DPC

How about a thread of resources pointing to "frugal" films. Finished pieces made with smartphones, consumer camcorders, you get the picture. Not tests. Films. Because that what excites me most at the moment.  Here's a few pointers from me. You know how the internet works, I don't have to baby you with links ;-) Google : Ruslan Pelykh Leica, Boat Magazine iPhone, BFM TV Paris iPhone, Filmic Pro's video portfolio (Dark Waves especially), Tangerine (but everybody must have seen that by now), #mojo. My intuition says it's time to look at whats getting finished, broadcast, shared, simply but beautifully and take inspiration from that. Thoughts? Because 72 pages on how to get the best out of the GX80 / 85 just isn't right ;-)

How about a thread of resources pointing to "frugal" films. Finished pieces made with smartphones, consumer camcorders, you get the picture. Not tests. Films. Because that what excites me most at the moment.  Here's a few pointers from me. You know how the internet works, I don't have to baby you with links ;-) Google : Ruslan Pelykh Leica, Boat Magazine iPhone, BFM TV Paris iPhone, Filmic Pro's video portfolio (Dark Waves especially), Tangerine (but everybody must have seen that by now), #mojo. My intuition says it's time to look at whats getting finished, broadcast, shared, simply but beautifully and take inspiration from that. Thoughts? Because 72 pages on how to get the best out of the GX80 / 85 just isn't right ;-)

How about a thread of resources pointing to "frugal" films. Finished pieces made with smartphones, consumer camcorders, you get the picture. Not tests. Films. Because that what excites me most at the moment.  Here's a few pointers from me. You know how the internet works, I don't have to baby you with links ;-) Google : Ruslan Pelykh Leica, Boat Magazine iPhone, BFM TV Paris iPhone, Filmic Pro's video portfolio (Dark Waves especially), Tangerine (but everybody must have seen that by now), #mojo. My intuition says it's time to look at whats getting finished, broadcast, shared, simply but beautifully and take inspiration from that. Thoughts? Because 72 pages on how to get the best out of the GX80 / 85 just isn't right ;-)

Here in Greece there are no contracts, except working for television, which again, there is no health insurance.
People believe that a guy with a dSLR is a video professional, and that attitude has passed to the professional level.
The contract I have now is for a documentary series. In the begining, they were considering not using a sound man (=me!), nor a field producer.
Then, they talked to me about sound, the budget for sound was atrocious, but I cut a deal working for less hours and I didn't want to be excluded from TV for the first time after coming back from my Bachelor of Arts in Film amd Video.
Then I learn from a producer inside the production company (it is a media group with TV stations in the while Balkans, press, music production companies, exclusive contract with Vice, e.t.c a huge organisation for East-Southern Europe terms) the company that took the first contract with the cable TV station (different media groups, by the way) willing to earn as much as possible, tried to do it without a field producer ("we will makenthe calls from the office"), a sound man ("you can do it with one wireless mic"), no lights ("with a couple leds you will be fine), and 2 Canon 5DmarkIII !!!
When first conducted me were like "can you do a bit of field production too? You will get a few hundrends of euros per episode and we will be ok", I refused, because there was no possible in anyway, we found a very good and experiences producer (that earns more money than me eventually!), and we go with a full van, dedos, kino flos, a JVC LS300+the 5Diiis, a full sound kit and most of these for free.
I also help with lighting, do a little sound post and the DP does color corection for free.
You know what they asked us yesterday? "Can we do it 5.1 sound, and why we don't have 10 bit image?"!
Right now, in the whole Greek market there are 2 good productions with 5-7 times our budget, and they are really doing a great job. The last 4 years were none such productions.
Imagine what is going on with the small and uneducated clients. It is a massacre!
I am starting to sell extra virgin oil of the Koroneiki varity in Europe, to bring some money to the family budget!
I learned today that a guy(that I know) does BOTH video and photos in weddings, and he charges 300-600 euros for photo/video, ALONE! One friend does photography lessons, and there are 3 middle aged women, never hold a camera in their life "learning the basics to do video in weddings", and in his class, from the 15-20 people, almost all are going to work in weddings!
Today I talked with a band for an event coverage and a small clip in the end, and they told me they paid the last 3 years, from 80-200€!
It has become a hobby, and I am working since 1999, my first jobs were in film, have 1 bachelor and 2 diplomas, I feel I am overqualified!

So, trying to function as professional in the industry is more about people skills than not.  At least that's been my experience at the level I'm at.  No one's ever going to hire me because I have a craft level that's superior to those in the upper echelon of film making.  I'm just not that guy.
Which leaves me in a precarious situation --as most of the time the work I'm doing has been quick boutique "one-offs" wherein I go in for a day or two, gather footage, then take it back to the homestead and edit it together.  Rather simple, small and fun stuff to do.  Nothing special about that.  12 year olds have better equipment and do the same.
The tough situation I'm facing is that my ability to tolerate a difficult client has diminished.  Maybe it's a sign of getting older?
This is no small thing.  Seriously, the desire to coddle a client has seemingly disappeared.   For instance, I'm working on a documentary thing where the client is so maddeningly absent minded, she has forgotten about shoots, called me in at the last minute to locations, sent me on location for shoots that are irrelevant to the product, has failed to produce shoots that offer any useable coverage, won't stop talking (about herself) to the documentary subjects on location to allow clean b-roll of said subject, doesn't seem aware that words from an interview require some sort of image to cover the endless droning of a talking head, refuses provide interview (trans)scripts with accurate time-code, etc, etc, etc.... 
Basically, she's kind of incompetent (from my point of view) to direct documentaries.  Nice person, but her choices and process are maddeningly pathetic.  Nevertheless, she's paid me a flat rate to do all this stuff for her.
Aha!  Therein lies the problem.  
Never, ever, work with a bad client on a large project for a flat rate. --AND ALWAYS assume first time out of the gate, no matter how sweet they are, that you're getting in bed with a potentially difficult client.  You'll end up being exploited and resentful; resentful to your client and resentful to yourself for agreeing to such ridiculous terms to begin with.
Anyway, that's my advice.  How to y'all cope with a shitty client?  I drink lots and lots of wine and get fatter.  You? 

I suggest you start shooting your subject and then decide what extra lenses you need (I bet they will be wide angles - you will need at least some establishing shots). For interiors / architecture 25mm or 50mm lenses etc are only really going to be good for details. And I wouldn't get too hung up on moving from f 1.8 to f 1.4. that's only 2/3 of a stop difference and you'll only be able to take advantage of that if you don't need depth of field. If I had just one lens for MFT it would be the Tokina 11-16 + a Metabones Speedbooster.  

Test everything beforehand. Fully exposed high ISOs are not as much of a problem as underexposed lower ones.

Not sure what a "unaltered raw photo" means. As a general rule, the less data your image contains, the nearer you want to be to your final result in camera. 
 

Standard Panasonic picture profiles are not designed to turn into 'flat mode' and if you dial down contrast this might give the appearance of more dynamic range (as the lows get a lift) but actually it does nothing to increase the dynamic range of the final graded material. You're just crushing the blacks back down again in post and reducing the tonality of the image in-camera, less colour information due to less contrast in an 8bit image.

Back testing profiles, and still not happy with my best effort so far which was
Natural 0, -5, -3, -3, Highlights -3, Shadows +3
and still too contrasty for my taste,
I tried setting iDynamic to Standard rather than Off and was very surprised with the improvement.
I'm sharing this because conventional wisdom is to leave this kind of thing off and someone else might like to try it.
This is NOT interesting video. Just walking around the block, pointing at "difficult" lighting situations...
 

Back testing profiles, and still not happy with my best effort so far which was
Natural 0, -5, -3, -3, Highlights -3, Shadows +3
and still too contrasty for my taste,
I tried setting iDynamic to Standard rather than Off and was very surprised with the improvement.
I'm sharing this because conventional wisdom is to leave this kind of thing off and someone else might like to try it.
This is NOT interesting video. Just walking around the block, pointing at "difficult" lighting situations...
 

Back testing profiles, and still not happy with my best effort so far which was
Natural 0, -5, -3, -3, Highlights -3, Shadows +3
and still too contrasty for my taste,
I tried setting iDynamic to Standard rather than Off and was very surprised with the improvement.
I'm sharing this because conventional wisdom is to leave this kind of thing off and someone else might like to try it.
This is NOT interesting video. Just walking around the block, pointing at "difficult" lighting situations...
 

Back testing profiles, and still not happy with my best effort so far which was
Natural 0, -5, -3, -3, Highlights -3, Shadows +3
and still too contrasty for my taste,
I tried setting iDynamic to Standard rather than Off and was very surprised with the improvement.
I'm sharing this because conventional wisdom is to leave this kind of thing off and someone else might like to try it.
This is NOT interesting video. Just walking around the block, pointing at "difficult" lighting situations...
 

Andrew, thank you for explaining why we don't see any commercial work from you here. You don't need to justify your choices and this doesn't make your opinions any less interesting. I'm still a little confused as why anyone who doesn't have to would spend quite so much money on cameras, though. Outside of what I might need for jobs, what excites me most at the moment is what can be done using very simple equipment... My ambition is to own as little as possible.
As far as your test goes, it looks to me as if the portraits were made in direct, late in the day, autumn sunlight.  In my experience, this kind of light is treacherous : it's attractive to the eye but I've never managed to use it for a flattering picture of a human being. At the least, you would really need to put a big silk between the subject and the light source. Even then, colour correction is hard because the light is so very orange. Whatever camera is used, it would be difficult to make an attractive "normal" image in this situation.
When I test cameras, my first concern, before creating any "look" is whether I can get an image that reproduces the scene as I (or my client) have seen it. This is my starting point. I pay careful attention to not losing information in the shadows and highlights because clipping of either does not correspond to normal vision. Being able to film in lower light than I can actually see in doesn't interest me much in most cases ; below a certain level of illumination we just have to accept that we're in the dark. Often I find myself looking from the camera to the scene, asking myself "Does it really look like that?".
Similarly, I want a camera that lets me get my picture sharp before I worry about "filmic" shallow depth of field. 
Once I establish a "normal", baseline image, then I can think about tweaking it towards a particular effect.
This is why the images you posted to accompany your article made me react so strongly ;  because they weren't  the best to show the relative capabilities of the cameras concerned. As an example, wedding videos are generally not very interesting, but they can be informative in the sense that we have critical skin tones, important blacks and whites, low light, some action. You can learn a lot about how a camera behaves from watching them. Holiday movies, less so.
Finally, with a budget of 6000 €, I would think (more than) twice about buying just one camera (for my purposes). However good, one camera will only give you one point of view. I would rather have several cheaper cameras with, perhaps, a slightly less good image and have more angles to edit from that one single point of view. My Sonys are useful here because it's easy to match cheaper and more expensive models.
As to the projected life of the Canon, I suspect that within the next couple of years we're going to see more and more 4K delivery. This means that the possibility of reframing in post (my main use for 4K) will be reduced. Higher resolution cameras will be introduced and lower prices to compensate for this, limiting somewhat the resale value of 4K cameras. That's just my prediction.
But what's really got me thinking this week, far beyond high-end camera tests and choices, was being on a job with Canon and Sony shooters and also a young reporter from a French TV station that has equipped its journalists with iPhones   . His broadcast piece was maybe not "filmic" but he could work with a speed and discretion that no one else could match, Canon or Sony... 

Andrew, do you film professionally? It's just that you speak authoritatively but I don't think I've seen anything other than what you post here. To me the skin tones (especially on the train trip) look pretty awful. No client I have would ever approve that. The blacks are crushed to death and faces are red and over-saturated.

On my very carefully calibrated monitor the embedded holiday video looks bad. I don't think I need to upgrade.

Andrew, do you film professionally? It's just that you speak authoritatively but I don't think I've seen anything other than what you post here. To me the skin tones (especially on the train trip) look pretty awful. No client I have would ever approve that. The blacks are crushed to death and faces are red and over-saturated.

Andrew, do you film professionally? It's just that you speak authoritatively but I don't think I've seen anything other than what you post here. To me the skin tones (especially on the train trip) look pretty awful. No client I have would ever approve that. The blacks are crushed to death and faces are red and over-saturated.

Andrew, do you film professionally? It's just that you speak authoritatively but I don't think I've seen anything other than what you post here. To me the skin tones (especially on the train trip) look pretty awful. No client I have would ever approve that. The blacks are crushed to death and faces are red and over-saturated.

Richard Bugg, I asked because I'm interested to know who's opinions I'm reading. It's getting a bit weird having so many of them and so little work to show. Apparently Andrew owns the camera and says "What a shame the 1D X Mark II is a pros-only affair." That made me ask. It can't be very hard to answer. It is relevant in that professionals have a skill set that clients are willing to pay for and the most to lose if their judgement turns out to be wrong. 

Richard Bugg, I asked because I'm interested to know who's opinions I'm reading. It's getting a bit weird having so many of them and so little work to show. Apparently Andrew owns the camera and says "What a shame the 1D X Mark II is a pros-only affair." That made me ask. It can't be very hard to answer. It is relevant in that professionals have a skill set that clients are willing to pay for and the most to lose if their judgement turns out to be wrong. 

Andrew, do you film professionally? It's just that you speak authoritatively but I don't think I've seen anything other than what you post here. To me the skin tones (especially on the train trip) look pretty awful. No client I have would ever approve that. The blacks are crushed to death and faces are red and over-saturated.

I agree with DPC and Gerbert Floor. There is no commercial potential in this footage, as it is.

I kinda agree with DPC, that comparison is really weird. I agree that canon has great colors, but that profile with crushed blacks is pretty extreme. I mean, it's ok as a 'look' I guess, but not really something you can deliver to every client.
 
I'm also pretty curious about work or a reel, this site (especially the forum) is a great resource, but your opinions can be quite harsh and I don't see the actual knowledge and creative skills to back it up, except for a few music vids from a long time ago. This is not meant as a bash or to bully you, but I think it's too much spec talk and not enough filming.

Andrew, do you film professionally? It's just that you speak authoritatively but I don't think I've seen anything other than what you post here. To me the skin tones (especially on the train trip) look pretty awful. No client I have would ever approve that. The blacks are crushed to death and faces are red and over-saturated.