Aapo Lettinen

the Ninja V is quite handy for a onboard recorder. You will want to have couple of extra NP-F batteries with it at all times, it is pretty power hungry because you will use it as a monitor as well (for example the cheaper style NP-F960 or 970 batteries. the cheapest ones would work but something with decent quality cells like Dynacore is great ) you can purchase one 500GB ssd first and then decide later how much extra storage you actually need. Normal 2.5" ssds can be used in the plastic "caddy" and there is also the special purpose Sony and Angelbird drives which are already externally the right size to fit to the Ninja without a caddy. Remember though that these special drives don't fit to normal SATA hdd docks and you need the proprietary atomos dock to read them on computer whereas with normal sata ssd you could remove it from the plastic caddy and attach it to a normal dock to read the files. Not a problem at all and easy to do but just something to remember when planning your workflow :)

Congrats for the new camera Samuel! I'm sure it will work very well for your purposes. I'm a little sceptic though how practical the C200 update would be if it takes about 2 years to get the money, there will be much better alternatives then. but probably you can find one from the used market for good price :) For us the biggest advantage of the Z6 +atomos combo is the ability to choose the lenses more freely when shooting in low light. For example I just shot some doc material yesterday in a small WW2 bunker where the only light sources were a tiny streak of sunlight coming from a blocked opening in the wall and a little bit of ambience skylight coming from a 10" hole in the ceiling. You can see your way around when your eyes adjust to the darkness... for the camera to get a visually similar view of the scene I boosted it to 12800 ISO with 1/40 shutter speed and still got a decent image for our purposes. The difference to a normal camera was, I was using the kit 24-70 F4 zoom lens the whole time! with most other cameras one would probably choose a F1.4 prime and would had the additional disadvantage of very shallow DOF which would make shooting even more complicated. The Z6 +atomos+zoom lens was much faster to work with in that setup (or almost any setup if comparing the practicality of a zoom to a special purpose high speed prime lens) so it is not that it would not be possible to shoot similar scene with for example the FS7 but it would be highly unpractical for our needs when comparing to the Z6 setup which is maybe 5 times faster to work with because of the lenses when shooting that kind of scene. For other purposes like daytime shooting or high contrast scene I would take the FS7 or other higher dynamic range camera any time. That's why I called the Z6 a 'special purpose camera' , it is excellent for certain type of low light scenes but it is not suitable for all types of shooting and it is not, by my opinion, very practical for daylight high contrast shooting. In low light one can, on the other hand, capture some absolutely magical images with this type of cameras so they are a great addition in the toolbox as long as you have possibility to use other cameras for the very high contrast scenes

if you haven't done it already it is good to check how well your viewfinder markings align with the camera gate. there is a nice trick to do this by projecting the viewfinder image and gate aperture to a wall or paper using the taking lens: 1. put the camera on a tripod directly facing a wall where you can place a piece of paper for drawing the markings. remove the magazine 2. with the lens on, rotate the shutter to the viewing position. you may now want to reduce lighting in the room to see the projection more clearly... 3. shine a very bright flashlight to the viewfinder of the camera and adjust the takeup lens so that it projects the viewfinder markings clearly to the piece of paper on the wall. hold the light there and draw the lines to the paper with pencil 4. keep everything locked in place including the camera, paper and lens settings etc 5. rotate the shutter to the taking position with the magazine removed and attach a small piece of translucent material directly over the aperture on the film channel so that it is fully covered. a small piece of paper will do. try to keep the material flat against the aperture. 6. shine the bright light to the translucent material on the gate and draw the projection on the wall showing the aperture edges. Using a different colour pencil will help a little 7. now you should have a paper where both the actual aperture and actual viewfinder markings align and you can evaluate how much there is difference between what you see vs what you get and where the actual aperture edges are compared to the framelines seen in the viewfinder.

mine works fine with a 6v gel battery on normal speeds, it has the same motor

LEDs are great if you need smaller amount of relatively soft but still directional light, especially if on battery power and if you need to be able to adjust it quickly. they are still relatively expensive option if you need lots of power and you need to decide if you need cheaper to rent package and more power (HMI, Tungsten or Kino Flo) or easier to manage fixtures with shorter total setup times (LED, possibly even battery powered compared to a diffused and gelled tungsten for example) . adjustable colour temperature is a plus but it has the disadvantage of losing lots of lumens when using the adjustable LED for cold light where you tend to need the highest output (night scenes and daylight scenes) . I personally prefer daylight-only LED fixtures for the highest output for normal uses (by my opinion the LEDs are most useful when you need cold light with limited power supply available and need to be able to move the light quickly) and HMI if needing more output or punch. Gelling a daylight LED to tungsten temp is not a huge loss but gelling a tungsten LED up to daylight is nonsense considering the LED fixtures tend to be relatively low output to begin with. Large Kino fixture may still be the best option for uses where you need relatively soft light with relatively high output with limited power available. renting a couple of hundred watts daylight LED fixture is much more expensive than renting a beat up Kino with similar output. If one has unlimited budget OR unlimited power OR unlimited time available then one has lots of options ? the thing with the LEDs is, they are generally pretty low powered fixtures to begin with and for uses where you need to fight the other light sources in the scene they are less useful than for scenes where they can be used for easy and fast to manage supplementary lighting or where you can use the LEDs as the only light sources so that the low power output may not be an issue at all and you can take benefit of the sensitive digital cameras now available to be able to get by with lower overall light levels on set. for fighting sunlight any LED lighting is pretty useless. you are lucky if you can even see that the fixture is switched on ?

People also tend to be more biased the more they have watched videos and read other persons reviews about a camera model and the less they have actually used it by themselves. Another thing is that one cannot accurately compare cameras image quality and look based on the footage other people have shot. You need to know the shooting situations extremely well to be able to compare anything and that is very difficult to arrange without actually testing the camera personally with the kind of scenes you are actually going to shoot with it. That is why I didn't offer any Z6 raw material for you to evaluate...I have some here readily available but there is no point sending it because comparing cameras based on unknown footage is absolutely pointless and would not help you in any way. These are highly subjective things which need to be evaluated personally just like comparing lenses based on the "look and mood they create"

bmpcc speed booster probably does not work with the GH series. the GH5s has for example v-log already enabled in factory and dual iso capabilities. the original GH5 is not as versatile due to the older sensor. the price difference is not that much when starting to calculate it further. purchasing a separate recorder (for example atomos) complicates the choices further because the memory card costs and internal bitrates don't matter then that much anymore. The lens mount thing is very challenging because most of the adapters lack full electronic controls (for example there is no EF to NikonZ adapter which enable electronic aperture adjustments even when normal fully muchanical EF to NZ adapters are common and very affordable) which is why it is easiest to switch camera bodies when you have fully mechanical lenses with aperture rings and mechanical focusing. For example Nikon AI-S lenses are pretty versatile, you can use them with almost any camera with adapters so that you never need to purchase new lenses unless needing certain wide angles or PL mount ones. Sadly the metabones ef boosters with full lens control are pretty expensive and it may make economically more sense to sell the EF lenses and purchase completely new lenses than to spend lots of money to the booster to adapt the old ones. The Chinese speed booster copies may be actually pretty OK for normal uses but they don't have electronics and are thus worthless with electronic EF lenses

That may be relatively easy to solve because you have lots of potentially incompatible lenses. 1. Sell the incompatible lenses you currently have and use the money to buy the camera body or if the shop allows you can directly trade them in for the new camera body 2. Purchase the new lenses with financing, you can surely find a shop which allows that 3. The end result the same but easier to manage the financing options

It DOES NOT output raw video yet. that is under development. there is a great difference between a promised feature and a delivered one. Occasionally camera manufacturers may not even deliver ever or only apply the promised feature only to the next camera model and not the current one

Yes I was referring the very slow response of that lens's electronic focusing which is very annoying and makes working it pretty slow even if you just shoot some plates. It is better than no glass at all but I would go for some better glass (or any other glass) if possible

I would not use the kit zoom lens for any cine use because of its horrible latency. You will have hard time focusing with it. As for the look difference, I am sure the colorist can match the footages from the two sensors very well so there is only minor differences. The codecs is not a particular problem if you expose the fs7 well. They tend to have more noisy sensors than f5 so the codec will catch the blue specking etc quicker

Because the OP already has a collection of EF lenses (I assume the electric ones like canon L) then the best solution could be the GH5s with metabones ef booster so that the existing lenses can be used and the setup would be as versatile as possible. As I mentioned the Z6 works best as a special purpose camera. Our crew uses one for cityscapes night shooting with long tele lenses and low light gimbal stuff. It is excellent for both of those as long as the dynamic range is not needed and you can live with the other limitations. I mean, it is a nice little camera with great colours and image quality for what it is if you use it with the atomos. But the 9+ stops and lack of uhd/4k high speed is just not good enough for daytime shooting nowadays if you plan to use it as a main camera and for most uses the 4000-5000 usd for the camera+recorder and accessories without lenses is too much for a camera setup with that kind of limitations. As a night low light b-camera it is wonderful though if you need that kind of system for your projects and can arrange good lenses for it

I think the Z6 is best for uses where you need a documentary camera for very low light shooting (iso 6400, 12000 and 25600) and have possibility to use the external 10bit prores recorder with it. For general indie use the GH5s with a cheaper speed booster would be more practical and versatile and much cheaper. Or the Pocket 4k if you can wait the camera for half a year

I havent used those other camera models but have some experience of the Z6. The menu system is not simple with these cameras either, you will want to test one in the shop. The Z6 also lacks video scopes other than zebra so you really want to have an external display with it, for example the Ninja V which also has recording capabilities and has really nice scopes. The atomos raw update is not out yet so you are stuck with 10bit nlog even with an external recorder. Also the dynamic range is pretty modest in video shooting, something like 9 or 10 stops of really usable range which you actually can see (remember that camera manufacturers and articles always exaggerate the dynamic range of a camera and the real practical range is always at least one or two stops lower so they would list this camera as 12 stops probably even if it really has the 9 or 10 of usable range currently) but its not super bad. The camera is pretty sensitive and the low pass filter is really nice to have so no difficult aliasing problems to worry about. There is lens adapters available for EF lenses (no electric controls, only a mechanical adapter) and PL mount (the ciecio adapter is very nice quality) so it is pretty versatile

Partially gelling a light for making two different colour temperatures and spreads/hardnesses from single light (in this case making a "sunset light" from a small window on an indie shoot with single 650w tungsten fresnel)

if doing moonlight you might want to control the daylight ambience with flags and frames to make it more directional and single source looking. for warm sunset look it is possible in some cases to create both the warm "sunlight" and cooler "sky ambience" with the single source by using partial gelling and diffusion on a frame or light. For example, one can take a large piece of diffusion media and cut a hole to the center where one would attach a piece of clear CTO... then one would have a hard center light with lower colour temperature and cooler, dimmer and softer ambience light coming from the other parts of the frame. ND gels or CTB could added if needed to adjust the balance between the two. one could also just partially cover a frame with CTO and partially with diffusion, for example 251, and add some 1/2ctb or ND or more diffusion over the 251 if needed. OR use two or more frames side by side if that is easier.

Lomo OCT18 lenses with an PL adapter can be very lightweight and it is possible to attach a focus gear to one easily and you can clean+lubricate the focus gears by yourself so they are easy to service. for handheld the newer black versions of the 50/2, 35/2 or 28/2 and the newer Rafcamera adapter which enables smooth focusing. It could be possible to get two or three lenses with adapters and gears for about 1000 euros if you can find ones which are in great optical condition (not scratched and cracked to hell like most of the ebay stuff seems to be at the moment) I am not sure though how they would clear the shutter of the 235, never tried them with that adapter on film cameras though used them on Konvas a lot

there is affordable PL to C-mount adapters available on ebay and other places, would those work instead of having a hard PL conversion? you would probably like to have separate support system anyway unless doing very heavy modifications to the camera (especially if it's a turret model) so a separate adapter would probably work nearly as well as a hard conversion and would be much cheaper and easier to arrange

it may work on special situations but if you use white background you will very easily generate spill/contamination problems from other lights you use. so the green itself will be fine but as soon as you try to light your subject the other normal lights will spill to the white background and contaminate your green with white light causing extreme saturation problems and making a clean key difficult. That is the reason why it's rarely done, even if it sounds tempting at first to just use ANY white background instead of having a proper green screen and just "color it with green light because it's easier" . the thing is, IT'S NOT even remotely as easy as using a truly green background from the start and will become exponentially more difficult when your subject light levels rise. I would maybe use the technique on special occasions depending on the subject lighting but for any normal greenscreen stuff it is much easier to just have a truly green background to begin with. You can of course enhance the background green with super green light if needed :)

one of my friends does lots of nature documentary shooting with Varicam35 and the Canon 50-1000 lens. it is very useful combination and sensitive if you need S35 sensor

Blackmagic products would be very nice purchases if one just likes to walk by a shop window and sees a nice camera there which they even happen to have in stock and then just goes and buys it right away, "here's my Visa, wrap it up with couple of Vlocks and a tripod and those lenses" :rolleyes: When you have to order them and they are promised to deliver and then there is none for half a year it just does not work at all :blink:

you mean this or another new model? https://www.provideocoalition.com/blackmagic-design-announces-ursa-mini-pro-4-6k-g2/ the high speed would be pretty neat for the price. though I am a little sceptic about actual delivery dates as usual B)

Yep. I just canceled my order of the Pocket4k and will look for other options now for a camera. that's what happens if a company does not deliver their product on time: they will lose money. **** Blackmagic <_<

Yes you can use normal generator for tungsten as long as the basic voltage regulation works in the genny so that it does not go excessively over normal. Hmi lights are very picky about voltage variations and they really need an inverter generator to work reliably. You may not be able to even strike one if you are 15v under the rated voltage for example. If you only need small amount of cheap lights then tungsten is fine. If you need hmi type of light for the output I would recommend a 1.2k with small suitcase type inverter generator. Vlock powered led panels are an option as well though they are nowhere near the output of an hmi and you cant get hard really narrow light from them

It also may have serious colour shifts because of the layers ageing on different rates. I shot a similar type expired exr50 roll some years ago which came out super green and it was not possible to grade it to fully normal looking image. also had pumping grain in the shadows, maybe due to different temperatures between the sides of the roll when in storage. Could surely be used for art projects though and your roll may be in usable condition if stored correctly