SL video tutorial suggestions

[Irakly Shanidze]

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Sorry for the iPhone picture
This is how the rig looks like

 

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by Irakly Shanidze

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[MRJohn]

Sorry for the iPhone picture

This is how the rig looks like

 

 

Thanks, looks impressive, I guess this beast not suitable for handheld use?

[Irakly Shanidze]

Thanks, looks impressive, I guess this beast not suitable for handheld use?

 

It only looks bulky. The rig weighs no more than 3lbs. The matte box is carbon fiber with aluminum barn doors, the rest is also aluminum. There is no need for the eye level finder, as the monitor has focus peaking, framing, composition aids. In this configuration it is good for low vantage level work. If I need to shoot something handheld on the eye level, the box cage gets replaced with a double-hander from P&C. However, I prefer using a tripod for that and create the handheld effect in post.

[lx1713]

I'm a newbie to video. Pardon my ignorance 

 

Being a focus by wire lens, is the 24-90 difficult to work with precision using the follow focus? I've been practicing the different speeds of rotation but I'm not very good at nailing focus smoothly without overshooting the desired point of focus.

[scott kirkpatrick]

I notice that Irakly's rig example shows a focus-by-wire lens (an L or TL lens with a smooth barrel and no markings) with a toothed ring added around it, and then an external reduction gear to permit larger, smoother focus movements.  Even so, it is still necessary to track the point of focus by watching the focus peaking sparklies, or maybe by using the distance shown on the top plate LCD (does that even work while you are shooting?).  And practice a lot.  Or use autofocus, either continuous or with the lens set in MF and the joystick pressed to cause a change, and edit around the times when it doesn't work very well...  My R lenses are marked up pretty well so that simple focus changes can be done with the scales, as long as I am using a tripod.  But the net is that I try for as much depth of field as possible, and with 1/25 to 1/50 shutter speed, that is quite a lot.

[lx1713]

That's true. I do prefer my manual lenses in this. The 24-90 needed a lot of practice to get the feel of it so that I will not overshoot. I've taken a liking for the 24-90's feel and universal usage (for me) that I want to be able to use it better. 

 

I was using a deeper dof (as your post mentioned) in an actual shoot yesterday to reduce the need to be so precise with my 24-90 yesterday and discover that up to certain distance set, a deeper depth of field allowed me the use the 24-90 like a par focal zoom lens, i.e.. in focus at 90mm as well as 24mm. I didn't need to focus at all but just worked on framing composition and zooming. I'm still not confident of my focusing  I've an unfortunate tendency to focus too quickly or slowly which means even with manual lenses, I will be terrible. But it's Irakly's picture that gave me pause and some ideas.

 

I got a feeling manually focusing the 24-90 is going to take me ages to master 

[Irakly Shanidze]

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24-90 is parfocal for all practical purposes. Focusing at 90, zooming out and then pulling zoom in looks great if you shoot in-camera.

[Irakly Shanidze]

Manual focus with a follow focus is much easier than turning the barrel. Just make sure that the tooth ring is tight enough, and the lens is absolutely stable (there is s special contraption for that) or gears will slide.

[Irakly Shanidze]

The problem with 24-90 is that the front element extends while zooming. It makes using a matte box problematic. A manual constant aperture zoom with a fixed form factor is a much easier thing to handle. 18-56 T is also small enough to create a trouble.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Here's article that shouldn't be missed: https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.co.il/2017/10/a-review-of-gh5-camera-after-15000.html#more

 

Kirk Tuck summarizing about a year's worth of experience in his mixed practice of stills and videos.

 

Some takeaways: 

 

--video pays better

--white balance is important, and log is more trouble than it is worth except outside in sunlight. Of course indoors, he lights the set whenever possible, but some of his work is events that need candid shots.

--he uses single shot AF, not manual, not CAF.  His choice of subject may be part of that.  I don't think he is adjusting focus during a shot.

--his only bolted on gadget is a preamp that handles two XLR inputs and provides phantom power.  The GH5 gives him 10 bit 4:2:2 ProRes in camera as long as he uses the fastest biggest SD cards available.  Would that it were so simple for the SL to do that.  Maybe the next model...

[Irakly Shanidze]

Well, yeah, GH5 does some things in-camera that SL can't, and for me the most important would be 60fps in 4K. As to 10-bit output, it does not really matter, as I would still have to use an external monitor, and it might as well be BM Video Assist 4K, which also doubles as an XLR preamp and has two UHS-II slots. Besides, Kirk does use an external HDMI recorder, Atomos Ninja.

 

It seems to me that Kirk is not so crazy about log gamma because he is not that familiar with DaVinci Resolve. Log footage has at least one stop advantage in dynamic range, and this is my very conservative assessment. For that I am willing to live with the fact that the footage needs to be color graded

Edited October 4, 2017 by Irakly Shanidze

[lx1713]

Irakly and Scott. What're your takes on the SL's advantage that you think is indispensable to you? The key advantage for myself is the superior stills which is my bread and butter with the occasional video captures.

[Irakly Shanidze]

For stills I use mainly M10 and occasionally S006. SL is mostly for video. Stills are great, but not in any way greater than from M10, which is much more portable. Video is a different story. Portability, or lack of it thereof, is not much of an issue there. Having said that, if I did not have M10, i would use SL for everything.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Lenses drive everything.  I use the SL for stills with medium and longer telephotos (some M, some R, some SL), and some extreme R wide angles.  Also 50/1.4 which is easier to focus with the SL than the M10.  To me the M10 is for no-fuss photography with 28-50 mm focal length, and I sometimes use it with a 21 without bothering to carry an extra viewfinder.  I'm still learning my way into video, interested in movie construction and in how capturing slices of life in video relates to street shooting and informal portrait work.  (Shooting video certainly forces the shooter into a different role.  It gives me some understanding of why and how some of my heroes like Robert Frank and Danny Lyon essentially put down their Leicas and Nikons in the mid 1970s and took up 16mm film and Nagra recorders...)

 

For video I currently work with the SL, using TL lenses, and with an Olympus E-M1.2, with some of the Olympus Pro zooms and a few primes.  I've shot a few plays and a bar-mitzvah with Olympus gear and some sport tournaments with the SL, plus lots of little experiments on the street with the SL.  The Olympus stabilization is great, but I think in low light the SL is cleaner, and I prefer the richer color from the SL.  But I am sure I am not getting the optimum from either.

[lx1713]

I want to do both stills and video (not sure if I can wrap my mind around that) so I've limited my scope to a 24-90 and a 35mm f1.4. Hence Kirk Tuck's article which Scott pointed to, is very relevant to my approach. Thanks!

 

Somewhat strange that while I agree with him on almost all his points, my decision was to pick an SL  I think mostly because I'm a still shooter still and my events are ISO 3200 - 12800 mostly.

 

I knew if I got myself the 90-280, my mind would look out for the long shots that makes my delivery to my clients a little special but I won't grow into video. The 90-280 is just so appropriate to me as a shooter that I realise the 5-6 % of the shots will consume too much of my time (20-35% of the shoot time) on the job. Something had to go.

[Irakly Shanidze]

In my view, SL is a better decision than GH5 for a very simple reason: the picture looks better. Yes, GH5 has a host of super nice professional features, but it does not negate the fact that the frame is smaller than Super16. Smaller sensors require lenses with much higher resolving power, which, in turn, makes for lesser microcontrast.

 

As far as lenses go, the 24-90 is so versatile that it will cover most of what you need, both in stills and video. With video, unless you really put some serious effort into it, shallow depth of field is not something that I would recommend using a lot. It is very different that stills in two ways:

 

1. It is much harder to keep the subject/object in focus if anything moves (either you, or the object, or, god forbid, both). AF, even the best one, does not work fast enough to be transparent. Hence levers and follow focus contraptions, and these things do not automatically make you king of manual focus. It does take practice to be able to time focusing to the movement. I'm sure, you know that on a real movie set a cameraman, while shooting, is responsible for framing, while a specially designated person "pulls focus", and more often than not coordination of the two is more sophisticated than ballroom dancing. 

 

2. Shallow DOF is rather unnatural, at least for most people. In stills it is for the better, as the OOF areas make the viewer scan the image for something more comfortable to look at effectively directing his attention to where it needs to be. In motion picture, if the shallow DOF is required/desired, you have to be able to create a scene in which OOF areas are stationary, and only the talent is moving. As the motion attracts attention, moving blobs will be very hard to ignore, and it leads to a visually painful scene

[lx1713]

Thanks, Irakly. That's very helpful. Moving blobs, I like that description! 

 

Btw I enjoyed your article on cinematic look.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Thanks, Irakly. That's very helpful. Moving blobs, I like that description! 

 

Btw I enjoyed your article on cinematic look.

 

+1    I liked the cinematic look article, too, but now I can't find it and was looking.  Can someone post a link?

Edited October 5, 2017 by scott kirkpatrick

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[lx1713]

Afraid it's no longer linked

 

http://www.artphotoa...ography-part-i/

 

http://www.artphotoa...graphy-part-ii/

[BernardC]

Yes, GH5 has a host of super nice professional features, but it does not negate the fact that the frame is smaller than Super16.

I am nitpicking, but it's bigger than Super16, and smaller than Academy 35.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, which also uses a M4/3 mount, has a Super16-sized sensor.