FX6: I can see again!

Doug Jensen

Doug Jensen

Carbonite Member
I had cataract surgery on both eyes last month and the results are amazing. Sharper, crisper, truer colors, etc. I didn't realize how poor my eyesight had gotten. Now it is great, once again, to be able to get out and shoot wildlife and actually be able to see the animals. I gotta say, being able to see the birds before they have flown too close makes all the difference. Plus, once I get them in my sights, the image in my viewfinder is so much sharper and crisper now, so I can more easily tell when I'm actually in focus or just close.

I shot this 4K video last week using my FX6 and Sony 200-600mm lens with Sachtler Akitv8/Flowtech75 tripod system. I used the camera's built-in S-Cinetone shooting mode and then applied one of my own S-Cinetone Booster LUTs with a little fine-tuning on a clip-by-clip basis. It is nice to be back in business again.

 
Great to hear! Glad the surgery was such a success.

Really beautiful shots in the video. How much were you relying on AF for this vs MF?
 
Glad to hear Doug! Wife had the surgery 5 years ago. Suddenly she could see again.

Im a few years younger, and still able to enjoy 4K HDR to its fullest, but i reckon i need to start saving...
 
Martin.G said:
Glad to hear Doug! Wife had the surgery 5 years ago. Suddenly she could see again..
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Yeah, I know what you're saying. My wife had hers done in the summer of 2022, but it wasn't even on my radar until about a year ago -- even though, looking back, I was definitely in decline earlier than I realized. The decline definitely accelerated in the last 6 months. The biggest surprise wasn't just with sharpness, it was how much white balance and black levels were also affected. Whites are so much cleaner and brighter now. Skies are blue. Blacks are deeper. I had to go two weeks between left-eye and right-eye surgeries, so it was easy to compare before and after by opening one eye or the other. The differences between the two was more than I expected. I will also confess that any color grading I've done in the past 6 months is suspect. I already went back and re-graded some stuff I previously thought was okay.:embarasse
 
drboffa said:
Really beautiful shots in the video. How much were you relying on AF for this vs MF?
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Thanks.
With the FX6 it can be hard to say how much is shot with manual-focus and how much is auto-focus, because even "auto" isn't truly auto. Technically, touch-tracking AF was active for just about every shot in the video, but you can't just point the camera and expect it to do the work. That can work for stills, but not for video. And it can work for human faces, but not animals or inanimate objects. The touch-tracking requires you to tap on the screen to tell the camera where to focus, and on a moving bird that is flying past clouds, foliage, other birds, etc. it can take 5-10 taps before the camera will lock-on to what you want to be in focus. By then, sometimes the shot is totally missed because the bird has already passed the point of closest approach and is moving away. And if the animal is close enough, then you better tap on the face or else the eyes won't be sharp. You'd think that DoF would be deep enough that if you focused on the body the eyes would be sharp enough, but that is not the case even when the animal is 30 yards away.

So, bottom line is mostly AF but with a lot of manual labor mixed in.
 
Love this! Especially the slow clip transitions harmonize the pacing and tempo. Beautiful color, contrasts and sharpness. A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican, He can take in his beak, enough food for a week. But I'm damned if I see how the helican.
 
Tom Roper said:
A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican, He can take in his beak, enough food for a week. But I'm damned if I see how the helican.
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Normally I don't like poetry, but this is beautiful man. Brought a tear to my eye.
 
How can you not love poetry? All you need is a glass of wine in front of the fireplace. From memory, recite Shakespeare's sonnet 18 and she will fall in love with you. Then again, you don't have a fireplace in Florida.
 
Tom Roper said:
How can you not love poetry? All you need is a glass of wine in front of the fireplace. From memory, recite Shakespeare's sonnet 18 and she will fall in love with you. Then again, you don't have a fireplace in Florida.
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Well, hold on there sir, in my defense most of the homes I've owned had fireplaces and I've only lived in Florida for six years, yet I have hated poetry my whole life. Not my cup of tea. I rank it right up there with dancing, country music, hip hop, super hero movies, musicals, and religion. Not interested in any of it. But nevertheless, the ode to the Pelican brought a lump to my throat and tear to my eye.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Well, hold on there sir, in my defense most of the homes I've owned had fireplaces and I've only lived in Florida for six years, yet I have hated poetry my whole life. Not my cup of tea. I rank it right up there with dancing, country music, hip hop, super hero movies, musicals, and religion. Not interested in any of it. But nevertheless, the ode to the Pelican brought a lump to my throat and tear to my eye.
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Are you from Bomont originally?
 
Yes, I don't like Johnny Cash.

Speaking of Footloose, I was offered the chance to work as a PA on that production in Utah when I was in college during spring of 1983. It was very tempting, but ultimately I decided it would be better to work full-time over the summer in Chicago where I could earn 3x more money -- that I really needed for tuition, rent, etc. for the following school year. I have no doubt that I absolutely made the right decision because many doors opened to me later that wouldn't have been there if I had gone that other direction that summer.

When you look back on your life you can point to a half-dozen (or even fewer) really pivotal decisions that could have really changed your whole trajectory. That was one of mine.

Had no idea the fictional town was Bomont.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Yes, I don't like Johnny Cash.

Speaking of Footloose, I was offered the chance to work as a PA on that production in Utah when I was in college during spring of 1983. It was very tempting, but ultimately I decided it would be better to work full-time over the summer in Chicago where I could earn 3x more money -- that I really needed for tuition, rent, etc. for the following school year. I have no doubt that I absolutely made the right decision because many doors opened to me later that wouldn't have been there if I had gone that other direction that summer.

When you look back on your life you can point to a half-dozen (or even fewer) really pivotal decisions that could have really changed your whole trajectory. That was one of mine.

Had no idea the fictional town was Bomont.
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Or maybe you would have ended up even richer and more famous if you had worked on Footloose. Who's to say!

The internet tells me this is technically Folk Alternative Country Gospel, but here's a track by Cash that I love:

 
ahalpert said:
Or maybe you would have ended up even richer and more famous if you had worked on Footloose. Who's to say!
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Maybe, but I doubt it. I much preferred having a career in television and video production. I'd have been bored stiff on film sets even I was and ASC cinematographer. I've worked on a few film shoots and a lot of EPK work and I couldn't wait to get out of there. It's just not my bag, baby.
If I ever had any doubts, the recent threads about RUST, unions, strikes, etc. just confirmed I made the right choice.

ahalpert said:
The internet tells me this is technically Folk Alternative Country Gospel, but here's a track by Cash that I love:
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I'm not saying it is awful or as bad as other country, it's just not something I particularly enjoy or would choose to listen to when there is so much other stuff l like listening to instead. To each his own.
 
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