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Messages - ChadMuffin

#76
I just wanted to let you know that I used 1.5 Beta 6 and did not have any issues on my Windows 8.1, GeForce GTX 780, and pulling the footage into Premiere CC with audio synced. No pink highlights or green frames. Even when viewing the DNGs in Explorer, the images were scaled correctly and the colors were represented properly. Great work building this from the bottom up! Excited to see more to come and what Adobe does with the rumors of more DNG support.
#77
That will help make the process smoother!
#78
Share Your Photos / Re: Military and Dual ISO
June 02, 2014, 01:50:09 AM
Quote from: sgofferj on May 31, 2014, 04:08:37 PM
I was wondering what exactly you did to get there.

When it comes to most of these shots to make them look more... "painterly?" It was actually quite simple. You may have been able to do them without dual ISO but, have that extra dynamic range made it easier and higher quality. I simply lifted the shadows very high and brought the highlights down significantly and applied a lot of contrast and clarity in Lightroom. Often, multiple lays of clarity with the brush tool painted over the whole image. Or course, being selective in some areas where it seemed it fit.

The staged one with the soldiers and the humvee was a bit technical. I wanted there to be motion blur of one soldier in the background so I wanted a longer shutter to do so. I also used an ND filter maxed out as much as possible without the x-factor. I shot it on an image stabilized lens, handheld at 1/12, ISO 100 AND f/22 in daylight. I used a flash on the soldier in the foreground on rear curtain sync to stop any motion and to help create that interesting lighting. I them brought it into Photoshop, ACR filter for adjustments, including clarity, and them made masks to changed levels, curves, hue selectively where I liked it and dodged and burned where I thought it looked good. I then finished it with a mask of lens blur to simulate lens blur even though I shot it at f/22.

Quote from: baldavenger on May 30, 2014, 11:01:00 PM
Thank you for your service.

Thank you!
#79
Share Your Photos / Re: Military and Dual ISO
May 30, 2014, 10:45:50 PM
Thanks! A lot of the soldiers that got them told me they would use them as backgrounds. Good feeling! If anyone wants them, go ahead. No copyright.
#80
That was a worry for me. I used a UV filter just for protection and rain bag when I got in closer or if I knew things would get messy. But, it was actually a little overkill in the end. This wasn't a color run, with fine dust everywhere. It was controlled blasts of essentially colored water. Thanks for the link! Good info.
#81
A client came to me who is starting a business doing paint parties as well as other promotions and advertising about making him a "mega-mercial." I filmed a couple shows and put this together. He also had 2 other video guys there that had a 5D3 (not hacked) and a GH3 (hacked) who where nice enough to let me use their footage. I was able to tell the difference while editing, not just in color grading but overall quality and I am sure you can too. I was running 2 KB 64GB cards which held up very well as I swapped them out they would fill up on a USB 3.0 HDD. I edited in Adobe products. Used Elemet 3D for the 3D graphics and Optical Flares from Video Copilot. The shows were not huge but I think I managed to make them seem larger. I used the latest Tamron glass, 24-70 and 70-200, which has been working great for me, recommend them for the price. I also used the Canon 15mm fisheye. And, I used a HD-2000 for steadicam like shots and a lot of handheld for time sake. Thoughts, comments, questions, I would enjoy to hear them!

#82
Share Your Photos / Re: Military and Dual ISO
May 29, 2014, 04:43:02 AM
Quote from: Virindi on May 27, 2014, 06:08:54 PM
A little too extreme I think..

I thought the edits were a bit too extreme too but, I made some test edits and showed a small group of soldiers and they all thought the more extreme were better. And, since that was my target audience, I continued editing that way even if it wasn't my typical. But, I do appreciate the feedback!

Quote from: bobbygd on May 28, 2014, 07:48:39 PM
I am feeling as if i am watching snaps of some world war movie.

Thanks! That was the atmosphere I was hoping for!
#83
Share Your Photos / Re: Military and Dual ISO
May 25, 2014, 05:49:12 PM
Thanks for your feedback! I personally have been going back and forth between the first and last one. Since it is a tank regiment, I wanted to stay true to that.
#84
Share Your Photos / Military and Dual ISO
May 24, 2014, 08:31:23 PM
I am in the 194th Tank Regiment in MN and just got back from Annual Training. While photography is not my primary job in the military, I am a network admin, I managed to take some pictures and used ML Dual ISO (some without) and managed to get some great results and wanted to share them. I hardly got more than a few moments to shoot from time to time and only one shot is "staged." But, the documentary style revamped made it better in my opinion. I only changed colors, shadows and highlights in the pictures. Thoughts and comments, I'll be here! I plan on selling these in VFWs, Legions, VAs and others for the Soldier Fund at the Brainerd, MN Armory. And, would like your help to see which one is best to start printing.

Dual ISO:

M1 Abrams
by Chad J Smith, on Flickr

Not Dual ISO, staged:

COD inspired.
by Chad J Smith, on Flickr

Dual ISO:

An M1 Sunset
by Chad J Smith, on Flickr

Dual ISO:

Blackhawk
by Chad J Smith, on Flickr

Dual ISO:

Abram in Action
by Chad J Smith, on Flickr

Not Dual ISO:

Abram Astir
by Chad J Smith, on Flickr

#85
Would you check that out!? I tried out both methods you guys brought up and they worked great. I don't know if one is better or not though. Much to learn and much to try. I plan on trying that skin tone white balance tool. But, I will be leaving for military training tomorrow and will be gone for a few weeks so I probably won't be able to continue this until I get back. The only thing is that the histogram and wave form seem to be all over the place.. Still looking into it, probably have a setting wrong somewhere.

#86
Here is a screenshot from me working with cdng in Speedgrade and After Effects. I purposely included the blown out window so you can see what it does. The first two images are me attempting to correct them to the proper white balance. The first one is in Speedgrade, I did not spend too much time on them because the result I was talking about, with the blown out highlights changing color, became noticeable. I used a combination of all the sliders and I tried to match the waveform and histogram but, they were not represent it properly in Speedgrade. You can see the red channel is rather sporadic. The second one is in After Effects which took me only one click. The last two where were I pushed the WB way over to the cool side so you can see it. I did not use any other tools in Speedgrade other than the temperature and tint sliders, this also changed the blown out highlights. I know some of you have confirmed this in previous posts in this thread but, here is a visual representation of it. If anyone has any other ideas, I am all ears. But, it seems like Speedgrade may not be one of the best choices for a workflow with cdng or at least at this time until there is more support. I have included the cdng file if you want to play around with it and post your results. Thanks!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r6vqv5g8m6frt85/kw86ztf4Uq/WB%20Test/M30-172300005.dng

Please keep in mind that I am not a professional colorist. So be nice!  ;)

#87
Thanks for the info! I have seen some rumors regarding that in Speedgrade. Keeping my eyes out!
#88
Not to my knowledge. Or at least changing it like it does in ACR. I am not a huge tech guy so forgive my lack of proper terms.. But, using tools in Premiere Pro such as fast color corrector or even 3rd party like Magic Bullet looks seems to change WB as if you were to change WB with a .jpg and not like a .cr2, it does not give the best results compared to using ACR with a raw image. I have been playing with Speedgrade quite a bit and going through lessons through Lynda.com and very happy with the workflow and really want to step up my video editing with ML because I really want to start offering high quality videos with the wedding photography I do. Using Adobe products all together just work out so well and easy to use. What I have been doing lately which is not fast is pulling the dng sequences into AE and exporting in uncompressed prores and then working with them in Premiere which gives great results, just incredibly slow. I could use Resolve but, I don't want to jump back and forth and relearn another product. I am looking for speed. I am still playing with the test results in Speedgrade in hopes that others will see the benefit as raw2cdng becomes more fine-tuned and for those who have Adobe CC.
#89
Thanks for you fast replies. I will try these options out as soon as I can and post my findings.
#90
With Chmee's CDNG tool, you can work with the raw files natively with audio synced in Premiere Pro which is awesome! (Thanks Chmee!) I really enjoy the ACR tool for color grading/correcting, especially how easy it is to change WB. But, jumping back and forth from After Effects and Premiere Pro is not the most streamlined and using Speedgrade is far easier as a workflow. And, Speedgrade is specifically designed for color grading/correcting. I know there is an option to use Resolve but, I would rather keep everything simple with Dynamic Link that Adobe offers. The only thing I have trouble with is correcting or changing the WB in Speedgrade. There is a Temperature slider but it seems to add a filter to adjust colors instead of changing the actual WB like ACR. For example, if you have something blown out and change the temperature slider to be warmer, the blown out part will become warmer in color instead of staying white such as in ACR. Also, colors don't seem to change correctly as they do in ACR. I have searched many sources such as Youtube, Google, Adobe.com, many forums to include this one for a different options similar to ACR these past few weeks and have come up empty handed. Does anyone know of an option to change WB in Speedgrade so it is similar to ACR? Thank you in advance!
#91
Updated, works great! Thank you!
#92
I have gotten this error too.
#93
This should be a sticky note. More people need to know about this batch converter.
#94
There seems to have been quite a bit of changes with mlv2dng and mlv_dump. That programmer may not have included some of the latest updates. But, I don't know for sure. I would check out raw2cdng or the MLV to DNG Batch Conversion 1.9, lots of good stuff in that one and it seems like he will add cdng sometime soon.
#95
I have read that some people with the 126GB 1050x have been having some speed issues or some speed consistency issues. I personally have the 64GB 1000x and typically do not have any issues after the card is warm. I would run some test in camera regarding speed. You need a write speed about 83-89mb/s to record 1080p 24fps. You may need to the 64GB version... Or, record slightly smaller than 1080p or have a wider aspect ratio and then upscale it. In all reality, after I compress and upload to the web, you can hardly tell the difference if at all. Hope that helps.
#96
Modules Development / Re: Text input for MLV
March 11, 2014, 02:41:28 AM
Been getting that too.
#97
I was checking out the latest again for converting and was wondering if the vertical banding from raw2dng was implemented yet? I downloaded the latest mlv2dng from the first post of this thread again and it seems it is still there. Is this where it would be posted? I am not a programmer but, still willing to help in any ways I can.
#98
I don't know how many people would use the start and end points for converting, but it would be nice. You have a great point about production work and wanting to keep everything but, documentary style work usually had a lot of unnecessary footage waiting for things to happen. I was working on a side project and only used about 15% of the footage which just took longer than I hoped for converting and then, Re-scrubbing through the footage once converted to prores. It was just a idea, that's all. Thanks for all your work!
#99
This is probably a mlv_dump thing but, wanted to throw it out there anyways. Would it be possible to set start and stop points on the clips and only export that section? Sometimes, there is a lot of extra footage that doesn't need to be converted, would help cut down on converting times.
#100
Share Your Videos / 5D3 ML RAW - Extreme Low Light Test
February 19, 2014, 10:11:17 AM


I really wanted to push the limits of this camera and got some pretty awesome results.

For the nerds:
Camera: 5D3 Magic Lantern (latest build at time of video)
Lenses - 15mm f2.8 fisheye | 24-70mm f2.8 | 70-200mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.4 | 2x Teleconverter
Stuff: Glidecam HD-2000 | Monopod | Handheld | HDR-300 Ring Light | KomputerBay 64 GB 1000x (x2)
Workflow: .MLV > MLV Converter (lossy) > After Effects (Adobe Camera Raw) > H.264 (16 Mbps)

If my cards got full, I swapped them out on a USB 3.0 Ext HDD on my Windows Surface and got back in the game. At the end of the night, I sorted through the crap in MLV converter and let it export over night, when I got back in the morning, it was time to edit. Love the look, love the flexibility, love the doors it opens to creativity, but it is really difficult to work with in AE, It runs silky smooth in DaVinci Resolve but I love working with ACR... This process is not for the time sensitive. Many amazing leaps have been made with ML, but the post needs to be improved and sped up before it truly becomes practical. Downloading the footage  will look better.

I was able to handle 3200 ISO with great footage. Depending on what you are shooting, you may even get it to 12800 ISO with a good denoiser (I used ACR Noise Reduction). Tonal range was noticeably decreasing when reaching 6400 ISO. I did not use Dual ISO. I did not use ML Sound, I knew I wasn't going to be using sound in the final video (no, this is not the final video).