QuickHitRecord

I think I get where you are coming from. I never made the switch to mirrorless for photos. I tried taking photos with my EOS-R, G85, and even my GH1 and I'm just not into it. I find that my trusty old 5Diii is still more satisfying to use. I even picked up an Olympus e500 and Sony A350 because they are so inexpensive right now. They are also a lot of fun and offer great character. I have particularly been enjoying the A350 at ISO 1600:

I for one would be more interested in learning more about your adventures in still photography. With the exception of one regular client, I've managed to keep photography as strictly a hobby. Compared to a medium like video, still photography levels the playing field for capturing something interesting.

I think I get where you are coming from. I never made the switch to mirrorless for photos. I tried taking photos with my EOS-R, G85, and even my GH1 and I'm just not into it. I find that my trusty old 5Diii is still more satisfying to use. I even picked up an Olympus e500 and Sony A350 because they are so inexpensive right now. They are also a lot of fun and offer great character. I have particularly been enjoying the A350 at ISO 1600:

I for one would be more interested in learning more about your adventures in still photography. With the exception of one regular client, I've managed to keep photography as strictly a hobby. Compared to a medium like video, still photography levels the playing field for capturing something interesting.

I think I get where you are coming from. I never made the switch to mirrorless for photos. I tried taking photos with my EOS-R, G85, and even my GH1 and I'm just not into it. I find that my trusty old 5Diii is still more satisfying to use. I even picked up an Olympus e500 and Sony A350 because they are so inexpensive right now. They are also a lot of fun and offer great character. I have particularly been enjoying the A350 at ISO 1600:

I for one would be more interested in learning more about your adventures in still photography. With the exception of one regular client, I've managed to keep photography as strictly a hobby. Compared to a medium like video, still photography levels the playing field for capturing something interesting.

I think I get where you are coming from. I never made the switch to mirrorless for photos. I tried taking photos with my EOS-R, G85, and even my GH1 and I'm just not into it. I find that my trusty old 5Diii is still more satisfying to use. I even picked up an Olympus e500 and Sony A350 because they are so inexpensive right now. They are also a lot of fun and offer great character. I have particularly been enjoying the A350 at ISO 1600:

I for one would be more interested in learning more about your adventures in still photography. With the exception of one regular client, I've managed to keep photography as strictly a hobby. Compared to a medium like video, still photography levels the playing field for capturing something interesting.

Someone has been working with a Raspberry Pi high quality camera module to make their own 1/2"-sensor open source, raw-capable cine camera:
Placed into a 3D-printed body, the components reputedly only cost $200 (this probably assumes that you already have a monitor of some kind). The demo footage is surprisingly good:

For anyone who wants to learn more about this project, here is the development thread: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=296776

This was my main work camera for two years. I struggled with it. Coming from the C100, I thought that it would be a home run but I found myself missing the C100 a lot. The C100 was easier to handhold, had more reliable DPAF (even though it was center-weighted), and monitoring wasn't as confusing.
I was unimpressed with the H264 and only used CRL, recorded to a Solidpod that I mounted externally. Other C200 shooters have told me that they are okay with the noise levels, but to me the CRL footage was noisier than I was comfortable for client work at ISO 400 or above. After almost every shoot I would run NeatVideo on all of my footage, apply a LUT (unless they wanted CLOG2), and export ProRes files before handing it off to my clients. The resulting footage was really nice, but it took a lot to get there.
The day that I shipped the C200 out, I breathed a sigh of relief. I now have a C70, which addresses all of my problems with the C200.

There aren't that many. Off the top of my head:
Sony F35 - Super35 Sony SRW-9000PL - Super35 Sony Genesis - Super35 Digital Bolex D16 - Super16 Ikonoskop A-Cam dII - Super16 And then you get into 2/3" CCDs, and there are a ton of those. Here's a good place to look for the Sony models. On the Panasonic side, there were the HPX and Varicam bodies. Toshiba, JVC, and Ikegami also had 2/3 CCD cameras, but they were mostly standard definition.
There were a handful of 1/2" CCD camcorders, mostly from Sony as I recall.
1/3" CCD sensors were mostly found in fixed zoom lens cameras like the HVX200, FX1, Z1U, DVX100, Canon XL/XH cameras, and some of the JVC GY cameras. But 1/3 sensors are pretty small.
Compared to today's mirrorless cameras, these cameras were mostly very large and meant to be operated on shoulder or tripods. The smallest and most manageable of the bunch was the Digital Bolex, which now goes for around $7K used.
The Sony F55 is a MOS sensor with global shutter, not a CCD camera.
If you'd like to have a small CCD camera to try out, I'd recommend the diminutive and inexpensive Lumix FZ47 (FZ48 in the UK). It's fixed lens and can't record in 24P or 25P, but it does shoot in 1080P and the 1/2.3" sensor is larger than any of the 1/3" cameras. And the image stabilization is surprisingly good, which is useful for the ~600mm equivalent zoom. Here's some footage I shot:
I personally love the camera, but I wouldn't say that the grain is good at all. If you freeze-frame the footage, you'll see a ton of temporal ghosting and macroblocking. But in motion, it's one of my favorites.
And here are some of my photos with it (JPEG only, the camera does not shoot RAW): https://distanceandelevation.com/blog/2021/8/9/bandontoportorford

Surely the GH6/5/5ii would be close to the top of that list, right?

For reference, here are both cameras. Same lens and same camera settings. The C70, shooting Canon Raw Lite, is first and the R1MX is second. They weren't hard to match.
It's so close that I wonder why I am bothering with the cumbersome R1MX. But once I see the moving images, I'm reminded of why I go through the trouble.


 
 

It was devastating to read your post and I am so sorry that this has happened. Your sister sounds like a remarkable person. Wishing you and your family strength and resilience as you navigate this extremely difficult time.

I made a living shooting with two C100s and an Atomos Ninja Blade for my first five years as a freelancer. It's a nice image but I never used CLog because the limited codec, even coming from the Atomos, didn't hold up to grading very well and I often ended up with noisy footage. Also, I found that it was pretty difficult to monitor and expose properly; the newer Canon Cinema cameras let you apply a very accurate LUT on the LCD that is actually great to work with. I always shot in WideDR. Lastly, it's a bit of a noisy image compared to the newer cameras (or even my EOS-R from 2018), even at the base ISO of 850.
All that being said, when exposed properly I thought that the images were really nice and good enough for professional use. They had a more neutral, less saturated look than what I am getting from my C70. Form factor was great and built-in NDs are so freeing. They will change the way you shoot. And the DPAF, even though it's only available in the center of the frame (I set a button so that I could toggle it on and off with ease), was surprisingly solid. I'd say it was even more reliable than what I have on the C70.
One more thing to consider. These cameras have internal batteries that can only be changed at a Canon service center, which isn't cheap. I started hearing about other shooters having these batteries finally die on them, so they would have to re-enter all of their settings every time they turned on the camera. This hastened the departure of these two fine cameras from my collection!

For the sake of discussion, here's a little comparison from a while back between all of the smaller cameras I own (the SD9 is a CCD camcorder):

^FZ47

^EOS-R

^GH1

^G85

^SD9
The two CCD cameras have that kind of muted, undersaturated skintone that I associate with some of the older S16 film stocks (though I really don't like the SD9 as much -- which is just as well, because you can't turn the auto ISO off while shooting).

I just want to say that this is the first footage I've seen in ages that makes me want to brush the dust off of my anamorphic lens for the first time in seven years and take it out for a spin. And I have never seen anything from a GH5 that I've liked so much -- I am usually put off by footage from that camera. Really lovely. Thanks for sharing.

I had one a long time ago. I did a test with it that was actually featured in a blog post here, though I can't find the link. I found this lens to be terribly soft until f5.6 or so. Mine had the crazy "cleaning marks" on the front element, and I actually spent way too much money sending it off to have the front element resurfaced (and recoated? I can't remember). Which did not help at all. I did some tests with it after I got it back and sold it shortly afterwards.

I've been thinking about this since my first test with RIFE. The problem is that none of the old CCD cameras I would want to do this with can capture more than about 5fps.

Oddly, I found myself drawn to the imperfections of the GH4 in the test, which has never stood out to me at all. Interesting.

@Matt Kieley The shot of the woman on the couch at 1:07 in the first video is really nice. And it looks like there may have been a couple of other shots from the same film as well. Do you recall what lens you were using?
The GH1 is plenty for storytelling. Dynamic range is a challenge but I find that I prefer the look to most modern cameras. Here's a test (not by me) that did a good job of showing the why the GH2 (with the same sensor as the GH1) creates a much more emotionally resonant image than the GH5. At least to me:
 

Great to see another FZ47 video! I like your treatment of the footage a lot. It looks different than just about everything else (obviously CMOS cameras, but it also stands apart from any of the HVX/ZIU/etc crowd too).

Here's an earlier edit without Topaz:
The image quality is riddled with problems, but I still find myself drawn to it. I agree with @PannySVHS; the video on this camera would have been a much more compelling feature with a higher bitrate. I wish this camera had been one of the Lumix bodies to be hacked back in the day.

This. It's more satisfying to get a lot out of a little than a little out of a lot. And this applies in a much more profound way when you're just shooting stuff solo, for fun.
It becomes, "Look what I was able to capture -- wow!" versus "This is all I was able to do?"
Of course, it all changes in the context of a time-sensitive/high pressure paid shoot, when you need all of the help you can get.

This. It's more satisfying to get a lot out of a little than a little out of a lot. And this applies in a much more profound way when you're just shooting stuff solo, for fun.
It becomes, "Look what I was able to capture -- wow!" versus "This is all I was able to do?"
Of course, it all changes in the context of a time-sensitive/high pressure paid shoot, when you need all of the help you can get.

This. It's more satisfying to get a lot out of a little than a little out of a lot. And this applies in a much more profound way when you're just shooting stuff solo, for fun.
It becomes, "Look what I was able to capture -- wow!" versus "This is all I was able to do?"
Of course, it all changes in the context of a time-sensitive/high pressure paid shoot, when you need all of the help you can get.

I was way off. A testament to modern phones, or possibly how much footage can be disguised if it's softened and grained out. I did notice the IBIS in some of your shots, which lead me towards the GX85 speculation.

Nice work! GX85?

Me, or the OP? I liked his grade too.
For mine, it looked terrible OOC -- it always does with this camera. I just tweaked it until I got something I liked. I think I used FilmConvert on this (probably the second Vision3 option). Heavy grain does wonders to cover up an image that's been pushed beyond its comfort zone. And then I think maybe some flicker and film dust over top to help cover it up even more? I'm pretty sure that was it.