cheap nikon to canon adaptor that I bough at B&H earlier this summer. Blackmagic Cinema Camera post workflows | Oliver Peters | digitalfilms After Effects offers another solution. You can open CinemaDNG image sequences, make adjustments with its camera raw importer, and then render out final, graded movie files. Naturally, plug-ins like Magic Bullet Looks add more options for custom styles. ...

“GAME CHANGERS” PART 3: CAMERA AND LIGHTING | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine The third part of the series about the production of the low-budget indie movie Game Changers , with filmmakers Rob Imbs (director) and Benjamin Eckstein (cinematographer): Eckstein : The thing that surprised me is how we’ve been lighting the film. We’ve been pretty sparse in what we have been doing, and I am definitely not a believer in “don’t light.” I love lighting. I think about lighting all the time, it’s totally the thing I’m most passionate about. But it was kind of surprising how much we were working with practical lights and just reshaping practical lights rather than bringing in a ton of our own fixtures. I think that is something that would have been different with the AF100. Every Little Thing You Love | Overdue Films | Vimeo The BOSCPUG SuperMeetUp took place last Friday. Unfortunately, I was only able to be there for the first half hour, but I did get to see a great short film,...

Blackmagic Cinema Camera Shipping Update: 11/7 | Grant Petty | Blackmagic Forum Blackmagic continues to update on the progress of the camera, and the problems they have had with the sensors. Evidently the sensor manufacturer switched from one company to another for the bonding of glass to the sensor between the initial test run and the production run. Odd. Our current understanding is that the company that has been bonding on the glass is crap and they have been contaminating the glass when bonding it. Because the sensor suppliers test process was also bad, it meant that no one really knew what was going on and it's been weeks and weeks of confusion. Shooting with the TS3Cine | Justin Hamilton | Vincent Laforet In the end, we came away with some good shots, mostly thanks to the skill of the skater we were working with.  The lesson learned for us was that camera motion is just as important in hi-speed as it is at normal frame rates.  A static camera is a boring camera...

Upcoming Events in Boston This Friday, 9th November is the  BOSCPUG SuperMeetUp .   Then on Tuesday 13th is another event:  BOSCPUG   Visual Storytellers Meet  Featuring JOE FINDER (PARANOIA) & WYNDHAM LEWIS (NURSE JACKIE) Rule Boston Cameras Events: Wed Nov 14: 10am-12noon Maximizing Mass Tax Credits For Your Production : Boston-based Entertainment Attorney, Emily McNamara, answers all your questions about the Massachusetts Film Tax Credits and how your production can take advantage of these valuable incentives. Wed Nov 28: 10am-12noon Canon Full Cinema EOS Line-Up And 4K Workflow : Canon's Technical Speicalist, Ken Rowe, introduces the latest in the Cinema EOS family — the new C100 and C500 cameras and EF Cinema prime lenses — providing a brief overview of their features and a review of the C500's 4K workflow. Thu: Nov 15: 6-8pm Recipe for Success: Jan maliszewski on Directing Cook’s Country : Emmy-nominated director...

Are the F5 and F55 going to be game-changers? | Alister Chapman | XDCAM-User The very thought of 16 bit raw with 14 stops of dynamic range is making me drool, these cameras will seriously encroach on F65 territory and give the Arri Alexa a very hard time indeed, heck even the F5 will give the Alexa a very hard time. A clear sign of just how significant these cameras are is the way Red have slashed the prices of their Epic and Scarlet cameras. Canon C500 is Shipping, but Canon's RAW Implementation is Unlike Any You've Seen Before | Joe Marine | No Film School Basically, instead of sending out an Alpha along with the RAW, it’s sending the other green channel. Since Canon is not starting out with a 16-bit image pipeline like RED and Sony (Canon is only doing 10-bit at best), they are trying to save as much detail as possible by locking in certain attributes. These engineering hacks have worked in the past for Canon, who always seems to pull out better image quality than t...

CHECKING OUT SONY’S NEW NEX-EA50H AT ABEL CINE TECH: ERGONOMICS AND LOW COST TOO | David Leitner | Filmmaker Magazine It proved a joy to operate, too. A rocker switch built into the EA50H’s handgrip drives the 18-200mm at three fixed zoom speeds: slow, slower, and snail’s pace. Perfect for subtle pushes during interviews. A selector switch for the three speeds resides conveniently on the side of the lens. No menu diving required. (Uniquely, there’s also a low-profile, spring-loaded slider switch on the barrel of the lens to operate the zoom on e-Mount cameras lacking handgrips with rocker switches.) Panasonic GH3 real-world test (pre-production firmware) | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Now for better news – the GH3 maintains the insane resolution of the GH2 in video mode. This aspect of the image in 1080p is well up there with the best 1080p cinema cameras costing many times more. It resolves more than the Sony FS100 and has a better internal codec especially in 1080/60p (with nearly do...

Red, Sony and Canon 4K | Michael Sutton | WideOpenCamera Mike Sutton takes a look at the 4K options: The next thing Red needs to do is to have 4K video outputs on the camera.  You cannot tout resolution yet be highly compressed without any other codec options.  I don’t see how these go hand in hand.  If image quality via resolution is everything, then surely resolution aficionados would want the ability to tap off an uncompressed RAW feed.  I have a feeling that RED will put out another camera much sooner that people expected. 8-Bit is Still 8-Bit, Why DSLRs Are No Match for the 12-Bit Blackmagic Cinema Camera | Joe Marine | No Film School People have done as much as possible to argue against the test that was performed with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera by Marco Solorio and OneRiver Media. That test compared the 5D Mark III and the BMCC, and even though the superior resolution and dynamic range of one of those cameras should have been obvious, many still pr...

“GAME CHANGERS” PART 1: GETTING STARTED | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Filmmakers Rob Imbs (director) and Benjamin Eckstein (cinematographer) are currently shooting a low-budget independent feature film, Game Changers, a drama/comedy about two video-gamers who are approaching their late twenties. With an initial target budget of $30,000, Game Changers might be better described as a shoestring budget feature, given that they began shooting with only half that amount raised. Thread: Attitude adjustment... | Jim Jannard | RedUser Red announces new prices: Now… here is the new pricing:  5K EPIC-X Brain- $19,000 5K EPIC-X Monochrome Brain- $20,000 5K EPIC-M Brain- $24,000 5K/4K Scarlet Brain- $7,9504. 5K RED ONE M-X Battle Tested- $4000 (includes CF or SSD recording module). The RED ONE is End of Life. Battle tested is all that will be available from here on out. RED Cuts EPIC Price in Half: EPIC-X Now $19,000, SCARLET Under $8K, RED ONE Goes 4.5K for $4K | J...

SONY ANNOUNCES F5, F55 AND OTHER TOYS | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine As interesting as the new technology – and promised 14 stops of dynamic range – is, these two cameras also show that Sony has been listening to, and are making a serious effort to woo customers. While the image quality of the PMW-F3 was widely lauded, it wasn’t a shoulderable camera – without a third party rig – and while the LCD Panel was good quality, it wasn’t in the right position when you had the camera on your shoulder. Sony has reworked the design, added a shoulder rig option, and will offer three EVF options; an improved LCD EVF, an OLED EVF and a 7″ LCD. Introducing the PMW-F55 | Sony Europe Richard Lewis, Cinematography Product Specialist, provides a detailed, hands-on tour of the new CineAlta 4K cameras. All the key features, including the flexible modular structure, multiple recording formats, menu controls and important accessories are shown. The 18 minute video also demonstrates recording...

Sony F5 and F55 (From the horses mouth – not speculation…) | Den Lennie | F-Stop Academy The truth is we have never had it so good as film makers.  There are a truly incredible range of tools now from all the major manufacturers.  We win on all fronts.  I don;t see the F55 as a camera I’d ever own but rent for sure.  The F5 may be one to invest in but until we know pricing who knows.Lets not forget that just because these new camera exists does not make the F3 with SLog and less of a beast and the FS700 and FS100 are still incredibly powerful visual tools.  It always comes down to what you do with them… SONY LAUNCH THE F5 AND F55 4K CAMERAS: MATT ALLARD GIVES HIS VIEW | Matt Allard | DSLR News Shooter Firstly, I’ll give you my personal opinion of these models based on the specifications: on paper these certainly look very attractive indeed, with Sony really listening to the end user and offering cinematographers two very good cameras.  From workfl...

Breaking news: All you need to know about Sony's new "F" cameras | Ned Soltz | RedSharkNews Officially, no price, though Philip Bloom says $18K for the F5 and $50K for the F55 : The PMW-F5 is based around the same 4K 11.6 megapixel sensor as the FS-700. The F5 records internally MPEG-2 50Mbps 4:2:2, SR 220Mbps 4:2:2 (future free firmware upgrade records to SR 440 Mbps 4:2:2 or RGB 4:4:4) or XAVC 4:2:2 HD or 2K at frame rates up to 120 fps). With the newly introduced R5 4K recorder, the SDI output from camera will record 2K or 4K 16-bit linear raw to Sony’s new recording media AXSM. The PMW-F55 shares the same color filter array as the top of the line PMW-F65 as well as incorporating a similar global electronic shutter to eliminate the rolling shutter issues found in CMOS sensors. It adds to the F5 up to 180 fps in XAVC 4:2:2 HD and internal XAVC 4:2:2 2K up to 240fps as well as 4K with frame rates up to 120 fps. The F55 supports both QFHD for no-cropping to 4K ...

CAMERAS: Thoughts on the Canon C300’s Color Science | Art Adams | ProVideoCoalition In the end I used Cinema2 gamma, because it did the nicest job of holding highlight detail in the clouds while adding a pleasing contrast to the rest of the image, and the EOS Standard color matrix with matrix gain set to -30, which gave me accurate but understated color that looked like what I saw by eye. I white balanced the camera in sunlight and came up at 6100K, which looked great.  At last! Lightworks for Linux will be available starting on October 30th | Editshare The version that we will be releasing in October will be very similar, and also similar to the current Windows version that many people are already using.What version of Linux is required to run the Lightworks alpha?Initially it will be Ubuntu 12.04 only, with an aim of supporting other versions at a later date.  Dual Viewers in 10.0.6 | Final Cut Pro X Tutorial | Dan Allen | YouTube In this HD Voice tutorial fo...

Everything changes... IMPORTANT post | Jannard | RedUser Red to drop the price of the EPIC on November 1st: So. We could easily pretend and invent a new model to justify a lower price with higher performance. You are too smart for that. So are we. Instead... we will just lower the price of EPIC.EPIC continues to be modular. Dragon will be an upgrade. Meizler is a module. All is good in the world if you accept the fact that everything gets better, cheaper, faster and for less money over time.If you bought an EPIC in the past 30 days... we will offer a credit towards accessories. That amount will be posted along with the new EPIC pricing. Nov. 1st is when it happens. The Business of Screenwriting: The Power of “No” | Scott Myers | Go Into The Story Sure, you would have been out the money, but you would have earned some creative karma. And if you have the good enough sense to reject a project that is clearly not one you have any business writing, something good will come your w...

Interview with Canon’s Mike Burnhill on the Canon 1D C 4K DSLR | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Mike Burnhill: While the EOS-1D C is based on the core specifications of the EOS-1D X, it has been further optimised to provide even higher quality video performance that’s suitable for cinematic production. While both cameras feature the same sensor and processor, several of the circuit boards are different due to the high data rates and internal heat generated by up to 4K shooting. Capturing the Essence of the Edit | Ron Dawson | Dare Dreamer One of the most effective ways you can shorten an edit is to get rid of all the ums, pauses, and tangential thoughts an interviewee gives. Usually the more nervous a person is, the more of these they will have. So it behooves you to make them as comfortable and at ease as possible during the interview itself. Shoot Like a Pro Series - Interview Basics | Sony Professional | YouTube Basic interview lighting in a video tutorial: In this episode...