LensMeAHand

I can attest to the overheating. We've set the "Auto Power OFF Temp." setting to "High" on all the ones we have at my studio, which gives us a little more shoot time. But shooting in 8K gets them very hot very fast.

Thanks! I'm glad it was helpful 🙂

No—as much as I love to tinker with computers and electronics, taking apart a camera scares me. There are so many small, fragile, and expensive parts to break. If you have the courage though, by all means, go for it!

Haha thanks for the comment Doug! I totally agree with you—I was being a little silly in my original post, but I don't think the a1 is the best first camera for a cinematographer either. The FX series are great. I think you could also get an older F55 or even an F35.

Not too long ago, I found myself in the midst of a conversation with a woman who had just quit her high-paying job at Tesla to pursue her dream of becoming a cinematographer. She mentioned she’d bought a Sony a1 as her first camera. "Wow," I thought, “Her very first camera is superior to what now must be my tenth camera, a Sony a7sIII.” Later that day however, I was questioning whether her a1 really was better than my a7sIII. Yes, it's $3000 more expensive and can record video at twice the resolution, but there's more to this than meets the sensor. I should mention at this point that I’m intimately familiar with the a1 because I use it nearly every day—the studio I work at uses them to shoot background plates because they’re compact, capable of shooting 8K, and with their ethernet port, they can be controlled from a computer. So while I was at work today, I thought I'd do a little test: I put my a7sIII next to an a1, turned them both on, and waited. The a1 depleted its battery in 2 hours 1 minute. My a7sIII stayed on for a whole additional hour, despite the fact that both cameras use the same battery. Now you might say, "well of course the a1 consumes more power, it has a much better 8K sensor,” but are you you aware that it has to compromise the video bitrate to record in full 8K? The a1 can only record 8K when set to the highest compression setting: XAVC HS To Sony's credit though, they do a really good job with the compression—it's tough to discern any difference between my a7sIII shooting at XAVC S-I 4K and an a1 shooting at XAVC HS 8K. No discernible difference in quality, even after grading Also, even if you're worried about recording at XAVC HS levels of compression, the a1 can still record at XAVC S-I 4K, just like the a7sIII. But you shouldn't be worried, because when you crank the hue/saturation in post, the a1 actually looks better than the a7sIII, despite the higher compression! I believe this is because when you're editing both files in a 4K timeline, the 8K 4:2:2 actually becomes 4K 4:4:4. You can see what I'm talking about in the comparison below. With saturation bumped to 100%, the blocky color chunks on the bricks look much worse on the a7sIII So I guess you could argue that having 66% of the a7sIII's battery life is worth it for the improved video quality. There are some other downsides of the a1 though—like its ISO limits. It'll reach its max at 32,000, while the a7sIII will continue all the way to 409,600! The monitor is another place where the a7sIII exceeds. The flexible a7sIII monitor The a7sIII's monitor can spin every which way, allowing you to view it from directly above, below, or in front of the camera. This comes in handy all the time when shooting from up high, from the ground, or generally in cramped spaces. You can also turn it around and fold the screen in, to protect it during transit. The a1's monitor mechanism The a1 monitor, on the other hand, only allows you to tilt up and down, with no means of folding it in to protect the screen. I'm not sure which design is more durable—I've put both through the ringer without any issues. Regardless of which is better though, they're both too small to be used for any kind of professional video work anyways—you really need an external monitor, not just to see the image better, but also to get a waveform readout. So far I've been comparing these two cameras solely in terms of their use in the video world. If photography is your objective though, the a1 is better, hands down. I've already mentioned the 8K resolution, which translates to a 50 megapixel image, but I've yet to mention its maximum photo shutter speed of 1/32,000 (versus the a7sIII's 1/8000), its faster continuous shutter, and its faster flash sync. So at the end of the day then, it looks like this isn't much of a contest for the a7sIII. The only thing it has going for it is its high ISO range, but honestly, for most use cases, 409,600 ISO would be too noisy anyways. So I guess if you're a bright, young cinematographer with $6,500 burning a hole in your pocket, don't waste your time with the a7sIII, be like the former Tesla engineer and go for the a1.

You know, when I was making the list, I was trying to include only camera add-ons that could produce footage to make a novice ask "how did you do that?" I feel like the polarizer, while essential, is too subtle for most to notice, and I feel like a graduated ND is more of a correction and less of an effect. However, when writing the post, I was thinking about the ND in terms of video and said, "that's not really an effect," because video looks the same with or without an ND because you're usually at a 180º shutter regardless of exposure. BUT for photography, you can get some really cool daytime long exposure shots, and I should've mentioned that.

One of the biggest appeals of a camera is its ability to capture the world from a different perspective, and sometimes that perspective can be emphasized with the help of in-camera effects. I wanted to make a reference guide of all these interesting in-camera effects to showcase what's possible for those who are newly venturing into the world of cinema (or photography). Mesmerizer The mesmerizer is a lens attachment that can be rotated around to add distortion. It's often used to show nausea or disorientation. Star Filter Star filters turn any point light source into a star. The photo shows a 4-star filter, but 6-star is also common. A variation on the star filter is a streak filter, which is essentially a "1-point star". Shooters who want the anamorphic look but cannot afford anamorphic lenses sometimes use a blue streak filter to simulate anamorphic lens flare. Diffusion Filter These filters keep the majority of the image sharp while blurring only the highlights, giving a soft look without being out-of-focus. They come in different strengths (e.g. 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2). The stronger strengths seem to have been popular in the 1980s, but nowadays, the subtler strengths are more popular. Infrared Cameras allow us to capture the infrared spectrum of light, giving a unique look and providing a portal into a world which we cannot see with our naked eye. The above commercial was shot with black and white infrared film and then color mapped to make shadows blue and highlights orange. There's also color infrared film, which was used for the photo on Jimi Hendrix's first album. In the digital world, you can shoot infrared images by removing the infrared filter in front of your image sensor (or buy/rent a camera that already has it removed) Prisms Simply putting a prism in front of your camera lens can yield some cool shots. There are many different types of prisms. Some give you a kaleidoscope effect, as seen on Pink Floyd's first album cover. Relay Lenses These lenses relay light through mirrors and prisms, allowing cinematographers to achieve numerous effects, such as an infinite depth of field, which is conducive for forced perspective. They also allow the tip of the lens to reach cramped places that a big bulky camera can't go (think miniatures). And by rotating one section of the relay lens, you can create the illusion that the camera is spinning. Tilt-Shift Lenses These lenses allow you to tilt or shift the plane of focus, allowing you to make miniatures look like full-scale and vice-versa. They also solve the keystoning problem of wide angle lenses, especially problematic with architectural shots. Another cool feature is the ability to shoot into mirrors without getting the camera in the reflection. These are all the in-camera effects I could think of. Did I miss any?

In an era of sharp, lifeless digital sensors, it seems like everyone‘s hunting for that “film look”. Between adding grain, applying film stock LUTs, and even transferring digital footage to film and back again, it seems like people are desperate to bring character into their digital footage. That’s what I love about this DZOFilm 20-55mm lens. It has a ton of character, which is why I asked my friend if I could borrow his for a day. A still from Dead Serious, a short film my friend shot entirely with this lens The lens comes from a Chinese company, but still feels like a quality product when you hold it in your hand. My friend has been using it for about a year now, and he tells me he's had no issues with the quality. The only thing I notice is that there’s a microscopic amount of play in the focus ring, but it’s so faint and not noticeable in-camera. Focus breathing is also so extremely faint that it’s not worth mentioning. Here's the thing—this lens would score quite poorly if you measured it against the traditional criteria of what constitutes a quality lens. There's some geometric distortion so it's not a great lens for VFX work. The lens is designed for a Super35 sensor, but you can still see some distortion on the railing towards the left of the crop box It's not very sharp either. There's also a ton of chromatic aberration. You can see the lack of sharpness in this crop, along with the chromatic aberration that's most noticeable on the right of the cat's face But all these "flaws" are part of its character. The chromatic aberration is actually my favorite part about this lens—it adds an extra splash of color. My second favorite part is the price—they cost as much as a photo lens! Or if you rent, I've seen them for as little as $35/day on sharegrid. So if you're trying to put some life back into your digital footage, this lens might be worth considering. Has anyone used any other lens series from this company? I’m curious if the full frame primes have the same character and if they’re color matched.

This is great advice. I've learned so much by adding shots I admire into my NLE and not only looking at the graphs, but even playing around with the color wheels to try and get an idea of what the shot might've looked like before grading.

On lower budget projects, we sometimes don’t get the luxury of a prep day—or sometimes even if we do, we might only check that the gear isn't broken. But if you’re concerned with the outcome of the final product, I would encourage you to do more thorough testing of your gear, above and beyond the question of whether it functions or not, specifically when it comes to lenses. Even on the lowest of budgets, you need to know how your lenses behave so you can shoot accordingly. Take, for example, my old Pentax 50mm. This lens has a cool vintage look, and it’s the only lens that I’ve ever gotten the question, “what lens did you use?“ after showing someone a photo I took. ^This isn't a great photo, but it's an example of how the Pentax looks. Anyways, if you had this lens, you might be inclined to use it for one of your shoots. And that's where the lens test comes in. Notice the vignette and halation when wide open. That's the "cool vintage look" right there. So imagine you've just bought this lens on eBay, you pop it on your camera to shoot a quick test clip at f/1.7 and love what you see. You take it on a shoot, but the subject matter you're shooting requires a larger depth of field. You stop down to f/5.6 and now you've lost most of that cool look, but you might not notice until you're seeing the footage on your computer monitor, at which point, it's too late. Another example: I recently worked on a short film where they chose to use rehoused Canon FD lenses for their glass. The tighter shots looked good, but the wide shots looked fuzzy and had a crazy amount of spherical distortion. Again, a great reason to test—to avoid unpleasant surprises on set. Side note regarding my test shots: The bottom test card image is noisy because I bumped the ISO up to keep the exposure consistent—DON'T DO THIS! Ideally, you would have enough light on your test card that you could only change the aperture and shutter angle, because changing the ISO affects the sharpness and gives an ambiguous result. I was trying to take these quickly just for the example, but you shouldn't rush through your tests for an actual project!

Haha oh no!! I'm always so scared of the weight of the camera alone cracking the glass. Luckily it's never happened to me. (knock on wood) But now I know not to put two dancers on the roof!

Thanks for the silicon grease tip!

So you want to mount a camera to a car? There are so many ways to do it, it’s overwhelming, and it’s easy to get wrong, only to find out later your footage is ruined. I’m making this post because I didn’t have a guide when I started—I figured it out through trial and error, so I’ll share my experiences, that way you don’t have to relive all my mistakes. The Most Basic Mount This is the absolute most simple low budget car mount you can muster. It’s a suction cup with a ball mount tripod head on top. You can re-create this set up for a cinema camera as well, but you'll need a much larger suction cup with a professional level tripod head and bowl to support the additional weight. This setup will get you the shot for your student film, but for anything professional, it will be too shaky. To stabilize the camera, we need to prevent its movement on every axis. Adding Stability Suction cups are made of rubber, and they flex with the movement of the car. A tiny flex in the base of the suction cup translates to a much larger movement when it gets up to the camera body. To add rigidity, use C-stand arms with baby pins and additional suction cups to lock the camera in place. You’ll get the best result from positioning the C-stand arms at a diagonal, so each one is acting on all three axes. You’ll also want to attach the baby pins on the camera as closely as possible to each other. For example, if one baby pin is on top of the camera body and the other is screwed into the bottom, you will be introducing flex into the setup. When you’ve got it rigged up, you can test that you’ve done it correctly by pulling on the camera in every direction to make sure there’s no flex. Getting Even Smoother Now even if there’s no flex between the camera and the car, the footage will still be a little rough due to the car itself shaking over the bumps in the road. For a car commercial where you want a shot like this: that’s fine. You want it to be hard mounted to the car. Any dampening of the vibrations will cause the part of the car that’s in the shot to move around in relation to the frame. However, if you’re shooting a dialogue scene inside a car and the focus is on the actors, not the car, you’ll want to isolate vibrations as much as possible. To accomplish this, you’ll want to add vibration isolator between the suction cup and the tripod head. Obviously we don’t want to have C-stand arms locking the camera down if we’re using a vibration isolator, as they would just reintroduce the vibration we’re trying to eliminate. If you don’t have a vibration isolator, try hard mounting and shooting at a smaller shutter angle. This will reduce motion blur, making the footage easier to stabilize in post. Adding Versatility The general setup we’ve discussed so far allows you to capture some basic angles, but it’s limited by the fact that the suction cup attached to the camera can only mount to a broad, flat surface. To have the flexibility to put the camera anywhere you want, you’ll need to utilize speed rail. For some setups, building speed rail becomes more of an art form than it is a simple template to be followed. All I can say here is you need to experiment. It's best to build the speed rail rig at least a day before your shoot. That way, you'll have plenty of time to tweak it to be the best it can be, and then you can take photos to facilitate building it quickly on the shoot day. Just keep in mind that when you're building speed rail, you use the same concept of stabilizing it on every axis. Other Car Mount Devices - Gimbals provide their own stability with the additional feature of being to pan, tilt, and roll the camera from a remote control. Unless it’s a smaller gimbal like the DJI RS2 where you can just slap a suction cup on, you’ll be using speed rail to mount it. It’s common practice to have two pieces of speed rail coming from the roof and meeting in a ‘V’, at which point they connect to a vertical piece of speed rail that connects to the car body towards the ground. The gimbal connects to a vibration isolator that is suspended by a dampening arm, which attaches to the vertical piece of speed rail. This is a common way to mount a gimbal, but certainly not the only way. - Hostess trays are the standard way to shoot in-car dialogue scenes. It requires less planning than a speed rail setup, and it also allows actors to open and close the door a hostess tray is attached to. - Russian Arms are like a gimbal, steadicam, and jib all in one package. You have the freedom to move 360º around the camera car for maximum flexibility. - At the highest echelon of car rigging, they’ll actually modify the cars, build custom mounts, and bolt them to the picture cars for maximum stability. But if you’re doing that, you’re probably not reading this. Tricks of the Trade With any of these methods, there are some crucial steps you need to take for the best outcome - Use two screws for your tripod baseplate Whether the camera is a little handheld mirrorless or giant cinema rig, you need to have two points of attachment. If you only use one screw, no matter how tight it is, the camera will likely rotate around on the plate as you go through turns in the car, potentially even unscrewing itself! - Clean the camera car. The suction cups may come loose if stuck to a dirty car. I like to wash the camera car the night before to make sure any surface can be mounted to. If you’re in a pinch however, you can use glass cleaner/detailer spray/water and a rag to clean the surface where you’re sticking the suction cup. (Warning: This will most likely scratch the paint) To garner even more adhesion, you can pour water on the car before putting the suction cup down, or alternatively, you can put a thin coat of vaseline around the edge of the suction cups. (I’m not a huge proponent of vaseline because it has the potential to damage paint) - Stay away from matte boxes. This is especially true if the camera will be mounted to a gimbal that’s mounted to the car. A matte box is the most un-aerodynamic thing you could put on your camera and is likely to introduce shakiness to your footage. When filters are required, opt for screw ons. - Safety straps. You don't want your camera coming loose and hitting the concrete. Not only would your camera be damaged, but you could also cause a car accident. The lowest budget version of a safety strap would be tying rope to the camera, feeding it through a door or window, and then closing said door or window. A better option would be ratcheting safety straps specifically made to hook onto edges of car body panels:

Has anyone else heard of Sony's SDK? If you have some programming ability, you can do all sorts of things with your camera through your computer!! They even provide a detailed setup guide: The SDK is compatible with most Sony mirrorless cameras, along with the FX6, FX3, and the new FX30. The possibilities are endless. You could link the SDK with a motion sensor to snap a photo or start recording video upon detecting movement. Imagine being a wildlife photographer/videographer—you could get close-up shots of wild animals, since you wouldn't be frightening them away with your presence. If you were tasked with photographing something monotonous, the SDK could make your life easier. Imagine a brand is paying you to photograph their new line of clothing, and they wanted five different angles of each product on a mannequin. Even if you had five cameras, it would be tedious to take each picture by hand—after dressing the mannequin, you'd have to walk to each camera and press the shutter for each photo. And if one camera was positioned overhead for a bird's eye view, you'd have to climb up a ladder each time to press the shutter. With the SDK, you could connect the cameras to your computer and press one button to instantly take five simultaneous pictures. Or maybe you're taking a lot of HDR photos. Adjusting the exposure between each bracketed shot takes time, and if you're working quickly, you run the risk of making a mistake and setting the wrong exposure. You could use the SDK to make your camera take three pictures at the press of one button, adjusting the exposure between each one by a specified amount of stops. And if your shutter speed was fast enough, the software could take the photos quickly enough that you wouldn't even need a tripod for your HDR work! I think it's awesome they provide their SDK to anyone for free. Has anyone here created anything cool with it?

I've only used the MacBeth chart, simply because of its prominence. Ironically however, it wasn't originally created for video purposes and I'm sure there are better alternatives.

Perhaps the flare made the shift more noticeable, but I've noticed this blue shift on multiple photo telephoto lenses regardless of whether there is flare or not.

As we all know, photo lenses can be fraught with imperfections (focus breathing, distracting lens flare, etc), but we use them on smaller projects when we don't have the budget for a set of Arri Master Primes. And while we can't make a $2,000 photo lens look like a $40,000 cinema lens, we can at least make the look of our project more consistent by using a color chart to correct lens color shift. If you think it's not a big deal, take a look at these two stills: Both were shot with the same camera, the same white balance, and the same lighting. The same base grade was applied to both files. Despite the Canon lens' intense blue shift, you might say—with some grading, no big deal, no one will notice. But imagine if you were using these two lenses for a documentary. You'd be cutting back and forth between the wide and close up for the entire project. You'd have to do an intense amount of finessing to match these shots for every single interview or else the audience would be distracted by a color shift on every cut. It only takes a few seconds to put a color chart in front of a camera, but it will save you hours in the editing room.

You first have to set the camera to Interval Shooting mode (Menu>Shooting>Drive Mode>Interval Shoot Func.>On) And you might think that's all there is to it. But it's a little trickier than that. Let's say you're doing a sunset. If you go outside at golden hour, set your exposure in Manual mode and let the camera do its thing, your timelapse will start off looking great and then slowly fade to black. Not what we want. If you set the camera mode to AUTO, A (Aperture Priority), or S (Shutter Priority), the camera will keep your exposure as consistent as possible, but it will change your aperture and/or shutter speed, neither of which I want to change during a timelapse. So the trick is to use manual mode, but set the ISO to Auto. That way your exposure will remain constant, as well as your depth of field and motion blur. Just keep in mind the minimum ISO in ISO Auto is 640, meaning that you may need an ND filter if you were planning to shoot at ISO 40 during the daytime portion of the timelapse. Although this is the best solution I've found, you can still run into the issue of your night footage being really noisy. For example if you've exposed for daytime with a 1.2 ND, the camera has to boost the noise to crazy high levels to compensate at night. I'm thinking you could avoid this by removing the ND when it starts to get dark, maybe staging two NDs in your mattebox and removing them one by one, or slowly adjusting a variable ND until it's not doing anything. I haven't had the time to test this, but please let me know your results if you try it! P.S. A helpful tip for timelapses: Because the camera will be powered on for hours and you can't swap batteries mid-timelapse, use the USB-C port to charge the camera from wall power (or car power with a cigarette lighter to USB adapter).

In my quest to figure out how to color grade, I started grading without LUTs (adjusting each clip from scratch), then I tried starting with a base LUT and tweaking from there, and more recently, I've been using the ACES color space with input transforms. The first method (adjusting color wheels manually for each clip to get the look I want) is the most tedious. I also feel like the LUTs are designed to fix color shifts from the camera sensor and make the image look more lifelike. So without a LUT, I felt like my work looked worse. Starting with a base LUT speeds things up, but I recently noticed that I'm losing information: Take a look at her cheek. All the color information is lost—it's just a sea of red. And there's no amount of finagling the color wheels that will get that information back. Now compare that to the same still, grading in the ACES color spaces with an input transform to SLog3: Notice the smooth roll off on her cheek from highlights to shadows. Much better. And much more flexibility in grading as well. Most of the times, the difference between these two methods isn't noticeable, but the intense red light really brings out the limitations of that specific LUT. Anyways, I'm curious how others are grading their footage? Any nuggets of knowledge you've gleaned on your color grading journey?

I couldn't imagine not shooting in log, even more so when it's a hectic run and gun. When you're moving quickly, you're more likely to make mistakes, and having the flexibility to possibly correct some of those mistakes in post is priceless. If you're too lazy to grade it, you can slap an SLog3 to 709 LUT on all your footage with one click and be done

I was on a shoot recently where we were using the Sony PMW-F55, and upon reviewing the dailies, we found the monitor LUT had been baked into all the footage! Luckily we caught it early, but it could've been catastrophic had we not. The problem comes stems from the way the F55 settings are configured—when you add a LUT to the top two SDI outputs, the camera will bake the LUT into the recorded files. You can't put a LUT on one and not the other; they are linked. Not that many of us are still using the F55 these days, but if you are, make sure you run your monitors from SDI pins 3&4, or apply a LUT from the monitor if you use SDI pins 1&2.

I agree with everything you said. I was grading all the log footage to match the PP off shot, but if I had been grading them both to match a certain look, I would’ve had very little flexibility with the PP off. Also, regarding noise—I would guess that when digital cameras were more primitive, there may have been some difference in noise levels when shooting with and without log, but at least with the a7sIII, I think it’s safe to say that the S-Log3 noise is a non-issue.

There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on this. I’ve heard you shouldn’t shoot night footage with a Log color profile because Log makes compromises to achieve a wider dynamic range, which you don’t need at night. So if that's true, it follows that you should shoot with a standard color profile to capture more information. However, I’ve worked on movies, TV shows, and commercials, and I've never seen any footage shot in anything other than Log. I decided to shoot some test footage with my Sony a7sIII and let you decide what’s better. Here's one shot, with four different camera settings: The bottom right frame was exposed properly with no Picture Profile. The other three were shot in SLog-3 with various ISOs and then graded to match the first image. When you zoom in, you can see differences in noise:At ISO 8,000, the SLog-3 shot is so noisy that it's unusable. When we increase the ISO to 20,000, it's still noisier than the PP Off shot, but just barely. Even though it's clearly noisier when zoomed in on a still frame, the difference in noise isn't apparent when you playback the clips as video. Then at ISO 64,000, the noise is just as low as the PP Off image, but at ISO 64,000, the image has been overexposed to the point that it looks slightly washed out in terms of contrast. Also, a subjective critique, but I think the colors look worse in the ISO 64,000 image. A point where I notice both these things (muted color and low contrast) is the part of the road illuminated by the headlights Personally, I think the SLog-3 image shot at ISO 20,000 looks the best, and from this experiment, I would decide it's better to shoot in SLog-3. So I think I'll continue to shoot in Log. But maybe I'm missing something. Does anyone have different thoughts on this? Maybe different results from different cameras? I’d love to hear other experiences.