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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-19-2013, 11:26 PM
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In the second video there's a fly alien on the wall (0:28)!
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
11-19-2013, 03:06 AM
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They're absolutely not terrible shots if he just came out of the blue :) But it maybe a good idea to have your aperture no smaller than 1/8 no matter what you're shooting unless you really need the smaller aperture for photographing stars, but for any other subject I'd look at the focal length before the aperture :) like manntax said you run into problems if you go smaller, I think for aps-c f/11 is the absolute smallest aperture (not sure if focal length played a role here) beyond which the IQ degrades because of diffraction (the smallest details on your sensor grow larger than the pixel size, meaning you're not using all of the pixels and the pixels you do get don't necessarily have the right color/luminance because of diffraction)
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-19-2013, 03:00 AM
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Thanks for clearing that up :) I'm not sure if a moving catwalk is any more or less a "gimmick" than a crane or some kind of mechanical arm (i don't mean those robotic fully automatic cranes that can be remote controlled and record every position of the camera to a millisecond accurate timeline, I meant something more simple and mechanical, whether its wooden planks (shoutout, haha) or one of those mechanical telescoping extending things (I don't know what they're called)), they're all just something to go beyond what a human on two legs can do alone. Other than that I agree wholeheartedly, the camera operator is the person who makes or breaks the shot, it's always so much more cinematic to watch good steadicam than robotics and cgi camera gimmicks.
you have to ask someone who knows more about that :) I don't have the k-3 specs in front of me.
thanks for sharing.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-18-2013, 09:29 PM
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but from what I read (I might be wrong) the "pseudo AA"/simulated AA doesn't work with video? Maybe someone knows better
avchd is a camcorder codec, I don't think the k-3 uses that. I don't know what you mean by 'golden setting' :D just use whatever settings that look like they can get the most detail out across the dynamic range. I don't know how bad it gets with the h.264 codec (isn't that what k-3 uses?) (probably no better than MJPEG) but with MJPEG I expect to see extreme banding. I haven't tried it yet, but it wouldn't make sense if you didn't, in a JPEG no matter how high the quality the information that's in the RAW just isn't there. You don't notice it in a normal JPEG most of the time... But color grading adds several layers of color masks which make any imperfection 100x more visible. So from this:  You get this:  When you should be getting this: 
But I'll give it a try, it will be interesting to see how it turns out. Maybe if you try to avoid strong gradient areas/strong transitions from light to shadow you can largely avoid that. :)
I think with the budget they had for kill bill, they could have had anything from robotics to a chimpanzee to do the tilt, and the crane might have had a holder for the jib where you attach the jib and then the holder that's being controlled by a strong mechanical arm (either mechanical leverage or computer controlled) can do the tilt. I don't know how they did it, I haven't seen it in a long time so I don't remember the shot that well but there are many ways to do these things. :)
You know you can combine camera steadying techniques :) if you have your marks and do the positioning exactly and cut the footage correctly, you can even blend two dolly shots together, one done with the operator holding the jib and the other one done with the jib being attached to an actually dolly on rails :) Also if you use light rails that are sturdy but where the segments are easy to separate if necessary and the speed isn't too fast (as it shouldn't be at 24fps) you can have your assistant "undo" the tracks behind the dolly as you go assuming you're shooting so wide or your angle changes in a way that would show the tracks in the picture if they hadn't been moved out of the way. :) using a dolly on rails (don't think some slide cam type setup, think dollying the camera around on a wheelchair except with a little more finesse :D ) leaves your hands pretty free :) you can even push it with your feet so you can pan with your hands free. So yes, you can get steady footage and the camera movements you want out of any camera, but you can't get the dynamic range and presence of detail across the dynamic range and lack of banding after grading in the footage you shoot out of every camera. :) Just like every sensor has their weak points (vertical lines with bright lines vs jello) so does every camera.
I agree that the choice of codec should be a user choice. It should be trivial to include two codecs and i don't see why not even more, but then I don't know how difficult it is for the processor to support several codecs.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-18-2013, 09:44 AM
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osv: you also need a crane for some of those shots :) and the one in the jungle, i don't know what they used for that,...my imagination almost got the better of me, then I realized they must have used a drone? I forgot how common those are now
edit: i noticed you said "largely", I was mostly thinking out loud :)
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-18-2013, 09:34 AM
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I never even pan that quickly :D which is good if you're using CMOS because think of the jello, any dslr has horrible jello if you do pans that quick. 22 frames for a 45' turn? i'd call that a whip pan! i prefer slow pans in the range of 120+ frames / 45 degrees (though you rarely end up using the 45 degrees, except if you pan along with the person as they walk down a long straight, then it can go over 90'), I don't find quick pans cinematic at all, except when used very sparingly in certain situations. I have to admit sometimes fast camera movement is just what you need... but not when using CMOS, unless it's in a RED, then it's controlled (so I heard, I haven't used a RED myself. I'm a bit sceptical but I guess they have the hardware to make it work). Otherwise you're better off shooting on film. In any case it depends on what style you prefer. If you like pans that quick though, look into cameras with CCD if you don't mind working around the issue with bright lights in the dark :D but from what I've seen there are no modern cameras with CCDs except the BM 4K production camera which has a global shutter
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-18-2013, 08:41 AM
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ohh... that makes perfect sense, I finally undestand what was meant and why I had it backwards. Thank you so much for explaining it in detail.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-18-2013, 08:36 AM
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hey, that's pretty nifty, doing it that way :) I have to admit I haven't tried that with my Pentax, I'll give it a try and see what I can do with it. I had been meaning to play around with the contrast and high/low key adjustments but hadn't yet gotten around to it.
grispie: in case PiDicus Rex's description was unclear, the footage looks about like this:
You Tube
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src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n1JgdKKn3NA?controls=1" allowfullscreen>
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(the "ungraded" video) the BM isn't the best example but I couldn't find anything else quickly on youtube. Try 14 bit raw ungraded for search words if you want to look for more examples. Here's another one:
You Tube
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src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oaVgdREJOyQ?controls=1" allowfullscreen>
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The BM cameras use CinemaDNG. As far as I know it can't record uncompressed raw video. I don't know if you can record uncompressed raw externally. The color depth of the cinemaDNG in BM is 12 bits.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-18-2013, 07:48 AM
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Yes, of course I'm confused, otherwise I'd have an easier time figuring this out. :D oh, I didn't know normal lenses can't focus/resolve that sharply. Okay. In the text I also read this: "Aberrations (inperfections) in images usually vary with the distance from the center of the frame, in the manner shown in the table below for simple lenses." I think that confused me as well. I didn't understand it the first time, now reading it again it seems to say that the aberrations closer to the edges get worse quicker on FF than on APS-C. Is that correct?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-18-2013, 07:05 AM
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See my follow-up question above and please answer it if you can. I really want to understand all these things better, understand why my thinking is backwards. It doesn't seem backwards to me so I need someone to help me understand how and why it's backwards.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
11-18-2013, 06:56 AM
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yes. the smaller you make the aperture (the hole inside the lens that corresponds to your iris) the narrower the light beam hitting the dust and the sharper its shadow on your sensor. :) cleaning a sensor can be scary (and risky if you don't know what you're doing) but blowing air with a blower that's specifically made for sensor cleaning is risk free when you do it like instructed. For only air you're better off doing it yourself, taking the camera to a shop for that would be a waste of money, but for wet cleaning you're probably better off letting a professional do it. Hopefully you find my advice helpful :)
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
11-18-2013, 06:29 AM
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yes :) at least I think so? the YN model I'm looking at says it supports "nikon and canon" and it also had a list of models at the end of the specs and my canon was there. If I can trust that then it will work with my Canon, but I don't know if the specs are always true? it claimed to support TTL up to 1/8000, that's why I thought it's worth the extra money, but again that's just black on white, I'd have to test it to see if all the claims are really true
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-18-2013, 06:25 AM
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This article also makes a good point: Full Frame vs while it's cheaper for a manufacturer to only cover the FF sensor exactly with no wiggle room (which is the case with cheap lenses), some (better, more expensive (to buy and to manufacture)) lenses cover a larger circle, so there are no "bad corners" on FF. :)
Maybe someone smarter can explain to me how the aps-c sensor could tell the difference between a lens that couldn't resolve the individual slats in the blinds in the example image, and a lens that can resolve a lot more? Lets say white bb pellets in between the slats just so no one can say "but it resolves the slats... kind of, barely..." I'm not being snarky here, I genuinely want to understand what to me seems impossible to understand even after I accepted that the way I thought it is isn't the way it is. How can the smaller sensor tell the difference when it can't resolve the detail? Smaller pixels also mean less photos detected by each pixel or more noise because each pixel gets more photons than it can handle, doesn't it? Isn't that one of the disadvantages of smaller sensors? Photographer Dennis Manarchy builds supersize 35 foot camera | Mail Online
can any dslr/FF/4/3 or even middle format resolve the individual pores on human skin from a portrait distance? If it can't, how can it measure the resolving limit/sharpness of a lens better than a larger format (sensor or film)? I'm slipping back to my original understanding because it's the only one that seems to make any sense, but I'll happily accept the reverse if someone can explain it to me. I can't understand something no one explains.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
11-18-2013, 05:01 AM
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Looks like a hair? :) I freaked out too when I first saw something like that in my pictures, but luckily it was only dust/hairs. Those you can usually clean with just a blower which is really easy. You already photographed against a sky, but others will probably ask you to take a photo against the sky or against a white wall or white paper at the smallest aperture the lens you're using allows so they can verify if that really is a hair and a speck of dust.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-18-2013, 04:51 AM
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Either you take the time or leave the floor to those you have something meaningful to contribute. Arrogance does not make you experienced or respected, it makes you something else entirely. :)
Ah... now that you say that, of course that makes more sense. I added "correct me if I'm wrong" for a reason: I wasn't sure if what I said was correct, it was based on something I recently read that seemed to make sense in my head, unfortunately the wrong way around. Thank you for taking the time to correct me :)
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
11-18-2013, 03:44 AM
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Okay, thank you! :) That's exactly what I wanted to know. I'm not going to use film era flashes, I wouldn't dare... Electronics nowadays are so much more sensitive and so much smaller and require more exact voltages anyway even if they matched, I wouldn't dare try. And yes, YN 465/467/468/565 I just have to figure out which model best fits my needs :)
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-18-2013, 03:42 AM
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(I was told what I wrote was completely wrong, so I removed it for the time being. read below for follow-up)
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
11-18-2013, 03:33 AM
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I just want to make sure before I buy anything so I don't break my camera.
If I buy a YongNuo for Canon that supports TTL, can I use it on my Pentax (the flash becomes fully manual) as well as on my Canon (the flash supports TTL) without breaking anything? Is the "for Canon" there just to point out that the TTL support is only for Canons, or is there some difference in the electronics so that a YongNuo for Canon will short out Pentax or something? The branding is just about the TTL/manual, right?
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
11-18-2013, 02:27 AM
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thank you for this, when I get more serious about high-speed photography (or do it for money) I'll give this unit a try, but for now I think I'll rather go with the 10 times cheaper YN which still does 1/20000 :)
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
11-18-2013, 02:23 AM
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thank you, that makes a lot of sense and I thought as much, I just wanted to make sure. I got confused ever since I heard the term "crop factor"...
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
11-17-2013, 02:26 PM
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so the middle format to FF crop factor is about 1.95:1. if a lens is 35mm and made for middle format, it means that it's still 35mm and will look like a 35mm correctly on FF but be a 18mm wide angle on middle-format, and something longer on aps? right? and the "for middle format" simply means it also covers the 60x60 film area as well as anything below it?
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-17-2013, 02:15 PM
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We can agree on those points, with 3. and 4. being optional and better left out altogether. :)
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-17-2013, 03:53 AM
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but Pentax isn't the "last runner" in every category, their weather sealing is impeccable, out of this world! I know I have to go non-Pentax for video and that annoys me enormously because that means that no matter what "weathersealing" the manufacturer advertises I HAVE TO buy a raincover, an umbrella, whatever to keep my equipment dry if I want to shoot in the rain for more than a minute, and in any case just in case. If it was Pentax equipment, I wouldn't. If Pentax can do so outstandingly in one category, seems unlikely they couldn't do better in others. (and again, for all my complaints about pentax video, I still love Pentax for photography.)
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
11-16-2013, 07:29 PM
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wow, someone with a religious trust in global corporations. either Ricoh gives in to the pressure of the market, stops existing, or they have a tactic that allows them to stay competitive and making money despite not offering what everyone these days expects (at least) in a (higher-end) dslr. and what were k-5 and k-5ii/s if not dslr-shaped entry-level camcorders? No manual controls for ISO, shutter speed, aperture, anything? I think even $300 camcorders have those controls. The truth is, anyone who does video professionally is going to want to use a manual lens with manual focus and manual aperture control. So setting the aperture on the screen is not professionals. Okay, in the k-5 line you can't set it on the screen. So the video is for professionals? Nope, can't set the shutter speed or ISO manually either. So it's for complete amateurs who just want a p&s video capability without touching a single setting? Then why pretend it's anything else? The k-3 was a step in the right direction but fell miles short of most people's expectations. Those who can be happy with it, I'm happy for you. Just understand this: either Ricoh is going to create a high-end video line like Canon (in the $10,000 range) and you'll NEVER get better video options in a Pentax/Ricoh dslr, or they half-assed it this time and maybe try better next time.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-16-2013, 06:35 AM
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oh right, thanks for clearing that up :)
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