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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.

I like film and retro filmic looks, but shooting Super-16 (or even Super-8) is still an expensive PITA. After some testing of my equipment, I've realised that my GX85 has image quality equalling or surpassing a Super-16 film camera (with some categories surpassing a Super-35 film camera) so in my pursuit of a pocketable, portable, fun, simple, and fast setup that looks like film, this project is born. The criteria is to work out how to get great images from the tiny setup that are enough like film that most people would believe it if you said it was shot on film. My approach is simply to compare the two and find the biggest differences and then work on bringing them closer together, 80-20 rule and all that. The first point of comparison is already known, the crop factor is similar (2.2x vs 2.88x) so making sure I don't go too hard into shallow DOF then this should be comparable. Second consideration is camera movement, shake, and how they'll be used. S16 film cameras can be hand-held, but they've got some weight so are relatively steady in use. 8mm cameras were designed to be hand-held and are much lighter, so will move more. The GX85 is far smaller than either, but has IBIS (and OIS with some lenses) so that should make it feel larger, but I'll have to watch out for parallax, which will give away the cameras lack of heft. Third is the DR. Film has a huge DR and I wasn't sure how this would go - harsh clipping of highlights and blacks will be a dead giveaway. Without knowing anything about its rec709 profiles, I shot an exposure test where I took shots one stop apart. Film negatives have a lot of DR, but print film has far less, with stocks like Kodak 2383 only having about 5-6 stops in the linear range of their exposure (between about 10% luma and 90% luma, before the rolloffs kick in). Bringing in my test shots and matching the contrast within my standard colour pipeline (based around the Film Look Creator tool in Resolve) I realised the GX85 has enough DR to push its highlights well up into the highlight rolloff curve of the FLC, and same with the shadows, so this is fine too. DR, check! Fourth is resolution and texture. The images should be soft and noisy, but how much? After reviewing a number of sources, I realise that there are all kinds of factors, such as the speed of the negative, how it was exposed (0... or -1 and pushed in post, etc), but often the biggest factor in softness was the lenses used, and the biggest factor on the grain is the processing that the streaming service does when you upload it! In this sense, I have a lot of freedom in these aspects, but I'll have to do further tests on uploading to YT. I have seen videos that have really nice grain in 4K, so I know it can be done, but my previous tests showed the YT compression really changes things, so I'll have to do more tests. Then we're into testing with real images and just seeing what we see. My first test was some random shots in the garden, just to have a starting position. The feedback I got (including one friend who practically lives to talk about film!) was that it looked good but needed more saturation. My thoughts were that I exposed too high (I'd forgotten that the LCD is deceiving and the GX85 has a lot of shadow info) and as such the highlights in the first image were clipped in the file and still show in the graded image. After this test I happened to watch a YouTuber go through their grading process and they said they exposed by putting the image in the middle of the histogram, which made sense to me and I realised this is what I should do with the GX85. Second test was just a few images while out and about. It's the GX85 and 14mm F2.5 pancake lens. I'd previously forgotten this lens is both a 31mm and also a 62mm (with the 2x zoom) and so is much more flexible than I was remembering, so I made sure to include some 2x shots to see how useful that was with this level of image degradation. I also decided to push the images to get more of the kind of look I'm chasing. The 2x seems completely fine too, having quality far more than this level of softening will show. I also re-graded them in B&W, pushing the contrast much further. I may even want to go harder on these. Much more work to do, but I'm really liking the process so far. In these days of digital perfection, the attraction of film is in the colours and the texture. If you want the colours and not the texture, wanting to keep a much more modern level of sharpness and noise, emulating some of the properties of film is so ubiquitous that I think it's just called "colour grading". The phrase "film emulation" then is for the texture of film and deliberately wanting the imperfections and aesthetics of it. You don't have to go hard like I have with Super-16 film + Super-16 lenses levels of softening, but if you did this is easily possible too and FLC has 35mm presets which soften, but do so far more subtly than this. I'll continue to iterate on the colours and textures, but moving into moving images is probably next, with all the testing of the YT processing and compression that comes with that. But seriously, imagine telling someone in the 80s that you could fit an interchangeable lens camera capable of shooting feature-film level images in your pocket... Feedback welcome.

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.

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.

This is really amazing, @kye - thank you so much for doing this. Apologies if I missed it someplace, but did you happen to note the lens you used to create your findings on the GX85? thank you again!