Ty
Cinematographer, Editor, Director
Freelancing full time since 2008 for documentary, sports, commercial, and corporate projects.
The Bolex is a fantastic camera, I shot some of my student films on it 10-ish years ago - and yes - the sound of the motor did ruin a fair amount of dialogue.
As an aside - the film grain in the video above looks pretty bad. I wonder if the newer H.265 codec will better preserve details like grain?
These videos really show off the Ronin's inability to keep a straight horizon from a moving vehicle.
Still, Ditogear's product looks pretty awesome. Looks like it's compatible with any gimbal - in the coming years I'm sure the gimbal tech will improve and this mounting hardware looks like it'll outlast any current tech.
I used one of these adapters years ago with a Panasonic HVX200 - and that was when I was "making the jump" into HD resolution. Even then, the red rock adapters produced footage that looked really soft to me, and most of the footage I shot with it ended up going unused. At 4K the footage looks downright unusable.
Not a groundbreaking idea, but it's still a good one. I bet lots of people will find this worth buying. I don't think the price is too steep considering the trade-offs - especially with the bigger battery.
It makes me wish the Hero4 was a more reliable camera. Has anyone else experienced problems? Our studio has a couple Hero4 Black cameras and we stopped using them altogether because every once in awhile they would freeze up and crash after 5 seconds of recording. You know, just long enough for you to press record and confirm that it's recording before you get out of the way of the awesome thing you're trying to capture. Quite disappointing to come back and see that the recording time still reads "0:05"
These look great, but I had to do some digging to find out just how bright they are. The Blind Spot Gear website sates, "The Watts in terms of a traditional tungsten light is 75W, however our lens is 36 degrees @ 50% full angle. This means the light is directed and gives a punch, 1940 lux @ 3 foot."
I was wondering how accurate their 75W claim is. Using the Arri Photometric Calculator (http://calc.arri.de/calculator) and this footcandles to lux calculator (http://www.rapidtables.com/calc/light/fc-to-lux-calculator.htm) confirms that the Scorpion Lights output less light than your traditional Arri 150W Fresnel Tungsten lamp. However according to my rough calculations the Scorpion lights might output a little more than the claimed 75W equivalent:
Scorpion Light is 1940 lux @ 3ft (36 degree angle)
Arri 150 is 2100 lux (or 195 fc) @ 3ft (30 degree angle)
I could be wrong, if anyone else has time to waste feel free to weigh in. Either way, these don't seem to be bright enough to use as key light, unless maybe you're using a camera that excels in low light.
The newest GoPro has a mode that will correct (de-fish) the fisheye effect associated with GoPro footage. Supposedly it's an in-camera correction, but it sounds like it's a software feature. So nothing is changing with the lens. If you're shooting in 4k and delivering in HD it may be useable on a professional level. Hard to judge it without seeing it for ourselves, but it could be a good option.