Aussie Ash

Bullshit. I have seen for my own eyes putting more powerful equipment in the hands of aspiring filmmakers does inspire them, does improve their cinematography and does allow them to get noticed. This community wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the gear.
 
You won't know any of my work if it wasn't for this platform, which is based on the gear.
 
Let's knock this content is king nonsense ON THE HEAD permanently from now on. OK?

Not bad.  I'm not partial to shooting with a shoulder rig myself, but if you find it helps, no problem.  
 
Using that LED light though?  I'd ditch it.  IMHO, that's not going to do you any favors with creating an attractive image.  I'd say, at the most, use it as a rim light on subjects.  Have a assistant hit 'em from the side or behind if need be, but direct like that?  Nah, not a good thing.
 
No assistant?  Roll with natural light and then find your angles that compliment your subject.  This is a much better approach to documentary style film making.  Modern cams are great in low light.  Keep it naturalistic and try harder to find your shots rather than just illuminating the first thing you see.
 
Is that the Oly45mm on there?  If so, that's a great focal length (90mm Full Frame Equivalent) for portraiture and will look awesome...but not handheld --unless you're some sort of zen master shooter.  You'll need a tripod or at least a good monopod.
 
If you can handle it, I'd recommend shooting the whole thing longer lens @2.8/fps50/and a shutter speed of 100. (adjust exposure with ISO and/or ND filters)  It would make your work look much more elegant and cohesive.  But again, only if you can effectively control the lens movement on that longer focal length.  Easier said than done.  
 
More practically, shooting @50mm (FF equivalent) would still look nice and give you a bit more flexibility with space.  Personally, I'm not a fan of wide angles with documentaries.  Useful for a few special shots, depending on the subject, but I stay away from them if I can.  I like to pick one prime and shoot at least 80% of my footage with it.
 
Good luck!

I want to share my experience with GH3 as a photography tool.
 
Coming from a canon prosumer series, I was very disappointed with the GH3.  The midtones are flat, so you end up with pasty saturated complexions on people's faces.  At least in Adobe Camera Raw.
 
So I bit the bullet and bought PS Kiss' GH3 lens profiles which lets me force different camera profiles that are calibrated for the GH3.  And when I apply the 5D Mark 3 profile and bump the exposure by 1/3 stop, the image quality is superb.  Whereas the standard Adobe Camera Raw profile that which is your only option in Adobe Camera Raw, for my standards, makes unusable pictures when it comes to pictures with people's faces being the subject.
 
So the problem is that Panasonic is not working with Adobe to create calibrated lens profiles, not that the camera is not capable.  But you can work around it for now.  It's just one extra step in the workflow.  Sure the raw files in MFT cameras are supposed to magically work in Adobe camera raw, but they only fix distortion.  Colors, which may be fine for people looking for a different color profile than what you normally get from Nikon or Canon, but are not good when you are looking for accurate color.
 
With that said, I feel good about shooting photos with the GH3 now that I know how to get the most out of it.

Here's a simple phrase that should help:  "Chase Mini Van"
 
Open the doors and pace the riders.

It doesn't really matter that much which brand or model mic or other gear you'll get, because in the beginning the more important question you should be concern with is how, not which brand. Don't fall into severe GAS, and don't go into hyper spending mode right in the beginning. You really don't need all that much to get started.
 
Røde, Sennheiser, or even Azden will all do, but instead of obsessing about particular brand shotguns or other type mics to go for, make sure you get a separate audio recorder, and preferably a stereo mic for that, like the Røde Stereo Videomic Pro, for example, along with dead cats for the mics. Even though the GH3 has adjustable audio levels, don't rely on the in-camera audio alone. Use it only for reference audio and possible b-roll sound, but always make sure you'll get a proper soundscape for the final edit. 
 
If you plan on selling your film to the riders, make sure you get the sounds of the bikes recorded properly. Also pay attention to getting the ambient sounds in each location. For that you'll need the separate audio recorder and optimally placed mic. It doesn't matter if the sounds aren't always 100% real time sounds, they'll love your film if you get the sounds of the bike appear 'larger than life' in your film. You'll get away with less than ideal footage, as long as the soundtrack sounds good. A little bit of Hollywood-esque magic isn't bad for documentaries, either.
 
After all, bikes like classic Triumphs with 360-degree crankshafts make an awesome sound even without any outrageous aftermarket pipes, so do some classic v-twins and120-degree crankshaft inline triples, and even the classic Harley sound is pretty entertaining. So it really pays off to put some effort into getting those sweet engine sounds on a separate soundtrack which you can then use to beef up the final edit. The weight is on the quality of the sound, not the loudness of it. 
Just don't go for wrong soundtrack for the wrong bike, though, they'll pick it up and hate you for it, even though it's pretty common in Hollywood movies. Nevermind those Japanese inline fours, they all sound the same and they're all equally boring. 
 
Speaking of following the bikes, if you plan on riding and shooting pillion, you'd better consider getting a GoPro or Sony action cam which you can attach to yourself. Forget about the sound when riding, although you can try capturing something behind your back, but chances are you'll catch just a lot of wind noise and rumble. But if you can catch a decent soundtrack of the engine, maybe with the lavalier taped behind your back, by all means try it.
 
So all in all, apart from the GH3 and a (wide enough angle) lens, the essential gear to go for in the beginning would be a decent monopod or at least a tripod, an ND filter, (or at least a polariser), a shotgun mic, a separate audio recorder, and perhaps a separate mic and a light stand/tripod for it, and of course furry covers for all the mics. You could also invest a little bit in a basic lavalier mic,  too, but not much point in going overboard with that right in the beginning. I don't think it is one of the most urgent items in your shopping list. Practise with some cheaper one first, or go for a shotgun mike, and buy at least one external audio recorder, like the Zoom H1, for example, which costs less than 100€. 
Good luck with the project. Shouldn't be a boring one. 

none of it is really 4K, 2K upres mostly and HD. Elysium was 4K and then upres to 8K for Imax. Only a handful of studios here in the city can even handle 4K. We have renders for TV that tke 8hrs a frame to render in HD. SO take a shot that is 30F to 300 frames long...and usually if its 300 frames long its some epic explosion with tons of pieces.....put 4K and STUPID STEREO into the mix and then 48 or 60FPS. its getting ridiculous. I prefer 2K 2.39:1 with some nice film grain to it for texture with a great story any day.

It's not yet common.  Some directors insist and have enough juice to pressure production to fork over the substantial budget increase both 4K VFX and DI will cost them.  Prior to the phenomenon of IMAX presentation for non-educational films 4K was more common for anamorphic films where that's considered rather minimal quality for anamorphic. 
 
I would be really surprised if more than 10% of big VFX films are being posted at 4K and certainly less than 20% right now.  That's up from hearing about the one or two films a year requiring 4K post just a few years ago.  The shift to DCP already gave a resolution boost to 2K finish over general release print quality, commonly considered worth about 1K thanks to all the optical steps.  
 
If you've ever seen first-gen prints straight off a neg projected big and beautiful you cry at how much is just gone by the time it hits the multiplex.  This is a big reason why the death of film as an acquisition format is far too premature, regardless of how good any digital camera is, because DCP of analog origination is the best looking digital presentation going.  Similarly, digital origination looks nice® when printed to film and optically projected.  It would be interesting to see experiments with digital origination, print to neg and then scan that negative for DI and eventual DCP. 
 
Anyhow, yes, I was surprised to read someone had busted out the VV.  They must be doing pan/zoom or perhaps some tricky projections where the extra resolution is desirable above working from a 4K 4-perf scan.  It's maybe a little overkill if they're using it for an Alexa section.  
 
CG itself, regardless of standard practice, doesn't need to be rendered to your target, working resolution because we tyipically work at 4x to 8x oversampling.  You have further shading and geometric oversampling if you're using a REYES style micro-polygon renderer (Pixar's Renderman implementation, prman, or SESI's Mantra renderer being the most common) where, nominally, if you were to only do a 1x spatial sample you would still have four micro quads shading beneath each pixel.  
 
Straight raytracers commonly have even more oversampling thrown at them as they're prone to spatial aliasing but there's decades of research into techniques like poisson disc sampling and other stochastic techniques striving to improve results while lowering computation because noise is less distracting and more aesthetically pleasing (and more consistent with motion picture imagery either analog or digital) than hard, jagged lines.

Even when shooting with the ARRI "The Fridge" D 20 back in the "old days" the decision to use it instead of a RED was a decision for the aesthetic character of the image, it's "film-likeness", that made people to put up with a camera which was kind of hard to handle concerning size and weight. This concept - stay as near to film aesthetics as possible - was quite efficiently transferred to the Alexa which provides great DR plus excellent colour rendition, especially skin tones. Also Alexa fitted better into the existing workflows. A decisive bit less franken-rigging. Very nice and not overly complicated menues. Sturdy body. And great reliabilty.

What befuddles me is that the rental costs of a camera should be a big factor in a major production of a narrative film or even an average one. For a German TV-Movie costs for camera (excluding lenses) is maybe 3% of the budget or even a bit less. The cost-factor should be really only kicking in, when you go small to low budget or your production manager is named Scrooge. Apart from questions of aesthetics - you like or dislike a certain characteristic delivered by a sensor (which really is there or maybe only assumed :-)) - again workflow on set and in post is also cost-wise the decisive factor to take this or that camera. Not rental costs.

In the end all a camera is is a tool. And Alexa seems to fit in better under most circumstances for middle to bigger budget productions of narrative films. No miracle here and definitely no "fanboy'ism".

Captain Phillips seemed to have the most disparate use of cameras.  Quickly skimming the Nov'13 ACM it appears they used Super-16mm (Aaton) shooting on the water, especially for the Somali only parts of the film, in the skiffs.  Being so remote without support they didn't trust digital for this kind of shooting.
 
As soon as the Somalis step onto the boat and Tom Hanks' portion of the story starts it switches to 3-perf 35mm.  For the arial stuff showing the extremities of scale they shot Alexa.  GoPros were used to capture the SEAL parachute drop.  VistaVision was used for VFX plates.  They don't mention the C300 at all in the article, nor do they list it at the end, so I'm betting it's inclusion above is mostly about marketing.
 
Wolf of Wallstreet was split 4-perf 35mm and Alexa to ArriRaw.  Here again the filmmakers went with different shooting styles for different stages of the narrative, mainly with different optics, lighting and color.  Depending on the character's state of mind they shot either spherical Arri Master Primes and the Hawk anamorphics, heightening DiCaprio's mania by shooting a lot with the 35mm and 28mm anamorphics, switching to spherical when his state of mind is more clear and precise.
 
For DiCaprio's "quaalude look" they shot 20mm on an Alexa at 12fps with 360 degree shutter, then step-printed to resample back to proper time.  And a prototype C500 was used by the second-unit/VFX to shoot ariel photography.  It was small enough they could rig it to the nose of an RC Octocopter.  The RC copter was necessary because the location in Long Island didn't allow full-size choppers as well as allowing them to get shots that would have been impossible with a full size chopper.

All the parts of my new GH3 with 14-140 lens came yesterday.
I used it this morning to record my bowling practice.
As a stand alone unit for over 10 minutes of Video I find it unbeatable.
 
These are my impressions that may change after I dial in both cameras.
 
Things I like more about the GH3
1. Unlimited recording
2. Much better AFF
3. More depth of field
 
Things I like more about the D5300.
1. Much better image quality
2. Much better color
3. Much Higher usable ISO

Today I bought a Nikon D5300 for review, and a bit of shooting, but mainly for the blog with intention of sending it back after.
 
Well, so far it is surprising me.
 
The dynamic range with the flat picture profile is really quite something. Head to toe with ProRes on the Blackmagic Pocket Camera. I'd put it at 12 stops. Very good colour and good shadows, and again good low light performance. The codec in 1080/60p seems ok so far too. The main drawback seems to be the cheap-mid-range Nikon ergonomics (not enough buttons and dials). Wish they had put this video mode (and articulated screen) in the D7100 instead.
 
But so far so good peeps!

This is going off topic, but from the online discussions I've seen, what some folks don't seem to fathom about the whole resolution debate,  when talking in the context of a film like The Hobbit, is the characteristics of perceived resolution when the frame rate increases.
 
The faster the frame rate, the more that particular series of still pictures are viewed as more RESOLVED and lifelike...even if the pixel resolution is IDENTICAL and shot from the SAME camera.
 
Everyone seems to focus their discuss pixel resolution, when it (I think) is about the aesthetic issue of slower frame rates.  This is an overlooked cinematic effect that shouldn't be ignored on-line, but too often is.  (Professionals get it though)
 
Look, here's a straw man for ya:
 
"Oh, I like films shot on the Alexa!" people argue, "It's so much better than everything else.  So organic and "pure."  Well, yeah.  It kinda is, but are you enamored with the cinematic look of the frame rate or the actual image resolution?  I suggest it's both.  If you shot 60p on an Alexa I guarantee you a film purist would take one look at the result and be horrified at the "videoness" of the image.  Shoot the same exact scene at 24p on the Alexa, play it back, and the film purist would instantly feel more comfortable. 
 
Aside from all that, just watching a film shot in 48p, then played back and displayed at 24p will certainly alter the perceived cinematic aesthetic of the film.  It will present different visual characteristic.  At 24p you'd be watching every other frame of a 48p shoot and that's all it takes.  Watch the footage at it's initially shot 48p and it starts to look more "video/electronic" (and thus less cinematic) to the human eye.
 
You got a camera and monitor that does both 25p and 50p?  Shoot 50p and put the clip on a 50p timeline and then on a 25p time line.  Watch the difference.  Or, shoot a horse race at 50p then shoot another at 25p and go look at the perceived change of the image.  You'll see in a hurry it's not an issue about resolution that's altering your idea of what it means for an image to be "cinematic."
 
...and I'm not even getting into motion blur and shutter speeds, which also greatly alter the perception of moving pictures.
 
Long rant short:  It's not just about the resolution.

"And, the downsampling is key if you really want the best possible resolution and accurate color for 1080p with RGGB grid array sensors."

Well, yes, we had this discussion before. A downsampled image can't by any means increase accuracy. It can have no visible aliasing, and that's a good thing.

Done right, a 4k clip downsampled to 1080 will *look* better than a genuine 1080 clip - if there was one, because you simply can't have absolute accuracy.

I am curious to see the first few hundred tests. Will they look like Vermeers (I think Jan Vermeer was mentioned somewhere above, a painter famous for depicting details, which in art remained an exception)?

And you'd be in the company of a lot of respected DPs that have made the transition to digital.
 
Arri has proven since the introduction of the Alexa that, when it comes to digital, how you fill those rows and columns is ultimately more important than how many rows and columns you're filling.  Higher and higher resolution and more and more DR and wider and wider color gamut are all goals the engineers busy working away at Sony or RED understand.  They're practical problems with practical solutions, overcome by throwing more and faster engineering at them.  These engineers aren't going to create better cameras though.
 
Last night I finally got around to watching Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and immediately thought about where we were going here.  It's almost poetic that this film was released the same year as the first installment of The Hobbit, a shitty looking 4K movie shot on RED.  I'm not anti-RED and there are plenty of good looking RED films, this isn't one of them and this film is a good example of what's missing from RED (and Sony's) path.
  Reading about their workflow, on The Master, it reinforces my feelings that 4K and beyond, with digital cameras, is really a problem for filmmaking, and it's not just about resolution.  Nobody has ever complained that 65mm made actors or sets or props or make up look bad.  The Master was a mixed 65mm (mostly) and 35mm show, graded photochemically with both print and DCP distribution.  They did four separate release finishes for this film, with true photochemical for 70mm and 35mm prints.  It's crazy.  But for their DI they scanned the 5-perf 65mm at 8K and the 4-perf 35mm at 6K for an eventual 4K DCP finish.   More than once I've read, based on DP and colorist commentary, that anamorphic 35mm with a digital 4K finish is considered minimally what you need if you care about preserving most of what's there in the neg, where 2K is an abomination, but 6K for spherical when you're not shooting 8-perf seems excessive by conventional wisdom.  Everything I've read over the years about how obsessive P.T. Anderson is over the photography of his films leads me to believe they weren't assigning film this level of resolution unless it warranted it.  Every aspect of his acquisition and release methodology was thoroughly tested.  My own experience on dozens and dozens of films working with scanned 35mm imagery concurs.   Making 4K actually look good with digital cameras isn't something that seems part of the conversation at these electronics shows and soft lenses is the current bandaid but I think it's just that.  They're not confronting head on a fundamental flaw in how these sensors are recording reality so discretely and unattractively.  Resolution is to blame but film proves this to be false.   For the 35mm portions of The Master  the emphasis was on the sharpest lenses available, so that the footage cut well with the 65mm.  Meanwhile DP after DP are on record choosing reportedly soft lenses, like Cooke S4,  for high resolution digital acquisition, otherwise finding the look is harsh and unappealing.  Moreover, PT Anderson requires his films be shot on the slowest stocks available, ensuring the smallest possible grain.  DP Mihai Malaimare brought his personal 85mm Zeiss Jena for Panavization, the sharpest 85mm he's ever used or seen, and Panavision found a matching set of expanded focal lengths already in their possession.     All this emphasis on resolution didn't make the film less beautiful.  On the contrary, I can't think of the last time I saw close-ups in a motion picture that inspired this much awe.  It was just astounding.  And the color.  Seeing a film, shot on film, with a photochemical grade that looks this amazing also points out just how over-graded a majority of films are, regardless of the origination.  There's a lot of "just because you can doesn't mean you should" sort of observations one could make.   All the criticisms levied against The Hobbit and DP after DP working around and against the "edge" of Ultra-HD (some of which, yes, is preserved even in 2K or 1080P reductions), this was never the case with film, shooting with what we know to be higher resolving power than 4K.  I think we need to be shifting the conversation away from just the simple number of rows and columns and to how they're being filled.  Video engineers did finally get around to giving us the ability to shoot video with film-like gamma curves, finally appreciating that we don't like our movies looking like the nightly news.  Now they need to appreciate that 4K+ for movies needs to be different than 4K+ for covering Formula-1 or football.

Two weeks ago, a client asked me to shoot some nice photos of her employees. I told her that this would be a job for a photographer with his own studio and proper flash lights, things that I don´t have as I´m not a photographer at all. To be honest, I actually told her so because I really didn´t like the idea of driving 400 kilometers just to take portrait pictures of employees. But her answer was, well, shaking up. She told me that she wasn´t interested in high-polished, perfectly lit ultra high resolution photos, but rather something special and charming. I know she´s got the money and access to professional photographers, but she explicidly wanted me, because she appreciates my ideas. So I bought a "green screen" (actually a green carpet) from IKEA, grabbed some LED lights and my GH3 and took these pictures downstairs her company building. The end of the story: She and her employees couldn´t have been more happy, because the pictures looked exactly what they were hoping for. They are not perfectly lit, they are not perfectly sharp, but they have a special look and feel and thus represent the spirit of that specific company. Mission accomplished.
 
This was an example, that can apply to all of my creative work. As long as I´m a self-employed and creative person providing a service, my clients pay for the whole package, including my own nature. They don´t pay solely for resolution or pro-looking equipment.
Even in the future, some people will be able to sell precious 720p suff, while some highly graded, moiré-free 4K work of others won´t be worh a penny to anybody. Like I said, it´s the whole package and your knowledge of how and whom to sell it, it´s not your camera´s codec alone.
 
Anyway, I will be pleased with all these 4K test videos on youtube and vimeo. Thousands of self-appointed filmmakers will show us thousands of arty video shots of flowers, dogs, cats, grain fields, dancing people and cars. Everything accompanied by gentle music from Ludovico Einaudi. Description: Testing my new GH4/Canon C50/Sony FS4K/Blackmagic Production Camera with lens XYZ...
 
Testing, testing, testing, testing, testing, testing, comparing, testing, testing.... Oh look, there´s 8K on the horizon. This time it won´t allow us to make any excuses because of bad equipment. Finally we can tell our stories. With 8K we can. Finally.
 
But seriously, while all these predictable and influencable "I can´t because of bad equipment"-guys kept on excusing, complaining and distracting from their own incapability, my good old GH2 turned out to be a cash cow. The only thing my clients complaint about was the form factor of my GH2. The couldn´t imagine, how this tiny box would be capable of producing such a nice image. But it did. I`m self-employed since 2010 and I started with nothing but a GH2, some Canon FD lenses, an old Macbook Pro and ingenuity. As of this writing, I haven´t lost one single client, despite rolling shutter.
 
Today, it´s not the money anymore that keeps me from buying a RED or a Canon C whatever, it´s the experience that you can do so many things with the tools that you already have. Most of the time, it´s your lack of skills and imagination that seperates you and your clients from being satisfied.
 
The easiest thing to do is putting the blame on anything and anyone but yourself.

It's really not about the 4K that's important. it's the new processors and technological improvements that will be innovated to support 4K will bring superior image quality. And having good equipment forces your to create better content.
It doesn't allow you to make excuses because of your equipment.

Philip Bloom had a lengthy blog on this back in October here is the link and his pros and converts
 
philipbloom.net/2013/10/10/4kraw/   Now the pros and cons of 4k PROS: 
Incredibly detailed images, 4 times that of HD but they are not obviously so.
Fantastic ability to crop in post. Something I do on all my interviews for docs now that I shoot 4k for them. I am not shooting 4k docs – just 4k talking heads. I can then go in for tights or back out whenever I want in the edit. Way better.
“Future proof†I am bit hesitant about this as I see very little need for future proofing most of my work. Now for high end drama and big docs then yes. Do it.
You have a higher end format to sell to clients. Sometimes an advantage. Not always though…see cons.
Scaling down to 2K in post often yields quite stunning results.
CONS: 
Inefficient codec mean massive files. Even efficient ones are pretty big, which means expensive cards and lots of storage.
Inability to edit natively for the vast majority of people. Proxies are used which of course adds time.
Most production companies I have dealt with cannot take it.
Almost nobody can actually watch 4k (yet). I can’t.
It can lead to lazy cinematography. Although I use the crop to help me in interviews, this is not due to being lazy but to give me options. You should never forget the tight shots because you can crop. The whole aesthetic changes. The depth of field remains the same so it doesn’t look like a true close up
You need to be even more skilled, as mistakes are easier to spot.
Incredibly unforgiving and harsh. Showing the flaws in everything, especially people. Fantastic for beauty shots etc..for drama it’s actually too detailed and causes the DP many issues.
Needs a really big screen to really see the difference.
Will it actually take off as a consumer format for the home? I am very pessimistic about this.

Things like bit depth really matter for post. I can approximate  higher bit depth by downsampling from higher resolution, but the individual precision of each pixel remains the same. So in certain cases, you won't pickup subtle changes in tone. 
 
And all else being equal, down-sampling does not afford you better dynamic range.  And 4K raw is still way too much data, so you will lose something by going to 4K. 
 
As for content delivery, almost eveyone is still stuck below 1080p (besides Blu-Ray). iTunes, Netflix, Cable, almost all of their HD looks like heavily compressed 720p or 1080i. 
 
The Canon c300 is a special case, because it uses its 4K sensor not just to down-sample intelligently, but to minimize motion artifacts.  Most of the 4K cameras that are going to come out won't be using the same process, and therefore won't get the same benefit from a 4K sensor.

The "sharper" aspect has to do with the shutter speed, not the frame rate.  When you increase the frame rate you're also increasing the shutter speed.  Shooting with a high shutter speed at 24fps produces the same spatial crispness just without the temporal fluidity that the higher frame rate would have given it.
 
In the 48-60fps range your brain chemistry changes how it interprets visual stimulus.  At these speeds it's treating it as something happening live and now.  That doesn't mean that you consciously accept what you're seeing as real, because you don't suddenly forget you're watching a movie and sitting in a theater but your brain is interpreting the imagery as something that you're witnessing in realtime.   This can create certain involuntary reactions to what you see (good for novelty/theme park films).  All of the research into this phenomenon was done a long time ago by Douglas Trumbull.
 
As a measured scientific fact this is something that Peter Jackson needlessly screwed up on, either because he failed to research previous HFR for narrative attempts or because he failed to properly interpret the data (as well as appreciate the absolute flop that ShowScan was).  He likely thought that the very real changes in brain chemistry that happen when a viewer is stimulated this way would aid the audience's suspension of disbelief but it works in the opposite way as well.
 
HFR allows the audience to see through the veil of pseudo-realism that works for narrative films (that used to also count on the impressionistic recording of light and color by celluloid which added 50-75% more production value to what was being photographed in the case of miniatures, mattes and make-up) and perceive what's actually happening before their eyes: people playing dress-up, with heavy make-up on, carrying props that look like expensive items from a Halloween Store.  

Wow I didn't realise the new mac pro's were so tiny! That's amazing. And relatively cheap too, about half what I thought they were going to cost! Great point on hand luggage Andrew. To be honest I would have mistaken these for new mac mini's unless I knew otherwise; very impressive. 
 
To address the claims that AVCHD is a pain, it's not. I cut a short shot on a hacked GH2 to 176mbit on a 1.7ghz macbook air last year, it was a breeze. Didn't drop a frame. 
 
The only issue I have found with macs is the gamma issue with AVCHD. Most things are plug and play, cameras and printers and such, whereas with PC's you have to piss about installing drivers, software, et al. I have saved hours, probably days by now, by buying a mac. 
 
Anyway, back to the BMPC, the image looks good enough. It's another camera that I wouldn't mind using, along with all the other cameras available these days. 4k is cool, we finally get noise/grain that doesn't make everyone automatically think it's rubbish or a documentary. The dynamic range is the only flaw, seeing as the bottom stop is noisy as hell, we get what, 11 stops useable? Good enough, but nothing special. I'd prefer a BMCC with a speed booster. They should have partnered with metabones and released a camera with a built in speed booster. 
 
Global shutter is great, about time too. 

I like to keep my rig as small as possible so I don't use a follow focus. I have mostly AI-s glass, which all has the same beautiful focus mechanism, so I'm happy using that. The z-finder Jr helps a lot with achieving good focus first attempt (though I'm not that practiced at it yet). One thing I'm loving is that (using the adhesive clip-on frame with the z-finder jr on the D5300) the axel on the swivel screen is quite strong and the Jr is quite light, so I can hold the camera low and against my body (much more stable) and, with the screen turned out and up, look down into the z-finder. I may post a photo of this setup as it's really working well for me.
Nikon are supposedly releasing a focus assist that I might get (called NAL-1), but I haven't seen it for sale yet.
 
FYI: I've carefully put a small piece of electrical tape over the contacts on the lens mount of my 35mm f2 AF-D, which allows me to use the aperture ring (I assume the 5300 wants you to lock your AFD lens to f22 when attached too?). This allows you to change aperture while recording. Though you loose metering.

I like the look too Matt. At some point, I think people should take off the pixel peeping googles and start evaluating, and crafting images based solely on aesthetic taste. 
 
It's fine to try and figure out what your tools are capable of, and whether or not they can deliver the look you're after via grading, etc. But after you've figured out if the tool is capable enough, it's time to focus on the artistic part. 
 
On pretty much all of the camera enthusiast sites, you read post after post that imply some users get stuck in eval mode... they can't see anything other than noise, corner focus, dynamic range, resolution, moire, etc. I do the same thing, but try to recognize when it's time to just start using the tools with the knowledge you've gained in the testing phase, i.e. "This camera's noise is acceptable to me up to about 3200, so I need to make lens and lighting decisions to compensate." or, "This camera tends toward a softer image, so I need to use the sharpest glass I have, and plan on a little sharpening in post when needed." etc.

Anyone care to explain the relevance of this? We've established Panasonic cameras have great resolution.
 
The GH3 has other deficiencies though. Personally I'd choose the D5300 over the GH3. Better colours, better dynamic range, better low light, good detail with sharpening, less moire. The GH3 is more user-friendly, but the 5300 is fine to use (I actually really like the way it handles, and the large LCD is amazing with a Z-Finder). What's the best thing about the GH3? The Speed Booster, which is Nikon mount, so lens choice is going to be the same there. And low light performance still isn't going to match the 5300. In terms of latitude for grading, I'd say they are probably on par. I can tell you the 5300 is a pleasure to grade compared to my G6. DR looks better on my 5300 straight out of camera than any graded GH3 clips I've seen, as are colours, so grading isn't as important in comparison.
 
I don't want to start a fanboy battle, but I'd like to know if resolution is really so important to you guys that you're prepared to ignore all of the other stuff?

There's tons lacking on the photography side too actually. They don't have a mirrorless system with EVF. They have something like a grand mirrorless lens range of what… 2 lenses!?
 
So no really portable full frame camera for stills like Sony has with the A7R, A7 and RX1.
 
There's no high megapixel body for stills. Canon 22MP to Nikon / Sony 36MP is a big gap. Their CMOS manufacturing needs to move off the current outdated process to achieve this high megapixel count and it seems they are late doing this.
 
Their contrast detect AF is still slower than Micro Four Thirds and 95% of Canon lenses don't have internal silently focussing stepping motors for AF. Even on 70D the live-view AF is way slower than the Panasonic GX7 / Olympus OM-D E-M1.
 
They don't have the variety of bodies either… They are all almost identical to use, similar size, similar ergonomics, similar black trad. SLR design, etc.
 
The lens range is incredibly strong but very pricey, look at the new Canon 35mm F2.0 IS. That began at 700 euros and they had to drop the price 200 euros before it started selling. Compared to Sigma 35mm F1.4 you have to really need IS to consider the Canon. It's a nice lens, I use it, and light… but at 700 it was a non-starter for me.
 
Photographers are also complaining about the EOS M2. They were awaiting a proper update but instead had the range cancelled altogether in the US and Europe where the last one sold poorly due to being rather rubbish.
 
Trust me, it's pretty much only momentum and inertia which is keeping Canon in the game at the moment.