Fuji X-T3 released

puredrifting said:
... I'm really digging what the X-T3 can do though, it's impressive as hell for a high end cell phone price.
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Hello back to a namesake.

In terms of price/value of the gear -- on the DVXU Sony forum, there's an anti-Ursa thread but, all its QC problems aside, the image coming out of Ursa 4.6 was quite delightful. I don't know if it was a seminal camera per se - I think GH4 was - but it is clearly on the progressive ladder of BMD Cinema Camera (2013) - GH4 (2014) - Samsung NX1 (2014) - Sony FS7 (2014) - GH5s (2017) - XT3 (2018) that brings professional image quality to the consumer level (FS7 is here because it basically succeeded F5 and the original BMD Pocket deserves an honorable mention for being the first real affordable Raw unit)). And the next barrier is something under $1,000 from a major manufacturer with compressed Raw and AF and a better picture quality than Alexa Mini.
 
DLD said:
No additional license required.

The human and the non-human/CGI/Mocap faces will be indistinguishable from one another, way beyond the Uncanny Valley.


Fortran??? I used to code in binary. I mean, PL1. High school days.
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I recently worked on a project for a high-end marketing/production company and researched state of the art face/character animation. It's super close, but not quite there yet. Deep Fake AI synthesis is at the high-entertainment level and is also interesting to study. Future cameras will have embedded blockchain/crypto tech to prove source/location etc. Probably also IR, 3D depth and other data to provide Quality of Truth elements. A bit further: quantum entangled elements, with new forms of quantum storage to preserve quantum state from the measured photons (impossible to hack/fake with present knowledge of physics).

For FX shots or 'bringing back' characters, CGI is great, however I think humans enjoy real-world filmmaking too much to go 100% CGI. It's the fun factor of making things in THIS reality vs. virtual reality. As an early pioneer, I've sort of wrapped around back to real reality. Simple things are great :)

Binary & PL1? Here's 6502 hex opcodes I used to type into computers at Apple stores along with a BASIC program saying "Press Return to Continue" which would CALL 768 into this madness:

300:
AD 30 C0
20 ED FD
4C 00 03

Surprised I still remember that lol.

Converted to Assembly
300:
AD C030 ; Load the accumulator with the contents of memory address C030, which clicks the speakers and and loads the accumulator with random garbage
JSR FDED ; Jump to subroutine character out and return: draws a character on screen based on the value in the accumulator: this takes a random amount of time
JMP 0300 ; Jump to address 300 hex (768 decimal): loop forever

This draws random garbage on the screen really fast which then scrolls the entire screen while playing a loud screeching sound, some described as a like a coffee grinder. So much fun back then haha! Simple things :)

Memorized this in college- not a sign of intelligence or skill- how many phone numbers do(did) you remember? (before cell phones and google killed LTM):
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884179, chunked as 3.1415926 535 89 79 323 84 626 4 338 327 950 288 4179 . Kind of a like a song with numbers from certain car models haha. Memorizing numbers and doing math isn't what humans are good at (computers are): AI still can't do common sense, which most humans take for granted. Sure someday AI will do that (and more). Watch/read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe to see how it all plays out. And The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (really short- read it it's fun!): https://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf

Back on topic: wonder if Fuji's hardware for the X-T3 can run AI AF like Sony? Really just a vector processor unit (a bunch of MACs (multiply accumulates) for AI inferencing).
 
puredrifting said:
Welcome back DLD, it's been a while!

To add to this conversation, I met a National Geographic photographer the other night at a party. Nice guy, started showing me stuff he has shot, of course, on his phone. No I mean he has sold most of his camera gear and actually shoots in his iPhone. He shoots a lot in the Antarctic but he also shoots all around the world and his main tool is the iPhone XS. He's won some pretty prestigious awards He is friendly with Phil Schiller and the Apple team and he tests new updates and improvements for them. He is kind of the timelapse king and has a ton of work he sells as stock and other than the long term plant cameras/game cameras, he is shooting everything on his iPhone. And I have to say, he showed me some low light stuff shot on his iPhone that actually didn't look like crap like my 8 Plus looks in low light. Computational photography is definitely here. This guy works at pretty high levels of still (He was the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year) and timelapse and he is making a living with just his iPhone. Amazing. People don't believe me (and JCS) when we say in just a few short years, people will look back at cameras like the C300 MKII and the Sony FS7 MKII and laugh because their phone will dwarf what those two cameras can do. I don't think phones will replace things like Panavisions, REDs and Alexas because filmmaking will still be crew served but for the mid to low end, phones, phones, phones.

I'm really digging what the X-T3 can do though, it's impressive as hell for a high end cell phone price.
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The movement is growing, Dan. You, DLD, me, and maybe NorBro. That's perhaps 4, so only ~96 more to go to reach critical mass (100th Monkey Effect)!

Haven't used the iPhone XS yet, iPhone X (and even the 5S) are great for landscape/nature/sunsets (see my IG, link below). Even my old Canon P&S (given away) had better color/look than the iPhone X (liked the 5S better actually, for skin tones).

This was shot, edited and animated all on the iPhone X: https://www.instagram.com/p/BswWau1A56p/
 
Maybe! NorBro is the one who actually purchased and used almost all of the cameras (and equipment) he talks about! :badputer:

lol...I'm just playing.

I saw the writing on the wall in 2012 via Blackmagic.

Anyone with a BMCC back then instantly knew.

Instantly knew.
 
OK that's a solid 4. Think I saw a post by Eric that he's warming up to the idea?

AlexaLeica would be a neat camera: Alexa color with Leica lenses- make it look like the Ferrari of small cameras and keep the price high(ish). There's still some time before the AI Phones level the playing field, even then, art and style will always be valuable.
 
As long as there is a more accurate color profile. Alexa colors can be nice, but they aren’t exactly pure.
 
Took me a long time to find this...

I always thought this was a great example of the BMCC.

You just didn't see this kind of footage from regular people back then in 2012 before Blackmagic came along.

You needed serious money to own or even rent a camera that could come close.

https://vimeo.com/120887527

Now the thing sells for 500 bucks on eBay...I'm shaking my head.
 
NorBro said:
Took me a long time to find this...

I always thought this was a great example of the BMCC.

You just didn't see this kind of footage from regular people back then in 2012 before Blackmagic came along.

https://vimeo.com/120887527

Now the thing sells for 500 bucks on eBay...I'm shaking my head.
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Indeed special. I so wish the new bmpcc 4k had this look in terms of color science and texture. I've yet to see any footage out of the new ones that look remotely close to the aesthetics of the old black

You needed serious money to own or even rent a camera that could come close.
 
lol

(I'm laughing because there's always someone...with anything and everything. Absolutely, TOTALLY fine; it's just funny.)
 
NorBro said:
lol

(I'm laughing because there's always someone...with anything and everything. Absolutely, TOTALLY fine; it's just funny.)
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Have you seen my posts on the forums before? Do you think i am kidding?
 
Dude, ever thread i am on with you, you act as if you have never seen me on the forum before. Lol.
 
Because I almost never understand what you're saying, but now I think you've been joking a lot and it's been flying over my head.
 
@Norbro, you’ll have to come out to LA and meet some of us dvx’ers out here. Cinegear is coming up.
 
jcs said:
Binary & PL1?
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Ran on a Hungarian IBM knock-off ... part of the advanced math placement class that my dad forced me into ... (and, by that, I mean forced others to admit me) ... wasn't my thing but the curriculum was mandatory for all ...

James0b57 said:
As long as there is a more accurate color profile. Alexa colors can be nice, but they aren’t exactly pure.
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Did the debate on the Alexa secret sauce ever get settled? Was it the filters or the sheer processing power? Now, it seems to be all LUTS. "You're making a film on Zenit TTL? I got perfect LUTS for you. $20 will make it look like an Alexa65 with the same depth of field".
 
DLD said:
Did the debate on the Alexa secret sauce ever get settled? Was it the filters or the sheer processing power? Now, it seems to be all LUTS. "You're making a film on Zenit TTL? I got perfect LUTS for you. $20 will make it look like an Alexa65 with the same depth of field".
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As you already know, most of what makes an Alexa so much better is the teams of people creating the content surrounding it. That said, Alexa is not known for being technically accurate. But seeing as how impossible that may be, i think they chose the “right” sauce.

Sony is kind of the poster child of what happens when you strive for accurate colors. Wasn’t until the Venice that they started going for aesthetics.

I don’t really think any camera can really mimic the Alexa, unless they incorporate some form of highlight retention or hdr feature, because no other CMOS sensor i know of can reach into the highlights like an Alexa does. So a simple LUT will not replicate the Alexa look.
 
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