Messages

226

Lenses / Re: Buying my first L lens...which one is best for video?

« on: January 04, 2012, 11:08:36 PM »

What are you hoping to record?  The 70-200mm focal length (which I've only used briefly on the 5dII) is wickedly telephoto for general purpose video.  The image is amazing, at least on the f2.8 II and presumably on the f4 as well.  For like wildlife or whatnot it would be wonderful and it's nice for portraiture and music video inserts, possibly, but those aren't the most useful focal lengths for most video.

Not to mention a telephoto lens increases perceived skew.  So, if you don't have a tripod...yes, you would want IS very much.  But really you want a tripod.  With a real fluid head.  Everyone skimps on this.  Don't.

For sports a long lens is great if you're by the sidelines, but if you can get close to the action longer lenses are way more exciting.  For narrative stuff, 24-70mm (on the 5dII or 17-55mm (on the 7d) is almost objectively the best choice.  But for fun, dynamic stuff, the wider the better...

The sharpness of an L lens really won't matter that much for video, but the lack of distortion, the magic color (which isn't real), the wide f-stops, the lack of fall off, the good ergonomics, and the good bokeh will.  But any decent lens should be fine at regular stops.  Even the lowly kit lens and 55-250mm IS do great for video (even at f5.6 excepting the 55-250mm's insane fall off, but no worse than the overrated 17-55mm IS) but they're quite slow.

Depends what type of videos you'll be shooting.

My recommendations are:
16-35mm L
24-70mm L
17-40mm L

simply because I film snowboarding/longboarding and I need a good regular telephoto as well as a nice wide lens. 

IS helps in certain instances, but really it's not too noticeable in my opinion and I don't always use it.

Not bad advice...  I'd throw in the 24-105mm f4 L as a general purpose lens for the 5dII if you get that, especially since you won't need the extra stop so much outdoors.

Seriously, though, buy based on focal length and not "L" vs not.  What focal lengths do you use most now?  Do you want to go wider or tighter than your current lenses let you go?

227

EOS Bodies / Re: C 300 is not an alternative to 35mm motion picture film.

« on: January 02, 2012, 05:06:11 PM »

That's a little harsh.  The codec might not be great, but the C300 makes a lot of huge advancements over the 7d in areas that matter more:  a reduction in aliasing, vastly superior low light, better latitude, almost no skew, etc.  Footage straight out of the C300 looks fantastic.

The codec does lag behind pretty seriously, though.  I've heard claims that the F3 with s-log is useable even in XDCAM, but I doubt it.  Never had much luck grading material from 8 bit MPEG-based codecs.  8 bit 4:2:2 is not enough space to capture a flat image and retain tonality when grading.  More disappointing, the uncompressed output on the C300 is apparently only 8 bit, putting it a step behind the F3 in that respect.

The C300 looks great for documentaries, tv series, etc. so for anyone who's considering between it and film for that--I can see it as a viable alternative.  But I agree that it's not competitive with the Alexa and Red for theatrical exhibition, just based on specs alone.

That said, it's almost certainly good enough that lighting, cinematography, and direction become the primary issue with it--good enough that anyone who knows what they're doing can get a solid product.  Even with the 7d you had to watch out for skew an aliasing to the point it was frustrating shooting anything with camera moves or detailed fabric.  The codec isn't holding you back THAT far and if it is, just rent an Alexa already.  If you're talented and successful enough that the difference between an 8-bit and 12-bit codec is holding your craft back substantially (i.e. you're shooting for theatrical release), you can afford to rent a $50,000 camera instead of a $20,000 one.

228

Lenses / Re: Lens recommendations for real estate interior photography please

« on: December 27, 2011, 03:50:06 PM »

It sounds like you've got the right attitude and I'm sorry for my critical tone, but it really is foolish going into this without appropriate gear.

I would skip the 17-40mm zoom (the 24mm-70mm, which is excellent, covers most of that range already) and get the 17mm TS/E.  I'm a total amateur at photography but the pros I've talked with who've done this professionally and with success wouldn't consider doing interior photography with anything less and even I don't like shooting landscapes without a view camera, not that I get the chance to use mine much anymore.  Remember, you absolutely need to correct for perspective and if you don't use a tilt/shift lens or tech/view camera that means the horizon will be dead-center, which is a very ugly way to compose in general.  In a pinch the zoom will pull it off so long as you compose wide with the aim of correcting/cropping in post, but the correction in Photoshop will show up at 4200 pixels wide.  The 5DII sounds like an ideal camera for this purpose, however.  The other advantage of tilt shift lenses is you can stitch geometrically seamlessly so the focal lengths are a little "bendable" in post if you will...

If you really want to cheap out, a 7D type camera and very wide zoom will work, just make sure you correct for perspective in photoshop and bring your off-camera strobes.  Your client's aversion to strobes and HDR implies that he's worked with some untalented people in the past.  As much as I hate HDR (even in a lot of professional real estate photography), it can be used seamlessly on interiors to recover blown out windows, etc.  Also carry around a set of color corrected practical bulbs at lower wattages to avoid blowing out highlights too strongly and a set of color correction gels for your strobes (CTO of various strengths at the very least).

229

Lenses / Re: Lens recommendations for real estate interior photography please

« on: December 26, 2011, 11:24:14 PM »

Real estate photography used to mean a 4x5 view camera, film that's $3/sheet (with development costs), a host of expensive lenses, and an assistant being paid $300/day minimum.  "Painting" with lights and long exposures.  Years and years of apprenticeship.  That a 5DII and a couple lenses seems extravagant is insane to me.

A t/s lens is absolutely necessary for reliable and repeatable work.  Yes, you can get away with a regular ultra-wide lens, photoshop, and cleverly turning lights on/off and using HDR, but that's really pushing things and asking for a sub par result.

You need the ability to light a space naturalistically yet stylishly.  You need the ability to consistently deliver corrected perspective with an acceptably wide field of view.  You should be able to compose and focus properly in camera instead of shooting a lot of stuff and fixing in photoshop.

If you have a great eye, that will trump anything else.  A brilliant photographer with a rebel and kit lens will do better than an amateur with a high end tech camera, waiting patiently across the course of the day for the best light, switching practicals to ones that are powerful enough and color corrected, composing artfully and intentionally too wide but with a final composition in mind in order to correct perspective later, blending multiple exposures by hand in post, etc.  But if you're not technical enough to understand why tilt/shift lenses and a strobe package are essentially mandatory then you're certainly not technical enough to do competent work without them.  Again, the 5DII and t/s lenses should be considered bare minimum for the low end.

230

Lenses / Re: Lens recommendations for real estate interior photography please

« on: December 26, 2011, 11:51:45 AM »

I hate to be "like this," but if you're considering this field professionally and not just for fun, a 5DII, 17mm TS E, 24mm TS E, and a decent set of off-camera strobes and hot lights is the absolute bare minimum for the low end.

You can fake it with the widest available APS-C lens, photoshop to correct for perspective correction, and HDR, but that's a pretty bad fake.

231

EOS Bodies / Re: More Noise Comparisons, C300 vs Red Scarlet

« on: December 25, 2011, 03:39:37 PM »

The Scarlet I would imagine has a stronger performance for preset scenes with the appropriate lighting in mind.

It's just your imagination.  Red has poor color rendition, clippy highlights, and more skew.  There's great looking red footage (Pirates 4, Prometheus, Girl with Dragon Tattoo) but out of camera it's a mess and the prototype c300 footage is far more aesthetically pleasing with nicer memory colors, more pleasant knee, and subjectively better noise texture.

The on-set interface (and post production interface) are also completely broken with the Red camera.

4k is insignificantly superior for broadcast--but for a blockbuster, 8 bit 4:2:2 MPEG compression is outright insufficient.  So the Red has the advantage in this respect alone.

The c300 shows a couple stop advantage with a lens 1 2/3 stops slower.  Wow.

232

Canon General / Re: Canon video advice

« on: December 18, 2011, 10:04:02 PM »

Objectively the quality will be worse.  Worse resolution, worse skew, etc.  The low light performance (with an appropriate lens) will be much better but that's canceled out to some extend by such shallow depth of field that you really need to stop down a lot at times.  You will have vastly more flexibility in terms of "look."  The camera allows for (but certainly doesn't guarantee) a very cinematic image.

The 5DII is not a video camera.  It's a still camera that happens to have a video mode.  That video mode requires close to the same kind of attention you'd pay to a red camera or a film camera in that you have to pick lenses (which can be very expensive) carefully, you have to pull focus manually (often requiring that you hire a focus puller and set marks), and the automatic functionality is useless.  And even then you've got to deal with aliasing, skew, difficulty monitoring the image, etc.

The ten minute limit is not about overheating but it's put there to avoid EU tariffs on video cameras.  The camera can overheat, but it's rare.  Put an ice pack on it for a while and you should be good.

What do you want to record?  Sports?  Family events?  Music videos?  Short films?  Advertisements?  If you're looking for a "film look" at the expense of potential production hassles the 5D might be the ticket.  You can get AMAZING looking images from it, though it's slower to use for "off the cuff" footage.  It's a very cool camera for a cinematic look, good enough that it's used as a b camera or crash cam in larger movies and it's used in some high-end commercials as the main camera (so is the 7d).  But be prepared to light and shoot like a cinematographer or it might be a frustrating ordeal.

233

EOS Bodies / Re: Best "first buy" Gradient Filter?

« on: November 29, 2011, 11:30:40 PM »

The Cokin filters, in my experience, have a very minor color cast.  Maybe not.  It's not bad at all.  Even the cheapest grad filters are usable.

The hi-tech filters don't have a color cast, but they are transparent to IR.  That means for some films (fast color negative, velvia 100, others) they'll produce a magenta cast.  For properly manufactured digital they shouldn't.  Possibly at high ISOs with newer sensors, though.  With the red camera they might be a disaster...

The Singh-Ray filters, at least above two stops (three stops and above), have an IR dye and are color neutral across it and the visible spectrum.  Pretty cool, but possibly unnecessary.  You can custom order two stops with the IR dye, too.

I'd get two stops soft.  Three stops hard is useful, since sky and reflection are often around three or four stops apart, so you'll get a nice symmetry to shots of the ocean at sunset.  But the look is too pronounced and kind of cheesy, imo.  I have a lot of respect for anyone who can get by without any hdr or grad filters, but if you choose to use them I'd go two stops hard/two stops soft.  If you like a dramatic look three stops is good, too.  The "reverse" ND filters that fade in two directions look really cool, if very special-purpose.  A three stop reverse filter might be really cool.

234

Lenses / Re: Cinema lens versus non-cinema lens

« on: November 07, 2011, 02:55:43 AM »

Mostly it's economies of scale and tolerances (t-stops and distance scales that have to be calibrated much more precisely), as mentioned above, but good movies lenses are legitimately better than the best still lenses.  The "resolution" numbers are so ridiculous because you're using a fake metric for mtf (megapixels) in the first place.  Can the 85mm f1.2 REALLY resolve 21 megapixels fully wide open?  And what do megapixels even mean considering the mtf of sensors often appears higher than their theoretical nyquist limit?  Wild gaps in logic here...

Re: movies lenses, one they tend to exhibit less distortion, secondly they have nicer bokeh extending toward the edges of the frame, thirdly there's less curvature of field, fourthly there's drastically reduced breathing (so that rack focusing doesn't result in zooming in).  The lenses can also be huge, with enormous optical elements and impressive construction AND perfect color matching between lenses of the same brand and type.

I recently shot a bit with the Panavision Primos and they really are unparalleled by still lenses.  There's no breathing, essentially no coma or curvature of field, and they're sharp wide open and available in tons of focal lengths.  And these aren't even the highest end lenses available by any means. 

235

EOS Bodies / Re: RED - Scarlet.....

« on: November 04, 2011, 02:20:53 PM »

Yes, the red is a huge pain in the ass...  It's possible to get good results out of it, but the colors do look pretty muted (even when graded very well) and the camera is buggy and requires constant software and firmware updates.

It's great if you love being on the bleeding edge...  If you just want to shoot good video and stills fast, it's, imo, a pain.  And transcode times at 4k are brutal, for 5k, even more so.

236

EOS Bodies / Re: Concept Cinema DSLR Official

« on: November 03, 2011, 11:05:23 PM »

Is this the exact same design, form-wise, as the 1DX?  If so, it's probably almost the same camera but with upgraded firmware and a considerably higher price...  APS-H is also an annoying crop factor for video.  Super35 is much closer to APS-C and there are fast wide zooms for crop bodies.

I want the APS-C cinema camera!

To those fawning after the Red...sure, it looks nice, but the poor color rendering, impossible proprietary workflow, and constantly-in-need-of-updates software make the camera a nightmare, imo, to use.  Canon's footage has nicer skin tones than I've ever seen out of a Red.  There's a reason so much tv is shot with the Alexa, rather than the red, and why dSLRs are used on ads--1080p with nice and standardized colors out of camera is much better for post.  Red is cool, but what you get in terms of extra tech you pay for in having to figure out how to use it efficiently.  Canon's cine camera does seem overpriced for what you get, though--in that no man's land the AF100 and F3 already inhabit except even more expensive...

237

EOS Bodies / Re: November 3, 2011 Announcement

« on: November 03, 2011, 10:59:16 AM »

I dont care if it's 1080p if they make some HUGE improvements somehow in terms of quality.

Yes.  Actually not that many films are finished in 4k...  Most are still 2k.  Lots of major films (Captain America, Avengers, Transformers 3, etc.) shot at 1080p or 2k.

The vast majority of new TV shows (maybe an exaggeration) are shot on the Alexa in prores, because the format is easy to ingest.  How many still photographers distribute their images as raw files?  Prores log-c plus custom LUT provides the built in "look" the cinematographer wants, but also with substantial room to grade.

238

Canon General / Re: 15% off sale...

« on: August 04, 2011, 01:50:57 PM »

Yeah... I'm signed up for promotional emails from when I registered my 7D, but didn't get this one.  Oh well.......looks like they didn't have anything useful in stock anyways.  Hopefully next time!

Keep checking back.  the 5D MK II is added this morning!  Also a few good lenses were added in stock - 17-55mm, 17-40mm l, 85mm f/1.8

Do you have a working code?  I could really use that 17-55mm...

239

Canon General / Re: 15% off sale...

« on: August 04, 2011, 01:07:45 PM »

Anyone have a code?  I could really use one.  Thanks!

240

Lenses / Re: Old film camera lenses for DSLRs?

« on: April 06, 2011, 01:22:09 PM »

Branden is actually right.  In theory.  Diffraction has nothing to do with photosites being "buckets" but instead with the size of the aperture relative to focal length and sensor size.  And it's the same on film, digital, or whatever else:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disc

What he's referring to has nothing to do with diffraction and is instead related to the idea that emulsion is roughly flat and so it will respond to light hitting it at any angle, whereas photosites will reject off-axis light because they're built up like little buckets and if light isn't entering at the right angle it will hit the edge of the bucket, not the light-sensitive part.  Fast wide lenses that aren't designed specifically otherwise will have more oblique rays toward the edges, if I'm not mistaken, so the edges should be darker since less light is hitting straight-on.

But buckets don't have micro-lenses and so the comparison isn't entirely true.  Otherwise, tilt/shift lenses would produce unacceptable vignetting on digital.  It depends largely on photosite design and a million other factors.  In some cases in-camera software will correct for or attempt to mask vignetting, too, so it's really hard to say.  If you look at medium format digital backs, for instance, some work fine with tech cameras (which are essentially view cameras and which produces lots of off-axis rays) and some won't due to the bucket issue.  It's a matter of sensor design, mostly relating to micro-lenses if I'm not mistaken.  But yes, in theory digital vignettes worse than film.  Film's softer contrast may have a bit to do with it, as you mention, but I think that's only half the story.