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Thank you. I'm glad people are liking it. It was a lot of work and took two years to make. Most of the time by myself, out in the city with a tripod and camera. I met a lot of people doing it since the camera looks unusual. (It's common in Vancouver to see someone filming as it's a big film production town and has six film schools but people out shooting usually have more modern squarish looking cameras.) The themes and aesthetic came out of the photography I had been doing for several years already. I had been framing buildings to make geometric shapes. This was basically adding motion to that series. The music was from a friend who had I got to know when he acted in a short I did a few years earlier. https://testcardmusic.bandcamp.com It hasn't had a festival screen it yet but it did get an award in Sevilla, Spain. https://www.instagram.com/seviff.spain/p/DUTcVcGDLq7/?img_index=16

Pretty cool. I found this article about the cameras used in each of the films at Cannes. It's pretty interesting. This film is shown. (Alphabetical under M. About two-thirds of the way down. ) https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/cannes-2026-cameras-lenses-arri-alexa-35/screenshot-231/ There's a picture of the director holding a camera. It's so rigged up that it's hard to see but looks like a Digital Bolex with the PL mount. It says they used two of them, a PL mount one and a C mount one. The second one not rigged up and hand held. Looks like they used a variety of lenses too. In the picture it looks like a vintage Angenieux zoom. There's mention of a TV lens and CCTV primes. Here's a quote. That's been my experience as well. I shot 16mm some decades ago on a 1970s Bolex and a 1930s Victor (that had been fished out of a dumpster behind an NFB office.) so I'm familiar with that and of course many different video cameras over the years. The Digital Bolex is closer to a 16mm camera than to a video camera in both how you operate and how the image looks.

Hi, I still rock an dji ronin s, so I am thinking about upgrading to a new one. For the panasonic S5II, or nikon zr, or Sony a7v a low weight hybrid. The dji ronin s isnt smooth enough for really slider like movements. I am not sure there huge improvements in gimbals besides ai tracking and speeding up set up time. Which is the most smooth stable gimbal in 2026? Thanks!

Wonderful! Great eye and great images. Definitely in the direction of Koyaanisqatsi etc, not only with the images themselves but the shifts in theme too. Everyone should do themselves a favour and watch it!

Great stuff! I also find that when using 'lesser' equipment my brain can more easily switch over from "will this make technically great images?" to concentrating on the compositions and creative aspects. I suspect that our subconscious knows that footage from the latest cameras gets very detailed technical scrutiny but once the tech is no longer the current model the technological fetishism moves on and it's only the creative people left. I also find a strange satisfaction from getting great results from older equipment, and I have no idea why, so I just go with it. Other potential advantages of older equipment: it's potentially cheap to replace, so you can be less precious with it, even risking things like taking it in the rain etc any scuffs or scratches or wear marks can improve it's appearance rather than detract from it (people say "look at that old camera and how worn and beat up it is, awesome!" and also "oh no, I scratched my nice new camera") older bodies are often smaller older equipment is more likely to be metal rather than plastic - I dropped my GF3 once and it just got a little dent with no other damage! the lower DR forces you to expose better in-camera rather than choosing the exposure (and therefore the subject) of a shot, forcing you to be more decisive when shooting etc etc. Plus... if you own them already.. they're free!

That GH2 footage looks great. Makes me want to take my GH1 out again. Any one of us would have been overjoyed to captured that footage ~15 years ago when that camera came out. And even now, it looks great. I don’t think I would have ever guessed that it was from an 8-bit mirrorless camera. I’ve been really enjoying shooting with outdated cameras and applying modern post to them, especially degrading them further to hide the imperfections. I don’t know that I’m achieving something that I couldn’t with more modern and convenient cameras, but I feel like it takes a lot of performance anxiety away and that may have an impact on the way I’m shooting. I think it’s nice to go in thinking, “this will probably look terrible” and then it just becomes about enjoyment, and less about the result. And then when you do manage to get a nice shot, it’s all the more rewarding. I’ve written a short that I’d like to produce later in the Summer or Fall. Since it takes place outside and mostly downtown, I’m kind of liking the idea of shooting it guerilla-style with a hacked EOS-M.

The trailer is gorgeous. Great job!

I use it both for my own films as well as I get hired to do music videos and events. I just finished a feature length experimental film shot entirely with it called Shapes, Colours, Patterns. (There's a trailer for it on my Tumblr. https://clarknikolai.tumblr.com ) I'm very happy with it, and of course the image from that camera is gorgeous. Something I've discovered with the Digital Bolex's footage, is that it looks the best projected rather than shown on an LCD screen. I'm now working on a new project. It's a narrative, collectively written, performed and crewed by myself and three other artists. It's set in the present day in east Vancouver where three artists are working on their art projects. The characters are based on the people involved and their real lives (but fictionalized so we have more freedom.) We're using French New Wave and Availablism methods. Quick half-day shoots. It's self funded, using what we have around us, the equipment we already own, locations we already have, etc. (I think so far all we've spent on it was some coffees.) I plan to enter it in to film festivals when it's done. Here's a picture with the camera mounted backwards on the shoulder rig. This is so the camera operator can walk forward while the talent is behind them and they don't need a spotter. It's tricky to learn how to move but it's going okay. It works fine with a wide lens but not easy when zoomed in (as you'd expect.) We have to flip the image in the monitor or it's disorienting.

Here's a pic from a shoot I did last December. I don't know the brand of the shoulder rig (as I got it used on Craigslist), the EVF is the (sadly discontinued) Kinotehnik LCDVFE. The camera attaches to the rig with a Niceyrig quick-release plate (that has feet). The lens is a vintage Angenieux 17-68mm zoom with a screw on wide angle adapter, on top is a Niceyrig top handle holding an Audio-Technica stereo mic and a monitor mount. A bit hard to see is an attachment that goes below the rails between the shoulder pad and the grips for two wireless mic receivers.

"A man of his time", a French film which was part of the official selection at Cannes and was very well received, was shot entirely on a digital Bolex. https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/a-man-of-his-time-review-a-superb-swann-arlaud-powers-emmanuel-marres-ambitious-overlong-vichy-france-drama/5217030.article

Old cameras have a number of challenges, including: - weak codecs, often 8-bit low bitrate files - terrible low-light - dated colour science and no log profile (rec709 profiles only) - poor DR - lack of IBIS or EIS - etc At the time these were pretty significant challenges. Now they aren't the challenges they used to be, because fast lenses and film emulation assist with all these limitations. Let's take these one at a time. Weak codecs Weak codecs, including 8-bit low-bitrate files can be soft, and can be overwhelmed by motion. By shooting with faster lenses you render more of the frame out-of-focus and therefore the limited bit-rate only has to focus on a smaller percentage of the frame. Thanks to cheap Chinese optics companies, we are now awash in F1.4, F1.2, and even F0.95 primes. The soft image is now no longer a liability, because compared to our modern 4K sensibilities, even 35mm film is noticeably soft by comparison. This means that by adding film emulation you'll be softening those edges and smoothing over any subtle compression artefacts. Film often has a more compressed colour palette, pushing hues closer together in many instances, lessening the visibility of artefacts. It doesn't work magic, but every bit helps. Terrible low light Cheap F1.4, F1.2 or even F0.95 primes sure make a big difference after the sun goes down. That "fast" F2.8 vintage lens you were shooting on back then is 3 stops slower than these things now. That can really bring a lot of situations back from being unusable to being at, or close to, native ISO. Dated colour science and no log profile Rec709 colour profiles are basically a creative filter the camera has applied, and they often weren't that good. Film emulation takes that image and applies an incredibly large transformation over it, which goes a long way to hiding any imperfections the colour profile might have had. It's like if you put on a pair of rose-tinted-glasses, you can still see that things have different colours, but any subtle differences aren't visible because the image has had a strong look put over the top. Also, film emulation plugins often come with controls for exposure and WB etc, which can help to grade the 709 footage, which was a major pain back before we had colour management pipelines. Poor Dynamic Range You know what else has pretty poor DR? Print film! Kodak 2383 has about 5-6 stops in the linear region, and then everything else in the image is squished into the highlight or shadow rolloffs. Yes, you can see into those rolloffs a bit, but if your camera has 8 stops then you've got at least a stop to put into each rolloff. People think film has huge DR, and it did at the time compared to consumer digital cameras, but it was the negative film that had the huge DR, not the print film. It's very common now for people to shoot on film, scan it, and then do everything else digitally, so they keep the full DR of the negative, rather than taking half of it and pushing it into the rolloffs. This is a still from Minority Report from 2002: It's not exactly a dynamic range demo - the streams of light INSIDE THE ROOM are blown out and every item of clothing the main character is wearing is crushed blacks. Lack of IBIS or EIS So there's a little shake in the files... well, film had this thing called Gate Weave, which was where each frame didn't perfectly align in the camera and so when played back there was movement of the whole image. Once we started doing digital intermediates people started stabilising the images digitally and that went away. When I went to the cinema and saw Goodfellas projected on celluloid they played a bunch of old ads and movie previews also on celluloid, and some were jumping around all over the place and some were rock solid (which means the projector the theatre was using wasn't the source of it) and much to my surprise, Goodfellas itself had quite a bit of it. By just using modern tools you can now stabilise things pretty easily, but this will create artefacts if you do it too strongly (especially if the camera had bad RS), but applying film emulation gives you much more leeway. This is because you can stabilise the image, then apply some Gate Weave, and once the viewer notices your images look like film they'll potentially just accept the shake in the image as being part of the film look. By adding Gate Weave and getting some grace from the viewer you can potentially increase the strength of the stabilisation you're applying too, with there being more wiggle room, and also because the softening of the image will mean that any distortions in the image will be slightly less visible. I was inspired to write this partly from my GX85 Super-16 camera project, but also partly by this video of the GH2 shooting at night. You can still see the ISO noise and macro-blocking creep in as blue hour ends, but he was also using the 9mm F1.7 and 35-100mm F2.8, the F1.7 is reasonably bright, but the F2.8 is pretty slow compared to things like the TTartisan 50mm F1.2 or the 7Artisans 35mm F1.2 primes that are $109 and $97 on B&H. These won't offer OIS, so your options for these on non-IBIS cameras are to spend more (Canon and Sony both offer 35mm and 50mm F1.8 primes with OIS) or to use a tripod or larger rig of some kind. Far from perfect, but much more useable than you'd think. These cameras have actually gotten better over time as the rest of the ecosystem is better able to support them. The only reason we don't think so is that our expectations have inflated faster than their potential.

I just learnt very early in my career, unless I did not do that, it left me open to all kinds of issues. I make it very plain before each and every client books that other than a handful of things that are more or less a given, I do not and will not shoot to shot lists as they both stifle creativity and are open to interpretation and potential recrimination. Nor will I edit or produce a result to any other specification than my portfolio would suggest. Despite it being in the contract, I will still get someone every now and again who will send me a detailed shot list of 50 other individuals work on 50 other days, that may or may not even be the same season never mind time of day, captured at 50 different venues...and then have to politely remind them I cannot do that...and they will STILL complain after the fact I have not done what they paid me to do. Well actually, I have done EXACTLY what you paid me to do, but fortunately these freaks are maybe 1/100 clients and all you can do ultimately is politely and professionally move them on. Having said that, if I feel I can accommodate or work something in, I will at least try, but we are never going to get close to that 50 'Must Have' list...and you still won't win, but at least you can occupy the moral high ground and state you bent over backwards even though you did not need to. It's just part of running a business and anyone who has been doing so for 25 years, will have experienced issues from time to time and as long as they are not the norm, then you are doing just fine. I can count on just 2 hands from 850+ jobs/clients over 25 years those who have had a hissy fit and hand on heart, can say with 100% conviction, it was them not me! But I do work in a very specific niche where I can operate in this manner and I am the type of person who is comfortable saying no with a smile.

100% Of course, completely irrational biases still exist. One of the major ones is that people seem to only want lenses so sharp they need to wear gloves to even pick them up, or lenses so distorted that it's like most peoples memories of Woodstock. There is a secret third option. These lenses have a subtle hint of the vintage vibe, but aren't completely out of control divas that need to be babied all the time. They're also cheap, freely available, have modern features like AF and OIS, and are fast and easy to use. To discover this secret, here's the thread where I talk about them, and reveal what they are and how to get them.

No worries! In terms of the lens, not a clue, but it really shouldn't matter.

In a sense it's much better than people give it credit for. In terms of bit depth, what matters is how close (or not) the bits are to each other in terms of what hues / luma they describe. We all know that 8-bit LOG is worse than 10-bit LOG. In general, the below are roughly equivalent: - 8-bit 709 == 10-bit LOG == 12-bit Linear - 10-bit 709 == 12-bit LOG == 14-bit Linear and the killer... - 6-bit 709 == 8-bit LOG == 10-bit Linear The challenge with 8-bit 709 is that the 709 from consumer cameras is essentially a creative picture profile, and so when you try to grade it there will be all sorts of tints or knees and elbows in the gamma etc. If you try and convert from 709 back to some sort of LOG space for grading it makes the image much more flexible, as I outlined in my 8-bit REC709 is more flexible in post than you think thread, which showed that with some care you can turn this: into this: However, this is a "naked" transform without any look applied, so once you add in a transform with some flavour (like the 2383 LUT) then you can get an even more consistent output, turning this: into this: @Framed_By_Dan the above thread is worth checking out as it has a lot more detail, but the crux of it is to make sure you're using the right colour spaces etc, which FilmConvert should be capable of doing I would imagine.. Adding a film look will help obscure any shot-to-shot differences, and would probably give a decent set of tools for making small changes that are normally needed between shots when working with footage not shot on a closed soundstage. I think the reason people are so dismissive on 8-bit 709 is because when it was out, the colour grading tools people had access to were primitive and the colour grading knowledge was minimal, however when 10-bit LOG came in everyone needed to convert and people with specialist knowledge built LUTs that looked really good, and then after that the tools got a lot better and people started learning how to grade. I think had those tools and knowledge been around when 8-bit was the norm then people would have gotten a lot more out of it. The examples above show absolutely unforgivable exposure and WB errors and the results are good enough to be amateur-level. Had these been the variations that someone even semi-competent would have in their footage, the results are likely to be basically flawless. Indeed you should!!! 😆😆😆 Seriously, everyone has their own standards and looks for different things, so me saying it's good enough won't carry any weight for you using it on your projects (and it shouldn't) because we shoot differently. The sensor is 4592px wide, which with its 10% crop in UHD, means the normal mode is reading 4174px across (which seems an odd number actually). If we assume the 2x is half that width (and not half the full sensor) then that gives us 2087px wide for the 2x crop. I always shoot 4K so I get the 100Mbps bitrate, but edit on a 1080p timeline, so any artefacts will probably be obscured in post for me. Depending on what you're shooting, how sharp your lenses are, and your timeline resolution you may get quite different results I'd imagine. I've got a few S16 c-mount lenses and some have wider image circles than others, with my Risespray 35mm F1.6 c-mount even covering the full MFT sensor on my GH7! Definitely worth testing and they can add some great character to the image without taking up a lot of space and making the rig really big (unlike using adapters and vintage S35 or FF glass). Also, definitely recommend using FilmConvert for this, as not only is it likely to be a more accurate film emulation (it's film emulation, whereas the Film Look Creator is just that, a Look Creator that creates Film LOOKS), but also it should have settings for input and output colour spaces, so if you set these correctly then you should be able to adjust exposure and WB in a pretty neutral way. I've been using the Standard colour profile, with Contrast / Sharpness / NR all turned down to -5, and Saturation left at zero. If you're using different profiles then I suggest shooting some test shots in both Standard and your normal profile, then pulling them into FilmConvert and playing around and seeing which you prefer. All the profiles on the GX85 do quite significant things to the colour, rotating hues, lightening and darkening different hues, changing the saturation of different hues, etc, so there is no neutral profile and it's just a matter of taste. If you get some good results I'd be keen to see them so please feel free to share them!

Following this! I have the GX9 and have often wondered about trying come C Mount S16 lenses on it. After all, some should cover the 2.2/2.3x crop in 4K. I'm not going to go as deep as the OP here but if I can get a decent look with FilmConvert I'd be happy.

The GX85 with the 14mm is such a nice and pretty combo. Best bang for the buck for wide angle rangefinder style photography. I still got my GM5 but I'm thinking about selling it as its cuteness factor wears off quickly and the GX is just so much better in every regard. I would have loved a Leica branded version with rock solid build and perfect button feedback and layout. I think this little Lumix is still well build and to me it is a classic indeed. It's my favourite small camera in regards of small form factor, great image and bang for the buck. If it had Pannys great 10bit codec and HLG I would have called it a digital S16 camera. I do call it a personal cinema verité camera nontheless. Anyway, awesome thread and interested to see your findings, kye! I've been using my two GX85 cameras for photography over the last couple of months, with a 14, 28 and 50, even a 75mm in use. Different 50s btw, C-mounts from Schneider and Zeiss. That Zeiss is astonishing, the Xenon painterly with its uneven focal plane and it other attributes. Would love to put em to usage for video. I guess this thread is a good starter for some GX85 motion picture love!:) @kye I have not experimented with the 2x digital crop. Is it without artefacts? That would make it a usuable 2/3" camera, though with one bayer sensor instead of three sensor blocks of course. Kind of like an LX10, which in 4K has about 2/3" sensor size. Could the 2x digital crop be downsampled from a 2.3K image? I could test it myself, couldn't I? Shouldn't I?:) @Clark Nikolai I would love to see a picture of your shoulder mounted D16. Awesome! Do you use it for personal occasions or for projects and what kind of projects? Cheers and thanks for this fun thread!

It seems like Panny is asking if we want a Lumix L2000- an L10 with a mount, full HDMI, IBIS and a headphone jack, for 1199 and a Lumix L1000, an L2000 with GH5 sensor, for 899. I'd say two times Yes, please! Keep em coming! I would go for the L1000. The names are too cool, so I am looking forward to my L1000. Heck, why not, the L2000 will be it for me.

Oh, this deserves admiration. I've learned to try and do this too. The gigs I now accept for clients grant me autonomy. I've failed with a few clients in the twilight of my career because I wanted to protect my autonomy, but I chalk it up to not being creativity aligned, and try to not let it bother me. Well, before I found (developed) my own voice I certainly worried about that stuff -- I had to worry about the $tuff. Good on you for building something that expresses your creativity so well that people want to pay you for it.

Take a look this time ; ) Coupled to a7S III Can’t wait for their Z-mount version to arrive too and join the ZR fun ;- )

I count myself very lucky in that regard in that I don't work to client briefs or input. At least, not beyond the most basic of levels. Ditto end result where there is zero input. It means I am only ever looking at how I am doing something or how I would do something. But a lot do not have that luxury I know!

The funny thing with vintage lenses is half the magic comes from the flaws people used to complain about. Lower contrast, weird flares, cat-eye bokeh, imperfect corners… now everyone is hunting for exactly that look again.

Anecdotally, yes, from reddit threads and even Photography Life who have separate pages for the two models and both contain MTF charts that seem to be different (it's not the same image) but the curves appear identical. https://photographylife.com/lenses/panasonic-lumix-g-14mm-f2-5-asph https://photographylife.com/lenses/panasonic-lumix-g-14mm-f2-5-ii-asph The announcements from Panasonic also use the same description - V1 - from Panasonic announcement: V2 from DPReview (I couldn't find the announcement of V2 on Panasonics website? Why do you ask? Your review at the time was quite favourable.

As a naive shooter myself, my challenge is that I know what I want in general (the vision) but not specifically what will accomplish that vision, like which compositions I need to capture so that when I edit them together it creates a seamless sequence that gives the desired vision. In your case it seems like you know how to think about coverage and how to edit things together to achieve a range of different visions that a client might want, but perhaps you don't have a clear idea of what vision you want to achieve? Opposite problems!