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I think people see politics these days as a form of show-biz entertainment soap opera drama, what a surprise they are going to get when the frogmen smash their door in next.

I had a play with the Nikon Zr today and quite liked it, it's a capable, good value for money Sigma-Fp style camera with very good autofocus and finally a screen with which you can see what is in focus and what isn't. Well done Japan for going large after 25 years of 3.0 inches. It's the sort of camera that would be very exciting back in the day of the DSLR video revolution to say the least... Nowadays though, I find other stuff more exciting. Also the screen tilting mechanism sucks... I'd far rather they'd drop the YouTube vlog-style swivel screens on a camera like this and have a standard tilt screen that is ON AXIS with the fucking lens, and with it being so large it really feels unbalanced stuck out at the side and blocking the ports. In a way the Zr feels like a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K but done well. But it doesn't feel very high-end, even if the image is. Also I miss the EVF and think the Z6 Mark III is even more bang for buck. So yeah, doesn't set my hair on fire but it's going to be a very decent buy for a lot of people.

In terms of colour in LOG and rec.2020 the only difference between cameras these days is how easy (or otherwise) they are to grade, for example C-LOG on the old Canon 1D C was so easy, it only needed the addition of contrast and barely any colour grading at all to look cinematic. Now there are massive differences between LUTs compared to between LOG curves and colour. So when you see all these reviews, tests and comparisons you are just seeing a LUT! It's almost comical really, nobody gets under the skin of what the camera is doing - they're just putting their grading skills and LUTs on show. And the codecs are all so good... no more 8bit banding. I compared the Sony a1 SLOG3 H265 8K to Nikon Z9 NRAW 8K and there was nothing in it really, not even in terms of noise and shadow detail. You could do just as big a grade or white balance shift on the H265 footage as you could with NRAW. Now the way I like to think of RAW as useful is as follows: - As a way to bypass poor camera image processing... Hardly needed now... In the old days, light and day difference between something like 5D Mark II compressed H.264 and uncompressed Magic Lantern Raw (in Cinema DNG), even at 1080p it was a different league of image quality. - As a way to increase image quality with drawback of huge file sizes. Now we get if we're lucky a 1-2% increase in image quality for a 1000% increase in file size (over H.265 10bit) - As a way to turn off in-camera sharpening and white balance (do it in post). However image processing has got so flexible you can turn sharpening off in LOG... look how smooth and natural Canon LOG looks on the old 1D C or EOS R6 III 10bit H.265 for example - A file format to show to clients that says you're serious 🙂 And we all know why the majority of videographers are fawning over raw delivery whereas ARRI ALEXA DPs casually go round doing it all in ProRes That is another comparison the YouTube bros refuse to do well... the ALEXA ProRes vs ARRI RAW and Canon LOG vs RAW I haven't seen a single good comparison!

I have the 35/50/75 Saturn in E mount and haven't experienced any focusing issues on the A1, and of course that's with no Desqueeze support. It does have a bit better EVF than the Panasonic cameras, but I haven't found the EVF to be a night and day difference. I own the 35 & 50 Saturn in L mount and have had great results on the S1RII. The 35 isn't quite as well corrected as the longer lenses, so it has a bit of character, especially against the light. Still, none of the Sirui lenses can rival the results I get with my favorite anamorphic adapters, but there is something to be said for simplicity and reliability. Also - I'm not sure if the S5II was included, but the recent update for the S1II/S1RII now provides 1.6x desqueeze. Still attached from the 35 Saturn on S1RII.

Nikon ZR vs Arri Alexa Mini Color (R3D NE, N-Log, Log C) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgJGK3YpIx0

I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn how many movie theaters are still projecting in 2K. Movie theater projectors are expensive as hell and overall profits for theaters are down compared with 10 years ago. Exhibitors aren't going to rush out to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on anything that doesn't have a direct positive impact on their profits. Being able to count the pores in the lead actor's skin doesn't put asses in seats or sell more candy.

Here is some completely unbiased coverage of Scotland’s previous meetings with Brazil.

Vimeo is in the process of deleting ALL my videos, due to their new policy of deleting their entire library of content for ALL non-current users without an active Pro paid subscription. Also, about 90% of my Vimeo was nurfed by the copyright music shambles, where Vimeo did the 3-strikes thing and they delete your entire account. So to avoid that, back in the day, I just decided to make these videos private, and unlisted. I have not got round to putting it all on YouTube yet, but perhaps I should?

I have a colleague from Kansas that use to do second unit for Malik back in the 70’s and this anecdote is right on target. My buddy’s job was to wander around the set’s region and find shots of bugs.

Especially with so much competition, and smaller cameras.

To expand on it, let's take 24 frames or one second at film rate. With film you have 24 full images, motion blur is kept in each image, not smeared netween them. With ML 5D raw, Alexa Pro Res, Red Raw, Blackmagic cameras etc, you have 24 distinct images, individually compressed either losslessly or mildly lossily. Motion blur is kept within each image. With AVCHD and other Long GOP CODECs, the I-frame image is divided into pools of pixels for analysis across time. only some frames are whole, the I frames, the rest refer the different pixel pools to the I frame and usually to a frame in the middle of the group too. In order to remove data the codec only moves what it has to. Your one second may have only two complete images, the rest are created as best can be from the other frames, with huge changes causing pixellation and blocking due to so little data headroom. On top of this, the red-channel resolution is quartered, and the blue channel halved in 4:2:0, so the spatial resolution for movement is cut down, as well as the temporal resolution. In short, the plastic movement you get from many implementations of such long GOP CODECs reflects the methods use in compression. Motion blur is also smudged and blurred by chroma sub-sampling (4:2:0:) and by interframe compression.

It worths mentioning G9II, a sort of GH7 in a S5 body.

They are outdated in that they are older cameras that don't have all the bells and whistles of the most modern camera released but in terms of image quality, I think every single one still holds up. I'd very much miss the lack of IBIS and shutter degree, but I could absolutely do my work with three GH3 bodies if I had to and I don't think most people would notice or care. The cons were low light and auto focus (though I still think the GH5's auto focus was usable in real situations despite others proclaiming it to be unusable.) You also needed to hack the GH2 to get the most out of it, so that could be seen as a con for it. The pros? Great IBIS in the cameras that have it (the GH5's IBIS still blows away IBIS in Sony's newest cameras), the battery life was incredible (at least up to the GH5; haven't used the GH6 or 7), no overheating, excellent image quality, decent audio preamps (GH3 on, from my experience), plus you get all the benefits of usinga M43 camera, like the smaller lenses and the ability to adapt anything.

There isn't a single camera in the entire GH line that wouldn't be usable today. If you want 4K, you'd need to go GH4 or newer. If you want reliable video autofocus, the only option is the GH7. For the best low-light performance, the GH5s is probably your best bet (though I'm not sure if the GH6 or GH7 have great low light performance). The older models struggled more in low light. With the GH1 and GH2, hacking them for more bitrate is suggested for best quality. The most popular models were the GH2 and GH5, but the GH7 seems also to be well-regarded.

Anyway I'm going to lock the thread, it's been completely wreaked as usual and it would be better to go back to cameras.

I think praising someone that dangerous, with that kind of low moral standing, for being a good at executing a business plan is missing the point, but then each to their own. His PayPal chum is even worse. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist

A lot of this criticism assumes that value only comes from personally inventing things or never having bad ideas. That’s not how execution works. Ideas are cheap. Execution is what matters. Plenty of people had ideas about reusable rockets, EVs, satellite internet, or brain–computer interfaces long before Musk. What almost no one managed to do was turn those ideas into working, scaled systems in industries where startups usually fail. SpaceX didn’t win because Musk designs fuel tanks. It won because it executed faster and cheaper than legacy aerospace giants with decades of experience. Tesla didn’t invent EVs, but it forced the entire auto industry to electrify years earlier than planned. Starlink is the largest satellite constellation ever deployed, providing connectivity where no real alternative existed. Yes, he has bad ideas. Every aggressive executor does. The difference is that his companies survive them and still outperform competitors. You don’t have to like Musk — but dismissing his role because he isn’t the inventor misses what execution actually means.

Easy to fall upwards when you have 498 billion in the bank! What with all that money his personal life is still a binfire. Only have to look at that to see the true character of the man. All the messy multiple affairs and abandoned sons, daughters. That's what he's singularly able to achieve merely as a man when he's not got the billionaire oligarch hat on. When he's got the billions and the companies he's able to take the credit for other people's hard work and that's how he built his entire reputation.

There have been numerous stories over the years, apocryphal maybe, but they were coming out even when the media loved Muskrat... anyway, the stories were frequently about how employees of companies like SpaceX believed him to be an absolute idiot and upper management believed that their main role with him was to block him from getting in the way. One of the most famous stories was about some fuel tank that was fracturing in flight. The engineers had some ideas, but Muskrat came up with some idea to put a layer of fast-set glue/resin on the outside that would stay liquid - and when the cracks started to appear in the tank, the adhesive would leak out and set, automatically healing the crack. All of the best engineers in the company said that the idea could not possibly work and explained why it couldn't. Yet, Muskrat insisted on an all hands on deck and everybody worked non-stop with the vessel and the resin until... Muskrat finally acknowledged that the idea couldn't possibly work. It sort of fits with a man who has basically failed upward for most of his life - such as how he got fired as CEO of PayPal after nearly running the company into bankruptcy with his bad ideas, but still owning a bunch of stock so that when Thiel transformed it to a profitable company and sold it to eBay, Muskrat came out with billions. Would SpaceX exist without him? No. Would Starlink exist without SpaceX? Also no. Did he invent Starlink? Also no. Would Neuralink exist without him? No, and who cares? It's a good accessibility play for people who can't otherwise operate a computer, but for the rest of us, do you know anybody who is loudly complaining that they don't have some shitty device in their head that will ultimately be used to shovel ads directly into their brain? Do you spend every day glaring at your computer wishing that your brain could directly control it? For Tesla, he didn't invent it at all. Outside of having a strong first mover advantage in terms of modern electric cars, they aren't very good. Quality control has always been lacking. Muskrat decides that for full self driving, they don't need industry-standard tools like proximity sensors, but instead they'll rely only on cameras. He did, apparently, invent the truck that looks like a small child drew it and which is almost universally reviled. So yay. Otherwise, what has Muskrat invented? Hyperloop - the dumbest mass transit invention in the history of humanity? 12 years later, there isn't a single operating hyperloop that you can go ride. And it turns out that vactrain concepts had existed for years before he "invented" that too. So... has he had a single novel idea in his entire history? Or is his "genius" really just in ways to exploit existing wealth to extract more money, mostly from the government?

Was it all a bit of a sham? EOSHD investigates... https://www.eoshd.com/news/users-are-complaining-openai-wreaked-sora-2-eoshd-takes-a-look-at-what-happened/

To everyone I offended this year... work on yourself so I don't have to do it again next year. If after all you have seen, you still drink the Elon koolaid you deserve all the personal attacks coming to you. I have absolutely zero respect for your opinions or your feelings on the matter. It is entirely your responsibility that you feel insulted by what I said above even though it was objective fact and not at all personal. Elon is not a rocket scientist. He's a fucking twat face, alleged Nazi drug addict. I suppose you think his little fascist bromance with Trump was furthering the future of Planet Earth as well?

I found out what he's been up to and it's the greatest irony in the history of the camera world. He has pivoted to cat videos. Very occasionally you will see a long review of a camera. This is his one on the Nikon Zr. I also tuned into another favourite of mine, Gerald Undone. He's done a Q&A where people throw money at him like a stripper. Except he's a bloke so can't tuck the money into his bra. I actually think this one of the purist examples of autism I have seen. And if we look at the top fans, Philip is 7th... I have no idea who the others are. TechMixr? That's quite a good question on the chat box... Which of the companies standard H.264/H.265 4K codecs at 100Mbit has the least noise reduction, aka most filimic, that I would like somebody to show. I can't be bothered and have sold all my gear to fund the forum hosting fees. Do you think the camera community would have worked out differently without all the narcissist Americans and Canadians? I think it would have. You'd have women in it for a start. Some real, talented actresses might be about... lending their opinions to DPs and gracing camera test scenes, instead we have some blokes being herded around like sheep by PR people from Sony and Panasonic! Maybe we'd have an alternative platform to YouTube... like the early days Vimeo with original file downloads, forums, and beautifully curated portfolios of work. Instead I do feel that the community has been rather sold out... And to an extent, those in it have sold yourselves out by being silly. You have worshipped at the feet of the social media influencer, lapped up the rumours site clickbait like gullible little fools, whittered on and on and on about what your camera strategy is for 2025, changing cameras like underpants, and dropping thousands on 8K RAW cinema cameras to shoot Instagram material with, delivered onto a 5 inch smartphone screen at 480p resolution in a 10 second endless loop.

My opinion on the buyout of Hollywood by an oligarchy mafia. https://www.eoshd.com/opinion/warner-bros-risk-talent-exodus-over-trump-ellison-deal-who-will-follow-christopher-nolan-and-jump-ship-next/

I don't remember Bill Clinton's government combing through a non-US citizen's personal politics at customs. It makes tourism a bit shit, doesn't it? If I had to go to NAB or to the US for work I would just not bother. Really I didnt know that It was him was it? Have you ever considered it might instead be the thousands of employees of these companies backed by billions in venture capitalist funds and government NASA contracts. Also as far as "the world" and "the future" goes, they haven't moved the needle that far. SpaceX is just a private NASA contractor and they haven't even gone to the moon. Tesla is a failing car company, completely outgunned by China. Starlink consists of some satellites that ruin photos of the sky. And Neural link is an allegedly deeply immoral pig experiment. No. Critical thinking, and criticism is not the issue. Gullible bastards are.

Same here. I had to leave my PRO account after 15 years. I didn't renew after what they did to the European accounts, who pay the subscription like all users worldwide. I hope they fail miserably. I moved everything on Youtube. Such a shame.

I haven’t been there for a while and was toying with a trip next year. To paraphrase King Arthur now though.

I guess you only need a couple of months to inventarise all your socials of the last five years. Is that including public forums like these ? also, every person you emailed, even if you got a new computer a year ago and do not have your complete history. On top of that all addresses and phone numbers of all family members, best friends, exes and current affairs you might be having. Probably that includes the number of deceased parents or family, if they did that within the last five years. so we basically need a P.I. to investigate ourselves to get into that shithole the US have become ? i think I’ll give a pass then … My guess is tourism will be booming the next couple of decades !

Yes my whole comment was on a "joke tone" and ironic as a mean to try to be "light" given the harsh and unbelievable reality we are all witnessing right now. I could've add "marple sirup" and "advanced Artic position related to Denmark" in the "unless they contain" list, that would have been more obvious I was being light. Sorry, not always easy to convey humor with text on sad topics (and not in your mother's tongue🫠). I need to rely more on spot-on British humor Gif like @BTM_Pix does😅

The Alexa has a really fast sensor readout, 2ms... motion cadence on that is of course fine as it is on all of ARRI's cameras, so that probably excludes fast readout as being the issue. Maybe some cameras implement the shutter timings differently to others? Say if you are in 1/50 or 1/40 or 180deg shutter the sensor might still remain in 60fps and it will just expose for longer and then the image processor converts it from 60p to 24p and then the codec maybe fudges things further with trickery like inter-frame compression and inter-frame noise reduction, whereas on a simpler camera like the Digital Bolex there is none of that shit and basically a global shutter sensor and entire image pipeline optimised for 24fps at 180 degree shutter. Maybe some of our modern mirrorless camera sensors have a true 24fps mode and others only have 60fps mode, process the 24p from that. Maybe some codecs are truly awful at motion... On the 50D it didn't have a video mode at release if I remember correctly? Magic Lantern enabled it via the raw video hack, but there's no H.264 mode is there? I could understand why some of the older H.264 low bitrate codecs hurt motion a lot, Cinema DNG and Magic Lantern were like going from digital video to film. The leap was that big. I should do some tests in Cinema DNG on my Sigma Fp-L as it is a direct sensor feed, uncompressed RAW and no pixel binning in the 1.3x crop mode. I bet that looks pretty good at 180 degree shutter in 24p.

Agreed completely on your assessment of the image characteristics. I truly appreciate the performance of classic anamorphic adapters and am happy that they are coming down in price. I just picked up a baby Kowa Anamorphic 8 2X for cheap and it's a jewel. A few examples of what I consider ideal performance below. First three are the ZIA 1.5x with an older Leica 50 Elmar collapsible, which is a tiny and wonderful combo that just covers full frame 3:2. Second is the baby hypergonar 1.75x with a Voigtlander 75 2.5, which also covers full frame but is a bit more muted (although this adapter can be fickle against the light sometimes).

I've been thinking about global shutter for a specific project, after being unsatisfied with test shoots using my S5. There are several to choose from now, but you're totally right that it's surprisingly difficult to find quality reviews or comparisons, particularly older models like the F55 in a modern context. If I move forward with it, I'll probably end up with a Komodo--but I've struggled to find direct comparisons between the Komodo, F55, Ursa Mini 4K, and A9III, not to mention comparisons with IMX410 cameras that I'm already familiar with.

I have one and it really is a good camera when it comes to the image quality. I love the image it makes. It's brought my own filmmaking to another level. It's not a run and gun camera though. More of like using a 16mm film camera. Nothing automatic. Manual everything. The dream of an all-in-one isn't quite true with it though. You need to rig it out with an EVF. (Although I don't have and have never used the shark fin shaped viewer with the mirror so maybe that's okay.) I used to see them come up on eBay a few times a year but now they rarely do. And people are asking US$11000 with accessories. (I also notice that nobody is bidding on them at that price and the listing ends without any bids, then gets relisted.) I occasionally see them listed for about US$5000 but they don't last long at that price. They're a good camera, worth $5000 but not worth $10000. I think that it's no longer such a unique camera image-wise and you can get a close enough image with a used Alexa or Blackmagic Production camera 4K and be making your movies. (Still if one came up and you could afford it, get it.) If you're handy you could make your own using the same sensor. Check out this project: https://github.com/lafauxbolex https://www.youtube.com/@LaFauxBolexDigitalCinemaCamera/videos

Are you talking about the US or Venezuela? 🙂

I sincerely hope they correct this very fast. From my use, I would not say it is as bad as people are saying, but until now the h265 from my Nikons has been very very good.

This is my point. If a 20 year old varicam 27h can can do a lot that 35mm film rolls can do, the modern crop of mirrorless and cinema cams are much better, the gap between these new ones and the 35mm film rolls is really not that much, hard to justify the 100x cost and the much long time for processing.

The woman with bubbles at 1:00 or so or the sun behind the mountain at 1:50 or so are more challenging scenes than the baby and the rolloff in both looks really rough to me. The image at 0:49 also looks pretty bad to me, as do the highlights in the water at 0:40ish. It's great for a camera from 20 or so years ago, but in modern terms, I'd expect better from any mid-tier hybrid. Like with most things, in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, it can look great - but so can a Nikon ZR or a Canon R6 III. 😃

The effective resolution of properly-exposed modern 35mm film is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5K if I remember right. But as above, a lot of people aren't so likely to care about that. Unless the varicam had some sort of miracle sensor, though, 35mm negative film will have much better dynamic range and much, much more pleasing highlight rolloff. It's still seen as king of rolloff - and on a film with a 20 million dollar budget, the cost of shooting on film vs Arri vs anything else is basically an afterthought.

No, but it turns out that a lot of our guard rails are imaginary.

"The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, now is the time for monsters" - Antonio Gramsci, Italy 1930s

I'm talking about LOG video, it really does depend on the user more than the camera how the colours come out, especially as the modern range of gear now have a similar high level of codecs. So the Z-LOG = S-LOG = F-LOG they're all very much the same sort of thing. Whenever you see this LOG footage on YouTube, it's been graded by the user, either with a LUT or with their own grading skills in Resolve. Yet all the comments are like this... WOW the camera has great colour science, blah blah blah. And i's the same with RAW... All the sensors are now at a high level, similar dynamic range and so on. If anything they are now too good and are moving AWAY from the look of film. As for colour science... If you shoot JPEG or rec.709 video, then what the camera is doing matters far more. But in LOG they are all using a very similar wide colour gamut, and similar LOG curve, similar white balance, it is only the 8bit side that still has a big variation between Film Simulations, Photo Styles and Creative Looks. So just bear in mind next time you see footage on YouTube that the LUT is doing 99.99% of the colour you're seeing not the camera.

Speaking of name dropping AND Lubezki… I was bartending my day job years ago while in film school and came to work to set up the hotel bar and looked up to see The whole crew from “Knight of Cups” standing there silence. I proceeded to hang out and cut fruit for 3 hours while they shot some scenes with Christian Bale and Natalie Portman around the pool and walking in and out of my bar. I was giving “Chivo” and his AC’s beers at the end of the bar and chatting with them in between takes. At the end he wanted to pay and I just laughed. I told him he was a huge inspiration for me and there’s no way they were paying LOL. Have me his business card and got to meet Terrance Malik later. i don’t think any of those scenes even made it into the film but it would have been even better if i got some background work out of it LOL. Loved the way he ran his set and how quiet and professional it was. Lubezki told me Mallick wants it all naturalistic and wanted the hotel and bar open the whole time. No closed set and no yelling from the first AD. Just quietly exploring shots and vibing off of the mood and the actors. I learned a lot through observation and it was inspiring. Epic day.

I was just about to mention how good Train Dreams looks and the magical pairing of the Alexa 35 sensor matched with the Kowa Prominar Sphericals. Stunning film and very Chivo-esque. As much as we say the camera doesn’t matter now I think there are arguments for both sides. I think it’s a lot like fine wine. A lot of people are fine with a $5 bottle and can’t really taste the difference between that and a $500 bottle. I can though.

Well in the newer cameras (S1II and S1RII) it opens up certain data heavy codecs that are not available in SD but I think with the S1R, it was more a case of having a more robust (and cheaper!) card option? I had mine set up writing to both for peace of mind insurance but beyond that, no other needs.

Cheap zoom lenses (and especially kit-zooms) are often the BEST lenses. I wrote a whole thread on it here including examples and comparisons, but the summary is: They're cheaper than almost any alternative They're flexible and very fast to use, because zooming is always faster than changing primes They improve your edits because you can get greater coverage and variety of shots in the same amount of time / setups They are in the "sweet spot" between being too sharp and looking clinical and being too vintage, but their aberrations are often actually very aligned with the qualities of vintage lenses people want, just dialled down to a modest amount They have smaller apertures so are easier to focus / less prone to focus errors and don't need as much ND in brighter situations They often have native AF and are kept updated with firmware updates They often have OIS Those with variable apertures are much closer to being constant DOF, where the more you zoom in the smaller the aperture gets, counteracting the effects of the longer focal-length, which makes your footage more consistent They don't get a lot of love online, but that's because most of the discussion online is about the things that are THE MOST of something (the sharpest, the newest, the biggest, the most expensive, etc) and being cheap and good is only really attractive to people who actually shoot in the real world and where a happy middle ground is desirable. My most used lens is a variable aperture zoom lens, despite me owning many much "better" lenses.

Such a great camera. I'd argue it's the best value out there, as far as used cameras go. Still using two myself.

I have the S1RII and the S1II. I also still have the old S1 and S5. The S1II is the same than the S5II about video details, even if some youtubers said the details rendering has improved, it's not true at all. Same bad rendering as the S5II. I understand some people are not bothered or can't see the difference and it's nothing wrong about that, but the difference is clear by example if you zoom inside your videos on people faces. Like the S5II, there is a sort of rough detail sharpening and in the same time a lack of very fine details. As always V-log looks better than the 709 profiles but it's still not great in my opinion. The S1RII also has the same detail rendering and I was very disappointed by the 6,4K Open Gate, it was not better than the 6K of the S5II, maybe even worse, like if this mode used a tiny bit of binning like the 5,9K 16:9. The new 7,2K is ok and looks better than the 6,4K. The 8,1K Open Gate is even better but limited to 24fps. Even if the video engine is the same between the S1II, S5II and S1RII, the later has much more resolution in 8K, hence the fine details looks finer even with the bad processing. it's only when the footage is a bit underexposed or overexposed that the S1 6K looks better. I read somewhere something interesting about Real Time Lut, using a burned in lut with a good amount of contrast helps to recover fine details. When recording V-log without Real Time Lut and grading in post, some fine details can't be recovered. I can confirm it's true. So using Real Time Lut V-log on the S1RII in 8,1K Open Gate is the best for details rendering. I'm glad Panasonic has fixed the colored pixels issue in Prores Raw on the S1RII and now the footage looks great, same details rendering than on the S1 or S5. But it's really crazy we must use Prores Raw to get the same good details rendering than on the S1 or S5 H264/265. And the crop is a shame, 1,45x ! When cameras like the Z8 or Z6III offer 6K or 8K 60fps raw video without crop ... About the S1II, Prores Raw only has a minimal crop (about 1,05/1,1x I think) and it was the main reason I bought this camera. Like on the S1RII, Prores Raw is excellent and like it has much less crop, fine details looks even sharper (in a good way). Finally we have a Panasonic camera with not only excellent IBIS but also excellent detail rendering and good AF without using external recorder (even if Prores raw is a pain for the workflow). The only issue I found is the 240fps 1080p mode, it is clearly not finalised because some horizontal lines appear randomly. I also found the photo raw files of the S1II and S1RII to be slightly less contrasty than the S5 and S1, they have less that punchy looks and I still prefer the rendering of the S5 and S1 with my best lenses like the 50mm S or 24-70mm Pro. it can be because of ACR but the JPEGs out of the cameras also looks slightly less contrasty than on the S5 and S1. Other than that, IBIS is stellar but sometimes more digital than on the G9II or GH7, color science is good but not as good as the GH6 to my eyes. The S1II also has better AF than the S1RII and I can feel the difference. Compared to Nikon, Lumix has several advantages like the IBIS and Open Gate. L-mount also has great "practical" lenses but I think they lack really great lenses with very nice rendering and more pancakes. After using most of the L-mount lenses, only a few looks really fantastic, like the 50mm S Pro (if it has not the coating issue), 24-70mm S Pro, 28-45mm Sigma and the APO Summicron SL. While absolutely great, the APO SL are really too much expensive for most people and it will be hard to attract a lot of people in the system, it is why Lumix try to attract people with smaller lenses and never released again new S Pro lenses since 2019/2020. Nikon has better AF most of the time but also more great lenses. The 50mm f1.8 is much better than the Lumix, the Nikon 35mm/50mm/85mm f1.2 and 135mm f1.8 are some of the best lenses you can buy. You can also adapt Sony FE lenses and there are more interesting "cheap" lenses available from third party manufacturers like Viltrox (mainly the 35mm f1.2 and 135mm f1.8).

Motion cadence is a phrase I use to make clients think I'm a pro.

I agree with you that the term cadence is somewhat confusing: In fact, I would I'd dare say that most of the "cadence" problems do not exist. They are simply a question of footage not properly shot or encoded. Many, many videos on the web use fast shutter speeds in sunlight to compensate the lack of an ND filter, causing an akward cadence. Some others use a very slow shutter speed in low light to compensate the lack of proper lighting, causing an akward cadence. Some in camera codecs record "fake" progressive framerates that are actually interlaced or the footage is interlaced-deinterlaced in the NLE to fit a certain standard, causing an akward cadence. Some other times, 23.976 footage is edited and encoded as 24p, which is not exactly the same. And finally, some other times it's the players fault (though I don't own an Apple TV) or the encoded stream, or any of the absurd TV "image enhacements" of any recent TV set. Under normal circumstances, any professional camera recording true progressive footage at a proper 180º shutter angle should yield that cinematic motion. And I can include DSLRs and midrange cameras, too. You don't see those "cadence" problems when you go to the movies, even though you see movies recorded (not filmed) with a mix of Alexas, Reds, C300s, C500s and even 5Ds. Because the footage is properly shot, conformed and handled throughout the whole workflow.