Videography, Photography, and all things visual

Manofinterests · March 25, 2019, 8:59pm

Just some talking points
What are you shooting on right now? (Camera & Gear)

What is your primary focus? (Photo? Video? Editing? Colorist?)

What do you primarily shoot? (interviews, professional, weddings, etc)

What piece of gear are you looking forward to next?

Favorite piece of gear?

Next big project?

What do you want to improve on most?

What are you shooting on right now? (Camera & Gear)
Canon XC10 & Panasonic G7

What is your primary focus? (Photo? Video? Editing? Colorist?)
Videography and editing (I suck at editing though)

What do you primarily shoot? (interviews, professional, weddings, etc)
Keyboard Reviews, youtube stuff, interviews

What piece of gear are you looking forward to next?
BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k
a circular polarizer that fits my XC10

Favorite piece of gear?
Just got my XC10 in so I can’t say it is that just yet. But so far it’d probably have to be my 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. lens that I rock on my G7. Solid piece of glass for its price.

Next big project?
Just more videos on youtube Reviews, streams, tutorials, and more!

What do you want to improve on most?
Everything. Especially color correcting. I just switched from premiere to resolve and I have been enjoying it so far, but I feel like I’m having a tougher time getting used to color correcting with resolve so any tips would be great. I also want to get out and shoot outdoors more, but before that I really want to make sure I have all of the ins and outs of ‘studio shooting’ (shooting in my room) down so set up and tear down of my setup can be easy and efficient for when I need to change my setup for different scenes.

tigers · March 26, 2019, 1:47am

What are you shooting on right now? (Camera & Gear)
Fujifilm XT-3

What is your primary focus? (Photo? Video? Editing? Colorist?)
Photography and editing.

What do you primarily shoot? (interviews, professional, weddings, etc)
Landscapes, vacations, kids

What piece of gear are you looking forward to next?
Fujifilm XF 50-140 f/2.8 (gonna have to sell a board to help with that, though)

Favorite piece of gear?
XT-3

Next big project?
¯\(ツ)/¯

What do you want to improve on most?
Editing, especially videos in Premiere. Most of my photo editing is in Lightroom CC and I’m about average proficiency with it but getting faster at editing and ingesting/rating photos would be nice.

Kekkles · March 26, 2019, 3:12am

Gear:
Sony a7rII, 24-105mm f/4, 28mm f/2, Minolta 55mm f/1.7, feelworld 4k monitor, smallrig for a7r/sII, DJI Ronin-M, Zhiyun crane 2
Not pictured: a7sII, a6500, 85mm f/1.8, zeiss 55mm f/1.8, various nd filters and polerizing filters, and manfrotto tripods
What are you shooting on right now?
Primarily a7rII, I have been shooting more photo’s recently so the rII is my go to.

What is your primary focus? (Photo? Video? Editing? Colorist?)
Photography and Videography,
Photo editing

What do you primarily shoot? (interviews, professional, weddings, etc)
Videos: Car events such as car shows or racing events (mainly all b roll)
Photos: Cars, Landscapes, portraits

What piece of gear are you looking forward to next?
a light box for product photos, a7sIII, a7000, ronin-s, any new g-master lens $$$

Favorite piece of gear?
Dji ronin- M or 24-105 f/4 lens, its great for everything.
Next big project?
A car edit featuring my car (2017 Subaru STi).

What do you want to improve on most?
The biggest thing with me is being constantly motivated to go out and shoot. My work flow is like short big spikes of productivity followed by long and lazy flatines. Also having a consistent style, I’ve been playing around with photo editing for a while but I’ve only ever recently gotten serious about it (1 year) and I have yet to get my “style” of photography.

monotux · March 26, 2019, 4:10pm

I’m this type of nerd as well:

What are you shooting on right now? (Camera & Gear)

When I can, I use the smaller camera pictured above - a Chamonix 045n-2 (4x5"), and the larger beast is a Intrepid 8x10".

…but since I recently became a father all of that analog work is put on hold for a few years.

I currently use my old trusted Nikon D600 with an assortment of prime lenses. Currently I use my Tamron 45 mm f1.8, but the old time Nikon 20 mm f2.8 is in heavy use as well. Beyond that I use my old 55 mm macro, my crappy 35 mm f2 and my excellent 85 mm f1.8.

What is your primary focus? (Photo? Video? Editing? Colorist?)

Photography. Darkroom work is my favorite activity but I haven’t had time to do it in a while. Shooting with my large format cameras is lovely as well.

What do you primarily shoot? (interviews, professional, weddings, etc)

Only personal stuff. I’ve done a few weddings, portraits and such, but nowadays only personal projects.

What piece of gear are you looking forward to next?

Pretty happy with my current gear, but I’m probably going to move to a smaller non-DSLR camera if my D600 breaks down (I’ve had it for…6 years or so now?).

After using my large format cameras nearly exclusively for a few years, I’m really starting to miss the camera movements when using my DSLR. I might look into some tilf/shift lenses for my current system, but it’s so expensive and it is silly compared to what I’m used to have.

Favorite piece of gear?

My 4x5" camera + lenses, no doubt.

Next big project?

Currently only doing a diary project.

What do you want to improve on most?

Portraiture and everyday life, it’s been a while since I shot that subject and did it well.

Nebulant · March 26, 2019, 5:48pm

What are you shooting on right now? (Camera & Gear)
Main personal camera is an Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the Olympus 12-40 f/2.8 Pro lens. I also have several other olympus zoom lenses and many vintage ones that I can use with this body (one of the main advantages of m43 is it adaptability with older gear). I also have a Nikon body that has had the hot mirror (IR cut filter) over its sensor removed, allowing it image anything from near UV to IR depending on the lens filter package used.

At this point I have put all of my vintage film cameras into storage now that I do not have access to a darkroom.

At work, we use cameras of unbelievable size that actually still use film - 10,000 feet of it at a time! You should see the ‘camera support’ we use

I also have the benefit of having my significant other work for a major camera rental house, so I am able to get my hands on almost anything else I would need for at least a weekend. I love being able to try out lots of different stuff.

What is your primary focus? (Photo? Video? Editing? Colorist?)
My background is in Scientific Imaging, so I have always focused on absolute accuracy and the ability to pull meaningful data from images. When editing images I aim for true to life tone and color reproduction, with critical accuracy.

What do you primarily shoot? (interviews, professional, weddings, etc)
Personally, I like to shoot landscapes.
For work I have done forensics, ballistic analysis, archaeological photomicrography, fine art and historical document digitization and reproduction, high speed imaging, and high altitude aerial imaging/mapping.

What piece of gear are you looking forward to next?
Photographic equipment is not my main ‘hobby spending’ focus at the moment, but I have been interesting in picking up the Laowa 7.5mm f/2 Rectilinear lens. It is very interesting to see such a wide lens with little barrel distortion. (https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-7-5mm-f2/)

Favorite piece of gear?
My favorite piece of gear would have to be a color checker. Weird choice, but I always like using them when I can.

Next big project?
Tabletop studio pictures of all of my keyboards / keysets.

What do you want to improve on most?
I have never been a very good ‘artistic’ photographer. I want to work on making more visually pleasing images, and learning more about studio lighting, even if it is just with my pop up lighting tent and speedlights.
I also need to get out more and shoot! It is a tough balance between going out and being ‘present’ in your surroundings and enjoying your time vs. having the camera in hand and experiencing things through the lens. I also want to find more unique and interesting things to shoot - the dilemma of the landscape photographer is knowing that almost everything you shoot has been shot before, and probably by someone better. I need to find more joy in what I shoot for myself.

Manofinterests · March 27, 2019, 6:02pm

On a random note, I got a gift in the mail

Kekkles · March 27, 2019, 6:16pm

That’s one nice gift, what lens do you think you’ll be using?

I’d recommend the Lumix 12-35f/2.8 best all around lens.

Manofinterests · March 27, 2019, 6:30pm

Oooh, I’ve been eyeing that lens for a while. The best I can do at the moment is the lumix 14-45f3.5-5.6 which is decent. I should start looking at the used prices for the 12-35

I also have the 25mm/f1.7 which is actually pretty great for the price tag since it goes on sale quite often. These are the two primary M43 lenses I have been using with everything involving my G7.

Since this was an unexpected gift, I need to start looking at next month’s budget so I can get myself a cage, batteries (or a v lock battery solution), and a usb–c drive. I’m super pumped to try this out and see what I can do with it.

I guess since everything I’m recording now can be prores, raw, or blackmagic raw, I should work harder on learning and improving my color correction and color grading

Manofinterests · March 27, 2019, 6:42pm

Always curious; how did you get into large format photography? It looks really daunting lol

Kekkles · March 27, 2019, 7:26pm

I’d recommend either SmallRig or Tilta for the actual camera cage as it’s probably the best bang for your buck cage compared to like the 8sinn cage which is like $300+

But totally look into the getting 15mm rod supporting baseplate so you can attach a v-mount battery because from my short experience with the BMPCC4k has poor battery life, and lets be honest no one wants to use a dummy wall-plug batteries
eventhough 8sinn is like expensive as hell they have what I think are the best cf rods in the market as well as a really good v mount battery plate.

monotux · March 27, 2019, 7:50pm

It was a slippery slope

It started with shooting 35 mm film, and working in the darkroom. Eventually I moved into medium format and I was amazed with the difference in image quality. At this point I had read quite a lot of literature on darkroom work, learned about view camera movements and started dreaming about being able to develop each sheet exactly as needed for the negative/scene combination.

As I already had the development and printing ready I eventually located my 4x5" and the necessary gear to work with it. I got lucky and got a great deal on my setup.

Manofinterests · April 2, 2019, 3:49am

Cage and SSD! Everything will slowly come together piece by piece

Manofinterests · April 14, 2019, 6:42am

More progress on the BMPCC4K rig!
I have done some b roll shots of keyboards that you all will start seeing in future videos. Since it’s just b roll for now, the battery life is manageable as long as I have a couple backup batteries charged and good to go.

I think the next big addition I’ll need is a rail system so I can mount a 150W v mount battery so I can shoot for several hours at keycon and the Seattle meetup coming up

Gord · April 14, 2019, 4:16pm

Cool to see so many keyboard nerds who are also camera nerds

What are you shooting on right now? (Camera & Gear)
Stills: Fuji X100
Video (ish): Sony RX100MkIII
Support: Manfrotto BeFree travel tripod

What is your primary focus? (Photo? Video? Editing? Colorist?)
When I was doing it professionally it was shooting/editing/grading video. These days I do it for fun and mainly just shoot stills (so much simpler without sound and movement, you can put all your effort into capturing the scene)

What do you primarily shoot? (interviews, professional, weddings, etc)
I paid my way through undergrad shooting and editing a lot of talking-head studio greenscreen work - not the most exciting stuff but I appreciated the ability to streamline and optimize a consistent workflow over time. These days it’s pretty much all hobby landscapes, although I plan to start documenting some of my keyboard-related builds, so we’ll see if that changes.

What piece of gear are you looking forward to next?
As you can tell from the list above, I’m pretty frugal when it comes to camera gear, now that I’m not using it professionally! If I were to start doing more video I’m sure the RX100 would become limiting soon enough, but for now I’ll say my likely next step (maybe not for a while though) would be to upgrade the X100 and get back into interchangeable lenses. I love Fuji’s physical exposure controls - @tiger how do you like your XT3?

Favorite piece of gear?
Fuji X100, for all the buttons and dials. It’s like typing on a mechanical keyboard instead of a touchscreen!

Next big project?
I wouldn’t call it “big”, but I’m working on some keyboard builds and will probably post some photos and maybe a video or two.

What do you want to improve on most?

A few things:

First, improving my open-source video post-processing workflow. There’s lots of great options of the stills side (DarkTable, RawTherapee, etc) but for video I keep getting pulled back to Premiere.

Somewhat related to the previous point, I would also like to figure out a workflow for 100% keyboard-driven video editing, at least for assembling timelines. At one point I dug into customizing Blender to do this, but there were still a few click-related actions that didn’t seem to be keymappable through the Python API.

Finally, I really identified with this:

I find that when I go out with a camera I get consumed by the process of shooting and miss the bigger picture - this often leads to me just leaving the camera behind because it’s too much of distraction. I need to figure out how to balance that dynamic.

Gord · April 19, 2019, 1:56am

Have you settled on a video format for recording in? Given the external SSD I assume it’s something high-bitrate… 12-bit RAW seems like overkill for shooting people at meetups, but hey, if you have the storage space and compute power… What are the file sizes like? How big’s your SSD and how quickly does it fill up?

And no problems editing it? How beefy is your machine?

Sorry for all the questions, I’ve been thinking about my own workflow a lot lately and am trying to get a handle on what the modern options look like.

Manofinterests · April 19, 2019, 7:14pm

I’ve been recording Blackmagic RAW 3:1 and it has been working out pretty well

It’ll probably be overkill, but having more data to play with color grading in post is always fun. Especially when you want to dramatically color grade/correct keycaps hehe

Manofinterests · April 21, 2019, 9:20pm

Hmm, about 68GB for approx 13mins or so of footage, so it does take up some space when I’m working hehe. Most of my videos/content aren’t longer than 15 mins, or I have normally around 200GB free on my main drive to work with. Once I finish any given project all of the files and info go to my 8TB backup. Things are filling pretty quickly, but so far so good.

I don’t have any footage to show off yet since the camera is still pretty new to me and I’m still getting into the swing of things, but I’ll have a lot to show off after Keycon

Manofinterests · April 22, 2019, 3:21pm

No worries about all the questions

The specs I’m running are:

CPU: i7 8700k (not currently OC’d)
GFX Card: R9 390
Ram: 32GB Ram

Everything runs alright for working with the raw footage. Some small hiccups when I’m trying to move about a larger bit of footage, but overall everything is fine. Rarely any hiccups on playback which is convenient.

In terms of LUTs and grading, my gpu/cpu handles it well enough where it does take a moment, but once it applies it’s good to go.

I think it’s mostly my CPU that really lets me do my editing pretty smoothly as well as the optimization in resolve.

Manofinterests · May 3, 2019, 7:54am

Rig update

Manofinterests · July 19, 2019, 10:12am

Staying up until 3AM preparing to move everything for a shoot