dbp

Good choice, you won't be disappointed! 

I've used the C100 (Mk1) and bmpcc a bunch.  The C100 is the best all around camera for sure, such a delight to use and the quality really punches above it's weight.

When it fires on all cylinders, I still prefer the pocket image. 

But you can't discount the "not getting in your way" factor of making a good image, and that's where the C100 is second to none I think. 

Not the most favorable review, seems to be not much of improvement over the GH4.

^Yep,  there definitely is. So it helps to have the fastest m43 glass you can. The really fast and good stuff comes at a premium of course (ie 42.5 f1.2)

One of the disadvantages of m43 compared to larger sensors is that it's hard to find sufficiently fast zooms. There's the Sigmas, but f2.8 isn't really fast enough for lotsa bokeh, where as it definitely is with full frame. Much easier to find zooms f2.8 and up. 

Yep, seems most of the olympus/panasonic lenses perform well wide open. I can vouche for the panny 20mm f1.7

But I've also read reviews and seen footage from:

Panasonic 12 f1.4
Panasonic 15 f1.7
Panasonic 25 f.14
Panasonic 42.5 f1.2 / f1.7

Sigma 30 f1.4

Olympus 12 f2.0
Olympus 17 f1.8
Olympus 45 f1.8
Olympus 75 f1.8

All seem to perform pretty well wide open.  The Rokinon 12 f2.0 that I have is also pretty good at f2, especially for the cost. So there's lots of options. 

No I meant, you can use 1.4 to 2 pretty reasonably on m43, to get into the equivalent 2.8-4 range, since many of the good native m43 lenses are sharp wide open. 

I don't think m43 is that bad for DoF. Although it does vary I suppose. I forget how big the GH4 crop is in UHD.  I always think the bmpcc crop is bad, but the GH4 isn't much better.  GH2, on the other hand, is actually pretty good at 1.86 or whatever it was.

At least the native m43 are pretty sharp wide open. So you can get alot of them to be quite usable at f1.4-2. 

I think a lot of movies live in the 2.8-4 range, so it's not that far off in reality. 

21 hours ago, Fritz Pierre said:

OK...let me create a shitstorm...all this crap about color science is fucking exhausting...so I'll say....in a camera choice, for me, I prefer Panasonic as more color accurate...I don't want a camera or a computer or a fucking iPhone to create colors that are NOT in front of me and make me think what an incredible photographer I am...it's an easy cheat IMO...I prefer to start with an accurate WB and have a colorist do what I need....in post....to suit the storyline or the mood I'm attempting to create...that's all I want from a camera...an unvarnished image of what is in front of me...for me, the rest comes from post....very little is really ever created by zooming in 400% on still image on a desktop and finding flaws in images.... on the other hand a lot of beautiful work is created by people with imagination on deeply flawed cameras...and reading between the lines, I love this camera....warts and all....

Interesting that you say this, because I am the exact opposite. Not to say that you are wrong by any means. What you are saying makes sense.

But I think that's why I'm a bit enthused by the GH5, and a lot of new offerings in it's range, for that matter. It feels like having quality, accurate, true to life footage has been achieved. The GH4 and many others already do a decent job of that. I long for something that looks a little different, stands out, even if it's not necessarily accurate. In fact, I'd prefer it to look a little surreal. I think that's why I gravitate towards the digital bolex and the blackmagic stuff. It has a unique look compared to the many Canon/Sony/Panasonic offerings. 

1 hour ago, mercer said:

I don't want to rain on the GH5 parade, but I would assume that the camera will not be as good as hyped... it will be good... great even... just not the end all be all a lot of folks are making it out to be... or hoping it will be. 

This. Though I'm not sure there'll ever be an end all be all, because we're all programmed to want more more more, and because I think the improvement curve is flattening out to the point that it's hard to make monstrous, noticeable image quality leaps now. 

7 hours ago, Arikhan said:

@jonpais

Yeah...I use Pana cams for two years now and there is a huge progress in color science and specially skin tones. I can see this very clear when comparing the skin tones on my "old" FZ1000 with eg your gx85. Lip color appeared on the FZ1000 (without great tweaking or correction in post) in some lighting situations quite "piggish", nowadays Panny color rendition on a gx85 is much more pleasant OOC...

Despite the fact that they had other issues, I still think the peak of Panasonic color science was the HVX200/HPX170/HMC150 days. That's when people called it the panasonic mojo. They've gone backwards since then, though it seems like they are coming back around, slowly but surely.

From reading about cards when trying to shoot raw on the pocket, I think minimum speed is often the bottleneck. Many have a fast enough max speed, but dropping below the minimum even for a moment is bad news. 

14 hours ago, Julien416 said:

 

 

Been wondering if i'd take the plunge.
That's it. I am sold.

Yep, looks great! Wondered what lens too, cause it definitely seemed on point.... turns out it's the Zeiss Otus 55mm. Might have something do with it looking so nice as well : )

40 minutes ago, Davey said:

I envied the photographers at my last wedding the other week. Dirty big pro looking Nikons - covering 24-200 at f2.8 between them and shooting RAW with only one lens change each to contend with the entire day. Not a care in the world about exposure and WB (within reason).

And then there was me with four lenses, a7s, a7sii, dying batteries, changing WB and exposure between the main hall, outside, the glass reception area, back into the main hall, outside again, do please remember to change WB by 2000k when setting up on the tripods at the last moment and don't blow the dress out.

First time I shot RAW photos was an absolute revelation and I lost my respect for the generic wedding photographer charging £800 for what he does. ALL you have to think about (outside extreme conditions) is the art of composition - you either have that or you don't - and then clack, clack, clack away with your massive flash ruining all my slow motion footage with your white bars across my screen.

I might keep videography as a hobby and switch to photography when it comes to weddings.

Or save up and film weddings in RAW video...

 

Yep, same. I work with a lot of the same photographers. They'll complain about lighting issues and it's like... what are you even talking about? Not to mention having the opportunity to use flash. I can't run a bunch of continuous lighting in a room without pissing everyone off. It's just an entirely different ballgame to get a good looking product.

And I have actually considered it with Raw. Get a couple of 256gb cards. It'd be a monsterous storage hit at first. But you could scan through and quickly get the good clips to 95% balanced, export to dnxhd HQ, or even SQ and delete the raw. Footage would look much better and would probably give you a leg up, since even the high end wedding videos tend to have pretty crappy looking color throughout lots of it. No fault of the shooters, just the nature of the gig with crappy codecs. 

4 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

For day to day work flow you are completely right. Raw is kind of big boy stuff. But if you have the time well it is beautiful.

Yep, tends to be big boy stuff, and I understand it.

Funny though, the paradox is that it's *very* valuable for quick and dirty, low budget stuff, and events. The very places it's used the least is when it can help the most. A lot of times, lighting is minimal, set up time is minimal, they don't want to mess around staging stuff and repeating stuff, so you end up getting what you can get quickly and on the fly. It's very freeing to not have to worry about getting an accurate white balance while shooting. So many times I wish I could go RAW at weddings, but the storage would be horrendous. Crappy mixed lighting conditions,  quickly moving between indoors and outdoors, harsh exteriors during mid day. All sorts of things where Raw and lattitude is invaluable. 

I love only having to worry about composition, focus, lighting ratios (if controlled) and getting a fat negative. The rest is all done in post. 

1 minute ago, fuzzynormal said:

Thank you for the advice.  I'll continue to play with RAW and see if I can get to a place that I'm comfortable with.

I suppose that's the extra step that bugs me.  I want to grade completely after the cut, not at all before.

Anyway, I've hijacked the thread, so I'll bow out...

It is annoying. I dearly wish either premiere would be able to handle cinemaDNG properly, OR have Resolve become a suitable editor. Honestly, I'd rather the 2nd option, as resolve's color grading is excellent. I've thought about experimenting with Resolve as a main editor, but haven't pulled the trigger.

The workflow is *almost* there, but not quite. So yeah, it's a bit annoying for sure. 

3 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

I'd love a URL link to a video outlining useful workflows so I could get a better handle on it.  Maybe the path I'm on is the wrong one. 

Also, perhaps it's because I'm shooting docs, that dissuades my embrace of the RAW workflow.  When the shooting ratios of the footage to final cut are so high, the process of manually "touching" every single clip to get them into the project is just too impractical.

Based on how I've been understanding it, the "quick" RAW workflow doesn't deliver a big advantage IQ wise, and the "slow and simple" / "laborious" option are out for reasons stated.

But, please, if anyone has an example of a RAW solution that would jibe with doc shooting, my goodness, I'd love to see a video.  Thanks! 

Can't speak on 5D raw, but honestly, the only thing holding back blackmagic pocket raw from being viable is hard drive space. RAW compatible memory cards have really fallen. Couple of 256gig cards would get you almost 80 minutes each. The footage runs really smoothly in resolve. I often shoot corporate videos, and I load the clips in resolve first. Whip through them with a basic grade, export them out and use them in premiere. They cut like butter in both instances, and I have a pretty old computer at this point. If you wanted to do extensive grading, it'd take more time... but for your standard real world looking color correction, it's super quick. You get a ton of lattitude, quality is excellent and workflow is barely impacted at all. 

Hard drives would absolutely add up with a ton of footage but that's gonna happen with any decent codec in 4K as well. Price you pay for quality, really. 

15 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

 

This footage, while technically in a low light situation, also has lots of ambient light bouncing around in the corners.  There's a good scoop of photons for the sensor.

 

That's true, exposure has been key with high ISO on all previous GH models and it can look decent if the entire frame is filled with light. That footage still has some dark areas where I'd expect it to go to hell pretty badly, especially at 5000-10,000. Just doesn't look anything like what I'm used to seeing out of the GH4. 

Wow, that looks dynamite for 10,000 ISO. Some of the others have looked like GH4 or worse, so really not sure what's up.

8 hours ago, Justin Bacle said:

I would invert your list as Magic Lantern raw has nowhere near the dynamic range of Black Magic or Digital Bolex's cameras

Didn't intend on it being in a specific order, but I will say that the 5D raw stuff I've seen definitely seems to win for color. 

Talking pure image quality, I'd say:

5D Raw

BMCC/BMPCC Raw

Digital Bolex

Nothing else in that range competes with those based on anything I've seen. Ergonomics / usability is a whole different matter. 

I have the magicpower juicebox battery mounted on top, so that adds a decent amount of weight. Steadycam solo and Glidecam XR-4000 both look like good options.

On 2/16/2017 at 2:11 PM, Parker said:

The Rokinon 12mm f/2 is a great lens, very small and light, I've used it on a GH4 quite a bit and liked it. Recently I've also seen some test footage from Laowa's new 7.5mm f/2 which looks very impressive, and definitely solves "the wide-angle issue" of micro 4/3. 

EDIT: Well, I should have read the post better, you say you don't like the exaggerated look of those ultra wide angles, my bad! Best of luck and happy shopping.

I'll cosign this. The Rokinon is excellent for a very reasonable price. Manual focus only... probably why it's so cheap. But manual focus is generally fine on a lens this wide anyway. 

http://nofilmschool.com/2017/02/shootout-arri-alexa-mini-vs-red-epic-w-helium

Seems strange that they didn't went with ISO 800 for the helium shots. 

Yeah, that tests actually looks noticably worse for the GH5 in low light, compared to the GH4. Certainly hope something is up with that. 

Show of hands, what are ya'll using to stabilize this little thing??