ac6000cw

The situation with review content being affected by commercial interests is nothing new in the slightest... Many years ago I was asked if I was interested in doing a product review for a now long-gone print magazine. I tried to be as fair as possible when I wrote it, but thought the product had some usability/compatibility issues that needing fixing. The version of the review printed in the magazine had some of my criticism watered-down, I assume partly because advertising revenue related to the product was important to the finances of the magazine. I only did a couple of reviews for the magazine in the end, mostly because the amount they paid for them wasn't much in relation the work involved in testing a product properly (and I wasn't interested in doing quicker, more superficial reviews).

A 'walking about in a forest' comparison from Robert May of the S5iix stabilisation modes at 14mm (very wide angle) using the 14-28mm f4-5.6 lens(which doesn't have OIS): Pretty impressive stabilisation performance with minimal warping artefacts.

A very good strategy for getting the best out of older 8-bit cameras - I think Kye does the same (with a GX85). At the end of the day, unless you tell them, anyone who watches the final movie won't know (or care for the most part) what was used to make it - they'll judge it primarily on the story it tells, be it fictional or documentary, and whether it it's enjoyable/interesting/absorbing. If an old camera does the job and is enjoyable to work with, why not use it? Inanimate tools like cameras, lights and filters can help or hinder the art, but they can't create it...that needs imagination.

Capturing in 4k or 1080? I still have and occasionally use a GX80. I recently had a serious clear-out of my most of my older cameras - G6, GX800, E-M1 ii, LX7, LX100 - but did hesitate over the LX7, to the point where I did some video test shots. In the end the amount of jaggies/aliasing and no 4k weighed more heavily than the small size and reasonably 'premium' feel, so it went...

Never done any VR stuff, but a few thoughts/ideas: You could try a using stereo mic with a 120 degree (instead of the more usual 90 degree) angle between the capsules. That will give you a wider, more diffuse soundfield. Some stereo mics that use mid plus side capsules internally have a switchable 90/120 option (and/or an option to output the raw mid and side signals instead of L and R, enabling you to choose the virtual capsule angle in post using a mid-side to stereo conversion plugin). Stereo field manipulation/enhancement plug-ins might also be useful to widen the soundfield and create a more spacious effect e.g. I've used iZotope Ozone Imager (free), Nugen Stereoizer (in full and cut-down 'elements' versions), various Melda Production plugins to do this and/or create pseudo-stereo from mono sources.

It's possible to synthesize all sorts of microphone types/polar patterns, including things like perfectly co-incident stereo pair mics (which are impossible to physically build), from a B-format Ambisonics stream/recording - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics#Virtual_microphones - and also produce a binaural stream - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics#Decoding I think that post-processing flexibility is the real strength of using a Soundfield microphone for ambient sound recording.

I agree (as someone who has done all my editing for years on either gaming or workstation-class laptops). Generally, decent laptops in both of those categories should have cooling good enough for long-term high CPU and GPU loads, but you do need to choose carefully - and expect them to be noisy when they are working hard! Also be careful when comparing desktop and laptop GPUs - they can have the same or very similar model numbers, but the laptop version might have different performance specs (and more aggressive thermal management) e.g. : (info from Wikipedia) The desktop version of the nVidia Quadro RTX 4000 (100-125 watts Thermal Design Power): ...versus the mobile version (60-80 watts TDP):

I think it's likely to be a real camera and lens (for the reasons you mention), but no idea which lens. TV news gathering was in a slow transition phase from 16mm film to ENG back then, so there would have been plenty of working 16mm film equipment around, used both for news and other TV production outside the studio environment.

I very much agree with that - the opposite of someone filling an answer with the latest buzzwords, fashion statements and acronyms to gloss over the fact that they don't really understand the subject. I've been interested in science and engineering from quite young (the first book I ever bought was about electricity and magnetism). Favourite subject at secondary school was physics, helped a lot by an enthusiastic teacher who really understood the subject and could explain the fundamentals behind it very well. When I went on to study physics and electronics at university, in marked contrast some of the lecturers were terrible at explaining things in a simple fashion. One lecturer in particular kept pushing his own textbook, which was just as impenetrable as his lectures, so some of us students just gave up and found a book that explained the basics of the subject much better, just to get us through the exam at the end of the year... (and it was a subject that in my subsequent electronic design engineering career I've become much more familiar with - so now I know it's mostly much less complicated than it seemed at the time). "Simplicity is the essence of good design" I've found to be very true. If things start getting too complicated and messy in a project, it's usually a sign that I didn't set off in the right direction at the 'blank sheet of paper' stage.

If it was a real working 16mm film camera, I don't think it would be an ENG (Electronic News Gathering) lens, as they are designed for professional portable video cameras (which in the late 1970s would have been triple vacuum tube image sensor cameras using a dichroic colour splitting prism, thus having a long flange-to-sensor optical path). But of course in the movie it's basically a prop, so doesn't have to be a working camera.

...and is that a Nagra IV open-reel tape recorder the sound op is using?

I did a similar 1080p to 4k comparison with 10-bit 50p HEVC files from my OM-1 very recently (as a check after I'd updated the FW to the latest 1.6 version). 1080p is nominally 40Mbps and 4k is 150Mbps. With the 1080p upscaled to 4k (using the FFMPEG zscale 'spline36' filter), at normal viewing distance on a 55" native 4k OLED TV I could tell them apart (as I know what to look for) but it's not easy. A normal viewer wouldn't notice. I've done the same comparisons in the past with files from my G9 with the same result. As a consequence of this, most often I record in 1080p 10-bit and save 75% of the storage space, unless there is a reason to want maximum resolution/quality e.g. it's an 'unrepeatable' major trip or event, to allow for re-framing or extraction of 4k stills. For the last one (which is handy for wildlife), I often record at 4k 24/25/30p 10-bit as that is sharper on the OM-1 than 4k 50/60p, but use 1/100 shutter speed to reduce motion blur while being reasonably usable as video footage as well.

AFAIK, the GPU in the 'Ice Lake' CPUs has hardware decoding for up to 10-bit 4:2:0 HEVC i.e. 'Main 10' profile, assuming you have a Retina MacBook Air - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Air_(Intel-based)#Retina_(2018–2020) Any higher HEVC profile e.g. 10-bit 4:2:2 has to use software decoding on those machines. Not surprised. I often upload stuff to YouTube as 4k 50p using HEVC at 15-30 Mbps (using 'constant quality factor' encoding). I used to use higher bitrates, but decided it wasn't worth the extra storage space/upload time. HEVC is generally a very efficient (quality versus bitrate) compression codec.

Definitely - it's why I like the way Olympus/OMDS IBIS operates on the OM-1 & E-M1 iii. When I use proDAD Mercalli for stabilisation in post I usually choose the 'Glide Cam' option, which gives a floatier feel with lower warping artefacts (and less cropping) than the default 'Universal Cam' setting.

Thanks for the info. Robert May also commented in his video that it didn't seem to improve long telephoto stabilisation. Not that surprised as OIS in the lens can be as or more effective than IBIS and/or EIS at long focal lengths, at least for pitch and yaw. Now that the enhanced EIS is out in the wild, doubtless Panasonic will be getting lots of feedback, so there may be performance improvements to it in the future. For the vlogging situation, it sounds like it needs to be made a bit more 'floaty'.