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Go figure, I still have a 4K BenQ TK800 gathering dust 'cause, for what I actually need most of the time, our two little 1080p GV50s do the job perfectly well ; ) And then there are our 1080p XGIMI MoGo 2 Pros too. We actually bought several of them for our facilities instead of going for the newer MoGo 3 Pro or even the MoGo 4 (the latter even comes in a Laser version), although both were already available by the time we acquired ours. And yet, I religiously keep my good old 22-year-old XGA (1024x768) BenQ PB6200 in my office! LOL : ) BTW, 768p has pretty much become our new norm for the MiniMax H3 work we've been doing locally on our Olares system, even though 2K is available in the cloud. And there are some pretty good ways of bridging that gap in post anyway: Topaz Video with Starlight Precise 2.5 when maximum quality matters, SeedVR2 through ComfyUI when we want to keep the whole workflow local, or simply Resolve Studio 21's Super Scale when we want to stay inside the NLE. Different tools, different trade-offs, same principle. For me, in the end, what matters with every new tech development is simply what we can actually do with it. Horses for courses. Nothing more. No need to be fanboys of any particular brand, format, sensor size, resolution... or even of any poster here! : D Brand-agnostic, format-agnostic, tech-agnostic ; ) Use whatever gives you something useful, for the sake of the art and whatever the state of the art happens to be. (E. :- )

I question the need for 8K for any use. I understand some people shoot in uncontrolled ways and would rather reframe in post than compose their shot during capture. I understand people like Fincher prefers working this way. I understand that it is great to have extra resolution for VFX. But how many users of these types of cameras need these features? We're not discussing sweeping Hollywood sci-fi epics. That said, I believe the next huge indie film, shot from some kid in the middle of nowhere, will probably use one of these cameras. So if having 8K slates helps the vision come to life... that's really great. For me, I'd rather have the extra DR and I'd love that Osmo Raw that @eatstoomuchjam referenced. Hell, I may be able to afford that now. Hmm.

I may be up for an 8bit challenge! Can I use the 8bit cDNG from the FP? 🤪

I agree, my time spent on that site has fallen by 90% at the very least since the re-design. Their bounce rate must have skyrocketed.

Thanks, I'm looking for a more human approach though.

Happy August, Creatives! I've created a couple of brand new looping music tracks to share with you...free to use, as always, with attribution, just like my thousands of other music tracks and sounds. They are: "THE CYBER SUBWAY TO EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE" "NEON GRUNGE" You can freely download them here: https://soundimage.org/sci-fi-14/ Please don't forget to check out my Game Music Mega Pack which enables you to download all of my video game music at once...a big time-saver. Over 1400 tracks (looping & non-looping) and growing. Here's the link: https://soundimage.org/ogg-game-music-mega-pack/ You can also check out my smaller genre packs here: https://soundimage.org/ogg-music-packs-2/ Thanks, as always, for your support...I sincerely hope my music and sounds are helpful in your projects! 🙂

This is turning into quite an interesting rabbit hole, good call starting this thread : ) Well, at least we have one thing in common this time ; ) the GX85 is in my arsenal too! ... That also makes the format issue particularly relevant. Since the GX85 records video in 16:9 rather than genuine 4:3 open gate, a 1.55x adapter would produce a rather extreme 2.75:1 image. The more practical 2.07:1 combination would require an open-gate body such as the GH7. A potentially more practical option might also be one of the smartphone anamorphics with a standard 37mm rear mount, such as the Beastgrip 1.33x or 1.55x MK2. These could be attached to lenses such as the Panasonic 14mm or TTArtisan 17mm with ordinary step rings, making mounting and alignment considerably simpler than with the 17mm-threaded Neewer.

Again? : ) Nobody said they are equally important. Not even close. That is not the position anyone here has argued at all, but a dismissive caricature of it, no less. And misleading. Period. What has emerged from several contributions here, including yours and mine on the importance of DR, is simply that their practical value depends on the shot, purpose and workflow. Extra DR matters in both controlled and uncontrolled high-contrast scenes, perhaps even more so in the latter. Fair enough. In other cases, reach, reframing, stabilisation, VFX or high-resolution frame grabs may matter too. Budget hybrid cameras, you said? ; ) Correct. Those are real-world uses as well. So saying that none of this relates to anything anyone here actually does is rather sweeping, given that more than one person here had already pointed to practical uses for higher-resolution capture while also acknowledging its limits. Nor is this only about one camera. More will come, including the Pocket 4 Pro with those extra stops, and naturally we will discuss where such advances matter and where their limits begin. This is a camera forum : ) It is the right place for disagreement about cameras, specs, footage and real-world use. Not for theatrics, personal point-scoring, showing off or ego contests. None of us needs to perform as the final authority here, as so often happens on internet forums. “More useful for one workflow” is not the same as “practically irrelevant to everyone else”. Either way, life goes on, and so does this thread. Your contribution has been useful, as have those of others. We do not need to agree. You are one of my fav contributors here, and clearly one of many people’s favourites too. That gives your words more weight, but also more responsibility. Being a valuable contributor does not give any of us the right to be unpleasant to others. And that last reply was unpleasant. And unbalanced. Prima donna behaviour is no more attractive on a forum than on a professional set. In my work, I simply cross prima donnas off the list. I have neither the time nor the patience for them. That is worth remembering for all of us. You, me, everyone. And there is no drama here. This is only a disagreement about cameras. You were the one who announced you were “done”, as though an ordinary disagreement had become rather more serious than it really is. Perhaps you're simply in a bad mood today (it happens to all of us). But your interlocutor should not have to pick up the bill for that (and pay the price). Almost impossible to take a different position from yours without it turning personal (if not at first, you keep escalating until it does...), basically as if disagreeing on a point meant challenging your “authority” : X (phew) No hard feelings anyway, count on it :- )

Vintage anamorphic adapters are optically imperfect in very pleasing ways, but are large, expensive, difficult to find and setup, and can be slow to use (double focusing etc). Modern smartphone anamorphic adapters are optically imperfect too, but are small, cheap, easy to find and setup, and designed for AF cameras so should be incredibly fast and easy to use. Of course, the first question is about coverage, and this might surprise you, but modern smartphone sensors are approaching MFT sensor size. GX85 with 14mm F2.5 lens (no adapter) - I took a photo so this is open-gate MFT: GX85 with 14mm F2.5 lens and Neewer 1.55x anamorphic adapter in-front of the lens (de-squeezed): Full-sensor coverage and no vignetting visible. Can it cover S35? Who knows! Looking at this image it's much blurrier on the bottom than the top, but I was just holding the adapter in place so maybe I didn't have it exactly centred vertically, but it should give an idea of the image quality. It's obviously lens-dependent though, as this is the GX85 with the TTartisans 17mm F1.4 in 16:9 movie mode (no open gate)... Coverage.... isn't ideal! However, with the 2x digital zoom on the GX85 and de-squeezed you get this: This equates to about 44mm FF equivalent, and reminds me of some of the more funky vintage anamorphics. Perhaps the most impressive thing is the form factor. This is a 1.55x anamorphic setup probably more pocketable than a BMPCC4K, and that's literally got "pocket" in the name! Those just show the adapter leaning against the lens, as I am yet to work out how to mount it properly. The challenge is that this adapter has a 17mm rear thread which is smaller than any step-down ring I can find, so I'll probably have to go DIY to mount it. People have suggested I drill a hole in a metal lens cap, or get the smallest step-down ring I can find and glue a washer to it where the inner diameter of the washer matches the thread size. I'll have to experiment, but there are options. That whole rig weighs less than my Sirui 1.25x anamorphic adapter on its own.. 627g vs 744g!! It's early days for this idea, but the coverage surprised me and I think makes it a real option for shooting actual projects. The fact that the 14mm looks so clean and the 17mm so dirty means that buying one of these probably gives you as many looks as you have lenses, so potentially quite a few. I'm yet to play with how it looks at different apertures and focus distances, but they'll probably give some variety as well. The above were shot at F5.6 or so. If you stretch the 16:9 files from the GX85 you get 2.75:1 so super widescreen and you can crop the sides if you wanted to. On something like the GH7 with a 4:3 open-gate it would be almost exactly 2:1, a very useful format. It's not just MFT either. I've heard quite a number of instances where people want to go for an older look and will use a S35 cinema camera (like a RED) in a lower resolution mode and combine that with some vintage optics to get the look they want, or used the Alexa S16 mode and S16 lenses. Lots of cool stuff has been shot like that and when you have to de-squeeze in post then cropping a bit takes very little extra time on real projects. In a way these are perfect for low-budget anamorphic experimentation if you're interested in optics with some character and getting a range of looks from just one purchase.

Mike Vogel’s riding high with this new series : ) Good to see him doing so well — a true pioneer and one of the indie AI filmmakers producing some of the most interesting work across YouTube and related digital platforms today. It also proves that solid project development remains fundamental to filmmaking, whether old-school or cutting-edge: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pixverse_a-luxury-mars-resort-no-return-shuttle-activity-7469342407965241344-G5Of

This is a forum for people that shoot with budget hybrid cameras. None of the above points relate to what anyone here is actually doing with their work, or whoever they're showing it to. Completely contrary to that, Dynamic Range is something I struggle with in real-world shooting for a large percentage of the shots I take. The idea that they're somehow equally important is beyond imagination. I'm done. Feel free to continue the discussion about pocketable 8K gimbal cameras, 17K sensors, 150MP doorbells, 5000fps smartphones, or whatever theoretically true but practically irrelevant things you want.

I only ever pay attention to what is visible when I apply my entire image pipeline, so I didn't know offhand, but I just shot some test clips and viewing them straight out of camera I don't really see aliasing. I do see some artefacts in the 4x mode that are hard to describe, a bit of noise (and perhaps some processing artefacts on the noise?) but definitely not aliasing, even when I shot hard edges and rotated the camera slowly to try and reveal any aliasing. The 4x mode is soft, obviously because it's sampling a small area of the sensor and then upscaling it to 4K, so maybe that smooths over things perhaps. I could do a 8-bit challenge... maybe we should make it interesting and limit the entries to 720p or something just to add a spin. I'd be tempted to enter the Charmera. To say that it's 8-bit is perhaps the understatement of the year!

That is precisely the point about limits, already laid out rather extensively in my post on the previous page... although I may have to start charging royalties if we keep returning to it ; ) No way : ) This discussion is precisely about how measurable advantages translate, or sometimes fail to translate, into real-world use. Additional dynamic range matters when the contrast of an actual scene demands it. Additional resolution matters when a workflow requires cropping, reframing, stabilisation, VFX work, digital reach or high-resolution frame grabs. None of those are imaginary specification-sheet exercises. They are perfectly ordinary practical uses. You may not need any of them in your own work, which is perfectly fair. But that is quite different from saying that 8K offers no valid practical advantage over 4K at all. Reality is precisely where those limits are established ;- )

Just chiming in to say I was working with someone recently who was extremely happy with his Osmo 4p. Never having to balance a gimble ever again etc.. However, they said the one problem with this cameras is they're too light, which makes it more susceptible to up and down movements when walking. Their solution, which really made me laugh, was to mount it onto their regular camera, Blackmagic 6kPro, and use that as basically a paper weight. I'd stupidly assumed they were getting double angles of everything!

From what I've read, this is basically correct. It can apparently add about 3 stops of extra highlight retention. On most modern cameras, changing ISO doesn't change the sensor gain unless you move into the territory that is handled by the next "native" ISO. The only exception I know to this is Z Cam (which is why they suffer some WB shift when changing ISO). Otherwise, for raw codecs, you are adjusting the allocation of stops/highlights in the recording - and for non-raw codecs, you are changing how the camera post-processes the raw that it read at the base ISO. So in theory, the LOFIC should help with any ISO that is set by the user. It should also be understood that it only helps with highlights and does nothing whatsoever for shadows - meaning that ETTR is probably even more of a thing with any LOFIC system than it was with most Bayer sensor setups.

Minor nitpick: 8K will also be largely irrelevant in cinemas! At least near me, many of them still broadcast 2K on most of their screens, with maybe one or two set up for 4K projection. Only the most eagle-eyed audience members could even theoretically notice a difference in 4K and 8K projection at a viewing distance where they could see the entire screen at once - and outside of maybe a nature documentary, even among those viewers, it's hard to imagine them caring much. Not true. Aside from digital zoom without substantial quality loss, as you mentioned, a number of VFX use cases, especially those involving masking something out, are improved by having the highest-resolution source material available. That and in theory, you'll get better color information putting 6K or 8K on a 4K timeline, assuming the use of a Bayer sensor. Remember that it's necessary to guess at the values for 2 out of 3 colors for every pixel when debayering footage. From what I remember, and I might remember wrong, this means that the readout from Bayer sensors is effectively 4:2:2. Downsampling from 6K or 8K gives you something that is more effectively 4:4:4. As to whether that matters to you, maybe none of it does. In practice, modern debayering is very good and I'm not really sure that viewers are ever going to notice a difference in 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 once at 2K resolution or above. Correct. A 4.6K Arri is still preferred in many productions to an 8K camera from another vendor. The FX5 is going to sell a million bazillion units despite being released as a 5K camera in an era when all of the competitors are at 6K or higher (also assuming that some of the firmware weirdness and constant rebooting to change settings can be fixed). There are still cameras being released today using the same IMX410 that was in my Z Cam E2-F6 that I bought in 2018. The Ronin 4D was one of the best product ideas that DJI ever had (really, the Osmo Raw was, but the execution was too clunky). They were never going to compete with Arri in the space where people use Arri - so take a real pain point from a lot of productions (gimbals are irritating to use/balance and are often disconnected in operation from the attached camera) and fix that. Now you see the 4D showing up in all sorts of productions - because it's the best camera ever made and wins the spec sheet wars? No. But the quality is good and it's an elegant solution for some problems.

Everything you said above can be copied and pasted a decade from now when people are arguing if a 32K sensor is better than a 16K sensor. On the 32K sensor you can crop in more.. it's great for high-res frame grabs.. cropping in 9 times instead of 8 times! The problem with such discussions is they're unconnected from reality. What CAN you do with an 8K image that you CAN'T do with a 4K image? Both have enough resolution for cinema. Both have enough resolution to pull frames and print them on billboards. Both have enough resolution to win an Oscar... etc. All this is beginning to sound like people arguing they need a 150MP doorbell camera to be able to live with themselves.

Fair enough, and I think “it really comes down to your perspective” is already much closer to what I have been saying from the beginning : ) I would only question “completely irrelevant”, 'cause and when you immediately acknowledge the principal practical justification for an 8K sensor: Cropping twice into a 4K image ; ) That is precisely where the additional detail becomes visible in the comparisons posted above, particularly with the tele shots and whenever the image is cropped and magnified. 8K is also useful for extracting high-resolution frame grabs : P So yes, I concur that the Pocket’s additional latitude may be much more valuable in a wide, uncontrolled, high-contrast exterior scene. The Pocket 4 Pro remains high on my wish list, of course : ) But in a shot requiring additional reach, reframing or magnification or yet, genuine DSMC use ; ) the Luna’s resolution may be the advantage that actually matters too : ) Which brings us back to perspective, purpose and the particular shot, rather than to any single universal verdict on the two cameras. Let alone the POV Head Tracker, detachable screen, internal 32-bit float stereo audio (all game-changers) and the rest of the Luna’s modular shooting concept ; ) E. :- )

Interesting idea that the lens might be contributing to this impression, and I would tend to agree with you. In my testing I routinely found that if you change almost any variable then the aesthetic impressions of almost all the image characteristics are changed. This is one of the reasons I am so critical when people compare cameras side-by-side but don't match WB and/or don't use the same LUTs or colour pipeline, they're effectively saying "I've compared these cameras in identical conditions except for the colour which is different in every way and impacts your perception of basically every aspect of the image". My testing of YouTube suggests that for 4K uploads Prores HQ isn't much better than H264 at around 100Mbps, and maybe also 50Mbps, but it's likely to be pretty subject specific (like if you have lots of demanding shots like big fountains or rain or snow or waves moving across water etc - things with huge amounts of motion). I'd suggest experimenting, and hopefully that gives a place to start. Impacts of these sensors to the market value of videography is obviously a hugely complex topic, but in general terms if this reduces the barrier to entry then more people will come into the market and more supply without more demand means the price goes down. I'm not sure that the extra DR of these sensors really has that much impact on this though. I watched Peaky Blinders The Immortal Man on Netflix the other day and there's a wide shot taken from a long way away with a large fire on top of a hill and no other lighting in the rest of the scene, taken at the dim end of blue hour, and the fire is clipped to absolute hell, basically being just a solid yellow blob. Whatever cameras they used were fine for the rest of the film but clipped on this. The market for DR is there, but the better the tech gets the thinner the tail is. Still, if every camera had Alexa 35 level DR, that would be a nice bump in quality for all footage for sure. Temporal NR wouldn't be shown by that graph, true. I agree that the word "RAW" has less and less meaning every day of late as well! The relationship between ISO and DR is an interesting one too. I used to think that the DR during the day was higher than at night, especially if there was direct sun, but I've almost reversed my position on that since I've been shooting more at night in recent years. It might be that during the day people expect that the light and shadow sides can't both be seen at once whereas at night lighting from artificial lighting is more even, or it might be that the sun doesn't tend to be in the frame when at night the lights are almost always in the shot unless you're using quite a long lens and the background is controlled. If you think about S16 film footage the daytime footage doesn't normally look as harsh as the shots taken at night in cities where every light in the frame is absolutely blown to hell. I haven't read up about LOFIC sensors, but my impression was that they have an additional capacitor that catches the 'overflow' from the main read-out, which should increase the DR across all modes of the sensor. This assumption that it applies all the time and without any trade-offs may well not be true of course, but it sure seems to work nicely at base-ISO where they tested it!

You make excellent points, but it really comes down to your perspective. The detail from the 8K will be completely irrelevant, except in cinemas, where exactly zero people will ever watch this footage. The extra DR will absolutely be visible, even on smartphones, even with a film emulation applied, and especially because these cameras are designed for wide FOV shooting outdoors where there is a high probability of having huge DR (and even the sun) in the frame. We can look at images in controlled lighting, this is true. However under such conditions the vast majority of cameras from the last decade will look just fine. In fact, if the older cameras have the same bit-depth in their codecs but less DR then they might look BETTER than the modern cameras as the bits will be less stretched! So if we're going to compare modern cameras in very controlled conditions then the comparisons should include the vast hundreds of models released in the last decade or so, but if you do mention them then people go berserk because these older cameras fall short in other areas, and you can make a good argument that the controlled tests are nice but not entirely sufficient for evaluation. In which case, the stunning differences in DR between these cameras is now back in the consideration and the DJI is miles ahead of the Luna. To summarise that a bit, if you're taking everything into consideration then the DR really matters and if you're not then why aren't you comparing dozens of older cameras, and if you desperately want a tiny gimbal but only shoot in controlled conditions then isn't that a niche application so narrow that it really can't be justified to evaluate the cameras overall? In terms of me reminding people that lower DR 1080p cameras are fine for many practical tasks, this is true, but modern camera releases have basically nothing to do with practical tasks at all. There is no justification for 8K codecs. Period. The justification for 8K sensors that let you crop 2x for a 4K image is borderline but fine. Then there's 17K - seriously... Most camera discussions departed reality long ago and the discussions about this or that camera have the same rigour as discussing which super-hero can win against which other super-hero.

They only rely on IMATEST and it doesn't reveal everything. Especially these days that temporal NR algorithms are doing magic work. The RAW files of these devices are nothing like conventional RAW still images from a mirrorless camera, let alone their 10bit h.265 video. But even some still cameras turn on the NR on RAW from a certain ISO and above. This is S1II for example. The highest no-NR-applied ISO is ISO 5000

Found you another camera to play with.. Godox C100: accidentally the best new toy camera 😁

Maybe. It could also be how the lens renders people, that gives me the sense of artificiality. I do see a significant image (and sound) quality reduction when uploading my own video to youtube at the settings and video format recommended by youtube. I've been trying to figure out how to minimize this issue, and one way is to use the highest-quality format as an intermediate for uploading (QuickTime with Prores HQ). I've not gotten to test this enough to come to a conclusion. I think to evaluate noise reduction and other algorithmic processing done by the camera, one would need to look at subject detail also, and how faithful the details and color in the image are to the subject. This is affected by the lens in addition to digital image processing and compression, but when evaluating a fixed (non-removable) lens camera, it is fair since the user can do nothing to change the optics. Anyway, if this sensor and optics available for 1" sensors satisfy the video community then a lot of money can be saved by not having to invest in larger sensor cameras. It also means making videos of satisfactory quality (or quality that is perceived as very good by the public) will become much more accessible to the general public and thus worth less in the job market, as has become the case for still photography. However, I'm not really convinced just yet.

The one thing I have not tried is the e stab, but straight out of the box with zero set up other than a quick balance, on the RS4 mini with the optional tracking module, it worked superbly. Not even close to anything like overheating, but then so far, I have only really been shooting stills with it. Start up time must be fine as I have not noticed anything other than it takes a second or so for the zoom to find it’s last setting, either; 28, 50 or 75mm as I have it set. Battery life excellent. I just came back from a week long trip to Scotland and shot well over 1000 frames and battery still showing 2 bars.

I treat the LX as camera for HD delivery. From my experience, it's the best ratio between size, quality, ergonomy and used market prize for good quality HD. GM1 with a 14mm is thicker, more expensive and handheld video turns out jittery very easily due to its tiny body not being equipped with a stab. I have tested the video side with my slightly taller GM5 and it's not fun to use for video. The stabilized 12 to 32 zoom makes it thicker than I like to for considering it over a GX85. The LX15 has lens stab, which works in 4K as well for holding steady, panning and tilting. HD on it is just too brittle for my taste so I see it as a 4K4HD cam. My two cents. Nice talking to you again, kye.:) @kye