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I thought that about picking up some FX3’s and my next wedding film would look like a sequel to The Creator. But stupidly, I stuck with my S5ii’s 😒

Recently saw a second hand Sony ZV-E1 on a local online market place. Price was good and I bought it. Great video camera but lacks EVF. Same is true for it's pro oriented brother FX3. Typically those type of cameras are used with external monitor on professional shoots or with camera LCD display only when vlogging. If you like EVFs and want to add one, choice is not great. No external add-on EVF from Sony like the one Sigma FP has. Portkeys LEYE III modified with better loupe is the cheapest one at 450-500 E/$ but I wouldn't call it small. Then Kinefinity EVF for 1250 E/$. Great one but definitely not affordable. There is an obvious gap and need for a relatively small, high quality, affordable external EVFs for cinema / hybrid cameras. I was looking for quite some time on AliExpress for Mini OLED displays (0.39'' to 0.7'') as a building blocks for DIY External EVF. Usually they come with controller board with HDMI input too. Almost bought some components preparing to do some 3D design and printing around them. Surprisingly found an EVF ready to be used. This type of EVFs were designed to be used with industrial instruments and were on AliExpress for quite some time. They all had lower resolution and AV video inputs in the past. For the first time saw one with 1920x1080 resolution on a 0.7'' mini OLED display and HDMI input. Also for the first time this type of EVFs is targeted toward cameras. Price was good too at 230E/$ so I decided to give it a try. Received the EVF few days ago and am happy to report that it is better than expected. Here is the list of things that I like and few that I don't like: What I Like: High resolution 1920x1080 ( equivalent to 6 220 800 dot camera EVF). Cameras EVFs have 4:3 ratio to cover 3:2 frame + some black strips on top and bottom to display information like exposure and other camera settings. The sensor on this one has 16:9 aspect ratio. To get 3:2 ratio the EVF crops the image to 1620x1080. Still great resolution at the level of ~5 mln dots EVFs like the one in Panasonic S1 series. I see in the EVF exactly what I see on the LCD screen of Sony ZV-E1 minus peaking. This is a rather good thing. Solid, all metal outer shell, good, even great quality of craftsmanship. Eye cup is big, made from rubber and fits around the eye much better than traditional camera EVFs. Big and bright screen - has at least 10 levels of brightness that can be changed and controlled manually. Picture inside looks big and bright, quite easy to see. Smooth focusing / diopter correction ring. HDMI cable is integrated, ready to be plugged into a camera. HDMI cable looks to have good quality. No need of additional power or battery. It gets small amount of power (500mA) from HDMI. This is a huge plus for me. Has mounting thread, can easily be mounted on rigs or cages or even on camera hot shoe. Can be tilted and placed in any position you want. Another huge plus. I've simply put it on monitor holder for hot shoe, which is mounted on the camera cage. EVF sits higher and is slightly tilted. It also provides 3rd point of contact and add stability. I am able to hold the camera lower and closer to the chest, which makes it more stable when shooting. Optimal size for me ! Not too small and not too big. Relatively light. Another huge plus. Optics made of glass, look high quality. Great price for what it offers - 200 Euro ($) including shipping and taxes after some Aliexpress discount. Because EVF receives its power from HDMI you don't have to switch it on separately. It has its own ON/OFF switch but if you stop the camera, EVF stops too as it doesn't receive power from HDMI. This is very convenient because it semi integrates with the camera, you don't have to switch it on/off separately. What could be better: While loupe (optics) craftsmanship is high quality, optical schema is probably not the best. Seeing tower end of the frame and in the corners is kind of difficult. In photo mode EVF has to show picture with 3:2 ratio. It crops the display at 1620x1080 to achieve this ratio. Same is true for video. This is great because this way corners of the OLED display are always cropped and dark while picture in the EVF is still high quality and resolution is still great too. So you always look at a picture which is in focus from end to end and you can see the whole of it. Brightness control has many steps but goes only in one direction. Adjusting it when you want to make picture darker or go at the opposite direction is difficult. You have to cycle trough all settings value until arriving before the setting you were a moment ago. Brightness control button is too small and uncomfortable to use. Both are not huge issues because eye cup completely isolates your eye and cuts external light at almost 100%. Once you set the brightness level you rarely need to adjust it. It doesn't have the additional tools a pro external viewfinder usually has - like peaking, False color, zebras, etc. Because it takes power from camera and becomes additional consumer, battery is drained a little faster. Hard to say how much faster. I still prefer this compared to EVF that have their own battery. Picture is not as clear as in a high quality camera viewfinder. Native camera EVF receives video stream that already has noise reduced. Image on HDMI out from the camera is more like RAW video, lots of noise in the shadows at high ISO, some noise even at lower ISO. I guess the same would be with any external EVF, even expensive PRO ones. It's not EVF's fault. I also see sometimes some texture like noise, not sure because of this particular OLED display or because of the HDMI out stream. Overall picture quality is not up to what you see in a camera integrated EVF but it is close. Surprisingly noise in the shadows helps me better judge exposure and use successfully ETTR. I live in a PAL region but camera was set to NTSC to have 24fps. There was a lot of flicker in EVF image even when only natural (sun) light was available. Maybe this can be avoided with some additional camera settings. No such problem when camera is set to PAL and 25fps. Sometimes when adjusting brightness, EVF looses sync and doesn't display any image. Have to switch camera on/off one time and problem is resolved. Not a big deal but it happened once or twice. HDMI cable is integrated. A PRO EVF has just HDMI out socket and you can choose your own HDMI cable. This one can be easily modified IMHO. Size: L=~50mm; Diameter ~43mm; weight 188g with the integrated HDMI cable Overall I like it a lot. There is nothing like it on the market and especially at this price point. I am surprised it took Chinese manufactures so long to figure out that a good market for external EVFs exists. I prefer it over modified Portkey LEYE III because of the smaller size and no need to plug and charge another battery. I may buy another one. 🙂 Now my Sony ZV-E1 has an EVF and a great one too. 🙂 Here is the link: On Aliexpress You can find it on ebay too. Search for V780H EVF Here how it sits on top of Sony ZV-E1

GH7

Few additional findings and notes: Tested it in bright sunlight conditions. It is great. Fully isolates the eye. Because it perfectly isolates the eye from external light, once brightness is adjusted there is no need to change it. Optics actually are better than thought initially. It has several lenses not just one loupe. Most likely metal housing was designed and used for smaller sensors - 0.5''. Current one is bigger at 0.7'' that's why far end corners aren't perfectly visible. I saw this only when was feeding it with signal from my laptop. When shooting with Sony ZV-E1 as already mentioned it displays a 3:2 crop at 1620x1080px and everything is perfectly visible and in focus. one relatively simple modification would be to cut the current cable and solder a female HDMI and probably glue it to the side of the EVF. This would allow to use better or custom HDMI cables. size is just perfect for cameras like Sony ZV-E1 and all other mirrorless cameras, especially when you don't want to use a rig and have just the camera and a lens, probably also a cage as it is in my case. Nice experience. Makes shooting with an EVF really comfortable. The more I use it, the more I like it 😀

Cam Mackey hears your call to action and is now working on it.

Just like the Zhiyun light, they will come with silly fake leather trim and Cam Mackey's name plastered over every square inch of the camera, the strap, the case, etc. They'll also have a filter that you can't turn off that gives everything a yellow tint. The x model will come with a hat and it'll have built-in wheels and a special "X" button that makes the camera itself start doing sick burnouts in the sand. There will also be a special Gerald Undone edition of both cameras that will have a special extra-super-hdr mode that increases the rolling shutter to 41.5ms. On this model, the leatherette will be purple. Finally, there will be a Matt Granger special pocket edition which is the same as a normal edition, but comes with some extra large pocket cargo pants.

I am actually in the camp of ‘gear is great’ and love a chat about kit, but just saying that too many focus on the camera and only the camera above all else as in, “if only I had Camera X, I would make it in this industry”. I’m all for filmmakers large and small to break away from the norms and don’t think kit should be restricted to just the most expensive stuff when some very very ‘low’ end gear has been proven to work just as well and in some cases, has made certain shots possible on the first place. As already referenced, The Creator being shot on FX3’s and The Batman (for certain scenes) using a lens that can be purchased of eBay for under 100. I think the Ronin is such an example but could this show have been made without it? Yes. Will the way this show was shot influence others to emulate? Probably. Will some of them buy or rent a Ronin as a result? Probably, but the result was not solely down to a single piece of kit.

I did a post about it a while back on the OG Pocket where it’s kind of accidentally par focal at f5.6 but maybe on a native Panasonic body it might be properly corrected ? I did a video of it on the P4K to illustrate the functionality of the BM controller app that I wrote and it was so so with that as you can see when it shows the servo zoom function . If you’re looking for a cheap 12-32 then the Panasonic f3.5-5.6 kit lens one is limited functionality wise (no manual focus or aperture) but has OS and is absolutely tiny. I did some stuff (again with the OG Pocket) here. And it also has a companion lens in the same vein in the 35-100mm f4-5.6 to make a tiny two lens kit with a great range.

Picked up a used GH6 and got the LogC firmware and I am loving it. I have a Lens Turbo in FD mount and the underrated 35-105mm Canon lens, but am looking to keep this set up as native as possible. I picked up a 7artisans 24mm 1.4 on the cheap and am pleasantly surprised by the lens, especially since every review I could find of it, trashes it. Since almost every review was with the lens on an aps-c camera, I assume some of the goop is cropped out with m4/3. Anyway, I'm looking for a cheap zoom, probably a Panasonic kit, that is better than it should be. I intend on making it my Spielberg f/5.6 lens, but then I got to wondering if any of the kit lenses are accidentally parfocal? I'd love for the little 14-42 PZ to be that lens, but for some reason I doubt it. I assume I'll eventually give in and get the 12-35mm for the added IBIS, but the point of the camera is to keep it on the cheap. Here are a few frames from the 7artisans in case anyone is interested. These were my first few shots with the lens and the LogC profile. Other than the Arri LUT and an s-curve, no construction equipment was harmed with this set up...

I see you all lurking in the shadows, secretly reading the rumors, too afraid to hit “post”... 😇 In just a few days, the new Lumix FF is set to drop—and rumor has it, we’re talking cinema camera territory. The Canadian YouTubers? Already in Texas and Portugal, probably under NDAs thicker than a RED firmware update. So... are we talking or what? Because let’s face it: after this one, it’s gonna be another six years—and at least one global event worthy of a disaster movie—before Panasonic releases their next cine cam. Built-in ND? Or are we chasing DJI ghosts again? Meanwhile, our cowboy filmmaker has the mystery box chilling on the hood of his pickup, right across from the light he’s testing:

I am going to predict not. I reckon it will be S5ii spec in a Sony FX3 style body and that's about it. Possibly a better built and beefier S9... Interested? 'Mildly curious'. I have literally just finished packing up my van after updating software, resetting all the settings and clocks etc on all my kit ahead of this seasons opening event. I have ZERO interest in changing anything until this season is done and in the bag. Mid-season changes just cause problems!

Does it exist a camera whose image technically falls apart nowadays? 😉

Published by Canon (JP 2025-040484) a month ago... «To provide a compact imaging optical system that’s wide and fast.» The prototype coming (or is it mere proof of concept for patent purposes?) would be for a 24mm f/0.7 from those white papers announcing they have worked out «a long-standing challenge in lens design» but according to Canon rumors, any RF f/1.0 lens is then just arriving around the corner, very likely.

This is a topic that comes up in this forum frequently. I don't think you'll get any argument from the majority of people here that there are a number of sub-$10,000 cameras that will get you really close to Arri quality. But for a majority of Hollywood productions, they're not reaching for this camera. As I said in another message above, it's extremely polarizing among people who have used it. If your use case is shooting an hour-long oner and you can run 14 takes of it to choose your favorite, it may be the best cinema camera on the market. If you're shooting nature, it's a pretty awful camera - lidar autofocus doesn't work that far out and the focus motor can only go about an inch past the lens mount, not to mention that balancing a lens longer than 130mm or so will definitely put you over the 4th axis' weight capacity. If your use case is putting the camera on sticks and using Arri Master Primes, it may be the absolute worst camera on the market. I'm not even sure that they could be mounted, even using the Flex + a cage to add rods. It's a really cool niche camera that is finding success (and will continue to find success, I think) for specific use cases in Hollywood... and in my own short films too. But if people at Arri are losing any sleep, it's not for the DJI chicken head camera.

LX10 in photo raw is very nice. If it had 10bit HLG for video, it would be a perfect pocket camera, even moreso with an evf. I don't enjoy slippery phones for taking images, billions of people do though. I love the 24 to 70 F1.4-2.8 zoom on the LX btw. A 24 to 50 zoom coupled with a 1 or 1/1.5" sensor would be nice and a mechanical focus wheel as well. Afaik only a few phones offer the latter. Is that right? Are these your shots? @Andrew Reid Nice images and colours. @Cosimo Colors remind me of GH2 palette when in use of skilled hands. Old school digi vintage look by oldschool 8bit masters like Martin Walgren or Andrew Reid.:) That reminds me how much of imagelovers GH2 users were when creating their pieces. I barely find any good stuff shot on recent cameras. The destruction of vimeo didn't help that I guess.

I have said before on here and I'll maintain it, DJI's taking one of the smartest plays here. Especially on mid-high end productions, regardless of any other factors, it's going to stay primarily Arri. If you make a traditional camera and try to compete, you'll have a huge uphill fight. On the other hand, if you make a camera that takes something that's a pain in the ass, whether it's Arri or another decent camera system, and your thing makes it really easy, your camera might get used in parts of films that are shot on Arri or Burano or similar. Putting cameras on a gimbal is legitimately annoying. Wanna have that gimbal-based camera track subjects? Time for hacks like putting a second camera on the gimbal and needing to use multiple tools to track and monitor. One of the Ronin 4D's real superpowers is integrated tracking based on what the camera is seeing. Today, a friend and I shot some tests with mine while between blocks at a local film festival. In the first, I experimented with an "impossible" shot where I tracked her walking and then had her pause while I pulled the camera back, planning to do a faux dolly zoom by reframing in post. It's imperfect, but with some practice and a less ambitious distance, I think it could play. For the second, I recently got a Hydra Alien and wanted to see how it would work. My car is a worst-case scenario for rollers - the Wrangler has an extremely stiff suspension. Yet, after 40 minutes of stumbling around with putting the Hydra on my car for the first time ever, I mounted up the camera and had my friend drive while I operated. There are some micro-vibrations, certainly, and I might experiment with the alternate/softer shock plate, but it's kind of amazing how turning on autofocus + tracking on a random car on the road resulted in such great footage. The last shot was to see if I could do a Tarantino-style shot spinning around the subject. If doing this on set, I'd want to set up something to ensure a consistent distance to the subject(s), but similar to the others, given the results after doing no planning or setup, the results are a bit unbelievable for just getting to the parking lot and saying "Hey, I bet we could do this. Let's try!"

Thank you for your extensive reply. I was basing my info on the official Ronin blurb, as well as both the Adorama and B&H sites. Nowhere does it say you need all these additional elements clearly to make the most out of the cheapest kit. That's exactly the reason these gear-head forums need to exist. It's very easy to get tangled up by a barrage of technical data without the prior knowledge.

That's simply not true. The focus motor is an additional $270 purchase. The 6K version of the Ronin 4D also doesn't come able to shoot ProRes RAW or 4444 XQ. For that, you'll need to add the ProSSD mount ($200) and a 1TB ProSSD ($800). For most MF lenses, you'd also need to buy a mount other than the one included with the camera - I haven't seen many DJI DL mount to anything else adapters. A Leica M mount costs $300 new. Used prices on most of the above are about 2/3 of new cost. The 8K version of the camera includes the mount and a ProSSD, but (if I remember right) not the motor. And while almost none of the cameras that I mentioned include ProRes RAW (except the S1R Mark II), a majority of them are capable of shooting raw (many of them in a format that works in Resolve without conversion (additional $80 fee for Raw Convertor license if PRR). For those that don't, you can buy a used Ninja V or Video Assist 12G for $200-500. For stabilization, you can add a $400 gimbal - though compared with using the R4D, it will be much more of a pain in the ass. On the other hand, most of the other cameras can support lenses weighing more than about 1000g which is about all the R4D can support if you want to use the 4th axis. External 5" screen? If you don't already have one sitting around, you can get one of equal or better quality to the R4D screen for about $200-300. Any of those other cameras can also be set up in such a way that they will be small/light/unintrusive. That's simply not possible with the R4D. The closest you'll come is the Flex unit which costs $900 and then you'll be in a backpack ($200-300 if you buy the official PGY Tech one) and still carrying a pretty big/obtrusive camera. The main advantage of the Ronin 4D is the integrated 4th axis which eliminates a lot of footstep motion and helps smooth things out on a car mount, etc. In my experience, it's better than using an EasyRig with the springy arm or a ReadyRig Nimbus - and can be used with either for even more smoothness. The second advantage of the R4D is that everything is tightly integrated. If you get a Gimbal with subject tracking, that'll be on a separate screen and is usually driven by a second camera rather than through the camera's lens. If you get a DJI Focus Pro or other Lidar-based manual focuser, that'll also be driven through a second camera and another screen. With the R4D, you can draw a box around a subject and turn on AF and when you start tracking, it will do so uncannily well... about 95% of the time, and randomly lose the subject the other 5%. It's a great single operator camera - but again, it's far from the device I'd choose as my only camera. If I could have only one, I'd take something else for sure. It would be my first choice for my second camera, though... hands down.

Further north and more nuclear power station adjacent. Or further west if the S you are thinking of is somewhere on the east coast.

It will be available in any colour you like as long as its brown.

Just got the LP-E6P battery and it make R5C much less stressful lol, extra 30min of recording is quite nice so don't have constantly worry about the battery life.

Short answer: no. Whole mounting part can be changed but it will require skills and experience to create and make a new one

It's so easy to focus on the camera as the single most important element and if some folks wish to believe that's what it's all about, best of luck to them `and their lives within the comments section on YouTube. It's not the camera. It's not the lens. It's not the grade. It's not the lighting. It's not the budget. It's not the creative talent. It's all of these elements and that is what a camera body is, just one single element, but alone it is nothing.

Well, the 8K sensor for the X9 is generally acknowledged as superior to the 6K one and it's (as far as almost anybody can tell) the same sensor that is used in the Panasonic S1R Mark II, a $3,300 camera. That camera compares favorably to the EOS R5 without being enormously better. You can get a used EOS R5 for around $2,000. Having both an EOS R5 and both versions of the X9 (having bought the 6K and upgraded), I can safely say that the image from the EOS R5 is pretty close to the X9. Plus if we're talking about shows on Netflix, Chimp Empire (recommended to be by another forum member here) is gorgeous. That one was shot on the Canon C70. Someone listed one in the local Facebook buy/sell camera group today for about $3,500. The Creator was shown on theater screens everywhere. It was shot on the FX3. The Sony ZV-E1 which is available used for about $1,700 uses the same sensor. In a recent short film contest, a film that I shot tied for best cinematography - mine was shot on a combo of Komodo-X and C70. The one that tied it? Shot on a Panasonic S5, a camera that is available used for about $800-900. Even if I cared about awards, I wouldn't be upset about the tie - the other film looked great on the big screen. So... I'm not really sure anymore what point you're trying to make about the Ronin here. Yes, it was used for a Netflix show. Other high-end prosumer cameras have also been used for Netflix shows before so this isn't really novel. Nearly every camera on the market right now is superior technically to the Red One M-X (also available for under $2,000 on the used market) - the camera used to shoot films like The Social Network, Ché, and District 9, all of which were shown on cinema screens worldwide. All of this means it's a great time to be a filmmaker, but that's hardly unique to this one camera. 😃

For full frame, 6K and various flavors of ProRes that's a very very small number of cameras. Even more so if the camera AND lens totals around US$10k (the 32mm Cooke lens used for the entire show costs US$4,500 brand-new; the 6K version of the camera US5k)

Man, my 50 years are starting to show. I now remember all of this. At least I didn't technically quote you to you. And I also remember how fantastic your focus module works. I need to stop buying cameras and lenses and send my money to you.

If just one of these ^ happens, it would be ossum 🫡

i mean the fairly obvious answer to the question is quality of light. other than the second to last set just generally being too dark and contrasty, you can just tell by the highlights hitting the road and the sharp shadows that you're dealing with very hard light. during sunset, the sun becomes a way softer source, which is why everything suddenly looks way nicer. compare your references: Perfect Days (which is btw set in Tokyo lol): the first still has fairly harsh sunlight, but that creates that fun tree shadow on the toilet. all of the other stills you chose from the movie are during overcast weather where the sun is naturally diffused and gives you a more low con look. The last medium close still from Kill Bill is a great example tbh. Do you think it looks natural? Because to me that super harsh light hitting the background dunes and car certainly doesn't, if the light that's hitting the actor is modified to such a softened and bounced back degree. the matrix: tiny bits of hard light as edge lights around the character, but everything else is lit super soft, and some intended contrast ratio. same thing with the killer. Super soft first still, the virtual paris background has some harshness but our character is in silhouette in the second, and the last one is mainly soft, but has a hard edge light on the side. i like this one, but i dont like how hot the highlights are on the right side. i would either try to power window the exposure down there, or use a diffusion filter for blowing these highlights out and making them feel a bit magical. you can see some great examples of that in wong kar wai's films. up the exposure and lower contrast slightly on that second to last set, try to power window whatever's distracting to curate the viewer, and they'll look pretty decent. this is what i can do with about 10 minutes of work by putting your thumbnails in resolve. basic fixes for legibility, but still going for contrast:

If the rumor’s true and they’re dropping two new cameras, I’m not even that fussed about how they differ from each other. I just want to know how they plan to make them stand out from the S5II and S5IIX. How are they gonna explain that to customers? Just the 60p crop? Seriously, how do they expect all these models to survive in a market that’s getting tighter by the minute? And it’s not like they’re Canon, Nikon, or Sony. Beats me, feels like a magic trick at this point.

Looks to still be mirrorless/photo form factor. That would be fine with me if the EVF tilted and there were NDs. Having the grip rotate would be nice too.

The irony being that that 80 inch TV has frame interpolation and computational image enhancement engaged on it by default. Anyone on this forum have people in their lives that bother to adjust their "smart" tvs beyond accessing their channels? I'm guessing not many. Home TV sets are now literally built to destroy the original image. And here are all of us hobbyist technicians trying to maintain the most pristine IQ. Might be an Exercise in futility.

It's like a wedding where the fella wears a dark suit and the bride, a white frock. In bright sunlight. And insist on doing everything outdoors, early to mid-afternoon. Welcome to my world 😏 😉

Visited Jikjisa Temple yesterday, which was founded in the year 418, and looks straight out of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Everywhere you turn there are compositions that make you gasp. The main challenge with full sun like this is the high contrast scenes, and then grading them so they don't look faded and also don't have half the image almost while or half of it pitch black. This one has slightly more contrast than I'm happy with, but it gives you a sense of the look things start to drift into. When I'm grading them for real, I think I'll likely use large power-windows and pull things down or up using those. As a reference, here's the kind of shot I'm talking about where the contrast ratios are just overwhelming. The information is all in the files, so I'm capturing it all, I just have to pull it out.

That general blackout of a couple of days ago reaching two-digit millions of people for half a day was creepy enough to say the least... First time ever in half of a century of life. We are nothing without modern life or too little. Looked to be part of a movie. Don't want to know what genre is. EAG :- )

This seems to be the clearest frame of it. It's not really giving much away, though.

I have one on the way after looking at the image samples here: https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_14_ultra-review-2683p5.php The 75mm F1.8 lens in particular... Like some of the famous Zeiss Distagons it has a floating element to get close. With such a fast aperture in combination with the close-focussing abilities make it look incredible. The 14 Ultra in fact has two such lenses, a 75mm and 120mm. And the main imager is 1" Which also in the close-to-mid focus range has a very shallow DOF. I have lighted tweaked that last one in Pixelmator Pro, the JPEGs have a surprising amount of chonkiness to play with. Then there's the RAW capabilities... With Motion Cam Pro there's the RAW Cinema DNG recording. Within Xiaomi's own camera app is the expert RAW mode for stills, with Leica's colour tuning. This allows you to completely turn off any noise reduction and sharpening... one of the main caveats of modern smartphones. I think at £600 used this is the real deal. The 15 Ultra doesn't change things very much, indeed to go any better would require a big leap. We're talking at least Micro Four Thirds size sensor instead of 1", and F1.4 maximum aperture. And to make this pocketable is going to require a lot of physics bending. There are some other options like the Oppo Find 7 Ultra, and Vivo X100 Pro which have a large 1/1.4" sensor on the telephoto lens, 200MP. But the lens quality itself is a bit compromised as a result. The Vivo X100 Pro has the Zeiss modes, Zeiss lens simulations, even RAW video built into the main camera app I believe. But I find Xiaomi's image processing with Leica to be the best of the bunch. Looking forward to when it turns up from CEX this weekend with the photography kit which gives it ability to use filters and a proper shutter release button! I think for street photography requiring stealth, 3 lenses in one pocket and very high speed, this is a better choice than a proper camera, X100 VI or Leica Q. The ultimate shot getter?

I see your contax 85mm 1.4 and raise you a super takumar 85mm 1.9 Very windy day here. No good for videography, i did get few nice images with the takumar however i struggle a bit with the focus peaking and it wasn't much fun, with the wind about. So i swapped to a 60mm oly lens as i wanted a comparison of how both lenses did sunstars. The next few images are the oly 60mm macro lens. I massaged the exposure to suit my preferences, however the colours are sooc

I think that last set is nicer, although i can't tell you why. i know its night and i expect it darker. I'm not entirely sure that its being down to night is the only reason they are nicer. You've done something different in your approach to grading or the initial video i think.

Just had a look at some stills from it, and yes, much darker than my other references. I looked through all the John Wick franchise, as well as some other action series too, and one way they can make these things all look dark is just have them all set in night-exteriors or interiors without visible daylight. I think there's lots of tricks like this. For example, I read an article on how movies often look "larger than life" which has many factors, but one was that there were almost three times the number of shots that were taken below eye-level as those at or above eye-level, so most of the movie was literally looking up at the characters.

Nah, they will pass, but then these are night shots rather than day so would expect them to be darker 😝 I re-watched The Batman yesterday. Last time was big screen with French subtitles 🥸 but at home on this occasion and that movie I think is a great example of ‘dark’ for reference.

Pretty stable and even with the post stab, not a huge amount of cropping going on 👍 I'd say FF Lumix is about the same level with S5ii.

Edited and uploaded the stabilisation test video. Test of how well the GH7 and 14-140mm combination is able to stabilise hand-held footage. GH7 was using the Boost IS mode, which is a more stable version of IBIS (but it doesn't do electronic IS, that's a different mode, so this mode has no crop). My hands were more shaky than normal when filming this, and the first shot was standing up without leaning on anything, and the second shot of the hotel was sitting down. Results aren't perfect, but they're good enough for my purposes.

I don't mind at all, I mentioned it partly to raise the topic as I'm not sure about it. What I need to do is to get a bunch of references and study how they distribute the DR of the images into the final grade, so I can get a sense of things. A bit like how cinematographers get an understanding of levels and ratios, using false colour or a light meter. I pulled a few reference stills from the movie Perfect Days which is set in Seoul to compare: and some from Kill Bill vol 2, as it's a bit more contrasty: and The Matrix, because it's got that feeling of the matrix not being a real place, which gets to the idea that Seoul is like a world unto itself: or The Killer has quite a dark grade to things: There's something about the rich dark areas, and having rich dark colours that I'm chasing, but obviously I'm yet to work out what it is and how to get it. Works in progress though!

A few more from today, in Hongdae. Even less grading than yesterday, but trying to lean into the contrast and deep shadows more.

It's been forever since I've read up on it, but I'm pretty sure it was used because they were limited in how long they had access to locations. It was also an extremely ambitious film with a small budget. I wouldn't call using it to film an entire episode "very sparingly." But the point I'm making is, for the better part of 25 years people have been talking about how the industry is going to change every time "attainable" cameras are used to create a notable piece of work. "It's going to disrupt the industry." It never does, though. It's not that I disagree with your main point; most people wouldn't know the difference between something shot on a GH5 and an Alexa, assuming it's competently made. It's not like the millions of people watching the season finale of House that was filmed with a 5D Mark II noticed a difference. But that's not the reason most of the industry refuses to switch over to these more affordable, but very capable cameras.

Why stop with spraypaint? Hose that sucker down with line-x and never worry again about scratches!

That is some stability Kye! Various Netflix and other productions should take note; I hate all this super handheld jittery stuff.

I think personally that while I can make the 24-70 & 70-200 combination to work for me, a lot of the time something in-between would be useful, as I mentioned before, in portraiture. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were still a lot of lenses with intermediate ranges such as 50-135/3.5, 75-150/3.5, 35-135/3.5-4.5, 35-105/2.8 etc. but somehow these disappeared and standard zooms started at 24 mm and telezooms at 70 mm, 80 mm, or 100 mm. In portraiture a range that is between the two (24-70 and 70-200) would be ideal. I think the reason why 24-70 became the standard "pro" zoom is that when the first digital SLRs came with 1.3x, 1.5x, and 1.6x sensors they needed the standard zoom to have shorter focal lengths, so instead of a 28-105 or 28-80 they would make a 24-70 and 24-105. Of course, then came lenses like the 17-55/2.8 specifically for 1.5x / 1.6x sensors. But anyway the 24-70 range stuck and now some photographers would consider a zoom that starts at 28 mm too limiting even "useless". This I don't agree with, and I'd be happy to have an in-between range zoom such as 50-150 or similar. To me this sounds a very practical lens and not at all weird. However, the f/2.0 maximum aperture does make it a bit big and heavy and I can see the objective is to replace primes for some users. If it becomes popular, perhaps they can make an f/2.8 zoom with a similar range. The f/2.0 makes the lens expensive as well. I notice a 4600 EUR initial price in Finland (incl. 25.5% VAT) vs. $3900 (not including VAT) at B&H. This seems absurd considering the tariff situation, it's like they slapped on the price increase from the tariffs on both regions instead of just where it is actually applied. I think it's completely unrealistic to expect most European customers to even consider this lens at a 4600 EUR price point. I would expect the price to fall rather quickly if Sony wants to sell these lenses.

Picked up a Contax Zeiss 85mm 1.4, my first 85mm, and I cannot believe I have neglected this focal length for so long. Absolutely loving it so far.