Leaderboard

There are so many variables when it comes to how you're viewing the film images. Negative film has wide dynamic range and soft highlight rolloff. Positive film has much more limited dynamic range and pretty hard highlight rolloff. Faster film tends to be grainier. Filmmakers with a big budget would be choosing their film stock for aesthetic/style reasons. Imagine shooting Taxi Driver on the same technicolor low-grain film stocks that were used for The Sound of Music. Bright saturated colors would have been terrible for Taxi Driver. Scorcese chose less gritty films than some others might, but Travis Bickle lives in a relatively desaturated/dark world and that's for the best. Filmmakers with low budgets were likely to choose the cheapest film stock they could and some even used the leftovers that weren't exposed from the productions of others. Or in the case of John Waters, whatever film he could steal. Next, as you said, for these classic films, you aren't necessarily looking at scans from the master negatives. You might be looking at scans of the release prints. They didn't always save the masters. It could even be a second or third-generation print. Then to add to that, the way the film gets transferred matters. Did they scan the original negatives or a print? How was it scanned? Was the film being scanned perfectly flat? What compression was used on the scanned image? Was it scanned or telecine? If telecine, which projector lens was used during the telecine process? As far as the lenses, razor sharp lenses have been available for a long time, including in the 50's, and including wide angles. Lots of vintage wide angles are a little softer in the corners, but they can be very crisp in the center... but fashion applied in many eras of film, just as it applies now. For some of the softer images, especially close-ups, they might have been using a net filter, made more complicated by the net filter potentially being mounted behind the lens instead of in front. https://www.provideocoalition.com/the-secret-life-of-behind-the-lens-nets/ I'm sure I'm forgetting more things too. Like almost anything going through an analog to digital process, there are about a bazillion variables to consider along the way.

A quick headsup with the Viltrox adapter. Years ago, I hacked a Canon 10-18mm to make it fit, which it did. However, one day, I took it out my bag and was getting some really crazy lens flares. Turned out, the back lens element was touching the glass in the adapter when at around 12mm. In my bag, it cracked the glass in the Viltrox, and I learned there's a pretty good reason the combo didn't work without being hacked. So if you get any EFs lenses, be careful - or you'll end up with a one of a kind, megaflare adapter (I've used it a few times since because of the 'creative flaring', so it's not all bad) This photo is from the moment I noticed something was wrong. Luckily, it was on my GX85 at the time, which I was using for behind the scenes stills. So nothing was lost or ruined in a 'professional' sense.

Not only the Leica :- )

I'd use a little known plugin called Tilt Shift Blur (TSB), which comes with Resolve but is very special in a critical aspect. Normally if you have a node and give it a key then the node calculates things as normal and then uses the key as a transparency effect, so if you used a large Gaussian Blur and gave it a key then you'd get a huge blur mixed with the sharp image at the level of transparency the key dictated. However, with the TSB, the key defines the size of the blur, so you can vary the size of the blur that way. For this purpose I'd give it a luma key of the image and adjust the contrast and amount to control the relative amount of blur between the lighter and darker parts of the image. The TSB is what I use to soften the edges of the frame in my lens emulation nodes, which allows there to be no blur in the centre and it gradually transition to having a larger and larger blurring towards the edges. The fact that the key input acts as a transparency control really doesn't make much sense when applying most OFX plugins and I'm surprised they haven't made more of them smart like the TSB one where it uses the key as an input to control one or more of the OFX parameters.

Hey all, I'm pretty close to squeezing the trigger on a Sigma FP - what are some things I should be looking for when inspecting a used Sigma FP for potential purchase? Like obvious things for me would be signs of irreparable damage to the ports, dead pixels, ensuring the SD slot is in working order, any scratches on the sensor. Anything else though? Particularly things that might be unique to the FP. Thanks in advance!

Version 8. Changes are: Added CA Added film dirt and damage Added diffusion Less blur I've also added a bunch of fresh images into the reel, so there's a wider range of situations, including more real-world examples. The ones I grabbed from previous trips are exposed with SS so the motion might be off on some of them, so excuse that aspect of it (although having a slightly blurrier image does make this less visible). I also backed off the stabilisation on the shots from the previous reel as I think it hides the gate weave a little and is more how the rig actually shoots. Here are a few before/after images, to get a sense of what it's working with as input and how far it's taking the image. This is the setup used for (most) of the images in the reel.. It's tiny, actually pocketable, fits in the palm of the hand, and the ergonomics are just right.

Ok, here is the kitten footage about the only thing i did was zoom in a little as i wanted it to be more obvious what what happening in the first clip, i also stabilized the footage. Iphone 13 pro max was used. Not sure about the third clip, one day last week the iphone camera gave me grief all day. It jumped about, had focus issues. Quite bizarre, i have also noticed it flares abit oddly, i presume its time to put new lenses covering over it as when i examine the lens covering their starting to get scratched. I have since installed the raw cam app thats been mentioned in a forum thread and i'll give that ago shortly. The mission 1 has been in and out of its box, i charged the battery and updated the software and its back in its box as i want to do some kind of unboxing ceremony, kinda like a welcome to country thing 😀. You probably need to be abit aussie to grasp where my thought processes are going. The other issue is i seem to have misplaced a ball head adapter. I kinda had some ideas for its use, not a huge issue as i can work around it i think.

Originally posted in another thread, but given what it is, I think it deserves a place of its own. There’s something very real happening here right now. This is not just a minor upgrade. : ) Insta360 sample for focal length range. source (from Leica HQ BTW) And that detachable screen is basically an on-set field monitor. WOW What a killer combo : X

This is quite misleading as mirrorless cameras can be set up to do a similar thing where the image is tone-mapped and written to a rec 709 video, usable immediately. The use of a log format and pretending that it is meant for direct viewing and comparing that to a highly processed video from a different camera is a bit disingenuous when cameras have menus with processing settings that allow the user to get a video without editing, with less AI for sure, but with good algorithms that do a roughlysimilar thing more predictably and with higher quality. I am not familiar with how Canon or Sony cameras do things but on Nikon I often use ADL which is their tone-mapping algorithm and it allows me to shoot high contrast, suboptimally lit scenes and get good results without editing. Log video is specifically a storage format and not meant for immediate viewing, which you of course know. Extremely edited night time footage where subjects have been dug out from the shadows will never look very good, and using appropriate lighting and/or making the video in conditions where the existing lighting is half decent is better than relying on extreme AI processing. This is probably one of the reasons why compact cameras are enjoying a resurgence: people are sick and tired of the sickly-looking overprocessed results from smartphones, and even a compact camera that has a small sensor but does not overprocess the image is preferred.

For those interested in small setups, in modestly priced gear, in non-clinical rendering of images, in very fast lenses, in vintage lenses, or older equipment, we exist in a space that has no quantitative reference. There are no numbers to look up and understand things from. It applies to the equipment: Questions like "how sharp is that lens?" don't have an answer (that is intuitive anyway - MTF charts aren't intuitive and often aren't reliable or even available). Even if it did, that answer would only be true at one aperture setting, and even then, is only true for the middle of the frame or the edge of the frame, but not both at the same time. If we shoot at base ISO with a 4K camera then we'll likely get an image with roughly 4K resolution, but at higher ISOs the effective resolution will likely drop due to ISO noise, NR, compression, etc. If we use filtration, like diffusion filters, then these lower the effective resolution of the image. It's literally what they're designed to do. How much do they do this though? Not only is there no published answer to this, but the answer changes depending on focal length, sensor size, etc. It applies to the look we're creating: Any colourist working creatively will be trying to create an image with the right amount of resolution / sharpness / noise / etc, not just "the sharpest" or "the highest resolution". How much is desired? What are the references? I've been struggling with many questions from my own equipment and projects, including: My TTartisans 17mm F1.4 is less than half the weight of my Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95, but the TT is quite soft at F1.4. How soft is it though? Is it too soft? If I want to shoot low-light with the GX85 (which has terrible higher-ISO NR) then what ISO setting is too soft, and then which lenses do I need to use in which environments to get enough light into the sensor? My Takumar 50mm F1.4 on my generic M42-MFT speed booster has pretty soft edges, but how soft? You'd think the solution to these would be to look at the footage and decide, but (for me at least) it's a double-edged sword because I also don't know what final images I want! I have spent a good amount of time looking at Hollywood films and big budget TV shows (see the original The Aesthetic thread) but apart from just going "I like that" and "I don't like that" we have the problem once-again of there being no way to quantify things. Saying "this show is softer than that show" really doesn't help. My solution is to reference things back to film. I originally did this with my Panasonic GF3, which shoots 1080p so soft you could cut it with a wet noodle, by comparing it to the presets in the Film Look Creator tool for 8mm and 16mm film I concluded that when the GF3 didn't show macro-blocking due to the (very low) bitrate, it was about the same as 8mm film. This was actually a really useful reference for me, because the associations I have for 8mm and 16mm film are quite useful. 8mm film has an aesthetic that is very nostalgic and low-fi, but was never good enough for TV shows, let alone the cinema. My new plan is to reference everything back to film, across quite a number of ways... Texture, which is what I've talked about so far: - I will be trying to "map" my lenses and cameras and codecs to a specific resolution of film (16mm, 35mm, somewhere in between) - I will be trying to "map" my aesthetic preferences to film too, like wanting a certain project to have the resolution of 16mm for example, but further than this - the size and amount of grain can also be a useful reference. These are useful references for me because a lot of the aesthetic references of cinema I have were actually shot on film and so by associating these things back to film it's a relevant reference, not just some arbitrary scale that isn't directly related. Dynamic Range and Contrast: - How does the DR from the GX85 look when put through an image pipeline in Resolve compare to the contrast of a 250D -> 2383 process? - What about the iPhone vs a 16mm process from the 90s? or a B&W process from the Italian Neorealism or French New Wave period? Contrast and DR should be relatively easy to match to various film stocks by just shooting some over/under exposure tests and adjusting my standard Resolve colour pipeline to match what is in the spec sheets. Speaking of spec sheets, not only do the spec sheets for motion picture film contain the Sensitometric Curves that show DR and contrast, but they also contain the MTF curves too as a reference for resolution. When it comes to resolution you don't need to look at the charts though - I asked some film geeks I know to comment on the FLC presets and they said that the 8mm / 16mm / 35mm presets in the Grain panel have about the right amount of image softness and amount of grain (but that the character of the grain isn't accurate), so the FLC is a reasonable reference for the texture of film in a very broad sense. What else? Image stability is another one. 8mm film cameras were larger than modern compact cameras so were more stable with the lenses they were normally fitted with, but 8mm had pretty terrible gate weave (alignment from one frame to the next) so having micro-jitters from hand-holding is compatible with the look. Whereas 16mm would have had more mass and less gate weave but at least at first would have probably been shoulder mounted or on a tripod, so some types of shots / angles will be more compatible with the aesthetic than others. Depth of field is another one. Lots of people think the "Super 16mm look" just means deep DOF, but it's more nuanced than that, as the lenses typically used would have some separation in low-light when focused closer, but due to the lenses at the time the shots might have been softer wide-open, so that's another relationship to understand. There are lots of other parameters that make an image that aren't covered here, but I am finding that getting some kind of reference for texture and contrast fills a very large gap in the landscape for me. The goal isn't to accurately emulate anything, its to develop a keener understanding of the spectrum these things exist in. Where I'm hoping to get to is to be able to develop summaries like: The GF3 is about 8mm at base-ISO, which during the day is equivalent to <some particular F-stop>, so I can put basically any lens sharper than 8mm onto it and the result will still look like 8mm. I can hand-hold this tiny camera with an acceptable level of shake up to about Xmm and it'll still fit the 8mm vintage / amateur / nostalgic vibe. The GF3 is tiny but once you add a lens that is larger than a pancake then I may as well use the GX85, so the only sensible lens is the 15mm F8 bodycap lens. Any other combo doesn't make sense. (This is an actual example I've worked out through testing). The GX85 at base-ISO is equivalent to <film size of some kind.. 16mm? 24mm? 35mm? 50mm?> which requires lenses of <F-stop> during the day and <F-stop> in well-lit night environments. This amount of resolution is suitable for projects with a vibe of <gritty street? vintage? night cinema? high-end commercials? etc?> but not other vibes. (This is still yet to be tested, but once I've worked out the camera then certain lens combinations will reveal themselves to make sense and others will obviously not work) iPhone? Where does it sit in all this? It has huge resolution and very strong codecs (4K Prores HQ or even Prores RAW) but poor DR and even worse ISO performance. GH7. What are the aesthetics I want to create that I can't create with the above (because the above is too limiting). What lenses and shooting styles and approaches are required for these aesthetics? The ultimate thinking is developing "constellations" where there is compatibility / alignment between: a camera, one or more lenses, certain shooting situations and techniques, an image pipeline, and a target aesthetic. I've been working on finding these "constellations" by starting at the camera and working forwards, but also by starting with the end aesthetic and working backwards, and I've identified a number of partial matches, but I think that by relating everything back to motion picture film, I can make more progress fitting the pieces together.

Great posts, sticky this! Your contribution here @kye is priceless and a fine example for everyone, myself included : ) It's always a pleasure to read your thoughts! :- ) Keep going… I’m linking to it elsewhere, BTW ; -) Food for my trainee students. : D

Famously, the greases that Leica used in their old lenses would evaporate and deposit on lens elements over time. It can be cleaned, but the danger of evaporation/depositing is real!

Now I have mostly progressed my GX85 Super-16mm "conversion" I am turning back to a more generalised look at film and The Aesthetic as it pertains to cinema. My next step is to convert my S16 emulation into a 35mm emulation, which shouldn't be that hard as it's the same stuff but just using more of it, so turning down the grain and backing off the softening and size of halation and bloom etc. In order to get my bearings I've collected a bunch of frame grabs from cinema over the decades, and some fascinating things have emerged. Observation One: Film doesn't look like it's gotten cleaner and sharper This is what people say, but when scrolling through the references, you can find things like this from 1952's Bend of the River: and then things like this from 1994s Speed: Obviously you need to be smart about things, so both these shots are likely to be locked off, focus wouldn't be missed, lit naturally and exposed properly, etc. There are lots of shots from Speed that are soft, but it's an action movie so lots of them are probably motion blurred or the action was impacting how well that frame was focused etc. Luckily, License to Kill from 1989 will get us back to safe ground with some nice sharp images: But how are these images possible all the way back then? One thing that comes to mind is that when consulting Kodaks excellent Chronology of Film page, you see that the negative stocks started off as very low sensitivity and increased over time, so it's like comparing the high-ISO of todays cameras to the native ISOs of past cameras. Observation Two: Images look like they've gotten less worse The further back you go, the more you find shots that should be sharp but just aren't. The example above from 1952 was a real outlier, as most of the images from that time looked more like these from 1955s A Bad Day at Black Rock: I suspect the quality of the lenses. All the above looked like wider shots, so maybe that lens wasn't so good (wider lenses are harder to make). Maybe it wasn't at its sharpest F-stop. A lot of the sharpest images across the frame grabs I looked at were close-ups, and I suspect back then a 50mm at it's sharpest aperture and focus distance was a lot better than a wider lens at whatever F-stop and focus distance was required for the scene. Check out these grabs from 1955's The Seven Year Itch: Monroe was at her height of popularity so there's no way she's getting the beat-up lenses from the rental company or a camera team that doesn't know what they're doing. I can't think of any reason these two particular images would be softer than the technology at the time would have allowed. By 1971 things seemed to have gotten a lot more consistent with Diamonds Are Forever: Then if we fast forward to the last few years, we get films like 2024s Trap, which looks quite sharp and even approaching a digital look: but still has films over-emphasis of high-contrast edges: and it's a similar case with 2023's Poor Things which can look quite sharp: but on wides it still has that film look: and it's only when the lenses get crazy that the edges start looking more vintage again: Anyway, lots of food for thought, but it's almost like the sweet spot of film has remained relatively similar in performance but has gotten drastically wider as you can now get images that are that sharp and clean in much less light and across a vastly wider range of lens focal lengths and apertures. Another variable is that prior to digital projection, the final image had to go through many more layers of film than it has to now. Back in the day the image pipeline was something like: negative → interpositive → internegative → release print, rather than just negative -> scan, and it's not like our projection lenses haven't gotten better now too! Let me know if you can think of any more variables that I didn't mention, but it's like we're looking at lenses get better and film be useful in more situations, rather than it get "better".

It actually feels like it's in a softer set of threads, so it's not like metal on metal where it grips and then slides easily, this just requires a certain level of force to get it to move and once moving it requires the same force to keep it moving. I would absolutely never ever put something like WD-40 into an optical assembly! Not only would it potentially dissolve or melt any plastic it comes into contact with, but solvents can 'wick' into things and spread across surfaces (especially bad if those surfaces are on the inside and you can't get at them to clean them), and solvents will evaporate and likely fill every void or space with fumes, which can potentially condense on the surfaces of the lenses and dissolve the coatings etc. I've glued things together before with PVA glue, which is water based, and after the glue had dried (ie, the water in it evaporated) it had condensation all over the sensor and lens etc. I set it on a windowsill in the sun to dry for a few days and it cleared up fine, but I think that was mostly because it was water and that didn't interact in any way with the lens or sensor elements.

Speaking of the dials registering the wrong way, I've mostly noticed that on dials when you rotate them quite slowly, so it seems like trying different speeds might be the best strategy. It's also good to get a decent light source and look over the surface of it by looking at the reflections as you rotate it. I'd be looking for any evidence it's been dropped etc, especially on anything that's meant to move like the buttons or dials etc, but also on the corners. I dropped my GF3 on one of its corners and as it's a metal chassis it just got a little flat spot and wrinkle, but you can feel it if you pay attention.

Defintely check out and test the rotating thumbdial on the back. It's not specific to the FP, but I've bought second hand cameras where those things became glitchy and register as spinning one way when you spin it the other. Or flip flop between left and right if you rotate it too fast. It's probably not going to be an issue, but is the only thing I'd double check on top of what you said already. Maybe also look for damage on the pin connectors used for the EVF by the ports.

In my opinion, you've made it there!

Breaking news. The product is so obvious no-brainer, DJI has decided to declare a legal war against their most serious threat: https://petapixel.com/2026/06/11/dji-is-suing-insta360-for-violating-multiple-osmo-pocket-patents/ The apocalyptic precedent is Kodak v. Polaroid, where Kodak was effectively pushed out of instant photography, but that was a much deeper, ecosystem-level disaster, not just another Tuesday in consumer electronics litigation. DJI has itself been through patent warfare with Autel over drones. And Insta360 recently faced GoPro in a camera-related dispute that did not exactly erase its current lineup from existence. Apple and Samsung spent years throwing patent grenades at each other before settling.

Yes, indeed, but a few third-party brands offer that simple, inexpensive accessory, and it can easily be added to your setup.

looks nice, hides the clipping well

Starting at $770!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Guess they saw GoPro's pricing on the Mission 1 series and said "hold my beer."

Tradingshenzhen also has Vivo x300 Ultra global version. Will buy the Chinese version as difference with global one are small and definitely not worth 500 Euro. There is a lot of ongoing development in video for smartphones. A new application now allows every iPhone from 13 Pro to 17 pro to shoot Log with HEVC 444 codec. Same quality as RAW much smaller files. Amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTDz2yyx_yE

I'm not so sure about that, I have bought several items and most times i try to get as much info as i can to make an informed decision however nothing turns up. Once i have bought the thing and used it then found an issue googling that provides a bunch of responses that weren't available with earlier queries. I suspect my search terms or the wording is inadequate somehow. I will say i haven't had the the issue the my cheaper sb that you have had, my issues have been different... I did just have a quick look at my m42 takumars, they all look to have slightly different length protrusions from the rear. Theres also 4 types of 50mm takumars from takumars to super takumars and a couple of smc takumars. If you have a micrometer we could do some math and figure out the differences. But that wont solve your problem.

I was just wondering if it would make any difference, doing it before or after, but I think I don't know enough about how the debayering is actually done. I suppose that if manufacturers don't share the spectral responses of the channels then no-one can know what the primaries are, so although they'll know the gamma is Linear they won't know the colour space. Therefore if they want to make the image more warm along the neutral axis, they'll be boosting red and green but won't know the correct proportions to move along the right vector (unless they do some testing to determine this). I guess it's a situation where you have all the usual suspects feeding into it, like corporate secrecy and paranoia (in the guise of "competitive advantage") and poor understanding of transparency and the benefits of open standards, but also poor business management and inability to understand how the customer experiences their products. Industrial espionage is also something that happens and there's a balance between being transparent and making it easy for your competitors to undercut you in the market. I think for ARRI the marketplace might be somewhat different, but perhaps not. Then again, ARRI got sold and not all the Japanese manufacturers needed to be put on the market, so maybe their curmudgeonly ways paid off...

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

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!

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.

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!