Policar

Not all of us are trying to make spy videos of our neighborhood coffee shop.

Apple already makes the world's most-used camera, the iPhone. I think it produces a great image for what it is, great color and the HDR mode rocks for stills.
You still need a crew to use an Alexa properly (less so an Amira, which even does grading in-camera if you want) but it's definitely built for luddites and to fit into existing workflows, more like the G7 than the AF100 I suppose (having never used either). So I think these brand preferences boil down more to what approach you take than what offers what for the money. 

I apologize for any perceived attitude. I'm a camera enthusiast who still shoots as a hobby (I used to shoot tv professionally), but now that I'm working in post I get to work on some even higher end projects with the most cutting edge camera systems and lenses. And I wanted to share some of the latest news that I was incredibly excited about as well as my experiences with different camera systems. Every day I' working with Alexa footage with the highest end lenses or Varicam footage and with the highest end lenses, which is especially fun for me since I'd shot with almost every camera system previously, but I get an even better impression working with the files in post and interfacing with people on the cutting edge and learning their preferences and prognostication. And I never got to the level on set where I could shoot Ultra Primes next to Aluras one day and then C Series anamorphic the next, but I do get to work with that footage now on a daily basis. But I get that with this (and my confidence in the people around me and what they say–not in my own opinions, which I try not to mix in and apologize for my misunderstanding regarding the rec2020 color space*) isn't welcome here because of the perceived arrogance, and I won't be posting here anymore.
*That said, Canon's white papers do indicate a camera that fills most of the gamut (which naturally includes imaginary colors the eye can't see and so arguably needn't be filled) and we've seen before that a camera needn't resolve a full "4k" to be 4k compliant and yet Netflix does exclude some cameras from common use that claim a 4k spec. So there is a middle ground, and I believe this is where the divide falls. The advice I'm hearing from the top brass at top labs is that 15 stops and support for high bit depth high bit rate rec2020 will be what producers ask for from a camera when shooting HDR. Canon had HDR in mind specifically when developing the C300 Mk II and C700. That said, I will have to trust you that the GH4 can also fill almost the entire rec2020 gamut as I have not read the white papers and my only experience with that camera is without an external recorder or VLOG, where it still performs well for the price. As regards the 12 stop spec in HDR10 for acquisition, that is news to me, and interesting to consider given that Dolby (where I consulted for free simply due to my enthusiasm for the product; I have friends with financial interests, but I don't have one) is looking toward much higher numbers.

The HDR acquisition spec among those developing next generation standards is 15 stops, though, and rec2020. Not 12 stops and rec709. I've used the GH4 and it simply doesn't have that much highlight latitude. I have friends at Dolby, Technicolor, Deluxe, CO3, etc. developing the next-gen HDR grading systems and they're all operating under the 15 stop spec. To reveal my sources more specifically would break NDA, but I know for a fact that Canon targeted 15 stops as it was considered baseline for HDR. 
To be fair, these labs are remastering content from film and cameras specc'ed at 14 stops and under. I'm sure you can create compelling personal HDR-ready content with that system, but it doesn't meet or even come close to the standards being developed for professional use. And when distributors and exhibitors further and more formally standardize, the 15 stop/rec2020 spec (or better) is what's going to be expected. Whether the C300 II meets its 15 stop claim is another question (before the firmware update it probably didn't; I have a number of friends who worked on developing that camera and it was an ugly protracted development, the early failures of which mask a now-impressive sensor in firmware update SLOG 2), but anything less isn't even close. (Fwiw, I would rate the Alexa Mini at 15+ stops, and internally, Arri does as well. Likewise, the F65 has footage that can be graded for HDR even if it wouldn't meet specs for official support, so yes, it's not cut and dry.)
I'm not saying this to argue with you but to educate you. I have no doubt that you can make impressive content on your camera that looks impressive on an HDR display. But this is not an approach I would recommend to anyone as anything other than a hobby and the results will never make full use of the technology being developed, not even close. That said, from this experience you are building now, you will be on the forefront of shooting and grading HDR, and that is an extremely valuable skill going forward.

The camera spec I believe is 15 stops, but I saw film and F65 footage that looked fine as HDR.
That's similar to asking why an HD screen is required to view HD when you can downscale to SD. Truth is, tone mapping only goes so far. With HDR, it's the difference between listening to a very compressed (dynamic range compressed while mastering, not MP3 compressed but that too) track on your iPhone with bad headphones vs being at the concert live. It's the difference between a cheesy tone mapped image and being there. It's really incredible and difficult to describe because no screens exist now that can approximate the high end test beds.
Imagine that the image you're seeing of a day exterior isn't an image, but instead a window, with as much contrast as your eye can see and as many colors. Or even colors that you have never seen before. The sun can be so bright on an HDR set that it's unpleasant to look at. Imagine if your tv could get as bright as looking into a 60w bulb and as black as pure darkness. Sure you can compress that range, but why would you want to?

I apologize for any perceived attitude. I'm a camera enthusiast who still shoots as a hobby (I used to shoot tv professionally), but now that I'm working in post I get to work on some even higher end projects with the most cutting edge camera systems and lenses. And I wanted to share some of the latest news that I was incredibly excited about as well as my experiences with different camera systems. Every day I' working with Alexa footage with the highest end lenses or Varicam footage and with the highest end lenses, which is especially fun for me since I'd shot with almost every camera system previously, but I get an even better impression working with the files in post and interfacing with people on the cutting edge and learning their preferences and prognostication. And I never got to the level on set where I could shoot Ultra Primes next to Aluras one day and then C Series anamorphic the next, but I do get to work with that footage now on a daily basis. But I get that with this (and my confidence in the people around me and what they say–not in my own opinions, which I try not to mix in and apologize for my misunderstanding regarding the rec2020 color space*) isn't welcome here because of the perceived arrogance, and I won't be posting here anymore.
*That said, Canon's white papers do indicate a camera that fills most of the gamut (which naturally includes imaginary colors the eye can't see and so arguably needn't be filled) and we've seen before that a camera needn't resolve a full "4k" to be 4k compliant and yet Netflix does exclude some cameras from common use that claim a 4k spec. So there is a middle ground, and I believe this is where the divide falls. The advice I'm hearing from the top brass at top labs is that 15 stops and support for high bit depth high bit rate rec2020 will be what producers ask for from a camera when shooting HDR. Canon had HDR in mind specifically when developing the C300 Mk II and C700. That said, I will have to trust you that the GH4 can also fill almost the entire rec2020 gamut as I have not read the white papers and my only experience with that camera is without an external recorder or VLOG, where it still performs well for the price. As regards the 12 stop spec in HDR10 for acquisition, that is news to me, and interesting to consider given that Dolby (where I consulted for free simply due to my enthusiasm for the product; I have friends with financial interests, but I don't have one) is looking toward much higher numbers.

Thanks for clearing that up, I was confused because I assumed it was light sensitive. I agree about the Q7 being clunk to work with even though it's very impressive in other ways. I always found the C500 through the Q7 to be extremely sharp at 4k, far sharper than the Epic or Alexa, but the color straight to prores seems odd to me and I've seen mosquito noise and aliasing that's a bit annoying. Never worked with the raw files, but it seems like a camera that's halfway there to me.

I got started shooting film and that was all I shot for a while. So when I shoot digital I'm still approaching it how I did when I shot 16mm. And when I shoot stills I'm approaching it how I did when I shot 120 and 4x5. So while I might expose a little differently for a digital camera, same as I'd expose differently for slide film and color negative, I'm always thinking about it that way. And for me (and I think most film guys) "speed" refers to ISO of the film or stop of the lens set. 
While you're clearly thinking about things in a more complex and advanced way than I am, you'll have to forgive those of us who are old and slow ourselves. I think it's worth respecting some of these old terms if only because the plurality of shooters still abide by them and they do have a definitive and clear meaning. If you ask any DP about a camera's speed, they won't think about ergonomics, which concern the AC and operator more than the DP, anyway. So while most people here are approaching things on a more holistic and aware level and don't need to respect such outdated ways of thinking, I still think respecting some of the old terminology will help with guys like me who still use that outdated approach. The OP seems like an experienced shooter and anyone with any experience on set would use the term "speed" correctly, which confuses me.

The specs I'm hearing are 15 stops DR, rec2020. For acquisition. Then 10 bit 4000 nit wide gamut for the panel itself. Obviously not many current systems meet these specs and there are many, many competing standards. After all, 1024X720 was once "HD."
The result is breathtaking, though. Especially on the 10,000+ nit display. Only one other tech demo impressed me as much this year and it felt less mature. What's cool is you'll be able to see colors you've never seen before.
 

I agree! I still have my ST60 Panasonic plasma even though it's old tech by now. I do think the state of the art OLED sets are better but my eyes aren't good enough to need 4k at normal viewing distances anyway, though most people I know are getting 4k displays now. The dithering on plasmas makes them a little soft to begin with, but the ST60 is fine.
I saw HDR demoed on a smaller 1080p screen after seeing state of the art 4k projection and there's no comparison. I actually don't think 4k looks any better unless you walk right up to the screen or it's projected on a huge screen. I'm beginning to see the advantage for acquisition (for cropping in or whatever) but I think Netflix and YouTube and Amazon are sort of doing this for marketing rather than quality. It's a marketing thing meant to get people to replace their displays. I find it really laughable that people think this is something that matters. The old 1080p plasma screens have better acutance and the illusion of better resolution at normal viewing distances. However if you have the money a 4k OLED would be even better!
Your plasma is 100 nits at full brightness. Brightest highlight, every setting maxed out to bright. I've seen two HDR displays demoed and one was 4,000 nits and the other was 10,000 nits or more .So imagine all that contrast and better resolution and better color detail and then on top of that it goes 100X brighter but not just brighter, the darker areas are still as dark and well-rendered (actually much better). The sun looks like the sun. It doesn't look like an image of the sun. It's amazing tech. On top of that you're getting much richer reds and greens. It's just a massive jump in quality.
Fwiw, current-gen HDR-certified displays are 600 to 1000 nits. That's what's commercially available. So while those will look really really good.... They're nowhere near what's possible. I think energy conservation standards may prevent HDR from taking off, however. HDR projection standards will also never compare with home monitors in terms of contrast or brightness. So this may be something that never emerges as mainstream or properly-implemented. State of the art is 3XLED per-pixel (similar to Sony's "crystal led" technology) and LED efficiency is already high. This is very very expensive and still too inefficient for widespread use. OLED doesn't cut it for brightness/efficiency. Standard LED/LCD doesn't cut it for contrast. So we may be left with 1000 nit faux-HDR, which should look much better than anything you've ever seen, but nowhere near what's being demoed. Sony has 4000 nit displays at trade shows. That's very interesting because at that point it does feel very different. Only small areas of the screen can be that bright at once, but a large area that bright would be almost painful to look at. We'll see when and if this technology becomes commercially available. 4000 nits is a ways away and I wouldn't consider anything less than that representative of HDR.

The camera spec I believe is 15 stops, but I saw film and F65 footage that looked fine as HDR.
That's similar to asking why an HD screen is required to view HD when you can downscale to SD. Truth is, tone mapping only goes so far. With HDR, it's the difference between listening to a very compressed (dynamic range compressed while mastering, not MP3 compressed but that too) track on your iPhone with bad headphones vs being at the concert live. It's the difference between a cheesy tone mapped image and being there. It's really incredible and difficult to describe because no screens exist now that can approximate the high end test beds.
Imagine that the image you're seeing of a day exterior isn't an image, but instead a window, with as much contrast as your eye can see and as many colors. Or even colors that you have never seen before. The sun can be so bright on an HDR set that it's unpleasant to look at. Imagine if your tv could get as bright as looking into a 60w bulb and as black as pure darkness. Sure you can compress that range, but why would you want to?

I've seen demos of cutting edge HDR displays. Unfortunately, a small screen screen consumes nearly as much power as a small house (due to the need for a bank of air conditioners behind the unit) to cool it. But the image is unbelievable. Much bigger jump from HDTV to HDR than from 1080p to 4k. As big as SD to HD, easily.
The high end first-gen sets are likely very impressive so it's good to see YouTube pushing the technology. It does seem immature. The ecosystem is very immature. But HDR is mind-blowing. 

I actually had this happen. I made a short that was narrowly rejected from a very high profile because the voice was too strong and one of the programmers was afraid it was too weird for their brand. Every lower tier festival rejected it outright because it was way too weird for them. Very discouraging, but I was at fault for not knowing the community I was applying to be part of.
You should just do what you want and enjoy yourself. You will probably have fun at the local festival, which is more than I've ever gotten into! If not, don't apply to it next time. Lesson learned. Easy. Find people who are doing what you like. That's step one. Breaking in is step two. Do step one first. Trust me. The same goes for film school, etc. Watch the shorts they're producing, meet the students and faculty. Is this the community you want to be a part of? If so, it's worth considering applying.
LA is an extraordinarily difficult place to produce quality work cheaply ($10,000 for a short, let alone a feature, sounds 10X too low compared with a high end thesis film). If you have a strong technical skill set you can benefit from this when some of the money trickles down your way. If you learn Avid or Nuke or something or become a wizard at motion graphics you can make six figures in your twenties without much trouble, but I won't suggest you'll like what you're doing. There are lots of good local actors in most communities, even just community theater, but you have to look for them and write a script that's strong enough that they want to be in it. You have to be the community they want to be a part of. Or you can pay them.

I bought a C100 and a 5D Mark III right after they came out. Sold the 5D pretty quickly although the RAW looked good (not as good as the C100 other than its shallow depth of field "FF" look, which was impossible to pull focus with so whatever). The idea that the 5D III's RAW is technically a better image is a misconception fueled by people who are incompetent on set or in post. Both have great images, though, and the quality is really pretty close.
I've used almost everything on the market and it's the combination of great ergonomics and a good image without much work in post that's led me to not replace the aging C100. I feel like nothing else on the market has an image that's better in a meaningful way without some sacrifice. Sony is technically a bit better (a stop better highlight detail, a stop faster native ISO) but the ergonomics and workflows are dodgy and the color is hard to work with on the high end and on the low end it's a real nightmare with overheating and SLOG 2 having awful color (the Kodak emulation LUT on the F5 is decent, however) and the ergonomics are awful. The Red is expensive and difficult to work with on set and in post, awful in low light, and actually had slightly less dynamic range than the C300 etc. until the Dragon and the new color processing. The Red M had like 8-10 stops of DR, MX about 11-12, and color wasn't great then. And still it's behind Canon and Arri but it does become subjective because its looks is digital, not film emulation. The GH4 is not bad IMO but its 1080p is surprisingly soft (the 4k is fine but you get a bit of crop) and the ergonomics I don't love and it's not super reliable. But it's not bad at all.
But they're all fine. I guess for me if I want a better image the next meaningful step up from the c series is renting an Alexa, but that's also a pain to use. I sort of worried about minor differences until I tried something that was actually different and now for me it's Alexa or bust (though the C300 Mk II look pretty nice after the firmware update–haven't tried it with the new firmware though!).
I don't care for the "FF" look, but if you want shallow depth of field get some f1.4 or f1.8 lenses and an 80D to go with the C100 I'd say. The 80D is easy to use for video and the autofocus is useful for close ups (where sharpness isn't important) and you can get APS-C lenses like the new Sigmas that are sharp and fast enough to match f2.8 on FF and for cheaper. And the DR is RAW is good on the 80D for stills.
Also the Canon RAW workflow is the exact opposite of the cinema series workflow–a nightmare, and that's really why I abandoned it. The 5D II is nice for stills, but has poor DR in RAW compared with the 80D. I'd get an 80D and a C100 Mk II, but I think part of it is that I'm lazy and I do care about color more than most people (consistently score off the charts in color vision tests).
I wouldn't bother with a 1DXII as a video camera. Same very limited dynamic range as other Canon dSLRs. 1DC could be nice, but it lacks the efficient low bitrate codec.

I bought a C100 and a 5D Mark III right after they came out. Sold the 5D pretty quickly although the RAW looked good (not as good as the C100 other than its shallow depth of field "FF" look, which was impossible to pull focus with so whatever). The idea that the 5D III's RAW is technically a better image is a misconception fueled by people who are incompetent on set or in post. Both have great images, though, and the quality is really pretty close.
I've used almost everything on the market and it's the combination of great ergonomics and a good image without much work in post that's led me to not replace the aging C100. I feel like nothing else on the market has an image that's better in a meaningful way without some sacrifice. Sony is technically a bit better (a stop better highlight detail, a stop faster native ISO) but the ergonomics and workflows are dodgy and the color is hard to work with on the high end and on the low end it's a real nightmare with overheating and SLOG 2 having awful color (the Kodak emulation LUT on the F5 is decent, however) and the ergonomics are awful. The Red is expensive and difficult to work with on set and in post, awful in low light, and actually had slightly less dynamic range than the C300 etc. until the Dragon and the new color processing. The Red M had like 8-10 stops of DR, MX about 11-12, and color wasn't great then. And still it's behind Canon and Arri but it does become subjective because its looks is digital, not film emulation. The GH4 is not bad IMO but its 1080p is surprisingly soft (the 4k is fine but you get a bit of crop) and the ergonomics I don't love and it's not super reliable. But it's not bad at all.
But they're all fine. I guess for me if I want a better image the next meaningful step up from the c series is renting an Alexa, but that's also a pain to use. I sort of worried about minor differences until I tried something that was actually different and now for me it's Alexa or bust (though the C300 Mk II look pretty nice after the firmware update–haven't tried it with the new firmware though!).
I don't care for the "FF" look, but if you want shallow depth of field get some f1.4 or f1.8 lenses and an 80D to go with the C100 I'd say. The 80D is easy to use for video and the autofocus is useful for close ups (where sharpness isn't important) and you can get APS-C lenses like the new Sigmas that are sharp and fast enough to match f2.8 on FF and for cheaper. And the DR is RAW is good on the 80D for stills.
Also the Canon RAW workflow is the exact opposite of the cinema series workflow–a nightmare, and that's really why I abandoned it. The 5D II is nice for stills, but has poor DR in RAW compared with the 80D. I'd get an 80D and a C100 Mk II, but I think part of it is that I'm lazy and I do care about color more than most people (consistently score off the charts in color vision tests).
I wouldn't bother with a 1DXII as a video camera. Same very limited dynamic range as other Canon dSLRs. 1DC could be nice, but it lacks the efficient low bitrate codec.

I don't generally watch vlogs, but the above video makes a pretty good case for them.
I think if you go back to Bazin or even look at some of Lévi-Strauss and Sanders Peirce's ideas on semiotics that inform him and the Cahiers, you begin to reexamine what film is uniquely good at and why it became such a popular medium in the first place–and its strengths lie in its ability to record a convincing record of life, a recording of something that actually happened that feels real. Film shares this with audio recording and photography, but film takes it to another level. Unlike literature or painting or animation, it's not a symbol or a drawing, it's a record of something that actually happened in front of a camera. So way before you even worry about lighting or blocking or editing or even storytelling, what film does that's unique and remarkable is that it provides a lifelike and moving record of an event. Modern blockbusters move away from this tendency because they rely so heavily on CGI and animation and compositing that it begins to feel like a video game (which they're imitating; they share a common audience). I think you feel that modern blockbusters are different, and I definitely prefer action movies from before CGI became so commonplace because they feel more physical to me. Mad Max got a good reception because it was a bit more physical. Maybe part of the increasing appeal of MMA fighting (and historically the appeal of sports) is the you get back to that physicality.
Now we're at that stage where the eight year old girl (or whatever Coppola said) finally has the resources to tell a story affordably with film. We'e got dSLRs and iPhones and we're making movies instead of just watching them. And I think two tendencies are emerging from that. One is to imitate what we're watching in theaters, and the other is sort of to break off from it. This website is definitely more for imitators, trying to get something that looks expensive for cheap. And I don't find any of the work I've seen posted on this website to be any more interesting than what it's imitating. Some is more technically adept than the rest, but mostly it's a bunch of music videos and montages meant to showcase a new lens or something and it's basically a bunch of camera tests. Which is cool, that's a cool hobby, and it's fun to engage with and it's good to know what gear is out there so you can do your thing–make art, money whatever with it, once you get bored with camera tests. So the work doesn't interest me, but it's still a worthy topic.
Neither does vlogging interest me, and in fact it interests me less, but I still think it deserves respect because it's doing something new and unique and compelling. Hence the enormous emerging audience... Vlogging goes in the exact opposite direction, back toward cinema verité and away from blockbusters. And verité, unlike direct cinema, acknowledges the camera, which I think is sort of the film step in presenting "reality." Which, if you'd ask Bazin, is the point. Vlogging brings that to the next level. And yeah it's obnoxious like Michael Moore is obnoxious because the filmmaker becomes his own protagonist and you might not like him. But it's cool to watch stuff people are doing and imagine you're doing it. It's even cooler to imagine you're also the filmmaker recording it. And vlogs let you engage with content on both of those levels. Even something like Rocket Jump (which is more in the "imitating mainstream media" category than vloggers are) makes the entire process from funding to production to distribution transparent to the viewer and encourages the viewer to do it, too. So you're watching their content but separate from that you're relating to it as a potential filmmaker. To me, this is really cool. Most kickstarter campaigns are dumb money grabs, but with something like Rocket Jump it becomes an alternative form of financing that's communicating directly with the audience and that's cool. All the BTS elements there are cool. (The photography tutorials and stuff that pollute YouTube aren't–because 99% of them are just promoting horrible information and lowest common denominator aesthetics.) The BTS elements of vlogging remind me of a film nerd sneaking on set and reading Fangoria or American Cinematographer or watching the dvd deleted scenes... except it's going even way further than that. 
YouTube kind of fulfills the promise of verité, and to some extent realizes the potential of cinema itself on a very very basic level–even if the content is generally not my thing and I'd argue usually pretty awful. Snapchat and Vine do, too. More than that, they allow you to be the consumer and the producer, so you get a real community. But most people are boring. And most content is boring. If it's democratized, more of it will be boring. Painting wasn't great during the renaissance because it was cheap, you know? Painting got worse when it was democratized. So while I think your Snapchat or YouTube channel can be really banal and millennial and shitty and most of them are... that's the content, not the medium. The medium itself is really cool and there are some YouTube channels and Vimeo channels I enjoy and to trash the medium because most of it is garbage would make me a hypocrite because I really love some of it.
I think if we feel alienated by these media it's a pretty boring response to just imitate an outdated one instead unless you really commit and say–okay, I'm holding myself to the standard of my heroes. I'm not content shooting with a camera that maybe they used or has the same resolution of one they used, I don't really care about that at all. I'm going to challenge myself to do with my resources better than they could do with them, or if not better than more personal to my vision. And that's the approach successful vloggers are taking. Like it or not, the cutting edge of documentary is YouTube and Snapchat. I'm not going to say vlogging is a better pursuit than shooting a documentary for the festival scene. I will say I think how you evaluate each has more to do with how you feel about its audience than anything else, and at that point it's a social issue, not a technical or theoretical or aesthetic one.
Edit: I think this website produces some good camera tests, however. The "feel" of the image is more than its specs and going out and shooting with a given camera or set of LUTs gives you an interesting window into their potential that specs alone can't.

I don't generally watch vlogs, but the above video makes a pretty good case for them.
I think if you go back to Bazin or even look at some of Lévi-Strauss and Sanders Peirce's ideas on semiotics that inform him and the Cahiers, you begin to reexamine what film is uniquely good at and why it became such a popular medium in the first place–and its strengths lie in its ability to record a convincing record of life, a recording of something that actually happened that feels real. Film shares this with audio recording and photography, but film takes it to another level. Unlike literature or painting or animation, it's not a symbol or a drawing, it's a record of something that actually happened in front of a camera. So way before you even worry about lighting or blocking or editing or even storytelling, what film does that's unique and remarkable is that it provides a lifelike and moving record of an event. Modern blockbusters move away from this tendency because they rely so heavily on CGI and animation and compositing that it begins to feel like a video game (which they're imitating; they share a common audience). I think you feel that modern blockbusters are different, and I definitely prefer action movies from before CGI became so commonplace because they feel more physical to me. Mad Max got a good reception because it was a bit more physical. Maybe part of the increasing appeal of MMA fighting (and historically the appeal of sports) is the you get back to that physicality.
Now we're at that stage where the eight year old girl (or whatever Coppola said) finally has the resources to tell a story affordably with film. We'e got dSLRs and iPhones and we're making movies instead of just watching them. And I think two tendencies are emerging from that. One is to imitate what we're watching in theaters, and the other is sort of to break off from it. This website is definitely more for imitators, trying to get something that looks expensive for cheap. And I don't find any of the work I've seen posted on this website to be any more interesting than what it's imitating. Some is more technically adept than the rest, but mostly it's a bunch of music videos and montages meant to showcase a new lens or something and it's basically a bunch of camera tests. Which is cool, that's a cool hobby, and it's fun to engage with and it's good to know what gear is out there so you can do your thing–make art, money whatever with it, once you get bored with camera tests. So the work doesn't interest me, but it's still a worthy topic.
Neither does vlogging interest me, and in fact it interests me less, but I still think it deserves respect because it's doing something new and unique and compelling. Hence the enormous emerging audience... Vlogging goes in the exact opposite direction, back toward cinema verité and away from blockbusters. And verité, unlike direct cinema, acknowledges the camera, which I think is sort of the film step in presenting "reality." Which, if you'd ask Bazin, is the point. Vlogging brings that to the next level. And yeah it's obnoxious like Michael Moore is obnoxious because the filmmaker becomes his own protagonist and you might not like him. But it's cool to watch stuff people are doing and imagine you're doing it. It's even cooler to imagine you're also the filmmaker recording it. And vlogs let you engage with content on both of those levels. Even something like Rocket Jump (which is more in the "imitating mainstream media" category than vloggers are) makes the entire process from funding to production to distribution transparent to the viewer and encourages the viewer to do it, too. So you're watching their content but separate from that you're relating to it as a potential filmmaker. To me, this is really cool. Most kickstarter campaigns are dumb money grabs, but with something like Rocket Jump it becomes an alternative form of financing that's communicating directly with the audience and that's cool. All the BTS elements there are cool. (The photography tutorials and stuff that pollute YouTube aren't–because 99% of them are just promoting horrible information and lowest common denominator aesthetics.) The BTS elements of vlogging remind me of a film nerd sneaking on set and reading Fangoria or American Cinematographer or watching the dvd deleted scenes... except it's going even way further than that. 
YouTube kind of fulfills the promise of verité, and to some extent realizes the potential of cinema itself on a very very basic level–even if the content is generally not my thing and I'd argue usually pretty awful. Snapchat and Vine do, too. More than that, they allow you to be the consumer and the producer, so you get a real community. But most people are boring. And most content is boring. If it's democratized, more of it will be boring. Painting wasn't great during the renaissance because it was cheap, you know? Painting got worse when it was democratized. So while I think your Snapchat or YouTube channel can be really banal and millennial and shitty and most of them are... that's the content, not the medium. The medium itself is really cool and there are some YouTube channels and Vimeo channels I enjoy and to trash the medium because most of it is garbage would make me a hypocrite because I really love some of it.
I think if we feel alienated by these media it's a pretty boring response to just imitate an outdated one instead unless you really commit and say–okay, I'm holding myself to the standard of my heroes. I'm not content shooting with a camera that maybe they used or has the same resolution of one they used, I don't really care about that at all. I'm going to challenge myself to do with my resources better than they could do with them, or if not better than more personal to my vision. And that's the approach successful vloggers are taking. Like it or not, the cutting edge of documentary is YouTube and Snapchat. I'm not going to say vlogging is a better pursuit than shooting a documentary for the festival scene. I will say I think how you evaluate each has more to do with how you feel about its audience than anything else, and at that point it's a social issue, not a technical or theoretical or aesthetic one.
Edit: I think this website produces some good camera tests, however. The "feel" of the image is more than its specs and going out and shooting with a given camera or set of LUTs gives you an interesting window into their potential that specs alone can't.

I don't generally watch vlogs, but the above video makes a pretty good case for them.
I think if you go back to Bazin or even look at some of Lévi-Strauss and Sanders Peirce's ideas on semiotics that inform him and the Cahiers, you begin to reexamine what film is uniquely good at and why it became such a popular medium in the first place–and its strengths lie in its ability to record a convincing record of life, a recording of something that actually happened that feels real. Film shares this with audio recording and photography, but film takes it to another level. Unlike literature or painting or animation, it's not a symbol or a drawing, it's a record of something that actually happened in front of a camera. So way before you even worry about lighting or blocking or editing or even storytelling, what film does that's unique and remarkable is that it provides a lifelike and moving record of an event. Modern blockbusters move away from this tendency because they rely so heavily on CGI and animation and compositing that it begins to feel like a video game (which they're imitating; they share a common audience). I think you feel that modern blockbusters are different, and I definitely prefer action movies from before CGI became so commonplace because they feel more physical to me. Mad Max got a good reception because it was a bit more physical. Maybe part of the increasing appeal of MMA fighting (and historically the appeal of sports) is the you get back to that physicality.
Now we're at that stage where the eight year old girl (or whatever Coppola said) finally has the resources to tell a story affordably with film. We'e got dSLRs and iPhones and we're making movies instead of just watching them. And I think two tendencies are emerging from that. One is to imitate what we're watching in theaters, and the other is sort of to break off from it. This website is definitely more for imitators, trying to get something that looks expensive for cheap. And I don't find any of the work I've seen posted on this website to be any more interesting than what it's imitating. Some is more technically adept than the rest, but mostly it's a bunch of music videos and montages meant to showcase a new lens or something and it's basically a bunch of camera tests. Which is cool, that's a cool hobby, and it's fun to engage with and it's good to know what gear is out there so you can do your thing–make art, money whatever with it, once you get bored with camera tests. So the work doesn't interest me, but it's still a worthy topic.
Neither does vlogging interest me, and in fact it interests me less, but I still think it deserves respect because it's doing something new and unique and compelling. Hence the enormous emerging audience... Vlogging goes in the exact opposite direction, back toward cinema verité and away from blockbusters. And verité, unlike direct cinema, acknowledges the camera, which I think is sort of the film step in presenting "reality." Which, if you'd ask Bazin, is the point. Vlogging brings that to the next level. And yeah it's obnoxious like Michael Moore is obnoxious because the filmmaker becomes his own protagonist and you might not like him. But it's cool to watch stuff people are doing and imagine you're doing it. It's even cooler to imagine you're also the filmmaker recording it. And vlogs let you engage with content on both of those levels. Even something like Rocket Jump (which is more in the "imitating mainstream media" category than vloggers are) makes the entire process from funding to production to distribution transparent to the viewer and encourages the viewer to do it, too. So you're watching their content but separate from that you're relating to it as a potential filmmaker. To me, this is really cool. Most kickstarter campaigns are dumb money grabs, but with something like Rocket Jump it becomes an alternative form of financing that's communicating directly with the audience and that's cool. All the BTS elements there are cool. (The photography tutorials and stuff that pollute YouTube aren't–because 99% of them are just promoting horrible information and lowest common denominator aesthetics.) The BTS elements of vlogging remind me of a film nerd sneaking on set and reading Fangoria or American Cinematographer or watching the dvd deleted scenes... except it's going even way further than that. 
YouTube kind of fulfills the promise of verité, and to some extent realizes the potential of cinema itself on a very very basic level–even if the content is generally not my thing and I'd argue usually pretty awful. Snapchat and Vine do, too. More than that, they allow you to be the consumer and the producer, so you get a real community. But most people are boring. And most content is boring. If it's democratized, more of it will be boring. Painting wasn't great during the renaissance because it was cheap, you know? Painting got worse when it was democratized. So while I think your Snapchat or YouTube channel can be really banal and millennial and shitty and most of them are... that's the content, not the medium. The medium itself is really cool and there are some YouTube channels and Vimeo channels I enjoy and to trash the medium because most of it is garbage would make me a hypocrite because I really love some of it.
I think if we feel alienated by these media it's a pretty boring response to just imitate an outdated one instead unless you really commit and say–okay, I'm holding myself to the standard of my heroes. I'm not content shooting with a camera that maybe they used or has the same resolution of one they used, I don't really care about that at all. I'm going to challenge myself to do with my resources better than they could do with them, or if not better than more personal to my vision. And that's the approach successful vloggers are taking. Like it or not, the cutting edge of documentary is YouTube and Snapchat. I'm not going to say vlogging is a better pursuit than shooting a documentary for the festival scene. I will say I think how you evaluate each has more to do with how you feel about its audience than anything else, and at that point it's a social issue, not a technical or theoretical or aesthetic one.
Edit: I think this website produces some good camera tests, however. The "feel" of the image is more than its specs and going out and shooting with a given camera or set of LUTs gives you an interesting window into their potential that specs alone can't.

I don't generally watch vlogs, but the above video makes a pretty good case for them.
I think if you go back to Bazin or even look at some of Lévi-Strauss and Sanders Peirce's ideas on semiotics that inform him and the Cahiers, you begin to reexamine what film is uniquely good at and why it became such a popular medium in the first place–and its strengths lie in its ability to record a convincing record of life, a recording of something that actually happened that feels real. Film shares this with audio recording and photography, but film takes it to another level. Unlike literature or painting or animation, it's not a symbol or a drawing, it's a record of something that actually happened in front of a camera. So way before you even worry about lighting or blocking or editing or even storytelling, what film does that's unique and remarkable is that it provides a lifelike and moving record of an event. Modern blockbusters move away from this tendency because they rely so heavily on CGI and animation and compositing that it begins to feel like a video game (which they're imitating; they share a common audience). I think you feel that modern blockbusters are different, and I definitely prefer action movies from before CGI became so commonplace because they feel more physical to me. Mad Max got a good reception because it was a bit more physical. Maybe part of the increasing appeal of MMA fighting (and historically the appeal of sports) is the you get back to that physicality.
Now we're at that stage where the eight year old girl (or whatever Coppola said) finally has the resources to tell a story affordably with film. We'e got dSLRs and iPhones and we're making movies instead of just watching them. And I think two tendencies are emerging from that. One is to imitate what we're watching in theaters, and the other is sort of to break off from it. This website is definitely more for imitators, trying to get something that looks expensive for cheap. And I don't find any of the work I've seen posted on this website to be any more interesting than what it's imitating. Some is more technically adept than the rest, but mostly it's a bunch of music videos and montages meant to showcase a new lens or something and it's basically a bunch of camera tests. Which is cool, that's a cool hobby, and it's fun to engage with and it's good to know what gear is out there so you can do your thing–make art, money whatever with it, once you get bored with camera tests. So the work doesn't interest me, but it's still a worthy topic.
Neither does vlogging interest me, and in fact it interests me less, but I still think it deserves respect because it's doing something new and unique and compelling. Hence the enormous emerging audience... Vlogging goes in the exact opposite direction, back toward cinema verité and away from blockbusters. And verité, unlike direct cinema, acknowledges the camera, which I think is sort of the film step in presenting "reality." Which, if you'd ask Bazin, is the point. Vlogging brings that to the next level. And yeah it's obnoxious like Michael Moore is obnoxious because the filmmaker becomes his own protagonist and you might not like him. But it's cool to watch stuff people are doing and imagine you're doing it. It's even cooler to imagine you're also the filmmaker recording it. And vlogs let you engage with content on both of those levels. Even something like Rocket Jump (which is more in the "imitating mainstream media" category than vloggers are) makes the entire process from funding to production to distribution transparent to the viewer and encourages the viewer to do it, too. So you're watching their content but separate from that you're relating to it as a potential filmmaker. To me, this is really cool. Most kickstarter campaigns are dumb money grabs, but with something like Rocket Jump it becomes an alternative form of financing that's communicating directly with the audience and that's cool. All the BTS elements there are cool. (The photography tutorials and stuff that pollute YouTube aren't–because 99% of them are just promoting horrible information and lowest common denominator aesthetics.) The BTS elements of vlogging remind me of a film nerd sneaking on set and reading Fangoria or American Cinematographer or watching the dvd deleted scenes... except it's going even way further than that. 
YouTube kind of fulfills the promise of verité, and to some extent realizes the potential of cinema itself on a very very basic level–even if the content is generally not my thing and I'd argue usually pretty awful. Snapchat and Vine do, too. More than that, they allow you to be the consumer and the producer, so you get a real community. But most people are boring. And most content is boring. If it's democratized, more of it will be boring. Painting wasn't great during the renaissance because it was cheap, you know? Painting got worse when it was democratized. So while I think your Snapchat or YouTube channel can be really banal and millennial and shitty and most of them are... that's the content, not the medium. The medium itself is really cool and there are some YouTube channels and Vimeo channels I enjoy and to trash the medium because most of it is garbage would make me a hypocrite because I really love some of it.
I think if we feel alienated by these media it's a pretty boring response to just imitate an outdated one instead unless you really commit and say–okay, I'm holding myself to the standard of my heroes. I'm not content shooting with a camera that maybe they used or has the same resolution of one they used, I don't really care about that at all. I'm going to challenge myself to do with my resources better than they could do with them, or if not better than more personal to my vision. And that's the approach successful vloggers are taking. Like it or not, the cutting edge of documentary is YouTube and Snapchat. I'm not going to say vlogging is a better pursuit than shooting a documentary for the festival scene. I will say I think how you evaluate each has more to do with how you feel about its audience than anything else, and at that point it's a social issue, not a technical or theoretical or aesthetic one.
Edit: I think this website produces some good camera tests, however. The "feel" of the image is more than its specs and going out and shooting with a given camera or set of LUTs gives you an interesting window into their potential that specs alone can't.

I don't generally watch vlogs, but the above video makes a pretty good case for them.
I think if you go back to Bazin or even look at some of Lévi-Strauss and Sanders Peirce's ideas on semiotics that inform him and the Cahiers, you begin to reexamine what film is uniquely good at and why it became such a popular medium in the first place–and its strengths lie in its ability to record a convincing record of life, a recording of something that actually happened that feels real. Film shares this with audio recording and photography, but film takes it to another level. Unlike literature or painting or animation, it's not a symbol or a drawing, it's a record of something that actually happened in front of a camera. So way before you even worry about lighting or blocking or editing or even storytelling, what film does that's unique and remarkable is that it provides a lifelike and moving record of an event. Modern blockbusters move away from this tendency because they rely so heavily on CGI and animation and compositing that it begins to feel like a video game (which they're imitating; they share a common audience). I think you feel that modern blockbusters are different, and I definitely prefer action movies from before CGI became so commonplace because they feel more physical to me. Mad Max got a good reception because it was a bit more physical. Maybe part of the increasing appeal of MMA fighting (and historically the appeal of sports) is the you get back to that physicality.
Now we're at that stage where the eight year old girl (or whatever Coppola said) finally has the resources to tell a story affordably with film. We'e got dSLRs and iPhones and we're making movies instead of just watching them. And I think two tendencies are emerging from that. One is to imitate what we're watching in theaters, and the other is sort of to break off from it. This website is definitely more for imitators, trying to get something that looks expensive for cheap. And I don't find any of the work I've seen posted on this website to be any more interesting than what it's imitating. Some is more technically adept than the rest, but mostly it's a bunch of music videos and montages meant to showcase a new lens or something and it's basically a bunch of camera tests. Which is cool, that's a cool hobby, and it's fun to engage with and it's good to know what gear is out there so you can do your thing–make art, money whatever with it, once you get bored with camera tests. So the work doesn't interest me, but it's still a worthy topic.
Neither does vlogging interest me, and in fact it interests me less, but I still think it deserves respect because it's doing something new and unique and compelling. Hence the enormous emerging audience... Vlogging goes in the exact opposite direction, back toward cinema verité and away from blockbusters. And verité, unlike direct cinema, acknowledges the camera, which I think is sort of the film step in presenting "reality." Which, if you'd ask Bazin, is the point. Vlogging brings that to the next level. And yeah it's obnoxious like Michael Moore is obnoxious because the filmmaker becomes his own protagonist and you might not like him. But it's cool to watch stuff people are doing and imagine you're doing it. It's even cooler to imagine you're also the filmmaker recording it. And vlogs let you engage with content on both of those levels. Even something like Rocket Jump (which is more in the "imitating mainstream media" category than vloggers are) makes the entire process from funding to production to distribution transparent to the viewer and encourages the viewer to do it, too. So you're watching their content but separate from that you're relating to it as a potential filmmaker. To me, this is really cool. Most kickstarter campaigns are dumb money grabs, but with something like Rocket Jump it becomes an alternative form of financing that's communicating directly with the audience and that's cool. All the BTS elements there are cool. (The photography tutorials and stuff that pollute YouTube aren't–because 99% of them are just promoting horrible information and lowest common denominator aesthetics.) The BTS elements of vlogging remind me of a film nerd sneaking on set and reading Fangoria or American Cinematographer or watching the dvd deleted scenes... except it's going even way further than that. 
YouTube kind of fulfills the promise of verité, and to some extent realizes the potential of cinema itself on a very very basic level–even if the content is generally not my thing and I'd argue usually pretty awful. Snapchat and Vine do, too. More than that, they allow you to be the consumer and the producer, so you get a real community. But most people are boring. And most content is boring. If it's democratized, more of it will be boring. Painting wasn't great during the renaissance because it was cheap, you know? Painting got worse when it was democratized. So while I think your Snapchat or YouTube channel can be really banal and millennial and shitty and most of them are... that's the content, not the medium. The medium itself is really cool and there are some YouTube channels and Vimeo channels I enjoy and to trash the medium because most of it is garbage would make me a hypocrite because I really love some of it.
I think if we feel alienated by these media it's a pretty boring response to just imitate an outdated one instead unless you really commit and say–okay, I'm holding myself to the standard of my heroes. I'm not content shooting with a camera that maybe they used or has the same resolution of one they used, I don't really care about that at all. I'm going to challenge myself to do with my resources better than they could do with them, or if not better than more personal to my vision. And that's the approach successful vloggers are taking. Like it or not, the cutting edge of documentary is YouTube and Snapchat. I'm not going to say vlogging is a better pursuit than shooting a documentary for the festival scene. I will say I think how you evaluate each has more to do with how you feel about its audience than anything else, and at that point it's a social issue, not a technical or theoretical or aesthetic one.
Edit: I think this website produces some good camera tests, however. The "feel" of the image is more than its specs and going out and shooting with a given camera or set of LUTs gives you an interesting window into their potential that specs alone can't.

The only thing you need to be a professional is a client.

The only thing you need to be a professional is a client.

The only thing you need to be a professional is a client.

The only thing you need to be a professional is a client.

The only thing you need to be a professional is a client.