[Bill Davis]

[Scott Witthaus] “I don’t think this is an “either or” scenario rather the choice of the proper tool for the proper scenario.”

It’s not – as much as some others here would like to spin it that way.

The problem for the “you can’t get there with an iPhone crew” in this thread, is NOT that there is no DIFFERENCE between the DSLR shot and any iPhone shot…

It’s the AMOUNT of difference. And the relevance of the difference. (Which is what is actually being shaved smaller and smaller and smaller every month.)

I didn’t carefully cherry pick and curate my shots to post here for exactly that reason – they were just what was in my iPhoto library – warts and all.

And that’s the point, really. If my regular library is filling up with more very useful shots – even if they aren’t ideal – I have an increasingly better chance of having illustrative content that serves my purposes in ALL my discussions.

Folks here will definitely pixel peep – as we’ve clearly seen. But if I’d used ANY of those shots as illustrations adjacent to a content post about the relevant topics, they’d do their job. And that’s attracting the eyeballs needed to engage the reader – exactly like they engaged everyone here.

And that’s the overall game we’re ALL playing now.

Made you look. Made you read. Made you consider.

The only game left is engagement.

Everything else is going to be noise, moving forward.

My 2 cents, anyway.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Tony West] “I’m sure it doesn’t look cheap or sub-par, but most of the shots I see with the iPhone don’t have that shallow depth that many want.”

Careful here.

In portrait mode, the fake shallow depth of field that the dual lens iPhones can pull off can be pretty darn convincing.

Here’s a shot I took of Sam Mestman at the Creative Summit from 2016 right after the capability was introduced with the effect on and off.

And one of a series of depth effect portraits I took at ComiCon 6 months later.

How long before this hits video and it’s even harder to tell if it’s a lens or an algorithm?

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

Hi Cindy,

As Jeremy and Joe have indicated, usually updating isn’t an issue with X.

X has a number of auto backup systems that it runs while operating such that you seldom lose work in progress.

Its not impossible for things to get corrupt, but it’s pretty rare. So don’t lose hope.

If you want to setup a Skype session or something similar on a smartphone where one of us can see your screen and help diagnose things, just post a note. Either I or somebody else here might have time to try to help you out over the weekend. Good luck.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Scott Houston] “My situation involved captures from an ATEM TV Studio that saved h.264 files with AAC audio (no other choices).”

Back in the day, there was a LOT of audio anomalies in the early BlackMagic ATEM systems.

I remember HUGE processing delays with the default multi-track audio embeds – even if they were empty.

I just did a gig at NAB using a current ATEM system and none of those original issues were evident.

My advice is to make absolutely sure all your software and firmware updates are totally current.

The BlackMagic stuff is largely video over IP – and like all computers, if the code isn’t current, there can be all sorts of bugs lingering that have been addressed over time.

Good luck.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

Yep, I thought of a better example to express my argument, moments after I posted the original. It happens.

My overall point is still that Herb argued that the iPhone has a 30 cent “piece of crap” lens. And I showed a simple example of what the 20 cent version from a couple years ago was actually capable of.

I contend that the image I posted taken through that 20 cent lens did NOT represent a THOUSAND times less quality than what you can achieve with a $200 “nifty fifty” – let alone a piece of $2500 prime glass.

And sorry, but if you have to go to 200% on a 2493×3528 raster to point out major image anomalies, the game is kinda already over.

I understand all the reasons a serious lens can be a smart investment. But for how long? And in what form? We’ve seen video cameras move from HD to 2k to 4k and now to 8k over just a few years. And dedicated still cameras have pretty much followed the same path. Cooke and Canon and Angenieux are surely still safe for a while. But there’s a lot of industrial weight tipping towards technologies like Micro4/3s these days. We’ll see where that goes.

You should really keep your eye out for the Michael Cioni piece from Faster Together. He made a very powerful argument for where this stuff is going. Using history and math.

It’s worth looking for.

Be interesting to see whether his predictions will prove valid over the next few years.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “You’ve proved the point. Take the shot of your wife’s photo and zoom in 100%. The compression level that is being uses together with the in-camera sharpening make the image quality quite poor. Sure, at a distance it looks great, but it simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Of course, the camera you have with you is better than no camera at all, which is why this style of photography is so successful in the marketplace.”

Not sure the point. It’s a 30 cent lens according to Herb. Seems to me it’s a pretty damn good use of 30 cents!

Outside of a NCIS situation where somebody thinks they’re going to zoom and enhance to read a page on a book on the table for clues to a murderer – this level of detail is so far beyond anything I’ve been able to carry around in my pocket – as to be scary.

And this was (iirc) on an iPhone 6plus. I’d be nice if this was a 4K still directly from my iPhone X sensor! I’ve watched some of the iPhone spots where Apple used that same sensor as source material for national Ads running on 4K TVs and you know how much less effective those ads are compared to anything adjacent to them? ZERO.

There’s NOTHING functionally wrong with the images. They attract the same eyeballs at the same rate with the same perception of visual draw as ANYTHING else.

If your argument was something like back in the Hi-8 days that over generations – the utility of the images degrades too fast – I’d listen to that. But you can’t. The 1s and zeros never change.

The more you guys try to prove that the ONLY way to get eyeballs is to use the same processes we used in the 1980s – the more silly it seems.

I remember on sets in the 1980s the engineers doing the EXACT same “pixel peeping” you are doing in this thread – trying to argue that nothing less than 1″ type C was ever going to be “professional” enough to go out on TV.

And we all know how that turned out.

I’m all for capturing the best images we all can. But NOT at the expense of understanding that the images we can acquire in our daily lives now – without out ANY crew or gear considerations attendant to that capture – are where the visual language of the world is headed. And that while bespoke, crafted imagery will always be valuable and, heck, just FUN to create for those of us who love image-making – it’s NOT going to drive the same distinction between practitioners that it once did.

That’s just inevitable, in my view.

But feel free to keep on the path of service to the top 1% of content distribution systems. Maybe that will turn out to be the correct play.

Time will tell.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Herb Sevush] “You pay the money so that you don’t “occasionally” get great results, you pay for equipment that will always give you great results, under any conditions.”

“equipment” NEVER gets you great results.

The experience of the people behind the equipment does.

And what I’ve seen is that my experience is in danger of aging out.

I stopped using my Neumann and starting using a Rode because my Sony shotguns (that had been in service for 20 years) got too old and the internal wiring developed issues. I didn’t want to spend a fortune, so yes, I picked up a modestly priced Rode shotgun to replace it. I thought long and hard about a Sennheiser, or an Audio Technica, or any of the dozen pro mics I know would hold value better. But then I came to my senses.

I’ve been was tossing OUT totally pro-quality gear for 15 years now. $30,000 cameras. Tungsten light kits. Announcer mics that cost me a bundle in their day. It has ALL aged out of reasonable service.

And about that cheap Rode mic?
Surprise, surprise, used property it actually turned out to work BETTER than those classic mics. All the off axis rejection, none of the sunk cost, and self noise that was essentially unmeasurable due to modern components – just like what you find in iPhone’s recordings. A Sony that cost me $650 1985 dollars out-performed by an Australian knock off that cost me $100 bucks.

In Las Vegas to do the exact type of production I’ve been involved with for 30 years – we didn’t run nearly as much XLR or BNC cable. But we ran a TON of Cat 5.

Buying for 20 years of equipment longevity was something I could support in the 80s. Because I got 20 years of use out of it. But now I look around and see WAY too much gear sitting fallow and virtually useless today. I’m shedding old gear again in two weeks. And it’s a pain to see things I paid good money for ten years ago worth NOTHING today. But that’s the reality.

Anyone want to buy a digital phone hybrid useful for an on-line call in show? I’ve got one. And NOBODY needs it anymore. Skype has seen to that.

Even GRIP gear is starting to show it’s age. When a big LED array weighs 2 pounds and the hero monitor weighs 3, all those C-stands and the boxes of Mafer and Cardillini clamps are WAY too much for the jobs I need done today. I’ll keep one or two and sell a dozen off.

Some things won’t change. But the ratio of things that WILL to what won’t – keeps accelerating.

Keep up (kids of ALL ages) – it’s gonna get bumpy out there, IMO.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “Go back and read Bill’s posts.”

Better yet, read my latest post below where I bolster my contention that the camera section in a modern smart phone is rapidly gaining imaging parity with the best imaging devices of the not too distant past.

And I posted practical self shot images to defend that view.

Michael Cioni, in the video that will be out soon from the Faster Together stage at NAB, makes mathematically supported prognostications that the pace of camera sensor development is following some hard and fast scientific rules that may mean that many of the lines between classic analog and modern digital image acquisition (and storage!) are going to disappear sooner rather than later.

He sees resolution gains (and the practical use of the same) largely unconstrained by hard limits – if I’m interpreting his presentation correctly.

So don’t bet on the distance between the capabilities of a smartphone photo sensor and a “camera” photo sensor staying too far apart.

Particularly when the price commanded by a smart phone and a decent still or video camera keep creeping ever closer to parity.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Herb Sevush] “But would you be just as happy to use the iphones’s built in mic for recording? With video you are stuck with the built in, cheap, POS lens of the iphone, which is why there is no equivalence between recording audio and video on a smartphone.”

Yes and BS in that order, Herb.

The iPhone mic is capable of excellent, extremely low noise digital audio recordings. No, it can’t beat physics and it has to be used like any other microphone in an appropriate setup. But if it is, it can yield excellent results.

And the lens system on the iPhone works exactly the same way. If the light hitting the sensor is managed properly, the quality of the results you get back can be outstanding.

As evidence, here are three of my iPhone snaps taken in the past few years. A landscape with lots of subtle tones. A heavily backlit full length portrait of my wife on a vacation, and a classic head shot I grabbed of our son in a restaurant one day.

No, they are not large format shots with a grip truck worth of gear on a set with stingers draped everywhere. What they are, instead is evidence of a camera functioning at a level that perfectly let me capture what I judged as being photo worthy without a lot of hassle.

And that’s what a great camera is.

A device that yields quality results when used properly.

Period.

I suspect the iPhone will prove to be the Leica of this generation. Small and simple, accessible, and amazing. That it also has a working phone and a personal computer attached to it is mind boggling.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

Sure there will be customers for Cioni’s Panavision DXL rig.
And customers for Red rigs.
And customers for C-500s
And customers for BlackMagic’s new “cargo-pocket” camera.
And plenty of customers for iPhones as well.

My point is simply that that the performance delta between these tiers keeps getting squeezed.

When I was starting out, anyone, Pro and consumer alike could see at a glance the quality difference between VHS playback and 1” type C.

And I could dependably hear the quality difference between a cassette recording and a reel to reel.

I’m not sure if you took a still image capture from the DXL – and one from my iPhone – at the same physical size – that most people would see a discernible difference.

And I know for sure they couldn’t hear the difference between a VO audio recording done on a studio XLR balanced system or one direct into my phone.

Absolutely the DXL would fill a movie screen WAY better. But for every set of eyeballs that sees it that way, chances are 100 sets of eyes will now watch it on a screen that’s home TV size or smaller and mostly, smaller than a piece of notebook paper.

And the problem is for every minute of content put through the DXL production chain, there are hundreds of hours now that go around that system and go direct from a pocket sized sensor and out into the world – and they serve the needs of their audience every bit as well as the big rig approach.

I don’t dismiss the need for any of those production levels or approaches.including the DXL.

But I know what I’m willing to bet grows fastest and has the most impact on the industry moving forward.

We’ll see in time.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.