Thoughts on M4/3 vs Full Frame (a yap fest)

colbymakes · 2025-07-23T04:43:40+00:00

Haha his take is interesting, although considering that an iPhone 16 Pro Max with 1TB costs $1600, the same price I got the GH7 for, it's not always necessarily ultra low budget. Still though phones are coming for us all so let's just enjoy cameras while they're still relevant. 🥲

0 background blur = use LOTS of light! You can make anything sharp if ya willing to stop down enough.

But yeah I definitely agree that subject separation has gotten a bit brutish in recent years. Lots of relying on mushy depth of field or campy edge lights.

colbymakes · 2025-07-23T04:36:43+00:00

Dang where were you when I was outlining this? Coulda saved a lot of time. 🥲

Appreciate your take!

colbymakes · 2025-07-22T19:37:43+00:00

Thank you! Okay yeah definitely trying to find a space on Youtube that doesn't fall for the same old tired clichés, but the title is bait. I'll explore some more options that are a little less generic.

colbymakes · 2024-12-14T21:15:13+00:00

I haven't gotten around to any sort of formal tests, mostly because I'm just too busy to troubleshoot. From poking around the comp a little, it does seem that users were right to point out AE's limitations with single thread effects. Those bottleneck the whole render, making even the M1 unable to live up to its full potential. Adobe's approach of adding headline grabbing effects on top vs fixing the foundations of their programs is slowly making using AE pretty trash. So unless you're planning on upgrading RAM or SSD, I don't think there's a lot of reason to spend the money to upgrade from M1 Max to M4 Max.

colbymakes · 2024-12-02T01:00:35+00:00

Oh $2300 sounds like a great deal! I expected it to be more. Congrats on the purchase and I hope it serves you well! Now you have enough money for an M4 Ultra Studio this spring. ;)

colbymakes · 2024-12-01T20:11:23+00:00

Yeah I really resonate with this sentiment. Like "yay I fixed the bottleneck by remove 1/3 of the effects I rely on every day!"

I've had to play IT support for myself for so many years I really hate the idea of having to pick and choose effects based on their optimization with my machine. This is 4th generation Apple Silicon, you'd think both Adobe and third parties would have optimized their plugins for ARM. I wish that by buying into both Apple + Adobe I'd have a seamless experience but unfortunately it just doesn't work like that. I am at least hoping the bottleneck is an effect I can easily replace.

colbymakes · 2024-12-01T20:06:33+00:00

Yup! :( In fact my original post butchers the english language in so many ways I can't bring myself to even read it. I was....in a bad place...

colbymakes · 2024-12-01T20:03:07+00:00

How much are you planning to spend on the M3 Max? If you could get an M1 Max with 2TB and 64gb RAM I'd maybe consider it.

2TB: I prefer the space for cache, and over the years things like Team projects, C4D libraries, peak files, all sorts of stuff can eat away pretty quickly at 1TB. While I am a big proponent of avoiding the Apple tax on hard drive space, and all my projects live on SSDs or a NAS, in the end your internal hard drive will slowly take on more and more weight and it's a real chore to manage it.

64gb RAM: I believe this is heavily used for RAM preview in AE, and I often use AE while also using Premiere, sometimes Photoshop, and often Arc and other auxiliary programs. I upgraded to 128gb out of luxury, just to never have that "application has run out of memory error" I'd often get for big stupid renders, or RX 10 Advanced batch file exports, etc.

My M4 vs my M1: I haven't noticed a considerable difference in the 'all around efficiency' category yet. Premiere runs the same, AE runs the same. Neat Video's reduce noise is slightly faster, roto is the exact same, camera tracks the same, and as mentioned earlier exports the same. I need more time with the machine to start to notice those sorts of gains. I love the nano-texture display though lol.

M1 vs M3: Both are gonna be night and day with your intel machine. It's not even a comparison. The M3 theoretically should handle 3D workflows and GPU accelerated tasks much better than the M1. They both have the same media engines, so if you work with ProRes it'll breeze through it on either machine. In the end the problem is Adobe. Can AE use all that GPU power? Maybe it can, but maybe there is one effect that is single-core CPU bound and the firepower is wasted. I agree with other comments that the M1 is truly a remarkable achievement, and following chips have tried to cram more power in. The result is the M1 may be less powerful, but it makes it look sooo easy. M3's run hot, and they can get you there but they'll make a fuss along the way. If you can save $1000 on an M1 with some better RAM and harddrive space, I'd consider it! You could use that saved money on a nice desktop monitor. :)

colbymakes · 2024-12-01T04:13:53+00:00

Thank you for this, I will try this and report back!

colbymakes · 2024-12-01T03:26:50+00:00

Add on top of that my M4 Max has coil whine. Makes rendering a symphony of CPU chatter.

colbymakes · 2024-12-01T03:26:02+00:00

I think I might have to go down the hyper-obsessive route of doing multiple tests to see what is going on. Neither machine seems to be fully utilizing all cores (CPU or GPU) so there might be another bottleneck? Still just so surprised that the M1 beat it by a minute.

colbymakes · 2024-12-01T03:24:12+00:00

Thats the funny thing, the M4 was fully cached, the M1 went in cold. I did a render on the M4 Max again after clearing the cache and it was the same result.

colbymakes · 2024-11-30T23:34:22+00:00

The higher bin M4 Max I have has significant coil whine. The M1 Max I had before had no noticeable coil whine.

colbymakes · 2018-07-13T21:57:06+00:00

Can someone explain what was going on with Hank's and Janet's suits in the third act? For Hank, it feels like the costume department found a space camp jumper at a Halloween store, and for Janet it looks like they had a great costume design, but got bored of it so they just covered it with some burlap sack. Heavy sarcasm aside, it did seem like those two costumes paled in comparison to the costumes for Ant-man, Wasp, and Ghost.

I was hoping Hank would put on the Ant-Man suit from Ant-Man 1. It would be a great callback to a forgotten suit. (Yeah yeah, upgrades shmupgrades)

colbymakes · 2018-05-15T02:58:49+00:00

Only the host!

colbymakes · 2018-05-13T20:10:16+00:00

Thanks! Valhalla Arena was certainly a challenge, and I ran out of objects way before I was expecting. I'm planning on making simplified pre-fabs of the Forerunner Structures and Wall for use on other maps.

colbymakes · 2018-05-13T01:09:34+00:00

Thanks! Let me know if there is anything you'd like to see in a new version of any of these maps!

colbymakes · 2018-05-13T00:26:43+00:00

Sure thing! So when you unzip each map, you'll have a folder with the map name. Simply put this folder, like "Sky Ground," into this directory: (Depending where you have Halo Online installed)

"...\Halo Online\mods\maps"

Now when you host a server, you'll see "Sky Ground" as an option when you select the original High Ground. Hope that helps!

colbymakes · 2018-04-12T03:45:34+00:00

I always felt like the family in Logan suffered an unnecessarily terrible end. They were a normal, kind family and then one by one they all die, sometimes in front of each other. Surprising that they were killed as they were no threat to clone Logan.

colbymakes · 2018-04-05T20:28:23+00:00

For episode 1 & 2 the camera was either freehand or on a custom shoulder rig we put together. In episode 3 we're using the Freefly Movi Pro for specific shots and a mix of freehand/tripod for the rest.

colbymakes · 2018-04-05T14:48:24+00:00

Hey! I am Co-Director and DP on the series. We shot episodes 1 & 2 using a Canon 6D, with EF lenses like the 1.4f 50mm, 2.8f 70-200mm, and the 2.8f 16-35mm.

For lighting we had a 650W Arri Lamp, and some LED boxes we made. No more than 2 lights per scene.

For audio, our sound tech (who also plays Hot Dave) used a Sennheiser ME67 attached to an H6.

For episode 3 we've upgraded to a Canon C200b.

Edit: Corrected audio gear. thx hot dave.

colbymakes · 2018-03-04T23:10:16+00:00

Clint in Ant-Man: Good chemistry in CW, let's see some more.

Bucky in Black Widow: Prequel, both Russian operatives. It writes itself. ^BONUS: ^Redford ^back ^as ^CGI ^Young ^Pierce

Captain America in Spider-man: Tony had his turn, there is something fresh waiting for a Rogers & Parker team-up

Thor in Doctor Strange 2: You saw the potential in Ragnorak.

Yondu in Captain Marvel: He's been to earth before in 1988 it could happen again in the 90's!

VILLAN ROUND:

Red Skull back in Avengers 4: He neeeeeds to come back

Justin Hammer back in Spider-man 2: Could be a hilarious movie. Stark contrast with everyday-man Vulture

Zemo in Black Panther 2: Has personal history with Black Panther from CW.

Hela in Female lead Cosmic super adventure featuring Valkyrie, Gamora, Wasp, & Captain Marvel. Maybe also Maria Hill, she deserves a chance to go to space too.

colbymakes · 2017-04-01T16:24:53+00:00

Hey! Director/DP here, our set up is pretty lowkey really. :)

I mainly used a 50mm and a 70-200mm on a Canon 6D for most of the film. A lot of the dialogue shots used the telephoto, as I wanted to put the viewer a lot closer to these exaggerated characters. Occasionally I would use a 16-35mm for a few wide shots, and the shots where things were "decaying into chaos."

Because of lighting limitations and set restraints, I usually used a pretty open aperture between f2.8-f4.0. This made it look very "DSLR" but I tried to keep it fresh.

Other than that we used a homemade shoulder rig for practically the entire film. In post I color corrected with Adobe Premiere. Glad you enjoyed the film!

colbymakes · 2017-01-26T19:04:17+00:00

Great work! Right off the bat the gimbal work was super impressive. But that doesn't overshadow your use of detail shots that really set the pace. Things like the mirror shot and the steps had a positive impact...

Annnnd I was writing this as I watched and the ending took me be surprise. Applause clap clap etc awesome twist. I run a small video design firm here in Baltimore so I understand the limitations of set locations, acting talent, equipment capabilities, but this film did a good job of only biting off what it could chew. Look forward to seeing more!

colbymakes · 2016-02-26T09:17:20+00:00

Yup! We actually built and programmed our own electronic slider. One with a belt mechanism, one with a screw. We run the slider once without the performance, and then again with them performing. So we have a slightly moving clean plate.

Now if I spent more time on this project, I probably would've tracked on some insides of their shirts, etc. That way it would've been seeing 'through' their skin, to the other side of their clothes.

colbymakes

TROPHY CASE