Working with your father as a young man is one of the highlights of any man's life. I'm so happy Zhiyun is showing you love! I have to give the Molus G300 a look now. Thank you as always for sharing!
Thank you for the kind words. Very impressed with the design, small size and color output. Affiliate ink in the description if you decide to buy and sends a little cash in my son's direction / dinner.
Very interesting. I appreciate the meticulous work you do "before" showing up to a job. Nothing worse than figuring it out on the fly. Time well spent. I bought that white tent.
Thank you for the great LUT suggestion. I got them close but always struggled to get the FX6s, FX9 and FX3 output to match. That LUT works and looks great. Thanks again.
Recently got this G300 ,with Godox 90cm travel series dome , as a small ,light weight interview key for interior shoots. With 1.4 primes ,I don't think Ive ever been over 20% or even near that. Never had any fan noise even long interviews . Found a Vanguard 46 case, that fits the foam it ships with perfectly , and the Vanguard S46 hard case will take the soft case inside too.
8:25 In my opinion, after Aputure dropped the price on the LS 600D (non-pro), it's the best bang for your buck as far a power goes. Basically the same price as the 300 and you get SO much more power. As we all know, we're always wanting more power, never less power when competing with the sun. Of course you said you were hoping to downsize the bulk in your van. I just wanted to say I'm very pleased with the bare bones 600D. I bought two of them and haven't needed more light on any shoot so far. All depends on what you're doing I guess. Great video!
Agreed the value and build quality is bonkers on the low-end 600D, but I think as he mentioned there's a limit to space when traveling with a smaller set up.
600D is a fantastic light. I've used it many times. But at that size and bigger I'll leave to the Gaffer. When the shoots get bigger I need to share the rentals with the other departments. For my one man band jobs and news the 600D is just too much to manage. From a rental perspective it's more profitable for me to have room in the van for additional cameras vs lights.
In my experience what you see on FCP are not the LUTs baked on the files, those are LUTs applied by the program bc it recognizes the metadata of the cameras and with that info can assign the conversion LUT that comes with the program and thinks is the right one. In the case of the FX3/30/A7s3, those cameras shoot on H265 wrapped in an MP4 which doesn't save metadata bc of the nature of the codec (It was never meant to be used for capturing/recording it was for viewing) so FCP, Premiere, Davinci, Avid don't have any information to read and then assign the adequate conversion LUT. I have the same issue while using my FX6 and A7S3 on Premiere and Davinci and the only solution is to apply the lut by yourself or on Davinci and let the program know the colour space where the camera is working and then it will be able to apply the conversion lut, but all this has to be done in a colour managed project.
Glad to see the gear review in this--I've bought so many things after watching your vlogs, you need to get paid for this! If you had affiliate links I'd absolutely be using those. I usually watch before a travel gig and sit with the B&H app open on my phone ;) Anyway, always a pleasure to watch these and get motivated.
Thanks! This is my first official affiliate review. Free product, and affiliate link, no other compensation. But really it was a good fit for my own projects so was anxious to test it out. Here is a affiliate link for the G300. If you buy one I think I get 10%, in which case you paid for lunch for my son and me. Zhiyun MOLUS G300 Light store.zhiyun-tech.com/products/molus-g300?ref=shqqghji
On the FX6 and presumably the FX9, under Project > Cine EI Setting, the Embed LUT File setting saves a copy of the selected monitor LUT onto your record media. On the media, the LUT file is in the Sony folder not the XDCAM one. As far as I know it can't be embedded to stand alone in each clip; you have to make sure the LUT or Sony folder is copied over as well.
You may need Sony’s catalyst browse app to bring in the LUT, it will be stored in the metadata. Not 100% if it can be sidecarred tho, like a red or arri
I've had issues color matching my FX6 and FX30 in S-cinetone. I used Auto White balance on both and the FX30 was horribly yellow. Seeing your custom white balance get as close as it did, that's going to be added to my new workflow. Just haven't had time to set up and test setups for different shooting situations. I'll be looking for that Lut to add to my arsenal. All said though, still love my Canons (C70 & R5C) for close color matching, menus, and external monitoring options. Thanks for all your work.
If you want to recapture the Arri looks you liked try out the phantom luts with slog3 running 5600k and 1.0 -1.3 over and it will look a lot less “videoy”
Texas sunlight seems to be really harsh. I've been able to expose my shot correctly with G300, but I had shadows in my background (I usually have them there). But I live at 53 degrees of altitude, Texas seems to be between 25 and 36 degrees ...
Hi David, High light levels and squinting is something I’ve come up against in the last year. Is this how it’s avoided by having lights higher on the stand? How do hollywood DOPs avoid this with so much light, esp in the 100ASA days? I think it’s great you’re doing reviews now as your audience trusts your opinion. I had the original Zhuyun Crane, it was great, especially after using the Nebular 4000lite or whatever it was called.
Majority of pro talent have nuked their retinas and can stand in the light and not squint . It's regular people who suffer. However. placing lights high and off to the side does help.
Wow David, great minds think alike. I just ordered a Zhiyun Molus X100 and a Zhiyun G60 yesterday. I may have a travel gig shooting in NYC in the next few months so trying to downsize for an interview package for flying. These new Zhiyun lights are so ridiculously small and light compared to my Aputure and Godox full size instruments. I always like to see what I can do with smaller, lighter gear. Let us know how the Zhiyun 300 holds up for you. I've owned two Zhiyun gimbals and they were ok but the build was not as good as my Ronin 2 Pro. Also, have you ever used the Expodisc for manual WB? I have been shooting some live stuff in a theater lately so trying to get a decent manual WB is almost impossible unless we take all of the cameras up to the stage. The Expodisc is brilliant for manual WB, you are getting a reading off of the incident light where talent will stand/sit, rather than reflected WB as we would get with a white card. I have not done tests yet to compare manual WB of cards versus Expodisc.
Are your theater lights all the same color? I tried the Expodisc in mixed lighting for photography and could never get good color. I have big windows, fluorescent and LED ambient sources to deal with.
Interesting, in mixed lighting the Expodisc will yield an mix of the ambient color vs clean reflection of the desired source. I can see this being useful shooting fast broll. Often I grab a quick AWB off a wall or ceiling when newsgathering.
@@disco4178 We have a revolving cast of LDs for the theater. When they listen and do what we ask, yes, all the same color temp for most of the show. There are some musical interludes where I tell them they can go nuts and do whatever kind of wild concert lighting they want with all of the Varilites and wild colors but for the bulk of the show, we request plain, white warm light on stage and on audience. So far, Expodisc seems to give me a good reading on the white light. It's coming from all LEDs. As far as the music stuff, the colors are all over the map anyway so I don't sweat that, it's a small portion of the shoot.
@@benmcnights1763 For video production and this recurring weekly live broadcast, all Sony. For my live streaming company, all Canon C200 x 2 and an XF605. Planning on picking up a third C200 soon as my production partner who owns the 605 will be moving back east so I will need a replacement third camera. Production clients seem uber focused on it has to be Sony, I'd say about 85% of the gigs, corporate, entertainment, commercial, on-line content. Live Streaming, live broadcast clients don't seem to care which cameras we shoot on. Interesting that two related yet distinct types of production are so different mindset about cameras.
I rant about this on my channel ;) Why would you shoot LOG in a studio? No one has explained why, except "I like the look I can get out of it." Out of the factory, Sony has maximized the color saturation to 8-bit by applying a GAMMA curve. If you can control the lighting you should be able to get the most accurate noise-free image you can with the native profile. When you shoot LOG you're either extending (modifying) the curve at the low or high end. That means you're extending into noisier data from the sensor. Of course, if you're going to bring up the shadows in post, a LOG profile will do the same thing in the camera. So you can save a step, develop in camera, so to speak. But theoretically (and I bet detailed tests would confirm) you're throwing out good color for bad. Have you done experiments to determine if it's better to "grade" the camera's natural profile to what you want, or do it with LOG+gradings (which is really color substitution using LUTs). Skin tones are a problem with LOG because again, it's throwing out colors to fit in dynamic range. When you try to adjust a shade of a color the next shade simply is not there. Sony put in LOG for very challenging lighting conditions one should try to avoid. It's a last ditch effort to bring up shadows and pull down highlights--color nuance be danged. Yes, I feel I live in an alternate universe where people WANT to shoot it all the time. What am I missing? About your iPhone comment. Outdoors bright light is perfect for small sensors in phones. They actually have an advantage! Inside, it is probably applying a LOG curve to the sensor data and then "grading" it appropriately. I believe the more you look at it, the more problems you'll see with the color (because it's favoring dynamic range over color fidelity). I believe if you try to grade the iPhone footage it will fall apart quickly.
Excellent points! As an owner op it's just easier to give them what they ask for vs what is technically better AND more efficient. If I were to choose one battle it would be to stop shooting interviews wider "so we can crop it post."
Hey Dave I love the channel. There aren't many BTS news shooter channels online, so I appreciate what you're doing. I shoot news out here in lovely Honolulu. What do you call the platform on top of the c-stand where the reporter can put their notes, phone, etc.? Looks really useful and a nice alternative to having the talent hold their notes in their hand. Thx
What an amazing place to have a FT job. I'm running this shelf on a small light stand. I've seen other photogs with small music stands, same concept. amzn.to/3XfLzvI
I got a Projector Stand off Amazon , for holding laptop /zoom remote shoots , where they need the eyeline at quite a precise height next to the lens . Pretty cheap as I remember and comes all in one ,with the tray , and even elastic bands to hold stuff.
Yeah, an iPhone does a lot of internal post processing to get a “good” image. It will target people’s faces and correct them. Most of the time it’s good, but sometimes it’s brightening people’s faces too much in certain scenarios and looks really off.
@@CrankyCameraman No problem. You can actually see the iphone struggle at @13:20 and @13:45 where the intense blue is right behind your son and creates a few glitches and a weird halo around his head if you pause it.
I find FCP’s build in LUTS are not accurate. I have Canon C300 MK II and use Canon’s own LUT, which are 100% what I shot at. Thanks for the content, happy if you don’t do reviews, your work and views are much more interesting.
The FX3 is a hair underexposed. You just can't rely on f-stops. I'd 100% have waveforms up to check between cameras. Still, nothing is here beyond what you can natively correct in most NLEs.
10% discount code store wide ZHIYUN10WSS
Zhiyun MOLUS G300 Light
store.zhiyun-tech.com/products/molus-g300?ref=shqqghji
Working with your father as a young man is one of the highlights of any man's life. I'm so happy Zhiyun is showing you love! I have to give the Molus G300 a look now. Thank you as always for sharing!
Thank you for the kind words. Very impressed with the design, small size and color output. Affiliate ink in the description if you decide to buy and sends a little cash in my son's direction / dinner.
Your son did a great job folding that reflector!
Yes. Better then every producer to date! haha.
I've seen that too ... real pro :D
I’ve been using the Molus 200 for 6 months and love it. I haven’t used my Nila a single time since. I like the Bowens mount with a soft box.
Very interesting. I appreciate the meticulous work you do "before" showing up to a job. Nothing worse than figuring it out on the fly. Time well spent. I bought that white tent.
Thanks. Love the walmart tent and price.
Thank you for the great LUT suggestion. I got them close but always struggled to get the FX6s, FX9 and FX3 output to match. That LUT works and looks great. Thanks again.
Recently got this G300 ,with Godox 90cm travel series dome , as a small ,light weight interview key for interior shoots. With 1.4 primes ,I don't think Ive ever been over 20% or even near that. Never had any fan noise even long interviews . Found a Vanguard 46 case, that fits the foam it ships with perfectly , and the Vanguard S46 hard case will take the soft case inside too.
Nice to see how close the colors are right off the bat between these cameras! I’m also digging the G300 - such a nice size!!
8:25 In my opinion, after Aputure dropped the price on the LS 600D (non-pro), it's the best bang for your buck as far a power goes. Basically the same price as the 300 and you get SO much more power. As we all know, we're always wanting more power, never less power when competing with the sun. Of course you said you were hoping to downsize the bulk in your van. I just wanted to say I'm very pleased with the bare bones 600D. I bought two of them and haven't needed more light on any shoot so far. All depends on what you're doing I guess. Great video!
Agreed the value and build quality is bonkers on the low-end 600D, but I think as he mentioned there's a limit to space when traveling with a smaller set up.
600D is a fantastic light. I've used it many times. But at that size and bigger I'll leave to the Gaffer. When the shoots get bigger I need to share the rentals with the other departments. For my one man band jobs and news the 600D is just too much to manage. From a rental perspective it's more profitable for me to have room in the van for additional cameras vs lights.
Think the Nanlite fc500bi is better value if we talk watts/dollar and it's bicolor.
In my experience what you see on FCP are not the LUTs baked on the files, those are LUTs applied by the program bc it recognizes the metadata of the cameras and with that info can assign the conversion LUT that comes with the program and thinks is the right one.
In the case of the FX3/30/A7s3, those cameras shoot on H265 wrapped in an MP4 which doesn't save metadata bc of the nature of the codec (It was never meant to be used for capturing/recording it was for viewing) so FCP, Premiere, Davinci, Avid don't have any information to read and then assign the adequate conversion LUT. I have the same issue while using my FX6 and A7S3 on Premiere and Davinci and the only solution is to apply the lut by yourself or on Davinci and let the program know the colour space where the camera is working and then it will be able to apply the conversion lut, but all this has to be done in a colour managed project.
This makes senes, appreciate you breaking it down for me. Thank you.
Boy those are about perfect. Great color matching.
I'm currently on the market for a new portable light and found this review helpful! Thanks mate.
Excellent, thank you.
Glad to see the gear review in this--I've bought so many things after watching your vlogs, you need to get paid for this! If you had affiliate links I'd absolutely be using those. I usually watch before a travel gig and sit with the B&H app open on my phone ;) Anyway, always a pleasure to watch these and get motivated.
Thanks! This is my first official affiliate review. Free product, and affiliate link, no other compensation. But really it was a good fit for my own projects so was anxious to test it out. Here is a affiliate link for the G300. If you buy one I think I get 10%, in which case you paid for lunch for my son and me. Zhiyun MOLUS G300 Light
store.zhiyun-tech.com/products/molus-g300?ref=shqqghji
Test out some of the Phantom LUTs with the ari color match with those camera. That would be a good test as well!
Looking at that parking lot setup, an awning on the roof of the van could make additional useful shade.
i have always avoided this zhiyun but honestly might my time
Some stuff that they make is literally garbage just youtubers triest to sell it to make a profit. There are SOME good ones.. thats not the majority
On the FX6 and presumably the FX9, under Project > Cine EI Setting, the Embed LUT File setting saves a copy of the selected monitor LUT onto your record media. On the media, the LUT file is in the Sony folder not the XDCAM one. As far as I know it can't be embedded to stand alone in each clip; you have to make sure the LUT or Sony folder is copied over as well.
You may need Sony’s catalyst browse app to bring in the LUT, it will be stored in the metadata. Not 100% if it can be sidecarred tho, like a red or arri
I've had issues color matching my FX6 and FX30 in S-cinetone. I used Auto White balance on both and the FX30 was horribly yellow. Seeing your custom white balance get as close as it did, that's going to be added to my new workflow. Just haven't had time to set up and test setups for different shooting situations. I'll be looking for that Lut to add to my arsenal. All said though, still love my Canons (C70 & R5C) for close color matching, menus, and external monitoring options. Thanks for all your work.
2_SGamut3CineSLog3_To_LC-709TypeA go here to download pro.sony/en_TN/technology/professional-video-lut-look-up-table
I think the FX3 looks darker in the skin tones as well. It might be the lens doesn't transmit the same amount of light.
If you want to recapture the Arri looks you liked try out the phantom luts with slog3 running 5600k and 1.0 -1.3 over and it will look a lot less “videoy”
Great video, what is the Sony LUT?
2_SGamut3CineSLog3_To_LC-709TypeA go here to download pro.sony/en_TN/technology/professional-video-lut-look-up-table
Wondering would it have worked in sun with Fresnel spot mode and diffusion flag. Probably too much setup for the road though
Not here in south Texas, sun is much too bright. Dusk / dawn, winter time I switch to Astras vs setting up another stand and diffusion (for news).
Texas sunlight seems to be really harsh. I've been able to expose my shot correctly with G300, but I had shadows in my background (I usually have them there).
But I live at 53 degrees of altitude, Texas seems to be between 25 and 36 degrees ...
Were you using the Molus at 100% or 100% MAX? if you hold both of the buttons on the controller it will boost to 500 Watts
Covered both modes
Hi David, High light levels and squinting is something I’ve come up against in the last year. Is this how it’s avoided by having lights higher on the stand? How do hollywood DOPs avoid this with so much light, esp in the 100ASA days? I think it’s great you’re doing reviews now as your audience trusts your opinion. I had the original Zhuyun Crane, it was great, especially after using the Nebular 4000lite or whatever it was called.
Majority of pro talent have nuked their retinas and can stand in the light and not squint . It's regular people who suffer. However. placing lights high and off to the side does help.
@@CrankyCameraman I see, maybe that’s why they all seem to be wearing glasses at awards shows 😆
What do you set your zebras at for skin?
Wow David, great minds think alike. I just ordered a Zhiyun Molus X100 and a Zhiyun G60 yesterday. I may have a travel gig shooting in NYC in the next few months so trying to downsize for an interview package for flying. These new Zhiyun lights are so ridiculously small and light compared to my Aputure and Godox full size instruments. I always like to see what I can do with smaller, lighter gear. Let us know how the Zhiyun 300 holds up for you. I've owned two Zhiyun gimbals and they were ok but the build was not as good as my Ronin 2 Pro.
Also, have you ever used the Expodisc for manual WB? I have been shooting some live stuff in a theater lately so trying to get a decent manual WB is almost impossible unless we take all of the cameras up to the stage. The Expodisc is brilliant for manual WB, you are getting a reading off of the incident light where talent will stand/sit, rather than reflected WB as we would get with a white card. I have not done tests yet to compare manual WB of cards versus Expodisc.
Are your theater lights all the same color? I tried the Expodisc in mixed lighting for photography and could never get good color. I have big windows, fluorescent and LED ambient sources to deal with.
Interesting, in mixed lighting the Expodisc will yield an mix of the ambient color vs clean reflection of the desired source. I can see this being useful shooting fast broll. Often I grab a quick AWB off a wall or ceiling when newsgathering.
@@disco4178 We have a revolving cast of LDs for the theater. When they listen and do what we ask, yes, all the same color temp for most of the show. There are some musical interludes where I tell them they can go nuts and do whatever kind of wild concert lighting they want with all of the Varilites and wild colors but for the bulk of the show, we request plain, white warm light on stage and on audience. So far, Expodisc seems to give me a good reading on the white light. It's coming from all LEDs. As far as the music stuff, the colors are all over the map anyway so I don't sweat that, it's a small portion of the shoot.
Hi Dan, are you shooting all Fx9/6/3 these days? Is the C200 retired?
@@benmcnights1763 For video production and this recurring weekly live broadcast, all Sony. For my live streaming company, all Canon C200 x 2 and an XF605. Planning on picking up a third C200 soon as my production partner who owns the 605 will be moving back east so I will need a replacement third camera.
Production clients seem uber focused on it has to be Sony, I'd say about 85% of the gigs, corporate, entertainment, commercial, on-line content. Live Streaming, live broadcast clients don't seem to care which cameras we shoot on. Interesting that two related yet distinct types of production are so different mindset about cameras.
I rant about this on my channel ;) Why would you shoot LOG in a studio? No one has explained why, except "I like the look I can get out of it." Out of the factory, Sony has maximized the color saturation to 8-bit by applying a GAMMA curve. If you can control the lighting you should be able to get the most accurate noise-free image you can with the native profile. When you shoot LOG you're either extending (modifying) the curve at the low or high end. That means you're extending into noisier data from the sensor.
Of course, if you're going to bring up the shadows in post, a LOG profile will do the same thing in the camera. So you can save a step, develop in camera, so to speak. But theoretically (and I bet detailed tests would confirm) you're throwing out good color for bad. Have you done experiments to determine if it's better to "grade" the camera's natural profile to what you want, or do it with LOG+gradings (which is really color substitution using LUTs).
Skin tones are a problem with LOG because again, it's throwing out colors to fit in dynamic range. When you try to adjust a shade of a color the next shade simply is not there. Sony put in LOG for very challenging lighting conditions one should try to avoid. It's a last ditch effort to bring up shadows and pull down highlights--color nuance be danged. Yes, I feel I live in an alternate universe where people WANT to shoot it all the time. What am I missing?
About your iPhone comment. Outdoors bright light is perfect for small sensors in phones. They actually have an advantage! Inside, it is probably applying a LOG curve to the sensor data and then "grading" it appropriately. I believe the more you look at it, the more problems you'll see with the color (because it's favoring dynamic range over color fidelity). I believe if you try to grade the iPhone footage it will fall apart quickly.
Excellent points! As an owner op it's just easier to give them what they ask for vs what is technically better AND more efficient. If I were to choose one battle it would be to stop shooting interviews wider "so we can crop it post."
Hey Dave I love the channel. There aren't many BTS news shooter channels online, so I appreciate what you're doing. I shoot news out here in lovely Honolulu. What do you call the platform on top of the c-stand where the reporter can put their notes, phone, etc.? Looks really useful and a nice alternative to having the talent hold their notes in their hand. Thx
What an amazing place to have a FT job. I'm running this shelf on a small light stand. I've seen other photogs with small music stands, same concept. amzn.to/3XfLzvI
@@CrankyCameraman It definitely is better than a stick in the eye ;-). Thanks for the stand info!
I got a Projector Stand off Amazon , for holding laptop /zoom remote shoots , where they need the eyeline at quite a precise height next to the lens . Pretty cheap as I remember and comes all in one ,with the tray , and even elastic bands to hold stuff.
Yeah, an iPhone does a lot of internal post processing to get a “good” image. It will target people’s faces and correct them. Most of the time it’s good, but sometimes it’s brightening people’s faces too much in certain scenarios and looks really off.
Thanks for confirming, I had no idea.
@@CrankyCameraman No problem. You can actually see the iphone struggle at @13:20 and @13:45 where the intense blue is right behind your son and creates a few glitches and a weird halo around his head if you pause it.
I find FCP’s build in LUTS are not accurate. I have Canon C300 MK II and use Canon’s own LUT, which are 100% what I shot at. Thanks for the content, happy if you don’t do reviews, your work and views are much more interesting.
The FX3 is a hair underexposed. You just can't rely on f-stops. I'd 100% have waveforms up to check between cameras. Still, nothing is here beyond what you can natively correct in most NLEs.
Your audio is noisy
No shoes no working
Agreed!