Jump to content

David Mawson

Basic Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    206

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by David Mawson

  1. David Mawson
    Yes, but those options are expensive - at least compared to a $2000 budget. He's now being told to buy a $1500 body, a $500 wide, plus the body needs a decent power source, rigging to shoot hand held, a tripod, more lenses, ideally a monitor - that's a $3000-$4000 bill. The budget's $2000. Budgets are things to stay inside of. (And no one has even raised the question of whether the OP has a computer powerful enough to make edit and grade 4K pro res..) Instead he could just buy a $500 apsc body, a $100 wide, a couple of other - probably even cheaper - lenses. And he'd still have excellent quality with the right body. He could even buy a 5dii, shoot full frame raw, and come nowhere near blowing his budget. Yes, a $3000 BM build would shoot better - but it's out of budget. And he'd learn just as much with the right cheaper camera. Which is the point - this is a camera for learning on. The BM buys more image quality than a $150 EOS-M with Magic Lantern, but no more knowledge.
  2. David Mawson
    As no one else is responding, I'll give my extremely inexperienced opinion. Which is that I'd doubt the China ball has the oomph alone. If it works out, fine. But I'd be ready to put a heavily diffused 120d on either side of the central camera and backlight with something else - maybe just a reflector.
  3. David Mawson
    Actually some of the m43 kit lenses are great - a lot of samples of the 12-32 have excellent image quality. But you can't pull focus on them. So as a camera for learning, they're pretty awful. Well, yes: you can fit almost any lens. But so what? Without an expensive XL speedbooster you're going to have a very limited choice of focal lengths. And the point of accessing a large range of lenses is primarily to get those focal lengths. An aps-c mirrorless is much less limiting. The crop is less severe and you can get the original focal length of any 35mm stills lens back with a cheap generic speedbooster. You get a much wider real choice of lenses this way. Even without a speedbooster you can use an old 24mm stills lens to get a wide angle on aps-c, but on an m43 it will be a normal lens. Plus there' are a lot of cheap good-enough modern Chinese lenses for aps-c with mechanical focus rings and even de-clicked aperture. You can often get these in m43 too, but again the crop factor messes everything up.
  4. David Mawson
    I said that you can't afford to buy a BMPC - not once the cost of a speedbooster, lenses and power are added. Again, you really need to read what people are telling you.
  5. David Mawson
    Given how complex film cameras are and how precisely they have to work, I'd be careful about making assumptions here. They're very different beasts to 35mm stills cameras and do a very different job - think how much film they need to expose and how carefully the exposures need to be synched with the film advance. To be reliable they will need regular maintenance. And even a basic clean and lube can be $500-$2000 of skilled work:
  6. David Mawson
    I think you're missing all the more intelligent points being made in this thread. I strongly suggest that you understand the points made before spending money. If you're learning how to shoot like a pro, then certain features are essential - eg repeatable focus pulls - or very near to it - eg waveforms and vectorscopes and much more per-pixel data than than a G95 gives. As for what a speed booster is - you really should google that sort of thing, yes? Questions to humans should be saved for when you really need them. (And the g95's IQ doesn't look that great to me, even for the price. It's more of a vlogging camera - it prioritises features like IBIS over a decent codec.)
  7. David Mawson
    It could easily be only that. Or even less. Grading is priced by the colourist's time, not the running time of the project. A one hour documentary might get graded in a day while a music video with lots of cuts and fancy grade with lots of masks might take several times longer.
  8. David Mawson
    If you're referring to native m43 lenses (which are often not cheap or plastic...) then they do a very significant problem. Which is, with very few exceptions, they're focus-by-wire only, without a linear focus mode. So you don't get repeatable focus, which is a pain. In fact come to think of it, given the cost of XL speedboosters and manual focus wide angles for m43, I'm a little shocked that the OP is considering m43 - I'd have thought his school would have warned against it. There are lots of very nicely priced asp-c cameras that can be used with and without a speedbooster (and you only need a standard model, not the expensive XL) to get a full range of manually focussed lenses. A GH5 might be a good choice for weddings or corporate video, but AL is right - it's a bad one as a learning tool. You really need to go aps-c or fullframe.
  9. David Mawson
    Just out of curiousity: Why? They're not exactly the only two cameras in existence... And PC's point about output format is a very good one. A "thick" image (meaning one with more bits per pixel) at lower resolution is often a lot better to work with than a high resolution thin one. There's a big difference between log and good log.
  10. David Mawson
    I can't believe that the cost of sending film to be developed was a large of the budget of a major studio production. But the cost of re-accessing locations for re-shoots could be a problem. With digital you know when you've got the shot and keep on until you have. Btw - I think "dailies" were delivered daily, but often lagged several days.It was more a question of going to a location or re-building a set to shoot if there was a problem. I'm not a professional, but I'd suggest that the biggest change to costs with digital is lighting. Modern sensors need a lot less of it than film.
  11. David Mawson
    The current BMPCC doesn't need a speedbooster for m43 lenses. It's an active mount too, so you get OIS. However, I think your general point is a good one. And $2000 isn't nearly enough to get a working BM16K set-up when you consider the external power you need and lenses. My own suggestion would be to get a used EOS-M (the original model) for $150 and put Magic Lantern on it. Mirrorless super-35 gives you a huge range of lenses and ML gives you raw, false colour, waveforms, and a vectorscope. Shoot with it for a couple of months then buy the expensive camera knowing what features you really want. Either sell the body for what you paid or keep it as a b-cam - you an even put a viltrox speedbooster on it for another $150. Otherwise for $2000 I'd go for a used Fuji XE3, vintage lenses (maybe Minolta, because they all tend to have the same look) and a cheap speed booster and a basic 5 inch monitor.
  12. David Mawson
    Used ones start at four or five times that price. That seems to be a similar degree of exaggeration. I think checking reviews would quickly show that BM users aren't melting.
  13. David Mawson
    I appreciate the suggestion, but no. Between rain - this is the UK - the need to put someone outside to stop gear being stolen, it really wouldn't be a great idea. Plus it only works if there is a window and you can the subject near it, in which case either of those two cameras could get the job done without lights. The point of using lights is to handle the worst cases in a way that gets a consistent look. And psychologically, I think the problems are even worse. Gear on the other side of the window is still gear, but now you're shooting near a window and drawing attention from neighbours aimed at that window.
  14. David Mawson
    Yep. That's the biggest problem of all. And getting it up high would be appalling business. You could steer the light with reflectors and fresnels, I suppose. But honestly, if I thought a system like this was viable outside of a few very special niches - eg a low budget film that needed a lot of light and had a tech savvy crew - then the last thing I'd do is talk about it publicly.
  15. David Mawson
    No, with the right tank design you should be able to convection cool. The LEDs would heat oil and it would rise to the cross stroke, where the large surface area would let it cool fast, then it would sink again. To aid flow I'd put baffles in the tank like those shown in the convection cooling system here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_immersion_cooling And I'd probably make the top of the tank much wider than the body - think of an L rotated through 90 degrees, or maybe just a T. That way you'd have a lot of air-cooling at the top. The baffle design would need a little modification for that. And/or the top could have the fluid rising into a system of fins or you could half immerse a system of copper fins in the liquid. Those would be my concerns, yes.
  16. David Mawson
    Excellent editing. Doesn't look low budget at all. The only ghost of a problem was that some of the dialogue in the early corridor scene was indistinct.
  17. David Mawson
    Bruce Sterling especially Schismatrix, Holy Fire and short story collections. James Ellroy, especially the original LA books. Chester Himes. Walter Mosley. Bulgakov's Master & Margarita. Nabakov. Babel's Red Cavalry. Seth Morgan's Homeboy. The Godfather.
  18. David Mawson
    This is probably a crazy thought and I'm certainly not willing to try it, but sometimes PC builders fill the cases of overclocked machines with cooling oil. Really - this is NOT a joke. Perhaps an aquarium filled with oil and LEDs would work. The LEDs would need attaching to the glass and a heatsink attaching to each to transfer the heat to the oil, after which convection cooling should kick in. You'd want to keep the case vertical and direct the light with reflectors or fresnels. Good luck getting insurance... (And I hereby disclaim all legal liability if someone wants to try this.)
  19. David Mawson
    UK lighting prices are shocking. The best deal seems to be Aputure - good CRI, no reports of fan noise. I'm thinking of one of these https://fenchel-janisch.com/cheap-led-lights-aputure-amaran-528-review/ ..If it's a bit anemic, I could aim two at the same diffuser or bounce. And it has some convenient softbox options, although they seem a little small - https://www.aputure.com/products/ez-box
  20. David Mawson
    Unfortunately renting won't work out well - the plan is for quite a few short interviews on different days. That's an interesting point about bicolour - something I hadn't considered at all. And I appreciate the reminder!
  21. David Mawson
    Thanks - that helps a lot too! The other thing I'm discovering, coming from stills land, is that cheaper LED systems with decent CRI often have nasty fan noise...
  22. David Mawson
    That's excellent. I started with that plus a reflector for fill and a rim light, then when I found the set-up I posted, I never considered that I could get the same outcome by simplifying the LED softbox system. And I could still carry a combined reflector and flag and get someone to hold it or tape it to something in an emergency. Thanks!
  23. David Mawson
    No, they really don't - not the ones with an electronic shutter and a "stealth mode". However, the e-shutter can suffer from jello. And Sony have an appalling reputation for support among stills photographers, although I think they're trying to fix that for pro's now.
  24. David Mawson
    The shoots will be in day time. I'd consider blacking out windows to avoid mixed lighting too intrusive. And shooting with an inconsistent lighting look, high ISO, and mixed lighting sounds like a recipe for a disaster, even with an A7s.
  25. David Mawson
    Sorry: I should have said that I wasn't planning on using that exact light. It's the overall set-up. Ie - Light bounced off the reflector to make it big and soft - Flag to protect the interviewee from distracting light and increase contrast - Those small tweaks to the flag with white paper Re stands, I was planning on using large folding reflectors or stitching together something custom. It's indoors, so no winds. There's no problem putting together something out of instamorph and kite spars to hold them up while looking less intimidating than a normal stand.
×
×
  • Create New...