Do you think iPhone footage looks that bad?
I'm sorry, my comments were a bit harsh. I think it could be fine for many things, especially if the whole piece is shot on phones. My problem was that it looked bad next to footage from a digital cinema camera with larger sensor, as though it came from a completely different world. The lack of depth of field is the thing that stands out the most, but that cannot be avoided with a tiny sensor. Apple's solution for this on the newer phones is "portrait mode" which uses their AI and lidar scanner to isolate objects in the foreground and apply a blur to the background. That is very impressive, but kind of funny since it involves a lot of computation and special hardware to do something that just happens naturally with a larger sensor.
But this feature doesn't work in video mode, only for stills. I read a rumor that the iPhone 13 (or maybe 14???) would allow video to be shot with this kind of processing. If they can pull that off, it has the potential to eliminate what is arguably the biggest problem with small sensors.
Where does your Sony XDCAM-EX fall on the quality scale as far as digital recorders?
It falls in the "old" zone, as I mentioned, I got it in 2008. 🤣 There are newer, fancier cameras in the XDCAM series, but I can't afford those.
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Nevertheless, I still really like the image quality and am happy to work in 1080p. DSLR's are nice too and they have even larger sensors. But they are primarily designed for still photography and don't have the same ergonomics as a video camera. And photo lenses aren't like video lenses that are designed for precise control of zoom speed, etc.
What exactly do you shoot, and can you talk more about how you feel the iPhone footage failed?
I used to shoot a lot of live performances, also video that was projected on large screens in conjunction with
my job, and other fun personal projects. But I have been retired since 2011 and now just do the fun stuff. So I can't justify buying expensive new cameras just for that kind of thing.
This recent shoot was with with my incredibly talented family - daughter is a singer, son in law is an actor/musician and granddaughter has been in a professional ballet training program since she was 9. We do these little "family concerts" which I usually just shoot with the XDCAM, but I decided to use the 12 Pro Max and old 6s Plus as additional cameras. The 6s Plus did just fine as a locked-down shot with a wide angle lens adapter from Moment and Filmic Pro.
I was trying out a motorized mount called a "Pivo Pod" with the 12 Pro Max part of the time. It actually did a pretty decent job of automatically tracking people, but the video just looked bad, very flat and two-dimensional, also very much over-sharpened or contrast-enhanced. Unfortunately, the Pivo app doesn't give you any control over this kind of setting. But I also used Filmic Pro part of the time with the 12 Pro Max and again, there was just a quality to it that I disliked. I need to study this further in the future however, it can probably be improved.
What do I do if I am stuck using a laptop for all video-editing? Traveling around there is no practical way I could use an external monitor.
On the road, you do what you have to do. Presumably you get back home at some point where you can plug into a bigger/better screen. No matter how good your laptop screen is, it will get very crowded with everything in Final Cut Pro!
