Alec

@ jacketpotato , they do have some inter-company code of ethics; however, in one of the wider known examples, JVC had lead SONY to believe they would make Betamax and got some valuable R&D insights, then with NO heads-up to SONY came out with VHS. The bottom line is, implicit or even explicit promises are broken sometimes.

Unless SONY (or whichever other company) owes medium-format incumbents some favors for their sharing some trade secret info and insights, there'd be no appreciable ethical barrier to entering that field.

Yeah, 2MP used to be "film quality". LOL. I remember years ago some "independent Nikon photographer" shot some frames on 6x7 vs some 6MP Nikon, and of course Nikon won. Never mind that a lens on that Nikon never optically formed a medium format image, and was knocked further down with the anti-aliasing filter.

The reality is, whatever the year, they need to move merch like clockwork, otherwise there won't be money to meet monthly payroll and other expenses. So they keep coming up with stuff we're supposed to buy. And we're addicted. They don't put "Good" on boxes, they put "New". Most of the time, "New" is better, although elevated amount of BS and hype has to take place when that's not the case across the board (like 35mm -> APS, and film -> digital).

I think folks have been saying that ever since 2MP.

I expect, SONY will follow suit with a medium format mirrorless with a particularly short flange distance - a feature that has served its full-frame mirrorless so well in terms of 3rd party lens support.

It would be lovely to be able to mount a full-frame lens and select a "native" aspect ratio (with a 43mm diagonal at all aspect ratios not just "native" - they'd all be native) between 1:1 square format and 2.39:1 for video. Maybe even a 43mm round format for a fisheye :)

I don't think it's overdone, it just doesn't seem to have a rhyme or rhythm - or at least those that resonate with me (and you apparently). This is something where Ron Fricke's films excel.

TF?? Who's that guy at my place?

I think it got the author some well deserved notoriety in his Director of Photography capacity.

Rob890 is absolutely right of course - but not every photographer is a natural-born writer (the camera being incidental) - not many, in fact, realize they even ought to aim to be that.

@cdembrey I didn't know they did. I think we're yet to see an artistically valid use of the tilt motion for something other than "hey, here's tilt on video!!," but I'm sure it's coming sooner or later.

I think the author is hoping the footage would still be relevant 8 years from now.

Any 640x480 or 720x480 digital footage from a few short years ago is not very useful commercially nowadays. If you're going to pay a very real logistical cost for a serious project (clearly the case here), you'd want the resulting asset to have as much life as possible out of the gate. If he or she could have done it in 16K today, they would have.

Who knows, maybe they'd stitched it on crooked.

peterwr I did not know that!! In the 80s and 90s, spinners (fake rims that keep spinning after the car has stopped) and then stillers (weighed faux rims that stay still while the car is in motion) were popular in not such good parts of many a town.

This doesn't strike me personally as a luxury detail - branding that goes out of its way to be clearly seen is a general trait for middle-class aspiration brands. Who knows, maybe Bentley is moving to capture an upper slice of the middle-class market.

P.S. I just thought of this: if one does truly use a "NASA-inspired robotic head", in theory it is possible to track the moving car in the "money shot" and then dial in identical motion (or appropriately changing depending on patch position in the final image) for all the robotically executed shots.

That's in theory. In practice, that head looks much too flimsy to not just point the lens but precisely replicate the motion during the exposure. I'd envisioned something akin to what we see in the Apollo 13 movie in a scene leading up to the launch, set in the VIP observation deck.

That's a great piece of Corinthian Leather.

Nothing is random in a car commercial - one is allowed to bounce extra light onto the subject and even back up the car a certain distance and turn the wheels such that both B's on the hubs are exactly upright when it rolls back into the designated spot. Certainly choosing an angle where the seat (only the main point of the campaign) is not obscured by windshield reflections was an obvious priority early on. ALL that said, I do agree with you - that front passenger seat lighting and motion blur on the bridge certainly do not fit into the narrative.

These lenses have identical optical formulae to their still photo and non-Xeen video oriented siblings in Samyang's lineup.

So they do breathe when focusing.

If you do not use a follow focus rig (or do but do not change lenses often), it may be a better value to get a "plain" motion Samyang and save a bundle. However if you change lenses during shoots in a rig / have a crew, the sole fact that you do not have to reconfigure the rig when changing the lenses may pay for the price difference in a few shoots.

Not alike! Your post is better than this article by a very substantial margin - as measured by the improvement they could make to the target audience's footage.

A key thing in a motion picture is having something to say, because while pointless or self-serving stills are just that, a pointless or self-serving video is insufferable. Next comes forethought on how to say it using the motion picture language, in a way that is clear and eloquent. Then the execution, making sure you've not forgotten to shoot the "words" and "sentences" needed to tell the story. Lastly, piecing it together in editing.

It is pretty absurd to worry about color grading ahead of contemplating the actual point. That said, Richard's summaries of the video-specific technical issues including sound and camera motion are lucid and supported by well-crafted media. Good job Richard!

As for the legacy-free video editor that emphasizes digital tools such as histograms and tone curves, I'd recommend SONY Vegas Pro.

I just want to give thanks where due for the camera's design. From the front, it just looks so completely like a real camera ought to look. Sony A900 had that same design intent, and both these cameras share the distinction of being the first to reward their patient lens mount followers with a full frame digital body.

Love the K1 and I'm sure it won't disappoint its users.

I think it's not their warranty dept's, but rather their business decision that's come under criticism, to forfeit the advantages Apple and Google have made obvious, of opening up an exciting hardware platform to 3rd party apps.

They've probably rested on their laurels, as opposed to making sure the portraits they've made continue to wow.

'How can you expect that a studio can operate in this generation where everyone is clicking photos from their mobiles and digital cameras?'

This says a lot. It takes love and sweat, it takes investing in your employees, your clients, your space, to continuously build on the quality of your work, thus and reinforcing your brand. It's a lot cheaper and easier to just milk your name until it runs dry - hiring cheap labor and giving them "tell the client to smile then press this button" training, hence turning out glorified passport photos instead of portraits - until a day comes when a critical mass of your clients realize, that nephew with a D500 does legitimately take a better photo.