Emanuel

Not only the Leica :- )

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

Not only the Leica :- )

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

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

Now I have mostly progressed my GX85 Super-16mm "conversion" I am turning back to a more generalised look at film and The Aesthetic as it pertains to cinema.
My next step is to convert my S16 emulation into a 35mm emulation, which shouldn't be that hard as it's the same stuff but just using more of it, so turning down the grain and backing off the softening and size of halation and bloom etc.
In order to get my bearings I've collected a bunch of frame grabs from cinema over the decades, and some fascinating things have emerged.
Observation One: Film doesn't look like it's gotten cleaner and sharper
This is what people say, but when scrolling through the references, you can find things like this from 1952's Bend of the River:

and then things like this from 1994s Speed:

Obviously you need to be smart about things, so both these shots are likely to be locked off, focus wouldn't be missed, lit naturally and exposed properly, etc.  There are lots of shots from Speed that are soft, but it's an action movie so lots of them are probably motion blurred or the action was impacting how well that frame was focused etc.
Luckily, License to Kill from 1989 will get us back to safe ground with some nice sharp images:


But how are these images possible all the way back then?
One thing that comes to mind is that when consulting Kodaks excellent Chronology of Film page, you see that the negative stocks started off as very low sensitivity and increased over time, so it's like comparing the high-ISO of todays cameras to the native ISOs of past cameras.
Observation Two: Images look like they've gotten less worse
The further back you go, the more you find shots that should be sharp but just aren't.  The example above from 1952 was a real outlier, as most of the images from that time looked more like these from 1955s A Bad Day at Black Rock:



I suspect the quality of the lenses.
All the above looked like wider shots, so maybe that lens wasn't so good (wider lenses are harder to make).  Maybe it wasn't at its sharpest F-stop.  A lot of the sharpest images across the frame grabs I looked at were close-ups, and I suspect back then a 50mm at it's sharpest aperture and focus distance was a lot better than a wider lens at whatever F-stop and focus distance was required for the scene.
Check out these grabs from 1955's The Seven Year Itch:


Monroe was at her height of popularity so there's no way she's getting the beat-up lenses from the rental company or a camera team that doesn't know what they're doing.  I can't think of any reason these two particular images would be softer than the technology at the time would have allowed.
By 1971 things seemed to have gotten a lot more consistent with Diamonds Are Forever:



Then if we fast forward to the last few years, we get films like 2024s Trap, which looks quite sharp and even approaching a digital look:


but still has films over-emphasis of high-contrast edges:

and it's a similar case with 2023's Poor Things which can look quite sharp:


but on wides it still has that film look:

and it's only when the lenses get crazy that the edges start looking more vintage again:

Anyway, lots of food for thought, but it's almost like the sweet spot of film has remained relatively similar in performance but has gotten drastically wider as you can now get images that are that sharp and clean in much less light and across a vastly wider range of lens focal lengths and apertures.
Another variable is that prior to digital projection, the final image had to go through many more layers of film than it has to now.  Back in the day the image pipeline was something like: negative → interpositive → internegative → release print, rather than just negative -> scan, and it's not like our projection lenses haven't gotten better now too! 
Let me know if you can think of any more variables that I didn't mention, but it's like we're looking at lenses get better and film be useful in more situations, rather than it get "better".

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

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

Breaking news. The product is so obvious no-brainer, DJI has decided to declare a legal war against their most serious threat:
https://petapixel.com/2026/06/11/dji-is-suing-insta360-for-violating-multiple-osmo-pocket-patents/

The apocalyptic precedent is Kodak v. Polaroid, where Kodak was effectively pushed out of instant photography, but that was a much deeper, ecosystem-level disaster, not just another Tuesday in consumer electronics litigation. 
DJI has itself been through patent warfare with Autel over drones. And Insta360 recently faced GoPro in a camera-related dispute that did not exactly erase its current lineup from existence. 
Apple and Samsung spent years throwing patent grenades at each other before settling. 

Originally posted in another thread, but given what it is, I think it deserves a place of its own.
There’s something very real happening here right now. This is not just a minor upgrade.
: )
Insta360 sample for focal length range.

source 
(from Leica HQ BTW)
 
And that detachable screen is basically an on-set field monitor. WOW What a killer combo : X

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

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ayD92_55eZom1FTxYGxE6KA_fnjkNwHn

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ayD92_55eZom1FTxYGxE6KA_fnjkNwHn

The previous comparing with this one is pure crap.
:- )

The GoPro one in Seoul is very impressive....  I'm guessing they must be doing super-duper processing of the image.  Still, for the form factor it looks like a great result.
I'd be curious to see how the low-light is compared with previous normal GoPros.  Some time ago I made the case that an action camera is the perfect vlogging camera, as it's the size of a pair of wireless earbuds but is mostly without the issues that continue to plague the "vlogging" cameras that aren't wide enough / crop for stabilisation / etc.  If I was a vlogger I'd be using one of these 8K action cameras for sure, using the wide for talking head stuff and cropping in for more normal FOVs.  No-one on YT can tell if you edit a 1080p and upscale to 4K on export, so a 2K crop from an 8K sensor gives a pretty useful FOV, assuming the readout isn't terrible.

Not only small, two additional no-brainers to my book anyway -- people say this time GoPro has something or two really new:
 

To be fair, their own product page for the S9 certainly says otherwise though.
It’s all about the casual shooter.
Particularly the crossed out edit graphic.
I don’t disagree that it does a lot more but that’s what they’re aiming at based on their own marketing.
Which is another aspect of the bundled launch in not having the right lenses or the right type of “reviewers” there.
They hedged their bets and it all just looked very confused.
Plus, the S5ii 😉

 
https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lumix-mirrorless-cameras/lumix-s-full-frame-cameras/dc-s9.html

If I'm honest, this Fuji announcement has pissed me off a bit with Panasonic. Frankly, the price and value tread deeply into the core of M43. Having Panasonic basically refuse to make anything and allowing Fuji to own the market says volumes about the current state of Panasonic. Let’s be clear: they’ve come out with ONE value proposition in the past year, and it was for pros (S5II/X). We’ve been begging for a newer M43 camera like the GM5 or GX9, and Panasonic continues to ignore us, despite having an ecosystem for those cameras. To add insult to injury, they come out with an overpriced S9, effectively moving the amateur price point to $1500. Oh, and by the way, we have a new BS 'lens' for you—a manual focus 26mm fixed f/8! What the hell? Now we have Fuji putting the amateur price point back to where it should be—$800. It’s time to lower the price of the S9, announce a new GX9-type camera, or say goodbye to that market.

The Fuji X-M5 looks pretty exciting, especially for the price. The open gate sensor is a big plus for anamorphic shooters.  The lack of in body stabilization is an issue. As for autofocus, Fuji’s “AI-driven” system sounds promising, but I’m waiting to see how it performs in real-world scenarios before getting too excited.
I’ve got my own thoughts on how it compares to something like the Panasonic S9, especially when it comes to autofocus and video. But what y’all really think? On another note those film simulations look good for quick work. 

While I really dislike the film simulation dial (I shoot raw so it's wasted), I absolutely love the fact that Fujifilm put a joystick on every camera. I will never ever buy a camera (especially for photography) without a joystick for focus point selection. With most brands, you have to buy the upper-mid / high-end models to get a joystick as focus point selector.

My understanding was that Brandon literally helped make the genre with (what I like to call) "washing machine travel films" like Hong Kong Strong that are like you rolled and spun a camera through a city and then cut it with only match-cuts - they trigger my motion sickness pretty strongly and I literally can't watch them.
However, people loved it and he got a bunch of TV appearances out of it:
As previously said in the thread, he can make any camera from the last decade shine, and he has, and it's skill.  All true.
What no-one else has said though, is that videos like this are film shoots.  They're not holidays, or someone filming while traveling (even slow travel).. These videos are researched, storyboarded, scheduled, and then shot on location with a cast (him and his GF, but often he recruits locals and will direct them like he's shooting a narrative) and crew (IIRC he's mentioned hiring people to fix, drive, translate, liaise, etc).  This is no secret, and his free BTS content shows this openly.
I think he sits in a fascinating space that I don't see a lot of professionals operating in.  He shoots uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) situations, like markets and crowded public places, does so with talent and a shot list, but does so shooting relatively low-impact.  
People shooting a travel doc will be shooting with talent in markets and in the streets but will have huge shoulder-rigs and will build up a little crowd of people who are just staring at the shoot and have to be choralled to keep them out of frame.
People shooting relatively incognito in a crowd are mostly doing it without talent or a plan or shot-list.  
Not a lot of people sit between those two scenarios, and even less will tell you how to go about doing it.
I've paid a lot of attention to his BTS segments (which are excellent if you want to make videos like this) but as someone who travels for the enjoyment of it and shoots along the way, I can tell you that there is very little overlap between shooting while you travel and producing and shooting and editing a travel film.  
I put myself on the email list for when he launched his course, and when it was released it was pretty pricey.  Probably good value as he obviously knows what he's doing, but too much for me considering the differences of our methods.
Maybe it's an aesthetic thing, but his work looks dated to me now, including the Oppo piece.  I understand why he still shoots these things like this, because he's appeared on quite a number of videos like this that are posted on the manufacturers channel, rather than his own channel, so it's obviously how he keeps the lights on.  

I originally read the title as “This Guy Makes Any Camera Shite” and thought my cloud account had been hacked.
I enjoy watching Brandon Li’s stuff, particularly the self shooting ones. Self shooting as in shooting on your own as though someone else is shooting rather than self shooting in the vlogging context.
Tripods basically.

The secret sauce is skill.  
As someone that used to make my living doing travel videography decades ago, this Brandon guy has really honed the judgement it takes to get the shots.  There's so much going on out there in the environment and he's able to omit it, control it, and/or shape it into something impressive.  It's really quite a thing to do.
He could make any camera in manufactured in the last 15 years look similar to this.  In fact, he has.
This guy is a cinematographer that really knows how to chase the light, compose a shot, and also create advantageous serendipity.  Which might sound like a paradox, but it really isn't.  
But, yes, images like this sell cameras.  Okay, buy the camera if you'd like and start the path to making an edit like this.  You can't buy his boots-on-the-ground experience though.  He's casual about it all during his "how-to" segment, but it really is the biggest factor here.

I'd like a dollar for every time he says oppo find...  I believe the more youtube camera reviews i watch, the more cynical i become and the cynical part maybe exponential... 
i did like the intro, for a guy who lives in the country, its nice to see some travel footage. Although the title,  travel film could be "code"  for you, secretly need a new 8k  camera phone. That in turn would probably necessitate a new tv, new computer, and maybe some other peripherals. So for me, probably not going to happen.  Perhaps this new oppo is amazing, and good on them if it is. Personally i cant take a camera phone seriously if it doesn't have a lens cover. Every single lens i have bought except a couple of 2nd hand lens from japan have had lens covers. If  smart phone manufactures cant put a plastic lens cover on it then their not taking their product seriously.
During the into did think to myself one could  do a similar thing with a gimbal and any phone camera or perhaps even an action camera.  Sure enough a gimbal seems to be the secret sauce, oh and add 8k of course and the occasional hand held shot for added realism.  I shouldn't knock the guy, at least he's out and about doing stuff, while i'm content to simply watch it, in my comfortable desk chair..  It was nice of oppo to send him the phone to vlog with, after that my mind boggles at the boat trips, plane trips, bike hire, and i'm thinking at this point his his business financials must be going backwards. 🙃 I did learn a few things from the behind the scenes part, so thanks for that .
PS. Somebody should probably tell the dude,  that you ride bikes,  you don't drive them. It sounds kinda lame to anyone that does actually ride one.
 

Oh, you have met some of my family then?