📸🎥 Photography & Videography, Cameras & Gear, Editing & Apps News and Discussions

[Bo_Hazem]

Hello there! This thread will be all about photography, videography, cameras and gear, editing and apps, etc. We'll also share news and discuss all kinds of topics in that matter.

How do we start?

Your preference:
Your camera(s):
Your lenses:
Your expertise or fields you're interested in:

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I'll start with myself:

Preference: I started as a photographer, but now leaning more as a videographer. I would say Videography > Photography.
Cameras: Sony a7S III, DJI Mavic Air 2s, DJI Osmo Pocket.
Lenses: Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DN DG (E-mount), Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS, Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X Ultra Macro (E-mount), Laowa 24mm f/14 2x Macro probe (E-mount).
My expertise/fields of interest: Fauna and Flora (naturalism), advertisement and production in general.

 

[Darth Vader]

My expertise/fields of interest: Fauna and Flora (naturalism), advertisement and production in general.

For a moment I expected pornography.

Lord Bo of Brazzers.

I'm very disappointed.
Btw, I prefer photography. Have a Nikon D3300 DSLR, need to buy a macro lens

 

[Sharinghack]

I started with Photography and it was the best "teacher" in these arts. I was involved in VFX from an early age, even before going to college, so when I decided to go there I went to film school and got my Masters in Cinematography, so I could bring together the best of both worlds. That's why nowadays my main line of work is VFX supervisor on the film set.

Cinematography is WAY harder than Photography, but Photography still is the best starting point, mainly if you go full analog.


EDIT: I personally have a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K with a bunch of Zeiss glass. But professionally is rare not to work with an Arri Alexa, with kit Master Primes or Cooke S4.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

For a moment I expected pornography.

Lord Bo of Brazzers.

I'm very disappointed.
Btw, I prefer photography. Have a Nikon D3300 DSLR, need to buy a macro lens

For macro there are a bunch of lenses, it all depends on how much magnification are you seeking. Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x is great for extreme macro and relatively cheap.

I started with Photography and it was the best "teacher" in these arts. I was involved in VFX from an early age, even before going to college, so when I decided to go there I went to film school and got my Masters in Cinematography, so I could bring together the best of both worlds. That's why nowadays my main line of work is VFX supervisor on the film set.

Cinematography is WAY harder than Photography, but Photography still is the best starting point, mainly if you go full analog.


EDIT: I personally have a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K with a bunch of Zeiss glass. But professionally is rare not to work with an Arri Alexa, with kit Master Primes or Cooke S4.

Now that's some serious stuff! Would love to see more from you if you could share anything. Maybe learn from your experience as I wanna go full cinematography/filmmaking.

 

[Sharinghack]

Now that's some serious stuff! Would love to see more from you if you could share anything. Maybe learn from your experience as I wanna go full cinematography/filmmaking.

Well, the path you take must take into account what you really want to do in this business. If you want just to be purely a Cinematographer ( or DOP most commonly refered to) I would suggest to not be alone in this process, go meet people already in the industry and some estabilished production companies, and try to work with them to gain some experience. When I started I was a lighting assistant, just carrying and fixing light projectors in many shoots, at the same time I was absorbing all that as going on, hanging around with the camera crew, taking with the DOP and learn in the process. I'm not sure how the industry is in Oman but if you have a chance to do this I would recommend it. Don't be caught in youself, trying to do things alone, I was like that and I lost years trying to achieve things that were just not possible by myself.

I'll leave here a link to both my companies websites so you can check them out and the kind of work we do.

www.pushfilms.com - Film Production

www.pushvfx.com - Visual Effects

Cheers mate

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Well, the path you take must take into account what you really want to do in this business. If you want just to be purely a Cinematographer ( or DOP most commonly refered to) I would suggest to not be alone in this process, go meet people already in the industry and some estabilished production companies, and try to work with them to gain some experience. When I started I was a lighting assistant, just carrying and fixing light projectors in many shoots, at the same time I was absorbing all that as going on, hanging around with the camera crew, taking with the DOP and learn in the process. I'm not sure how the industry is in Oman but if you have a chance to do this I would recommend it. Don't be caught in youself, trying to do things alone, I was like that and I lost years trying to achieve things that were just not possible by myself.

I'll leave here a link to both my companies websites so you can check them out and the kind of work we do.

www.pushfilms.com - Film Production

www.pushvfx.com - Visual Effects

Cheers mate

Impressive!

 

[Bo_Hazem]

The benefits of filming in 8K, especially Sony a1 8K is only like 3GB/min which is pretty small as I sometimes I film for like 40+ min in 4K@120fps with 280Mbps that makes around 2.5-2.8GB/min.

It's an 8.6K downsampled to 8K (more like 7.6K to be accurate but it's generalized as 8K, just like 4K being 3.8K), so you end up with even more pixel density than average 4K in 200%/2x crop.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Impressive upscaling apps from Topaz, for both photos and videos:

Topaz Labs | Video AI 5™ | Cinematic superpowers. Ultra smooth. Sharp. Steady.

Get cinema-grade results with the all-new Video AI 4. Use and compare 24 temporally aware AI models trained to upscale, enhance, stabilize, and smooth footage.

www.topazlabs.com

Practical example:

And this for photos:

Topaz Labs | Gigapixel 8™ | Super scale any image with AI. Like magic.

Improve image resolution with deep learning. Join hundreds of thousands of photographers who use Gigapixel AI for printing, cropping, restoration, and more.

www.topazlabs.com

Crazy what AI can do!

 

[Sharinghack]

Impressive upscaling apps from Topaz, for both photos and videos:

Topaz Labs | Video AI 5™ | Cinematic superpowers. Ultra smooth. Sharp. Steady.

Get cinema-grade results with the all-new Video AI 4. Use and compare 24 temporally aware AI models trained to upscale, enhance, stabilize, and smooth footage.

www.topazlabs.com

Practical example:

And this for photos:

Topaz Labs | Gigapixel 8™ | Super scale any image with AI. Like magic.

Improve image resolution with deep learning. Join hundreds of thousands of photographers who use Gigapixel AI for printing, cropping, restoration, and more.

www.topazlabs.com

Crazy what AI can do!

You have no idea how many times this saved my life hahaha

 

[Bo_Hazem]

You have no idea how many times this saved my life hahaha

Haha! Yeah, I can see that.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

4K already has a great reach with cropping, like in photography, I zoomed in here pretty hard like %400 and still the quality remained good. Those flickers are due to the shitty stadium LED's that have been replaced lately. Here me acting like VAR:

Now 8K is another beast!

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Chinese custom officials might thought I was importing/smuggling some sort of dismantled guns, lol.

"We apologize for this inconvenience. The package was returned to the sorting center because of security inspection problem while exporting. We contacted the forwarder to get further update and will let you know. Thank you for your understanding in advance."

I think these two drew attention:

I have a strange setup for macro videography/photography that I'll share later when I get all the tools!

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Did this mini ad just now, meant for Story but did a wide one in 4K just in case with vertical in mind.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I've been heavily learning and testing HDR lately! I've used HLG3, Rec.2020, set black level to wide. I might use HLG instead of HLG3 because it has the widest dynamic range that rivals SLog2 according to what I've seen from Gerald Undone and also checked via my camera. HLG3 looks artistically pleasing out of the camera and I don't think I need much of color correction, maybe only pushing saturation in post by ~20% instead of doing it on camera as to preserve that wide range of color for future proofing as it looks perfect on my a7S III tiny screen and I don't own a proper TV/monitor that could display Rec.2020 nor P3-D65 wide enough (~75%-85% respectively).

I've done a test and shot 5 clips at different exposures, and challenged myself to make them look similar! I was pleasantly shocked of the results and that's near impossible in SLog3+Rec.709, I believe, thanks to Rec.2020 as well: (will delete both videos later)

Clips as they are out of the camera:

Made the footage a bit cooler, pushed saturation down, and tried matching all clips using the HDR wheels on DaVinci Resolve Studio 17:

The file above is only 104MB on my PC!!! Using Mainconcept HEVC plugin for DaVinci Resolve that supports up to 8K resolution and 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 (perfect for my planned Sony a1 camera!). I first panicked when saw the bitrate as low as 16-26Mbps, but how they keep the footage identical to the source yet extremely compact is pure sorcery!

Codec Plugin for DaVinci Resolve Studio: MainConcept

Render from DaVinci Resolve into camera formats from Sony, Panasonic, plus native access to HEVC profiles and AS-11 UK DPP

www.mainconcept.com

It's a one-time purchase and you can migrate it to other device on their website, and subscription is optional but won't recommend it. If you have new Intel CPU/GPU/APU or Apple's M1/M2 processors then you don't need that as you have dedicated hardware-acceleration for H.264 and H.265, and of course ProRes. I'm planning to get Mac Studio next! Current PC: Ryzen 7 2700x, Radeon VII with 16GB HBM2 VRAM, 32GB 3200Mhz RAM (16x2GB), 1TB NVMe m.2 3.5GB/s SSD (Samsung 970 Pro) as main, and 2TB SATA3 SSD (WB) for storage.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

An ad made with association with our lovely @Cragarmi voice over. Mostly stock footage.

Arabic version:

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Now filming Whitcombe's biting midges! When it's done and posted on youtube I'll share it here!





Builds for macro:

And another build for the other 5x macro, lightweight

 

[rofif]

I love taking photos. I have so many!
The only camera I have now is shitty old Nikon p610... which is essentially a fake camera that is basically just a binoculars.
But it can do this !

And it can take some not bad photos too. Of course aside from Zoom, Iphone 13 pro blows is out of the water. I have thousands of pictures from old phones, cameras and phone. But just crappy old nikon p610 for now:

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I love taking photos. I have so many!
The only camera I have now is shitty old Nikon p610... which is essentially a fake camera that is basically just a binoculars.
But it can do this !

And it can take some not bad photos too. Of course aside from Zoom, Iphone 13 pro blows is out of the water. I have thousands of pictures from old phones, cameras and phone. But just crappy old nikon p610 for now:

If you think iPhone and other phones could beat its photos then I think you need to watch them side by side on a large screen. The photos look briliant with natural bokeh vs fake AI shit that could be exposed easily with phones. That zoom range is crazy indeed! But a proper full frame camera you can get better results/zoom but at a much higher price!

Nice photos and keep on sharing! If my film becomes ready I should share with some of my wacky builds.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

So just received a pair of NP-F970, rated at 7800mAh and 56.8wh + dual charger:

Amazon product ASIN B09WTPFR1F
And Neewer 7" reflector with diffuser and 3 honeycomb grids at 20/40/60 degrees:

Amazon product ASIN B07V1N1R7F
Waiting for the main course, Aputure Amaran COB 60x. It should be a great "on-camera" and studio light! Very tiny with great power:

Amazon product ASIN B09JYQ54GQ
Will use it for extreme macro and probably night wildlife filmmaking.

Looking for those massive NP-F990 batteries with 11,600mAh and 85.8wh each!

Amazon product ASIN B07GM21K8M