My office in this house is 80 square feet and most of that is taken up by shelving and desks. If you include only the open floor space to position lights and a table, then my usable space is really 35 square feet. What can you do in just 35 square feet?

In the last article, I put together a test. I bought one of those pneumatic lift laptop task tables you often see at doctor’s offices or yoga studios. I placed a light with a large softbox, the camera, and some props. The emphasis on this setup was minimal time. I did not want it to take three hours like it had previously to build a lighting setup. I wanted it to take 20 minutes and have as little friction as possible to not dampen the motivation. The result was alright. Not great, not bad either. The image lacked contrast. The table was too small.

I set a goal for myself for the following week to improve on this test. I wanted more contrast, more three-dimensionality to the image. And I wanted an edge light.

I’m writing this up because I think there a lot of other people out there with tiny, tiny spaces feeling like they’re unable to do anything in them. I’m dealing with the same thing! And this is what I’ve come up with.

Neutral Shot

In the first test, I didn’t like the rounded corners on the laptop task table. At the focal length that I wanted, those rounded corners would be starting to bevel off on the edges of the frame, and I didn’t like that look. This meant that I could not get the wider shot that I wanted, limiting my range.

The first thing I did in this followup is head out to IKEA to get a new table. I wanted a solid neutral white surface to avoid changing the color on the products that I’d be showing and to bounce soft light onto those products. The smallest white table top that IKEA has is the LINNMON top, measuring 39 3/8” x 23 5/8”. I picked up four black ADILS legs to go with it. The grand total? $50.

Next up was key and fill lighting. My office has white walls, so I positioned the new table top close to the wall on the right side of the frame so that light from the key source, a Forza 60B in a 24” x 36” softbox, would bounce off the wall and reenter the right side of the frame as fill. The Forza key light is at 30% and placed to the left side of the frame, facing downward at an angle. Any 60 watt equivalent point source light like the Forza 60B would work here.

For the edge light, I used the light bar on my monitor. I thought about mixing colors, setting the key to tungsten and the edge light to daylight, but I didn’t like the look. It wasn’t blue enough. Instead, I matched everything to daylight. I also didn’t move the light bar. I just tilted the monitor back so that the light bar was casting its light toward the IKEA table top.

Finally, I sourced a looping colorful screensaver on Artlist. You can see it in the upper right hand of the frame in the wider shots. (Artlist has royalty free music, stock footage, and templates. They have a very open commercial use license, which is why I use them. Its library is small compared to other platforms, but what they have on there is good quality. Sound effects are lacking, however, and their search capabilities need a lot of improvement. So you know, the above link is a referral link.).

The end result?

I like the edge light way more than I had expected. Combined with the key and fill, the subject item pops in the frame. The table is not distracting. I like this setup.

Here are a few more shots.

As it turns out, sandwiching the subject item (shiny black lenses and microphone gear in this case) between two large soft light sources and then accenting those soft sources with a sharp edge light works well.

Further, if I need to do some top down work, I can set up the overhead rig, which is basically a Dana Dolly rigged on two C stands, over the top of the IKEA table. If I need to do some cyclorama photos, I can do the same thing with this table and some Savage paper, but against the gear wall. That is something I have yet to try.

I don’t have much more to say here. If you’re looking at a minimal cost lighting setup, I’d grab:

• 1x 60 watt point source LED light (such as Aputure Amaran 60D)

• 1x 24” x 36” soft box compatible with your point source

• 1x 9’ light stand for the light

• 1x IKEA LINNMON table top (39 3/8” x 23 5/8”)

• 4x ADILS legs

I’d then position your setup near a wall to benefit from bounce light. And, if you can swing it, you can grab any small LED light for use off frame as an edge light.

This setup here takes less than twenty minutes to put together and about fifteen to put away. I timed it. That’s way less friction than three hours.

The only thing for me to do now is to get to making those videos. That’s for another time.

(Way too much cream.)

This was a few years ago now. I have since moved across the country to a small townhouse in the city. I don’t have the space for this setup anymore.

And that thought has gotten my thinking.

This year, I’ve wanted to get back to tinkering. I enjoy doing that, you know, finding a weird old lens and putting it on a camera and getting some test footage or setting up fake product photos just for the activity of lighting, capturing, and editing them. This whole Feed the Sensor blog came about when I had that space.

There’s something to be said about the consistency of a creative space. It’s having markers on the floor for the tripod, a height noted down for C stands, the same lights, the same camera settings, a familiar shot that you can go to without much thought or time. Having that all ready to go means less friction when creativity strikes you.

Currently I don’t have that. When I made a video about Rode’s headphones and microphone, it took me 4 hours to build the set in the kitchen. And I ended up re-shooting that video twice (for a total of three setup times and 12 hours). That’s not something that I want to do again.

So, I have been exploring some fast setups. Hardware Canucks’ tiny studio space, as shown in Gerald Undone’s studio tour, is good inspiration.

These setups take less than twenty minutes to put together. They are all in my office room next to my desk. They do not take much effort or thought. I am also using as much preexisting room lighting as possible.

Evening OTS Shot

This is a 45-degree angle, over-the-shoulder shot. The key light is a Forza 60B positioned overhead. This light is permanently in place as a key light for video calls with clients, so it’s easy enough to swivel around. I also have a kicker light from a BenQ ScreenBar. (As a side note, monitor light bars look cozy in home office photos, but they’re just… fine. Mine is useful for throwing a bi-color light onto the wall behind the monitors when color grading. But mine is not too functional as a desk lamp, at least for me, because it’s placement on the monitor directs the shadow of your hand onto whatever you’re doing. They do give off a nice vibe, though). The fill light is the warm bounce off the bamboo desk. I find this look pleasing. I think I’d add some rain sounds in the background if I choose to use this setup.

Evening Overhead Shot

This shot is lit the same as the previous one, but I have mounted the camera to an overhead rig. To make this shot happen, I have to place two C-stands, mount the overhead rig, mount the camera, align the camera so that it is plumb downward and parallel with the wood grain (easier said than done!), and connect the camera to a monitor at desk height. This setup takes time and I could not keep it built because I need those C-stands.

Simple Front Shot

This shot takes way less time and is more aligned with videos typically on YouTube than the previous two shots. It uses the same key light as in the evening shot, though shuffled to the side. The fill light comes from the bounce of the white desk. And there is a kicker here that next time I’d change up to a blue light. I like how Crimson Engine does the blue light in his backgrounds, so I might try that. I think why my mind is wandering to his videos is that he makes effective use of contrast. His shots have this three dimensional pop.

Clean Closeups

These two shots use the same lighting as the simple front shot but the camera has been moved in and angled downward. I really like how sharp the Zeiss Contax 50mm F/1.8 is at F/2.8. I did not make any sharpness adjustments in post. This is straight from the camera.

I keep thinking I need to buy new lenses. I have watched probably all of the videos about the NiSi prime lenses. Having used the Contax lens set for 7 years, switching to those would be a big shift.

I’m going to keep experimenting with the lighting in these shots to make the subject of the shot have more of a three-dimensional pop. I can see an edge light looking nice on the crown side of the watch. The question I have for the next post is how can I maximize the saturation and contrast with lighting in camera? I’m going to take some inspiration from Hardware Canucks for that.

What are you doing to support your creativity? How important is a space in what you do?

In that post, I wrote about a few of the benefits of the camera — global shutter, a robust codec, inputs and outputs galore, built in V-mount, and internal ND filters. If you get yourself a few XQD adapters that slot into the SXS slots, you are set with that camera and will get an amazing image out of it. Buy two of them, take care of them, and you would not be missing much.

I shot with it for a few months. Then, at the beginning of this year, I sold it. I discovered that I had different priorities than when I purchased it.

I was in the process of moving from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. This move, while only a four-hour drive, meant I would have to establish a new network of clients and contractors in the city. For the first three months of 2023, I had next to no work. The majority of that time was designing my company’s website and building workflows with contractors. Work did not pick up until the second half of this year.

To enter the industry in Seattle, I wanted a camera body that was appealing and familiar to people I might have worked with, not “some old Sony camera from yesteryear” (though it is still used in many places) that is not exactly a hot rental. I also wanted a lighter weight body with similar base features but also one that was more energy efficient and had internal raw capabilities. The F55 has those AXS-R5 and AXS-R7 recorders that enable 16-bit linear raw recording to AXS cards, but then you’d be looking at about $13k to get up and running.

The camera that hit all of that criteria ended up being the Canon C70.

Hold on! Before you scroll away, look, I get it. This camera has a bad rep. The body is terrible ergonomically and infamous with its poor monitor hinge. Every rental I have had of this camera was awful not because of the image but because of the rigging.

If you take the time to rig out this camera properly, the body is no longer an issue. I keep the monitor closed all the time, instead running a right angle HDMI up into a SmallHD monitor mounted on a hinge at the front of a top handle. This monitor then outputs via SDI to a wireless transmitter mounted to a V-mount adapter on rails.

The Leftfield 3 baseplate from Bright Tangerine serves as the core piece from which everything is mounted. Rails out the back carry the V-mount adapter, transmitter, and batteries. Rails out the front carry the matte box. The top handle has a top rail mount that I can use with FIZ systems. Altogether, the rigging is lightweight and balanced. Did I mention that the top handle can be slid back and forth and left and right for adjusting balance?

The point I am making is if you invest in rigging out your camera, you can make up for many of its downsides.

What is not true about that above statement is inputs and outputs. I miss the SDI outputs on the F55; the SDI loop out on the SmallHD monitor is not an equal substitute. I also weirdly miss the way ND filters worked on that camera. There was just something more tactile about it compared to the buttons on the C70.

But back to the message here, the Canon met all of the following:

1. Modern camera body

2. Lighter weight

3. Internal RAW

4. Internal ND filters

5. EF mount (via at-the-time included 0.71x adapter)

6. Common recording media

7. XLR ports (mini-XLRs have been fine)

And lost out on these, compared to the F55:

1. Global shutter

2. More than one video output

3. Any kind of power output (fixed with adapter)

4. Built-in V-mount battery adapter (fixed with adapter)

5. A robust recording codec

This year, I produced about 48 videos. Most of these videos were shot on the C70 that I purchased after selling the F55. I do not think that I will review the camera, since it has already been covered in so much detail by… everybody, but I will leave a note here about compression.

I primarily shoot on the raw light codec. It is nearly the same bitrate as XAVC, around 400 Mbps, but retains 12-bit color detail so that I can change exposure, white balance, and sharpness in post. This bitrate is close to the 480 Mbps on the XOCN recording format of the F55. Both barely dent the space on my Network Attached Storage (NAS). I just wrote a post about why I got a NAS and data rates from various cameras, showing just how lightweight the C70 gets the image.

Compression is not perfect, though. If you were to zoom in all the way, you would see more artifacts on the C70. It is disappointing that I cannot increase the bitrate beyond the 400Mbps for internal raw light despite being able to shoot at 600+Mbps at 60fps.

I think the increased presence of compression artifacts is because more of that data is going to the 12-bit color retention than the retention of detail in a 10-bit image. I do not know if this is true. Please comment if you have an answer to this. All I know is that I see more compression “squiggles” when putting my nose to the screen. These squiggles are not visible when at 100%, but I see them because, like probably every other person in this industry, I cannot stop pixel peeping.

I have only had a problem with the compression once when I had to crop in 200% on an image to hide something in frame. When I did this, I noticed a reduction in detail that I have not seen on other cameras, including the F55. It was barely suitable for the job, but it worked. I would have liked a higher bitrate as that may have retained more detail.

So I got a Canon C70 after selling the Sony PMW-F55. I do not regret it. The color out of this camera is fantastic. Dynamic range gets two thumbs up. Once rigged out properly, it is a joy to use. In a short while, I will be purchasing a Canon C300 III for use as the A cam. This bigger camera will get me those inputs and outputs and higher bitrates and will work ergonomically out of the box. I do not plan on selling my soon-to-be B cam C70.

If you have any questions about my experience with the F55 or C70, leave a comment here. I plan on making some raw footage available for download once I figure out how to do that on Substack.

With that, thanks for reading!

Jump to table

I tried the labels on the sides with project names. I tried building an Excel sheet for tracking it all down. But, you know what? Having media for projects across 30 drives is an awful experience and I know I’m not alone here in being one’s own problem about data management. It’s an ongoing joke to ask how many hard drives one has in drawers, shelves, and in stacks beside their computer in a kind of “who has the tallest one” chumminess.

Thing is, this data management problem can be fixed by purchasing a RAID storage solution with a lot of storage, and most likely a network attached storage (NAS) one. Before purchasing, though, you’ve got to come to grips with how much storage will be needed over time inside of a system like this. Miss this step and you might be needing to upgrade to a bigger NAS sooner rather than later.

I sat down — adjacent to my stack of drives — and began to think about what I shot this year. In 2023, I did 22 projects and averaged about 180 minutes of total recorded time per project. This total comes out to about 12 TB of data for the year. Easy, right? I just buy a 48 TB NAS and call it a day with enough storage for 3 maybe 4 years? Well, maybe, if I stick to the Canon C70 for the duration of that time and don’t rent. My camera ownership track record in the last two years has not been great — Z Cam S6 to F3 and F55 to C70 to … Blackmagic Design Cube Camera 8K?

Methods

Every manufacturer has different compression methodologies and data rates for their cameras. For example, where the C70 maxes out at 51 MB/s (bytes not bits), for 4K DCI in Cinema RAW Light, the Ursa 12k hits 361 MB/s for 12K in 8:1 Blackmagic RAW. That’s a huge difference! On the Ursa, it’s not even possible to record at the highest settings without buying attachments and external drives.

Data rates are all over the place for every manufacturer and sources to find those data rates are also scattered across the Internet. To make things easier for myself, I thought about the resolutions, frame rates, and compressions most commonly used across camera models and arranged it all into a chart.

I’ll typically record at 24 frames per second and will almost always use the maximum amount of coverage on the sensor that I can get — give me that open gate! With compression, I just need enough data to do my normal color grading work, to pull back highlights if lost, or to raise shadows without everything being lost inside a murky gray fog. This generally means I aim for a balance of quality and efficiency, recording at a 5:1 or medium quality setting for B roll and opting for something slightly more compressed if doing interviews. With the C70, on the other hand, I just max that camera out because even at the highest settings it’s still significantly less data than the lowest setting on the Komodo of ELQ, which I think means Extra Low Quality.

After thinking about my typical recording settings, I sourced the average data rates for each camera model, compression, and codec from manuals and trustworthy websites like Newshooter. These links are included at the end of this post.

FYI, B&H Photo Video, as of the date of this post, uses the wrong units for the data rates of the Ursa Mini Pro 12K, leading users to believe that one can record 12K with minimum compression at a lightweight 578 megabits per second, when in reality, the camera punches a hole in your wallet at 578 megabytes per second — that’s over 30 gigabytes per minute.

Finally, I brought in three variables: (1) the average total project length, (2) the number of projects in a year, and (3) the storage cost per terabyte of data. The first two variables for me were, as mentioned, 180 minutes and 22 projects. To calculate cost per terabyte, I looked up the three most popular 12 TB and 20 TB storage drives that would be used in a NAS system and averaged their cost per terabyte, which came out to just over $18/TB — Hey, look, that costs a lot less than the usual $70 2 TB My Passport drive! There are savings in volume, for sure.

So what did I find out? Here’s the table.

Variables

1. Average total length of media in a project: 180 minutes.

2. Number of projects per year: 22.

3. Average cost per terabyte in a NAS storage drive: $18.55.*

The C70 is the most efficient camera I’ve used. It’s awesome! Ignoring the fact that you can’t buy storage by the terabyte, this camera costs $215 a year for 12 TB of project data. The FX6 is even more efficient at $139 for the year. The caveat there is that it’s only 10-bit XAVC-I, not a 12-bit raw like the C70. Were you to attach an Atomos Ninja V with a ProRes RAW license and an SDI adapter to the FX6, you would get a 12-bit raw recording (converted from linear 16-bit) out of it. But, ProRes RAW is heavy and would push the FX6 to a much higher cost per year.

Moving on, the F55 comes in third at $252 for the year with the same XAVC-I as the FX6. The Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 6K hops in fourth at $345 per year when exclusively recording at 4K DCI in 5:1 Blackmagic RAW. From there, cost per year rises in Scovilles to $1,517 per year if you’re wild enough to pick up a Blackmagic Design Ursa Pro 12K and exclusively shoot at 12K at 8:1 Blackmagic RAW, which is already fairly compressed. You’d be looking at 82 terabytes per year of data.

Thoughts

Doing this exercise helped me to see how much storage I would really need using the C70 plus a few rental cameras and it opened my eyes to the data rates of other cameras. I knew the BMPCC6K was on the heavier side given the number of offload sessions I’d had to do throughout a production day, but I never actually sat down and thought, “Huh, yeah I guess 1 TB for a day of capture is more than my usual 150 GB on the C70.”

Coming full circle, I settled for a 5-bay NAS that would allow me to store 80 TB of data before having to move on to a new system. This storage size allows me to happily record on the Canon and rent a few heavier data rate cameras for at least three years. By year three, I suspect storage prices will have fallen even more, hard drive sizes to have increased, and new cameras — Come on Blackmagic Design! — to hit the market with more efficient compression methodologies.

If you’re in the market for more storage, putting together a table like this is a great exercise and can save you money down the line.

What cameras and compression do you record at? How much data do you generate per project? How big is your stack of hard drives?

If you enjoyed this post or found value in it, you can buy me a coffee or subscribe below. Thanks!

*Average of IronWolf Pro 12TB, IronWolf Pro 20TB, and WD 20TB Red Pro.

Sources

1. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursaminipro/blackmagicraw

2. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera/techspecs/W-CIN-16

3. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursaminipro/techspecs/W-URSA-40

4. https://www.red.com/tools#recording-time

5. https://www.newsshooter.com/2020/07/17/blackmagic-ursa-mini-pro-12k-thoughts/

6. https://www.canon-europe.com/pro/stories/cinema-raw-light/

7. https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/res/manuals/5024/c3bfbc891ee0f149e46d142754fd6aa7/50244581M.pdf

8. URSA Mini Pro 12K - Raw Workflow, Data Rate and Resolutions | 4K Shooters

9. https://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/4/0300040134/06/eosc70-im7-en.pdf

Updated with method #4 on Feb 23, 2024.

I recently migrated my cloud storage provider from Dropbox to Box. I transferred all active projects and their cloud assets to Box during this process. When I reopened an existing DaVinci Resolve Studio project, none of the files were offline. Uh oh.

Clicking on the little angry red “Relink Files” chain icon brought nothing back. No files were relinked. Even if I selected an individual file and navigated to the new folder with that exact file, the Relink Files function would not be able to find the file. I googled around for an answer and couldn’t find any, so I decided to write up what methods have worked for me in case you, too, have this same frustration.

Do remember that if you are using a cloud provider and you haven’t marked the files for offline usage, your Davinci Resolve project will freeze until all files are downloaded. Set your project folder to offline access to prevent this issue from happening again.

Method 1: Change the Source Folder

The answer is simple: change the source folder, then relink. DaVinci Resolve has two stages of file relinking. It has the file-level “Relink Files” function that we’re familiar with, but this appears to only work within the source folder. If the files are moved out of the source folder (and I don’t know how far out since Dropbox starts after C:\Users\Name\Dropbox), then Relink Files will not work.

1. Highlight all of your project files. Right-click and select “Change Source Folder.” In the dialogue, browse for the new source folder. Mine happened to be the same project folder but with a Box filepath, rather than a Dropbox filepath (those cloud storage names are so similar!). Accept the change.

   

2. Make sure the file path in Change Source Folder is correct. It took me a second to realize that this is a clickable input box. In the past, I’ve had DaVinci duplicate the source folder path in the “To:” input area, showing the C:\ path twice. Media would not link, so check that.

   

3. Now click the “Relink Files” button again, pick the top-level project folder, and all files should sync back up without issue.

Method 2: Move Unlinked Clips Into a New Folder

It sounds dumb, I know, but in my experience, DaVinci has randomly unlinked several clips inside a project, but not all clips. Some just won’t link! It makes no sense. It must be a bug. I’ve pulled hair out over this. The simplist solution for me was to:

1. Navigate to the source folder on your computer and highlight all clips that are shown as unlinked in DaVinci Resolve.

2. Right click, copy.

3. Create a new folder inside that same source folder.

4. Paste the copied clips into the folder. This can be a pain when there is a lot of data.

5. Use the “Relink Files” button and select the folder that you just made.

By doing this, DaVinci has to rerecognize the clips inside the new folder, and this occasionally fixes the unlinking issue.

Method 3: Use Media Tab to Identify File Paths

In the Media tab, you can view the file paths for both source and proxy media. If the above two methods do not work, you can identify the problem file paths for each missing clip.

1. Select problem clips that are part of a same folder (such as from SD Card A) and right click. Try both of the following options.

   1. Select “Relink Selected Clips…”

   2. Select “Link Full Resolution Media…”

      

2. Select the next chunk of clips of a same folder (SD Card B, now) and repeat.

(New) Method 4: Change Source Folder to Wrong Source

This issue came up today and, again, I couldn’t find any support online. I found a new workaround to this issue that involves intentionally picking the wrong source file.

The issue was that several files seemingly at random were offline. I could view them in the Media page but once I dragged them in to the project, they would go offline. The source file path was wrong. Whenver I tried to change it, it would go back to the old one. The solution is to clear that file path and prevent DaVinci Resolve from auto-correcting your fix with the wrong one.

1. Right click on the problematic group of files and select “Change Source Folder…”

   

2. Pick an intentionally wrong source with no files on it. I chose a portable hard drive that I had plugged in as the source.

3. After picking this source, right click on the file group again and “Unlink Selected Clips.”

4. Now go back to “Change Source Folder…” and pick the correct file path to the files.

5. Finally, right click on them again, go to “Relink Selected Clips…” and pick the folder.

For me, things immediately synced back up. I think it’s an issue in DaVinci Resolve with file path naming. In my case, changing source folder wasn’t clearing the old source folder file path (even if I left it blank). The action was just adding the new file path after the one.

Fingers crossed this works for you! It’s such a bummer not being able to resync files. This project I was working on has about a dozen episodes an hour or more in length. Not being able to resync that content would have been terrible.

If you're playing it safe, you'd bring on a camera assistant, who mounts their monitor and follow focus on a stand and magically maintains focus for the director of photography throughout the day. In this scenario, they'd learn the movement of the talent in the blocking period and nail it every time during the takes. They make the shoot more efficient by reducing the number of retakes from focusing mistakes.

I haven't hired a dedicated 1st AC for my projects and my aim on Feed the Sensor is not to act bigger or more experienced than I am at producing or director of photography work. I got my experience working on scrappy small team jobs in the New England area before moving to Seattle. I have been on 40+ person jobs and have worked as a camera assistant, but where I've put in most of my time is small solo to six-person projects.

I bring this up because, without this experience, I don't think I would have even thought to use autofocus over a 1st AC. Here in Seattle, what has been notable to me is how unnecessarily large the crews can be. When you've got two interviews in a full day, do you really need a 1st and 2nd AC?

Rather than bringing on an assistant, you could utilize autofocus and cross your fingers that it'll work.

Here's where it gets sticky for me. I own a Canon C70. This camera gets a lot of flack for having poor autofocus. From what I read and hear on YouTube, Sony is the king at autofocus and Canon should not be trusted because it hunts or does one of those full zoom racks when it loses its tracking. Remember back when Canon with their dual pixel autofocus in the C100 days was the best out there? Sony took over that lead, and people are not wrong about that. The autofocus on the FX lineup is impressive.

But I have a theory that at least some of the distrust in the autofocus on the Canon C70 comes from people using legacy lenses through the 0.71x adapter. Autofocus is certainly not as good through the adapter. This is anecdotal. Surely I can't be the only one that bought the C70 thinking I could finally get some near full-frame imagery out of my old EF lenses, right?

Anyway, when you pair the C70 with modern RF lenses, the autofocus is right up close with Sony's FX6 and a native Sony lens. The modern RF lens I got is the Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8. It is my new do-it-all lens for the camera, a lens akin to the Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 on a Panasonic GH5 with Metabones speed booster.

The RF 15-35 F2.8 is a fantastic lens. It is a lightweight compact normal zoom with the best image quality that I've ever gotten out of a photo zoom lens. There's no question. It's tack sharp throughout the range, the color is neutral, the focus falloff is natural, and the range is nearly perfect (around 21mm to 50mm equivalent). What I see with my eyes is what this lens sees, and this makes for a very useful lens for your standard corporate work. Does it have character? Absolutely not. It's boring as it comes. However, I couldn't ask for anything more if I'm looking for a lens that captures what I need without a concerned client pointing at the frame and pondering, "The edges… They're a little fuzzy, y'know?"

Autofocus is no joke on this lens, either. After a few jobs in which I found the autofocus accurate and reliable for B roll, it became clear that I could get away with using it for interviews and even on fast-paced, moving shots, particularly on jobs that didn't have the budget for an AC. This thinking led me to choosing autofocus with this lens over a camera assistant on this ad.

Let's go through how this lens performed in chronological order for the day.

At the start of the day, I had my full C70 kit, the RF 15-35mm lens, and a Ronin RS3 Pro package. By about 9 am, I had everything built and ready to go and was helping adjust lighting. By 10 am, the talent had arrived and off we were with blocking. In those first couple of hours, I noticed several things about this lens.

First off, once mounted to the RS3 Pro, I could adjust the zoom without having to rebalance the gimbal. This ability saved time later in the day when we had to capture pickup shots at different focal lengths. I just reached over and adjusted it. Though partly attributable to the gimbal, this lens is well-balanced through its focal range.

Secondly, it's just the right size and weight. At 837 grams and about 5" in length, the lens is easy to balance on the gimbal with the C70. The actors for the day were all tall people, so I was unable to use the provided EasyRig (unless I wanted up-nose shots). For this reason, I went handheld using a Tilta Ring for the Ronin. The low weight of the lens saved my back. Ten hours of walking with a camera out in front of me is a guaranteed visit to the PT. I didn't have that problem with this lens.

About ten minutes in to blocking with the talent, I came across the first autofocus issue. The shot starts out with focus nearly at infinity. The talent walks into the frame and toward the camera. I match their pace. The time it took for focus to adjust from near infinity to about fifteen feet was too slow. The talent would be talking but their face would be a blur. Uh oh!

Inside the C70 menus, you can adjust several autofocus settings. I set the autofocus speed to the maximum and we ran through the shot again. The problem was resolved; the camera immediately switched from near infinity to a tack-sharp lock on the talent.

By about 4 pm, we had captured the content for all of the talent. During this time, I had grown to appreciate the RavenEye system on the DJI Ronin, which transmitted a video feed to an iPad for the entire day without fail.

I also began to worry just a hair about the autofocus.

The RavenEye transmitter sends a good quality signal, one that is better than the Hollyland and Accsoon transmitters that I've used, yet the signal is not strong enough to check for focus in a pixel-accurate way. Was the camera breathing slightly during the takes? Was it just off the eyes, perhaps on the nose? How could I know without a large monitor to look at?

Weird things can happen on set, such as a nearby lightning storm bricking a light or a microphone picking up the disc jockeys on the local radio station chumming it up about a fundraiser, and not knowing with 100% confidence that slightly miscalculated focus was one of those weird things was distracting enough to discourage me from running solely with autofocus again.

Days later, I closely examined the footage. Weird things had occurred: a "micro shift" in the focus plane from the nose to the eyes, or from the eyes to the ears, and back. It would be a brief pop out and in, something you'd miss if you blinked or were not inches from the monitor like I was. Thankfully, with the number of takes that we captured with each talent, it was possible to cover up the areas where this happened.

So all is good, right?

My takeaway is that I would not use autofocus on a job like this again. I could not confirm autofocus with a level of confidence that a person pulling focus could do with a simple thumbs up. It was an unknown, and not knowing proved distracting, taking my energy away from other activities on the job. At the very least, if I were to do this again, I'd have someone watching a 17" monitor during the takes who could give that thumbs up of confidence.

The Canon C70 and Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 performed well together. I have no complaints about this camera and lens combo. If you're looking for the ideal lens for your Canon C70, give the 15-35mm a try as a rental. You'll find that though it's expensive at $2,200 (or as low as $1,500 used), it gets its value by taking the place of a 21mm, 28mm, 35mm, and 50mm F2.8 lens set and not requiring lens swapping. Performance is excellent. That it is part of the new RF mount lineup means it'll be of use for many camera bodies to come.

If you could fault this lens, it would be that it's boring. What you see is what you get, nothing more. So, if you’re subject is boring, then, well, better get creative with the camera!

I already wrote that this neutrality of a lens is something I appreciate for corporate work, but what about you? Would you rather capture "the look" in the camera with specialty lenses or capture a neutral shot with this lens and make "the look" in the edit? How come?

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Back in March, I wanted to get back into the game of writing articles and reviews about the media production industry. While mulling over the idea, wearing a crusty, 10-year-old pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pros, I stumbled on an announcement by the audio company Rode for a new headset, the NTH-100M. I knew I needed a new pair of headphones (... Sorry to everyone who had to wear those Beyerdynamics on jobs with me...) and I wanted to do a write-up on them. Is the audio any good? How is that microphone? And, here we are.

When I first read that announcement, I thought, "It's about time an audio company release a headset with a broadcast grade microphone." It boggles my mind that it took this long for audio companies to realize they could stick one of their lavaliere mics onto a headset and make a profit. When I think of headsets, I think of universally bad microphone quality, and I know because I've tried quite a few in the process of making a podcast and running a production company.

But does this headset live up to the "broadcast grade quality" on the packaging? And how about durability?

In the Box

Let's start by looking at what you get in the box. You get the headphones inside a Rode-branded bag. You get an 8 foot TRRS cable, a splitter cable, a 3.5mm to 1/4" Adaptor (I'll add that to the drawer), and some color ID bands for accessorizing. Oh, and there is a tiny rubber seal piece that goes into the right headphone socket when the mic is not plugged in. Rode says this balances out the frequency response of the headphones that would be off if the socket were left open to the air. Also, there's dust that'll get in. Good luck not losing that.

Build Quality

With the headphones out of the bag and in my hands, I like the feel of them. They're on the heavy end at 350 grams. The cushions are soft. They're made from a polyester and polyurethane blend called Alcantara. This textile is used on car seats, steering wheels, and actually on the top end Sennheiser HD800s. It's very durable. The headpiece and ear cushions are made of this on the outside and of a trademarked CoolTech gel on the inside.

There's a steel band running through the headset. The rest of it is plastic. The headset does not feel cheap. But, at least on first impressions, it does not feel like it would withstand a drop. The plastic joints, the plastic hinges, and the plastic socket for the TRRS cable all feel like they could fail in some way, an impression that I never had with the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pros or the Sony MDR-7506s.

You've also got Braille for left and right and big L and R letters on the insides of the ear cushions. That's great. I don't like it when headsets aren't clear about left and right earpieces. Just make it big and visible.

There is a cable socket on the bottom of each earpiece. The TRRS cable goes into the left socket and the microphone goes into the right socket. They are not interchangeable, despite what Rode's marketing says. Why? The mic arm is one rigid plastic piece shaped to the curve of the right side of your face. While theoretically the mic would work in the left socket, you would either have to contend with a microphone curving away from your face (not great for audio) or wear the headphones backward (not comfortable).

The mic arm has an omnidirectional mic on one end and the bayonet connector on the other. Plugged in, there is some ability to pivot the arm around, but not a lot. Placement is where you want it to avoid plosives. Rode probably planned this to avoid complaints about plosives ruining their podcast interviews. More on that later.

Fit

Okay. I have a big head. On every headset I have owned, I have had to prepare for disappointment about sizing. I would unbox the headset, max out the size, and place it on my head. My earlobes would be exposed and get sore after a few hours of use. These Rode headphones? No problem. I still have to max it out using their trademarked Fitloks, but that max size is large enough to be comfortable. The ear cushions aren't the roomiest in the world, but my ears have no problem.

The rotational aspect of the Fitloks is not intuitive. The arrows go both directions. I was afraid of stripping it by going the wrong direction. Looking closer at it, it appears there is some metal inside the plastic housing that contributes to its durability.

Let's fast forward a bit. I've worn this headset for over a month. I have worn it for 10 hour editing sessions and have worn it on set while doing sound. It is the most comfortable headset I have worn. My ears do not hurt. My ears do not get hot. I don't get that soreness on the top of my head from other headsets. For me, they're perfect and I'm happy to keep using these for editing for years to come.

Sound Quality

Sound quality is also great. I'm no audiophile, I'm an editor with a need for confidence when doing critical listening. Rode says the headset's 40mm dynamic drivers deliver an "accurate frequency response" with "low distortion." Impedance is 32 Ohms. I can't test headsets, but compared to other headsets I've used, these have high clarity, a large soundstage, and great sound. I'd say they are a bit warmer than the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pros that I have been using for a long time.

What else here? Rode quotes a wider than average frequency response of 5 Hz to 35 kHz. Nice. Max sound pressure is 126 decibels. Passive noise attenuation is up to 20 decibels, thanks to the closed back design. If the jargon doesn't make sense, I don't get it either. For my uses, they're comfortable and have a detailed sound perfect for editing and sound recording.

Microphone Quality

The microphone is no slouch either. I suspect the capsule in here is a repurposed Rode omnidirectional lavaliere mic capsule because the clarity and vibrance is so similar to Rode mics that I have used. Rode's lavaliere microphones in my experience have never been as clear as other brands' mics. But, for a headset, this is fantastic.

I'm recording this entire article with the headset and putting it in the post for your reference, linked below.

I use Auphonic AI for mixing and mastering. Auphonic is not a sponsor, but I recommend them for audio correction work. You can upload single audio tracks or multitrack audio to the platform. Then, Auphonic's AI processes the audio for the best sound for each voice. It works on isolated dialogue, sure. But what's amazing is that you can upload mix down tracks with music, sound effects, and dialogue, and it will process all three independently. It's amazing. I used to spend 3 hours doing this mixing and would get a mediocre result. It now takes 5 minutes. The company is Auphonic. They're pretty neat. I wrote about them in my last article.

Anyway, audio quality out of the mic on the NTH-100M is better than any headset currently out there that I've tried. Until someone puts a Cos11D on a boom arm, this mic is going to be hard to beat.

Podcast Use

I am currently producing a podcast for a client and we have been using traditional podcast mics. I was so confident about the quality of this headset's mic that I used two pairs to record an episode on the podcast. I had the host and guest each use an NTH-100M for the session. It was amazing to not have to remind the talent to sit at the correct distance from the mic. Once the headsets were on, the mic was always at the right distance.

Two issues did come up. At the beginning of the recording, the guest had rotated the microphone too close to their mouth. As a result, her recording had plosives. I noticed this and asked her to rotate it away out of her talk space and the plosives went away. So I recommend, if using this for recording, to have your talent place the microphone outside of their talking space. It may also be a good idea to purchase a small windshield for lavaliere mics and perma-mount it on the arm.

Another issue that came up during this recording was the mic's connection to the headset. At the start of the call, I could not hear the guest. She said she had plugged it in. After a few minutes of troubleshooting, we found out the mic bayonet had not been inserted all the way into the socket. The groves in the bayonet allow the mic to "lock in" farther out, making the wearer think they plugged it in. Nope.

Taking a closer look, you can also see another issue. Durability. See how the plastic channels are already chewed up? How is this going to last more than three years?

Durability and Repairability

If I were to fault one thing about this headset, it would be its durability. The bayonet connection on the microphone looks weak, but a new mic can be purchased. However, the socket on the headset is non replaceable. Looking right up at the socket, we can see some tiny plastic pieces that look breakable. If this headset were dropped, would these sockets be the point of failure?

If purchased from an authorized retailer, the headset will come with a one year warranty. Purchasers can extend this to a lifetime warranty by registering the headset at warranty.rode.com. You will only find this info in the fine print. The warranty only covers factory defects. It does not cover damage caused by the user or excessive use in a commercial environment (whatever that means).

The ear cushions and headband are replaceable. You'll need to contact the Rode service center.

Cables are also replaceable. They have that same socket connector, unfortunately. Why can't companies just use magnets for these types of connections, like a Magsafe connector for mic arms?

The headset comes with a lifetime warranty (if you register) and Rode talks heavily of its durability in the marketing. But weird proprietary plastic connectors like these just give me end of life, planned obsolescence vibes.

Uses

For use in a studio, I have no concerns about the durability. They'll be sitting in a dark room next to a keyboard for years and years. The biggest test for them will be head sweat and luckily enough Rode's got that covered with replaceable cushions.

Travel and use in the field is where durability is more of a question. Twice daily, on the morning commute, I unplug and replug the microphone and TRRS cable. None of these components fit assembled inside the included bag, so you have to break it down before traveling.

Those FitLoks are a hassle to adjust every time I want to head to the office. I have taken to at most unplugging the cables and mic and tossing the headset into my backpack. I don't use the rubber seal when the mic is not in. It's lazy, but hey I'm a user of this headset and I'm sure Rode came across this behavior in their testing phase. Give it a few months and we'll probably see a hard case specifically for this. I've got my fingers crossed that it will contain it at its fully-extended position.

I took these on the plane, too. The 20 decibels of passive noise attenuation did make a small difference. Planes are loud. If you are doing a lot of travel, I wouldn't use these for your listening. Active noise cancelling headphones are great for that.

In the field, I bet these will last as long as the sound recordist feels comfortable resting them on the handle of a C stand. At some point, they'll fall. Unlike the ubiquitous Sony MDR-7506s, I picture these landing with a harsh crack. Keep them on your neck or in your sound bag.

Or not!

Over the course of recording footage of these headphones, I kept dropping them. They fell off the C stand, off the table, onto carpet, onto wood flooring. Every time, they withstood the impact. There are no loose parts rattling around. I don't know how the headset will fair if landing on concrete, but with the handful of hard drops that left me cringing like when my phone flies out of my hand and lands perfectly flat on the floor, screen down, the headset was fine.

Cable Texture

I'm also a little perturbed by the cable texture. Rode went with a smooth, grippy cable material. I can't say that it is as durable as the shiny plastic cables of other headsets. This feeling my be because, at first glance, this cable would not pass the cat test. I had a cable made of a similar material that was chewed through in seconds. My other cables have chew marks, but are not in pieces in the bottom of a plastic container labeled "film stuff" (I have several of those containers, don't you?).

Texture aside, the integrated strain relief on the cable is nice. You can also always buy the cable in blue, orange, green, and pink and in 4 feet and 8 feet lengths if you've got a preference or if your cat does.

Conclusion

So where does this leave us? The NTH-100Ms are comfortable and have great sound quality. The included microphone is the best out there for a headset mic. I will continue to ship out this headset to podcast guests in place of a podcast microphone kit. The balance of convenience and audio quality is that good.

I don't know how long the cabling on these headphones will last. For $189, I expected a better quality locking connection. A cable or cushion can be replaced, but as soon as the sockets on the headset wear out, you're stuck with another job for gaff tape.

Would I buy these again? Yes, 100%. They are the best and only headset out there right now offering comfort, audio quality, and microphone quality in one complete package.

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I look forward to creating more authentic content for Feed the Sensor. My goal for this site is for it to become a haven for human written reviews and articles on tech juxtaposed against a world of content and comments written by AI. When you come here, you'll only read genuine observations and experiences. If you, one of the seven, would like to support this future for Feed the Sensor, share this around!

Speaking of AI, ChatGPT is huge. If you live out in the wilderness and the word "wireless" makes you think of a tent without tie-downs to keep it up, I envy you. There is an arms race among the biggest tech companies for artificial intelligence dominance. Call them chatbots or prompt services, large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard are replacing many of the functions of search engines and, sadly, whole creative departments at companies. I've already heard stories of whole writing departments getting axed, their replacements being the AI minds of Jasper.ai or Byword.ai.

In the video production industry, we are getting quite a few new tools at the expense of copywriters, graphic designers, and editors. Where you'd be hiring a writer to come up with a script for a shoot, now you're looking at dropping a few prompts into a chatbot to get a slew of mostly well-written scripts that need a few revisions. Graphic designers have to compete with Midjourney and motion graphics designers have to deal with Runway.

Just take a look at Midjourney's showcase section. It's astounding.

Visual effects artists should be paying attention to Wonder Dynamics. The service can do body motion capture, lighting and compositing, and a bunch of other incredible things. Their demo video shows actors getting swapped out with 3D model assets, no motion capture gear needed.

All designers and VFX artists will soon have to compete with Adobe Firefly. In Firefly, you're given a popup chat bar. Type into it what you want done to a selected part of your composition. Do you want to make it look like it's snowing? Do you want to remove a children's slide from a shot? Ask Firefly and like magic it'll do as it is told. I am so curious to see the direction that this takes inside Premiere Pro.

Editors are probably already aware of the dozens of companies out there promising their service can generate video content from bare blog posts. You've got Synthesia.io, Steve.ai, and Pictory.ai, to name three, though at this point the quality of their content is mediocre at best (think late 2010's boilerplate "Happy New Year" animations with less than 5 likes on Facebook business pages but for video content).

Though those video generating services produce "meh" content right now, what will they produce in a few months? A year? The other day, I dropped a transcript of an interview from a corporate project into ChatGPT and asked it to generate a video in XML format based on the transcript. And you know what? It almost did it. The times were off, but there was the semblance of a rough cut. How long will it be before AI companies combine the XML creation of ChatGPT with object recognition for B roll to create fully-edited, delivery ready content?

I want to take the positive approach here; AI is incredible and the benefits that it can provide to filmmakers are incredible. Rather than offer just one video deliverable to a client, we can offer any number of deliverables based on criteria like target audience, length, or even "vibe." Within seconds, we could have a dozen variants of a video. Clients would love this. There is a major value there.

But we're not there yet. At this moment in time, we're just starting to see the fruits of AI in our workflows. At NAB 2023, Adobe and Blackmagic Design both unveiled beta versions of their non-linear editing suites containing many new AI features.

In DaVinci Resolve 18.5, the DaVinci Neural Engine brings auto-transcribing to interviews, text-based editing a la Descript to timelines, footage classification and tagging based on object recognition to clips in your folders, and scene relighting via Relight FX. With auto transcriptions, you can see the content of the interview as you edit. With text-based editing, you can select, remove, and rearrange this content just like a Word doc.

Relight FX is a stunner, allowing you to add light sources to a shot in 3D space with correct falloff characteristics based on scene analysis. Now we can more-easily say "Fix it in post!" when the gaffer wants to make an adjustment to that hair light but can't reach it without grabbing the ladder from the back of their van.

In Adobe Premiere Pro, we're getting Text-Based Editing (again like Descript) and Auto Tone Mapping. What the tone mapping feature allows you to do is sync a color profile across log footage from various cameras in a timeline, no famous YouTuber LUT needed. I'm not kidding. You can drop log clips from a Panasonic Eva-1, a Sony A7SIII, and a Canon C70 and check the box for "auto tone mapping" and all of the footage will instantly match the color space of your timeline, be it Rec709 or HDR. (Source: Newsshooter)

In the audio realm, companies like Auphonic are turning the arduous process of mixing and mastering into an experience akin to your local frozen yogurt shop. Show up; upload your raw interview audio, podcast content, or even fully-edited commercials including music to Auphonic; select a few options for your output, a sprinkle of noise reduction here, a dollop of voice EQ there; pick your metadata and output file types; and hit Upload.

Within a few minutes, Auphonic outputs incredible audio quality. I'm not talking "Oh the audio sounded like a potato before because I recorded it on my phone and now it sounds like it came from a Shure SM7B," I'm talking about the sound of a professionally mixed and mastered audio file. The clarity and presence of the voices. The reduction and gating. The ducking of music under dialogue despite uploading a flattened track. It's incredible. Auphonic is one of the first AI-driven softwares that have motivated me against hiring a contractor for the job of audio correction; to get the quality I get out of Auphonic from a contractor would be too much for the budgets on my productions.

These new AI tools aside, the "original" ChatGPT is providing a helpful hand in all steps in the production process, not just in scriptwriting. Personally, I've been using it to summarize meetings with clients, quickly generate a script for an idea for a project to see what it might feel like to produce, revise my list of interview questions for a series of interviews based on context (such as client objectives) or suggest additional questions, and assist in writing content for my company's site, Sandpiper Video.

ChatGPT right now is not connected to the internet in the same way that Bing's implementation of GPT 4 is integrated to the internet. I use Bing now for one particular task: before I have a meeting with a potential client, I'll ask it to brief me on the client. I put this brief in my notes. Then I ask Bing to summarize my company and find alignment between my company's services and the client that I have a meeting with. The resulting bulleted list of projects that we can do together more often than not contains a few things that I didn't think of when preparing for the meeting.

I would say the generative capability of ChatGPT has been most beneficial for me in day-to-day video production tasks. Be it interview questions, scripts, or client meeting info, I am doing way more than I could have back in, when was it, October of 2022? I caught wind of it back in December of 2022 after listening to Michael Barbaro and Kevin Roose worry over Sydney on the The Daily.

Being alive to witness the rise of AI is something special.

How are you using AI at the moment in your work?

I'd love to see a tool for the interviewer that in real time transcribes the conversation, suggests questions for the interviewer in the context of a set of marketing objectives or prewritten script, and builds a shotlist based on interviewee answers.

I could also see another tool like a "virtual AD" for "AI-enhanced callsheets and schedules" that optimize as the day goes on to keep the director/producer/DoP from pushing people into OT.

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The other day I picked up a used Sony PMW-F55 off eBay thanks to a video posted by CVP. It was a rather convincing video. Below I talk about why I went with the F55 over the FX6 and C70, what challenges I faced, and why I might move on and get a different camera.

Why the F55 over the others

I had been looking for a 4K-capable camera for a while and was split on getting the FX6 or the Canon C70. Both of those cameras have their pros and cons and they are often discussed in YouTube videos and in forums everywhere.

The FX6 has great autofocus and a lightweight, shoulder-ready body. The C70 does a flavor of internal Canon Raw, shoots to SD cards, and looks/operates much like a large DSLR. The FX6 has XLR ports but they stuck them in the handle! The C70 only has one HDMI port!

I could go on.

Thing is, these cameras are great for their price in today's lineup of great cinema cameras. We've got low end cameras such as the BMPCC4K/6K that have a fantastic image; mid-tier cameras such as the Komodo, Z Cam E2 F6, FX6,and C70 that offer more functionality; and upper tier cameras such as the Canon C300 III, RED series, Sony Venice, and of course Arri Alexa. There's no point to listing them all out. I merely include a few to indicate that there are tiers to the lineup of cameras. Those tiers are by design.

Manufacturers prevent cannibalization of sales by limiting features to specific tiers of cameras. Those lower tier cameras often have somewhat arbitrary hardware and software limitations. Could Sony have placed the XLR ports on the FX6 somewhere else, perhaps integrated into the body like on the FS7? Of course. But that's a feature reserved for the FX9. There are many ways in which manufacturers reserve features to specific tiers. It's how they make a profit and it makes total sense that they do this.

To be clear: this is not the same idea as "camera crippling," which is an idea that's floated around for a while.

The thing about the Sony F55 is that way back in 2013, it was top end. The only camera to beat it in Sony's lineup was the F65, and that camera was less popular than the F55 simply because it wasn't as easy to operate (and heavy). The F55 combined the best of everything that Sony had implemented into cameras to date. They put every feature they had into that camera without reservation and priced it at $30k for the base package.

In no particular order:

• Global shutter with internal true 4K 60fps at 480mbps intra XAVC codec

• Modular body with optional external recorders to 16-bit linear RAW

• Four SDI outputs

• Two XLR ports on the body

• Two hi-rose power outputs

• Timecode

• Indicator lights on buttons

• Dual memory recording

• Built-in V Mount battery adapter

• EVF input

• Shoulder mountable form factor and a lightweight body

• 6-button style menu navigation

• Internal ND filters

• FZ mount for loads of lens mounts

• Wireless camera control via its own internal WiFi network

These features convinced me to buy. At around half the price of an FX6 for a used F55 body, at least before the CVP video came out, I got what I initially thought was a very good deal.

I got most of the features of the FX6 and an additional set of SDI ports at the cost of weight and age.

Challenges to the F55

But, not all is easy with this camera. Particularly with pricing. Since this camera was top-of-the-line and because it's modular format is still compatible with components that fit the Sony Venice and Venice 2, it's accessories remain at a top-of-the-line price.

First off, media. SXS cards are $600 for 64GB. I could get two 160GB Type A cards for the FX6 for that price, heck get six 64 GB v90 SD cards with money to spare. And if you're looking to get one of the RAW recording units that slap onto the back of the F55 for 16-bit linear RAW recording, you'll be looking at over $4k for just a 1TB stick of AXS memory that will last you minutes, not hours. And to read that AXS memory? Good luck finding one for sale. If you do, it'll be over $3k.

So, media is expensive. If you're lucky like me, you can find several XQD to SXS adapters from Sony that enable internal recording to the more reasonably priced XQD memory type.

The F55 has just a more clunky OS to operate than the FX6. I can navigate the menus faster, no doubt, than either the FX6 or C70, but the process of doing so feels... so 2013. The navigation has heavy latency. Menu items pop up in countable order as they load. Some of the settings require a 20-second reboot! Despite the slowness of the OS, the numerous buttons surrounding it's main 6-button panel speed up navigation. Without diving into menus, I can format cards, change LUT types, change output resolution, and swap cards. Nearly all of the settings in the camera can be adjusted via the 6-button panel on the side and most do not block the display.

There is also something to be said about its weight. The body alone is more than twice the weight of the FX6 (4.88 lb vs 2.00 lb). Fully loaded with accessories and a small prime lens, you're looking at an EasyRig-mandatory 15-pound rig. The FX6 can be rigged up under 10 pounds.

Side bar: just this afternoon, I needed to output a signal to a laptop, send a wireless feed to a transmitter, and use an on-camera monitor. All of this was possible with the SDI ports on the side. With the FX6, I would have been stuck coming up a with a solution.

Why I might move on

For all the features that the F55 offers, I'm still drawn toward the lighter weight and autofocus capabilities of the newer cameras. I can get an image out of the F55 that is every bit as good as those other cameras, but I have to work harder physically to get it there and often need to bring multiple people into the mix to make the F55 produce the images that its known for.

I enjoy using the autofocus on the C70 and FX6 because it frees up my mind for framing a shot. With the FX6, the auto eND also allows me to think about framing and action when moving between two different lighting scenarios.

With weight, it's no question. Lugging around a 15-pound brick vs carrying a lightweight hybrid DSLR is the difference between hiking with camping gear and going for a walk in the park. It's less of a challenge. It's more enjoyable. I don't have to ice my back at the end of the day.

The images produced by the camera are what matters, in the end. Regardless of the camera, it's what you do with it that matters. The F55 produces nice images that are just as clean and clear as those newer ones. Will I upgrade to save on weight and have more fun with the autofocus capabilities of newer cameras? Yes... but I'm holding out for Blackmagic Design to come out with a cube camera that does it all.

I'll leave it at that.

How much usable range does the Sony PMW-F3 have? I did a quick test this afternoon to figure this out because lately I’ve been very impressed with the range that this camera has.

For the test, I exposed to middle grey on a Datacolor chart using these settings. I then reduced/increased the exposure by 1 stop increments until the image fell apart. In post, I corrected the image to match exposure at +0 stops. The methodology follows Robert Machado’s instructions.

In the end, I was able to correct exposure for 3 stops over and 5 stops under for about 8 total stops of client-deliverable exposure latitude.

To be clear, this kind of latitude is different than stops of dynamic range. As written by Gunther Machu at CineD, the Sony FX9 has 12.7 stops of dynamic range at a signal-to-noise ratio of 1 and the Arri Alexa Classic has 14.8 stops of dynamic range at a signal-to-noise ratio of 1. In contrast, the exposure latitudes of these cameras are 8 and 10 stops, respectively.

I want to further clarify that this 8 stops of exposure latitude that I achieved is based on what I would deliver to a client, or, in other words, “usable exposure,” which includes small amounts of noise reduction.

CineD and other sites that test exposure latitude tend to dive more into the noise and grain before cutting off their latitude numbers. For example, the RED KOMODO 6K has 7 stops of exposure latitude with 6 of those recovery stops going to under exposure, according to CineD. When looking at their sample frames, the image that has been corrected for 6 stops under is more noisy than the image that I got out of the F3 at 5 stops under exposed. I’m saying this because CineD might get slightly higher latitude results for the F3 than me, but who knows. Could it achieve 6 stops under? Not really. The image sharply breaks down after 5 stops under.

For reference, this is what the shot looks like when it’s under exposed by 5 stops.

And here’s what it looks like when it’s over exposed by 3 stops.

Over Exposure Latitude

Here are some sample frames from the tests. The top frame is the corrected image and the bottom is the image exposed for the camera’s middle grey.

At 3 stops over, the F3 has lost no detail. All data is intact and there is no color shift.

At 4 stops over, the F3 begins to lose highlight detail. Take a look at the chip chart. The whites have clipped and the cyan color in the top left of the chart has turned gray. Despite the lose in cyans and whites, the skin tones remain intact. There is no color shifting.

And here we are with 5 stops over the correct exposure level. Skin tones are gone and most bright colors have turned pure white. The image is unrecoverable.

Under Exposure Latitude

So now what about under exposure? Let’s dive in. At minus 3 stops with minor noise reduction, there is no color shift and details remain present.

At minus 4 stops with light noise reduction, we’re looking at an image with no major color shifts. The color chart remains the same. We begin to see non-correctable noise in the shadows. Saturation, if anything, is the main thing that’s changed here.

At minus 5 stops, the image is much noisier despite applying the same light noise reduction. The settings for this noise reduction are included at the end of this post. Like with the +4 differences, shadows have more saturation than the +0 shot. Would I still include a shot with a +5 stop correction in a final project? Well, I have.

Here’s an image that was at -5 stops of exposure that I later corrected in post.

What about an exposure at under 6 stops? The F3 breaks down here.

And here’s -7 stops, for good measure.

I think it’s worth noting that throughout the under exposure range, there is minimal color shift. That color chart stays the same color throughout. Saturation may change a bit, but aside from that, the image just looks noisier.

The exposure latitude of the F3 is impressive, especially for a camera released in 2011. At 8 stops of exposure latitude with 5 stops in the shadows, this camera has exceptional recoverability similar to high end cameras like the Sony FX9, Canon C500 II, and Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K. Where is falls short is in resolution — that 1080p image will only get you so far, no matter how good those pixels look.

Here are the noise reduction settings that I used. The settings for Temporal NR varied between 2 and 3 frames.

Back in 2011, Sony released the PMW-F3. More than ten years later, this camera puts out an image that can compete with cameras released this year. That is the main conclusion that I have with this camera after having used it for several months on client projects.

I initially purchased this camera so that I could have more fun with cameras — the comments at the time had drawn this camera in a filmic / artsy light, a light I had not stood in for some time as I had been wrapped in the cool LED colors of corporate filmography. However, after decking it out with a baseplate, all-day v mount power, a 10-bit recording monitor, and wireless video, I couldn't resist using it for work.

And on those projects that I used it, I was blown away.

I want to put my thoughts and some sample stills down here so that you, if you come across my blog, can see just how good of an image that the F3 puts out and why it actually may be worth considering if looking to get into video on a budget.

First off, I was able to purchase the camera and deck it out with a full production kit for under $2,500. I have built in ND filters; a slew of on-camera buttons for image control; two XLR inputs with a surprisingly good limiter; all day power on just 2 V mount batteries; a clean, camera-triggered 1080p 10-bit ProRes 422 HQ image recorded to SD cards; and a wireless feed sent to multiple iPads (which last all day). Did I mention the 15mm rails? I hang this kit from my EasyRig and can operate the camera all day without issue. Try kitting out any other camera for less than that.

Here's a list of what I have with the camera:

Equipment

• Zacuto Baseplate

• Two 4” carbon fiber rails

• SmallRig V Mount battery adapter

• Two V Mount 98Wh batteries

• Blackmagic Design Video Assist 12G 5”

• Accsoon CineEye 2S

• SmallRig Articulating Arm

Cables

• Blackmagic Design Micro-SDI Cable to Regular SDI

• Two right angle SDI adapters

• 12” SDI cable

• D Tap to 3 D Tap splitter

• D Tap to Blackmagic Design locking barrel plug on monitor

• D Tap to Accsoon CineEye 2S barrel plug

• D Tap to 4-pin XLR input on PMW-F3

Now let's talk about image quality.

Below you'll see a few stills pulled directly from DaVinci Resolve with both Sony S Log and the Rec709 LUT applied. Unless otherwise noted, no other corrections were applied.

You can get download the S Log LUT here (no need to *cough* BUY MY LUTs *cough* as it’s just a Google Drive link).

This shot here was taken with a Contax Zeiss 50mm at f/2.8 with an ISO of 570. Despite not having much dynamic range in the highlights, the F3 excels at showing highlights with a soft light roll-off. Exposed properly, it looks great. Tones are soft and colors are saturated in a way that just feels more 3D than other cameras that I have used.

What I want to draw attention to in this shot here is the shadow detail. Lights just keeps reaching farther into the shadows of the barrels without any muddiness or loss of color detail.

The F3 handles shadows better than any old or modern camera I have used. And I want to get into the weeds about that.

Take a look here at the above two frames. Like the frames in the previous shots, the top frame is in Sony S Log and the bottom frame is in Rec709. White balance has been corrected on an isolated node inside DaVinci Resolve. The whole image is overall too dark to be usable. This was, after all, the inside of an unlit theatre stage.

In this next frame, I've made an exaggerated correction by linearly dragging up the top right selector on the curve graph. A small amount of noise reduction was applied.

What other camera in this price range can retain as much detail in the shadows when underexposed in this way? What stands out to me is how much color detail is in the shadows. That green ladder leaning against the wall in the background was not visible in the Rec709 image and very hard to see in the S Log image. And, yet, when doing a linear correction to the overall exposure, the color detail in the ladder returns. The back wall is visible. The texture beneath the ladder in its own shadow is visible.

Let's look at another.

Here we have an S Log image of the top of a barrel. With the Rec709 LUT applied, the background is a pitch black. Shadows disappear. There is a clear focus on the plug on the side of the barrel. There's nothing wrong with the amount of range in the shot and this is likely the correction I'd use moving forward. However, for the sake of curiosity, I want to see what's actually captured in the shadows by the massive pixels on the F3.

Below, you can see the before and after of the correction to the image with a huge pull on the curve graph.

The shadows are clearly too noisy to be usable... but look at all that definition in the shadows! Look at that color detail! Despite being a nearly flat line on the waveform, there is detail crammed in the shadows that, when stretched, escapes and shows itself. More than that, it is color detail. The barrels have the right color. Heck, the back wall has some color definition.

The Sony FX6 disappointed me with its shadow retention. The Canon C70 had more shadow detail, but still not as much as this camera. Comparing these cameras to the F3 is unfair — we're looking at a 1080p-only camera versus 4K equipment.

The shadow detail of the F3 has saved me a few times. In one scenario, I was tasked with capturing footage inside of a room with black walls, a black ceiling, and a black floor. It was all naturally lit by several tall windows letting in a harsh noon light. Worse yet, I had forgotten to disable the ND setting on the camera and didn't notice because I had left the 3D LUT display setting OFF after making some adjustments. My eyes thought the image was exposed properly, but had I enabled the LUT while viewing, it would have been a much different story.

Here is the LOG image straight out of the camera.

And here is the image with the Rec709 LUT applied. Way too dark, huh?

Well, by making that same curve adjustment as noted above along with some minor noise reduction, I was able to bring the image to the state below.

Look at all the color information that this camera retains in the darkest of shadows. Even the man's shirt on the left has details. His arm, which was deep in the shadows in the uncorrected image, comes back with full skin detail, creases and all.

Is this corrected image grainy? Yes. But can any other camera in this price range bring back an image from the darkest of shadows in the same way as the F3? Unlikely.

Connecting back to the statement at the beginning, I like using this camera for 1080p work. The image has fantastic color and light roll-off. Shadow saturation and detail is the best I’ve seen. When paired with the Blackmagic Design Video Assist 12G 5” recording monitor, the camera outputs a 10-bit image in ProRes with more than enough data for exposure and color corrections.

If you’re looking at getting into videography and only have a budget of around $2,500, I’d take a long hard look at the Sony PMW-F3 with this kit combo. It’s a no brainer when compared to the Canon C100. Other cameras in this price range are targeted at consumers/prosumers, and often as a result lack many of the production-necessary features like built-in ND filters, video-centric button layouts, and wireless monitoring.

Some other notes…

When a job comes around requiring 4K content, I may look at renting a C300/C70 for the DGO sensor to get a similar amount of dynamic range in the shadows as this camera. It seems like a lot of cameras these days have optimized for the highlights, but now I'm looking for a camera that can get into the shadows.

What do you think?

A lot happened this afternoon. The Mamiya RB67 came a week early in the mail and I got the micro HDMI cable for the X100V. So, what better to do than to record the RB67 with the X100V?

I might write something up later in more detail but my main takeaways are:

• The X100V has a wide dynamic range look to it when using the default WDR LUT from Fujifilm.

• The 8-bit color blocking seen when recording internally is not present in 10-bit.

• The latency on the X100V is very good, better than other mirrorless cameras intended to be used for video. The internal recording needs to be turned off to decrease the latency to this level.

• The light sensor on the camera doesn’t work right. I tried dozens of settings to get it to stay on when a big battery was blocking it, but I couldn’t come up with a solution. If I had to dig into the menus or make any adjustment, I had to turn on my phone’s flashlight and point it at the sensor until the screen turned back on.

• Continuous autofocus hunts. It’s distracting and should be left off.

• The overall rig is just unpractical to use. It was fun to set up and I think I’m going to try it some more with the internal film profiles. If the camera can output with those profiles, then there could be some fun to be had with real-time film simulations.

• That 35mm f/2 lens on the camera has great character.

• The Sony ECM-XM1 has a full audio profile with rich sound. Surprised! It’s about $100 on eBay.

I had some spare time this evening and the thought had hit me that the Fujifilm X100V can output a 4:2:2 10-bit signal in 4K from the HDMI port. The camera essentially has the same sensor as Fujifilm’s higher end stills cameras, and those produce a great image, so why wouldn’t this camera be able to do the same? Better yet, it has a built-in 35mm f/2 lens that has been purpose built around the sensor. The camera also has decent continuous autofocus. And did I mention all of the film profiles it has?

If I could get the X100V to output 4:2:2 10-bit 4K in either F Log or a cinema film profile and get it all with continuous autofocus at f/2, I would be having a lot of fun.

I wanted to test this out.

The X100V, though, isn’t designed for this. There are no ¼-20s anywhere on it. So I had to rig something up.

What I ending up putting together actually feels neat and tidy. The core structural elements are the Kondor Blue baseplate and the SmallRig V Mount battery adapter. The aluminum parts of these two pieces form the L shape that wraps around the camera. Beyond that, it was a matter of spare parts, a few rails, and some creative thinking.

It is a somewhat annoying that the mounting hole on the bottom of the X100V is not centered beneath the lens. It’s off to the side. For this reason, I had to offset the matte box.

This whole rig is totally unnecessary. I could have mounted the Blackmagic Design Video Assist 12G right above it with a shoe adapter and called it a day. But that wouldn’t have been as much fun, right?

All that’s left to do is give it a test.

That will have to wait. I did not have any micro HDMI cables, so had to order one.

Hey, if you’re looking for the right settings to use on the F3 that you just bought and are also struggling to find a LUT to monitor with, you’ve landed in the right place.

The F3 produces a gorgeous image, but the default settings are not great. Here’s what I did to the settings to get the cleanest image out of the camera.

Settings

To start, head to Video Settings in the menu. There are 3 settings to check.

1. Set SDI/HDMI/i.LINK I/O Select to HD SDI.

2. Set 23.98P Output to 23.98PsF (if it isn’t already).

3. Navigate down to Dual-Link & Gamma Select. Choose 1.5G YPbPr422 & Video.

You might be saying “but that’s not S Log, that’s Rec709” at this point, but stay tuned.

Now press the Picture Profile button on the back of the camera just below the HD SDI output. If nothing happens when you press it, the setting is likely disabled because you put the camera into S Log mode from the Video Settings menu (step 3 above).

When PP opens, pick SET, and do the below steps.

1. Set Matrix to Off.

2. Set Multi Matrix to Off (it will be greyed out if Matrix is set to off).

3. Go into White and set Preset White to 3200. Make sure Offset White numbers for A, B, and ATW are 0, 0, 0.

4. Set HD Detail to Off.

5. Set Skin Tone Detail to Off.

6. Set Aperture to Off.

7. Go into Gamma and set Level to 0 and Select to S-Log. This option was introduced with a software update and it gave operators the ability to change white balance while in S-Log mode (yeah, the OG S-Log setting back in the main menus disables white balance — you’re stuck with 3200k or 5600k).

8. Set Black, Black Gamma, and Low Key SAT all to 0.

And you’re done! Just import the below LUT into your monitor for a preview or apply it afterward to your footage in your NLE as a starting base.

Download for S-Log to Rec709 WDR LUT for Sony PMW-F3

Sony PMW F3 S-Log

Sony PMW-F3 S-Log to Rec709 WDR

If ever you come across this post and would like to share what you shot on the F3, let me know and I might just make a post. I think this camera will be sticking around for some time.

Update: I have been able to source the original S-Log to Rec709 LUT from Sony thanks to Accsoon, the makers of several wireless video transmitters. I have the Accsoon CineEye 2S and have used it many times without issue.

Sony PMW F3 S-Log

Note: With these settings, the best output on the camera is HD SDI. The Blackmagic Design Video Assist 12G accepts this signal as a 10-bit 422 stream. It isn’t the 4:4:4 that this camera can output, but it is still very, very nice. If someone knows how to get a better image from this camera without buying a Gemini or Odyssey, let me know.

I bought the Sony PMW-F3 last summer after having watched a video on it by Caleb Pike over at DSLR Video Shooter on YouTube. I liked its size and functionality. The image, too, had a nice feel to it, at least on the videos that I could find. Most of the content for the F3 are limited to a half dozen videos on YouTube by people marketing it as “the budget camera to buy” off eBay. So, really, at the time that I bought the camera, all that I knew about its image was that it supposedly had a filmic look to it.

Fast forward to today and I’ve fully kitted out the camera with a baseplate, rails, matte box, V mount batteries, and a Blackmagic Design Video Assist 12G monitor for recording a clean 10-bit signal from the HD SDI port on the camera. I didn’t think I’d dive this far into the gear bin with this camera, but here I am wanting to use it daily for paid work.

How I got here was with an initial idea to start another passion project but this time shoot it with the F3. The first project was a mini documentary I shot back in Connecticut on Damascus steel knives, which can be viewed on the Works side of my site. I shot that on the Z Cam S6. This new passion project is going to be a mini series on unique distilleries in Oregon. There are so many unique distilleries here all seemingly coming to life on the heels of the explosion in growth of the brewery industry. From hybrid grain whiskeys to brandies aged with unusual fruit, the way people are making liquor here is unique and something well worth documenting.

Hence the mini series on distilleries.

I had the first shoot a few weeks ago at Branch Point Distillery in Dayton, Oregon. We shot it on the Sony PMW-F3, recording externally in ProRes HQ with a Blackmagic Design Video Assist 12G for close to maximum record quality (you can use a Gemini or Odyssey for 444 recording, but they are hard to come by). I could not tell you enough how beautiful the image out of this camera looks straight out of camera.

I am using a custom LUT that I made for the camera that I will eventually upload once I tweak it a bit. There aren’t many, if any, good S Log to Rec709 LUTs for the F3 on the Internet anymore, so I had to make my own.

Here are a couple shots from the F3 with the Rec709 LUT applied.

I am looking forward to using this camera more on this series and on paid projects because it makes just too good of an image. Excited.

Just this morning, I had the unnerving experience of opening a DaVinci Resolve project that I had been working on for three months to find half of the audio tracks were missing waveforms. When I played the timeline at these areas, those audio tracks with missing waveforms played back exactly what the waveforms were showing: nothing.

I had recently consolidated the project using Media Management and relinked the tracks. In theory, a full consolidation would keep everything intact without issue. But then this happened.

It took an absurd amount of Googling to find the answer to this problem. If this is your issue, I’ve condensed the solution that originally worked for me below as well as several other options to try out.

Methods

1. Re-Enable Audio Track

2. Convert Audio Track to a WAV or Other Format

3. Update Your Cache File Location and Clear Your Cache

4. Deactivate Controlled Folder Access

5. Copy Audio from a New DaVinci Project

Method 1: Re-Enable Audio Track

1. Right click on the blank audio track (or highlight multiple blank audio tracks). Click on Clip Attributes.

2. Navigate to Audio Settings and confirm if the audio track is set to disabled. In my case, all of the blank audio tracks were the result of DaVinci randomly disabling some audio tracks and not others.

3. Enable the audio track. The waveform should appear and audio should return on playback.

Method 2: Convert Audio Track to a WAV or Other Format

At times, if an audio track is using a file type that DaVinci does not support, the audio will not play back in it. The quickest fix is to open the audio or video file in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that supports the file type of the audio and then export just the audio track. Once exported, the new audio track can be linked up to the existing audio file inside DaVinci.

If you don’t have a DAW, I highly recommend getting Reaper. It is a highly flexible audio workstation that supports pretty much every file type. All VST and other audio plugins work inside Reaper. The noise reduction toolset built into Reaper is better than Adobe Audition’s noise reduction tool. best of all, at least for this issue, you can open video files inside Reaper and export the audio.

Reaper is free to download and use for 2 months. After the 2 month period, they ask you to purchase a license for $60. Not bad.

https://www.reaper.fm/

Method 3: Update Your Cache File Location and Clear Your Cache

Sometimes the cache fills up, and when it gets full, you’re unable to get audio playback. Other times, the cache location is in the wrong spot.

Head to your Project Settings and then Master Settings. Scroll down to Working Folders. Look at where the cache is located. A downside to DaVinci is if you, like me, prefer to store cache files with the project itself, these Working Folders need to be updated on a project-by-project basis.

After updating your cache location, you may start to see waveforms pop up. If not, then clearing the cache is the next step.

To clear the cache, navigate to the address for “Cache files location’ (shown under Working Folders in Master Settings). Delete what is there. Reload DaVinci.

You can also delete the cache by clicking on Playback from the top menu bar and selecting Delete Render Cache. There could also be issues with optimized media, so if you feel up to it and don’t have too much optimized media, try selecting Delete Optimized Media as well.

Method 4: Change Windows Settings and Deactivate Controlled Folder Access

Okay, this one is for Windows users. Open Windows settings and type “File System” into the search bar. You’ll see a suggested option for “File system privacy settings.” Click on that.

Ensure that both “File system access” and “Let apps access your file system” are enabled.

Next, type “threat” into the search bar and click on the suggested “Virus & threat protection” option. You can also just navigate there if you know where it is.

Once there, click “Manage settings,” scroll down to “Controlled folder access” and click “Manage controlled folder access.” Disable this feature; occasionally, DaVinci will be unable to access the drive if this setting is enabled.

Method 5: Copy Audio from a New DaVinci Project

If none of the options above work for you, try creating a new DaVinci project and importing the audio files into that new project. If the audio files show up in that project but not the old project, then you may have a corrupt project file on your hands.

If this is the case, then try saving the project as a new project and restarting DaVinci.

If this doesn’t work, then create a brand-new project where you can see the waveforms and import the old project into it with File > Import Project.

Hope this helps!

In the market for a cinema zoom lens but on a budget? Lately, for Micro Four Thirds camera users, DZOFilm’s 20–70mm T2.9 parfocal cinema zoom has been the budget answer. But, for those operating EF and PL mount Super35 cameras, the cinema zoom options offering that same focal range for under $5,000 are slim, save for an old RED PRO 18–85 T2.9, maybe a few vintage Angenieux zooms, and the new Venus Optics Laowa OOOM 25–100mm T2.9.

Well, the options were slim.

DZOFilm’s newest zoom lens combo, the Pictor 20–55mm and Pictor 50–125mm T2.8, steps in to this market offering a parfocal zoom and cinema housed experience for the Super35 sensor camera user at just under $4,500 for the set in black (or $5,400 for the set in white if you prefer to see your lenses in reflections).

I had the opportunity to use the DZOFilm Pictor lens set on multiple shoots for my company, Dovetail Filmworks, for a combined 40 hours of active operation time either with the lenses mounted on a shoulder rig or hooked up to an easy rig and operated by remote focus. The point is they weren’t just taken out to a field or pointed at charts. and they have me split on how I feel about them.

Let’s start by going over the build quality.

Build Quality

These are beautiful lenses. The smooth anodized black aluminum barrel complements the sharp angles and blocky white and yellow lettering on its surface. The overall look is simple, cohesive, textbook form-meets-function where all elements exist for a purpose. They are impressive to look at.

Dampening

The focus, zoom, and iris gears are nicely dampened. The focus gear has 270 degrees of rotation, which is more than enough for fine adjustments. The zoom gear slows down just a touch on the long end, but the resistance there is not enough to alter my confidence in a shot. The iris gear is on the looser end compared to the focus and zoom gears. On multiple occasions, I had bumped the iris to a T3 or T3.5 without realizing. A user error? Yeah, for sure, but the looseness is still a concern given that they could loosen up somewhat over a few years of use. When will they need to be serviced? How can they be serviced?

When writing about the dampening of the gears on the Pictors, my opinion is tempered by my recent experience with the similarly-priced Venus Optics Laowa OOOM 25–100mm T2.9. The dampening on the OOOM is almost non-existent. It is rough, inconsistent, and frustrating to use. The dampening of the Pictor set is butter by comparison, punching above its price.

Gearing Issues

But while the dampening is great, the gearing itself seems to have a problem. When connected to a follow focus, like the manual LanParte I own or the Tilta Nucleus-M I used, the gears do not perfectly line up with the gears of the focus system as if there is an ever-so-slight machining error. This error, if it is one, causes vibrations. When rotating a follow focus, the movement of the two gears as they fight one another shakes the entire lens. That shaking results in an audible rattle.

Worse, in my own tests with the camera locked down on a tripod and focused on a close subject, I found that this rattling of the lens shows up on camera as a bumpy frame movement reminiscent of the subtle bump of a weathered slider.

I held off on reviewing these lenses because I knew I would be remotely pulling focus with a Nucleus-M setup connected to a remote camera operator using an easy rig. I wanted to see if I could notice the bump from far away while staring at a monitor.

Did I notice it when handheld? No. When the lenses are on a handheld camera, the bumpiness when rack focusing is overpowered by the handheld shake. Further, when I was using this remote setup, there were moments when the camera was placed on a tripod. While it was locked down, I racked focus and also did not see any shake. What changed? The operator had firmly attached the supportive base to the rails beneath it.

In order to mitigate the bumpiness caused by the gearing, the lenses must be supported by the rails. This will get rid of the bump, but it will not eliminate the audible rattle of the gearing.

More Threaded Mounting Points

One (petty) thing I would have liked to see is the inclusion of those threaded mounting points on the focus and iris barrels in addition to the zoom barrel. Had there been threading on the focus barrel, I would have taken off the zoom knob and placed it there to aid in manual focusing without a follow focus. My thumbs were pretty beat up from racking with just the gear.

Image Performance

I am split about the performance of the Pictors. I tried writing around this so that I could get to the salient features of the set first, but in the end it is easier to just say what has been on my mind: the optical performance at T2.8 is either intentionally tuned for a vintage look or unintentionally poor with heavy chromatic aberration and strange bokeh. Yes, you could use these lenses at T4 for a reduction in those vintage characteristics, but you, like me, are likely looking at these lenses specifically because they are T2.8.

On the other hand, where the set suffers optically could be seen as reasons to justify it down the road as some kind of cult favorite on forums and at crafty tables. The set has all the character of something from another era, minus the fungus, plus many modern features like parfocal zooming and low breathing. It could be enough to keep those Nikkor primes firmly in a Pelican in your closet (with silica gel, I hope).

Parfocal

By calibrating with the included shims, the Pictors are truly parfocal.

There were many moments while using these lenses when I would zoom in on a subject and realize I did not need to refocus. I began to adapt my shooting style so that I could utilize the parfocality more frequently, such as by shooting a 20mm wide shot and then snap zooming in for a 55mm shot. When editing, I cut out the zooming portion to make the sequence of the two shots look continuous. Getting this kind of continuity on a non-parfocal lens is difficult to achieve because the time it takes to refocus after zooming is enough to make the wide shot and tight shot appear non-sequential when put together.

To hammer this home… Think of a chef chopping an onion. You want to get a wide of the chef starting on the onion and a tight of them partway through. With a parfocal lens, you grab this wide and then snap zoom to get the tight of them cutting. Since you do not need to spend time refocusing, the placement of the knife on the tight is nearly the same as its placement in the wide, lending a more continuous shot.

Low Breathing

These lenses have no noticeable breathing. The lack of a perspective shift when focusing between close and far subjects invites more creative shot opportunities, especially when coming from the nauseating focus shift of the Canon 24–70mm F2.8, which heaves the image in and out by double digit degrees. For those looking for minimal focus breathing, these lenses check that box.

Beautiful Flare, Low Veiling Glare

The quality of the coatings on the glass is another modern feature on these lenses. The glass does a good job at limiting veiling glare and when it does flare, it lets in warm, pleasant tones. In the below photo, sunlight was pouring through the far side windows. With one of these bright windows in the frame, the Pictor 20–55mm T2.8 retained contrast.

The long stack of lens elements that form just outside the flare is present, and in a good way. Since I have grown accustomed to seeing on the big screen the lens flares of long zoom cine lenses, the stack of elements on the Pictors stands out less than the element stacks of shorter DSLR lenses with fewer elements. To put it in other words, I mentally associate the long flare stack with a higher budget. If you are gunning to appear bigger on a smaller budget, these lenses could help with that given the flare characteristics.

I could be full of it here. As I write this, I wonder if I’m the only one.

Inconsistent Sharpness

Where I’m not the only one is in seeing the inconsistent sharpness at T2.8. Overall, the sharpness is not bad. It is not like there is never a tack sharp portion of the frame; it is just that while the center is sharp, the edges will always have a sort of defocused smearing effect to them even when stopped down to T3.5.

Many charts have been shot by reviewers and discussed at length, so I will not be showing charts here. Instead, I have included frames that demonstrate the character.

The above photo is a shot of the left half of a frame of cans in a beer canning machine. The center of the image and focus are set on the can directly underneath the machine (third can from the right). If you draw your eyes from the focus can over to the one on the far left, you can see a gradual reduction in sharpness. The leftmost can, though it is slightly forward in the field, is more out of focus than the cans closer to the focal point and has a streaky bloom about it. Again, to reiterate, this is at T2.8 on the Pictor 20–55mm. The effects shown here are lessened when not wide open.

Here is a full frame of a salad. The focus point is set on the lettuce just after the cherry tomato in the bottom of the frame. As you draw your eyes to the left, the focus grows less sharp and gains a streakiness to it.

These jerk chicken wings tasted great, but the focus, like in the above photos, loses sharpness outside the center and gains that streakiness like on the beer cans.

The slightly out of focus areas gain a muddiness I am not used to seeing in the out of focus areas of frames taken on any other lens.

In the above shot, take a look at the dressing. Though in the same plane of focus as the wing, the herbs in it are blooming.

When it comes to areas in the background, the muddiness goes away and the shots look fine.

Chromatic Aberration and Moire

The chromatic aberration on the Pictors is distracting if caught near the subject. There was a moment when I pulled out the 50–125mm T2.8 for some product work on a white backdrop. I thought it would be great because I could attach a follow focus and get some really smooth focus racking. But, I ended up swapping out the Pictor for the Sigma 18–35mm F1.8 because the chromatic aberration was strong enough to change the color on certain fine-detail areas of the product. Was it moire? Maybe, though probably a mix of the two.

If you look at this pizza in the below frame, you will see a large smearing of the crust where it should be in focus. That smearing blends the colors. Since the pizza is the subject of the frame, the chromatic aberration here is enough to be distracting.

The cardboard is a mix of purple and green. The crust has a purple fringe. The muddiness makes me think my lenses were dirty, but they were clean every time I checked.

In the above zoom of a frame, you can see a purple fringe on the baker’s shirt and on the countertop. Since this is not where the subject of the frame is (subject: the hands working the dough), it is not as noticeable.

Like I wrote in the beginning, the inconsistent sharpness, muddiness, and chromatic aberration are all characteristics that may appeal to some looking for a vintage look in a modern package.

Why I Would Buy the Pictors

• A cinema zoom like one of the Pictor lenses offers more creative possibilities for run-and-gun work than with prime lenses.

• The parfocality of the Pictors means more shots will retain focus on an adjustment and therefore be “saved.” In other words, you or your editor will be happier with more shots to choose from and fewer moments of clutched hair and “Why did I choose to focus right then!”

• The size of the Pictors is impressive in the eyes of the client. Your piddly Contax Zeiss may make a more beautiful image, but there is nothing like a big tank of a lens to make your clients nudge their buddies about that “pro videographer with the pro equipment” they had at their office the other day. Slap a sticker on the barrel and you could mark the lens off as an advertising expense...

• Compared to the OOOM, the Pictors are lightweight. At around three pounds, I do not mind carrying them around all day.

Why I Wouldn’t Buy the Pictors

• The Pictors have poor focus consistency across the frame and high chromatic aberration. I already was unable to use the set on a job because of those characteristics.

• On that note, these will not be your end-all-be-all lenses. For a clinical look or really any job that needs low color issues on fine details, the Pictors would stay on the shelf.

• In order to remove the bumpiness of the focus gearing when using a follow focus, the lens must be supported on rails. And having to lug around a rig with rails for those run-and-gun moments when a follow focus is needed is enough to make me consider leaving the lens behind in favor of something smaller.

Value

The DZOFilm Pictor 20–55mm and 50–125mm T2.8 cinema zooms are unique at their price point. For under $5000, you get two parfocal cine-bodied zooms with low focus breathing, good flare control, and a vintage image that could appeal to people, especially those who frequently utilize the look of older lenses. Aside from the gearing issue, the build quality is great.

The only comparable new lens at the same price point is the Venus Optics Laowa OOOM 25–100mm T2.9 at $5,000. The OOOM is sort of the exact opposite of the Pictor set. Rather than two lightweight lenses, it is one heavy beast. And rather than opt for build quality, it went for image quailty. On every measure, the OOOM performs better than the Pictors; it is parfocal, has low breathing and low veiling glare, has barely any chromatic aberration, has consistent focus across the frame, and has beautiful midfield and background bokeh. But it is heavy for the kind of work I do. I did not like lugging the six pound OOOM around when I could have used one of the three pound Pictors. And the build quality of the OOOM feels cheap with clunky, gritty dampening and a cheap material finish.

What also has to be looked at when considering a lens set like the Pictors is diminishing returns. How important is parfocality to you? Can you live with focus breathing? Can you live without autofocus? I kept asking myself, “Can I get by with the Canon L Series set, the 24–70mm F2.8 and 70–200mm F2.8?”

The answer for me was that the creative possibilities and efficiencies allowed by a parfocal lens with low focus breathing are worth the money, though where that money goes, either the Pictors or the OOOM, remains in the air.

Back in March, I got the bug to shoot a documentary. COVID had just begun to take hold in my area, Connecticut, and I was anxious at the sudden emptiness on my calendar. Where had all the clients gone? When would they come back? And what could I do now that I had been “given” too much time to handle?

I think many filmmakers out there are facing that same dilemma: what do I do with all this time?

A documentary, of course, would fill in that gap (somewhat). And more than that it would be something that I could call mine, that I could be proud of once all was said and done. In the three year journey into filmmaking that I had been on, I had not given myself the opportunity to put together a project, and so now, more than ever, was the chance to do something about that.

Also around this time, I had just picked up a new camera, the Z Cam E2 S6, and was on the go go to use it wherever I could. I wanted to test its dynamic range, its battery life, to really get knee deep in to the use of the cube form factor of this camera that was so different from the DSLRs that I had previously owned and used. Is it like a rental cine camera? No, not really. But the image is on par. I wrote a review about it here.

I set out on making the documentary by forming a list of potential subjects on a yellow notepad. I went to Google, searched across Connecticut for interesting people and happenings that could turn into a full-fledged story on camera, and mulled over different ideas that felt something real until one stuck.

The one that stuck was about Matthew Parkinson at Dragon’s Breath Forge. He’s a two-time Forged in Fire champion and Damascus-steel bladesmith who teaches classes and makes swords, axes, tools, and kitchen knives for clients all over the world.

I got in contact with him. We ended up shooting in March and April and I edited the twenty-three minute doc through August this year. It was a great experience and I learned a ton, which is why I am writing this post here. This post is about a few of the mistakes that I made and things that I would have done differently.

Also, if you have the time and would like to see how hand forged Damascus steel knives are made and get to know Matthew Parkinson, please take a look at “How Damascus Steel Knives Are Made With Matthew Parkinson.”

So let’s get into it.

Stop talking and be aware of audio

One of the first things I learned when getting an education in broadcast media was to “edit audio first,” meaning to build the narrative of whatever you are producing from the audio before even thinking about touching the video portion. The video complements the audio and the audio is the narrative, not the other way around.

In the corporate world of video, things are a little different. At the base level, you get your talking heads and some B roll and slap on a royalty free track. Audio from B roll generally does not get used, in my experience (often it’s disabled in the export process when making a catalog of selects for a client).

What became immediately apparent when I dove into this edit was that I talk, a lot. I make mouth noises like “hmm” and “uh huh” as if I’m Michael Barbaro on The Daily. I engage in conversation while shooting B roll as if the audio of that B roll is unimportant. I wonder why that might be the case?

I did not realize while recording that I would need the sound of that drill press sans my voice asking, “How’s the weather been?” Or that I would need the end of something Matthew was saying without me going, “Right, right, and can you talk about the hammer?” I cannot tell you how many sniffles I had to mask out and the number of shots that did not get used because I made the mistake of opening my mouth.

Some shots were recoverable, sure. I found audio bits and pieces and massaged them until they fit to mask out the bad portions. This kind of masseusery, while challenging (and something of a lame humblebrag in the vein of “yeah I dabble in audio wizardry”), is a time waste that takes away from the edit.

In short, when the tally light is on, keep your mouth shut. Be aware of the sounds you are making and limit as much as possible things that are difficult to control, like sniffling in a cold room. You will need all of the audio in the B roll shots you choose to include, so make sure that it does not include you in it (unless that is a “style thing”).

And always make sure you are getting audio on B roll, whether through the in camera audio or a shotgun mic mounted on the camera. If your camera supports it, I highly recommend using an on-camera shotgun mic with a secure cable connection. Even a slightly bumped 3.5mm-type connection will record no audio whatsoever, so make sure what you get is secure. There have been times where a small bump of a 3.5mm cable resulted in the loss of audio for twenty minutes of selects (and I mean selects, the shots I pulled from uncut footage).

Hold on action

Knowing when to hold on the action of the subject and when to move to a new position is a learned skill. The rookie mistake is to forget to let shots breathe.

Not two seconds after settling on a shot of the hammer coming down on the hot iron, I could have been off again getting closer and lower for that closeup of the metal shedding off when the hammer hits. Then back to a wide with Matthew in the right with lots of negative space on the left. Then a closeup of his boots. In the edit, the whole recording here might have looked like three minutes on the track, but in reality it would have been just sixteen seconds of usable footage — four for the medium shot of the hammer, four for the closeup, four for the wide, and four for the boots.

When Matthew inevitably talks at length about the process of the hammer coming down on the iron, I would have been in a tight place with no long shots to let the viewer take in his words uninterrupted.

Even the 10–10–10 shot style of 10 second hold, 10 second pan-and-back, and 10 second tilt-and-back gives only 10 seconds of usable footage per shot. While people say “never linger on a shot for longer than 10 seconds” as a rule of thumb, that rule applies when the information that the shot is giving is given fully in under 10 seconds. Some shots have a lot of information spread out over an extended period, and those shots if left intact at thirty to sixty seconds in length can be mesmerizing to watch.

This is a weak spot for me. When I went about shooting this doc, I made it a goal to practice holding on action. I frequently fought and sometimes lost the urge to jump in closer. Once in the edit, I found myself both patting and kicking myself on the back: the extended shots I managed to get amplified the narrative in a way that no sequence of short shots could have and the extended shots that I broke for a closeup or some other angle lost important information in the move to the new shot.

Mix it up on repeatable actions

A shot is not boring if the information from action in it is new.

Much of Matthew’s work on the hammer is repetitive. He heats the block in the forge, carries it to the anvil, hammers it, returns it to the forge, and then begins the set of actions again once the block is back up to temperature. Since this process would be shown more than once, I needed to find different camera angles for each set to keep up the flow of new visual information.

Maintaining an awareness of repetition is easier said than done. When Matthew was flattening the blocks so that he could stack and then weld them without gaps in between, I repeated a near identical series of shots that I had gotten a week prior when he was flattening the first blocks that had been forged. The single-point perspective medium of Matthew on the machine was the same as the single-point perspective on the second go around. In the edit, I could not use this second series of shots because though the blocks were different, the visual lacked new information.

Luckily, I caught the repetition early (when playing with the footage in DaVinci at the end of the day). In another round of flattening, I focused on aspects of the machine and Matthew for some cutaways that I then inserted in the previous sets.

Consider a second interview for anything you missed

If there’s a universal statement that can be made about giving interviews, it’s that the process of transforming the interview into the narrative will stir questions that had gone unasked. If it is possible to do a second interview, do it.

For me as a first-time interviewer for a doc, the question was a simple “Why?” Had I asked that question, or a form of it (“tell me more”), as often as I made Barbaro noises in the first interview, I would have had a deeper, more complex narrative.

But, I didn’t. So I went back to ask “Why?” and I kept quiet so that I could hear Matthew’s answers. The doc was a skeleton before this second interview. Those answers filled out the skeleton into a full form that I could call, with some confidence, a documentary.

Write down these missed questions as you edit the first draft. When the draft is ready to send to some friends for review, ask those friends to write down any questions they have while watching it.

Send a polished draft, not a rough cut

Before you send off that draft to your friends, make sure the draft is a polished draft. Do not send a rough cut. How many times has sending a rough cut to a client with a disclaimer ever stopped that client from telling you the audio is bad? Or that the colors are washed out (a “digital negative” I tell them, referring to LOG)?

How are your friends going to make accurate critiques of your doc if they must first define and then see beyond the rough edges that you put a disclaimer on? How are they to know the difference between an element worth critiquing and an element of the rough cut stage?

From my experience with sending rough cuts, more energy is put toward sorting between rough cut elements and elements worth critiquing than actually watching the cut.

I almost sent an early rough cut. I had exported it and had the email ready to go. I was excited. I wanted someone to watch and go “Wow, you made this!” in a flurry of egotism. But then I remembered all of the times when sending a rough cut resulted in a positive outcome — not once. Each time, what I had rashly thought would be an ego-boosting exercise with a laid-back client turned into a self-esteem withering series of explanation and clarification emails about the complicated nature of the editing process.

I held off on sending this doc until I had locked in the audio and visuals as best I could. When I finally sent it off to some friends, I got substantive responses with valuable critiques. Other than for a lone comment about a two-second shot that had somehow forgone color in the rendering process, the people I sent the doc to were not distracted by any rough “edges” — they were able to devote more attention to watching and critiquing the narrative.

So, save yourself the time and frustration. Save your friends the time, too. Send them a polished draft, not a rough cut.

To sum it up, keep quiet when the tally light is on, hold on action, vary your shots, get a second interview, and send a polished draft. These are just a few of the things I learned while shooting this doc.

I know this piece will be rudimentary for some, but there are plenty of other people out there like me who would benefit from seeing where I went wrong before diving into the making of a documentary.

If you want to try your hand at spying the bandaids I talked about in the post, “How Damascus Steel Knives Are Made With Matthew Parkinson” is linked below.

And if you want to see what I have since been up to, I have been starting up a new video production company called Dovetail Filmworks.

This pandemic has me thinking about lenses. I have a set of Zeiss ZF.2’s sitting in my eBay cart and some others in the basket over at B&H. Do I need them? Do I really need them? There is no clear answer to that.*

But if I went back to the beginning when that first camera hit my hands (it was a Xacti, then a Nikon), and if I could twist time to bring the lenses of the present into the past, the answer would have been a resounding, “No!”

There is just one lens needed to kick start one’s career in video production. When picking a first option just to get out working, you do not need to drop thousands of dollars or take out a loan for cine glass that you can rent for less. You are also not required to buy a bunch of squeaky Rokinons or pick up a used 17–55mm f/2.8 or hunt for vintage FD lenses or pray that the Angenieux bolex you just ordered from Indiana arrives without fungus. Fear not about hours of itchy, bloodshot eyes on KEH.

You just need to think Sigma. Think f/1.8. Think a 25mm, 28mm, 35mm, 40mm, and 50mm set all color matched, tack sharp, and wrapped in one barrel and stickered at under $600.

Think the Sigma 18–35mm f/1.8. It is the only lens you need to not just start in video production but work in the high end, as you’ll find this lens on the best of cine cameras on some big productions, provided those cameras have crop sensors.

For crop sensor cameras, super 35mm cameras, and even micro four thirds cameras with a speedbooster, there is no better lens choice under $1000 than this Sigma lens. Try me.

You get the low light performance of super speed cine glass. You get the sharpness of prime lenses even at f/1.8 (it really is a “prime zoom” wide open). You get a wide focal range between 25mm and 50mm for crop sensor cameras with minimal focus breathing. You get clean, round bokeh balls. And you get the build quality of Sigma’s Art lineup, which personally makes Canon’s “Pro” photographer lens line feel plasticky and cheap by comparison.

Where the lens falls short is literally in focal length. While true it is more heads than tails, ask a DP how often they use an 85mm on their A cam. And to some extent, the lens coating shifts slightly toward green in the shadows.

But for under $600? This lens would have been a steal at $1299.

I feel like I did not even need to write this. Those coming here just came for the confirmation bias.

*Actually, yes there is a clear answer. Maybe. I want to build out a prime lens set for rentals. Doing this during a pandemic might not be the smartest of choices, but, hey, that is why they are in the cart and not on the way.

This review was last updated on March 4, 2022.

Update: It’s now 2022 and I still use this camera. Many of the issues I originally had with this camera have since been resolved. These sections have since been updated to reflect those changes.

For the last eight months, I have been using the Z Cam E2 S6. I have used the camera in a diverse range of scenarios — outdoors in rain, inside offices for hours long interviews, in manufacturing facilities with lots of dust, in freezing cold snow, and on melting hot, humid night shoots. I have fully given it the “corporate footage” treatment, to say the least, and would like to share my thoughts here in a somewhat alternative review less focused on specs and more on user experience.

My main takeaway is that this camera offers seriously impressive image quality at a low price for the small-crew budget videographer. It will not let you down like Canon’s R5 or R6 will with overheating problems. After much use, I prefer the Z Cam E2 S6 over the BMPCC6K and other DLSR-type cameras in the same price range.

A (slightly controversial) note before the review…

The Z Cam E2 S6 is not a great choice for a production that has a budget for rental RED, Arri, Sony, Panasonic, or Canon cinema cameras. I would also say the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera series (4K and 6K), which I have used alongside the S6, and all DSLR-type video-focused cameras are also not good choices. This will take a little explaining.

Let’s start by going over what these sub-$3000 cameras do not offer. They do not have SDI inputs, internal ND filters, or optical low-pass filters. Monitoring latency and quality are things to be aware of, especially with clients, as they are not perfect, though are not as bad as on the Atomos/DSLR combos I have used. Rolling shutter performance is typically abysmal and in no way compares to that of a commonly rentable cinema camera. Finally, the buttons and menus of these cameras (yes, even Blackmagic’s touch screen menus) are not designed for multi-operator use or for quick muscle-memory operation.

While the Z Cam captures stunning image quality that is fully editable alongside Arri footage and can even trash some RED footage that I have edited, it is silly to compare the operating experience around this camera with that of those much more expensive cameras. The Z Cam is not an Arri. And, likewise, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera series and other DSLR-type cameras are not in the same class as RED. To put it plainly, these manufacturers have squeezed the image quality of the traditionally expensive cinema camera into a body that, due to budget, shares more characteristics with DSLR-type bodies.

The use-case of the DSLR-type body does not change simply because the image punches above its weight.

Inevitably, the lack of SDI inputs will frustrate people hooking up client monitors. The latency of the HDMI inputs will not be great for one accustomed to pulling focus on those rentable cinema cameras. On the Z Cam in particular, footage as of software version 0.96 can only be reviewed in a low-quality proxy format that, with pixelation and color banding issues, does not inspire confidence from the client. The absence of internal ND filters on most DLSR-type bodies will require additional equipment, slowing the production down. Without an optical low-pass filter, there is more room for infrared noise pollution or moire. Quick whip pans turns to jello, limiting certain shots. And with the lack of dedicated side buttons, particularly with the BMPCC6K, some shots in a fast-paced scenario might be fumbled by your grumpy operator due to an unnecessarily long jaunt through the menu systems.

But, and this is a big but, if the production is small enough, say with three people or a run-and-gun solo operator, the above issues are not problematic. HDMI works fine if you are the one working with it. Footage can be reviewed confidently with an awareness that those files are the low-res proxies. Filters can be added or screwed on. Rolling shutter is not immediately seen as a fatal flaw (heck, you can rotate the Z Cam 90 degrees and shoot open gate and then crop to eliminate it). And to keep with the pattern of repeating the problems that these cameras present on larger productions, those buttons and menu systems are yours and yours alone with which to learn and develop efficiencies.

So, regarding the above flaws, are budget cinema cameras like the Z Cam or other DSLR-type cameras still worth considering? Yes! Totally.

The Z Cam E2 S6 and BMPCC6K blow every current DSLR-type camera in its price range out of the water with video quality that can only be found at much higher price brackets. I say this because their shining characteristics are the result of conscious design around video, rather than around a compromise between video and photo capabilities. To pick a similarly-priced DSLR, such as the Sony A7S III or Canon R5, in order to retain photo capabilities is to make a compromise.

So let’s get down to it. How good is the Z Cam E2 S6 as a budget cinema camera? And how does it compare to the BMPCC6K?

The Pros

Battery Life

The Z Cam has fantastic battery life. The camera lasts 3 hours on one 6300mAh Sony NPF battery and lasts a full production day from 8 am until 7 pm on one 95Wh V Mount battery paired with the Nitze Universal QR Adapter. To have this lightweight, long-lasting camera rig with just the small Sony NPF battery is to be able to get more shots in less time without stopping down to swap batteries and more shots in places that a traditionally heavy rig would not be able to easily go.

This battery life contrasts that of the BMPCC6K and other DSLR-type camera bodies in the price range, where the form factor drives the size of the battery. The BMPCC6K requires a new Canon LP-E6 battery every 30 minutes if a v-mount battery and adapter combo is not added to the rig. Panasonics GH5S and Sony’s A7III are at least better at better life here, but they still frequently require new batteries to be inserted on the underside of the camera. I can’t be the only one tired of popping the rig off the tripod, flipping it over, and swapping a tiny battery.

When using a Ronin or other gimbal, the BMPCC6K in particular was a hassle because by the time we had a shot set up, we could only get one or two takes out of it before shutting it off and swapping batteries. Since the Z Cam lasts for 3 hours on a single battery and can be operated wirelessly from a phone, there is no issue with a gimbal setup.

When not on the Ronin with the BMPCC6K, I used the Core SWX Powerbase Edge, which improved the on-time by a couple of hours. Using the Edge with its quick release plastic plate was frustrating, though, because it flexed and made the rig even less balanced than it already was. The solution here, at the expense of weight, is to build out the back of the rig with a VCT baseplate and rail setup to mount the Edge.

Weight

The Z Cam, unlike the BMPCC6K, does not require the above setup to attain a reasonable battery life. Its weight is then kept minimal, with the only requirement that a Sony NPF battery be attached to the back. The benefit to this setup is that it can be placed almost anywhere. In one scenario, I stripped down the camera to just the body and mounted it to the top of a C Stand. I ran a cable from the camera across two rooms to get the live feed for use on a live band performance and then controlled it remotely with my iPhone. The connection remained flawless throughout the performance.

Balance

What has stood out to me from day one of getting the Z Cam is its balance. When picking up this cube shape with a top handle, the camera does not tilt to one side or rock backward. Needing a side handle, I add a SmallRig wooden handle and then, to compensate for the change in left/right balance, slide the top handle along the NATO rail to realign the center of gravity. I use an adjustable top handle from SmallRig so that I can adjust forward/backward balance when putting on a heavier or lighter lens. With the addition of the top handle and the side handle, the camera remains compact.

Though this is not a BMPCC6K review, the unique wedge shape of this camera is a good contrast to the Z Cam. The BMPCC6K is not easy to balance and is no longer compact once balanced. Attaching a battery behind the camera to even out front lens weight inhibits the use of the camera’s touch screen unless placed far enough away on a rail system. And adding a wooden handle to the side makes the camera overtly wide and awkward.

I would also lump all DSLR-type camera bodies in the same category as the BMPCC6K here. The touch screens on these cameras, even if they flip out, are a hassle to work with when finding balance. And the plastic side grips of these cameras that are so useful for photographers are not useful for videographers who intend to attach cages, handles, and arms in the pursuit of a rigid rig.

I cannot say enough how beneficial the cube shape is in having a balanced and compact camera setup. On gimbals, easy rigs, tripods, monopods, and shoulder rigs — on any form of stability, that sense of balance ensures that I am not giving a shot the Dutch angle and helps with wrist and arm fatigue.

It is hard to put this in to words. To have the center of balance be spot on in the middle of the camera makes the camera feel lighter, reduces wrist strain, and improves my confidence in going about a shot.

Balance is a big deal, one of the biggest factors in my preferring the Z Cam over the BMPCC6K and other DSLR-type body cameras.

Image Quality

There are many reviews already going over the image quality that the Z Cam puts out. It is great, no question. Skin tones, light falloff, noise performance, and dynamic range are all beautiful. As an editor, I have experience editing footage from a huge range of cameras and find this camera’s image quality to be on par with far more expensive cinema cameras. That it can accomplish this in such a small body and price is both amazing and makes me think twice about renting.

Does the production need the features of those rentable cameras, or can it be stripped down for economic reasons to allow the use of the Z Cam?

I most frequently shoot in Z-Log 2 at either 4k, 24fps, ProRes HQ or 4k, 50fps, ProRes, Variable Frame Rate. I then correct with the Z Log Plugin inside Premiere and DaVinci Resolve. FilmConvert’s Cinematch tool is also a great way correct the footage.

The footage is not RAW, but the plugin really makes it feel a little like Redcode or Blackmagic RAW when making minor adjustments to white balance and exposure. The plugin can also convert Z-Log 2 to C Log or Red’s color gamut for easy application of your preexisting LUTs.

If exposed properly and used within the limitations of other cameras in its price range, such as with an awareness of rolling shutter, I have no complaints about image quality.

Update in 2022: The newest versions of the firmware now support ProRes on every setting, even Variable Frame Rate modes. Though it cannot do 4k 120fps uncropped, I do appreciate the ability to record ProRes in a cropped 120fps mode.

Compared to the BMPCC6K, the Z Cam produces skin tones with a little more red, a little less green in them. The color sciences of the two cameras are very similar and not, in my opinion, something worth arguing over or making the deciding factor.

Another note to add here is the argument some people have about dynamic range. They might see this and go, “But, but the dynamic range is not 17 stops!” Well, yeah, no, neither the Z Cam or BMPCC6K can attain the same level of dynamic range as can be attained on a RED Monstro. My response to this is that kind of dynamic range is more useful for recovery of detail in the edit when a shot is poorly exposed than for the final image, which, when viewed on a TV is typically constrained to the Rec. 709 color space.

If the production needs that kind of recovery in post, then a rental makes sense. For smaller productions, as I have said, as long as the image is exposed correctly within reason, one can have a great cinematic image.

eND Support

I wrote a review of Z Cam’s eND module. It is better than any variable ND that I have used. I almost always have it in the camera even though at the clearest setting it reduces light be 1.7 stops because ISO and noise-performance on this camera is not a problem.

White Balance

When in uncontrolled situations, I frequently leave the White Balance setting on Auto with Lock In Record enabled because the camera is very good at finding the right white balance. I haven’t found the auto white balance on the BMPCC6K to be as good.

Wireless Signal

The Z Cam has 5G WiFi built in, which enables wireless video monitoring and camera control that is good enough in most scenarios for doing lighting and remotely adjusting settings. This feature is enabled with an antenna. The antenna provided by Z Cam was not great, so I purchased a 4 leaf clover FPV antenna.

When I picked up the antenna, I also picked up an iPad Air 2 and a beefy case, thinking this setup would be my cheap Teradek solution to hand to a client for viewing. But, after much use, I would not recommend going with this setup for a client as the WiFi is unreliable and very dependent on your location. Z Cam has said in the Facebook group that this reliability issue is in general a problem with interference beyond the control of the camera. Wireless interference can make the connection spotty, and that is not a good look to the client. I would say the connection is about as good as one of those budget wireless video transmitters, like the Accsoon CineEye. Though, that is not saying much because I gave up using the CineEye the one time that I had it for connection issues.

It is also worth mentioning that the iPad Air 2 does not have the processing power to reliably play the stream of footage coming from the camera if a LUT is applied. Log footage can be viewed mostly without stuttering on the iPad Air 2. A more powerful tablet is required to process the stream with a LUT in a lag-free way. This, of course, impacts what the client will see. A grayed out shot in LOG will look bad to them no matter what you say (I’ve had luck telling them to think of it like a “digital negative” of the actual footage).

I still think of the built-in WiFi as a pro for the camera because, spottiness aside, it is immensely useful for fixing up lighting. I can adjust a light all the way across an office and see the change in real time. I can also change and monitor all the settings from my phone when it is out of reach.

Even if sometimes you can get lucky with a clear connection, it is not a replacement for a Teradek, Vaxis, or Hollyland transmitter. I would be so happy if this magically changes in a future update, but given the comments made by Z Cam about the connection issues being beyond the camera’s control, I am not too hopeful.

Update in 2022: WiFi on an iPad with the camera has been greatly improved. I use it constantly for overhead rigs and as a confidence monitor for clients. The connection is not an issue for me anymore. The one downside is that the signal is an 8-bit stream that bands when a LUT is applied. For bigger jobs, a dedicated wireless solution is still a necessity.

Swappable Mounts

The mount on the Z Cam “Flagship” line can be swapped by removing four screws, much like RED’s mount. Z Cam offers an EF mount, a PL mount, a Leica M mount, a Micro Four Thirds mount in September 2020, and potentially a Sony E mount in the future. These mount additions are not your typical adapter. Each for $99, they fully replace the mount on the body of the camera, which, at least for me, gets rid of the concerns I had about investing in a particular line of glass.

The BMPCC6K does not have an interchangeable mount. Really any DSLR-type body in the same price range does not have this ability.

Update in 2022: I now have the Micro Four Thirds mount for this camera. What I didn’t expect when I got it was that it is an active mount, so the mount can communicate lens info to the camera. I have no complaints with this mount.

The Cons

Not a Familiar Brand

At least in my area, ad agencies and clients are not familiar with the Z Cam name. They know RED. They drool over RED, to be honest. They like Arri, though find it synonymous with expensive. And they are familiar with Canon, Sony, and even Panasonic. To include Z Cam on a gear list in a market with RED, Arri, Canon, and Blackmagic shooters is at this point kind of an initial disadvantage that requires an extra conversation.

I think this is changing. But, at this point, if a client reached out to two videographers for a small gig, one with a Z Cam S6 and another with a RED, they would likely pick the RED operator purely for the brand recognition despite the fact that the S6 has an image more than capable of accomplishing the job.

This is my take based on where I live in New England. I am curious to know your thoughts about this.

Poor In-Camera Playback

In-camera playback is not good. There is no way around it. The color-banding and pixelation of the low resolution proxies that play in the playback section of the camera are glaringly obvious. The beautiful footage I saw on my SmallHD 702 touch that I just recorded can only be viewed at that original quality on a laptop once files have been transferred over.

When I am on a job and the client asks to look at a take, I am so accustomed to telling them, “The footage here is a low quality version of what we’ll see on the computer” that I forget that I have already told them multiple times and am sounding like a broken record.

A question I have for Z Cam is if the footage cannot be reviewed at full quality in camera, then can the stream of that full quality footage be sent via a cable to an iPad or iPhone for playback?

I really hope that playback quality improves in a future update.

Update in 2022: It has improved, but it is still not good. If I were you, I’d get a recording monitor like an Atomos Ninja V or Blackmagic Design VideoAssist 12G and dual record to it for better playback capabilities and some redundancy.

Learning Curve to System and No Manual

In addition to improving playback, I hope the operating system’s menus (currently version 0.96) get an update. Compared to the simple menus of the BMPCC6K, the menus on the Z Cam are confusing at first to navigate.

Where a first time user of a Canon Cine camera would figure out where the playback button is and how to change record settings, they would need to read over a non-existent Z Cam manual to accomplish the same goals. To get into playback, one must click the power button. To change record settings, one must go into the separate Record and Video menus to set up resolution, frame rate, and encoder.

I have had to pull out my phone and search in the Z Cam Facebook group for an answer to a menu-related question more times than I can remember. Why is Proxy Track disabled? How do I enable Low Jello mode? How can I import a LUT to the iPad? Why is the Luminance Level set to Limited? Why is Variable Framerate set to Off without any other option to choose from? Sometimes, I am in a location without a cell connection, and not being able to open a physical manual can be stressful.

Software Bugs

It took me twenty minutes the other day in a location with horrible cell service to figure out why Variable Framerate did not have any option other than Off. I ended up resetting the camera, which fixed the problem. As I write this review, the VFR setting is back to showing Off as the only option even though I have Resolution set at 2.8K and Encoder at H.265.

There have been little bugs like the above throughout the eight months that I have used the camera. None of them have bricked the camera, and all have been fixed by a reset, but they have been annoying enough the times that they have happened that they are worth noting as a con here.

White Balance “Lock In Record” Disabled By Default

With each new update to the OS, all custom settings are wiped. I have given up on setting up the function buttons with my own presets because the updates come so frequently, at least for the last three updates leading up to version 0.96.

One of the settings that I immediately change, however, is “Lock In Record” in the White Balance menu. This setting by default is disabled, meaning if one were to use the camera in a controlled situation, none of the shots would match exactly with the same white balance. Mismatched white balance takes forever to correct, so I always dive into this setting and change it after an update.

“Lock In Record” should be enabled by default.

Exposed Ports

Kaiman Wong would be disappointed in the lack of “flappy bits,” as he calls them, to cover the exposed ports on the Z Cam. I took gaff tape to the unused ports when I first got the camera to prevent dust and moisture from getting inside.

The lack of covers really seems like an oversight back when the Flagship line was designed. Did they intend for people to operate these cameras as they do now? Why did they not include flaps?

While talking about exposed ports, the most important port (beside the sensor, if you can call it a port… for light) is the one for the CFast card. This port has a cover that does not perfectly sit over the top. After these eight months of use, the port cover has warped and no longer sits flush, often falling out while the camera is in use. I do not like having the place where the media is recorded be exposed to the elements.

Locking EF Mount

A locking EF mount is leaps and bounds better than the twist-to-lock mount found on DSLR-type bodies. Lenses are placed into the mount at the correct rotation, rather than twisted inward, which can be tricky for large cinema lenses.

Z Cam’s variant of the locking EF mount is good, but it is still loose on some lenses. I have to carry PTFE tape with me for some lenses because the mount is not a rock solid fit. When using a follow focus, the lenses can occasionally wiggle like a loose tooth. Putting a little PTFE tape between the lens and the mount fixes this. Switching to PL mount and all PL mount glass could also be a permanent fix for this. However, the need for a modification to the EF mount makes the mount in its current state a con for me.

Funky Record Button

I have never liked the soft record button on the top right of the Z Cam. It has a gummy feel that lacks feedback. I have to check the screen each time to make sure that the camera has begun to record. The function buttons on the side are much more responsive.

Verdict

The Z Cam has a fantastic image and a balanced, power efficient body that puts it ahead of every camera in its price range for video production. I cannot stress enough how great it is to have a balanced cube-shape body. This balance coupled with the great battery life is why I found myself using the Z Cam more often than the BMPCC6K and why I am not yet tempted by the new offerings from Sony and Canon.

The Z Cam is not without many drawbacks for larger productions and a few notable software issues for the solo shooter, the biggest being the lack of quality playback.

These software issues need to be fixed.

I do not think it will be long before competitors catch on and release their own cube shaped cameras. If they go this route, by releasing cube shaped cameras with great battery life, dedicated buttons, interchangeable mounts, wireless video, and robust software, then Z Cam could have some trouble. RED has just entered the competition with the Komodo, though at a higher price, and I don’t doubt that Blackmagic will be joining soon.

Despite these issues and concerns, if I were to go out and buy a camera today for video production and had a budget under $4000, I would pick up a Z Cam E2 S6 with some accessories.

Update in 2022: As of March 4, were I in the market for a new camera body in the price range of $2,000 to $2,500, I would be thinking about the Z Cam E2 S6, the Panasonic GH6, and the Blackmagic Design Pocket 6K Pro. Even today, at that price point, I would pick the E2 S6.

If you have questions about my experience with the camera, leave a comment here.

A version of this story is archived on CreatorCoffeeShop.com