Tim Fraser

I know I should be hawking the 1DC right now.
But, if I were you... Because you are coming from the NX1... I’m sure you haven’t invested in many Canon lenses....
Go with the Gh5... and later the Eva1...
You know that Panasonic won’t disappoint in the long run.... and because your a bonafide film student... you of all people should appreciate the 6K opengate anamorphic mode.... 
 

It seems you two have never experienced a truly sharp lens. 1080 through a sharp lens can easily look better than 4K through bad glass. I've experienced this many times.
Please get your hands on a new tamron or sigma 85 and compare it to the Canon 85 1.2 and you'll see just how much difference resolving power really means.

Morning boys!
Most important future of camera is colour science, motion cadence and dynamic range.
Lets say that this Sanyo has good DR but so what if the colours in 8bits look like plastic zombie land. No thanks jeff! Why would someone buy this over used 1DC is beyond me. 
Best affordable choices are, 5d mk3 (really a legendary classic with 14 bit vista-fuarking-vision size sensor and best colour science), 1DC (unbeatable 4k image, best body ever) and LEICA SL which used has fallen under 5K. Honorary mentions go to Fuji xpro2. Fuji is the only camera maker apart of LEICA and Canon that has charisma and character.
GH5 has great features but the sensor size is a joke sorry, footage looks like iphone 7 video srs, but I guess it's alright to do the job for some. Buying the speedboosters and adapting other lenses is let's face it cumbersome and ridiculous and no one should to invest in lenses with electronics (like native mft). 
Sony, A6500 A7smk2 etc, oh boy, worst ergonomics, HORRIBLE colours (yes, they are never quite right), bad looking high iso srs. From sony F35 and f55 is noyce. 
Nikon, oh boy d850 maybe does look good on paper, but they even don't make they own sensor, not to mention the goofy buttons and ergonomics, and modern Nikon lenses look crap. Nikkor did really well with AIS lenses but that's it
If you have more money just get the new jooouicy C200 or used c500, next step is ARRI AMIRA. REDs have amazing specs but that digital look is not nice, ARRI buldozers over RED sorry. 
I think that best possible look can be achived with ALEXA (or believe it or not with 5Dmk3 RAW) with old Cooks or vintage Panavision Anamorphics das it.
Sony comes and goes with new A7xx and A6xxx, ultimately there are boring and unimaginative, and how is it possible to make camera with (claimed) 15 stops of DR and such disgusting colours and then put it in 8 bit. 
Just buy Canon or Leica srs
 

I'm not in the industry, but I'd hazard a guess that if you're a TV station or an educational institution or any of many other types of organisation looking to buy 50 or 100 cams you'd always go Canon, Sony or Panasonic and avoid BMD like the plague (what? You buy 50 cams and have to send 25 back for replacement?). Likewise, if you're doing anything where serious money is involved at the kind of level at which this new camera is aimed you would (if you have any sense) go for the platform that offers robust, quality products for which replacements are available within 12 hours tops. BMD seem to make great cameras, with lovely imagery - but they're just nowhere near the QC and ubiquity of supply necessary when deadlines have to be met and crews standing around waiting for stuff can't be afforded.

Hey guys n dolls! Still love my G6. G7 didnt get properly tested yet, don´t like the body ergos. GX80 getting a hell lotta tested but it´s not so much fun as
my G6 was. Yet. Maybe because GX80s HD is kinda underwhelming and without a cage its a little small though beautiful to hold, kinda slippery too.
Bought a cage, so thats kinda helpful. Guess my run and gun days will become fewer and it´s time to get used to proper big and fat setups and cameras.
Big Bertha Urs(ul)a

Yeah that was a pretty lame article over at C5D in my opinion. Having had an opportunity to spend a little time with the GH5, it is already the most technologically complete / best camera I have ever held in my hands for the type of work that I do. I've been a pro for the past 25 years and have lived through film, Hasselblads, Nikons, Canons, DSLRs, Cinema cameras, and more. Truth is you can do far more with this camera than meets the eye, and if you can't do it on the GH5 you need a new career choice. It's quite an amazing camera, and at the $2K price point it's a no brainer. Here is a little real world test of my own for anyone interested in focusing on how cool the camera is rather than technical specs and BS. 
 

Sure. I don't usually do formal tests like shooting charts, color charts, etc. I might come to my conclusions quicker if I did this, but my test is usually just taking it out and shooting anything and everything, combined with my paid work (weddings, corporate videos, events).
I have owned and used 4 cameras extensively. Panasonic HMC150, GH2, GH4, and Blackmagic pocket. With all of them, they have strengths and weaknesses I find. It's not as simple as one is better than the other in every category. The lowly Panasonic HMC150 still wins on motion (CCDs, and all) and has color science second only to the pocket. Yet technically it's far inferior in other ways.
With all of them, I come back with footage that i'm sometimes thrilled with it, okay with, and outright disappointed with. Takes me a bit sometimes to see the variables. The GH2, for instance... over time, I noticed that under daylight, it was always great. Generally good under tungsten. But flourescant and mixed lighting, it took a big dive. And I would encounter this alot at weddings and events. Sometimes a second shooter would have a 7D, and it always handled the color on mixed lighting better. Same with the pocket and tungsten. Brilliant in daylight and florescent, but goes to the shits under tungsten. Even the stuff with an IR cut helps, but doesn't seem to cure it. That sensor really wants to  be at daylight, it seems. 
I shoot for this woman who does canine aqua therapy. Her pool is lit by these crappy mixed tungsten and florescent lights. I've used all 4 cameras there. I can *never* get the GH2 and GH4 to look good, color wise. Every profile and white balance setting, doesn't matter. HMC150 always did a much better job with the color, only exceeded by the pocket raw. HMC does a ton of stuff wrong, like resolution, dynamic range, highlight handling, but it always had nice color.
So that's kinda what I mean. Rather than definitely say Camera A is better than B, which is better than C... each seems to vary depending on the conditions. Only constant is that the pocket raw  exceeds all. *Especially* in harsh sunny conditions. It blows them all away, there. Though in tungsten, especially the 2800k tungsten, that gap narrows. 
And it takes a lot of using them to work this out. 

The G7 does not carry a signal through HDMI when recording. In other words, you can't use an external monitor with a G7.
Now, shooting a Feature Film on a 3 inch LCD screen does not really seem to be a great idea in my opinion. Image quality is great though.

You're not wrong about Oly.  And I shoot Fuji as well, so all these things are part of the mixed bag.  The thing is, when we're talking price, when we're looking at cameras within similar classes, the difference is typically a few hundred bucks.
At a certain point, determining my camera purchase can turn into a  "penny wise and pound foolish," decision.  A few hundred, or even a grand, is a small price to pay to own and use a camera that I'm comfortable with and does the things I need it to do.
You know how it is.  You balance liabilities of the gear with the needs of your work and one's own biases.
For instance, I just did 6 30-min documentaries in 6 months.  I did it with the GX85 and EM5II.  I'm not lying when I say that I'm glad I did the job on these consumer cameras rather than something like an Arri.  One would look INCREDIBLY better than the other, and I would love to use that camera for many many many things, but I wouldn't have been able to do half the work load (nor the radically informal work that yielded a lot of good results) without the flexibility of these goofy, small, hybrid, IBIS, 8-bit, cams.
I know it's hard to fathom among a forum like this, but having the best IQ is not always a priority.
My favorite industry idioms comes from the National Geographic guys.  It's simply, "f8 and be there."  And I think you can understand the sentiment of that saying.  
That's why I can't get caught up to much in the IQ debate.  My factors for my particular work rely on a lot more than just IQ.  You'll have other needs.  Someone else will have other requirements as well.  
For instance, I'm doing a cinematic doc/narrative in 2017, and I plan on using a Sony F5 and 100% static shots, so it's always always an "it depends" sort of answer with tools one decides to use for a project.  

Well you can buy a Panasonic G7 used for less than 400 dollars and get 4k with it. And they are good at low light also. Plenty of used GH4's out there now for less than 800 dollars also. It is for the money probably the best video camera you can ever buy.
Also Black Magic BMPCC and BMCC are really a great way to use a raw camera, and get, for the money, the best Cine look for the money also. Used Sony A6000 are cheap also.
The main thing you need to do no matter what you buy when you get it shoot, shoot, shoot ,edit ,edit, edit. By doing it over and over to see what you did right and what you did wrong best way you can really learn what to do. I would suggest using Black Magic Resolve because it is free. Really a powerful software package.
I could go on forever on cameras, but you are the one that has to make that decision. Plenty of info on the web. I like Camcorders myself, but good ones are pretty expensive. They are made to shoot video and need very little rigging to do it. Not some camera that has video added on to it.

The Zebras work on the green channel so with blue sky you can be not showing any clipping but be very overexposed. ETTR is not a good idea with any in-camera profile as it's an exposure strategy for shooting RAW. With RAW you get as much info onto the sensor before clipping to maximise DR and keep out of the noise and then apply a tone curve in post production. With non RAW capture the tone curve is 'baked in' to the data so if it's a low contrast scene you will overexpose if you ETTR and you have to pull down the values in post but you are moving values to a different part of the tone curve where with 8bit they can get stretched out and cause banding. Like I said this camera needs scopes ( as they decided to do with the XC15) but more importantly an RGB parade so you can see the individual channels ( not sure if they have done this with the XC15) - or use an external monitor / recorder but this kind of defeats the ergonomics. 

The a6500 will definitely loose 1/3 of it's current price anyway, just as a6300 did. By the time GH5 is out (Feb-March maybe?), Sony will have the a6700 (or something like that) ready for production. This has nothing to do with gh5 or what the average consumer wants. It's just Sony's strategy. When something new pops up from their R&D departments, it's instantly incorporated into the next design in a 6 month cycle, just the opposite from what Canon does. This leads to innovative BUT immature & untested products & brings huge sales after targeted marketing campaigns. This is how Sony choosed to move on, sadly. A side effect to this strategy is the shrinking value of these products, every time the next model is out (which is 6 months from now). Panasonic doesn't do this, nor Canon, nor Fuji, nor Nikon. This is why SONY SUCKS and not because of their skintones which i personally like :).

Andrew, thank you for explaining why we don't see any commercial work from you here. You don't need to justify your choices and this doesn't make your opinions any less interesting. I'm still a little confused as why anyone who doesn't have to would spend quite so much money on cameras, though. Outside of what I might need for jobs, what excites me most at the moment is what can be done using very simple equipment... My ambition is to own as little as possible.
As far as your test goes, it looks to me as if the portraits were made in direct, late in the day, autumn sunlight.  In my experience, this kind of light is treacherous : it's attractive to the eye but I've never managed to use it for a flattering picture of a human being. At the least, you would really need to put a big silk between the subject and the light source. Even then, colour correction is hard because the light is so very orange. Whatever camera is used, it would be difficult to make an attractive "normal" image in this situation.
When I test cameras, my first concern, before creating any "look" is whether I can get an image that reproduces the scene as I (or my client) have seen it. This is my starting point. I pay careful attention to not losing information in the shadows and highlights because clipping of either does not correspond to normal vision. Being able to film in lower light than I can actually see in doesn't interest me much in most cases ; below a certain level of illumination we just have to accept that we're in the dark. Often I find myself looking from the camera to the scene, asking myself "Does it really look like that?".
Similarly, I want a camera that lets me get my picture sharp before I worry about "filmic" shallow depth of field. 
Once I establish a "normal", baseline image, then I can think about tweaking it towards a particular effect.
This is why the images you posted to accompany your article made me react so strongly ;  because they weren't  the best to show the relative capabilities of the cameras concerned. As an example, wedding videos are generally not very interesting, but they can be informative in the sense that we have critical skin tones, important blacks and whites, low light, some action. You can learn a lot about how a camera behaves from watching them. Holiday movies, less so.
Finally, with a budget of 6000 €, I would think (more than) twice about buying just one camera (for my purposes). However good, one camera will only give you one point of view. I would rather have several cheaper cameras with, perhaps, a slightly less good image and have more angles to edit from that one single point of view. My Sonys are useful here because it's easy to match cheaper and more expensive models.
As to the projected life of the Canon, I suspect that within the next couple of years we're going to see more and more 4K delivery. This means that the possibility of reframing in post (my main use for 4K) will be reduced. Higher resolution cameras will be introduced and lower prices to compensate for this, limiting somewhat the resale value of 4K cameras. That's just my prediction.
But what's really got me thinking this week, far beyond high-end camera tests and choices, was being on a job with Canon and Sony shooters and also a young reporter from a French TV station that has equipped its journalists with iPhones   . His broadcast piece was maybe not "filmic" but he could work with a speed and discretion that no one else could match, Canon or Sony... 

Who doesn't love orange people?

i registered just to like your comment. my thoughts exactly. 
i own the 1dx mark II as well (like many, i normally shoot on sony a7s, a7s2, fs700 etc). a couple of Andrew's pros made me giggle a bit. color flatter talent? you mean to say that a colder grade would be unflattering? lighting, make-up and distortion free focal lenght flatter talent. p.s. i even think the sony looks better in the first example for instance. 
next, it's 1,38x crop, which is closer to 1,4x than 1,3x, making it more similar to super 35 than full frame. also, it's far from having good dynamic range, it's decent at best, and there is no way any third party "log" profile made in canon's picture profile editor could come close to genuine canon's c-log. flattened neutral profile isn't log, it just lifts shadows, you cant make log with a curve in a rudimentary pp editor, it offers zero highlight gain.  the a7s is the one with impressive dynamic range, AND it has proper log. you can overexpose it 4 (!!!!) stops before it falls apart. canon is a goner at 2 stops over. 
it's a great camera with great straight out color, just like sony is way better at other things. but the fanboyism is strong here. especially seeing how you initially bashed the camera without even having had tried it. nobody forces you to update your sony gear, it's an investment in your creative nature, not in your resale value. just because there is something newer, doesnt mean you gonna get shot if you dont get it. i still use the original a7s and it's more than enough if you dont shoot high end commercial stuff + (and even then you could manage with an external recorder). 

On my very carefully calibrated monitor the embedded holiday video looks bad. I don't think I need to upgrade.

There is a problem with this statement, as Nikon that won number 1 in the "JPEG shootout" also use Sony sensor...

Totally agree with your review if you talk with the professional photographer hat put on.
For an enthusiast like me the article has no point. I love tweaking my A7s footage and photos, once you practice you can get good results in no time and with a better DR than Canon's.
OT: i seriously dont get whats the deal with this grey-is-the-new-black look.

Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 with a focal reducer will cover a MFT sized area approximately. 
Not a good idea!
With a straight adapter it would be a good idea with a Sony a7R mk2, but not an a7S mk2.
 
What is your budget and purpose? As there are HEAPS of options for lenses!
Do you want to go mainly adapted or native mount lenses?

Personally if it was me I'd go for a mix, I could get together a nice little set at a very low cost:
You can pick these up second in Nikon F mount for cheap cheap:
Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8
Tokina 28-80 f/2.8
Tokina 80-200mm f/2.8

Then throw in one of the cheapest Sony FE mount lenses, which makes it quite a good value (unlike most Sony FE lenses):
Sony FE 50mm f/1.8

All in cost is not much at all, and you've got four nice lenses which cover a lot of uses.

I bought the following (though I am just a hobbiest at present that does the odd wedding and party):
FE 28mm f2.0
FE 16-35mm f4.0
FE 55mm f1.8
FE 70-200 f4.0
The only lens I have barely used as yet in the six months I have had the a7sii is the 16-35mm, but that is because it isn't fast enough for indoor shooting at night under disco lights. The other three lenses have been used equally and I love them all. I guess if money had been a bigger stumbling block at the time of purchase I would not have paid the Sony premium and instead gone down the adapter route, though the 28 and 55 are (in my opinion) worth the money.
If I'd had more money, I would have waited and gone for the following:
Sony Zeiss 35mm f1.4
Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8
Sony 90mm f2.8 macro
Sony 24-70 f2.8 (g-master)
Sony 70-200 f2.8 (g-master)
 

If you've got the money, a Zeiss Loxia set is ideal for video shooting. Beautiful focus action, clickless aperture rings, and an elegant, transparent rendering ideal for both clean client work or more creative grading. 
If you want to get something more affordable or more broadly compatible, I'd recommend buying vintage and fitting the set with gears from followfocusgears.com and uniform 80mm front rings from Duclos. I'm building a Leica R set that way right now, as I believe they're the best of the best vintage stills glass for cinema. Other great choices: Contax Zeiss, Minolta MD, Olympus OM, Nikon F, and Canon FD (in that order). 
A lot of low-level industry people are buying Rokinons these days, but they're relatively sterile, mediocre performers that don't match terribly well and suffer from quite a bit of sample variation. They're also-- let's be real here-- big pieces of plastic, and I'm not optimistic about their longevity compared to all-metal vintage glass. Besides, building a unique set could give you an edge over your competition, both in prestige and the looks you're able to achieve.
Edit: If you're looking for something more run and gun, I highly recommend the CY Zeiss 28-85mm and 80-200mm. AF on the A7SII isn't something I'd use in a fast-paced doc situation, and both those zooms combined will cost you less than a third the price of a new G-Master.

Try to get the constant f3.5 version, it's is ahead of the other Nikon 35-70 lenses in ways including distortion.

yes. 

​The low light performance was better than I expected. The softness is present, but worked well with the video. Only the aliasing was perturbuing, when filming the car lights.

At the end of a day testing cameras for a shoot tomorrow, all I can say is that it's not a straightforward as I thought when I posted this morning's test.
In fact, against my GH4 and 5D MK III, the EM5 Mk2's skin tones look really good. The colours are great and the files are very easily tweaked. 
Downloading John Brawley's ungraded files is quite informative, by the way.