Inazuma

I appreciate all the insight from everyone. In the end the I decided to go with the.....GH4! While the LX100 would have served my family needs well (for the most part), I think the GH4 will be a better long-term investment. Plus it really is designed for more intensive video use, where the LX100 is not necessarily optimized for that (i.e. shorter battery life, potential heat issue for extended shooting, short clip length, etc...). I really like the idea that the GH4, with it's longer battery life and "unlimited" video recording length, can basically be setup and forgotten about, say during a long interview or conference. That makes it much more "C100-like" in terms of video usability. Plus with the "dumb adapter" I bought, I can throw on any of my Canon glass. I bought the cheap Panasonic 14-42mm f/3.5 -5.6, mostly to have something with useable OIS. I'll start saving my pennies again and eventually graduate to the Speedbooster, if it becomes necessary. 
I also bought the EOSHD GH4 Shooter's Guide and look forward to learning all about my new GH4. 
Thanks again!
***EDIT - I forget to add 96fps, too!

Seeing shadows cast by the moon in this A7s video will I reckon stick in my mind for a while to come:
 
 

​Its just down to personal experience. Ive found in the past that theres something more of an organic quality to stills taken with a  higher megapixel count. Again, it's just personal experience and i'd probably have a hard time truly quantifying the difference. But the a7s isnt just a lower megapixel count camera, its a much lower megapixel count

Ah fair enough Maxotics :) I too owned a d5200 last year and the question of if it was noticeably better for stills than my GX7 has been on my mind for this whole time. I almost want to buy the camera again just to compare.

I love shooting stills, but I'm always shooting video instead so I never do. I'm not a photographer. The GH4 is a good enough stills camera for me - in fact I love shooting stills with it. It's so versatile, and stills quality (particularly RAW) is very good. Far, far better than my G6 for example. The Nikon would just sit on my shelf gathering dust, and I needed to sell it to pay for the GH4.
 
As you say, the GH4 and BMPCC is a superb filmmaking combo. With my fast primes and speed booster low light isn't even really a problem.
 
I'm literally in love with the GH4. There is just so much camera in that tiny GH3 body it's insane. It's such a pleasure to work with too. And it's amazingly futureproof - 10-bit 422 4K capable! The BMPCC's image isn't going to look silly for a very long time either. I'm so pleased to have two superb, professional video cameras that I know will be with me for a long time. I'm really looking forward to focussing on all the other aspects of filmmaking and not wondering whether or not I should upgrade. I can confidently say I would be happy with these two as my 'A-cameras' for at least another 2-3 years.
 
Anyway, the D5300 has gone now (as has my G6) and I'm too besotted with the GH4 to care.  :wub: I may pick up a GM1, GX7 or LX100 as a B-cam at some point if I find the BMPCC too frustrating for paid multi cam stuff. 

The new CMOS correction is very impressive. It corrects rolling shutter wobbling and vibration better than anything earlier. It is though very slow process.

I have tested now the auto batch setting and few own settings. It is time consuming to tweak so that my bad lens OIS (Pana 14-140mm v2) vibration goes away but it still crops as little as possible. I have used something like 35/35& pan and roll and 100% best stabilation but it is not very good still yet. Auto works fine but crops a bit too much. Advanced CMOS settings are so slow that I have not used those yet.   Own settings with batch are slow because I must first let the Mercalli analyze all the clips and then assign the own setting to all clips. So there is two long waiting time.   Very frustrating to mess with stab programs. I just watched my friends Nikon V1 handheld videos and those were very stable and no need for post stab.    The new Mercalli v4 still stabilizes GH4 videos nicely and without converting levels from 0-255 to 16-235 like the previous version v3. I found when I watched my same Gh4 0-255 nature videos stabilized by v3 and v4 the difference is quite big. When 255 levels are converted to 220 levels there seems to be some leveling and compressing of subtle color tones. The V4 0-255 stabilized result is more "photo like" quality and the fine color nyances of nature (greens in grass or reds of autumn) are preserved better.   I think the case is the same when shooting 0-255 vs 16-235. If the end product is 16-235 we loose the benefit.

Get a Panikonan :)

I have to agree with this.

For the most part, give a middle-range client shallow depth of field and they're happy. But there's a reason I stopped doing those sorts of gigs.

For the most part, people do appreciate the quality difference even if they can't tell why they like it more.

It's important in as much as you should know that you can shoot on a GH3, GH4, A7s, 5D3 et al and shoot stuff that clients are going to be happy with.

But that does not mean you should not strive for better quality work in everything you do! I'd personally rather move my way up through clients than stall at a certain level because I'm happy just giving them 'good enough' images.

I didn't get to shoot commercials and films from delivering images that were simply 'good enough.'

Never. There are so many different ways you can light a scene, compose a shot, tell a story through the camera, - I'd go as far to say that there is no right way. Just 'ways' that are more visually pleasing to many than others.

The right way is the way the Director wants/is happy with. That way may be completely at odds with what you're thinking or what you want (hopefully it isn't, but sometimes it is), but at the end of the day you're working for the Director.

My tip is that there's always more to learn - it's impossible to learn it all, so embrace everything (even the terrible shoots) as a good learning experience.

JGL, MJS, whatever ;) I'm liking the GH4 well, I've done a lot of work with it theses pasts months, not already online. Recently I've done a music video, and also a Making Of of a long feature movie, with two weeks shooting (in anamorphic of course) in Ethiopia. Soon online ;) 

I vote for GM1, since I am using it completely for run&gun. The missing stabilisation is not that much of a problem if you have a steady hand and if you actually wont run while shooting ;)
 
Some examples with that camera:
 

 

 

Ebrahim- there are lots of 5D3 RAW (5D3R) vs. <insert camera here> tests out there. Here's a pretty good one comparing 5D3R to Kodak film and Red Dragon:

 
5D3R has fantastic skintones and a very filmic look. Skintones look better than Red Dragon (at the time of the test- Red is constantly improving their color science: skintones look better now).
 
Keep in mind ARRI and Canon colors aren't necessarily chart accurate (though ARRI is both more accurate and produces nicer skintones). Part of the secret to good looking people/skintones results in making other scene colors off a bit. Here Shane Hurlbut prefer's Canon's C500 'golden color bias' over Alexa's color (to my eye Alexa is more accurate and could easily be made to have the 'golden' look of the C500 if desired):

I believe that now may be the time to reveal that I am in fact Joseph Gordon-Levitt! Andrew, I am a huge fan of your blog!!!
 
As I apply 'the method' to everything I do I have in fact been living in North East England for some time, shooting a lot of stuff with a Nikon DSLR and adopting a grouchy and abrasive persona to disguise my easy-going and gregarious nature. 

Did you actually set out to write the snobbiest post ever or did it just sort of happen? because to do that by accident is quite an achievement.

Looks great...but damn...they just couldn't get those holy skin tones right. What a bunch of amateurs. Oh wait...
 

The good thing about this camera is that it is flexible. You can mount native mft lenses on it or you can use a speed booster with other lenses to get a super 35 look. And if you want it to look softer there are ways to do it with filters or post production. Personally, I don't understand what all the fuss is. No one looks at an IMAX or RED film and goes "woah this is so sharp it looks like a video"

Canon APS-C looked really soft to me even before I knew anything about HDSLR filming. I still don't understand why it was bigged up so much :/

NOTE: Download the original file for most accurate comparison. 
This is a rushed test to see if I can live without my D5300 (a supposedly decent low-light performer) now I've bought a GH4 (which I'll be using alongside my BMPCC).
Conclusion: I'm happy to sell the D5300. I can't see any noise advantage to the D5300 at 1600 ISO. Colours are more saturated but I don't prefer them to the GH4 colours here. As with daylight footage, softness and macro blocking is an issue with the D5300 but much less so with the GH4.
BMPCC has finer noise than GH4 but colours are difficult to pull up, and there seems to be more false colour than the GH4 I think.

Let me tell you another true story. Some ten years ago a friend of mine asked me if I would borrow her my VX2000. She wanted to shoot a video as a gift for her father's 50th birthday. She had Windows Movie Maker on her laptop. No experience with photo/video at all. Sport student. 
 
She interviewed her family, she dubbed her father's dog, live, during recording. She cut a wonderful 15-minute-video, she hand-made titles, in fact a sloppy but charming stop motion, a birthday cake gradually forming out of thin air. 
 
On a Friday I explained to her the basics of how to operate the camera. The following Monday she brought it back and showed me the film. I was gobsmacked.
 
On the other hand, there is, as you put it, the market for enthusiast video. An invective? I linked this clip before:

I've heard good things about that one but for my money I would get the kamerar like andy suggested. The standout feature for me is that it's one arm, so much easier to move about on the rails or take on and off the rig. And it's just as stable.

Rumors have been pretty sketchy recently. The OMD em1 thing, the overinflated 7d mk ii, the zero rumours about an a7 with 5 axis.

My company just finished a documentary shoot with a GX7 and the GM1 was the b-cam.  Their image IQ is the same from my experience.  We put a loupe (a cheap Hoodman) on the GM1 for focus assisting.  Not a bad solution.  Looks ugly as hell, but it works.
 
It's my stealth camera.  We use it to shoot clean and impressive video in locations where we need to fly under the radar.
 
We also do a lot of run and gun small business work; shoot lots of restuarants.  One of my main gigs in the past was filming restaurants and galleys on cruise ships.  Most of that was done on NTSC cameras and 2/3" CCD sensors.  
 
That said, if there's an attractive evenly lit small business on the planet I've yet to find it.  
 
Here's my easy solution to make the lighting in businesses look better:  Turn off their lights.  Always.  Then utilize the natural source as best you can and supplement with your own sources only if needed.  2 or 3 good LED's will do the trick since most cameras these days are decent in lower light.  
 
Many times just having some natural light pouring in with good drop off into the distance is enough to get by.  Hitting your subject with some side rim/back light makes a ton of difference.  Strategizing effective angles that take advantage of that new light is the final step.  It's fast, simple, and effective.
 
You do that and your work will look better, doesn't matter what camera it's shot on.  
 
If I could pound one sentiment into the heads of video and photography enthusiast it would be this:  Stop worrying about camera bodies and lenses until you understand light and learn to control it.  An education in this stuff is free on the interwebs.  You can become a better shooter than most overnight with an earnest ambition to apply good lighting to your work...but since knowledge is not something you can purchase from B&H not as many people rant about it online.

Why dot you take that hard cash buy some used arri lights, red one mx camera or black magic 4k and start shooting dedicate your self to learn story telling cinematography color. Some of the famous directors like Quentin Tarantino Lana and Andy Wachowski Christopher Nolan Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kubrick to name few never wen to film school
 
Terry Gilliam
Film school is for fools. Live and learn how to make films. I didn’t go to film school. I just watched movies in the cinemas. And probably my greater education was actually making films, so that’s all I would ever say: watch movies, get a camera, make a movie. And if you do it enough times, eventually you start learning how films are made.â€
 
Quentin Tarantino
“Trying to make a feature film yourself with no money is the best film school you can do,†Tarantino told students during a master class at the Cannes Film Festival
 
James Cameron
One of the best things that happened to me was that I didn’t go to film school. I used to go down to the USC library and read everything. I’d Xerox stuff. I made my own reference library of doctoral dissertations on optical printing and all that.
 
 
You will spent shit load of money to get access to film cameras that you can buy now for 5000k on ebay red one mx body goes for 5 to 8k. I wen to film school they told me i can learn it all in 1 years 11k down the hole took me 5 years to pay that off working as a tradesman  i dont mind my job at all money is really good but if i could do it all over again i would spend my 11k some place else. School those day is only good for me if you want to make like minded friends that why we have forums like this one. I hear those film schools in USA are dam expensive. like 700 dollars for each class you attend a day.
 
Just my 2 cents